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| Seven of Nine develops multiple personalities... |
Voyager detects debris that Seven of Nine identifies as the remains of a Borg cube, emitting a neural interlink frequency. Seven begins experiencing memory lapses, which are revealed to be episodes in which the personalities of Borg-assimilated individuals emerge. The Borg signal has effectively given her Borg multiple personality disorder.
The Doctor is able to fit her with an inhibitor to temporarily keep the personalities at bay, but he warns that this is only a temporary solution. The only way to restore Seven permanently is to shut down the signal at its source: The vinculum, the central processor of the destroyed cube, still intact and floating in space.
But this vinculum isn't what it appears to be. Species 6339, a race hunted by the Borg, created a virus designed to bring chaos to the Collective, a plan that hinges on the Borg recovering the device. When Janeway insists that she will only relinquish it after Seven has been cured, the aliens open fire on Voyager!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Is entirely willing to give the vinculum back to the aliens to use against the Borg. She just asks that they wait until she can help Seven - Which makes the aliens unreasonable for insisting on attacking Voyager. Though she stands up for Seven, she privately admits that she fears Chakotay may have been right that the former Borg will never fully become part of the crew.
Seven of Nine: Infinite Regress is a terrific showcase for Jeri Ryan. She gets to alternate her usual, reserved Seven with a host of entirely different personalities: a small child, a grieving mother, a violent Klingon, and a greedy Ferengi merchant. Ryan throws herself into all of these roles, and her Ferengi is particularly funny. But her best performance is as Seven herself, Ryan's performance effectively showing her terror at the loss of control of her own mind.
Tuvok: Insists on using a mind-meld to stabilize Seven's core personality, something the Doctor objects is too dangerous. The climax intercuts Voyager in yet another (largely pointless) space battle against far more effective scenes of Tuvok, inside seven's mind. For all his preparations, Tuvok is overwhelmed, barely able to hang onto himself in the midst of the chaos of the multiple Borg-assimilated personalities.
Doctor: "With all of these new personalities floating around, it's a shame we can't find one for you." His jibe at Tuvok is more than a little mean (and would have been far truer of Season One Tuvok than the current version) - But it is funny, particularly with Robert Picardo injecting just the right amount of snideness. Picardo effectively alternates between combativeness when arguing with Tuvok and genuine concern when dealing with Seven, and it's clear that his worries over Seven's deteriorating condition are making him more short-tempered than usual with Tuvok and the rest of the crew.
THOUGHTS
Can Voyager ever have a strong, high-concept episode whose momentum isn't torpedoed by an artifically-imposed "external threat?" The season premiere set up a compelling psychological drama as the crew dealt with flying through an extended void of nothingness - only to then upend all that by introducing a generic alien baddie for the ship to shoot at. Now this episode does basically the same thing, bringing Species 6339 into an otherwise enjoyable piece simply so that someone can shoot at Voyager during the climax. Because we can't be trusted to care about the ending if the camera isn't being shaken while Harry and Tom shout Technobabble now, can we?
Sigh.
Making this worse is how forced the hostility of Species 6339 seems. They have no particular gripe with Voyager. They just want to return their vinculum to the Borg wreckage. The big battle happens only because the aliens cannot wait for Janeway's crew to save Seven first... So they are willing to risk the vinculum's destruction to save a very small amount of time. That does not sound like a particularly well-judged risk, and seems even sillier given that the Voyager crew manages to save Seven even with a battle going on, all before beaming the vinculum into space so that the aliens can recover it.
It amounts to artificial conflict that doesn't even make sense in context. It's not the first time Voyager has been guilty of this, and I'm sure it won't be the last... But it's blatant, and all the more annoying because the rest of the episode is actually pretty good. The episode is well-paced and benefits from the assured direction of David Livingston. While it's mostly content to keep us hooked by the high concept of "Borg multiple personality disorder," there are some effective dramatic moments. As Seven listens to the log entries left by personalities she helped assimilate, we sense that she is having to confront for the first time how many lives she participated in destroying.
More might have been made of that... But then we wouldn't have time for a dramatically unnecessary shootout with the Alien Race of the Week. Even with that unfortunate shift near the end, this is a fun episode to watch - It just ends up being less than it could have been and should have been.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
Previous Episode: Timeless
Next Episode: Nothing Human
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