3-4. The Swarm.

The Doctor frets over his deterioration.

THE PLOT

Voyager enters a new area of space, one which Neelix warns is the domain of fiercely territorial aliens who destroy anyone who dares to breach their borders. Starfleet regulations insist that no vessel can intrude on alien borders without permission... but just this once, Janeway decides that the immediate situation justified breaking orders, and she commands the crew to pilot the ship through the narrowest patch of the aliens' space there is.

Naturally, they attract the aliens' attention. Soon, a swarm of tiny ships are pursuing Voyager. They have no weapons - but when Voyager fires at them, the blast is reflected back at Voyager. They are able to disableVoyager's shields, in preparation for boarding!

Meanwhile, the Doctor's program begins to break down, as he finds himself unable to remember basic elements of medical procedures...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: After 2+ seasons invoking Starfleet regulations every time her crew so much as wish to go to the bathroom out of turn, she pulls a sudden about-face and disregards regs to avoid adding 15 months to the trip home. Not that I disagree with her decision, which seems a fairly simple calculation of risk vs. benefit, but it does fly in the face of her decision-making in previous episodes. 

The Doctor: Robert Picardo pulls double-duty as both the holographic doctor and as the EMH's creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. He has particular fun as Zimmerman, doubling down on the doctor's normal belligerance to amusing effect. Meanwhile, he basically plays an Alzheimer's patient as the Doctor regresses to something like childhood, playing with the medical instruments in sickbay as if they were mere toys. 

Kes: I'm still finding it hard to wrap my head around the notion that in a show that features Harry Kim, Chakotay, and Neelix, Kes was the character chosen to get the boot after this season's end. Character and actress remain very strong when given anything to do, as this episode demonstrates. Kes' medical competence has grown to the point that she can successfully direct a complex surgery when the Doctor's memory fails. Her confidence has also grown. She is able to argue for diagnosing the Doctor's deterioration rather than just rebooting him, appealing to both emotion and reason to sway Janeway to her point of view. Her emotional pain as she watches her mentor deteriorate is effective, and her determination to help the Doctor at the end is genuinely stirring.


THOUGHTS

The Swarm is the first solo script written by Mike Sussman, who previously collaborated on Season Two's excellent Meld. Sussman would go on to co-write several Voyager episodes before becoming arguably the best writer on Enterprise, so it was with some pleasure that I saw his name come up on the credits.

I won't say that The Swarm really disappointed me. This isn't a bad episode by any means. It has some good scenes, some good effects, and even some good character work for Kes. It is, however, a flawed show, with many of its problems coming from Sussman's script. Specifically, from an area that would later be Sussman's greatest strength as a writer: The structure.

The "A" and "B" plots do not go together at all. There is no connection, either in plot or in theme, between the alien plot and the Doctor plot. As a result, the strands are unable to feed each other or build upon each other in any way. Each plot simply interrupts the other, blunting the emotion of the Doctor storyline and the momentum of the alien one.

The alien plot doesn't fail disastrously, but it doesn't work very well either. A big problem for me is that this strand is driven entirely by Technobabble. Harry and B'Elanna do some Technobabble to the shields to hideVoyager from the mysterious aliens. When they are discovered, more Technobabble makes the situation dire, before yet some more Technobabble allows Harry and Janeway to save the day. Not exactly stirring stuff.

The Doctor plot works better, thanks to the ever-reliable performances of Robert Picardo and Jennifer Lien and to the inherent emotion of what is effectively an Alzheimer's plot. Technobabble both solves and resolves the problem here, too, but here both the problem and solution are easy to follow. The Doctor's program was always intended to be temporary, and so a breakdown after being left to run for so long perfectly fits the internal logic of the show. In fact, it's welcome to see one of the inherent problems of Voyager's situation actually addressed instead of ignored!

Kes' solution seems to be based more on the workings of medicine than on those of computer programs, which makes sense given that her professional background is entirely medical. It's also refreshing to see Kes behaving as temporary chief medical officer during the doctor's illness, giving some rare development to an often overlooked character. The ending leaves the ultimate fate of the Doctor's memories in doubt, even as it restores his program... Though this being Voyager, I strongly suspect that will be forgotten by the next episode.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Episode: The Chute
Next Episode: False Profits 


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