Now, Voyager
Jun. 6th, 2009 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakGiven that I'm all aglow in ST love at the moment, I thought I'd try my hand at some episodes from the show I had mixed feelings about when it first ran as well. What I thought then: I loved the Doctor and liked pretty much everyone else, except for Chakotay and Kes. Kes was sweet, but awfully handy as a plot device (i.e. her powers were whatever the episode required); having started her in a relationship with Neelix, it was clear the writers had no idea of how to write it convincingly (and the way they ended it was incredibly lazy, with episode dialogue informing us that btw, between last episode and this one Kes and Neelix broke up), and while I had nothing against her, I also didn't miss her once she was written off the show. (Mind you, she still deserved better than her one return episode, but that's another matter.) As for Chakotay... well. In theory, I should have liked him; given the concept of the character. In practice, Robert Beltran seemed to have only one expression available, which didn't help. Then there was the fact that season one, in addition to bringing on Janeway/Chakotay vibes, had Torres loving him unrequitedly and made Seska, whose introduction I had rather liked (being fond of Cardassians due to my DS9 imprinting and having dug Second Skin as an episode, I was hoping Seska would be a take on how the "real" Iliana would have been like) having had an established relationship with ongoing sexual attraction as well. So here I was, staring at three strong interesting women, and really couldn't understand what on earth they would see in this man.
Leaving aside the shipping issue - and believe me, not shipping Janeway/Chakotay in those days was like not shipping Jack/Ianto in Torchwood fandom today (i.e. you're screwed when it comes to fanfiction, because that's what 98% of the fandom are writing) - the Kazon, the first big antagonists, were really disappointing (keep in mind what DS9 did at the same time with Cardassians, Vortas, Jem'Hadar and the occasional Klingon for my basis of comparison), and Seska, after a good start, was written as a one dimensional villainess as well, which I found particularly dissappointing because they could have done so much more with her Cardassian heritage and genuinenly different pov instead of going for the "I'm evil, me" route. Also, the premise of the Maquis and Starfleet crews being forced to integrate seemed to be squandered as they did so very quickly. So I spend the first three seasons of Voyager feeling lukewarm about it in general, and now and again loving individual episodes. Then came season 4 and the introduction of Seven of Nine. This was pretty controversial (with some viewers leaving), but to me it started the period where I was a genuinenly enthusiastic watcher. Yes, the catsuit was pandering to the fanboys in the most blatant way possible, but the writing and acting wasn't. (It helped I was predisposed to like Jeri Ryan because of her role in the short lived Dark Skies.) As mentioned in my hybrid post, Seven got the type of between the worlds stories that fascinated me, and so did her relationship with Janeway which had all the spark, conflict and layers I had been missing on the show so far as far as interpersonnal relationships were concerned. Equally interesting was her relationship with my old favourite, the Doctor, which was in many ways the reverse of the one the Doctor had had with Kes. (Kes had been educating the Doctor in the humanities; now the Doctor was becoming Seven's guide, which given that he's a hologramm still busy figuring hout organic interaction himself made for some great stories.) So, in seasons 4 and 5, I watched every episode, and my interest in Voyager was at its peak. In seasons 6 and 7, it waned away again, not because I thought the writing was suddenly worse (it wasn't), but because I was starting to feel a general exhaustion with the ST universe. Moroever, shiny new shows and new worlds, not connected to Star Trek, were around on TV, and a fangirl has only so much time. I still haven't seen the Voyager finale or the episodes leading up to it, which admittedly is mostly due to being spoiled for a certain Chakotay-related horror. Which I object to for the opposite reason Janeway/Chakotay'shippers did; see above re: Chakotay.
Now I've rewatched some Voyager episodes I remembered liking very much, my attitude hasn't much changed, except for softening up on good old Chuckles. To be more precise, I'm okay with Chakotay in his first officer/ steadfast emotional support role, and since I avoided episodes where he's more, I had no problem with him otherwise. Also, while I've always liked Janeway, I now appreciate her even more because frustratingly, female leads older than 35 are still a rarity on tv.
While I recall liking Scorpion I - and being amused as hell at Chakotay narrating the Scorpion and Frog fable as a story of "his people", because Orson Welles made that one up for Mr. Arkadin, from which The Crying Game took it and made it popular to a 90s audience again - I skipped it for my rewatch and went directly to Scorpion II. See above re: Seven bias. As Borg episodes go, this one is way better than TNG's Descent (aka the one with Hugh and Lore I want to forget) and actually really good, if you buy into the central premise of Janeway able to stall assimilation long enough to negotiate a temporary truce due to a mutual enemy. The Borg finally having managed to meet a foe they can't assimilate and who outpowers them is something that was bound to happen sooner or later. Similarly, the episode plays fair to what was established about the Borg before by letting them revert to the assimilation program as soon as they think they don't need the humans anymore. What adds spice to this is that until then they keep to the agreement Janeway negotiated, but Chakotay does not, and that it's nicely ambiguous whether or not he was right or wrong in doing so.
This is one of the two episodes I'd first show people who insist all that Seven brought to Voyager is the catsuit, because until the very last scene, Jeri Ryan is still in full Borg makeup. And acts the hell out of everyone, selling the seperated-from-the-collective confusion and horror (as Seven, as opposed to Picard, has no adult and fully formed self to fall back on) as well as the big argument with Janeway in the brig about whether being forced to become an individual is any different than being assimilated. Meanwhile, poor Kes in her goodbye episode has one scene that really works for me - her quiet talk with Neelix, which sells me on their previous relationship like none of their couple scenes in previous seasons ever did - but otherwise the "Kes' powers suddenly grow to the point where she's endangering the ship, so off she goes, and she's totally happy about this, never mind she leaves all her friends behind!" solution to how to write Kes out of the show is really lazy, and it shows. The other exception, in addition to the Neelix scene: the very last scene with Tuvok putting a light in the window for Kes. I did feel a certain "awww" moment here.
Voyager in the first season had an episode with a pretty blatant Robert Oppenheimer parallel showing up, which was the first good Neelix episode. The Omega Directive approaches the question of scientific responsibility in a situation where a discovery almost certainly is bound to end up in mass destruction from another angle, and manages to come up with a believable way Seven can have a spiritual experience as a Borg, not as a human. Kudos. Janeway's stance here is basically the reverse from the historic split atom precedent; the Omega molecule might be able to provide infinite power, but it also has proven to trigger uncontrollably destructive chain reactions and kills on an unprecedent scale, so it can't be allowed to be pursued and has to be destroyed. At the same time, she's a scientist and not immune to Seven's arguments; she simply puts the risk to all sentient life first. The idea that the Borg should be fascinated by a molecule uniting many in harmony, embodying strength, and see this as perfection works for me, and consequently so does the moment when Seven sees the molecule coming together and experiences it as something spiritual.
As opposed to Janeway/Chakotay, I liked the other big Voyager 'ship, Paris/Torres. Not in the sense of seeking out fanfic about them, but I liked their scenes on the show, I thought the show did a pretty good job of making the coming together of these very different characters plausible, and of showing their relationship continue once it was established on a rocky but ultimately strong path. Day of Honor, wherein Be'Lanna does her usual thing of using her Klingon issues to express her issues with herself, is a good example of this; if them ending up in space suits in a near death experience making Be'Lanna able to come out with an "I love you" was predictable, it's nonetheless emotionally affecting. I think what I like most about the relationship is that it's not about making her more human but more accepting of herself as the mixture she is, while it's definitely what makes Paris finally grow up.
One, with its simple premise of Voyager passing through a nebula that inflicts radiation affecting everyone but the Doctor (because he's a hologram) and Seven (due to her Borg implants), which means the crew gets into stasis in order to pass through it, is a cunning way to explore the inside of a character really not given to discuss her feelings. It showcases Seven's between-the-worlds status, as being alone is something horrible to her both as a Borg and as a human; (imagining the collective and being reassimilated is no longer comforting but more of a nightmare scenario, but she's still lousy at human interaction, and the crew hallucinations with everyone accusing her of murder are equally nightmarish.
Hope and Fear is the s4 finale, guest starring Ray Wise as our tragic villain of the week, Arturis, who lost his people due to Janeway's Scorpion-featured deal with the Borg and is out for revenge. It rounds off a tightly written season as we go back to the start and now see the consequences and get answers to the open questions the start of the season left. Arturis isn't wrong in pointing out to Janeway that her deal with the Borg - which enabled them to defeat the one enemy who otherwise would have defeated them for good - had consequences for everyone else in the Delta Quadrant, consequences which they will have to live with (or not), while Janeway & Co. are on their way home. Janeway's defense, pointing to the danger which Species 8472 posed to everyone, isn't wrong, either, though she does not reply to the charge that ultimately her desire to bring her people back to the Alpha Quadrant did trump all. In terms her old argument with Seven from The Gift, this is the point where Seven does have an opportunity to go back and voluntarily chooses to remain on Voyager, though her feelings about the whole going back to Earth mission remain mixed at best (the episode does a neat job of showing Seven in her Seven way panicking at the prospect, from her scene with Be'Lanna to her argument with Janeway). If you're inclined to ship her with Janeway, the scene in the brig with Janeway working on Seven's eye implant is very intimate. (I can never make up my mind about Janeway/Seven, i.e. whether I see it as slashy or mother/adopted daughter. Either way, it's pretty intense.)
Someone to Watch Over Me from season 5 is hands down my favourite Voyager episode. Also my favourites among all ST show's attempts to do romantic comedy. (DS9's His Way is fine in itself but never fails to irk me in where it's placed in continuity, because of the way s6 sweeps away all second occupation and before that Children of Time related issues between Odo and Kira. As for TNG, I suppose you can call QPid romantic comedy, and I love it, but the RomCom is really just a part of it and by and large I'd call it more of a comedic character exploration episode. Anyway, Someone To Watch Over Me wins.) The Doctor tutoring Seven in social skills had been an ongoing storyline (and continues to be beyond this episode), but here the writers borrow a page from Shaw's Pygmalion, only with a reverse emotional outcome. The Doctor making a bet with Tom Paris that he can teach Seven how to date, and well enough so she can show up at the social function of the week with said date without alienating everyone is following precedent, but in Pygmalion (and its musical adaption My Fair Lady), it's the student, Eliza, who falls in love with Higgins through this (how much Higgins is affected depends on whether you believe Shaw or Lerner), while in the Voyager episode it's the teacher, the Doctor. In both cases, the turning point is when the student after succesfully accomplishing the original task discovers the bet the teacher made and leaves in indignation. Someone to Watch Over Me has a bittersweet graceful ending note when Seven and the Doctor reconcile, but he decides not to tell her how he feels. In between, we get some pricelessly funny scenes (one of my favourite details is Seven's appalled look when during her trial run date with another crewman, the crewman orders lobster, and she looks from the lobster to her own exsoskeleton) and a great duet exploiting the fact both Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan can sing. The subplot with Neelix having to chaperone an ambassador cracks me up as well, as do the asides about Paris/Torres ("How do you know when we're having intimate relations?" "There is no one on deck 12, subsection 5 who doesn't know when you're having intimate relations"). To round it off, there is even a scene with slashers early on, when Janeway recommends the whole dating exercise to Seven while making Seven dress her, which definitely falls under the non-maternal and more slashy side of the relationship for me.
Survival Instinct is the other episode I'd show to a newbie who thinks Seven's function on Voyager is to fill out a catsuit. As with The Gift, only this time because of flashbacks, the crucial scenes here have Jeri Ryan in full Borg make-up, and this time with the Borg bodyarmor intact, down to the eyepiece, which means she really has only her face and one eye to act, and she's great at it. This episode and Barge of the Dead, for which Moore provided the story though not the script, are the results of his very brief stint on Voyager after the end of DS9, which was then followed by his break-up with Brannon Braga and the STverse for a good long while. On the one hand, I can understand this and it certainly opened other avenues for him, on the other, I regret it because Survival Instinct is Moore at his best, and I think more recent developments have shown that creative control on him by someone else isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Given that individual Borg drones per definition are unable to bear individual responsibility for the deeds of the Collective, yet undoubtedly are the ones who carried out the conquering, killing, assimilating, the question of how a post-Borg drone would handle feelings of guilt has always been a juicy one in terms of storytelling, because it's not easy to answer. Seven starts out in a very different position to Picard because she was assimilated as a child, and getting to a point where she does feel some sense of responsibility for what to collective has done is a work in progress. But that's still general guilt. What Survival Instinct pulls off is making Seven responsible for something as an individual, because the collective hasn't done it, she has, and to confront her with this responsibility. So via flashbacks we find out that she and some other drones became separated from the collective before for a short while during a crash on a planet, and when everyone's original feelings and sense of person began to resurface, Seven panicked and re-assimilated the others. Which left them permanently damaged even after they left the collective again. And in the current day Seven has to choose between either letting them die in a short time, with only a month maximum to live, or handing them back to the Collective and forcing them through assimilation all over again, thus saving their lives but eroding their regained selves once more. Since we're in a Ronald D. Moore in top form script, there is no good answer to that one. In the end, Seven picks the "only a month of life left" option; the three ex-drones each respond differently - one can't bring himself to speak to her, one says farewell, and one remains around but makes it clear she won't and can't forgive Seven. It's one of those episodes where you feel suckerpunched, in a really good way.
Body and Soul is from season 7, one of the few s7 episodes I've on tape, and rewatching made me feel positively gleeful about not having given said tape away. It's another Doctor and Seven vehicle; this time, the MacGuffin of the week is that the two and Harry Kim are captured by people who hate sentient holograms (by s7, there are quite a few of those around), so the Doctor has to download into Seven in order to hide and save his life. Jeri Ryan visibly has a blast at playing the Doctor, having Robert Picardo's mannerisms down patch, plus the Doctor uses the opportunity to enjoy the physical life to the fullest, eating and getting drunk. We get another of these potentially awkward plot situations where Star Trek could have and/or did create(d) discriminating subtext, like in TNG's The Host where Beverly Crusher, having fallen for a Trill, is okay as long as he's in Riker's body but says no when the symbiont ends up in a woman's. Only this time, because the Doctor isn't in his own body but Seven's, the script has a far better reason to let him say no to the man who falls for DoctorSeven and the woman he himself feels attracted to; the alternative would be using Seven's body for encounters she hasn't consented to.
I think what truly makes the episode for me is that it also uses the opportunity to make character points; the Doctor, who may be in love with Seven but doesn't idealize her, argues with her about her puritanical lifestyle, and Seven, who may not be in love with him but does take him seriously as a friend and mentor, in the final scene concludes he has something of an argument there and shares food and sensation without being forced into it. It's an enjoyable episode all around, and a good one to conclude my quick Voyager excursion.
Leaving aside the shipping issue - and believe me, not shipping Janeway/Chakotay in those days was like not shipping Jack/Ianto in Torchwood fandom today (i.e. you're screwed when it comes to fanfiction, because that's what 98% of the fandom are writing) - the Kazon, the first big antagonists, were really disappointing (keep in mind what DS9 did at the same time with Cardassians, Vortas, Jem'Hadar and the occasional Klingon for my basis of comparison), and Seska, after a good start, was written as a one dimensional villainess as well, which I found particularly dissappointing because they could have done so much more with her Cardassian heritage and genuinenly different pov instead of going for the "I'm evil, me" route. Also, the premise of the Maquis and Starfleet crews being forced to integrate seemed to be squandered as they did so very quickly. So I spend the first three seasons of Voyager feeling lukewarm about it in general, and now and again loving individual episodes. Then came season 4 and the introduction of Seven of Nine. This was pretty controversial (with some viewers leaving), but to me it started the period where I was a genuinenly enthusiastic watcher. Yes, the catsuit was pandering to the fanboys in the most blatant way possible, but the writing and acting wasn't. (It helped I was predisposed to like Jeri Ryan because of her role in the short lived Dark Skies.) As mentioned in my hybrid post, Seven got the type of between the worlds stories that fascinated me, and so did her relationship with Janeway which had all the spark, conflict and layers I had been missing on the show so far as far as interpersonnal relationships were concerned. Equally interesting was her relationship with my old favourite, the Doctor, which was in many ways the reverse of the one the Doctor had had with Kes. (Kes had been educating the Doctor in the humanities; now the Doctor was becoming Seven's guide, which given that he's a hologramm still busy figuring hout organic interaction himself made for some great stories.) So, in seasons 4 and 5, I watched every episode, and my interest in Voyager was at its peak. In seasons 6 and 7, it waned away again, not because I thought the writing was suddenly worse (it wasn't), but because I was starting to feel a general exhaustion with the ST universe. Moroever, shiny new shows and new worlds, not connected to Star Trek, were around on TV, and a fangirl has only so much time. I still haven't seen the Voyager finale or the episodes leading up to it, which admittedly is mostly due to being spoiled for a certain Chakotay-related horror. Which I object to for the opposite reason Janeway/Chakotay'shippers did; see above re: Chakotay.
Now I've rewatched some Voyager episodes I remembered liking very much, my attitude hasn't much changed, except for softening up on good old Chuckles. To be more precise, I'm okay with Chakotay in his first officer/ steadfast emotional support role, and since I avoided episodes where he's more, I had no problem with him otherwise. Also, while I've always liked Janeway, I now appreciate her even more because frustratingly, female leads older than 35 are still a rarity on tv.
While I recall liking Scorpion I - and being amused as hell at Chakotay narrating the Scorpion and Frog fable as a story of "his people", because Orson Welles made that one up for Mr. Arkadin, from which The Crying Game took it and made it popular to a 90s audience again - I skipped it for my rewatch and went directly to Scorpion II. See above re: Seven bias. As Borg episodes go, this one is way better than TNG's Descent (aka the one with Hugh and Lore I want to forget) and actually really good, if you buy into the central premise of Janeway able to stall assimilation long enough to negotiate a temporary truce due to a mutual enemy. The Borg finally having managed to meet a foe they can't assimilate and who outpowers them is something that was bound to happen sooner or later. Similarly, the episode plays fair to what was established about the Borg before by letting them revert to the assimilation program as soon as they think they don't need the humans anymore. What adds spice to this is that until then they keep to the agreement Janeway negotiated, but Chakotay does not, and that it's nicely ambiguous whether or not he was right or wrong in doing so.
This is one of the two episodes I'd first show people who insist all that Seven brought to Voyager is the catsuit, because until the very last scene, Jeri Ryan is still in full Borg makeup. And acts the hell out of everyone, selling the seperated-from-the-collective confusion and horror (as Seven, as opposed to Picard, has no adult and fully formed self to fall back on) as well as the big argument with Janeway in the brig about whether being forced to become an individual is any different than being assimilated. Meanwhile, poor Kes in her goodbye episode has one scene that really works for me - her quiet talk with Neelix, which sells me on their previous relationship like none of their couple scenes in previous seasons ever did - but otherwise the "Kes' powers suddenly grow to the point where she's endangering the ship, so off she goes, and she's totally happy about this, never mind she leaves all her friends behind!" solution to how to write Kes out of the show is really lazy, and it shows. The other exception, in addition to the Neelix scene: the very last scene with Tuvok putting a light in the window for Kes. I did feel a certain "awww" moment here.
Voyager in the first season had an episode with a pretty blatant Robert Oppenheimer parallel showing up, which was the first good Neelix episode. The Omega Directive approaches the question of scientific responsibility in a situation where a discovery almost certainly is bound to end up in mass destruction from another angle, and manages to come up with a believable way Seven can have a spiritual experience as a Borg, not as a human. Kudos. Janeway's stance here is basically the reverse from the historic split atom precedent; the Omega molecule might be able to provide infinite power, but it also has proven to trigger uncontrollably destructive chain reactions and kills on an unprecedent scale, so it can't be allowed to be pursued and has to be destroyed. At the same time, she's a scientist and not immune to Seven's arguments; she simply puts the risk to all sentient life first. The idea that the Borg should be fascinated by a molecule uniting many in harmony, embodying strength, and see this as perfection works for me, and consequently so does the moment when Seven sees the molecule coming together and experiences it as something spiritual.
As opposed to Janeway/Chakotay, I liked the other big Voyager 'ship, Paris/Torres. Not in the sense of seeking out fanfic about them, but I liked their scenes on the show, I thought the show did a pretty good job of making the coming together of these very different characters plausible, and of showing their relationship continue once it was established on a rocky but ultimately strong path. Day of Honor, wherein Be'Lanna does her usual thing of using her Klingon issues to express her issues with herself, is a good example of this; if them ending up in space suits in a near death experience making Be'Lanna able to come out with an "I love you" was predictable, it's nonetheless emotionally affecting. I think what I like most about the relationship is that it's not about making her more human but more accepting of herself as the mixture she is, while it's definitely what makes Paris finally grow up.
One, with its simple premise of Voyager passing through a nebula that inflicts radiation affecting everyone but the Doctor (because he's a hologram) and Seven (due to her Borg implants), which means the crew gets into stasis in order to pass through it, is a cunning way to explore the inside of a character really not given to discuss her feelings. It showcases Seven's between-the-worlds status, as being alone is something horrible to her both as a Borg and as a human; (imagining the collective and being reassimilated is no longer comforting but more of a nightmare scenario, but she's still lousy at human interaction, and the crew hallucinations with everyone accusing her of murder are equally nightmarish.
Hope and Fear is the s4 finale, guest starring Ray Wise as our tragic villain of the week, Arturis, who lost his people due to Janeway's Scorpion-featured deal with the Borg and is out for revenge. It rounds off a tightly written season as we go back to the start and now see the consequences and get answers to the open questions the start of the season left. Arturis isn't wrong in pointing out to Janeway that her deal with the Borg - which enabled them to defeat the one enemy who otherwise would have defeated them for good - had consequences for everyone else in the Delta Quadrant, consequences which they will have to live with (or not), while Janeway & Co. are on their way home. Janeway's defense, pointing to the danger which Species 8472 posed to everyone, isn't wrong, either, though she does not reply to the charge that ultimately her desire to bring her people back to the Alpha Quadrant did trump all. In terms her old argument with Seven from The Gift, this is the point where Seven does have an opportunity to go back and voluntarily chooses to remain on Voyager, though her feelings about the whole going back to Earth mission remain mixed at best (the episode does a neat job of showing Seven in her Seven way panicking at the prospect, from her scene with Be'Lanna to her argument with Janeway). If you're inclined to ship her with Janeway, the scene in the brig with Janeway working on Seven's eye implant is very intimate. (I can never make up my mind about Janeway/Seven, i.e. whether I see it as slashy or mother/adopted daughter. Either way, it's pretty intense.)
Someone to Watch Over Me from season 5 is hands down my favourite Voyager episode. Also my favourites among all ST show's attempts to do romantic comedy. (DS9's His Way is fine in itself but never fails to irk me in where it's placed in continuity, because of the way s6 sweeps away all second occupation and before that Children of Time related issues between Odo and Kira. As for TNG, I suppose you can call QPid romantic comedy, and I love it, but the RomCom is really just a part of it and by and large I'd call it more of a comedic character exploration episode. Anyway, Someone To Watch Over Me wins.) The Doctor tutoring Seven in social skills had been an ongoing storyline (and continues to be beyond this episode), but here the writers borrow a page from Shaw's Pygmalion, only with a reverse emotional outcome. The Doctor making a bet with Tom Paris that he can teach Seven how to date, and well enough so she can show up at the social function of the week with said date without alienating everyone is following precedent, but in Pygmalion (and its musical adaption My Fair Lady), it's the student, Eliza, who falls in love with Higgins through this (how much Higgins is affected depends on whether you believe Shaw or Lerner), while in the Voyager episode it's the teacher, the Doctor. In both cases, the turning point is when the student after succesfully accomplishing the original task discovers the bet the teacher made and leaves in indignation. Someone to Watch Over Me has a bittersweet graceful ending note when Seven and the Doctor reconcile, but he decides not to tell her how he feels. In between, we get some pricelessly funny scenes (one of my favourite details is Seven's appalled look when during her trial run date with another crewman, the crewman orders lobster, and she looks from the lobster to her own exsoskeleton) and a great duet exploiting the fact both Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan can sing. The subplot with Neelix having to chaperone an ambassador cracks me up as well, as do the asides about Paris/Torres ("How do you know when we're having intimate relations?" "There is no one on deck 12, subsection 5 who doesn't know when you're having intimate relations"). To round it off, there is even a scene with slashers early on, when Janeway recommends the whole dating exercise to Seven while making Seven dress her, which definitely falls under the non-maternal and more slashy side of the relationship for me.
Survival Instinct is the other episode I'd show to a newbie who thinks Seven's function on Voyager is to fill out a catsuit. As with The Gift, only this time because of flashbacks, the crucial scenes here have Jeri Ryan in full Borg make-up, and this time with the Borg bodyarmor intact, down to the eyepiece, which means she really has only her face and one eye to act, and she's great at it. This episode and Barge of the Dead, for which Moore provided the story though not the script, are the results of his very brief stint on Voyager after the end of DS9, which was then followed by his break-up with Brannon Braga and the STverse for a good long while. On the one hand, I can understand this and it certainly opened other avenues for him, on the other, I regret it because Survival Instinct is Moore at his best, and I think more recent developments have shown that creative control on him by someone else isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Given that individual Borg drones per definition are unable to bear individual responsibility for the deeds of the Collective, yet undoubtedly are the ones who carried out the conquering, killing, assimilating, the question of how a post-Borg drone would handle feelings of guilt has always been a juicy one in terms of storytelling, because it's not easy to answer. Seven starts out in a very different position to Picard because she was assimilated as a child, and getting to a point where she does feel some sense of responsibility for what to collective has done is a work in progress. But that's still general guilt. What Survival Instinct pulls off is making Seven responsible for something as an individual, because the collective hasn't done it, she has, and to confront her with this responsibility. So via flashbacks we find out that she and some other drones became separated from the collective before for a short while during a crash on a planet, and when everyone's original feelings and sense of person began to resurface, Seven panicked and re-assimilated the others. Which left them permanently damaged even after they left the collective again. And in the current day Seven has to choose between either letting them die in a short time, with only a month maximum to live, or handing them back to the Collective and forcing them through assimilation all over again, thus saving their lives but eroding their regained selves once more. Since we're in a Ronald D. Moore in top form script, there is no good answer to that one. In the end, Seven picks the "only a month of life left" option; the three ex-drones each respond differently - one can't bring himself to speak to her, one says farewell, and one remains around but makes it clear she won't and can't forgive Seven. It's one of those episodes where you feel suckerpunched, in a really good way.
Body and Soul is from season 7, one of the few s7 episodes I've on tape, and rewatching made me feel positively gleeful about not having given said tape away. It's another Doctor and Seven vehicle; this time, the MacGuffin of the week is that the two and Harry Kim are captured by people who hate sentient holograms (by s7, there are quite a few of those around), so the Doctor has to download into Seven in order to hide and save his life. Jeri Ryan visibly has a blast at playing the Doctor, having Robert Picardo's mannerisms down patch, plus the Doctor uses the opportunity to enjoy the physical life to the fullest, eating and getting drunk. We get another of these potentially awkward plot situations where Star Trek could have and/or did create(d) discriminating subtext, like in TNG's The Host where Beverly Crusher, having fallen for a Trill, is okay as long as he's in Riker's body but says no when the symbiont ends up in a woman's. Only this time, because the Doctor isn't in his own body but Seven's, the script has a far better reason to let him say no to the man who falls for DoctorSeven and the woman he himself feels attracted to; the alternative would be using Seven's body for encounters she hasn't consented to.
I think what truly makes the episode for me is that it also uses the opportunity to make character points; the Doctor, who may be in love with Seven but doesn't idealize her, argues with her about her puritanical lifestyle, and Seven, who may not be in love with him but does take him seriously as a friend and mentor, in the final scene concludes he has something of an argument there and shares food and sensation without being forced into it. It's an enjoyable episode all around, and a good one to conclude my quick Voyager excursion.
