5-2. Drone.

Seven and B'Elanna observe as a Borg
drone matures on Voyager!

THE PLOT

B'Elanna, Tom, the Doctor, and Seven are in a shuttlecraft, investigating a proto-nebula, when their shuttle gets caught by a gravimetric surge. Voyager beams them back fast, but distortion from the nebula makes it a difficult transport. The team's patterns briefly merge - Not a lasting problem for the organic crew members, but a big issue for the Doctor's mobile emitter, which begins malfunctioning immediately.

The Doctor is beamed directly to sick bay before his program can fail, and B'Elanna promises to look at the mobile emitter. Before she gets the chance, it becomes clear that Seven's Borg technology has interacted with the device. Within a day, the Borg technology has created a maturation chamber in engineering - Giving birth to a new drone known as "One" (J. Paul Boehmer).

The mobile emitter has its origins in 29th century technology, resulting in "One" being a hyper-advanced Borg drone. Janeway puts Seven in charge of nurturing him, to make him an individual like Seven has herself become. But "One" begins asking questions about its origins and about the Borg Collective, causing Seven to worry about the Borg assimilating him and becoming even more of a threat than they are already!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Resists calls to kill the drone before it wakes. She doesn't want to kill unnecessarily, believing that if Seven could become an individual after a lifetime in the Collective, then this drone can surely be raised to be its own individual as well. When "One" begins asking questions about the Borg, Janeway suggests telling him - But she doesn't order Seven to do so, respecting Seven's choice to wait.

Seven of Nine: At Drone's center is a superb performance by Jeri Ryan. She has to walk a fine line in this episode, maintaining Seven's characteristic reserve while infusing an increasing amount of emotion into her scenes with "One." Ryan pulls this off splendidly, and the mother/son relationship that emerges between Seven and "One" convinces in large part because of her performance. It's worth observing that this episode is exactly one season after The Gift, in which Seven's fondest wish was to return to the Borg. Now she is the crew member most adamant about how dangerous the Borg is, and most in fear of the Collective - Having grown to treasure her individuality, she does not want to risk losing it again.

The Doctor: Is obsessively concerned about his mobile emitter when it stops functioning. This is played largely for laughs, with him badgering a sleepy Torres about the status of his emitter. But if you think about it at all, his anxiety is hardly unreasonable. Without that device, he's back to being a prisoner in sick bay and the holodeck - Effectively reduced from full crew member back to being just "the hologram." Even so, once "One" emerges, he ceases to even mention what he's lost. When the drone brings it up, asking if he's unwelcome, the Doctor insists that this is not the case:"Our primary mission is to explore new forms of life. You may have been unexpected but, given time, I am sure you'll make a fine addition to the crew."

Neelix: Though he has only a small role, his basic personality is used very well. Even as the rest of the crew responds warily to the drone's existence, Neelix is entirely open and friendly, completely welcoming. "One" responds to this openness, and when it begins researching data, Talaxian cooking is mixed in with the other, more technical material.

The Borg: It's confirmed that Borg reproduce through assimilation only, but the existence of the maturation chamber gives context to the infants the Enterprise crew found in Q Who? - As assimilated children, connected to a maturation chamber. Once matured, a drone's responses are fully automated - It must absorb data before it can interact in any way other than a pre-programmed scenario. By the episode's end, the Borg are aware of the existence of advanced future technology on Voyager - Something likely to pose a danger in coming episodes.


WOUND THE REDSHIRT!

Ensign Mulcahy (Todd E. Babcock) bears a mention for his stiff competition for a Darwin Award. On arriving at his work station and discovering it glowing green in a way that would be familiar to every Voyager crew member after Scorpion, does he run away while calling security? Or even keep a safe distance while calling security? Why, no! Ensign Imbecile walks merrily into the green glowing room. Fortunately for him, the script wants our sympathies to be with "One," so Mulcahy survives his Borg encounter with his humanity intact... But honestly, if he had died or been assimilated, it would have been his own stupid fault.

Idle question: If the Borg can become more dangerous by assimilating things more advanced, would feeding them a steady diet of idiots make them less dangerous?


THOUGHTS

If Scorpion was Voyager's The Best of Both Worlds, then this episode is its I Borg - a story focused on a single Borg drone, which emerges as a sympathetic individual over the course of the story. I Borg's complexity is replaced with more overt manipulation, and its difficult ending choice is replaced by an action set piece... But then, this is Voyager. And while Drone isn't anywhere near as strong an episode as its TNG counterpart was, it is still a highly effective installment.

The script is credited to Bryan Fuller, Brannon Braga, and Joe Menosky. The strengths of all three shine through, though. It has the fast pace of most of Fuller's scripts, with new elements and complications being built into the situation at every Act break. It also has the high concept of a Braga piece ("Borg baby") and the humanism of Menosky's best work. In short, the three styles mesh instead of clash.

Seven and the Doctor have emerged into a strong character pairing, with Seven disapproving of the Doctor's flippant attitude even as she privately takes on board his "lessons" in interacting with humans. With "One" talking to both of them about him being "born" by accident, the subtext becomes very much that of them being unexpected parents of this drone - Something that works even when the script hits it a bit too hard on the nose.

I do find myself wondering about the casual attitude toward the Doctor's mobile emitter. It's obvious by this point that B'Elanna can repair it when it breaks. Has she even tried to replicate some back-ups? Just a line of dialogue to the effect that the 29th century technology is beyond the ship's ability to reproduce would be enough - As it stands, it looks as if the crew thinks a single mobile emitter is all they need, and that they aren't even trying to provide redundancy for the only piece of technology that allows their only medical officer the ability to go down to planets or even to other parts of the ship!

Overall, and setting comparisons to I Borg to one side, this is a well-scripted, well-acted episode that does its job of creating some genuine emotional investment in a single-episode situation. It also ends with hints of things to come, leaving me actively anticipating the ship's next Borg encounter.

Definitely a good episode.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

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4-11. Concerning Flight.

Janeway prepares to fly on Leonardo da Vinci's glider!

THE PLOT

Janeway's holodeck relaxation, which involves assisting Leonardo da Vinci (John Rhys-Davies) with his glider, is interrupted when Voyager comes under attack. The unidentified aliens beam away several key pieces of technology - including the Doctor's mobile emitter and, even more critically, the ship's main computer processor.

The crew is able to track the stolen parts to a nearby planet, in a region controlled by Tau (John Vargas), a ruthless pirate who sells the items he steals at exorbitant prices. For his own amusement, Tau has given the mobile emitter to the Leonardo hologram, which was still running when the computer was beamed away. This holographic Leonardo believes he has been spirited away to America, and is dazzled at the wonders of the New World.

Janeway cannot resist the opportunity to work with one of her heroes in completing this mission. But as the situation grows more dangerous, she finds herself having to rely once more on Leonardo's glider - a machine whose design the real da Vinci was never able to actually test!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: When she and Tuvok discover the holographic Leonardo walking around the pirates' planet, Tuvok's reaction is the pragmatic one: deactivate Leonardo, retrieve the emitter, and get on with the task of recovering the computer processor. But Janeway is instantly enchanted at the idea of sharing an adventure with Leonardo da Vinci, and the scientist in her is likely interested in the ways in which he rationalizes all he sees as wonders from the Americas. While I could wish for sharper dialogue in Janeway's interactions with her Renaissance-era hero, Kate Mulgrew is terrific throughout and her screen rapport with John Rhys-Davies is almost enough to keep bits of this episode afloat.

Chakotay: Left in command while Janeway has her planetside adventure. The episode's climax sees him coordinating the ship's efforts to rescue Janeway, pushing Torres to install the recovered processor as quickly as possible while giving Tom a nudge to do some fancy flying to avoid Tau's ships while getting close enough to the surface to beam back their captain.

Tuvok: Though he disagrees with Janeway's decision to indulge the Leonardo hologram, he plays his part once the decision is made. When Janeway tells him to distract Leonardo at a reception hosted by Tau, he attempts to make "small talk." He's not good at this, by his own admission, but he flatters Leonardo sufficiently to keep the man's attention.

The Doctor: He isn't really any worse off than he had been for most of the time since he was activated, given that the mobile emitter was only a fairly recent addition... but having had full freedom of the ship for long enough to start taking it for granted, he feels that loss keenly. This manifests itself most evidently in a scene in which he pushes Seven for every last detail of a minor argument in the mess hall, clearly savoring each morsel of gossip like a condemned man might do with his last meal.

Leonardo da Vinci: John Rhys-Davies' holographic Leonardo, introduced in Scorpion, gets a more central role here. The actor is terrific, throwing himself into the gleeful ham needed to make DaVinci fun, but not going so far over-the-top that he can't sell the more serious moments. It's just a shame that he and Mulgrew aren't allowed more freedom to simply interact, without the plot getting in the way.


THOUGHTS

Plot is what ends up bringing this episode crashing down to Earth. The episode is clearly intended to be a bit of whimsy, with Janeway having a light-hearted adventure with Leonardo da Vinci. But writer Joe Menosky was pressured into giving more and more focus to what he dubbed a "tortured tech story," with Janeway and DaVinci mostly just reacting to Tau's tedious machinations.

I can't even really track the logic of the "tech plot." We hear the characters talk about how important the computer processor is, but we don't really see it. Without the critical computer processor, Voyager is nevertheless able to locate the pirate planet so that Janeway and Tuvok can infiltrate it (and meet up with DaVinci). They are able to track Janeway's movements and beam the processor up when she finds it. It's only the usual Technobabble that keeps them from being able to beam her up to end the episode then and there. Once the processor is re-installed... The ship still has to zigzag through enemy ships to get ridiculously close to the planet's surface before it can beam Janeway up. From the viewer's standpoint, there's no visible and visceral difference in what the ship can do.

With all the screen time devoted to recovering it from Tau, himself a painfully generic villain, there is precious little time for what's meant to be the episode's center: The Janeway/DaVinci material. The great pity of the episode is that both Mulgrew and Rhys-Davies are very good. They're given precious little opportunity to do much with their thin material, but in the few scenes in which the plot stops long enough for them to talk, they are both terrific.

The end result is a tedious bit of filler that isn't even much liked by its own writer. The concept cries out for rich dialogue, a flow of ideas and debate between two scientists from two radically different ages. Instead, it gets blandly functional dialogue that spends too much time moving along a dull plot and too little time on a pair of characters and actors who deserved much, much better than this.


Overall Rating: 2/10.

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