VOY: Once Upon a Time

         This episode provides an interesting look into what the future of children's entertainment may look like. I know I would have loved having a holodeck as a kid, in fact getting me out of it probably would have been a problem. This is also a good look at the challenges of having a child on a space ship, but not a normal ship either; a ship trapped on the far side of the galaxy. The B story about her mom being trapped under rubble played out pretty much exactly how you would expect. Something goes wrong, they think they are fine, they are not fine, crisis coming so it is now or never, and at the last minute everything works out great. 
         We open on the holodeck where Naomi is hanging out with her friend Flotter, a character who is the embodiment of water. He is afraid of the tree monster, but it turns out the tree is friendly. She gets stopped by Neelix who takes her to bed. She has a video call with her mom first who assures her everything is fine, but all the static on the view indicates it probably isn't fine. Ensign Wildman talks to Neelix after Naomi heads to bed and tells him they have been hit by a dangerous ion storm. On the Flyer Paris is struggling to keep them under control as they are buffeted. They find a class M planet but when they crash land they end up buried under tons of rock and Wildman is badly hurt. At briefing on Voyager they come up with a plan to track the flyer and Neelix gets the job of keeping Naomi distracted. She goes through her day and eventually ends up on the holodeck again where Flotter gets evaporated by the fire ogre who also burns down the forest. That night she notices her mom hasn't called.
         Things get bad enough that Janeway tells Neelix to tell Naomi, but before he can she wakes up and wanders the ship and starts getting clues something has gone wrong. Eventually she takes the turbolift to the bridge and hears the captain ordering sickbay to prepare for heavy casualties before anyone notices Naomi. She runs to the holodeck horrified that she has been lied to. On the planet the Flyer is running out of oxygen but luckily Seven has located the ship. They manage to cut through with phaser drills and everybody gets rescued just before the end of the episode. We just have time for one more trip to visit Flotter.

         Review: Not the most exciting episode, but it at least does a better job with a kid-centric episode than TNG or DS9. 

5 out of 10