A race of photonic lifeforms mistakes Paris’s Captain Proton holodeck program for real life, and the crew must go undercover to stop the evil Dr Chaotica using his death ray to wipe the aliens out.
From the trailer, this story looked fantastic, and it has so much fun and energy about it that you can’t help but enjoy it. The Captain Proton story has been an inspired addition to the show since the beginning of the season, and doing significant amounts of the episode in black and white, and in the style of 50’s Sci-Fi is marvellous. Even the wipes from scene to scene are done in style.
On the downside, all the colour stuff is dull, and very little is actually explained. The ‘sandbank’ Voyager is stuck on is not only ridiculous, but never properly talked through. The aliens themselves are not given a chance to become acquainted with Voyager’s crew, vanishing back to their own dimension as quickly as they came.
Of course, these are minor glitches in a hugely enjoyable story that you can’t help but love, fro the Doctor’s marvellous turn as the President of Earth to the unmissable Captain Janeway, forced to take on the part of Queen Arachnia of the Spider People. The other guest stars thrwo themselves into their roles, with Martin Rayner’s Chaotica marvellously evil, and just asking for a rematch. Stylistically, this show is superb, but you can’t help thinking that it would have been better done entirely as a 50’s serial, without needing odd bits of technobabble explanation.
****
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