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| Insert freeze-frame and laugh-track here. |
Voyager is assisting the peaceful Nezu, whose planet is suffering from a series of meteor collisions. Voyager succeeds in reducing the impact of a large asteroid, but the crew are surprised when their efforts only succeed in fragmenting it instead of vaporizing it. Then they receive a message from Dr. Vatm (Tom Towles), a Nezu scientist who claims to have made a shocking discovery about the asteroids.
The crew can't beam down or beam Vatm up thanks to Plot Interference, so Tuvok and Neelix go down in a shuttle. The shuttle crashes, because why should Chakotay have all the fun of destroying Voyager's inexhaustible supply of shuttlecraft? This leaves Tuvok and Neelix stranded along with Vatm and Sklar (Kelly Connell), an associate of the Nezu ambassador. The shuttle's communications are out (yes, more Plot Interference), leaving them cut off with only hours to go before the next meteor strike.
Then Neelix sees a nearby orbital tether, and has an idea to help them return to Voyager...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Another episode that pushes Janeway to the sidelines, a trend that I don't actually think is in this show's best interest. For all the obvious shots I take at Janeway, Mulgrew is the show's strongest presence, and it doesn't actually serve the series to push her to the margins. Hopefully, after a couple of Janeway-lite episodes, she will be brought back to centerstage where she belongs for the last part of the season.
Tuvok: Must really have gotten up on the wrong side of bed this episode, because his thinly-veiled scorn for Neelix isn't really veiled at all this time. Tuvok isn't wrong to want to make choices based on logic... but logic includes taking human nature into account, and I truly believe the scene in which he scolds Neelix for genuinely lifting the morale of the despairing Lillias (Lisa Kaminir) is there purely to justify the Talaxian's stand against him later in the episode.
Neelix: It turns out that he really hasn't been oblivious to Tuvok's evident dislike - He just refuses to accept the situation, and keeps trying harder and harder to do something to win the Vulcan's approval. At a critical moment, Neelix finally stands up for himself to Tuvok. It's a good scene, though somewhat undermined by the (far too) many episodes in which we've seen Neelix bullying Tuvok with forced cheer. Taken only in the context of this one episode, however, Neelix taking a stand for his gut feeling is a good moment, very well-performed by Ethan Phillips. Also good is a scene in which Neelix talks with Lillias about the loss of his family to the Talaxians' war with the Haakonians - a very rare instance of Voyager actually remembering past characterization.
THOUGHTS
Rise is a bizarre cross-breed of The Flight of the Phoenix and War of the Worlds, with Neelix, Tuvok, and an assortment of guest characters stranded on a planet under attack and having to repair an orbital tether in order to get themselves out. If writer Brannon Braga had been willing to leave it at that, he might have salvaged a decent episode out of this. Putting disparate characters into a confined space, in a precarious situation? That's a tested formula, and one that can work quite well.
Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ are on good form, with Phillips particularly seeming to enjoy showing Neelix's stronger traits. The buffonery is still there, but it's dialed back. We see Neelix behaving quite competently as he works the tether, and we see his genuinely compassionate side in his scenes bonding with Lillias. There's also very real feeling, both hurt and frustration, visible when he stands up to Tuvok just before the episode's climax. An unspoken character dynamic, Tuvok's near-open contempt for Neelix, is finally confronted, and the two actors are terrific in playing the scene.
Sadly, it's a single scene, far too short and with no sense that we can expect any follow-up. Because that critical moment is brushed aside in favor of The Plot Twist (TM). It turns out the meteor strike is the work of Nasty Aliens, and there's a spy amongst the handful of people in the orbital tether working for the aliens. Yes, that's right: The one spy among an entire world of people just happens to be among this group of six. I'm sure Vegas bookmakers would give you interesting odds on that. The identity of the spy is laughably easy to guess (hint: It's the most obvious suspect), and nothing about this thread ends up making the slightest bit of sense.
I'm particularly fond of the way in which Dr. Vatm was able to gather detailed intelligence about an alien race his people didn't even know were out there. That intelligence is remarkable, by the way. In one scene, Voyager is taking a pummeling; in the next, the information is used like a video game cheat code to disable the enemy weapons and shields with the push of a button.
In the end, some decent character scenes are buried underneath an unwieldy plot and a ludicrous ending. This is far from the worst Voyager has given us, and it is a generally watchable bad episode... but it's still pretty bad, and all the more frustrating for the glimpses of something there that might have been good.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
Previous Episode: Darkling
Next Episode: Favorite Son
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