VOY: Message in a Bottle

         I have to say I am a bit disappointed that my Trek50 episode was one with Andy Dick as a guest star. I have nothing against EMH episodes, Robert Picardo is one of my favorite actors on Voyager, but putting him with Andy Dick was pretty lame. It was clear the writers were trying to just do a good, exciting episode but Dick's lame attempts at physical comedy really didn't help things. I did enjoy getting to see the badass USS Prometheus but it made me wonder where this ship was during the actual Dominion war. Also seeing two more Defiant class ships, but since the Romulans are trying to fight the Federation I assume this is before the end of that war, so where were all these ships then? Still I enjoyed the Prometheus's novel combat strategy and the Doctor was great even with such a poor foil.
         We open with Torres complaining about Seven to Chakotay who tells her to deal with it. But it seems he has to deal with her first as Seven summons the captain and him to astrometrics. It seems she has accessed an alien sensor network and detected a Federation ship in the alpha quadrant. They attempt to contact the ship directly but fail. However they do come up with a plan to send the Doctor. He is hesitant since the risk is pretty high, but agrees to give it a shot. It works and he finds himself alone on the USS Prometheus with dead and dying Federation crew all over. The ship he is on has been taken over by Romulans and they start taking their injured to sickbay. He activates the local EMH and finds it is Andy Dick at which point I wished he just shut it off and saved us a lot of trouble. The Romulans have taken over the ship and are trying to take it back to their space. They even fight off another Federation ship even though we have already been told no other ship can keep up.
         The two Doctors come up with a plan to flood the ship with a sedative gas but the Doctor is captured on the bridge trying to access the ventilation controls. The Romulans try to interrogate him, but EMH number two saves the day by activating the sedative. The two head to the bridge and struggle to get things moving to the point where they can't actually fly anywhere. The Romulans show up but so does the Federation. EMH 2 hilariously shoots one of the Defiant class ships but NBD apparently. Despite being super incompetent they manage to activate the tactical ship separation and destroy a Romulan ship. We close with the Doctor returning to Voyager with the news that he has told their story to Starfleet and efforts are now in progress to effect a rescue.

         Review: I have super mixed feelings about this episode. Had they chosen just about any other guest star I would be raving about how good it was, but that is hard given what we got instead. A good story with some cool action despite the weaknesses.

6 out of 10