This season seems to be all about the impacts Voyager is having on various species in the Delta Quadrant and so far that has been a good thing. This time it is an alien bent on revenge for what Voyager did in helping the Borg with 8472. It really makes sense that a choice like that would have a huge impact on the many species whose space bordered the Borg. I do find it rather questionable that they are able to instantly travel at super transwarp speeds with tech they already had, but at least that is more reasonable that Starfleet sending an empty rescue ship to save them. Luckily that second bit turned out to be a trap so I am glad Janeway's endless suspicion saved them again. And speaking of her, this is the episode that starts setting Janeway up as a mentor to Seven. Good thing because the Doctor's lessons don't seem to be working.
We open with Janeway and Seven playing Velocity on the holodeck. It is something between racket ball and phaser practice and despite Seven's enhanced skills, Janeway keeps winning. Seven is upset and challenges her to another game but Janeway walks out on her. Next the captain is in the mess hall working all night on the secret message they got from Starfleet in Message in a Bottle when Chakotay walks in. In addition to scolding her jokingly about being up all night he tells her they got a message from Neelix and Paris that their supply mission went great and asking to take on a passenger who helped Neelix. She agrees and later that day meets the big headed alien. He is friendly and they learn that he helped after Neelix and Paris' universal translator broke he learned their language and helped. He mentions that his people are really good at all sorts of languages and Janeway gets him to work on the message from Starfleet. He is able to get the message decoded and in addition to a bunch of other info contains coordinates and a garbled message from Admiral Hayes.
They take the ship to the specified coordinates and find what appears to be a strange looking Federation ship. Chakotay leads an away team over since the ship is empty and they find a futuristic looking Starfleet ship with some sort of quantum slipstream drive thing. The ship takes off on its own and makes it 15 lightyears before they can get it to stop. Voyager catches up a few days later and they also decode the video from Hayes. He explains Starfleet had a breakthrough in warp tech and sent this ship to rescue them. Janeway is a bit dubious but sends teams over and it all seems fine. Everyone is excited about getting home except for Seven. She decides she isn't going home with them but Janeway tells her that is because she is afraid which Seven isn't exactly pumped to hear.
Janeway also keeps working on a supposedly unrecoverable part of the message which turns out to be the real message from Hayes. It explains that they couldn't do much to help other than send a bunch of info on the Delta Quadrant. Janeway gets a security team together and orders the other ship evacuated. She arrives on the bridge with Seven and some goons but the alien manages to pull a lever after a struggle and the ship morphs into an alien ship. Well, the bridge does at least. He confines them in a forcefield but Kim manages to beam out everybody but Seven and the captain. The alien explains his people were destroyed by the Borg after Janeway helped them beat 8472 and he is taking them to be assimilated. He does a classic villain thing and puts them in a brig he can't see or easily monitor so Janeway turns on some of Seven's implants so she can get through the forcefield and turn it off. Seven also explains Janeway was right, she was afraid but now that she might be getting borged again she realizes she wants to be human after all. The Janeway makes it to the bridge but the alien breaks the controls with them set for Borg space but Voyager manages to do the quantum drive thing and shows up just in time to save the day. We close with Janeway and Seven back playing Velocity again but this time Janeway is down to keep playing after the match.
Review: A decent episode with some actual character growth from Seven. Hopefully it isn't undone as quickly as they seem to like to, but we shall see. I enjoyed the plot about the revenge seeking alien quite a bit.
7 out of 10
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