The Delta Flyer crashes on a planet where B’Elanna is found by a poet, who decides to create plays about her and Voyager’s exploits.
How are these stories getting through? From that description alone, you can tell that the story’s going to be a bust. This season has seen more new writers than usual take a crack at Voyager, but rather than bringing fresh new ideas, it seems that they can’t do any better than the old hands. This episode is written by one of those old hands, Joe Menosky, who should know better. Whether it’s that Voyager’s characters simply aren’t interesting at all or that there are no stories left to tell in Trek is unclear, but this one wastes countless opportunities.
Every now and again during the story, there’s an obvious chance to throw in some biting satirical comments about writing in general and writing Voyager in particular, but nothing emerges. This could have given viewers some good laughs and a welcome twist to what is a very simple story: Torres inspires poet, poet writes play, Torres finds desire to help finish play. Why she should want to do this is anyone’s guess (as Harry points out), and the romantic angle that so desperately wants to be played up can’t go anywhere due to her relationship with Paris.
Not only that, but until you discover that Harry ejected from the Flyer, the viewer wonders why she doesn’t seem even vaguely interested in what’s happened to the poor Ensign. It comes to something when you’re desperate for Kim to turn up so that something interesting happens.
The only thing of interest is the play itself. The actors trying to get into the characters of the Voyager crew obviously have difficulty with aspects of their personalities which is quite fun and makes you wonder if any of the regulars had similar qualms when they started work on the series. Some of their playing is extremely close to the portrayals by the usual crew and it’s odd to see familiar character traits coming from other actors. In fact, this is the kind of thing that could have been better used in Live Fast and Prosper.
Another disappointing entry to a series that seems unable to recapture past glories at all at the moment.
**
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