Season 4 Ep 24 / 25 "Demon" / "One"
Oct 29, 2015 6:42:21 GMT -5
Jean Luc de Lemur and rimjobflashmob like this
Post by Prole Hole on Oct 29, 2015 6:42:21 GMT -5
Season Four, Episode 24 - "Demon"
Nothing funny to say, I just like this shot
"Demon", as an episode, does not have an especially good reputation. There is a reason for this - it's crap. There's a lot to criticize here, and a lot of the criticisms are perfectly justifiable. Some of the characterizations are peculiar. The science is all over the place. A lot of what we have on screen doesn’t make a lot of sense. It's silly - very silly, in fact. There's too much bafflegab, or not enough bafflegab, but one way or another definitely not the right amount of bafflegab.
But I like it.
Now comes the hard part - having to explain why. Because, honestly, all those criticisms are entirely accurate. Janeway's aggressiveness in the closing few minutes can be explained - she's terrified of losing her ship and angry as the situation slides further out of her control, she lashes out - but it still feels out of character. All that stuff about the nadion pulses to disrupt the Silver Blood over-explains things that could have been achieved with a deflector burst or phaser file, but instead we get laboured psudo-science. The Silver Blood is ridiculous, as a concept. Deuterium is perhaps a bad name to have picked for something Voyager is running out of, since in the real world deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen (or, as it's otherwise known, the single most common element in the entire universe). To be fair, that's not the fault of this episode, the hunt for deuterium has been mentioned a few times (another unremarked-upon but successful layering of ongoing consequences over the run of the show, and it will come up again) and the name is inherited, so you need to just accept "deuterium" is basically space-sounding petrol, rather than something which specifically lines up with the real world. Regardless of whether it's a real thing or not, though, Voyager running out of petrol.... well, it's not the most compelling idea for an episode, but it is one that needs to be addressed. One of the things non-Voyager fans are inclined to run the show down for is the fact that it doesn't often address the fact that the ship would only have limited supplies, so things would naturally start to run out. And one of those things would be fuel (anti-matter, dilithium, deuterium - it doesn't really matter what name is attached to it). Sometimes this is addressed - the airpoinics bay specifically exists to compliment the replicators - and sometimes it isn't (shuttlecraft), but Voyager's ability to basically just keep on going does symbolically suggest the Federation's economy of plenty. It's not always the most well articulated symbolic representation, but it's there nonetheless. So - we have the fact that something is running out being directly addressed, and importantly it's the thing that lets all the other bits of the economy of plenty function. No deuterium means no power, no replicators, no engines, no holodeck, no nothing. What a shame it gets a bit lost in the shuffle of hostile alien environments, cheapo studio sets and a storyline that at least in part comes down to When Paint Attacks.
But I like it.
McNeil and Wang are absolutely charming here. The thing that makes them work is that it seems clear they're being written as second-tier characters and there seems to be some pleasure taken in just letting them get on with being junior crewmembers without all that faffing about with "importance". Two junior members of the crew get sent out of a mission, basically bugger it up, then everyone else has to deal with the consequences. That's a perfectly servable plot engine to get things moving, and get things moving it does. McNeill lays on the cheese a bit thick in places, but Wang is noticeably better than his normal slouching at the back of the bridge, and it helps to keep things ticking along. He's especially great in the last act, playing go-between as "Harry" slowly comes to realize what he is, but throughout he's pretty great, and the friendship between Tom and Harry is well utilized. It's not anything deep or revelatory, but it just works. If Janeway is a bit inconsistent, then these two are written exactly as they should be. You wouldn't want this to centre a lot of episodes, but it's refreshing to see both characters being delivered as they should, and both actors responding to it well. If this was all the episode was it would get a little tiring, but the script is smart enough to shift focus from them when it matters, so we never linger on The Tom'n'Harry show too long, but it's deftly enough written that Neelix finding a bed / excuse to give the Doctor some comedy moments doesn't wear out its welcome either, though it's a close-run thing. Neelix's comedy relief material isn't often the good part of an episode, after all.
But I like it.
That's in part because Neelix is actually given something which is funny to do, not "funny" to do, and his genuine sincerity at rushing everyone out of sickbay when there's a real emergency helps to undercut what could otherwise be fairly laboured material. It also helps that it's a good idea to put him with the Doctor - an unusual pairing, but a surprisingly effective one. If Harry and Tom are the expected pairing then the Doctor and Neelix prove to be a refreshing counterpoint. In addition to which we also get a Janeway and B'Elanna pairing as well! It feels like simply ages since these two have shared any significant screen-time together, but here, in just a few short minutes, it all comes flooding back and it's lovely to see them working together (even if it's not quite clear why an engineer is assisting in the analysis of a biomemetic compound). Dawson and Mulgrew are just fun to see together, and while their mother/daughter relationship is far, far in the past (B'Elanna's outgrown it, Janeway has Seven for that now) they still click together on-screen. It's great to see. And oh yes, Seven. She's used a bit perfunctorily here, to be honest, but it's OK - this isn't a full-on Voyager ensemble piece but everyone gets something useful to contribute, and Seven's inclusion, while not big in terms of screen time, does at least allow her to find the deuterium everyone is hunting for and thus play a big part in getting the whole thing started.
But I like it.
OK, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. The Prime Directive? What Prime Directive? Actually this is often taken as a big hit against this episode - Janeway letting the whole crew be copied is a bit of a violation. But in truth when she makes this decision the Prime Directive is already blown. Not through anyone's fault, but really - she's able to negotiate, just about, a peaceful solution which doesn't involve anyone dying and this episode, most uncommonly, not only has a zero body count, but in fact since "life" is given to the Silver Blood the needle actually swings in the opposite direction. That in itself is enough to mark this episode out as unusual. But there's a certain about of pigs-ear silk-purse-ing going on here because, as I said right at the beginning of this review, "Demon" is crap. It doesn't remotely come together as a story, but a lot of the individual elements are enjoyable enough even when they don't actually amount to anything. Despite the crack about When Paint Attacks the truth is that it's actually very pleasing to have an episode where there isn't a straightforward bad guy, even if that means the actual drama of the episode is a bit inert. Faced with a situation where all the "bad guy" wants is to live, Janeway choose to give them life, rather than attack. That's very Star Trek, that is. See, even now, when I'm trying to come up with the bits that obviously don't work here I'm falling into a default mode that's defending this episode. Perhaps this episode works if you're feeling indulgent, and perhaps it doesn't work if you're not. Because, yes, "Demon" is crap. If you ask anyone who's seen "Demon" they will tell you it's crap. And they would be correct. It is.
But I like it.
Any Other Business:
• There's something really really nice about the crew getting to explore a properly hostile environment and having a setting which isn't just the usual strip of California desert or two-corridors-and-a-square. It really makes the episode stand out as something unusual.
• B'Elanna's back! After two episodes away (thanks to Roxann Dawson giving birth) she's back in Engineering and it's an absolute joy to see her again.
• Still trying to avoid talking about special effects, but the use of Voyager landing here gives this script a chance to do something that couldn't really have been done in any of the other shows, and the effects are generally excellent.
• Yea, the Neelix looking for a bed thing is fairly obviously padding out the running time but it's quite funny, and given some of the terrible comedy moments he's been given in the past we should be grateful for that.
• "I could give you a litany of damaged systems, Captain, but suffice to say, now that we're down, we won't be going up any time soon." Betty Davis Tuvok is back as well.
• The planet set and caves are woefully inexpensive (in sharp contrast to the quality of the special effects) but... I dunno, I find the TOS-like feel rather charming this time out, when normally it would just look cheap and tacky.
• Harry's little speech about how beautiful he finds the planet is really good, and a terrific delivery from Wang.
Season Four, Episode 25 - "One"
One way or another, I'm gonna get you...
Well, this review is basically going to be fifteen-hundred words in praise of Jeri Ryan, so if you find the fact that she's amazing here self-evidently true, or do not care for her and Seven, then please feel free to wait for the next review to come along - it's a good episode, and the season finale, so there's lots of fun stuff to talk about there.
Right, have they all gone now? Good. We can get down to business. Because "One" really does show off just what an astonishingly good decision it was to add Ryan to the cast. It's actually been a while since we had an episode that focused on Seven to quite such a degree, and a very long time since we had an episode which really focused on a single character to quite such an overarching extent ("Nemesis", most likely). This episode makes absolutely no bones about the fact that it's a character study of Seven and Seven alone, so the rest of the crew are stuck in stasis, and, other than the Doctor who's mostly there to act as a prop for what Seven is put through, that's about it for the regular crew. It seems obvious that the idea of extreme isolation for someone used to the voices of millions in her head is an appealing one, so in a way it's almost surprising we've had Seven for a whole season now without this coming up. Certainly, "The Gift" makes it clear what kind of trauma it is for Seven to be severed from the Collective in such a brutal fashion, but the loneliness angle isn't played up. Here, it very much is. Yet the loneliness and psychosis that Seven goes through here in reaction to her isolation is very much a means to an end - the point of the story is not specifically to put Seven through the ringer, though it does that as well, but rather to give her an explicitly different perspective by the time we reach the end credits. Seven has spent the whole season awkwardly trying to fit in to the Voyager crew - sometimes successfully ("Scientific Method"), sometimes not ("Prey") - but this episode is really the climax to her season-long arc of development and recovery. She is quick to volunteer for the mission, bristles when she thinks Janeway implies she can't handle it, and is clearly looking for the chance to prove herself. This already feels like a distinct difference from the Seven we saw in "Prey" - she still has her own outlook and perspective, but there's an acceptance here that she's part of the crew and has something she can genuinely contribute. Not just that she can survive in the nebula when nobody else can, but that she is of value to the crew above and beyond what she can offer in terms of technical skills or knowledge. She's looking for approval here, to prove to Janeway that she can be trusted. It doesn't end the character development that she's been going through, but it marks a specific point in it, and it indicates how far her recovery from trauma has come. At several points during the episode she informs us that she will adapt, and that she is Borg (as a statement of competence), yet the episode concludes with her admitting that she needs companionship. The "I" has become "we". It's a big moment for her, and it's significance is underscored by the fact that it's the exact conclusion of the episode, so that's what we're left with as the credit run. This "I" becomes "we" will be expanded on further in "Hope And Fear" but this is the biggest sign yet that Seven is now, truly, part of the Voyager crew.
Ryan, of course, excels at delivering the many facets of Seven in this context. I'm not going to talk too much about Seven as feminist character here - though once again we see how strong a character can be when she is written as character first/female second - but rather focus on Ryan's performance because, while there's no question that she's one of the strongest members of the cast, the work she does here is really a mark above anything she's delivered thus far, and she's been excellent thus far. There's so much subtlety and nuance brought to the role, and it is the way this is brought throughout the episode that really makes the character study here function. It would have been comparatively easy to start at Force 10 and then end up gnawing through every piece of set in sight, but that's not what Ryan does. For the early scenes we get Seven as we know her - confident, in control, strong - and over the run of the episode each one of these characteristics is stripped away, until we're left with a barely functioning shell who is then still able to save the day. The initial knocks to her confidence are played as comedy, with her and the Doctor gradually getting fed up with each other, and Ryan portrays the antagonistic side of their relationship as a natural outgrowth of something we have already seen (the social lessons), when just being able to walk away from them is no longer an option. Her subverting of the Doctor's holodeck lesson is marvellous, and shows Seven's dry wit and intelligence without overstating it, a side which Ryan has been able to deliver before, of course, but which she nevertheless manages to expand on here. It's a great comic turn, yet the shift to the dramatic that immediately follows shows how easily she can move from one style to another, and from hereon out the comedy is dropped in favour of slowly turning the screw, both on Seven's state of mind and the conditions under which she needs to operate. Her control is the next thing to slip, as one by one everything she comes to rely on - the Doctor, technology, security - is stripped away. Again there's gradation to Ryan's performance, so we see her start out sure-footed and projecting an image of control during her initial dealings with Trajis which is, piece by piece, taken away from her, until she seems legitimately terrified by him (and that's before she starts hallucinating Borg drones). Indeed there's a rather fascinating question as to whether Trajis really exists at all or whether he's just something her mind has conjured up - it's certainly written as ambiguous, since the ship's computer appears to alert Seven to Trajis's ship coming into range, but the Doctor sees Seven talking to herself later in Engineering when she thinks she's holding a proper conversation with the intruder. This ambiguity again increases the tension because we don't know how far Seven is slipping - Ryan here allows the scared side of Seven to come through and, again, we've seen this before ("The Raven") but it's taken to a much greater degree. It's this combination of strength and fragility that really makes Seven such a fascinating character, and being able to portray both simultaneously really is what marks this out as such a terrific performance.
This all climaxes in Seven's eventual complete psychotic break, whereby she hallucinates the entire crew mocking her as she does everything she can to get the ship across the finishing line and out of the nebula. As an externalization of her internal doubts and fears this makes sense. While it might ambiguous as to whether Trajis is real, the drones she hallucinates clearly aren't, and if the drones represent her insecurity from the past - a past she now seems to be unambiguously trying to escape - then the mocking crew obviously represent her insecurities in the present and future. Janeway's crowing about how it was her fault for trusting Seven obviously has implications towards their ongoing mother/daughter relationship, but Janeway isn't alone, and the externalization of these fears, while not necessarily an original technique, does give us insights to Seven's psyche. Even more interestingly, though, it's not just her fears, but also her plan to save the ship that gets externalized, with the bridge crew chiding her for finding an efficient but potentially lethal (at least to some of the crew) solution to the problem, a fascinating way of showing just how Seven's mind is working here, so even through her breakdown she's still desperately fighting for ways to overcome the crisis. It's again Ryan's fragility and increasing desperation to keep both the collapse of her own mind and the ship's systems at bay (a marvellously delineated parallel, as they both more or less fail at the same time), again delivered simultaneously but at never-higher levels, that really pile on the pressure during these climactic scenes... until she succeeds. Seven survives trauma once again, the trauma of being alone, and with one of the most straightforwardly brilliant performances of the whole show, Ryan perfectly encapsulates both good storytelling and good drama in a single forty-five minute episode.
It's magnificent.
Any Other Business:
• So again we get to see the effectiveness with which Voyager layers development throughout the show. Initially the Doctor's social lessons were just throwaway one-line jokes, then they become a real chance to develop Seven, and here we have them being used for firstly comedic then dramatic purposes. It's just great to see this expansion unfold.
• Some top-notch direction here from Kenneth Biller, in an episode which largely amounts to Seven wandering up and down corridors talking to herself - especially effective is the warp core suddenly flushing green as Seven beings to hallucinate Borg drones, a really startling but effective visual cue.
• I just adore Seven's subversion of the Doctor's holo-program, such a fantastic piece of writing.
• Excellent, too, is her short, peculiar, lonely dream, alone on an icescape.
• After really delivering the goods last episode, I'm sad to report Wang's back to his usual "eh" of a performance. Especially poor is his delivery of, "should we replicate you a [long pause, possibly to remember line?] teddy bear?", though he does better with his mocking of Seven during the bridge scenes.
• Some praise for Robert Picardo here as well, anchoring the half of the episode that isn't Ryan showing what a difference good casting can make.
• If there's a teeny tiny issue with the episode, it's the fractional, slight nit-pick that the Doctor just magically "comes back on line" after they clear the nebula. It's a phenomenally minor thing though.
• Love that final scene in the mess hall too, where Ryan gets to show off a whole different kind of vulnerability.
Nothing funny to say, I just like this shot
"Demon", as an episode, does not have an especially good reputation. There is a reason for this - it's crap. There's a lot to criticize here, and a lot of the criticisms are perfectly justifiable. Some of the characterizations are peculiar. The science is all over the place. A lot of what we have on screen doesn’t make a lot of sense. It's silly - very silly, in fact. There's too much bafflegab, or not enough bafflegab, but one way or another definitely not the right amount of bafflegab.
But I like it.
Now comes the hard part - having to explain why. Because, honestly, all those criticisms are entirely accurate. Janeway's aggressiveness in the closing few minutes can be explained - she's terrified of losing her ship and angry as the situation slides further out of her control, she lashes out - but it still feels out of character. All that stuff about the nadion pulses to disrupt the Silver Blood over-explains things that could have been achieved with a deflector burst or phaser file, but instead we get laboured psudo-science. The Silver Blood is ridiculous, as a concept. Deuterium is perhaps a bad name to have picked for something Voyager is running out of, since in the real world deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen (or, as it's otherwise known, the single most common element in the entire universe). To be fair, that's not the fault of this episode, the hunt for deuterium has been mentioned a few times (another unremarked-upon but successful layering of ongoing consequences over the run of the show, and it will come up again) and the name is inherited, so you need to just accept "deuterium" is basically space-sounding petrol, rather than something which specifically lines up with the real world. Regardless of whether it's a real thing or not, though, Voyager running out of petrol.... well, it's not the most compelling idea for an episode, but it is one that needs to be addressed. One of the things non-Voyager fans are inclined to run the show down for is the fact that it doesn't often address the fact that the ship would only have limited supplies, so things would naturally start to run out. And one of those things would be fuel (anti-matter, dilithium, deuterium - it doesn't really matter what name is attached to it). Sometimes this is addressed - the airpoinics bay specifically exists to compliment the replicators - and sometimes it isn't (shuttlecraft), but Voyager's ability to basically just keep on going does symbolically suggest the Federation's economy of plenty. It's not always the most well articulated symbolic representation, but it's there nonetheless. So - we have the fact that something is running out being directly addressed, and importantly it's the thing that lets all the other bits of the economy of plenty function. No deuterium means no power, no replicators, no engines, no holodeck, no nothing. What a shame it gets a bit lost in the shuffle of hostile alien environments, cheapo studio sets and a storyline that at least in part comes down to When Paint Attacks.
But I like it.
McNeil and Wang are absolutely charming here. The thing that makes them work is that it seems clear they're being written as second-tier characters and there seems to be some pleasure taken in just letting them get on with being junior crewmembers without all that faffing about with "importance". Two junior members of the crew get sent out of a mission, basically bugger it up, then everyone else has to deal with the consequences. That's a perfectly servable plot engine to get things moving, and get things moving it does. McNeill lays on the cheese a bit thick in places, but Wang is noticeably better than his normal slouching at the back of the bridge, and it helps to keep things ticking along. He's especially great in the last act, playing go-between as "Harry" slowly comes to realize what he is, but throughout he's pretty great, and the friendship between Tom and Harry is well utilized. It's not anything deep or revelatory, but it just works. If Janeway is a bit inconsistent, then these two are written exactly as they should be. You wouldn't want this to centre a lot of episodes, but it's refreshing to see both characters being delivered as they should, and both actors responding to it well. If this was all the episode was it would get a little tiring, but the script is smart enough to shift focus from them when it matters, so we never linger on The Tom'n'Harry show too long, but it's deftly enough written that Neelix finding a bed / excuse to give the Doctor some comedy moments doesn't wear out its welcome either, though it's a close-run thing. Neelix's comedy relief material isn't often the good part of an episode, after all.
But I like it.
That's in part because Neelix is actually given something which is funny to do, not "funny" to do, and his genuine sincerity at rushing everyone out of sickbay when there's a real emergency helps to undercut what could otherwise be fairly laboured material. It also helps that it's a good idea to put him with the Doctor - an unusual pairing, but a surprisingly effective one. If Harry and Tom are the expected pairing then the Doctor and Neelix prove to be a refreshing counterpoint. In addition to which we also get a Janeway and B'Elanna pairing as well! It feels like simply ages since these two have shared any significant screen-time together, but here, in just a few short minutes, it all comes flooding back and it's lovely to see them working together (even if it's not quite clear why an engineer is assisting in the analysis of a biomemetic compound). Dawson and Mulgrew are just fun to see together, and while their mother/daughter relationship is far, far in the past (B'Elanna's outgrown it, Janeway has Seven for that now) they still click together on-screen. It's great to see. And oh yes, Seven. She's used a bit perfunctorily here, to be honest, but it's OK - this isn't a full-on Voyager ensemble piece but everyone gets something useful to contribute, and Seven's inclusion, while not big in terms of screen time, does at least allow her to find the deuterium everyone is hunting for and thus play a big part in getting the whole thing started.
But I like it.
OK, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. The Prime Directive? What Prime Directive? Actually this is often taken as a big hit against this episode - Janeway letting the whole crew be copied is a bit of a violation. But in truth when she makes this decision the Prime Directive is already blown. Not through anyone's fault, but really - she's able to negotiate, just about, a peaceful solution which doesn't involve anyone dying and this episode, most uncommonly, not only has a zero body count, but in fact since "life" is given to the Silver Blood the needle actually swings in the opposite direction. That in itself is enough to mark this episode out as unusual. But there's a certain about of pigs-ear silk-purse-ing going on here because, as I said right at the beginning of this review, "Demon" is crap. It doesn't remotely come together as a story, but a lot of the individual elements are enjoyable enough even when they don't actually amount to anything. Despite the crack about When Paint Attacks the truth is that it's actually very pleasing to have an episode where there isn't a straightforward bad guy, even if that means the actual drama of the episode is a bit inert. Faced with a situation where all the "bad guy" wants is to live, Janeway choose to give them life, rather than attack. That's very Star Trek, that is. See, even now, when I'm trying to come up with the bits that obviously don't work here I'm falling into a default mode that's defending this episode. Perhaps this episode works if you're feeling indulgent, and perhaps it doesn't work if you're not. Because, yes, "Demon" is crap. If you ask anyone who's seen "Demon" they will tell you it's crap. And they would be correct. It is.
But I like it.
Any Other Business:
• There's something really really nice about the crew getting to explore a properly hostile environment and having a setting which isn't just the usual strip of California desert or two-corridors-and-a-square. It really makes the episode stand out as something unusual.
• B'Elanna's back! After two episodes away (thanks to Roxann Dawson giving birth) she's back in Engineering and it's an absolute joy to see her again.
• Still trying to avoid talking about special effects, but the use of Voyager landing here gives this script a chance to do something that couldn't really have been done in any of the other shows, and the effects are generally excellent.
• Yea, the Neelix looking for a bed thing is fairly obviously padding out the running time but it's quite funny, and given some of the terrible comedy moments he's been given in the past we should be grateful for that.
• "I could give you a litany of damaged systems, Captain, but suffice to say, now that we're down, we won't be going up any time soon." Betty Davis Tuvok is back as well.
• The planet set and caves are woefully inexpensive (in sharp contrast to the quality of the special effects) but... I dunno, I find the TOS-like feel rather charming this time out, when normally it would just look cheap and tacky.
• Harry's little speech about how beautiful he finds the planet is really good, and a terrific delivery from Wang.
Season Four, Episode 25 - "One"
One way or another, I'm gonna get you...
Well, this review is basically going to be fifteen-hundred words in praise of Jeri Ryan, so if you find the fact that she's amazing here self-evidently true, or do not care for her and Seven, then please feel free to wait for the next review to come along - it's a good episode, and the season finale, so there's lots of fun stuff to talk about there.
Right, have they all gone now? Good. We can get down to business. Because "One" really does show off just what an astonishingly good decision it was to add Ryan to the cast. It's actually been a while since we had an episode that focused on Seven to quite such a degree, and a very long time since we had an episode which really focused on a single character to quite such an overarching extent ("Nemesis", most likely). This episode makes absolutely no bones about the fact that it's a character study of Seven and Seven alone, so the rest of the crew are stuck in stasis, and, other than the Doctor who's mostly there to act as a prop for what Seven is put through, that's about it for the regular crew. It seems obvious that the idea of extreme isolation for someone used to the voices of millions in her head is an appealing one, so in a way it's almost surprising we've had Seven for a whole season now without this coming up. Certainly, "The Gift" makes it clear what kind of trauma it is for Seven to be severed from the Collective in such a brutal fashion, but the loneliness angle isn't played up. Here, it very much is. Yet the loneliness and psychosis that Seven goes through here in reaction to her isolation is very much a means to an end - the point of the story is not specifically to put Seven through the ringer, though it does that as well, but rather to give her an explicitly different perspective by the time we reach the end credits. Seven has spent the whole season awkwardly trying to fit in to the Voyager crew - sometimes successfully ("Scientific Method"), sometimes not ("Prey") - but this episode is really the climax to her season-long arc of development and recovery. She is quick to volunteer for the mission, bristles when she thinks Janeway implies she can't handle it, and is clearly looking for the chance to prove herself. This already feels like a distinct difference from the Seven we saw in "Prey" - she still has her own outlook and perspective, but there's an acceptance here that she's part of the crew and has something she can genuinely contribute. Not just that she can survive in the nebula when nobody else can, but that she is of value to the crew above and beyond what she can offer in terms of technical skills or knowledge. She's looking for approval here, to prove to Janeway that she can be trusted. It doesn't end the character development that she's been going through, but it marks a specific point in it, and it indicates how far her recovery from trauma has come. At several points during the episode she informs us that she will adapt, and that she is Borg (as a statement of competence), yet the episode concludes with her admitting that she needs companionship. The "I" has become "we". It's a big moment for her, and it's significance is underscored by the fact that it's the exact conclusion of the episode, so that's what we're left with as the credit run. This "I" becomes "we" will be expanded on further in "Hope And Fear" but this is the biggest sign yet that Seven is now, truly, part of the Voyager crew.
Ryan, of course, excels at delivering the many facets of Seven in this context. I'm not going to talk too much about Seven as feminist character here - though once again we see how strong a character can be when she is written as character first/female second - but rather focus on Ryan's performance because, while there's no question that she's one of the strongest members of the cast, the work she does here is really a mark above anything she's delivered thus far, and she's been excellent thus far. There's so much subtlety and nuance brought to the role, and it is the way this is brought throughout the episode that really makes the character study here function. It would have been comparatively easy to start at Force 10 and then end up gnawing through every piece of set in sight, but that's not what Ryan does. For the early scenes we get Seven as we know her - confident, in control, strong - and over the run of the episode each one of these characteristics is stripped away, until we're left with a barely functioning shell who is then still able to save the day. The initial knocks to her confidence are played as comedy, with her and the Doctor gradually getting fed up with each other, and Ryan portrays the antagonistic side of their relationship as a natural outgrowth of something we have already seen (the social lessons), when just being able to walk away from them is no longer an option. Her subverting of the Doctor's holodeck lesson is marvellous, and shows Seven's dry wit and intelligence without overstating it, a side which Ryan has been able to deliver before, of course, but which she nevertheless manages to expand on here. It's a great comic turn, yet the shift to the dramatic that immediately follows shows how easily she can move from one style to another, and from hereon out the comedy is dropped in favour of slowly turning the screw, both on Seven's state of mind and the conditions under which she needs to operate. Her control is the next thing to slip, as one by one everything she comes to rely on - the Doctor, technology, security - is stripped away. Again there's gradation to Ryan's performance, so we see her start out sure-footed and projecting an image of control during her initial dealings with Trajis which is, piece by piece, taken away from her, until she seems legitimately terrified by him (and that's before she starts hallucinating Borg drones). Indeed there's a rather fascinating question as to whether Trajis really exists at all or whether he's just something her mind has conjured up - it's certainly written as ambiguous, since the ship's computer appears to alert Seven to Trajis's ship coming into range, but the Doctor sees Seven talking to herself later in Engineering when she thinks she's holding a proper conversation with the intruder. This ambiguity again increases the tension because we don't know how far Seven is slipping - Ryan here allows the scared side of Seven to come through and, again, we've seen this before ("The Raven") but it's taken to a much greater degree. It's this combination of strength and fragility that really makes Seven such a fascinating character, and being able to portray both simultaneously really is what marks this out as such a terrific performance.
This all climaxes in Seven's eventual complete psychotic break, whereby she hallucinates the entire crew mocking her as she does everything she can to get the ship across the finishing line and out of the nebula. As an externalization of her internal doubts and fears this makes sense. While it might ambiguous as to whether Trajis is real, the drones she hallucinates clearly aren't, and if the drones represent her insecurity from the past - a past she now seems to be unambiguously trying to escape - then the mocking crew obviously represent her insecurities in the present and future. Janeway's crowing about how it was her fault for trusting Seven obviously has implications towards their ongoing mother/daughter relationship, but Janeway isn't alone, and the externalization of these fears, while not necessarily an original technique, does give us insights to Seven's psyche. Even more interestingly, though, it's not just her fears, but also her plan to save the ship that gets externalized, with the bridge crew chiding her for finding an efficient but potentially lethal (at least to some of the crew) solution to the problem, a fascinating way of showing just how Seven's mind is working here, so even through her breakdown she's still desperately fighting for ways to overcome the crisis. It's again Ryan's fragility and increasing desperation to keep both the collapse of her own mind and the ship's systems at bay (a marvellously delineated parallel, as they both more or less fail at the same time), again delivered simultaneously but at never-higher levels, that really pile on the pressure during these climactic scenes... until she succeeds. Seven survives trauma once again, the trauma of being alone, and with one of the most straightforwardly brilliant performances of the whole show, Ryan perfectly encapsulates both good storytelling and good drama in a single forty-five minute episode.
It's magnificent.
Any Other Business:
• So again we get to see the effectiveness with which Voyager layers development throughout the show. Initially the Doctor's social lessons were just throwaway one-line jokes, then they become a real chance to develop Seven, and here we have them being used for firstly comedic then dramatic purposes. It's just great to see this expansion unfold.
• Some top-notch direction here from Kenneth Biller, in an episode which largely amounts to Seven wandering up and down corridors talking to herself - especially effective is the warp core suddenly flushing green as Seven beings to hallucinate Borg drones, a really startling but effective visual cue.
• I just adore Seven's subversion of the Doctor's holo-program, such a fantastic piece of writing.
• Excellent, too, is her short, peculiar, lonely dream, alone on an icescape.
• After really delivering the goods last episode, I'm sad to report Wang's back to his usual "eh" of a performance. Especially poor is his delivery of, "should we replicate you a [long pause, possibly to remember line?] teddy bear?", though he does better with his mocking of Seven during the bridge scenes.
• Some praise for Robert Picardo here as well, anchoring the half of the episode that isn't Ryan showing what a difference good casting can make.
• If there's a teeny tiny issue with the episode, it's the fractional, slight nit-pick that the Doctor just magically "comes back on line" after they clear the nebula. It's a phenomenally minor thing though.
• Love that final scene in the mess hall too, where Ryan gets to show off a whole different kind of vulnerability.
