125 – Alice

Grade: C

Summary

Tom and Harry are trying to guess Tuvok’s age, which of course is a sensitive subject among Vulcans. Luckily for Tuvok, the ship stumbles onto a junkyard out in space, so that ends the conversation. The Voyager crew meet a dealer who wants to trade some of his junk for some of Voyager’s parts and supplies. Tom sees an old shuttle and instantly decides he needs to purchase it. He finds out that it has an interface that ties directly into the pilot’s brain. However, as he starts working with it, everyone begins to realize there’s something really wrong about this ship.

Commentary

I wanted to like this episode, but it’s just too mediocre and just too bizarre. It isn’t really bad, but it’s just sort of bland. How often have we seen “Rogue Tom Paris” on this series? How often have we seen relationship issues between Tom and B’Elanna? How often have we seen friendly aliens that have something to hide? Really, this episode is nothing to write home about because it’s just so average.

The stupid part of this episode is when they’re trying to beam Tom Paris off that ship, and of course Harry can’t get a lock on his pattern. Can Harry ever get a lock on anyone’s transporter pattern? Whatever. Then Chakotay saves the day by “boosting the confinement beam”, of course. Literally everyone watching this episode knows that boosting the confinement beam is what you do when Harry can’t get a lock. I don’t know why Harry can’t do that on his own.

I thought the ending was rather dull. Why did Alice want to go into this spatial anomaly? Why did she need to force Tom to go with her? Then they just beam him off and everything is OK. Tom and B’Elanna have a moment together when he can yet again apologize for his stupidity, but I really don’t understand how these two ever got together in the first place. Well, whatever.

Of Note

Chakotay says the ship “still has a full complement of shuttles”, which is pretty funny, considering how many they’ve lost over the years. I suppose Voyager can replicate shuttles at will.