116 – Someone to Watch Over Me

Grade: B

Summary

Tom and B’Elanna are having lunch together, and Seven of Nine is watching them. It turns out she is trying to develop her social skills and learn about relationships. After completely annoying B’Elanna, Seven takes the advice of both Captain Janeway and the Doctor to begin dating.

Meanwhile, Captain Janeway beams down to a planet to meet with some friendly aliens to help negotiate a trade treaty. Another ambassador remains on Voyager and ends up making a complete fool of himself.

Commentary

For the most part, I enjoyed this episode, though I didn’t care for the scenes with the visiting ambassador. He was way too over the top for my taste. I don’t really understand why he was even on the ship in the first place. Why would Voyager need a trade agreement with these aliens anyway? Voyager is supposed to be heading straight for Earth, so sooner or later they’re going to be far enough away from these aliens that a trade agreement would be pointless. So hosting these ambassadors on the ship amounts to absolutely nothing.

The part of the story with the ambassador reminded me of the TNG episode when Captain Picard goes with an ambassador and they crash-land on a planet someplace. Then there are two other ambassadors on the Enterprise, and one of them only wants to eat desserts with Counselor Troi. So, yeah, this is not terribly original.

The part of the story focusing on Seven is very similar to My Fair Lady. In this case, it’s Tom Paris who suggests a bet that the Doctor can’t transform Seven into a lady, and of course the Doctor takes it upon himself to force this transformation onto her. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to remake a classic story into a Star Trek episode. In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time. But it does mean that you’ll probably know how this episode is going to play out. There’s a slight twist at the very end, however, so it might not go exactly the way you anticipate. Still, it’s not very original.

Anyway, Seven finally goes on a date. “Awkward” doesn’t begin to describe the scene when Seven asks Ensign Chapman out to dinner on the Holodeck. I wonder how they can eat holographic food, however. Ah, whatever. The point is that their date actually is pretty funny. I wish they hadn’t used a guest actor for Seven’s date. It just shows the reluctance (or inability) of the Voyager writing staff to create relationships and situations that have lasting consequences. In other words, you know this date isn’t going anywhere even before it started. Actually, I wonder why they didn’t use Harry Kim as her date. We already know Kim is attracted to her and Seven has a bit of history with him. They could have taken advantage of that here, but oh well.

I do have one other complaint as well. Ever since Seven joined this ship, she has relied on Janeway and the Doctor as her guides to re-developing her humanity. In this episode, it becomes obvious that the Doctor is attracted to Seven and would want a romantic relationship with her. She, however, seems to only see him as a father figure (and Janeway as a mother figure). So their relationship really gives me the creeps.

Of Note

We learn in this episode that Species 8472 apparently has 5 genders. I’m not sure how that would work. Seems a little excessive, but whatever.

At first, when Ensign Chapman is shown on the screen, I thought it was the same officer who was giving Tuvok such a hard time in the episode when he made the former Maquis officers train on the ship. But actually that was Crewman Kenneth Dalby, played by a different actor.

The Doctor and Seven sing together during this episode. It sounds like their real voices, but the sound quality is slightly different. I’m guessing they are lip-synching.