171 – Endgame, Part 1

Grade: C+

Summary

It has been 10 years since Voyager returned to Earth after a 23-year long mission to the Delta Quadrant. Ensign Kim is now a Captain. Tom Paris is writing holonovels, and he and B’Elanna have a daughter in Starfleet who is an Ensign. The Doctor is now married and has chosen the name “Joe” for himself. Admiral Janeway is assisting Barclay in teaching at Starfleet Academy. But Tuvok is in an insane assylum, and Chakotay and Seven of Nine are dead. So Janeway makes a plan to help bring Voyager home sooner.

Commentary

I think all of us who were fans of this show really wanted to see what became of these characters after so many years, so it’s really nice to see what they’ve done with them. I’m glad that they avoided the temptation to divorce B’Elanna and Tom – it seems that marriages fail in Star Trek all the time, so I’m glad this one didn’t. I don’t like the Tuvok angle, though, and I really didn’t like seeing Chakotay and Seven dead. But that’s how it goes.

Admiral Janeway probably is supposed to seem a lot different than Captain Janeway was. But honestly, I think she’s right in character here. I wouldn’t expect Captain Janeway to act any differently. During this entire series run, Janeway has ignored the Prime Directive when it suited her to do so. So for her to ignore Starfleet regulations when she thinks she has a plan to get Voyager back home earlier, it makes complete sense to me. I guess that’s either good characterization or it’s failure on the part of the writers to make her seem different. It’s not entirely clear to me which one it should be.

There is one thing that annoyed me, though. Well, maybe there were more things that annoyed me, but this one thing certainly annoyed me. When Janeway is taking questions in Barclay’s class, one student asks her a question that has nothing to do with the Borg, which is the subject matter of the class. Janeway is nice and responds to the question, but doesn’t really answer it. Then another cadet asks a question that has to do with Seven of Nine. It’s a perfectly appropriate question for this class, since it’s about the Borg, and since Janeway is uniquely qualified to answer it. But instead, she rudely responds that she doesn’t want to talk about Seven of Nine. Perhaps this is in character, but I don’t see it that way. Instead, I see this as merely a convenience in writing to create some artificial drama and tension where it wasn’t needed. Of course we want to know what happened to Seven just like the Cadet did. Prolonging the resolution doesn’t do anything for us – we’re still going to be interested to see what happened to her and how Janeway plans to correct it. So instead of being rude, she should have answered the question.

Something else I didn’t like was the scene with Tuvok in the insane assylum. He keeps repeating something over and over again, trying to act irrationally. I don’t know if this was done on purpose, but I don’t think Tim Russ did a particularly good job in this scene. In fact, I think the entire scene was uncomfortable and strange. I didn’t think he made Tuvok look insane. In fact, it looked like he needed to try harder to make him seem insane. He seemed perfectly sane to me, especially compared to what he did just a few scenes earlier when Janeway visited him.

I’m interested to see how part 2 turns out. The first part did a good job in setting things up for Part 2, even though this isn’t my favorite episode.

Of Note

Reginald Barclay appears in Voyager 6 times, including this episode. Interestingly, he’s only in 5 episodes of Next Generation.