152 – Inside Man

Grade: C+

Summary

It has been about two months since Voyager heard from Starfleet. The ship’s morale is low, because crewmembers have not heard from their families yet. Then suddenly, Voyager gets a huge message – it’s a hologram of Reginald Barclay. He may have news to help Voyager get home faster.

Commentary

One of my very first thoughts when I watched this episode was “oh brother, here we go again – another instance of Voyager almost getting home and then blowing it.” This series deserves its reputation of being “Giligan’s Island” in space. Yet again, Harry Kim gets all excited about getting home, and yet again people have to restrain his optimism.

One surprise is that Holographic Barclay can mimic other people’s voices. He does a pretty good Tuvok, suggesting a mind meld to cure Tom’s pessimism. It’s amusing, but not nearly as funny as the characters seem to think. His Janeway impression is pretty spot-on, and I did get a bit of chuckle out of it. Still it feels like an attempt to poke fun at the series.

So we have the old and tired plotline of a chance to get home that doesn’t actually work. We also have two Barclays – the real one and the holographic one that has a much stronger and more confident personality. We also get some technologically savvy Ferengi who want to kidnap Seven of Nine. It all adds up to be a mediocre mess of a plot.

Speaking of Mr. Barclay, he’s one of my favorite recurring characters in the entire Star Trek franchise. But we’ve already seen him deal with his lack of confidence and his assorted mental issues so many times that we don’t need to see this again. About the only thing this episode has going for it is the appearance of Deanna Troi. She has never looked better – not even when she was a dozen years younger in the Next Generation.

But I still don’t intend to see this one again.

Of Note

At one point, Admiral Paris refers to the villains in this episode as “Ferengay.” It sounds funny. Once I heard it, I couldn’t unhear it.

Neelix’s version of “Mom’s Apple pie” is about the greenest pie I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if this is intentional or if the prop department had no idea what a real apple pie looks like.