After I finished watching this episode I described it to my wife as the Dark Empire of Voyager and that was completely forgetting the name. Now I realize that Seven didn't rejoin the collective specifically to kill the queen, but there are many other similarities. I didn't think I was going to like the bits about her family but they ended up adding a lot to the episode. I was also relieved to see that the ease with which they dealt with the Borg in the opening was because it was a trap. Of course it is a trap, this is the Borg we are talking about. I still found the queen to be a bit of a disappointment, but some of that certainly comes from my increasingly harsh feelings towards First Contact. I am not really sure what she got by keeping Seven as an individual either, maybe it is just a hobby of hers or something, but it seems like if she actually wanted her for a plot to destroy earth she would have just fully assimilated her and taken her memories. Especially since she points out that is exactly what she did to Seven's father.
We open with Voyager kicking the holy hell out of Borg probe ship but blasting their shields and then beaming an armed photo torpedo aboard. Unfortunately it destroys the entire probe since it was apparently the plan to try and capture a trans warp coil. They do get a bunch of stuff though including data on all nearby Borg vessels. Janeway spots a damaged scout ship limping home and decides it is the perfect target. She has Seven start reading her parents logs. It seems they followed a Borg cube for over a year and were even able to board and take notes. There are a bunch of flashbacks of them following and eventually getting caught by the Borg, but I am mostly going to stick with the main story as this is already going to be a long write up. Soon we see Janeway beaming onto the Borg sphere with a team of Seven, Tuvok and Kim. Tuvok and Kim destroy the ships shields while Janeway and Seven steal the coil. Things go well but Seven seems distracted by being back on a Borg ship. They have a system giving them two minutes before the Borg detect them but they don't quite make it. They do all manage to make to to the beam out location after getting the coil but the Borg get onto Voyager using the transporter beam and start attacking just and Chakotay stops the holodeck program.
That evening in the cargo bay Seven hears a Borg voice and gets a vision of being surrounded by drones. The voice explains that she knows all about Voyagers plan to take the coil and it will fail leading to the assimilation of Voyager unless Seven rejoins the collective. Seven doesn't tell anybody about her vision but does find something in her parents logs, they developed a device to hide a person from Borg sensors which they can use against the sphere. Janeway can see something is bothering Seven, but Seven insists on going on the mission anyway. They make it onto the sphere and the devices do seem to be masking them from detection. Everything goes great and they get the coil out but as they turn to leave Seven tells Janeway she is staying. Before Janeway care argue very much a forcefield goes up between the two and the drones start pouring in. Janeway returns to the ship without her and the sphere suddenly powers up despite being "damaged" and disappears into a transwarp conduit.
The sphere emerges in the middle of a huge Borg complex in space and flies right inside. Seven is taken to a room where the Borg Queen shows up classic dangling spine dramatic fashion. She tells Seven that she wants her to stay as a unique individual for some vague reason. Seven is opening hostile and it doesn't help that the queen shows her the plan to go assimilate an entire species before lunch. Back on Voyager they have learned about the queen from Seven's parent's notes and have a plan to use their masking technology on the Delta Flyer along with the trans warp coil. The modifications work and they track the sphere to the Borg space complex. Inside the queen sends Seven to go help with the assimilation. The screams of individuals being painfully turned to Borg is too much for her and she helps a group of them escape. As soon as she returns to the queen she is found out though but for no apparent reason the queen spares their lives.
The queen seems to have maybe figured out that Seven isn't being the most useful so she tells her the grand plan to wipe out humanity with a nanoprobe virus but for some reason she needs Seven to enhance it or something. Seven refuses but is threatened with assimilation. Just then she gets a message from Janeway but the queen instantly figure out what is going on. The Flyer manages to evade the Borg while Janeway and Tuvok beam over to attempt a rescue. Janeway makes it to the throne room alone and there is a showdown. I guess we are supposed to think Seven is considering staying, but really it is obvious she is going to go with Janeway. She tells the captain where to shoot to disable the queens command powers and they beam to the Flyer which heads to transwarp with the queen's ship right behind. They make it to Voyager which seals the conduit with a torpedo destroying the pursuing ship. In the epilogue Janeway says the coil took them 20,000 light years closer to home taking 15 years off their flight time.
Review: I fun action episode that actually worked as a two parter. Usually the second half really lags but this one worked, especially without interruption on netflix. I am going to take one point off for them sending the Doctor with his mobile emitter on the rescue mission. First of all Paris is already their backup doctor and second they just say the super Borg the emitter created when merged with just a few nanoprobes. If the Borg of today were to capture it presumably they could conquer the entire galaxy. At least the planets not occupied but gods or whatever.
7 out of 10
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