61 – Rise

Grade: D-

Summary

An asteroid is on a collision course toward a planet. Then we see some aliens on the bridge of Voyager, and after what seems to be several minutes, Janeway gives the order to phaser the asteroid and prevent it from destroying the planet. That’s about all I can remember from this mess.

Commentary

Ugh. I am pretty certain that I never saw this episode until just a couple of days ago. Honestly, I hope I never see it again. This was awful. It has all the standard cliches that I’ve come to hate: a shuttle crash, Neelix/Tuvok relationship issues, manufactured drama, horrendous dialogue, incompetent leadership, disjointed storyline, cheap special effects, shallow characters, questionable decision-making, a Deus ex-machina ending, starting the episode in the middle of the story, inept directing, and new aliens we will never see again. There’s absolutely nothing to like about this episode whatsoever.

Something I never understood about this episode is why Neelix is the only person on board who can pilot this thing. It’s not an airplane – it’s an elevator. Basically it goes up 300,000 km to the orbital platform and it goes down to the surface of the planet. That’s it. There’s no need to insert fake drama by giving Neelix something important to do. It’s the lack of details like this that make me despise this episode.

Of Note

In one scene, Neelix admits he worked on 1/10 scale models of the very thing they were using to reach the platform, which was an obvious reference to Flight of the Phoenix. In fact, this episode had so much in common with the film that Paramount had to pay $15,000 for the rights to use it, plus royalties. That explains why this episode is almost never on TV. Paramount is probably tired for paying extra to air an extremely sub-par episode. The movie is far better.