This episode is VOY's version of Lower Decks and while it doesn't work quite as well in some ways, in others it is extremely effective. When I realized it was so similar to the TNG episode I started to wonder if they were going to kill somebody off to keep in theme with the first episode, but in this case it was more about personal growth than duty. I suspect this episode exists at least to some degree as a reaction to the perception by many fans that Janeway doesn't really care about the people on her crew. I really liked the opening effects shot of the outside of the ship with people in the windows and the beginning and end of the opening sequence showing the difference in perspectives from the captains ready room to the plasma room at the bottom of the ship.
We open with a cool shot from the outside of Voyager into the captains ready room. She gives orders to Chakotay who takes them to the bridge. They get passed to astrometrics where Seven sends Crewman Tal Celes down to engineering to request more power. Torres passes the orders to another crewman who takes the orders down to deck 15 where he he takes them to Mortimer Harren who is annoyed to be interrupted from his theoretical physics work. That night Tal calls her friend Billy Telfer to talk about some sensor thing but he tells her to sleep and deal with it in the morning. The next day Seven gives an efficiency briefing and points out that all three of the named crewman in the opening are causing problems with efficiency on the ship but Janeway isn't willing to give up on them and decides the solution is to lead an away mission on the Flyer with all three of them.
None of the crewmen are exactly excited about the assignment. Billy heads straight to the Doctor to try and get diagnosed with something to keep him off the mission. Tal is convinced she isn't good enough to get the job done and Harren just doesn't want to go. But Janeway gives them no choice so they all go in the mission and are not having any more fun once they are underway. Things get bad quickly as there is an explosion and they lose part of their hull and all of their warp drive capability. Harren is convinced it is a dark matter comet, something he has theorized about, and the only solution is to jettison the warp core, but Janeway isn't willing to do that without more evidence. Tal suggests they beam the missing hull chunk in for analysis which Janeway agrees to. But it is still inconclusive but they don't have much time to worry about that, more of the phenomenon have arrived.
The ship is rocked and Billy disappears for a few seconds before returning with some sort of creature inside of him. For a hypochondriac he takes it pretty well. Janeway leaves him with Tal but he comes to the bridge not under his own control. Janeway stuns him with a phaser and the creature emerges from his neck and tries to interface with the computer. Harren wants to shoot it but Janeway orders him not to. He does it anyway and Billy suddenly realizes he could hear its thoughts. But now the creatures are coming after them hard. Janeway orders the crew to the escape pods while she lights the rings of the gas giant they are around on fire with the phasers or something. Tal and Billy refuse to leave but Harren leaves. Instead of heading to safety though he tries to sacrifice himself to save them. It doesn't work but Janeway saves him before lighting the rings and escaping. We close in sickbay with all three crewmen asleep and Janeway happy she got them to see themselves as valuable.
Review: A largely effective episode with almost none of the main cast other than the captain. Not all experimental episodes work, but this one does for me. I know many people probably thought Harren was crazy, but my grandfather was a theoretical physicist and the stuff he would say about the experimental physicists was pretty much exactly how Harren felt.
8 out of 10
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