"Hope and Fear"
Air Date: May 20, 1998
Star Date: 51978.2
PLEASE NOTE: This file is frozen. I think we've done all we're going to do on it! You're welcome to send addition nits but they will be filed for future reference instead of uploaded.
A linguistically-gifted alien helps Voyager decode the message from Starfleet Among the fragments, Janeway and crew find a set of coordinates. There, they discover a ship that appears to be a Starfleet vessel with a revolutionary quantum slipstream drive that can return the crew to the Alpha Quadrant in only three months. Almost too late, Janeway finds that her intuition is correct: It's a just too convenient. In fact, the alien has engineered the situation to kidnap the crew and return them to Borg space. When Janeway helped defeat Species 8472, the Borg were free to assimilate the alien's home world. He wants everyone onboard Voyager to experience the terror of being assimilated by the Borg. Obviously, in the end, he fails.
Brash Reflections
Had to do a bit of business this evening so I'm at this late. I'm tired. I think I'll just leave it with you, fellow nitpickers.
Reflections from the Guild
(Note from Phil: I haven't verified these reflections but they sounded good to me!)
(Note from Phil: Brian sent me this note last week.)
Brian Lombard: The Voyager season finale has an obvious nit in it. Or maybe it's part of the story, we'll have to wait. But I thought I'd point it out.
The promo for the episode has Janeway receiving a message from Starfleet Admiral Hayes. This is confirmed by TV Guide, which identifies his character as Admiral Hayes. Here's the problem. Hayes is dead! Hayes has appeared in two previous Trek incarnations. The first was in the Voyager episode "Non Sequiter", in which he was living on Earth in an alternate timeline when Harry went home. After that, he appeared in our timeline in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact". But according to Riker the Admiral's ship was destroyed! Now you could be saying that Hayes survived in an escape pod. But if that was the case, why would Picard have to take command of the fleet? Remember, Hayes was in command.
Alex Otis: I liked the Dauntless. "Wow Indeed"
Janeway and Seven had a perfect mother teenage daughter heart to heart in Astrometrics while Janeway was decoding the real message.
Nice tribute to Maguyver with the 'hairpin' saving the day.
Major Gilligan's Island syndrome episode. Haven't seen one of them in a while.
Now comes the long wait for the new season. At least DS9 isn't done with it's season yet. :)
Daniel Gunther: Pretty cool episode, but not without its nits!
Watch closely before the first away team to the Dauntless enters Engineering. There is a Starfleet door that is raised off the floor, like the ones on DS9 or Romulan Warbirds. What is the attraction with these totally inconvenient doorways?
So, all the panels on the Dauntless turn back into the alien configuration EXCEPT for the one in Engineering that Seven works on.
I thought that Admiral Hayes died in First Contact? (Riker: "The Admiral's ship has been destroyed.") I suppose he could have been rescued, but not by the Enterprise, which thoughtfully headed straight for the Defiant.
47: The faux-Admiral Hayes reports that Starfleet held 47 trial runs of the Dauntless.
Robert J. Woolley: She can extend the sensors! She can raise the dead! And now, with a twist of the screwdriver, she can walk through force fields!
This is getting beyond ridiculous. You know, with Superman, they lay out all his powers and weaknesses, then stick with them. They don't invent new powers whenever it's convenient. That's because it's cheating, and the readers *know* it's cheating, and it's no fun. Why can't the ST:V creators see this?
On another issue, if you thought Star Fleet vessels were poorly designed from a error-tolerance standpoint, we're light years ahead of this new species (sorry, I forgot their name already). With one touch of a panel button he causes an explosion under Seven's hands (OSHA would never approve), *and* destroys the entire navigational system. If *I* were designing a star ship, I might want to have a partial auto-destruct function like that, but I'd sure as heck bury it under about 10 layers of command codes, key-locked buttons (like on nuclear missile launchers), and a bunch of "Are you sure?" inquiries. But of course, that's just me.
Matthew Patterson: If they have been trying to decode the Starfleet message for 5 months, why have we not heard about it lately?
I think even Janeway has finally realized that no matter what the problem, Seven's Borg widgets will save the day. "Maybe she (Seven) has a few Borg algorithms up her sleeve."
So even though we're about 11,000 light years away from Borg space, we're still running into people who have encountered and otherwise heard of the Borg. If they have really expanded this far, why aren't we still running into them?
Just what is a "kiloquad," anyway? How many kilobytes (or megs, gigs, etc.) does that equal? Why didn't they just use the ever-handy prefix "iso-" for their computer storage term? Had we ever heard the word "kiloquad" before Voyager? And while I'm at it, what is the Meaning of life? (Yes, I know. 42.)
Why is Janeway allowing Arturis on her BRIDGE? She has NO idea of his culture's level of sophistication. For all she knows, this is a flagrant Prime Directive breach! (not that it has ever stopped her before.)
I really love this line: Harry "Wow!" Tuvok: "Wow, indeed." (Tuvok and the Doctor just crack me up.)
Stardate that the Dauntless was launched: 51472. Need I say it?
That little thing in the middle of the Dauntless' Quantum-thingy drive is just one of those plasma ball things. (you know, you touch it, it shoots a ball of lightning toward the center.)
Now that I think about it, the Dauntless looks rather like an Imperial Star Destroyer from the top.
47 slipstream trials!
Janeway says that the admiral in the transmission was Admiral Hayes. Didn't he die on Stardate 508xx in the battle with the Borg? (Well, they said his ship was destroyed. They didn't say that the Admiral was dead. He could have gotten away in a escape pod or something like Sisko, Jake, and all the other mysterious survivors of Wolf 359. Or maybe he beamed to one of the other ships. But if he had not been dead, wouldn't he have objected to Picard's taking control of the fleet?)
I like how they melded Janeway's log with Seven's.
Janeway says she might be in Indiana in three months' time. Didn't the late Admiral Hayes say it would take five months?
Seven says that B'Elanna will probably be prosecuted for her Maquis experience. What about the ongoing Dominion War? Didn't that sort of prove that the Maquis were right? Besides, wouldn't they want every experienced officer they could get to serve?
The writers didn't follow through on the recent developments in Seven's humanity. Oh well. I guess it's easier to write her as being hostile.
As soon a Seven said that she would not be going to the Alpha Quad, I knew that Voyager would not make it back. The UPN people would have a fit if Seven left the show.
Seven has come a long way from the Borg drone that stepped out of the alcove 9 months ago? I really can't tell the difference. She's still rude, arrogant, and in a skintight costume.
Personally, I think that Seven was more right than wrong about Janeway trying to remake her in her own image. It does seem like every time they've quarreled, it's because Seven defied her orders and did what Janeway would not have done even if Seven's action was the correct one and it saved the ship (see Prey for a REALLY good example)! And Janeway got mad, so she punished Seven!
This thing with Arturis bothers me. How did he learn enough about Starfleet technology and design and engineering to have built this vessel singlehandedly in, say, eight months? Do all the races they've encountered maintain a Voyager database just so they can inform any would-be aggressor about Starfleet? (Well, at least those people in Living Witness did, even if it was inaccurate.)
They said 8472 at least four times, just for the record.
Well, this is a new one. Arturis is the first person they've met who blames Janeway, not Seven, for what the Borg did to him.
This though just came to me during the commercial. If Janeway really wants Seven to obey her, maybe she should use sophisticated holo-effects to lower her head onto a Borg body and start spouting a lot of nonsense about how The Doctor's brain is capable of so much more than "primitive linguistic communication," and maybe something about watching "Future's End." (I swear, every time I see that scene, I think the Borg Queen is about to tell me to watch Voyager that week!)
So two days experience with quantum-etcetera technology, and Tom knows how to do all this sophisticated piloting stuff without blowing up the ship?
Seven says that altering her bio-electric field will allow her to pass through the forcefield. Wouldn't you have to generate a forcefield of an opposing frequency to short out the first one?
I LOVE this line: "But if we should be assimilated, our thoughts will be one and I'm sure I'll understand perfectly."?Seven, attempting to use her sense of humor. And a good attempt it was!
I think I saw a concept painting of Voyager a while back that looked rather like the Dauntless.
About 5 seconds after Janeway says 12 minutes to the Borg, Arturis says 4. Then after less than one minute of continuous dialogue, Arturis says 2 minutes? Does the slipstream alter the passage of time?
Well, we should just file the Quantum-yaddayadda as one more technology that we'll never see again. Add that to the Borg transwarp conduits, the nanoprobe gun, and the holoemmitters all over the ship.
As for the preview, I just have one thing to say. PLEASE, PLEASE, not the Episode of Hell AGAIN!
Corey Hines: 7o9's clothes during the game of velosity at the beginning of the episode brought up something strange. She herself actually chooses to wear the skin tight outfit.
How come Janeway didn't ask for 7o9's help once they got the message?
Once agian they re-used the bridge of the Exceleior for the new ship.
We had to have known this wasn't a Starfleet ship since we hadn't seen it or anything similar on DS9.
20 minutes into the episode I knew what would happen. They have to, after all, keep the show predictable.
I thought Admiral Hayes died when his ship was destroyed in Star Trek: FC
When the crew was wondering what they would do when they get back, I'm surprised Torres didn't mention fighting the Jem'Hadar after what they did to the Maquis.
Seven and Janeway the only ones left on the alien ship. Who could have predicted that?
At least we know Star Trek take the summer off too since the events of "The Gift" only happened 9 months ago instead of the regular year.
Very convenient that the panels in engineering are still in English.
I though Voyager didn't have any torpedoes left.
The usual Borg saying in this episode came from "Scorpion"
Does the Borg have some sort of physical barrier from pursuing the Voyager?
Patrick Wenker: I thought this was another good episode. Intriguing, a good story. It was refreshing to see 7 smile a little. Kind of reminded me of the scene in TOS 'Amok Time' where Spock smiles after he found out his Captain wasn't dead. After seeing her not smile episode after episode, it just seemed almost out of character.
I rewound my videotape after the show, and noticed that Captain Janeway and 7o9 looked exactly the same during two different games of Velocity. 7's hair and Captain's zipper on the front of her shirt were the same. Obviously, these scenes were recorded the same day of shooting, but I know after a game of raquetball, even my sparse hair doesn't look the same game to game.
Shane Tourtellotte: Why wouldn't Janeway have had 7o9 working on the encrypted message sometime before in the last five months? In fact, don't I remember her working on it in a previous episode?
When scanning the Dauntless, 7o9 reports "No organic matter of any kind." To my thinking, that would mean no food, since it's organic. However, further surveys reveal no replicators aboard the ship. No food, and no way of making food. Doesn't sound like a well-stocked ship to me. This should have raised suspicions early, at the very least.
Tuvok reports Dauntless left for the Delta Quadrant on stardate 51472--one of several 47s there. He also states this was three months ago. This episodes stardate is given as 51978.2. By the usual conversion, that ould be six months, not three.
When Dauntless powers up the first time, Kim is sitting in the captain's chair to report this to Janeway. Really? *Ensign* Kim? You mean there wasn't even a junior lieutenant on the Bridge to take command instead?
During Dauntless's first inadvertent test run, the ship supposedly goes 15 light-years. The whole scene seemed to take no more than a minute. By the "60000 light-years in three months" we're given, 15 light-years should take over half an hour to travel, even for Dauntless.
The fake Admiral reports they gave Dauntless 47 trial runs--47 #2 in this episode.
During 7o9's log entry, she works on a screen numbered 2473--47 #3.
Janeway refers to meeting 7o9 when she stepped out of an alcove nine months ago. Going by stardates, this should be twelve months. I sense a pattern: their dating is off by three months twice in this episode.
After Arturis is stunned, but before he wrestles himself over to the big lever to pull it, see how many times you can shout "Stun him again! Stun him again!" You should manage at least six.
Arturis reports it is mere hours(plural) to his homeworld and Borg space, but Paris tells Chakotay Voyager cannot keep up its quantum slipstreaming for even a full hour. Despite this, Voyager rescues Janeway and 7o9 scant seconds before they emerge into Borg space.
And once more, the Borg Army Knife(BAK) comes through again. Though wouldn't you think that if 7o9 had the capability to walk through force fields, she'd have it activated all the time?
Don Ferguson: Wow... What a spoil sport. I can see 7 being upset about loosing but refusing the call it quits and even start another match after Janeway leaves.. sheesh.
as far as the nits for this scene.. how come the sides of the holodeck have those unfinished metal rods yet the roof and floor has the classic hollo deck floors. and something just seemed odd about the way those disks were bouncing off the side walls.
Janeway talks about still trying to decipher the encrypted message and then chuckles talks about getting B'lanna to work on it and the captain says 7 should take a crack at it too... wait a second.. weren’t 7, b’lanna and crew already working on this thing since they found out about it????
amazing how Arturis figured out 7 was a borg just from looking at her. its not the first time it has happened either, there was that beggar race from "Day of honor" that took one look at 7 and said "WHAT SPECIES IS SHE??" she looks perfectly human save for the little thingy on her eye.
and tell me just how is it that this guy re wrote the entire message to fit his needs in the few seconds that he had once he got to the control panel? they made no mention on him having any other access to it yet as soon as they let him at the control panel, up pops the message with coordinates to the ship ect...
Voyager should have been tipped off from the start when they saw the Dauntless was completely automatic, doesn’t it seem rather dumb of SF to send a super advanced ship without a crew? The voyager crew would have no experience on using the ship, problems would certainly crop up and voyager's crew would have no idea how to fix it. since the journey takes on 3 months, there is no need not to send a crew.
speaking of it taking 3 months, when they first found out it was going to be a 3 month trip home, they didn’t seem disturbed by the fact that it had NOTHING in it, there was no mention of rations on board because Janeway told nelix he had his work cut out for him, and they said there were no replicators.. aren’t those a rather important item to have,, you know, besides food, spare parts and stuff.. 3 months seems like a long time to go locked up in a ship with absolutely nothing in it.
When Paris first saw the new warp drive he said "its....its...its..." and I shouting "ITS ONE OF THOSE NOVELTY STATIC ELECTRIC SPHERES!!"
Arturis tells them in mere hours they will be back in borg space.. 15,000 light years... yet it would have taken 3 months to get back to earth?
Voyager crew crawling all over the ship and no one noticed that panel that opened up and revealed that lever that deactivated the hologram for the bridge.
how convenient that they can no longer use the tech. to get home, I have lost count how many throw away "revolutionary propulsion systems" voyager has come across in the last year or two.. they seem to go through a phase.. the first two seasons it was wormholes and super transporters now almost every week it seems they are coming across some form of super warp drive that just so happens to fail once and they never try it again. its getting boring.
Great lines: "no.... But once we are part of the collective, our minds will be as one and I will understand you completely." - 7 in response to Janeway asking her if she understands why Janeway treats her the way she does.
Great scene: Arturis arriving in borg space, the cubs surrounding him and he just sitting back in his seat....defeated, moments away from being assimilated.
Brian O'Marra: Well...I guess it's season finale time...and no cliffhanger? Go figure!
Not too bad an episode. I wondered why it took Janeway as long as it did to get suspicious of this imposter ship.
Starfleet supposedly sends a ship that operates on slipdrive and can go 60,000LY in three months and they just leave it abandoned 10LY from Voyager's position? I would wonder why they just don't go the extra 10 and take a crew along to meet them. The alarms should be going off by now!
This episode keeps harping on how Seven has made so much progress over nine months. Where? For every two steps forward, she takes a step and three quarters back. Last episode "One" she redeemed herself and saved the crew through the Mutara class nebula. She won Janeway's trust. Now they're back to butting heads again and Seven spouts off about mutiny!
Speaking of the so called nine month progress...In "The Gift," I questioned Seven's very slow change from Borg to human. Harry had been assimilated by species 8472 in "Scorpion 2." The doctor applies Borg nanotechnology to reverse the alien takeover. Viola! By the end of that episode, Harry is back to his chipper self. Applying the Borg technology to reverse Borg technology in Seven and they get it as far as two facial implants and a Borg glove. In a later episode I noticed that those same impants were still in Seven, and no further progress. In fact, I referred to them as Borg tattoos or markings. I even predicted that the creators would drag her slow transformation to the end of the season...Guess what? They did!
These creators have a quandry...If Seven finally gets weaned off those impants...and one day she should...what happens to her character? She becomes an ordinary human like Paris, and Kim, and all the other human Voyager crew. The implants are what make her the alien crewmember that replaced the alien, Ocampan Kes who left the show in "The Gift!"
How much longer will Seven be half Borg/half human? Another season? Stay tuned...
Speaking of those impants that Janeway activated to make her walk through the Brig Forcefield on Arturis' ship...If Borgs are resistant to forcefields..then why couldn't Hugh escape in the Star Trek TNG episode, "I Borg?"
I leave the rest to my fellow nitpickers of Nitcentral!
Mike Bucca: Being a Voyager fan for all of its 4 years, this I think in my expierence, was the absolute WORST episode of Voyager. Dissapointment sums it up. And it wasn;t the nits, it was the lousy plot, and even worse ending. (I think even the disapointing episodes like Retrospect and Demon were better than this!)
PAL all the way. "You will be lost all summer!" You the only thing Ill lose is the memory of when and what channel Voyager is on. I now have no interest in Season 5 of Voyager, becuase there was NO cliffhanger!!!!
Sure, lets transform the ship into a federation vessel, and then keep certain sections of it federation AFTER its been transformed. Like the doors, some consoles, and the brig. Not to mention the hull.
The registry number shouldve beena tipoff to something wrong. NX-08A! What kind of registry is that. It shoulvde been NX-80454-A or something!
I don;t need to mention any mor enits, becuase the episode was almost a disgrace to the show. :(
John Burke: Well, that was a pretty decent season finale. My list of nits is not too extensive, but here's what I came up with:
First of all, let's just skip the whole issue of how Arturis learned enough about Voyager and Starfleet to make a ship that was that convincing, and let's also overlook the fact that I for one can't figure out how Arturis ever found out about their deal with the Borg. With Voyager, life is simpler if you overlook that kind of plotting detail..
Actually, they should have been suuspicious of the DAUNTLESS from the beginning. Tuvok says her registry is NX-01A. Now, NX is the proper prefix for an experimental ship, but I've never heard of a Starfleet ship whose suffix consists of two numbers and a letter.
Tom says that it seems like Starfleet's gone a whole different way with the hull design of the DAUNTLESS. I see what he's saying--it's more angular than most 'Fleet ships--but it still strikes me as very much a Starfleet type design.
Let's also put side Universal Translator issues (Like Janeway struggling to learn Klingon). Those are meant to be ignored.
I wonder why the crew wasn't suspicious of the Quantum Slipstream idea, given that their last contact with the AQ didn't even mention that such technologies were on the drawing board.
DAUNTLESS would have had no shuttlecraft? Heavens! Whatever would the crew crash every single week?
I'm not sure about this whole "Particle Whatchamacallit" (Holographic) interior for the ship, either. He made all the systems, controls and readouts look like they were Starfleet, all the buttons do what they were supposed to do, when the operator wasn't even looking at the REAL control surfaces? Oooo-kay...
One last "Don't ask" plot point: 7 of 9 being able to step through a forcefield because they reconnected two little doohickeys on her forehead implant.
Finally, at one point Torres tells 7 something about how if a Maquis won't be welcome on Earth, a Borg sure won't be. Then she claims it was a joke. I dunno...reminds me of a line in the movie "Hunt for Red October" where one character says to another, "He was patronizing you, and you stomped on him." Torres was definitely stomping on 7, not joking with her.
5/25/98 Update (Note from Phil: A quick reminder. It is not my intention to upload every message that I receive on an episode. I will always upload comments--i.e. "I enjoyed the episode." "I felt like the episode lacked . . ."--but if a nit has already been picked, it's picked . . . unless I decide to list it twice because it's repicked in a funny way or I just wasn't certain it had already been picked and I was bombing through my mail and I let it pass just in case! Let's remember that this nitpicking thing should be done with light-heartedness and good cheer!)
Sara Greenblatt: I liked tonight's episode, even with all its nits. I've always
disliked cliffhangers, so this was a nice change.
Hey! A shuttlecraft that *didn't* get destroyed! ... Great lines
(Tuvok): 'Wow' indeed. ... Perhape my mental discipline is rubbing off
on you. ... An unintentionally funny scene: Cap'n J saying that she
and 7 are butting heads more than usual. They argue whenever they're
in the same room! How can you have "more than *always*"?!
Now, the serious stuff...
At the beginning, Tuvok analyzes the new ship and says it has a
Starfleet warp signature. But the ship wasn't fueled by anti-matter,
and slipstream "space" was different from warp "space" ... so how
could he recognize the "signature" as being Starfleet? Surely there
wasn't a flow of particles spelling out S-t-a-r-f-l-e-e-t!! [grin]
"No organic matter" on the "Dauntless" -- no bio-neural gel packs?
Not just a new propulsion system, but new shipwide energy/computer
processing?
But, we did have a nice case of "Turnabout Intruder" -- Intruder
Friendly Operating System, that is. Janeway & Co. got into the
super-advanced never-before-seen technology of Arturis' ship and
handled it just fine. It was also handy that Voyager's crew could
adapt such a radically different technology to their own system.
Since B'Elanna's back in action, why wasn't she sent to the
"Dauntless" as part of the first team? Wouldn't a new propulsion
drive be under Engineering's purview? And what about Harry, in charge
of Ops? Wouldn't you want your *Operations* specialist there too? OK,
they got involved later, but they should have been there at the start,
especially after Helm Boy stated he didn't recognize the engine
configuration and had no idea what the propulsion drive was.
Another major nit: The Universal Translator's often difficult to deal
with nit-wise, but at least there's been mention of it analyzing
neural activity, and it does have the speed, memory and processing
power of a machine behind it. But a "living" UT? I don't think so,
at least *not* after exposure to only a few phrases of a language.
Even if that had been enough to give him grasp of grammar and syntax
(what, no irregular verrbs anymore?), language also includes
*vocabulary*, and that is constantly changing. Think of the phrase
"Check out my website and fax or e-mail me your ideas for a homepage"?
How could you possibly translate that without being a part of the
culture? Or what about something that's changed to a completely
*opposite* meaning, like "bad" being slang for "good." (By the way,
changes like that have been going on for thousand of years; a long
time ago "awful" used to mean "full of awe" -- that is, "awesome". It
did not refer to something horrible.)
It was a "throw-away" line, but it sounded like Neelix referred to a
xenon-based life form. Xenon is an "inert" element, which means it
doesn't combine with other elements easily (if at all). So how do you
get *compounds*, and what do you base your eco-system on? (By the way
-- silicon, as in the Horta, *is* chemically similar to carbon, which
human/oids are based on.)
Of course, we had a 47: The fake message stated that there had been 47
trials of the quantum slipstream drive. But is "14-Beta" the new
catchphrase? Last week Seven's nutritional supplement was 14-Beta-7;
this week it was the data block with the admiral's real message.
As for the concern about the crew's health after 3 months in
"slipstream space," hey -- 3 months there couldn't be worse than the 1
month in last week's nebula. Just pop everyone back in those stasis
chambers! (Tom, be a good boy and stay *inside* this time!
What's with Harry's derogatory comment regarding Ktaarians? Not that
he should be ethnically slurring anyone, but baby Naomi Wildman is
half Ktaarian, isn't she?
Janeway wasn't wearing her commbadge at the end -- how did they
achieve a transporter lock?
A scene I would have liked to see: Cap'n J telling 7 that she couldn't
stay in the Delta Quadrant because men 18-49 would stop watching and
the ratings would drop!
Kirk Johnson: I thought this was a great episode. It was nice to have a season finale that
was actually a FINALE for that season and not a cliffhanger. I would have
liked to see more of the Doc to add his great element, maybe bring Andy Dick
back as the model 2 EMH. I also thought that Dennis McCarthy's music seemed
better than ever. Anyway, every good episode has its nits.
I'll start with the actors. I thought Arturis looked familiar, maybe from a
NextGen episode or something, so I looked his name (Ray Wise) up at the
Internet Movie Database and sure enough, he was in the NextGen episode "Who
Watches the Watchers." While I was at it, I looked up Jack Shearer (Admiral
Hayes) and, in addition to playing the Admiral in First Contact, he has been
on another Voyager episode and two DS9 episodes, playing a different character
each time.
Joe Menosky never fails. I picked up two 47's. The first was when Arturis
finally "decoded" Starfleet's message. Seven observes a series of
coordinates, one of which is something like 28547. The second occured when
Tom reads off the launch date of the Dautless (sp?) and it is stardate
51472.something-or-other.
B'Elanna notes that the Dautless has only one (or was it none?) shuttlecraft.
This shouldn't matter. Judging from all the past episodes, Voyager should
have enough shuttlecraft to last a millenium on the Dautless.
Is there an acronym in the nitpicker's jargon for something like "You'd better
come and look at this" syndrome? It occurs here when Harry discovers the
alien technology but only tells Tuvok it's "unusual" and has Tuvok come to the
ship before he tells him anything else. (Note from Phil: In the past I've call it the "Don't Give Picard A Straight Answer Syndrome." ;-)
Once the Dautless has reverted to its alien form, the panels in its
engineering section still have LCARS interface. Good thing, to, because if
the Borg hadn't assimilated Arturis's species while Seven was still in the
collective, then she wouldn't have been able to read his language.
Another thing about the Dautless's transformation: how come the inside changes
but the external look remains to look like a Federation vessel?
Janeway gets to the bridge and tries to persuade with Arturis. They're about
to enter Borg space and she tries to negotiate. Hang the gosh-darn
diplomacy!! If you're going to be assimilated and the guy who's responsable
can be stopped by force, stop him!
I wrote a letter to Phil (before I knew Nit Central existed) once explaining a
similar problem: when Janeway beamed out, Arturis tried to stop her with
(cool-looking) phasers. As she dematerializes, the phaser beams pass through
her, just as the Klingons' phasers did in ST6 when Kirk and McCoy beamed off
Rura Penthe. However, in the NextGen episode "Matter of Perspective," the one
factor that decides Riker's fate is that a phaser beam ricocheted of him when
he was dematerializing. Granted, they were the phasers of three different
alien races, but if they are all indeed phasers, the beams should be
structurally alike.
No doubt you'll all find more problems that are actually nits than I did.
Keep it up, everyone, and one day Star Trek may be nit-free in the distant
future; but I guess that'd be no fun for us or the people who just like to
watch the show.
Johnson Lai: Why was this Starfleet message so secret that it needed
to be coded? It didn't convey any information at all that could possibly
be valuable to anyone.
If the ship was disguised by "particle synthesis," why didn't the
remainder of the panels (i.e. those in the engine room) revert to its alien
design after Arturis pulled the switch?
Jacob: This was a great episode despite the VERY misleading trailer. I loved the new
ship. Great name too. Now onto the nits:
They came VERY close to ripping off Guinan's story from TNG. The Borg
destroyed their homeworld and only a few thousand escaped. Very very similar.
Except Guinan wasn't out for revenge.
When the alien turns off the holo stuff on his bridge, some of it remains.
The consoles in Engineering are still Starfleet issue as are some others.
I thought that they said Voyager couldn't withstand the stress of the
quantum slip-stream warp drive? It seems to be stronger than they think
because the ship travels in it for an hour. It even outlasts the stream
itself. It collapses before Voyager's hull does.
That brings me to another point. How could they have detected the ship as
having a Starfleet warp signature if they weren't even using a conventional
warp drive?
Janeway never ceases to amaze me. She blew her opportunities to get home so
many times before, SHE COULD HAVE HAD THIS ONE!! That ship was the fastest
thing they have seen! Just take the ship! Who cares who's on it.
She's blown so many opportunities it's really annoying.
David T. Shaw: I liked this one- even a two word title! Only a few comments, not even
nits really.
The nits that I do have are old- Why was Star Fleet's message encrypted?
Encryption always has a cost to it- it either requires better reception, or
a broader band, or creates more data. All that they were sending was
regrets, and information. It should have been compressed- not encrypted.
Even if they were worried about given information to Delta quadrant
civilisations (Possible- the very fact that the Federation can detect
certain events in the Delta quadrant might give hints about technological
devices- technologies that might not yet have been considered yet), there
was no reason to encrypt the regrets (A simple "Can't help you- sorry. Here
is some stuff that might be useful," would have been sufficient). Note that
this is note true of the message that Janeway et al thought they received-
if you are going to send a ship into a quadrant, you definitely don't want
any curious natives hanging around it.
The second nit was with Janeway and her talk to Seven- on exactly what
basis does the Captain think that she has any moral argument with Seven?
She kidnapped her, destroyed her life, removed her from the collective, and
then has the gall to say that the crew has done a lot for her? Almost
everything the crew has done was to try to make her more human- something
that she never asked for. And I guess that bringing Nelix back to life and
spending thirty days with no one to talk to but HoloDoc doesn't count as
service (i.e. giving something back).
Okay- one new nit: They come across a Federation ship- no live signs.
They beam over. Before they beam over, do they do a thorough scan? Check
to see if the life pods are still there? Try to access the ship's log
remotely? No- just beam on over. What would have happened if there had
been a deadly plague, and all the bodies had been buried at space or
cremated, with the last crew member flying off into a star out of grief?
{Or any other equally unlikely event that seems to happen all the time on
Star Trek ;-) }
I was thinking that Seven is going through her teenage years- fighting
with her authority figure, scared to go out on her own, but not wanting to
hang around...
I liked the fact that Aquirius said that the masking was done by "Particle
Masking" or the like- it implied that the actual structure was changed,
which explains why it took so long for the crew to find something wrong- and
then only to by an mysterious power reading.. (Okay- I still think they
should have found it in the first couple of hours, but it is more likely
than a hologram...)
Janeway was wondering why her guts were telling her that something was
wrong- there was good reason. One- the ship lacked personal messages (or
apparently even orders). Surely Star Fleet would have at least duplicated
everything that they sent in the original transmission in case something was
lost (not to mention including new messages that didn't make it to the
transmitter the first time). Secondly- do you really believe that Star
Fleet would have sent an empty ship? There would have been some foolhardy
soul who would have volunteered to keep an eye on things ("sure- I am in
security anyway- I certainly won't live forever- sign me up...") if only for
the glory. And if the drive caused some sort of problem, the crew could
have used those nifty Stasis chambers (assuming that you can only survive
five days without injury, you only need about 18 crew members with one on
watch, the rest in Stasis...). No wonder alarm bells were ringing... (and
of course, messages from home and Star Fleet personnel were the two things
that Aquirius wouldn't be able to replicate...)
It is nice to see that Aquirius, when he disguised his ship as Star Fleet,
also included the IFOS.... (another realistic touch).
Seven is trying to develop her humour, but it is still a bit black. Of
course, if she was using B'Ellanna's joke as a model, there is no wonder.
I thought it would have been nice to have a few more lines of dialogue
from Aquirius explaining exactly how he arranged his revenge, to wit: "I
back tracked your path, talked to the civilisations that you had contacted-
I even bought some federation technology from some raiders to better mimic a
ship..." I guess I can't have everything.
Best line (from a guest- a first for me)- Aquirius to Seven: "You're much
more attractive than the average drone."
That is it for me. A good episode to go out on- until the last month, I
was beginning to lose hope for the writers.
Be talking to you in the fall.
Joshua Truax: Well, the season finale was a little better than I had expected.
But not by much.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the episode. Its premise was
questionable (see below), but at least it was intriguing. Still, I've
come to expect a little more out of a Star Trek season finale, even if
it's not a cliffhanger. DS9, for instance, never does cliffhanger
finales, but most of their season-enders were far superior to this one
-- and they certainly involved much higher stakes. Oh, the writers did
their best with the dialogue to make it seem as if there was more
at stake than there actually was, but the fact is that most of the crew
was off the Dauntless when the real danger began. In the end it was
just another escape-from-captivity plot, the likes of which we've seen
countless times before.
As I had suspected when I first read about it, "Hope and Fear" would
have made an excellent midseason episode, but it was a disappointing end
to an otherwise great season that saw the series improve in leaps and
bounds. It still isn't at the level DS9 was at the end of its fourth
season -- or TNG, for that matter -- but with the season's strong
finish, I finally believe Voyager has a chance to eventually catch up
with its older siblings.
All that said, it's once more into the breach, old friends.
(Translation: Nitpicking time, one last time.)
Now, let me get this straight: This Arturis fellow witnesses the
assimilation of his people by the Borg. Blaming the Voyager crew for
this, he somehow procures this quantum slipstream-drive starship,
redecorates it in order to pass it off as a Starfleet vessel, and parks
it in open space in the hopes that eventually Voyager will come along
and use it.
How does all this not add up? Let me count the ways:
1) Neither Arturis nor anyone else from his race had ever had any
contact with Voyager prior to this episode, so how did he get a hold of
Starfleet design patterns for the interfaces, etc. in order to use them
aboard the Dauntless? Keep in mind that the faux Starfleet motif is
already in place aboard the Dauntless when the first away teams beam
over from Voyager, meaning there wasn't time for Arturis to have picked
up the design patterns during his stay aboard Voyager and used them on
the Dauntless.
For that matter, how was he able to learn so many details about
Voyager's situation from a distance to begin with? I don't see how
knowledge about stuff like the message from Starfleet could have been
obtained outside of Voyager itself. (Granted, the Hirogen did intercept
that message too, but they didn't seem to care about its contents.)
2) As far as I ccould tell from the dialogue, Arturis is acting alone;
he is not part of a larger conspiracy to get the Voyager crew aboard the
Dauntless and ship them back into Borg space. I find it quite a stretch
that Arturis could have procured an entire starship, let alone such an
advanced one, completely on his own. I suppose he could have taken it
from his homeworld just before the Borg came, but then what happened to
its original crew?
3) The idea of just leaving this ship parked in the middle of nowhere
bears some scrutiny. First, what if some other aliens had happened upon
this highly advanced, yet apparently abandoned ship before Voyager got
to it, managed to access its systems and stole the ship for themselves?
That would have scuttled Arturis's plans pretty quickly -- unless, of
course, he had installed an alarm or The Starship Club or something to
deter would-be thieves before leaving it for Voyager to find.
That leads me to my second problem with Arturis's plan: Arturis had no
way of knowing that Voyager would just happen to be passing through the
area near where his ship is parked. If Janeway had decided to take
Voyager on a slightly different course on any given day in the past
year, Voyager might have missed Arturis's neck of the galactic woods
entirely, meaning he would never have had the chance to lead Voyager to
his parked ship. True, Arturis could have then used this ship to follow
Voyager around, but that wouldn't have done him much good unless Janeway
decided to backtrack for some reason...
More nits: When Voyager first encounters the faux Dauntless, how could
Tuvok have identified its warp signature as being from Starfleet? The
ship wasn't even at warp!
Speaking of the faux Dauntless, with a registry number like NX-01A I
would have been suspicious right away. Why would Starfleet start over
at 01, when most newer starships, including Voyager, have registry
numbers in the 74xxx range? True, the Dauntless is supposedly an
experimental ship, but then so is the Defiant, and it also has a "74"
number (NX-74205)...
Once again Janeway can't keep her hands off Tuvok, this time during
their conversation in the ready room...
The last two nits relate to the message from Admiral Hayes, whom we last
saw on Captain Picard's viewscreen at the beginning of ST:FC. First, I
thought Admiral Hayes was killed during the battle with the Borg in that
movie, which took place quite some time before Voyager received this
message in "Hunters". (As you recall, Riker said that "the admiral's
ship" was destroyed. Was he referring to some other admiral? Or did
Hayes manage to escape -- in which case, whatever happened to "going
down with the ship?")
Last, but certainly not least: Hayes is quite patronizing in his real
message to the Voyager crew. He claims that Starfleet has explored
several possible means of bringing Voyager home -- all to no avail. To
me, his message should have gone something like this:
"I'm afraid we can't help you get home any time soon. You see, while
you've been away, we've been at war with the Dominion -- and so far, the
Dominion's been wiping the floor with us. They've already captured
Betazed. By the time you get back to Earth, you might have
Weyoun, Damar, a bunch of Jem'Hadar and some Changeling as your
welcoming committee. And here's the real kicker: The only reason we
haven't lost already is because Captain Sisko brought the Romulans into
the war on our side by getting one of their senators killed and pinning
it on the Dominion."
John Latchem: Yes Admiral Hayes should probably be dead. But hey since when does Voyager
care about continuity. Brannon Braga decided to rewrite the timeline so
Voyager never heard of the Dominion, remember?
Actually the whole Admiral Hayes issue isn't a problem, he either escaped, or
he wasn't even there. Remember Riker only said "The Admiral." He didn't say
which Admiral (I know the implications are that it was Hayes, but hey, it's
pretty clear the guy is still alive)
At least Janeway noticed this whole thing was too convenient. I mean, Voyager
got the message 5 months ago, when the communications array was on line. Why
would Starfleet send an empty ship with an experimental drive system 500 light
years away from that point? And why send a ship at all. Obviously the
technique can be adapted to work on Voyager. Why not just send the technical
data? No one thinks of these alternatives, but luckily they both Janeway and
Tuvok discovered the rouse, at the same time!
Speaking of slipstream technology, I will now predict the end of Season 5. If
Braga wants Voyager to take over Alpha Quadrant stories after DS9 ends, then
there is an obvious way to do it. Seven perfects the technology, and the last
shot of season 5 is Voyager warping home. So Season 6 will begin with Voyager
arriving home three months later, when exactly covers the summer (or not. .
.no guarantee the tech will work).
Amazing that the technology is so easily adapted to Voyager, eh? And photon
torpedoes and transporters work in the quantum stream. Amazing.
Seven has only been with the crew for 9 months? She was on the ship 9 months
back in "Omega Directive" and that was maybe three months ago (the events in
"One" lasted a month alone. Plus there were at least 4 other episodes since,
and each averages 2 weeks accoring to the Chronology, so that's 2 months right
there). Chakotay was right at the beginning of the episode when he said she
was there for a year.
Neelix calls him a genius, but Arturis certainly doesn't act it. He commits
an act of stupidity no other villain can be accused of. The first thing every
bad guy in Trek history has ever done when capturing our heroes is to take
their combadges. This is a good idea, for many reasons. It prevents
communications and other signals to be sent to rescuers. It can also be
disassembled and used to escape. Guess what happens here? Janeway takes her
combadge apart and uses it to escape! (At least Arturis didn't fall for the
"they're sick let's lower the force field and check on them" trick).
Arturis is exposed, so what does Janeway decide to do? Beam Arturis directly
to the brig? Oh no. She has a better idea. She decides to beam a security
team over to Arturis' ship and try to restrain him. So what happens? First
Feeble Security Guard #1 can't do it. So Tuvok shoots him, which does
nothing. So then FSG #1 is joined by FSG #2, and together they can't bring
him down. So what do Tuvok, Janeway, and Seven do? They watch as Arturis
reactivates the alien systems and puts up a force field, effectively retaking
the ship. So instead of Janeway having the slip-ship to study, she and Seven
are captured! Great plotting Janeway!
And so ends Voyager's best season. Is that saying much? Not really. The
addition of Seven was an improvement, and the stories were better, but the
writing problems remain. Too much technobabble and clunky character and plot
developments, such as Seven's Borg Army Knife feature, and the decision to
change the Holodeck power systems.
But at least Tom Paris didn't turn into a salamander.
Just wait until next year.
Scott McClenny: Hope And Fear was a great example of how the desire for vengeance can cloud a person's thinking.
Arturis said at one point that his people had been able to avoid assimilation for centuries
and Species 8472 was their final hope.Sounds to me like his people would have been
assimilated sooner or later,even without Voyager's interference. If I'd been Janeway I think
that the moment the Dauntless broke into Borg space I'd have ordered 7 to start the process
of assimilating me before her "family"showed up for the reunion. Does anyone really believe
that this guy's name was actually Arturis? Sound a bit too close to Arthur.
Shadow7463: A very nice ship indeed, a very fast ship, a very SHIELDLESS ship, so nice for
all the bad guys in the delta quadrent to miss it.
This atoues guy sure likes the Bond Tourture System, put your victims in a
stituation in which it takes forever to happen, like an hour to borg space,
second, leave anything, nomatter how small on there person, so they can use it
to escape. Then look surprised as they enter your room, evading your special
demise. Fast, simple, useless!
And just pushing a button will blow out some of the ship, luckly he didn't
push the "slipstream drive detonation" button right next to it.
Brian Lombard: The shot of Tom and Neelix's shuttle returning to Voyager is
re-used from "Macrocosm".
Starfleet's true message was along the lines of "I'm sorry we can't
help you. Hope to see you soon". Why in the world did they need to
encrypt that? If I spent five months trying to crack that code I'd be
pretty ticked at Command.
Janeway says they've been trying to crack the code for five months.
Does that include the month they were all asleep in "One"?
Arturis a criminal genius. Let's look at what he had to do to get
Janeway where he wanted her. Learn all about Federation technology.
Design a ship which appears completely Federation. Plant the ship in
an area of space, totally unmanned, where anyone could just come up
and take it. Then he had to make his way to a planet Voyager had not
yet arrived at, so he could conveniently be there to meet them. On top
of all this is the message from Starfleet. What an incredible stroke
of luck for him, as it helped his plan. Is anyone buying all this?
He can do all this, yet he can't elude the Borg?
Mike Wilson: I was kind of disappointed because it kind lacked any real tension for
me...and
I found it hard to believe the story. Why would Janeway believe even for an
instant that Starfleet would send an unmanned ship into uncharted territory
deep deep into space with one of their newest superduper propulsion systems?
After all, Janeway must know that the federation is at war with the
dominion,
and we the audience know, from dialogue more than anything else (on Ds9)
that
the federation is taking a pounding. So resources must be a priority...and
even if she did fall for this how did this alien guy with the big head so
expertly disguise the ship as a federation vessel, indeed how did he even
get
this ship if the Borg destroyed his race leaving ony 10,000 of them? Did he
concoct this scheme on his own or was it a master plan by his people to get
even with voyager? Either way, I find it hard to swallow that a race on the
brink of destruction by the borg would want to spare a hyped up mega fast
ship just for revenge when survival should be their top priority. Don't get
me wrong..I liked the idea of a race of Borg survivors in the delta quadrant
seeking revenge on Voyager for helping the borg, but it didn't sit well with
me how it was done.
Kevin Reynolds: How did Voyager scan the Dauntless at the beginning of the show and
recognize it as having a Starfleet warp signature? The ship doesn't have
warp drive.
Jeff Winkle: A good way to end the season, all things considered, but still a few
nits:
The alien presses a button and all the Starfleet controls disappear and
the lighting changes. So why were the engineering consoles still there
for Janeway and 7 or 9 to use to escape? Pretty convent...
How did he get Janeway and 7 of 9 into the brig? If he lowered the
force-field to either physically move them or transport them, Janeway
would have pulled her phaser out and shot him (maybe - I refer to
Chakotay's inaction in "Unforgettable")
Couldn't the crew use the Doc's optic sensors to see through the
Holo-technobabble and see the real ship, like they did to escape from
the alien zoo ship? (The name of the episode eludes me, but it was
third season and the crew started vanishing one-by-one being replaced by
the invading aliens)
Clay: [Concerning Matthew Patterson's Question about the use of the word kiloquad,]
The word kiloquad was used in several TNG eps but at the moment I don't
remember the ep names. Maybe someone else will send them in to you.
Scott Padulsky: Well, I had had a few nits (such as, why would the crew be nervous that
the Dauntless[?] couldn't make the entire trip home? It made it to the
Delta quadrant in one piece, the return trip is an identical distance.
And why hadn't we heard about this new drive on DS9?) but the fact that
the ship was a ruse kind of made any ship-based nits moot.
So, instead, I just wanted to say that unlike others, I am happy that
this season didn't end in a cliffhanger. There is no law that says
every season of Trek must end that way. DS9 has had seasons that
didn't technically have cliffhangers (the season finales may have set
the stage for the upcoming season but they were not cliffhangers per
se). As far as I am concerned cliffhangers are a crutch anyway. If
you make a decent show (and I think based on the quality of this season,
Voyager has crawled it's way up to decent, albeit inconsistent in
quality) people will tune in. In fact, I was starting to get worried
after 7 and Janeway were kidnapped that that was how the episode would
end. So, in my opinion, kudos to the creators for breaking "tradition"
and giving us a complete episode to end the season. Two final points on
cliffhangers and then i'll be quiet:
1. The main reason I was glad it wasn't a cliffhanger is because the
season-opening resolutions in Trek nearly always disappoint.
2. I think the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I know, goofy title, but
one of the best shows on TV) handles season enders right. The opening
episode introduces the "main bad guy" (in season 1 it was The Master; in
season 2, Spike and Drusilla) and by the last episode the "main bad guy"
is dealt with. Sure, some plot threads are left unfinished but there is
some sense of closure. It feels less artificial and ratings-motivated
that way.
Jason Krietsch: Near the end, Atouris pulls down a switch, the ships control panels change and
the bridge turns blood red. He says he fabricated the looks of the ship,
unfortunately, he forgot to turn off the outer hull projection.
He lies when he wished to have the whole crew, before the security team beams
in, he makes a move for a button, now there are just belana, Kim, and Tuvok,
maybe a few unnecessary ensigns and other people, but I don't think that the
whole crew went over there.
Aaron Nadler: Finally--a joke from Seven! "When we are assimilated by the Borg, our thoughts
will become one, and then I will assuredly understand. " Great Stuff!!
Plus, the last episode with Torres' engineering jacket--She's had her baby, so
there's nothing left to hide!
So Ensign Wildman's become a Voyager extra. Nice to see's getting some
character growth to work with.
When did Artourist have the time to come up with the faux-Admiral Hayes
message? As he was reconstructing the message from the real Starfleet?
BTW--Voyager's writers finally got away from the UT problem with aliens. Have
them learn the language.
Steve: No, I didn't right the nits down this time. This was a great episode, but a
bit predictable. And the nits:
300 LY isn't very far, sure it's what, a month's worth of travel, but it's not
a whole lot. And of course, to our knowledge Admiral Hanson is dead, well, at
least his ship was destroyed in First Contact. I know that this IS in december
2374, but Janeway makes references to something being trinary in computers.
Well, that seems pretty impossible because an electric current can be on, or
off, nothing in between, nothing more, nothing less.
Sorry, that's all I remember.
NOTE: DOES ANYONE KNOW THE STARDATE THE SHIP (FORGOT IT'S NAME ALREADY) WAS SUPPOSEDLY LAUNCHED?
Mark Schieber: I watched the season finale of Voyager last night, and I think I have a
nit off the top of my head, although as yet I've only seen it once (as
opposed to my standard five or six times for any Star Trek show).
When the Borg assimilated the big-head guy in the end (which wasn't shown
but was inferred), wouldn't they know where Voyager was? It seems they
were pretty cavalier about it, particularly Seven of Nine.
And it seems like they were awfully close to Borg space, even for
slipstream technology.
But all in all I thought it was a great "character" episode.
Chris Ng: "As I recall, our relationship started nine months ago, in a brig like
this one." What brig? They were in the BRIG? The ship HAS a brig?
If it takes the Dauntless three months to get back to Earth, it should
A--take a lot longer to get to Borg space or B--take only thirty-six hours
to get to Earth. Okay...At least substantially less than three months.
David D. Porter: After Chakotay and his away team leave the bridge, 7/9 leaves before
Cap'n J--without any orders to do so. Why?
Was that Ensign Wildman we saw in the passageway during 7/9's log
entry?
"We've given you a lot, Seven." For instance, we uprooted you from
your home, essentially kidnapping you. We continually tried to remake you
into what we wanted you to be.
Gee, Cap'n maybe you should've asked where Arturis was *before*
telling Tuvok your bad news. What if they'd been together? It would have
been a bit late to tell Tuvok not to tip your hand.
Gee, at least four torpdeoes? (Probably five, maybe more)
George Padovan: What a *great* way to end the fourth season! "Hope and Fear" has
emotional drama, few laughs, character confrontation, action and
adventure, and good character growth & interaction between Janeway and
Seven. Just *great*. (grin)
The Dauntless looks liked a cool design even if it is a fake Starfleet
ship.
Okay, time to nitpick this episode.
How could Atouris, or any of his kind, *know* what Starfleet ship
panels, wordings, etc. look like when he never had *seen* Voyager or any
Starfleet ship before? Without that foreknowledge it would be impossible
for him to create those holoillusions on the Dauntless.
Also how did Atouris *knew* about Voyager's deal with the Borg? Far as
anyone knew, that knowledge was just between Voyager and the Borg.
In "Day of Honor", Voyager tried to create a transwarp conduit and
failed. In "Hope and Fear", Seven stated that quantum slipstream is
roughly the same as transwarp, yet Voyager managed to create a
slipstream when it couldn't create a transwarp conduit. Does this make
any sense? If they could create a slipstream, I'm sure they could manage
to create a transwarp conduit.
Not exactly a nit. Janeway stated that nine months has passed since that
confrontation with Seven in Voyager's brig in "The Gift". Weird thing is
that nine months has passed between the "The Gift" and "Hope and Fear"
in real life (Sept-May). Should Janeway really say it had been *ten*
months instead? After all, in "One", they did spent one month in the
Nutara nebula.
Atouris stated that for centuries his people managed to stay one-step
ahead of the Borg and elude the storm. Yet it's kind of silly for his
people to have slipstream drive and never consider to *relocate* their
civilization on the other side of the galaxy *away* from Borg space. If
they had been eluding the Borg for centuries, they should had been smart
enough to get *out* of the Delta Quadrant when they had the chance.
Was it kind of odd for several Borg cubes which seemed to be waiting for
the Dauntless when it came out of slipstream? They sure looked like they
*knew* the Dauntless would be there.
Well, overall, I have to say that the fourth season has been the *best*
season to date for Star Trek: Voyager! Seven was a great addition to the
cast and certainly liven up things a bit for the crew, especially
Janeway. My best for the upcoming *fifth* season! Have a safe and happy
summer to all! (grin)
Murray Leeder: Had some nice character interplay. An above average Voyager episode,
but still very much a Voyager episode.
I think the opening abused the captain's log as a narrative tool. She
just happened to be talking about the message when Arturis arrived? I
don't think we can chalk that one up to intuition!
So just how did Arturis do this? When did he find the time? Either he's
extraordinarily resourceful, or security around the message is quite
lax.
Reasons Voyager should have figured out Dauntless was a fake:
It had no auto-stop for the engines in place? Yeah right.
There was zero security on it. Anyway could have beamed aboard.
There were no replicators. That's pushing it.
Poor security! The ship morphs, and the security officers completely
let go of Arturis!
Another contrivance... Seven and Janeway being the only two remaining
on board.
How come Arturis's ship continues to have Starfleet panels after it
changes?
And how oh how did Voyager possible CATCH UP to Arturis's ship, which
had a good headstart.
Here we have another ship, like the Prometheus, that's certain to give
the bridge crew snowblindness. Bad idea.
LtCrTerlak: A very good show, although I was hoping that the Crew would make it through to
the Alpha Quadrant, seeing as how they beat the Delta Quadrant thing to death.
First nit: After the "Dauntless" changes back into the alien ship, Janeway and
7/9 break out of the brig (which did seem a bit like a starfleet brig, but oh
well) and go down to Engineering to stop the ship, or at the very least steer
it off course. When they arrived, though, starfleet consoles lined the rim of
the Slipstream drive.
Second nit: At the begining, Tuvok noticed the ship had a Starfleet Warp
signature. Now granted that it is near impossible for the Alien to fake it,
seeing as how he only heard about Voyager, it still would NOT have a Starfleet
Warp signature. The ship used Slipstream Technology, not warp drive.
Murray Leeder: As a fan of 20th century B-films, Paris should have recognized the
slip-stream drive static-sphere thingy as a content of many a mad
scientist's laboratory.
Simon Dodwell: When Seven takes control of Navigation, turning the ship upside
down (well, almost) the 'tourist' is struggling not to fall forward. I
understand that the ship would shake from being jerked around, but the
artificial gravity should make it possible not to slide forward.
Donnalynne Quick: Just a comment on the nits I just read: Everybody noticed that 7 could walk
through the force field but no one mentioned that this was new to 7 herself.
Hasn't Janeway had her in the brig a number of times?
Chris Booton: A good season finale, not quite as good as last years but still good.
There were a few nits I found;
The admiral says it will take 3 months to get home at this new warp
thing. Yet at the end of the episode janeway says they went 3 hours in I
believe an hour as someone said they can only maintain the speed for
another hour before the hull fractured, now 1 hour to go 300 lightyears
= 183.33 hours to go 55000 lightyears (the given distance to home given
by janeway last week as 70000-15000 = 55000) how 183.33 hours is by no
means 3 months, in fact it's more like 7.63 days (7 days 15 hours 7
minutes 12 seconds) or a little over a week, so where does the admiral
get 3 months from. Janeway should have been able to tell the message was
a fraud from this right away, as they were able to tell what speed the
ship could do from it's first jump into it's quantum warp.
Theres a 47 in the first stardate mentioned.
Why doesent the guy activate the ships self destruct when the borg ships
surround him, who knows perhaps the explotion of his ship would have
been enough to take them out.
If all the message had was maps and a sorry message then why all the
secrecy and encryption, with all the encrytion the new ship design would
have been a more realistic thing to hide so tightly.
When the alien guy gets shot he had a nice burn hole on his shirt, he
was only unconcious for a minute, considering the situation I think it
warented using a phaser setting higher than one or two, not really hight
but enough to knock him out for an hour or two.
Janeway says they will not be able to use the quantum warp againnn, why
not, certainbly they could find a way to deal with the hull stress, they
have done it before with other situations.
Voager fires at least 5 or 6 torpedoes at the alien ship while at
quantum warp, I get the idea the warp fieild only encompassed voyager so
as soon as the torpedoes left voyager they would drop into normal space
slow down and voyager would smash into them and yet they remain in
quantum warp.
I wonder if seven and janeway were using real phasers in that game? If
so then what if they shoot eachother, would the safteys project a force
field in frount of them like the holosuits on ds9 did for quark in the
episode where he was selling weapons (but then again it was a holo
weapon in there)
Adam Howarter: It is possible Hayes survived having his ship blown out from under him
in ST:FC. Wouldn't he then object to Picard taking over command? Not
necessarily. There have been many times in history when a superior
officer has deferred in the heat of battle to the judgement of a
subordinate who was in a better position to act. The battle of Midway
comes to mind. And while I'm sure life pods are nice, I doubt they're a
good place to run a battle from.
McClenny: Guess it's time to sit back and evaluate what kind of year it was for the Voyager crew. Except for Kes leaving I'd say it was the best season so far. 7 of 9 helped to give the show
an edge that the show really needed. True some of the episodes were so-so but I thought on
the whole they were rather good. I especially loved the way that the relationship between
Janeway and 7 has developed. Of course the danger is that it might turn into the Jeri and
Kate show... I guess we will have to see how next season turns out.
Lars Ormberg: I know the whole point was to remind us about the Starfleet message and
realize it would be the substance of this episode, but how likely is Janeway
going to go over the details of her search in such detail so far into her
efforts? Does every dull day start with a 2 minute Captain's Log about the
Starfleet message? I feel sorry for the poor Starfleet records officer who
is assigned to review mission logs if/when Voyager returns home, having to
read 200 identical logs.
Janeway has a really strong gut feeling. Not only does it prevent her from
being excited about the gift from Starfleet, but it prevents the rest of the
crew from being excited as well. Is the crew so used to failing at getting
home they don't even anticipate a success?
Tuvok did have one anomoly that needed to be checked out. When they first
detected the ship, Tuvok noted it had a Federation warp signature. But
later they discover the ship doesn't have a warp drive. As soon as they
discovered about the slipstream engine, they should have wondered about this
warp signature.
So how was it that their alien tourist was able to make the OUTSIDE of his
ship look Starfleet? The inside was this alien technology of particle
molding (or whatever it was called). So when he flipped the switch on the
bridge, why didn't the outside change back too? Was the outside of the ship
actually shaped and labelled as a Starfleet ship? Plus, why the Starfleet
panels and Starfleet door swooshes during 7 and Janeway's final escape?
This alien visitor is probably the fourth or fifth alien to identify 7 as
Borg. How? (Of course, this guy did stalk Voyager for some time, so he may
have heard about her). But going back to 7's capture by Janeway, none of
the alien races had any trouble identifying her as a Borg drone, despite the
lack of Borgness about her.
I guess Starfleet never bothered to send any recent news in their message.
After all, if they did the crew would have wondered how Starfleet could
afford to develop a superengine and then send off an advanced ship in the
middle of a devastating Dominion War. That was the first clue to viewers
that something was amiss. As well, B'Elana wouldn't have needed to worry
about her Maquis past since the Maquis have been destroyed by the Dominion.
Nobody thought much about Starfleet's
brilliant plan...they spend R&D on an advanced ship to rescue Janeway and
her crew only to force another advanced ship to be abandoned or destroyed in
the Delta Quadrant. Had anybody voiced these illogical events
(Tuvok...hello) then perhaps Janeway would have had something to back up her
hunch.
Were those KMYF moments in the cargo bay between Janeway and the tourist?
When Tuvok and Janeway confer about the ship in the briefing room, Janeway
regularly grips his shoulder and pats him on the back. I thought that the
original series made it clear that Vulcans prefer to avoid physical contact
as a matter of familiarity resulting from their telepathy.
Unless he accessed the computers when nobody was looking, how could the
alien visitor have created the false message? No matter how good with
computers, he had to create the source code for the audio-visual fake. Or
while "fixing the code" with one hand (while Janeway & 7 were present), was
the other hand secretly typing on Voyager's "faked Starfleet message" macro
program specially designed for times like these?
Were the faker's people so dangerous that the Borg found it necessary to use
hundreds of ships where generally one will do?
Were there any plans for taking holodoc with them on the trip? Is his
mobile emitter working again? We know that they were planning to travel
sans-holodeck.
When Janeway's security team beamed onto the bridge, why didn't they beam
into a circle surrounding their faker, cutting him off from accessing any
panels? And why didn't anybody follow up on the one phaser shot? "Well
Captain it only slowed him down so we gave up and decided to try and hold
him back instead." And are there Starfleet protocols that when the captain
is in a dangerous situation said Captain is beamed out last?
So Borg can walk through forcefields "like thin air"? So why did 7of9
remain in Voyager's brig? Why did Hugh remain in the Brig in the
Enterprise? And speaking of which, why are Janeway and Seven in the brig?
They were in a forcefield on the bridge. Then the alien took them down to
the brig and put them in another forcefield, where the only difference was
he could not longer keep an eye on them? Why risk their escape on the way
down, then give them a classic Bond escape opportunity by leaving them
unmonitored?
Good thing 7 doesn't have a microfilament hidden on her (the one item that
might be possibly hidden under her clothes) more often, or she'd escape
force fields rights and left.
Why are there so many Borg cubes guarding a conquered planet? And do the
Borg now think that the Federation has particle molding and quantum
slipstream technology? After all, the ship externally appears to be the
Dauntless even without the particle manipulation activated.
Jeff Winkle: The weapon the alien grabbed and tried to shoot Janeway
with...looked suspiciously like the laser pistols from the Disney movie
"The Black Hole".
Tuvok seems to suffer from "Security Chief's Aim Syndrome" (first
discovered by Worf during TNG), which a perfectly easy shot is missed,
either from a hand phaser or a ship based weapon. Tuvok fires four
torpedoes at the alien vessel and two of them clearly miss!!! The ship
can't maneuver since it's navigation system is destroyed, yet Tuvok
manages to miss the easy shot.
The ships registry actually makes sense to me (this is where I declare
momentary peace). The episode "Power Play" (TNG) described the Essex as
Dadelus Class, meaning the Dadelus was the first ship of that line.
Assuming that the Dadelus was the first ship to be commissioned (this is
a stretch, but work with me) be commissioned as NX-01. Like the
Enterprise, after the original was destroyed, the second ship with that
name would be given the "A" after the number. Now, (stretching even
further) assume that Starfleet wanted to save that name for a next
generation of propulsion vessel, and viola, that is how you come up with
the registration number. (O.K. that still doesn't explain why the
Saratoga and Defiant have such huge numbers, but it is a start)
Sitroom2: My big nitpick- how did the alien even know about the deal with the Borg
that Voyager made to get safe passage through the corridor? I doubt the Borg
told him.
Angela M Russo: I have often of late been looking at the Nitpicker Home Page, and I used
to like looking at the Brash Reflections of Voyager. I know you can't
edit the brash reflections that come in, but the nitpickers who are being
so brash need to read the Nitpicker's Prime Directive over again. What
happened to the good fun? What happened to the light-hearted cheer? It
looks now like the people who post there have more dislike for the show
than like.
The problem could be me. I enjoy almost every episode, and when I find
something "amiss" with the show, I don't get all hot-headed and
immediately post my brash reflection. Can our fellow nitpickers be
reminded of the light-hearted good cheer that we are supposed to have
when viewing our favorite show? (Note from Phil: Sounds good to me! I do admit that my attitude towards Voyager has been slipping! I'll see if I can't get it to improve at bit. ;-)
Peter Schieren: Not a bad episode, but not what I would have expected from a season ender.
A lot of the nits have already been covered, just a couple of comments.
7o9 can't beat Janeway at "Velocity" and is annoyed. She says that she has
better visual accuity etc... and that she should have won. Janeway then
says that the game is more than physical skill, but that intuition plays a
large part. Sort of sounds like Troi beating Data at chess in
"Conundrums"(STNG). Although not as extreme.
Also at the end when we find out that the slipstream effect will not work
again due to the damage it causes. Why don't they use the tecnology as long
as they can, then repair the ship, then use it again. There seems to be
very little that they cannot fix, no matter how badly damaged.
Jo-Hanna C. Goettsche: At some part of the episode, Torres mentions that she only speaks a few
Klingon phrases. Fine. Back in "Faces", she talks about being abandoned by her
(human) father as a child. So presumably, she lived with her Klingon mother
for at least a while until being old enough to move out. How exactly did she
communicate with her mother that a few phrases (Some of the phrases are
obviously profane. In an episode, Seven mentions that she had an argument with
Torres that ended with Klingon profanities. Even in the 24th century,
profanities seem the easiest part of a foreign language to grasp! :-) ) are
all the Klingon she knows? It makes you go "hmmm"
Lars Ormberg: The visitor did make a pretty good reproduction of StarFleet vessels. He
even added explosive consoles for that "just like mom used to make touch".
Good of the creators to switch back to kiloquads so we don't have to hear
the exact modern-day size of Voyager's computers (unlike Future's End).
Steve Oostrom: I had seen "Hope and Fear," and it was not a
cliffhanger! Oh well, I guess I won't have to wait all summer for the
start of the new season. Anyway, most of the obvious nits have been
captured already, but several people have mentioned that Admiral Hayes
should be dead. Although his ship was destroyed in "First Contact," he
could have escaped in an escape pod and survived, but they probably were
not looking for escape pods until after the battle was over.
When I first heard about this episode (by reading spoilers) I believed
that "quantum slipstream technology" was just a figment of Arturis'
imagination and that there was no such thing. However, it became
obvious that the technology was in fact real and could propel the ship
at high speed (three hundred light years in an hour, which translates to
a week and a half back to the Alpha Quadrant, not three months, if they
ran it continuously). Although the quantum slipstream technology might
slip into the forgotten tech category, its existence and the fact that
Voyager used it for an hour suggests that the Powers that Be now have a
method by which they can return Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant any time
they want. All they have to do is open an episode by having Seven of
Nine say "Captain, I believe I have solved the problem involving the
quantum slipstream technology we got from the Dauntless some time
back..."
When Arturis turned the ship's bridge back to its natural appearance
(thanks to "particle synthesis," what is that, a holodeck using "real"
matter?), the engineering consoles did not change, nor did the markings
on the ship's exterior. The door leading into the engine room looked
like it came off the Defiant too.
I found it hard to believe that Arturis was able to plant all of that
information into the Voyager's computer so quickly and without anybody
being able to detect him doing it.
If quantum slipstream technology required modifying the deflectors and
doing other things to the ship, then how did they manage to fire off
those photon torpedoes to disable the shields on the Dauntless? By the
way, how many torpedoes are left, or can they manufacture them now, like
they can shuttlecraft?
When the episode opened and Janeway learned that the Dauntless was only
ten light years away, despite all the travelling since they got the
message, I thought that was a rather interesting coincidence, but of
course, the Dauntless was close because Arturis put it there. Perhaps
that was the first thing that got Janeway thinking that this was too
good to be true. Other clues of course were the fact that there was no
crew, no replicators, no amenities such as that and the fact that
message was given by an apparently "dead" Admiral (but he would not have
been dead when Voyager launched, so Arturis could have gotten the
identity of some high-ranking Admiral from the data banks when he
fabricated the message to make it look authentic, while us viewers would
have known better-but that theory was blown when we saw the real
message).
Anyway, not that bad of an ending for the season, but a cliffhanger
would have been better.
Kurt: I know it's strange to dispatch nits instead of submitting them, but in the
interest of thoroughness (or whatever you want to call it):
Several people have mentioned the strange registry for the Dauntless,
NX-08-A. However, it's possible that they commisioned a new set of call
alphanumerics to distinguish between ships with and without slipstream drives.
If this is the case, NX-08-A is a perfectly reasonable call alphanumeric for
the ship. (As opposed to call numbers.)
At the time of this writing, one person has mentioned that pulling the
lever only returned part of the Dauntless to its original alien configuration.
It's possible that there were several such levers throughout the ship, each
one responsible for the conversion of a part of the ship (it makes sense... if
someone did find the lever on the bridge, but the ship's exterior stayed the
same, and the alien What's-his-name blocked off communication... who on
Voyager would know anything had happened?).
Many people have mentioned that it's strange that "Starfleet" would send
this ship 10 LY from Voyager, and not go the small extra distance to appear
right next to Voyager. [sigh] If the alien hadn't been lying, Starfleet
wouldn't have known where Voyager would be when it decrypted the message!!!!!
To my under- standing, they (would have) sent the ship about the same they
sent the message, five months ago! For all Starfleet (could have) known,
Voyager would have found a wormhole and been in the Alpha Quadrent by the time
they decrypted the message!
Finally, at least one person mentioned the "particle whatchamacallit", and
how the crew of Voyager could have been working on the alien pannels (sp?)
without making a single mistake, because the buttons were in all different
places. Well, unless I misunderstood the alien's explanation, the technology
("particle whatcha-macallit") he used literally re-arranged the particles of
whatever they affected (that could be used as a rather nasty weapon...). If
so, the alien's controls would have been re-arranged to fit the standard
Starfleet configuration.
And, finally, on to the real nits...
Were those real phasers that Seven and Janeway were using in the holodeck?
If not, why not make something a little more suited to the game? After all,
you wouldn't use a tennis raquet to play softball, although it's possible to
do so... Same principle here. And if they were real phasers, why drain the
power cells for something so trivial?
Matthew McLauchlin: Not only is the warp core one of those static balls, the plasma
conduits (or whatever) are also novelty lamps! They can be seen at my
neighbourhood Le Quizz novelty shop, right by the static balls. And lava
lamps.
I find it far more likely that Arturis only turned off the Starfleet
design in the bridge and brig; after all, those are the controls he
used. He could have left the hull and Engineering unchanged to save
energy.
Could not this Admiral Hayes and ST:FC Admiral Hayes be two different
people? Hayes/Hays/Haze/Eyz/Jeyes/etc, etc?
Interesting that Species 113's forcefields are just red versions of
Starfleet's.
What does Arturis eat? There are neither replicators nor organic
matter on board.
How did he design the Starfleet panels aboard Dauntless? He was on
board Voyager continually from the time he first saw Starfleet panels
until the crew first beamed over.
Murray Leeder: Okay, here's a good question - just WHY would Starfleet sent an
enormous, easily corrupted package of material just to say "Sorry, we
can't do anything". Just what was the rest of the package? "Testing, one
two three"?
Jason Allan Haase: I personally really enjoyed this episode. At first I was thinking they
were going to take this ship and maybe spend next season telling about
the three months it would take them to get back. Maybe as a way to try
and boost ratings yet again. I don't know about any other nitpickers,
but I would have enjoyed it.
Did Arturis look or sound like that Mintakan from Who Watches The
Watchers on TNG who thought Picard was an overseer? That's because the
actor Ray Wise played both characters. I noticed this right away
because I'm a big Twin Peaks fan and he played a major part in that
series and film.
This is kind of an anti-nit. If Admiral Hayes survived the battle with
the Borg in First Contact by escaping in an escape pod, he wouldn't have
been able to command the fleet from the escape pod would he? So then
he wouldn't have been angry with Picard taking over. Also, if Admiral
Hayes did die in FC, maybe Arturis got old information on SF and thought
Admiral Hayes was alive. This could have been a clever way for the
creators to tip us off about it not being the real-deal. But then they
went ahead and had Janeway recover more of the message which included
Admiral Hayes again, so they blew that one!
Scott Neugroschl: Well, its obvious what happened to the Lava Lamp manufacturers from the 1970's... They all moved to the Delta Quadrant to make quantum slipstream drives! The
"quantum core" (I don't know what to call it) of four vertical posts looks like a bunch of
lava lamps!
John Latchem: As far as Arturis being able to speak a language without learning its
vocabulary, well, he probably shouldn't, unless he is telepathic, which
doesn't seem to be the case. I think the creators have forgotten the the
first use of the UT, in TOS "Metamorphosis," established that the UT actually
translated thought into concepts, and then into words. So the UT reads minds!
Just another case of modern creators trying to forget TOS.
As for Arturis' plan failing if Janeway took a different path. . .He was
FOLLOWING them. It didn't matter where they went. I guess the big nit here
then is how he got through the nebula.
Tuvok says the Dauntless was launched on stardate 51472. This must be the
date it left drydock, not the date it was sent to the Delta Quadrant, because
Starfleet didn't send the message until stardate 51501.4.
Janeway says they left the slipstream on for an hour before it shut down.
Presumably this is after she returned to the ship. At that point they were
back near Borg space, about 10000 ly from where they were when the episode
began. So in one hour they made up that 10000 ly, and then some? 10000 ly an
hour means they'd be home in 7 hours, not three months. Obviously Borg space
is not so far back as we thought. In "The Gift" they could have been 9400 ly
from clearing Borg space and Kes threw them 9500 ly away, so at the beginning
of this episode they may have been only a few hundred ly away from Borg space.
However in "The Raven" Janeway says 10000 ly back, so someone is wrong.
About Jeff Winkle's registry number hypothesis: that's all fine and good, but
this new ship isn't named "Daedalus." It's called the "Dauntless." I thought
of a similar idea, if Starfleet's first vessel was named Dauntless (obviously
less sophisticated than Deadalus class). But then, why is it that the
registry is 01A? First why is that "0" needed in the front? And why isn't
the "A" seperated by a hyphen? If this were really the second ship named
Dauntless the registry should be something like NX-1-A.
As far as continuing the name but not the number, like Defiant and Saratoga, I
think maybe Starfleet thinks the number carries the luck and glory of the
previous ship with it. After all the Saratoga was the first ship disabled by
the Whalesong probe and the Defiant got trapped in a Dimensional rift, and for
all we know those could have been their first missions! Not exactly the kind
of luck you'd want for the next generation. That doesn't explain why they
think the name itself would be better, or why the name isn't paired with the
number by default. I think it's a case of the model makers not caring about
Starfleet history, except for the Enterprise.
Doc Nickel: One big nit nobody seems to have picked yet, is, after the Dauntless
shoots away for the first time, Janeway is making a Log entry where she
says something along the lines of "After two days at high warp, we've
caught up to the Dauntless...."
By this time we already know there is no "organic matter" onboard, and
later we discover there are no replicators...
So what did they eat or drink while trapped on the Dauntless for two
days? Three days is about the absolute maximum for surviving without
water.... Yet no mention is made of the crewmembers' being treated for
dehydration or being hungry.
Myles Hildebrand: I thought that Admiral Hayes was an
inconcsistent choice for the message as his ship was destroyed in
First Contact - last year at least, even by Voyager's calendar.
Perhaps he survived while thousands of Fed crewmen didn't.
Lisa Solinas: Janeway proclaims that since they've given Seven a lot, she oughta give
something back. Well, um, just a week ago she fought off radiation, a
failing ship, insanity, the Doc's acid remarks, and Dukat's "buddies" to
save the butts of Janeway and the entire crew. Seven almost sacrificed
herself so that others, including dear ol' Tom, could survive. She
helped them get the aliens that stuck probes in people's heads. She
stayed on board during the Year of..... whoops, it never happened. She
brought Neelix back to life. She fought the Hirogen and almost got shot
by French Resistance Kate. She was shot by Nazis. She helped Janeway,
against her will and emotions, destroy the Omega particles. She found
and helped on the Demon planet. She set up the Stellar Cartography or
whatever it is. I think Seven's given plenty back. Especially since
Janeway ruined her life in the Collective and wouldn't let her go back.
Janeway seems to becoming witchier as the series goes on. Essentially,
she's saying that Seven has no free will. If Seven wants to leave,
that's her choice. Sisko was going to allow Dax to stay on the Meridian
planet. Kirk allowed McCoy to stay on Yonada. Picard let Worf go.
Also, Janeway is going back on her word. In "The Gift", Janeway
proclaims that once Seven has attained full individuality, she can stay
or go as she pleases. Now it's "you're part of my crew and you're not
ever going to leave."
Seven is completely right. Janeway has been trying to mold her. Janeway
said that Seven "didn't turn out" as she expected. Expected? This woman
has been a normal person for SIX years. There is no "expect." It seems
that whenever they don't happen to have the same opinion, Seven gets
grounded. Sounds like my relationship with my mother.
I'm beginning to wonder if the writer put all these 47s in just to
please us.
Arcturis yells that the 47 species was their hope and their dream
against the Borg. Had it occurred to him that they said "your GALAXY is
impure"? I presume that Arcturis's people live WITHIN the galaxy?
I have asked before and I shall ask again. Why isn't Starfleet throwing
all their resources into the Dominion War? There won't be any point in
Voyager getting home if they get a Jem'Hadar reception party.
When Janeway says that a Borg drone could walk through a forcefield as
if it were thin air, I heard Seven's voice quavering, "I am.... no
longer able to shroud myself."
It's getting a LITTLE annoying to have the Voyager people yelling every
other week, "We found a way home! Oh, it won't work! We found a way
home! Oh, it won't work! We found a way home! Oh, it won't work! We
found a way home! Oh, it won't work!" ad NAUSEA. (Note from Phil: We have a term of it: GIS . . . Gilligan Island Syndrome.)
Why does Tuvok not have his phaser on stun? That burn on Arcturis's
shirt looked a lot like the one on Keevan's shirt in "The Magnificent
Ferengi." And if everyone will remember, Keevan died. He is dead. That
phaser blast burned his shirt and killed him. Why did Arcturis not only
survive but get back onto his feet in less than thirty seconds?
Boy, the way Seven is going, maybe she should go on a date with Odo so
they can discuss how "unlike humans" they are.
BIOELECTRIC FIELD?
There were gobs of technobabble in this episode. "Readjust the
transmumometer" and "triangulize the non-iconic blahblahs"?
It's been asked why there are no bioneural gel packs on the Dauntless.
Because they go funky if there's a germ nearby.
When the two unkilled redshirts tussle with Arcturis for control of the
Dauntless's conn, I kept screaming at Tuvok, "Shoot! Shoot!" At stun,
there would be no "permanent damage" as Talak'talan put it.
Harry says, "if you.... like Ktarians." What's wrong with Ktarians? The
Ktarians we saw in "The Game" were fairly humanoid. Horta, I understand,
but Ktarian?
Dauntless sounds like a name for a Defiant-class warship.
There is an easy way to get home. Blow up Voyager, kick Arcturis off the
Dauntless and set in a heading for Earth. [Although, knowing Voyager's
luck, they'd probably end up at the Changeling Homeworld.]
To Aaron Nadler: Hackles down, hackles down. If you remember, after
Kirayoshi was born Kira still wore a looser tunic for awhile before
returning to the jumpsuit and belt.
Torres whines about how little the Dauntless has: no replicators, no
holodecks, one shuttle. I'm certain she'd love the Defiant.
KMYF between Janeway and Arcturis? Okay, but if a person has a skull
like that.... "If I kiss a man goodnight, I like to know where I'm
kissing him--Kira [Maquis, Part 1]
Janeway won't play another "Velocity" game with Seven. C'mon, Kate,
humor the Borg.
When Torres says that she knows a little Klingon, I expected her to say
Alexander's line: "You're asking me? I can barely say my own name in
Klingon."
Imaginary letter:
Dear Voyager,
The Dominion has proven that it's going to eventually rip us to shreds
unless Captain Benjamin L. "Emissary" Sisko does something quick.
They're probably plotting a course here now. I can hear burly Jem'Hadar
pounding at my door! You'll have to meet with Weyoun whenever you get
here.
Mucho affectiones,
XWPilot: I thought it was cute to see 7 as a poor looser!
Great Line: "Wow indeed." -Tuvock
Janeway comes up with the bright idea of enlisting 7's help to decode the
message. Question: Why are we only thinking of this now? The message IS five
months old, after all.
Welcome to the USS Dauntless, the ship with no light bulbs. Chris Carter was
probably the ships archetect. Granted it wasn't REALLY a starfleet ship, but I
still groaning "TOAL!" for pretty much every sequence shot inside the ship!! (Note from Phil: For those of you who don't understand that last comments, I mentioned in the X-phile Guide that I often yell TOAL at the screen when Mulder and Scully are walking around in dark buildings. It stands for "Turn On A Light!"
This might be a nit, or maybe not... We push in on Harry's tricorder and see
the lights blinking and hear the beeping sounds. The lights seem to blink in a
regular sequence. Harry stops abruptly and changes direction as if the
tricorder has tipped him off to something interesting. However, the light
sequence doesn't seem to change. I kinda expected it to when the machine
picked up something new.
So, by using the quantum slipstream thingie, did Voyager loose time, going in
the opposite direction? Are they closer to Borg space now ? Is their gaactic
position any closer then they were in "The Gift"
Thus endeth season 4, the Borg cameo season. The borg were only really
featured in "Scorpion pt2" but made little cameos in "The Raven", "One", and
now "Hope and Fear". did I miss any? Guess the creators know that the sight of
a drone or the look of borg cube is enough to get the audience's atention!!
Andrew Noto: Way back in season 5 of TNG, in the episode "I, Borg," Geordi beams down
to the planet's surface with Hugh at the end of the episode because the
Borg don't assimilate individuals - they assimilate civilizations. And,
in character with their nature, the Borg didn't assimlate Geordi. They
merely ignored him, and took Hugh back with them. So, why - may I ask,
does Arturus think that the Borg will assimilate Janeway, Seven and
himself? Are they a civilization? - NO! Moreover, why DO the Borg
assimilate Arturus? The same question could be asked about why the Borg
actually assimilated Seven and her family in the first place...or even
the crew of the ENTERPRISE-E in "First Contact." (Note from Phil: And so the Borg continue to change! First they only wanted technology in "Q-Who". Then we find out that they assimilate societies in "The Best of Both Worlds." Now . . . they assimilate individuals.
PLEASE NOTE: This file is frozen. I think we've done all we're going to do on it! You're welcome to send addition nits but they will be filed for future reference instead of uploaded.
If you would like to add some comments,
drop
me a note at chief@nitcentral.com with the Subject line "Hope and Fear". Please include your real name, city and state (or province
and county as the case may be) in the body of the e-mail so I can give you
credit if you are the first person to bring up a particular nit. (Remember
the legalese: Everything you submit becomes mine and you grant me the right
to use yourname in any future publication by me. I will do my best to give
you credit if you are the first person to submit a particular nit but I make
no guarantees. And finally, due to the volume of mail received at Nitpicker
Central, your submission may or may not be acknowledged but that entry will make you a part of the Nitpickers Guide if you aren't one already!)
Admiral Hayes.
Copyright 1998 by Phil Farrand. All Rights Reserved.