129 – The Voyager Conspiracy

Grade: D+

Summary

Seven downloads a bunch of Voyager’s data into her Borg brain. Then the next morning, she starts discussing a conspiracy theory with B’Ellana Torres. She doesn’t believe that the alien they’ve just met actually is able to send Voyager closer to the Alpha Quadrant through his Catapult Device. But according to his theory, he could help Voyager cut down several thousand LY off their journey.

After sharing her concerns, Seven discovers other random conspiracies. Is she out of control or is there something wrong with everyone else on the ship?

Commentary

Actually, I thought I’d love this episode for quite a bit of it. I liked the new alien, the Catapult Device, and I even liked Seven of Nine’s desire to learn more about Voyager’s history. It became most interesting once Seven told Commander Chakotay that she suspected Captain Janeway stranded Voyager in the Delta Quadrant on purpose as part of a conspiracy. I thought we finally had an episode in which something totally unexpected would happen. Can you imagine where they could have gone with this?

But then I was quickly reminded that this is Voyager, and nothing ever has any lasting consequences, and nothing ever really changes. Nothing unexpected ever happens on this show, and every episode gets wrapped up in a neat little box in less than 45 minutes. No lasting consequences, nothing interesting happens. Then, just when you think this time bay be different, the Reset Button strikes again.

Well, this all became obvious to me as soon as Seven told Janeway that actually there was a conspiracy on the part of Commander Chakotay. So at that point it just became a race against time to see if they could solve Seven’s malfunctioning brain. Yawn. How wasteful of such a promising opening act.

What’s worse was the last scene when Janeway beams over to the Delta Flyer to rescue Seven and they have their Mother-Daughter chat that we’ve seen a thousand times before. Ugh.

Season 2 of TNG ended with an episode when Riker had to remember everything that had happened over the past two years so he could kill off some kind of virus in his brain. I hated that episode because I can’t stand wrap-up episodes like that. This one is almost that bad, in that several scenes are spliced into this one with Seven’s voiceover. This is just a bad one. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Of Note

Oops – when Seven refers to Seska, she calls her Commander Seska. Actually an Ensign. Oops.

Here’s another oops. After Janeway convinces Seven to come back to the ship to get help and that there’s no conspiracy, she actually asks Voyager to beam them back to the ship from the Delta Flyer. Um, aren’t they just going to have to beam someone back onto the Flyer to retrieve it? Oh well.

Oops number three. Toward the end of the episode, Janeway says there’s a “conspiracy of one”, but that makes no sense. By definition, a conspiracy requires at least two people.