Tom Salinsky

VOY S07E22 Natural Law (). Chakotay and Seven beam off a doomed shuttle and are trapped on a forest planet beneath an impenetrable barrier, where they find a primitive culture making blankets and smashing com-badges. In a virtual re-run of a scene in Q2, Tom Paris is pulled over by the space fuzz for piloting infractions. And mysteriously, Seven and Chakotay are trying to get back for a conference, further reinforcing that life in the Delta Quadrant has become just like home. This feels rather like three different episodes have been put in a blender and the result is that none of them really work. The noble savage strand is by far my least favourite, but they’re all pretty bad.

VOY S07E23 Homestead (). Neelix is throwing a party when Voyager comes across life signs – Talaxian life signs. The Delta Flyer goes to investigate and crashes, whereupon Neelix discovers that around 500 of his people are living in a hollowed-out asteroid, being victimised by a bunch of ghost-faced miners. If it weren’t that one side looks like Neelix, this would be yet another Zagbars vs Zoobles conflict. As it is, the fact that this is Zagbars vs Talaxian only helps a little bit. This all looks very much as if they might be going to write Neelix out here – there are only three episodes to go, after all. Neelix and Tuvok bury the hatchet (which given the events of Tuvix – recounted excitedly by Naomi in this episode!! – really shouldn’t be necessary) in rather a sweet scene. Surely, on the great ship reset button, nothing ever really changes…? But no, we won’t get to see Neelix sign up to Starfleet. He’s staying behind and Voyager is going on without him.

VOY S07E24 Renaissance Man (). Once more, the unknown environment of the Delta Quadrant provides plenty of opportunities for itinerant captains and holograms to attend symposiums and deliver papers. Janeway has done a deal with the oligarchs who control this region of space. In return for not dismantling the ship, they will be allowed to settle on a nearby planet. Quite why we have to learn about this second hand isn’t clear. It sounds like it would have been quite a dramatic and exciting scene. But lo! The Captain is behaving very oddly, because she’s not the Captain. She’s the Doctor and he’s obeying the orders of a pair of Sontarans who have Janeway held prisoner. (And presumably these all-powerful oligarchs who presented us with such an extraordinarily intractable problem are just made-up, which is a pretty rotten bait-and-switch.) As strong as they are, Mulgrew and Dawson aren’t quite in Jeri Ryan’s league when it comes to impersonating Robert Picardo impersonating them. On the other hand, the Doctor hiding himself in a sea of a hundred identical decoys is a marvellous visual. His over-the-top goodbye is nothing short of embarrassing, however. Vulcan crewmember Vorik appears for the final time and manages not to get himself executed, which I suppose is something.

VOY S07E25-26 Endgame (). What does spending seven years lost in deep space do to you? How might your friends, family, loved ones and colleagues react when you return home? What does it feel like to be welcomed back like a hero, when you know your success was earned with the lives of at least some of your fellow crewmembers? As usual, Voyager isn’t interested in any of those things. Which is a shame, because I super am. But the tug-of-love between deep character drama and the perceived need to stop people switching away from UPN ends up where it so often does on Voyager – in a bonkers high concept time travel pretzel logic fever dream of a story which aims to throw so many ideas at the viewer so quickly, that you stop questioning whether any of this means anything and you just sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s ten years after Voyager’s return to Earth, thirty-three years after they left. A lot’s happened in the sixteen years of travel that we missed. In the main, the old-age makeup is convincing and the actors do a good job of playing their more mature selves. Most are happy enough, but Tuvok has gone nuts, Seven is MIA, and Chakotay is dead and buried.

Back in our main timeline, it’s nearly B’Elanna Baby Day (but not quite), and Seven and Chakotay’s teamwork on the planet of the noble savages (as well as her turning him into a holographic sex doll) has matured into an actual relationship. After a great deal of not very necessary feeling busywork, into this cosy domesticity comes crashing sixty-something Admiral Janeway, and she’s cranky. Overhearing their sparring is the Borg Queen, looking rather more gaunt than when we last saw her, but now portrayed by Alice Krige who originated the role and who gives it a bit of extra sizzle compared to Susannah Thompson. After what seems like an awful lot of preparing, talking, talking about preparing, walking around with PADDs and general faff, it’s finally time to return to the Borg-infested nebula and try going home the short way round. Using future anti-Borg tech, Captain Janeway takes out two fully-operational cubes, slaughtering who knows how many drones. But she does draw the line at nipping through a trans-Warp conduit and it’s only here that the real Janeway on Janeway conflict begins. True to form, the Captain wants to destroy the conduit instead of using it to get home. They’re both well aware that this is a reprise of the debate in Caretaker, and the script hangs a series of lanterns on it. Embarrassingly, Garrett Wong has to say “It’s not about the destination, but about the journey,” as if he really, really means it.

Admiral Janeway seems to be motivated by the need to save Seven more than anything else. Shame she didn’t take her armoured TARDIS back in time just a few weeks earlier so she could save poor old Joe Carey, but you know, screw that guy. She briefly becomes as much the antagonist as the Borg, going behind Voyager’s back to ensure they get home whether they want to or not. And it all ends in a demented climax full of neurolithic pathogens, worm holes, destabilised conduit shielding, auto-dismemberment and much else besides. But this is a send-off party more than anything else, and everyone is invited: Barclay, Neelix (via Zoom call with Seven), the Borg Queen – but not Kes, of course, don’t be silly. And Mulgrew plays her dual role brilliantly, her older self coming back into alignment with the idealism of her younger self being one of the highlights of the show, reaffirming for absolutely the last time that, yes, she was right to destroy the array.

The Doctor, who spent much of the last episode impersonating Janeway, regrets that a therapeutic visit from Janeway won’t be possible to soothe an agitated Tuvok.

Voyager Season 7 wrap-up

It’s hard to know what to say about Voyager’s seven year run that I haven’t said dozens of times already. The cardboard characters let the side down again and again and again, with the result that this is the Janeway/Seven/Doctor show almost as much as TOS was the Kirk/Spock/McCoy show. Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo are the only cast members who managed the dual trick of being supremely able actors who also inspired the writers. Unlike, say, Tim Russ and Roxann Dawson who almost never inspired the writers, no matter how good they were, and definitely unlike Robert Beltran who seemingly stopped trying somewhere in Season 2.

And yet, there is good stuff here, and good stuff in this final season. The Workforce two-parter was a good use of the whole ensemble, with a very beguiling mystery in the first part, Body and Soul was an absolutely hilarious showcase for Jeri Ryan and Shattered was one for the fans, revisiting past glories and failures to great effect. But just as you have to make the deal with TOS that you get one female character with depth per year, and an awful lot of cardboard rocks and crummy monster costumes, you have to make the deal with Voyager that you aren’t going to get deep character work, season-spanning arcs, or delicate emotional stories, and instead look forward to the next bonkers high concept premise which threatens to turn the whole show on its head.

In some ways, the episodes I liked least were the ones which threatened to revisit the premise of the show, because it kept reminding me that the idea of a two warring crews desperately trying to crawl home in a barely holding-together lifeboat would have been so much more interesting than this leisurely cruise through Zagbars vs Zoobles conflicts which we actually got. But, despite all of the problems I’ve articulated, I genuinely did enjoy hanging out with this crew for 170-odd episodes, and I’ll miss the sheer ambition that was often on display here.

Voyager’s final season averages 3.06. The show peaked in Season 4 with 3.54, which is about as good as TNG Seasons 3-5, but not quite as good as the same period in DS9. That said, I’d put especially Season 4 next to pretty much any other year of Berman-Trek and expect it at the very least not to disgrace itself. The overall overage for Voyager is about the same: 3.08.

Right, five down and one to go.