156 – Flesh and Blood, Part 2

Grade: C+

Summary

The Doctor sent technical data on Voyager to the Hologram’s ship, then asked to be beamed aboard. It appears he is defecting to the other side of the conflict. Then, the Holograms cut right through Voyager’s shields and abduct B’Elanna Torres.

Commentary

After a pretty decent first part, the second part sort of spirals out of control. The leader of the Holograms turns out to be a total nutjob, and the transition is done way too quickly – it’s not subtle at all. Meanwhile, there are some good arguments between B’Elanna and the Cardassian Hologram, and a few decent ones between B’Elanna and the Doctor. But the story is just nuts, and Janeway proves to be insane. Why would she let the Hirogen fire on the ship four times before she launched a counter-attack?

I wish Janeway could have been more consistent as a character. She obviously is disappointed in the Doctor, but she isn’t going to do anything about his decision to defect or commit treason. Why? Because he acted like a human being. I guess she doesn’t feel like she can revoke his privileges or have B’Elanna reprogram his matrix to remove his nutty subroutines. And yet the Doctor is reasonable enough to offer to give up his mobile emitter because of his actions. It’s not nearly enough punishment. Giving technical data to the enemy has to be treason, doesn’t it? If Tom Paris had done that, Janeway would have reduced him in rank and sent him to the Brig for 6 months. In fact, in Thirty Days, she ordered Tuvok to fire a photon torpedo that could have killed Paris, only because she disobeyed one of her illogical orders. Why should she be so lenient with the holographic doctor?

Other than that, this episode really is nothing more than just a bunch of action scenes. That’s fine most of the time, but I wasn’t really in the mood for it.

Well, whatever. This is already much more than I wanted to think about this episode anyway.

Of Note

A Jem’hadaar warrior is somehow on this ship. I don’t know how that would even be possible since Voyager knows nothing of the Jem’hadaar. It logically follows that the Hirogen would only know the Alpha Quadrant enemies that Voyager knows. This is an enormous error.