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| Janeway forges an evil alliance with the fiendish Dr. Chaotica! |
Tom and Harry are enjoying another chapter of The Adventures of Captain Proton in the holodeck when the ship jolts and stalls in a layer of subspace. As Voyager struggles to escape, Tom and Harry discover distortions inside the program. They are unable to end the program, and have to rely on transporters to escape the holodeck.
The distortions are actually life-forms that are photonic in nature. They recognize the holodeck characters as real, and consider the humans to be illusory. When Dr. Chaotica (Martin Rayner), the Captain Proton villain, declares war on them, the battle threatens to destroy Voyager - Unless Tom and Janeway can play by Captain Proton's own rules to defeat Chaotica!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: The second half sees her entering the program as Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People, the object of Dr. Chaotica's romantic obsession. Kate Mulgrew is obviously having a great time hamming (and vamping) it up, gliding across the screen like a melodramatic silent movie villain. There are a few bits in which she goes overboard, getting a bit too twitchy, but most of her performance is amusing. Fittingly, the single funniest bit is played fairly low-key, when she sits on Chaotica's throne only to remark (entirely as Janeway) that it's "surprisingly comfortable."
Tom Paris: His enthusiasm for the Captain Proton program isn't all fanboy indulgence. There's actually a purpose: He's studying "how past generations viewed the future," which ties in well with previous episodes that have established his interest in Earth history. His familiarity with the Proton universe allows him to act as a guide for the other crew members (and the audience), explaining how and why the various characters act as they do throughout the program.
The Doctor: After the heavy emotional outing of the previous episode, this situation lets Robert Picardo indulge in some amusing, largely low-key comic mugging. He goes into the program to impersonate "The President of Earth," acting as an emissary to the aliens since as a hologram, he's the only member of the ship's crew they will recognize as a life form. He assists Tom (as Proton) at the episode's climax, and his reactions to instructions like, "Activate the Destructo Beam!" are very entertaining.
Harry Kim: Is lured into the holodeck program by Tom's promise that this chapter has slave girls in it... Which doesn't stop him from acidically noting that the planet is identical to that of another chapter. His role is reduced to its usual background one after the 20-minute mark, which is actually a shame - For a change, he is genuinely fun company (watch the sadistic glee he gets in zapping a bad guy multiple times), and I would have enjoyed him playing Tom's sardonic sidekick for the full episode.
Dr. Chaotica: The character is a parody, basically a send-up of Ming the Merciless, and Martin Rayner's over-the-top performance reflects that. But while he is clearly playing for laughs, he also reigns it in enough that we never get the sense that Chaotica is trying to be funny. The villain may be cheesy, but he is formidable. His forces fight the extra-dimensional aliens to a standstill, and he even gets the drop on Janeway at a critical moment, which puts just enough edge into a joke villain to keep the plot turning.
THOUGHTS
Bride of Chaotica! sits on the opposite pole from Latent Image. That episode was about serious ideas involving survivor's guilt and the nature of memory and identity. This one is... Well, really just about having a good time with a pastische of 1930s Flash Gordon serials.
When it sticks to the parody, it's terrifically entertaining. The black-and-white holodeck scenes are wonderfully cheesy, with the hilariously useless "Satan's Robot" a particular highlight. What keeps this from the level fo inspired lunacy is the shipboard scenes. Every time the action leaves the holodeck, the pace dies, and entirely too much time is spent on Technobabble explanations involving the region of space in which Voyager is trapped. Memo the writers: We don't care about the subspace gobbledygook, and every second devoted to that takes away from the addictive fun of Captain Proton.
Still, the bulk of Bride of Chaotica! stays either within or in close proximity to the holodeck adventure, and those scenes are uniformly enjoyable. The episode may not reach the level of inspired lunacy achieved by Deep Space 9's Our Man Bashir, but it remains a good ride.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
Previous Episode: Latent Image
Next Episode: Gravity
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