They are really starting to get more experimental in their episodes and I am loving it. They are also determined to make Neelix as annoying as humanly possible, in this case by having him decide to camp out in sickbay with no regard for the fact that it is an active clinic. I know the Doctor is a hologram, but if they are going to treat him like a member of the crew then maybe don't turn his sickbay into a dormitory. It was at least fun to get to watch the Doctor turn on the lights and gleefully kick them all out when an actual medical crisis happened. As for the actual story of the episode, it doesn't seem all that likely that a living metal goop could make a duplicate of a person including their memories, but it does make for a fun story.
We open with the ship running out of energy and moving the crew to dormitories rather than their quarters to save power on life support and such. Neelix decides he is too good for the dorms and opts to instead move into sickbay which seems like a terrible idea but Chakotay supports it for some reason. Seven meanwhile has ignored the order to shut down astrometrics but on the upside she found them a source of fuel. It is on a hostile planet, class Y which is apparently called a demon planet. Lets take a step back for a second, this planet is clearly way less hostile than even Venus so I have no idea other than lack of creativity by the writers why it would be considered the worst of the worst by starfleet. Janeway sends Harry and Paris down in a shuttle but when they land Harry is pulled into a puddle of goop. Then a minute or two later life support fails on his suit after we see some of the liquid metal passing through and then Paris' suit fails soon after. They both collapse unable to breath.
Since she can't contact them on the most hostile type of planet known to starfleet Janeway decides to land the ship and check things out. Yup, the read that correctly. They are so badly damaged they can't take off again even if they had fuel which they don't. Janeway sends Chakotay and Seven to look for them and they are surprised to find a happy and healthy Tom Paris walking around with no spacesuit on. He says he is fine, better than fine even. They find Harry and beam back to the ship but the two of them instantly start asphyxiating and the Doctor can only stabilize them by putting them in a force field with the atmosphere from the demon planet inside. They do however manage to harvest enough deuterium fuel to get the ship running again so there is that.
Kim goes back to the surface while Paris stays in sickbay so the Doctor can look for a cure. While exploring a cave with Seven Harry finds himself and Paris almost dead in their spacesuits. Meanwhile the ship suddenly has a pool of the liquid metal open up underneath and starts sinking so Janeway decides to take off despite that not really being an option due to the damage from landing. She calls to beam up the away team but Harry runs away and they only get the original Harry and Paris along with Seven and Chakotay. They come up with a plan to destroy the liquid to let them go but when they do the fake Paris is in pain and the fake Kim calls up from the surface. Janeway beams him into the transporter room in a bubble of his own air and fake Kim explains the planet has had life of a strange sort for a long time, but this is the first time it has had consciousness. Janeway negotiates their release in exchange for the crew being asked to voluntarily give the alien goo samples of DNA so it can make more people out of itself to be less lonely or something.
Review: An odd episode with some odd decisions by the crew, but overall rather enjoyable. The idea of a planet having a form of life that is unconscious but that can somehow make conscious beings with another creatures memories is certainly interesting scifi. I still am not sure why Janeway decided to land the ship, but luckily it all worked out for her.
7 out of 10
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