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| Introducing Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). |
THE PLOT
One of Voyager's long-range probes has stopped transmitting. Torres is able to retrieve the last few seconds of the probe's transmission, showing a sight Janeway has been dreading: the Borg!
The ship is nearing Borg space, and the recovery of their probe means the enemy knows they are coming. Fortunately, the probe detected a narrow corridor of space the Borg avoid - a passage filled with distortion caused by quantum singularities. It will be a bumpy ride, but there is a decent chance of avoiding the Borg if they can stay within what Chakotay dubs "The Northwest Passage."
There's another threat, however: An alien race the Borg term "Species 8472." These aliens are engaging the Borg and destroying them, seemingly without effort. Harry hopes for allies, but when Kes makes telepathic contact, she realizes they are anything but. Species 8472 is completely malevolent, and bent on destroying all inferior life, which to them means all life.
Janeway sees only one way forward: A deal with the devil. An alliance with the Borg!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Understands that the day may come when the danger in front of Voyager is too great to responsibly continue. When she realizes the ship is approaching Borg space, she fears that day may have come, and she admits to Chakotay that she dreads facing the crew with that decision. That, as much of any of her justifications, prompts her alliance with the Borg. Still, her arguments to Chakotay are sound. Species 8472 is an even bigger threat than the Borg, and if they aren't stopped at an early stage, they may become genuinely unstoppable. Kate Mulgrew is in superb form throughout both parts, her performance clearly rising to the quality of the material.
Chakotay: Strongly disagrees with Janeway's decision to make an alliance. He invokes the title by reciting the parable of the scorpion who, upon making an agreement with a fox to take it across a river, stings it because its malevolent nature is too strong to resist. When Janeway is temporarily out of action in Part Two, he goes with his own instincts over hers, leading to another argument between them. The best part? Both Chakotay and Janeway have genuinely good reasons for their decisions, and neither's argument is presented as a "straw man" to make the other look good. I'd love to see this Chakotay/Janeway relationship carried forward... though I suspect his characterization will return to "bland Tattoo Face" within one to two episodes.
Kes: Species 8472 is telepathic, which allows Kes a solid supporting role. Before they even know there is such a species, she has premonitions: Visions of dead Borg, including a horror movie tableaux of Borg bodies stacked one on another. She sees the attack on Harry minutes before it actually happens, but her warning is not enough to prevent it. At the climax, she acts as a conduit between Janeway and Species 8472, allowing direct communication during the confrontation. Considered alongside Before and After, this script seems to hint at the potential for a larger role for Kes in the future - if not for a certain People magazine article, at least...
Harry Kim: Before that article named Garrett Wang one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World," Scorpion was envisioned as Harry's swansong. He's Part One's sacrificial lamb, suffering the devastating alien infection that shows just how terrifying a threat Species 8472 really is. This obviously wasn't set in stone, given that Harry is still alive at the end of Part One with the Doctor clearly hoping to be able to cure him... but Part One very deliberately leaves Harry in a state that would have easily allowed him to be written out between episodes. Instead, the Doctor is able to miraculously cure him so completely that he returns to the bridge with no recovery time needed. From this point on, he's just Harry: a glorified extra who occasionally spouts some Technobabble.
Seven of Nine: Part Two introduces Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, the "Borg Babe" (in Brannon Braga's words). One of many smart touches in this script is that, while Seven received plenty of screen time and gets substantial interactions with Janeway and chakotay, she isn't presented as a new crew member. She is the voice of the Borg in this episode, speaking for the Collective during Janeway's alliance. She is a potential threat to our characters from her first appearance, and is very much an adversary when the alliance starts to fray. This allows her a strong introduction while avoiding the pitfalls of ramming a new character down the viewers' throat. It helps that Jeri Ryan is actually a good television actress, who easily holds her own opposite the established regulars.
The Borg: Scorpion almost acts as a mirror image to TNG's The Best of Both Worlds. That episode showed the Borg at their strongest, a single cube being unstoppable by all of Starfleet. This one shows the Borg at their most vulnerable, as devastated by Species 8472 as Starfleet was by the Borg. There's even a bit with Voyager flying through the wreckage of several Borg ships destroyed by the enemy - paralleling the devastation the Enterprise encountered when flying through the wreckage at Wolf 359. Writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky take care not to allow this to make the Borg less dangerous. They are unreliable allies, attempting to assimilate Janeway and Tuvok almost as soon as the agreement is reached and repeatedly trying to alter the terms of the agreement. As much of Part Two centers around attempts by the Voyager crew to contain the Borg as it does around defeating Species 8472. We are never allowed to forget the threat they pose, a threat that is increased by the alliance rather than decreased.
THOUGHTS
Scorpion is almost certainly the best installment of Star Trek: Voyager I've reviewed to date. It is tightly paced, with no sense that either part of it has been padded out to fill air time. Its treatment of the Borg is just about perfect, with the Voyager/Borg alliance creating new tension rather than dissipating it. Species 8472 is presented as formidable, and in their brief snatches of screentime they live up to the demands the story places upon them.
There's no sense of separation between the two episodes, which flow together beautifully. Part One establishes the situation and builds the atmosphere, with director David Livingston using the dim light and shadows of the Borg cube almost like a painter using colors in creating a portrait. Many of the effects shots are of feature film quality, including the Wolf 359 parallel of the graveyard of destroyed Borg cubes or the shots in which the bio-ships of Species 8472 descend, locust-like, on a Borg-controlled planet. The makeup job on Harry, as he is ravaged by the alien infection, is genuinely unsettling.
Winrich Kolbe takes over the directorial reigns for Part Two. Kolbe has a long Trek track record, and his confidence with action scenes makes him a good match for the action-heavy second part. There are two attacks by Species 8472, along with a clash with the Borg, and Kolbe keeps all of this both coherent and exciting, making this a rare two-parter in which Part Two is every bit as good as Part One.
Writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky make sure that in addition to providing an exciting climax, Part Two also pays off everything set up by Part One. In Part One, Chakotay compares the Borg to the scorpion of the fable. In Part Two, he's proved right when the Borg attempt to alter the agreement almost as soon as it's struck, and ultimately do attempt to betray Voyager. Janeway even uses the word, "Scorpion," to good effect in her counter-plan. Even the holodeck subplot involving Leonardo da Vinci (a thoroughly engaging John Rhys-Davies) is tied into the resolution, with Janeway and Chakotay sharing their final scene inside that simulation.
At the end of a season of Voyager that could only very politely be dubbed "uneven," this two-parter is a reminder of how good this series can be when the writers and producers are willing to push the characters outside their safe zones and take chances. Never mind its greatness as a Voyager episode: I'd rank this right alongside The Best of Both Worlds as among the best Borg episodes of the entire franchise.
Overall Rating: 10/10.
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