Season 7 Ep 25 / 26 "Endgame" / Season Seven Summary
Aug 25, 2016 6:53:29 GMT -5
Jean Luc de Lemur and rimjobflashmob like this
Post by Prole Hole on Aug 25, 2016 6:53:29 GMT -5
Season Seven, Episode 25 / 26 - "Endgame"
Admiral Takes Queen
No branch of Star Trek quite loves time travel the way Voyager does. All branches of the franchise have time travel episodes, of course, some great ("The City On The Edge Of Forever"), some not so much ("Time's Arrow"), but there's a certain gusto to the way Voyager has embraced time travel as simply a default thing that now exists, and can be used in stories whenever it's required. Similarly, no branch of the franchise comes close to exploring the Borg with the same depth and frequency as Voyager. So it seems entirely fitting that both of these elements make up the key constituents of "Endgame". Equally, for a show so strongly rooted in feminism, it's entirely appropriate that the entire finale revolves around predominantly female characters (two Janeways, the Borg Queen, and to a lesser extent Seven). This of course parallels and mirrors TNG's finale, "All Good Things..." whereby the protagonists are predominantly men (Q, Picard, to a lesser extent Data), thus sustaining our "Voyager is a feminist inversion of TNG" interpretation, running right up until the end. Indeed, "Endgame" maintains the same form of narrative circularity that TNG does as well, albeit in a different way. "All Good Things..." returns to the court-room of "Encounter At Farpoint" to see if there's been any progress, and Voyager finally makes it home after seven years. We have an explicit reference to the Caretaker for the first time in a long time, just to help really close the loop, and we have a roughly analogous situation to build the drama of this episode's story from (as well as references to the events that started the show in the first place). The narrative circularity of both finales is thus completed, their respective endings established in direct relation to how the shows began, and crucially "Endgame" is able to find a way forward. There are lessons learned over the last seven years, particularly with the Borg, and here all that experience is brought to bear so a different outcome from "Caretaker" can be achieved. The narrative is circular, the outcome is different. But there's an important point to be made here, one that has often been raised, and one which I want to address from the outset. At the time of transmission, there were a lot of rumours around the end of Season Five and Season Six relating to the idea that Voyager might be brought home early, and engage in the sort of short-range missions we saw back in "Friendship One", and indeed in the opening few minutes of "Caretaker". And in fact there are still a lot of fans who believe this is what should have occurred. Obviously this didn't happen, but there's a very good reason why it shouldn't have happened – because bringing Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant before the end of the series would constitute a narrative collapse. Voyager needs a finale that brings the show full circle and concludes in a way that is predicated upon how the show began – just as TNG did. The whole purpose of Voyager, the whole thing it exists for, is to tell tales of a ship, lost in the Delta Quadrant, trying to get home. That is the fundamental core of the show. By bringing Voyager home early you would end the show's abilities to tell those stories, which is the definition of a narrative collapse. It's also the same reason why, despite their best efforts, the post-series-finale Voyager novels have largely been rubbish. Because that's just not what the show is about. You need Voyager to tell tales of a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant, but you don't need Voyager to tell the stories of a ship at war, or having it be part of a Starfleet armada or whatever. Any ship can do that. But Voyager is integral to stories about a lost ship looking for home – that's what it's for. To look at it from another perspective, imagine if, at the end of Season Six on DS9, Sikso had been promoted to the captain of the Enterprise, or the Intrepid, or whatever, and spent the final season tooling around the Alpha Quadrant, looking for new worlds and new civilizations instead of dealing with the end of the Dominion War. You might get an interesting season out of such a premise, but it wouldn't, at its heart, be DS9, because that's just not what DS9 is about. One of the things "Endgame" gets unambiguously correct is having the final shot of the show being Voyager approaching Earth, the journey completed – a textual and paratextual narrative collapse occurring at the same time, as they should.
But before we get to that final shot, there's a lot of ground to cover, and one of the most successful aspects of "Endgame" is the comparative sophistication of its narrative technique. Which is to say it takes an entire episode for the two disparate parts of the plot – the future-Janeway and the current chronology of the series – to interact with each other, with just the little additional sting of the Borg Queen (who, amusingly, basically spends most of the first half of the story watching an episode of Voyager). This certainly isn't the first time this has been used – indeed it's strikingly similar to the narrative structure of "Year Of Hell" and "Distant Origin" - but it's an effective technique when properly deployed, it's not one that's over-used in the run of the series, and it's noticeably different from the narrative geometry of most Season Seven episodes. Indeed it's interesting that we don't get a single scene with the contemporaneous crew until the first act is over, everything being set in the future. As well as setting up an obviously uncanny narrative thread, this demonstrates a certain degree of trust in the audience, that they will keep up with and understand what's going on, and since neither narrative thread is given dominance it's pretty easy to switch between them without losing the thread of what's going on. Indeed the first episode keeps up its momentum in part by cutting between the future and present timelines but in increasingly shorter sections until the two eventually meet with the arrival of future Janway's shuttle. The second episode is structured much more traditionally, with the future segments entirely done away with and a relatively traditional narrative structure restored, but this also allows the second episode to have a drive and momentum the first one doesn't. It makes sense that this is the case – the first episode sets up the situation, the second one deals with and resolves it – but it also means that the cliffhanger (the Borg Queen watching everything that's going on) isn't being written towards, it can just naturally occur at that point in the story, so there's no narrative distortion going on. There's no padding in the first episode to vamp until the dramatic reveal, and there's no rushing through things to resolves a hanging plot point in the second episode – this is as well structured a cliffhanger as you could ask for (as a side note, there is an argument that this is because "Endgame" was always planned as a "television movie" so the pacing can be worked out as required. This doesn't really stand as an argument though, since the cliffhanger is exactly where it would normally be, and of course the two halves of the story are broadcast separately in syndication so still need to hold the same narrative shape as any other two-parter). So we have a real sense that the narrative geometry of the episode is working to support the story being told.
And so what of the Borg here? We have another expansion of what we know about them, this time in the form of the transwarp hub. What's of note here is how keen the Borg Queen is to avoid Voyager finding out about it. On a certain level this is logical – Janeway has a proven ability to inflict damage on the Borg and has, for the queen, proved annoyingly difficult to simply get rid of, so it makes sense that she doesn't want the irritating captain from the other side of the galaxy finding out about one of her Big Secrets. And, as we've seen so often this season, there's a real, determined attempt to continue moving forward, even as we know this is as far forward as we're ever going to actually move. It helps that this expansion of what we know of the Borg is comparatively straightforward – it's not something that needs reams of bafflegab or exposition to understand – and it can stand as a symbolic representation of the Borg Queen's power. But still, the fact that we get to learn more about them rather than just having them be The Big Bad At The End Of The Season (though obviously they are that as well) is definitely a good thing, even if it's on a comparatively limited scale. Yet there are two things that are not present here with the Borg, both of which should be addressed. Firstly, we do not have the resumption of the tug-of-love between the Borg Queen and Janeway over Seven. Here Seven is used as a messenger, but there's a very real suggestion that the Borg Queen is, despite referring to Seven as her "favourite", over that – she's clearly willing to take out Voyager after a certain point, Seven or no Seven, which suggests a marked progression in her approach to the former drone (and possibly an acknowledgement that her indulgences in the past have cost the queen dearly). Equally, there's no mention of the events of "Unimatrix Zero". In one sense this is a good thing – since "Unimatrix Zero" wasn't a great story at the best of times – but on another, purely practical, level it's the right call. There's already more than enough going on in "Endgame" without overburdening the script further with dense continuity references to a story most casual viewers likely wont remember, and those who do likely don't care about. Though it's obviously Borg-heavy, there's actually fairly little continuity on display here, and "Endgame" works as something which is accessible enough to non-fans (and a series conclusion is always a big event, drawing in a lot more than just the usual hardcore audience) but which has more than enough links to the series proper to work for those who are invested in the long term.
Yet for all the work done around the Borg, time travel, the queen, Seven, and everything else, there's one thing that "Endgame" is about above all else, and that's Janeway. Apart from yet another "All Good Things..." parallel, which focusses on Picard in the same way "Endgame" focusses on Janeway, both also attempt to get at the core of what it is that makes their respective captains who they are. For Janeway, this means twenty years of frustration, failure and loss which she eventually cannot live with, hence the move to enact her radical plan to reshape history. This is perfectly in line with the characterization we've had of Janeway before. We know that she struggles with guilt and potential PTSD, and in "Year Of Hell" we saw her literally suicidal. We see those same suicidal tendencies here, with Admiral Janeway being prepared to give her life to ensure the success of her younger self. It's possible to argue that, because she's a future Janeway likely to be deleted by the timeline reset she's not really sacrificing anything at all, but that's not how it plays out on screen. Admiral Janeway makes a very clear, conscious decision to sacrifice her life in order to ensure the survival of the ship and she knows the end result with be her death, whatever happens – not some quick deleted-from-history death, but a drawn-out, painful one at the hands of the Borg Queen. There's a certain nobility to this sacrifice, it's true, but what it really comes down to is the return of the pain and guilt we've seen before (most clearly in "Night") finally overwhelming her. It's something that's haunted Janeway's journey for the last seven years, and something which eventually grows to consume her. Despite this, though, there's still room for hope – it's implicit in the change of events that Janeway doesn't have to become the embittered, cynical future Admiral that we meet here. For all that "Endgame" plays out on a large, galaxy-spanning canvas, it's the impact that events have on people that matter here. Janeway gets her shot at redemption, Seven and Chakotay get their shot at a relationship, Tuvok gets his chance of a cure.
But the price that's asked for this is high. Obviously Janeway is changing history here, and in a fairly major way. She's affecting the lives of so many though her decisions, not just those she saved, but those whose future will be changed in other ways by what she does here. She gets a moment of, "to hell with the temporal prime directive" here – the same reaction her much younger self had back in "Shattered", so there's character consistency going on here – but "Endgame" itself is actually something of a rarity in Star Trek time travel episodes, because it actually posits that the change to the timeline made here might be for the best, rather than the original arc of history. We are, to an extent, freed from the oppressive arc of history into something more unknowable. This is a markedly unusual stance – the only other Voyager episode that comes close to adopting such a stance is "Timeless", and other time travel stories (but especially "Relativity" and "Future's End") re-enforce the idea that history is not something you get a do-over with – first time through is the only time through. The reasons for that stance – and the temporal prime directive in general – are pretty clear. On one level, there's the fairly obvious moral question of who has the right to adopt a change to history – it's all very well when it's someone comparatively benign like a Janeway, Sisko or Picard, but what if it's a Khan, or the Borg? Better to not let anyone do it than to risk someone with less than pure motives do it, eh? But on another level that's really the argument that "Endgame" refutes. Because the exercise here isn't about reshaping grand destines or building empires, as we discussed back in "Non Sequitur", its about people, and specifically about saving people. The morality of Janeway's decision is really based on her motivation for affecting a change to the timeline in the first place – to save lives. She may no longer be able to live with the guilt of what the journey home cost her and her family of crewmembers, but her principal motivation isn't selfish, it's to save those she cares about most. That's why she takes this chance. By finding a way to liberate herself from the arc of history, she also finds a way to restore something meaningful – "Endgame" is, in the end, about people, not destiny, and the idea that hope can be derived from the possibility of change and of not accepting the cards that fate has dealt you. Yet it is – also obviously – easy to question what gives her the right and authority to make this decision, and the answer is nobody. We've seen time and again that Janeway is not the most psychologically stable person ever to ascend to the role of captain, so the fact that she makes the questionable decision to undertake her change to the timeline is in line with the kind of instabilities that we've seen from her in the past. Admiral Janeway doesn't appear outwardly to be suffering from the kind of breakdown that, say, Ransom was, and she appears clear, level-headed and deliberate in the future-set scenes. Yet she's also obviously buckling under the strain – we're told that she's taken years to enact her plan, she can't live with the pain of seeing Tuvok reduced to a shell, and she gambles everything on one last roll of the dice. Is it a morally questionable decision she makes? Absolutely it is, but this remains true to the nature of Janeway that we've seen up until now. Anything else, the idea that she would give up faced with near-impossible odds... just wouldn’t be her. This is even reflected in the line that Captain Janeway wants to have her cake and eat it too, because of course she does – like Kirk before her, she refuses to believe in the no-win scenario.
Despite this overt focus on Janeway, however, all the other characters are given space to breathe, and it's one of the things that makes "Endgame" feel well-rounded. If we have a full embrace of Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic, which we do, then the fact that this is, despite Janeway's prominence, still an ensemble piece means that it also feels very much a part of what constitutes the mainstay of what Voyager is. The hints of a relationship between Chakotay and Seven carefully following the groundwork laid down earlier in the season, are finally allowed to bloom, and we get a phenomenal final performance from Jeri Ryan. Following up on the removal of her cortical node (an appreciated nod to continuity without feeling gratuitous), we get a marvellously relaxed performance from her – we've never seen Seven grin the way she does during her picnic date with Chakotay, yet as in the past her openness to exploring her feelings is never played as a weakening of the character, but rather as an expansion of her emotional palette. She snaps back to her usual efficient self when the moment calls for it, and gets to express vulnerability in a whole new way regarding her relationship with Chakotay, but for the character that has had the most detailed, developed character development "Endgame" does right by her and allows her to continue her development right until the end, and have it really matter to her. Chakotay hasn't had much development over the last season, so it's also nice to see him get a bit of movement here as well, and as with their previous couple of episodes together Beltran works well opposite Ryan. Equally, we get the last moments spent on the relationship between B'Elanna and Tom as they finally become parents with the birth of their daughter, the payoff to five seasons' worth of character development. It's sweetly affecting that their return to the Alpha Quadrant is matched by the bringing of new life into the world, and it marks a logical point to leave them, the build of B'Elanna's pregnancy having run throughout this season. One journey is ending but another is just beginning. Tvuok's degenerative condition may not impact much in the present (though it does get a lovely performance out of Russ in the future), but his reluctance to discuss the condition until essentially given no choice remains character consistent. Even Neelix, on-screen for all of sixty seconds, gets a final little push, when he admits he's thinking of asking Daxa to marry him, his journey continuing even as he's off screen from the events here. In other words, for all the scripting pyrotechnics going on there's a real attention to detail being paid to the characters, and real work being put in to doing right by them.
And then, after seven years, it all ends. "Endgame" isn't the best of the Trek finales (you'll find those ranked in Any Other Business), but it's still a very strong episode in its own right, and there's definitely a sense of satisfaction by the time we reach the end credits. Everything here is rooted in character, even though this is often disguised by the plot machinations churning away on the surface, and by doing right by the characters, the last two episodes do right by the show it's concluding. In a way "Endgame" is representative of both the season and series it concludes. It's not flawless by any stretch of the imagination, but it's inventive, entertaining, and carries through a sort of ragged success that nevertheless work well enough to be more than worth spending time with. When I began these reviews (two and a half years ago from my strictly limited temporal perspective) the purpose was, as I've frequently restated, to take a critical stance towards Voyager that was predicated upon redemption (and a firm rejection of the twin straightjackets of consensus and objectivity). Some may choose to analyse from a Marxist, feminist, New Historicist, post-modernist or any other kind of critical perspective, but from the outset, redemption has been my angle. And after covering every single episode of the show I remain convinced of one thing – that Voyager is a show that deserves its redemption. So here, right at the end of this project, I can look back over "Endgame" and find it a worthy conclusion to the seven seasons that have preceded it, and I can say, without a doubt, that this has been a journey well worth taking. "We've done it," whispers Janeway as Voyager emerges from remains of a Borg Sphere, disbelief in her voice mixed with hope. They have, and with "Endgame" the series has done it as well, giving Voyager a conclusion that the show needed. At the beginning of this review I stated that the thing "Endgame" gets right is having the last shot of the show be Voyager approaching Earth triumphantly, flanked by ships of the line on either side, its journey complete. It's a worthy final shot to a worthy final story. Well done Voyager, well done Janeway, and well done "Endgame". You did it.
Any Other Business:
• OK, so those Trek finales ranked in order by me would go "All Good Things...", "Endgame", "What You Leave Behind", "Turnabout Intruder" (a little unfair, I know, since it wasn't planned as a series finale), and "These Are The Voyages". The only reason that "Turnabout Intruder" is ranked higher than "These Are The Voyages" is because I prefer TOS to Enterprise. Neither are the dictionary definition of brilliant...
• Nice opening shot of Voyager swooping down over the Golden Gate Bridge, setting up a suitably ponderous pre-credits sequence with Admiral Janeway.
• I really do appreciate the fact they found a way to get Neelix into the finale, it seems fitting, and it's nice that he gets his little character bump. Still, he tells Seven they'll pick up their game the next day, and by the next day Voyager is back in the Alpha Quadrant. I wonder if he's hanging on the comm line, wondering why nobody’s answering?
• So at least in the alternative timeline the Doctor finally pics a name – Joe. It's a nice little nod to the past that hasn't been mentioned in quite some time.
• There's a fan theory (oy vey) that the "help" Q gave Janeway at the end of "Q2" is what led them to the location of the transwarp hub. It's a sweet idea, but there's absolutely no on-screen evidence for it at all, and it's clear Voyager just happens to be in the right place at the right time.
• Lots of latex old-people make-up in the future of course, but Kate Mulgrew looks really rather dignified with her swept-up white look, and it gives a subtle re-enforcement to her authority as Admiral Janeway, rather than Captain Janeway. Naturally none of the cast these days look anything like their "future" selves.
• That is one unconvincing grassy knoll future Chakotay is buried under.
• Nice that we get to see a little of Miral, Tom and B'Elanna's daughter, and nice to see her just competently getting on with her job.
• Of all people Harry gets the big "to the journey" speech? Yea, that wasn't the right call. I understand it gives him and Wang something to do in a story that doesn't greatly require either of them, but still, literally any other character should have been given that speech. The sentiment is heartfelt and sincere, but imagine how much more powerful that might have been if Seven had delivered it as a statement of intent regarding her recovered humanity, or Tom and B'Elanna, adapting to the idea of raising the child on the ship.
• I mentioned it in the review, but Tim Russ's performance as the mentally damaged version of Tuvok in the future is really well done, and some of the best work he does on the show as a whole.
• But if Russ is good, nobody comes remotely close to how straight-up brilliant Mulgrew is here, playing both Admiral and Captain Janeway in both two timelines and together in the same scenes. Until Tatyana Malansay came along in Orphan Black, I had (and have) never seen anyone act opposite themselves as well as Mulgrew manages here. It's a resoundingly brilliant performance and she deserves all the credit in the world for it.
• A few appreciated bits of continuity – Tuvok and Harry's occasional Kal-To game, Icheb getting a final scene (nice more because it's good he's not just completely forgotten about), a reference to the fact that the Doctor plays golf (he has a tee time with future Barclay), a nod to Captain Proton (and the fact that Tom has grown beyond it, while Harry is still trying to use it to manipulate his friend)… there's lots of little moments like that which manage to be included but which also manage not to be intrusive, the right way to handle continuity.
• One piece of continuity that's a shame though – instead of our regular Borg Queen in the form of Susanna Thompson, we instead get Alice Krige stepping back into the role for the first time since First Contact. This was simply due to a scheduling conflict and Thompson being unavailable, but it would have been nice to have the right queen for the finale. Krige, unsurprisingly, is excellent in the role as ever.
• There is an argument I've seen more than once that Admiral Janeway shouldn't know about the hub because Captain Janeway doesn't, but this is clearly nonsense. Admiral Janeway explicitly tells Captain Janeway that she has quite a few more encounters with the Borg before she got back to the Alpha Quadrant, during which time she could easily have found out about it. And even without that explanation, she has twenty years’ experience over Captain Janeway and is teaching about the Borg at the Academy, where presumably she would also be privvy to information collected from other ships who also encountered the Borg, any one of which could have found out about the transwarp hub.
• Equally, there's an argument that it's awfully convenient for Admiral Janeway to turn up exactly where the hub is and where Voyager is, but it's made perfectly explicit that this is where she aims for, and moreover she aims for that location because that's the way to get Voyager home, a confluence of timing and luck, which is why she doesn't turn up a few weeks earlier to save Carey or whatever. It has to be there and it has to be then because that's where the transwarp hub is.
• The transwarp hub itself, with its skeletal silhouette sitting round a blue-white sun or planet is a hugely arresting visual and a really striking special effect.
• Indeed the production quality of the whole two-parter (grassy knoll aside) is really of superlative quality, so all praise to everyone involved.
• If there's a flaw here, it's that the Borg Queen is a bit on the naïve side at times, but I like the fact that she makes one small miscalculation – choosing to allow Voyager to continue on its way early in the first episode, choosing stealth over a full-frontal attack - and from that everything becomes unravelled for her. Actions (and inactions) have consequences, and all that. Equally I really like that both Captain and Admiral Janeway are able to use the psychology of what they know of the Borg Queen against her, so they know she will lash out in frustration to assimilate Admiral Janeway once she's been discovered (this is also an excellent parallel of the scene in "Unimatrix Zero", when the Borg Queen lashed out but Janeway was a hologram on that occasion. Janeway's remembered and learned from that). It's again showing us the tactical thinking that makes Janeway a great captain, rather than just telling us how good she is.
• Some more great production as the Borg Queen gradually comes undone, and we see the fire of the explosion reflected in her dead eyes before the hub detonates.
• Oh all right, there's one other flaw here. There's a real shot at final-moments tension when Voyager needs to escape the transwarp corridor because they won't survive the pounding they're taking to reach the exit for the Alpha Quadrant but they can make it back to the Delta Quadrant. Then there's a cut to the Borg Sphere arriving in the Alpha Quadrant, and we get a scene on Voyager with Tom informing Janeway they're "right where we expected to be", then the Sphere explodes and Voyager sails through the wreckage. It should have been made clearer that Voyager basically backs into the Sphere to survive, then destroys it once they emerge in the Alpha Quadrant. It's obvious that this is what happens, because there's no other explanation, but it could have been made clearer on screen.
• Janeway's disbelieving "we've done it", as she simultaneously feels relief, fear, and the weight of seven years' worth of pressure leaving her shoulders is another brilliant moment from Mulgrew.
• And the very final line of the series, "set a course... for home" is the same as the very final line of "Caretaker", truly bringing the journey to its conclusion. Just lovely.
Season Seven Summary
Season Seven Cast
It feels a bit strange to be writing a summing up of the seventh season when I've just finished writing about "Endgame" and the conclusion of the series, but it needs to be done so here we are. If there's anything that Season Seven can be described as – other than "better than Season Six", which it unquestionably is – then I think I'd have to go for "raggedy successful". It is, by some distance, Voyager's least watched season, but given the marked, noticeable improvements over what came before it that seems like a shame. There's certainly a degree of loose thematic unity to the season – all those debates around rights, and the positioning of rights and freedoms within different societies – not quite as tight as, say, Season Four, but more than enough to give a shape and degree of cohesion to the season as everything moves towards the inevitable end. That does the season quite a lot of favours, because the stories themselves are a bit all over the place, jumping from character pieces to anomalies to time travel to continuity and back again without really settling on a consistent approach. The main focus of the rights debate is on holograms and the way they're treated – an obvious analogy, but an effective one nonetheless – and that finds its ultimate expression in "Author, Author", but in many ways "Flesh and Blood" is just as important to the debate, giving a big anchor to the rights debate early in the season in a generalized form (i.e. regarding a number of different holograms) so that later in the season we can build to a more personal debate when it comes to the Doctor. But these are very different types of story - "Flesh And Blood" is a big action piece with a thematic core, and "Author, Author" is largely, if not exclusively, comedic and very small in scale (it's a bottle show). The unity of theme though helps to keep things feeling like they beyond together despite the vast tonal differences and differences of approach.
As I mentioned in a number of reviews, the other thing that Season Seven is really successful at is building forward momentum. There's very little naval-gazing going on here, and the fact that the season spends a lot of time building the character work so that everyone has a real shot of moving forward is something very much to be commended. Even Poor Old Harry gets to have a bit of movement, and if "Nightingale" isn't the strongest episode of the season, the fact that the season takes the time even to give the most minor character on the crew something new to do is demonstrative of the ambitions it has. Seven's character continues to develop too, and because she's had probably the most detailed and specific character of anyone on the show the fact that they can still find new places to take her without just repeating themselves also speaks highly of Season Seven's ability to get hold of a character and take them to interesting places. For Seven this means developing another side to her humanity, this time romantic, yet this is dealt with in a remarkably subtle way, and definitely not taking the expected path. Because if you show me someone that thought Seven and Chakotay would have a relationship together at the beginning of Season Seven then I'll show you a liar. Yet it's the very unexpectedness of their blooming relationship that makes it work – it's not predictable, it isn't following the same path that Tom and B'Elanna's burgeoning relationship did back in Season Three, and it's allowed to stand as its own thing. And because it happens more towards the end of the season it also means that it gives a narrative drive to both characters at a time when we'd otherwise be expecting conclusions or reflections. It is, to put it another way, a smart use of both characters, and the fact that we finally manage to find a female character that Chakotay manages to have a bit of a spark with aids this hugely – just watch "Natural Law" alongside "Unforgettable" and see what a different that spark can make. Neither are exceptional episodes, but one it's almost impossible to remember, and one works really rather well. And there's more rapport between Seven and Chakotay in their one picnic scene in "Endgame" than there is in almost any other relationship he ever has. By finding new combinations and new ways to make the characters which we're otherwise very familiar with, Season Seven is able to find an approach that really works for the show.
Just as well really, since Season Six really made it look like things were going to limp to a fairly unspectacular close. But other thing that Season Seven does is act as a counter-argument to that point of view. Voyager absolutely does not limp across the finish line. Season Seven isn't the best season of Voyager, and there are a few obvious stumbles (hello, "Prophecy"), but it's better than it has any right to be, and it embraces that sense of forward momentum in sharp contrast to Season Six's business-as-usual approach. Season Six was content to trade in fairly static storytelling, which made it looked like a whole lot of going-nowhere-fast, but Season Seven's determined approach to keep things moving means that it... well, keeps things moving. Sure there are stumbles along the way, but there's a real sense of commitment to doing something interesting with the show in its final hours. In purely storytelling rather than character terms, B'Elanna's pregnancy, Seven and Chakotay's romance, even Neelix's early departure, are all woven into the very fabric of the season, and feel like they matter just as much as anything else. Indeed, Neelix's departure (and there's a certain symmetry to the fact that the two leads who depart the show prior to its conclusion are Kes and Neelix) is a markedly bold and unusual choice. Writing out a major character so close to the end could have been done any number of ways, but it's especially pleasing that it's not a "shock death" to add "drama", but something rather more constructive – someone reconnecting with their own culture and finding something (and someone) to care about. Of course you could argue the shock-death quotient is taken up with Carey a few episodes’ earlier, but... you know. It's Carey. He's a nice guy and all, but he's not exactly a major player in the way that Neelix is. Yet this is something that Season Six would never have attempted (both Neelix and Carey), so we see the sense of development running through the show returning. Obviously it should never have left in the first place, but the most important thing is that, in time for the show to bow out, it returns in a way that meaningfully adds to the sum total of what Voyager is.
Because the flaws of Season Seven are pretty easy to explain – there's just a few dud episodes in there. Not everything can land successfully, and things like having Tom and B'Elanna's baby (not really) be some Klingon prophecy, or the cheesy daftness of a space-race in "Drive" are pretty forgivable in the grand scale of things. As we've observed a few times, the bad episodes are a lot easier to put up with when there's something decent lying on either side of them. "Nightingale" might trade too heavily in clichés, but at least when it does it's doing it for good character reasons. It doesn't quite work, but doing it to progress Harry is a much better reason than doing it because you've obviously run out of other things to do or say. And structurally the season, having two two-parters (three, if you want to include “Endgame”), feels more of a part with the likes of Season Four, which has the same structure. This kind of parallel structure to the season just by default makes it feel more successful, as if there’s a return to the kind of structure that’s worked in the past but without just replicating the contents of that structure wholesale. So we have the same general shape to the season, but not covering the same kind of material. Compared to the flat linearity of Season Six this was definitely the right move to make, and gives everything a lift. The material following “Workforce”, the second two-parter, continues to drive the narrative of the show forward, even when that takes unexpected directions, such as Neelix’s departure, and the gradual increase in communication with Earth means that structurally we get an increase in the number of episodes where that contact is relevant to the events that play out. This means that, by the time “Endgame” comes round, the return home feels like something the season has been building towards, rather than something that just gets dropped in at the end of the series as the inevitable conclusion of the show.
So the final season of the show comes good in the end. “Endgame” isn’t a perfect finale, but it’s still bloody good, eminently worthy of redemption, and the show closes out with a return to Earth, as it always should have. I suspect the reputation of Season Seven will likely not change – the material is probably the least known across the whole of Voyager, which doesn’t exactly help, but it still deserves some praise for correcting the flaws of the previous season, and never falling into the trap of navel-gazing or reflexive self-praise, while always having something to say. And, really, that's what makes Season Seven such an interesting proposition – it never runs out of things to say. It doesn't act as a summary of the show it's concluding, but instead does something much more challenging – it manages to find new and inventive ways to keep the momentum going right up until the final scene of "Endgame", and for that alone credit is due. So thanks, Season Seven, for being a worthwhile concluding season, and for getting the crew home.
Admiral Takes Queen
No branch of Star Trek quite loves time travel the way Voyager does. All branches of the franchise have time travel episodes, of course, some great ("The City On The Edge Of Forever"), some not so much ("Time's Arrow"), but there's a certain gusto to the way Voyager has embraced time travel as simply a default thing that now exists, and can be used in stories whenever it's required. Similarly, no branch of the franchise comes close to exploring the Borg with the same depth and frequency as Voyager. So it seems entirely fitting that both of these elements make up the key constituents of "Endgame". Equally, for a show so strongly rooted in feminism, it's entirely appropriate that the entire finale revolves around predominantly female characters (two Janeways, the Borg Queen, and to a lesser extent Seven). This of course parallels and mirrors TNG's finale, "All Good Things..." whereby the protagonists are predominantly men (Q, Picard, to a lesser extent Data), thus sustaining our "Voyager is a feminist inversion of TNG" interpretation, running right up until the end. Indeed, "Endgame" maintains the same form of narrative circularity that TNG does as well, albeit in a different way. "All Good Things..." returns to the court-room of "Encounter At Farpoint" to see if there's been any progress, and Voyager finally makes it home after seven years. We have an explicit reference to the Caretaker for the first time in a long time, just to help really close the loop, and we have a roughly analogous situation to build the drama of this episode's story from (as well as references to the events that started the show in the first place). The narrative circularity of both finales is thus completed, their respective endings established in direct relation to how the shows began, and crucially "Endgame" is able to find a way forward. There are lessons learned over the last seven years, particularly with the Borg, and here all that experience is brought to bear so a different outcome from "Caretaker" can be achieved. The narrative is circular, the outcome is different. But there's an important point to be made here, one that has often been raised, and one which I want to address from the outset. At the time of transmission, there were a lot of rumours around the end of Season Five and Season Six relating to the idea that Voyager might be brought home early, and engage in the sort of short-range missions we saw back in "Friendship One", and indeed in the opening few minutes of "Caretaker". And in fact there are still a lot of fans who believe this is what should have occurred. Obviously this didn't happen, but there's a very good reason why it shouldn't have happened – because bringing Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant before the end of the series would constitute a narrative collapse. Voyager needs a finale that brings the show full circle and concludes in a way that is predicated upon how the show began – just as TNG did. The whole purpose of Voyager, the whole thing it exists for, is to tell tales of a ship, lost in the Delta Quadrant, trying to get home. That is the fundamental core of the show. By bringing Voyager home early you would end the show's abilities to tell those stories, which is the definition of a narrative collapse. It's also the same reason why, despite their best efforts, the post-series-finale Voyager novels have largely been rubbish. Because that's just not what the show is about. You need Voyager to tell tales of a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant, but you don't need Voyager to tell the stories of a ship at war, or having it be part of a Starfleet armada or whatever. Any ship can do that. But Voyager is integral to stories about a lost ship looking for home – that's what it's for. To look at it from another perspective, imagine if, at the end of Season Six on DS9, Sikso had been promoted to the captain of the Enterprise, or the Intrepid, or whatever, and spent the final season tooling around the Alpha Quadrant, looking for new worlds and new civilizations instead of dealing with the end of the Dominion War. You might get an interesting season out of such a premise, but it wouldn't, at its heart, be DS9, because that's just not what DS9 is about. One of the things "Endgame" gets unambiguously correct is having the final shot of the show being Voyager approaching Earth, the journey completed – a textual and paratextual narrative collapse occurring at the same time, as they should.
But before we get to that final shot, there's a lot of ground to cover, and one of the most successful aspects of "Endgame" is the comparative sophistication of its narrative technique. Which is to say it takes an entire episode for the two disparate parts of the plot – the future-Janeway and the current chronology of the series – to interact with each other, with just the little additional sting of the Borg Queen (who, amusingly, basically spends most of the first half of the story watching an episode of Voyager). This certainly isn't the first time this has been used – indeed it's strikingly similar to the narrative structure of "Year Of Hell" and "Distant Origin" - but it's an effective technique when properly deployed, it's not one that's over-used in the run of the series, and it's noticeably different from the narrative geometry of most Season Seven episodes. Indeed it's interesting that we don't get a single scene with the contemporaneous crew until the first act is over, everything being set in the future. As well as setting up an obviously uncanny narrative thread, this demonstrates a certain degree of trust in the audience, that they will keep up with and understand what's going on, and since neither narrative thread is given dominance it's pretty easy to switch between them without losing the thread of what's going on. Indeed the first episode keeps up its momentum in part by cutting between the future and present timelines but in increasingly shorter sections until the two eventually meet with the arrival of future Janway's shuttle. The second episode is structured much more traditionally, with the future segments entirely done away with and a relatively traditional narrative structure restored, but this also allows the second episode to have a drive and momentum the first one doesn't. It makes sense that this is the case – the first episode sets up the situation, the second one deals with and resolves it – but it also means that the cliffhanger (the Borg Queen watching everything that's going on) isn't being written towards, it can just naturally occur at that point in the story, so there's no narrative distortion going on. There's no padding in the first episode to vamp until the dramatic reveal, and there's no rushing through things to resolves a hanging plot point in the second episode – this is as well structured a cliffhanger as you could ask for (as a side note, there is an argument that this is because "Endgame" was always planned as a "television movie" so the pacing can be worked out as required. This doesn't really stand as an argument though, since the cliffhanger is exactly where it would normally be, and of course the two halves of the story are broadcast separately in syndication so still need to hold the same narrative shape as any other two-parter). So we have a real sense that the narrative geometry of the episode is working to support the story being told.
And so what of the Borg here? We have another expansion of what we know about them, this time in the form of the transwarp hub. What's of note here is how keen the Borg Queen is to avoid Voyager finding out about it. On a certain level this is logical – Janeway has a proven ability to inflict damage on the Borg and has, for the queen, proved annoyingly difficult to simply get rid of, so it makes sense that she doesn't want the irritating captain from the other side of the galaxy finding out about one of her Big Secrets. And, as we've seen so often this season, there's a real, determined attempt to continue moving forward, even as we know this is as far forward as we're ever going to actually move. It helps that this expansion of what we know of the Borg is comparatively straightforward – it's not something that needs reams of bafflegab or exposition to understand – and it can stand as a symbolic representation of the Borg Queen's power. But still, the fact that we get to learn more about them rather than just having them be The Big Bad At The End Of The Season (though obviously they are that as well) is definitely a good thing, even if it's on a comparatively limited scale. Yet there are two things that are not present here with the Borg, both of which should be addressed. Firstly, we do not have the resumption of the tug-of-love between the Borg Queen and Janeway over Seven. Here Seven is used as a messenger, but there's a very real suggestion that the Borg Queen is, despite referring to Seven as her "favourite", over that – she's clearly willing to take out Voyager after a certain point, Seven or no Seven, which suggests a marked progression in her approach to the former drone (and possibly an acknowledgement that her indulgences in the past have cost the queen dearly). Equally, there's no mention of the events of "Unimatrix Zero". In one sense this is a good thing – since "Unimatrix Zero" wasn't a great story at the best of times – but on another, purely practical, level it's the right call. There's already more than enough going on in "Endgame" without overburdening the script further with dense continuity references to a story most casual viewers likely wont remember, and those who do likely don't care about. Though it's obviously Borg-heavy, there's actually fairly little continuity on display here, and "Endgame" works as something which is accessible enough to non-fans (and a series conclusion is always a big event, drawing in a lot more than just the usual hardcore audience) but which has more than enough links to the series proper to work for those who are invested in the long term.
Yet for all the work done around the Borg, time travel, the queen, Seven, and everything else, there's one thing that "Endgame" is about above all else, and that's Janeway. Apart from yet another "All Good Things..." parallel, which focusses on Picard in the same way "Endgame" focusses on Janeway, both also attempt to get at the core of what it is that makes their respective captains who they are. For Janeway, this means twenty years of frustration, failure and loss which she eventually cannot live with, hence the move to enact her radical plan to reshape history. This is perfectly in line with the characterization we've had of Janeway before. We know that she struggles with guilt and potential PTSD, and in "Year Of Hell" we saw her literally suicidal. We see those same suicidal tendencies here, with Admiral Janeway being prepared to give her life to ensure the success of her younger self. It's possible to argue that, because she's a future Janeway likely to be deleted by the timeline reset she's not really sacrificing anything at all, but that's not how it plays out on screen. Admiral Janeway makes a very clear, conscious decision to sacrifice her life in order to ensure the survival of the ship and she knows the end result with be her death, whatever happens – not some quick deleted-from-history death, but a drawn-out, painful one at the hands of the Borg Queen. There's a certain nobility to this sacrifice, it's true, but what it really comes down to is the return of the pain and guilt we've seen before (most clearly in "Night") finally overwhelming her. It's something that's haunted Janeway's journey for the last seven years, and something which eventually grows to consume her. Despite this, though, there's still room for hope – it's implicit in the change of events that Janeway doesn't have to become the embittered, cynical future Admiral that we meet here. For all that "Endgame" plays out on a large, galaxy-spanning canvas, it's the impact that events have on people that matter here. Janeway gets her shot at redemption, Seven and Chakotay get their shot at a relationship, Tuvok gets his chance of a cure.
But the price that's asked for this is high. Obviously Janeway is changing history here, and in a fairly major way. She's affecting the lives of so many though her decisions, not just those she saved, but those whose future will be changed in other ways by what she does here. She gets a moment of, "to hell with the temporal prime directive" here – the same reaction her much younger self had back in "Shattered", so there's character consistency going on here – but "Endgame" itself is actually something of a rarity in Star Trek time travel episodes, because it actually posits that the change to the timeline made here might be for the best, rather than the original arc of history. We are, to an extent, freed from the oppressive arc of history into something more unknowable. This is a markedly unusual stance – the only other Voyager episode that comes close to adopting such a stance is "Timeless", and other time travel stories (but especially "Relativity" and "Future's End") re-enforce the idea that history is not something you get a do-over with – first time through is the only time through. The reasons for that stance – and the temporal prime directive in general – are pretty clear. On one level, there's the fairly obvious moral question of who has the right to adopt a change to history – it's all very well when it's someone comparatively benign like a Janeway, Sisko or Picard, but what if it's a Khan, or the Borg? Better to not let anyone do it than to risk someone with less than pure motives do it, eh? But on another level that's really the argument that "Endgame" refutes. Because the exercise here isn't about reshaping grand destines or building empires, as we discussed back in "Non Sequitur", its about people, and specifically about saving people. The morality of Janeway's decision is really based on her motivation for affecting a change to the timeline in the first place – to save lives. She may no longer be able to live with the guilt of what the journey home cost her and her family of crewmembers, but her principal motivation isn't selfish, it's to save those she cares about most. That's why she takes this chance. By finding a way to liberate herself from the arc of history, she also finds a way to restore something meaningful – "Endgame" is, in the end, about people, not destiny, and the idea that hope can be derived from the possibility of change and of not accepting the cards that fate has dealt you. Yet it is – also obviously – easy to question what gives her the right and authority to make this decision, and the answer is nobody. We've seen time and again that Janeway is not the most psychologically stable person ever to ascend to the role of captain, so the fact that she makes the questionable decision to undertake her change to the timeline is in line with the kind of instabilities that we've seen from her in the past. Admiral Janeway doesn't appear outwardly to be suffering from the kind of breakdown that, say, Ransom was, and she appears clear, level-headed and deliberate in the future-set scenes. Yet she's also obviously buckling under the strain – we're told that she's taken years to enact her plan, she can't live with the pain of seeing Tuvok reduced to a shell, and she gambles everything on one last roll of the dice. Is it a morally questionable decision she makes? Absolutely it is, but this remains true to the nature of Janeway that we've seen up until now. Anything else, the idea that she would give up faced with near-impossible odds... just wouldn’t be her. This is even reflected in the line that Captain Janeway wants to have her cake and eat it too, because of course she does – like Kirk before her, she refuses to believe in the no-win scenario.
Despite this overt focus on Janeway, however, all the other characters are given space to breathe, and it's one of the things that makes "Endgame" feel well-rounded. If we have a full embrace of Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic, which we do, then the fact that this is, despite Janeway's prominence, still an ensemble piece means that it also feels very much a part of what constitutes the mainstay of what Voyager is. The hints of a relationship between Chakotay and Seven carefully following the groundwork laid down earlier in the season, are finally allowed to bloom, and we get a phenomenal final performance from Jeri Ryan. Following up on the removal of her cortical node (an appreciated nod to continuity without feeling gratuitous), we get a marvellously relaxed performance from her – we've never seen Seven grin the way she does during her picnic date with Chakotay, yet as in the past her openness to exploring her feelings is never played as a weakening of the character, but rather as an expansion of her emotional palette. She snaps back to her usual efficient self when the moment calls for it, and gets to express vulnerability in a whole new way regarding her relationship with Chakotay, but for the character that has had the most detailed, developed character development "Endgame" does right by her and allows her to continue her development right until the end, and have it really matter to her. Chakotay hasn't had much development over the last season, so it's also nice to see him get a bit of movement here as well, and as with their previous couple of episodes together Beltran works well opposite Ryan. Equally, we get the last moments spent on the relationship between B'Elanna and Tom as they finally become parents with the birth of their daughter, the payoff to five seasons' worth of character development. It's sweetly affecting that their return to the Alpha Quadrant is matched by the bringing of new life into the world, and it marks a logical point to leave them, the build of B'Elanna's pregnancy having run throughout this season. One journey is ending but another is just beginning. Tvuok's degenerative condition may not impact much in the present (though it does get a lovely performance out of Russ in the future), but his reluctance to discuss the condition until essentially given no choice remains character consistent. Even Neelix, on-screen for all of sixty seconds, gets a final little push, when he admits he's thinking of asking Daxa to marry him, his journey continuing even as he's off screen from the events here. In other words, for all the scripting pyrotechnics going on there's a real attention to detail being paid to the characters, and real work being put in to doing right by them.
And then, after seven years, it all ends. "Endgame" isn't the best of the Trek finales (you'll find those ranked in Any Other Business), but it's still a very strong episode in its own right, and there's definitely a sense of satisfaction by the time we reach the end credits. Everything here is rooted in character, even though this is often disguised by the plot machinations churning away on the surface, and by doing right by the characters, the last two episodes do right by the show it's concluding. In a way "Endgame" is representative of both the season and series it concludes. It's not flawless by any stretch of the imagination, but it's inventive, entertaining, and carries through a sort of ragged success that nevertheless work well enough to be more than worth spending time with. When I began these reviews (two and a half years ago from my strictly limited temporal perspective) the purpose was, as I've frequently restated, to take a critical stance towards Voyager that was predicated upon redemption (and a firm rejection of the twin straightjackets of consensus and objectivity). Some may choose to analyse from a Marxist, feminist, New Historicist, post-modernist or any other kind of critical perspective, but from the outset, redemption has been my angle. And after covering every single episode of the show I remain convinced of one thing – that Voyager is a show that deserves its redemption. So here, right at the end of this project, I can look back over "Endgame" and find it a worthy conclusion to the seven seasons that have preceded it, and I can say, without a doubt, that this has been a journey well worth taking. "We've done it," whispers Janeway as Voyager emerges from remains of a Borg Sphere, disbelief in her voice mixed with hope. They have, and with "Endgame" the series has done it as well, giving Voyager a conclusion that the show needed. At the beginning of this review I stated that the thing "Endgame" gets right is having the last shot of the show be Voyager approaching Earth triumphantly, flanked by ships of the line on either side, its journey complete. It's a worthy final shot to a worthy final story. Well done Voyager, well done Janeway, and well done "Endgame". You did it.
Any Other Business:
• OK, so those Trek finales ranked in order by me would go "All Good Things...", "Endgame", "What You Leave Behind", "Turnabout Intruder" (a little unfair, I know, since it wasn't planned as a series finale), and "These Are The Voyages". The only reason that "Turnabout Intruder" is ranked higher than "These Are The Voyages" is because I prefer TOS to Enterprise. Neither are the dictionary definition of brilliant...
• Nice opening shot of Voyager swooping down over the Golden Gate Bridge, setting up a suitably ponderous pre-credits sequence with Admiral Janeway.
• I really do appreciate the fact they found a way to get Neelix into the finale, it seems fitting, and it's nice that he gets his little character bump. Still, he tells Seven they'll pick up their game the next day, and by the next day Voyager is back in the Alpha Quadrant. I wonder if he's hanging on the comm line, wondering why nobody’s answering?
• So at least in the alternative timeline the Doctor finally pics a name – Joe. It's a nice little nod to the past that hasn't been mentioned in quite some time.
• There's a fan theory (oy vey) that the "help" Q gave Janeway at the end of "Q2" is what led them to the location of the transwarp hub. It's a sweet idea, but there's absolutely no on-screen evidence for it at all, and it's clear Voyager just happens to be in the right place at the right time.
• Lots of latex old-people make-up in the future of course, but Kate Mulgrew looks really rather dignified with her swept-up white look, and it gives a subtle re-enforcement to her authority as Admiral Janeway, rather than Captain Janeway. Naturally none of the cast these days look anything like their "future" selves.
• That is one unconvincing grassy knoll future Chakotay is buried under.
• Nice that we get to see a little of Miral, Tom and B'Elanna's daughter, and nice to see her just competently getting on with her job.
• Of all people Harry gets the big "to the journey" speech? Yea, that wasn't the right call. I understand it gives him and Wang something to do in a story that doesn't greatly require either of them, but still, literally any other character should have been given that speech. The sentiment is heartfelt and sincere, but imagine how much more powerful that might have been if Seven had delivered it as a statement of intent regarding her recovered humanity, or Tom and B'Elanna, adapting to the idea of raising the child on the ship.
• I mentioned it in the review, but Tim Russ's performance as the mentally damaged version of Tuvok in the future is really well done, and some of the best work he does on the show as a whole.
• But if Russ is good, nobody comes remotely close to how straight-up brilliant Mulgrew is here, playing both Admiral and Captain Janeway in both two timelines and together in the same scenes. Until Tatyana Malansay came along in Orphan Black, I had (and have) never seen anyone act opposite themselves as well as Mulgrew manages here. It's a resoundingly brilliant performance and she deserves all the credit in the world for it.
• A few appreciated bits of continuity – Tuvok and Harry's occasional Kal-To game, Icheb getting a final scene (nice more because it's good he's not just completely forgotten about), a reference to the fact that the Doctor plays golf (he has a tee time with future Barclay), a nod to Captain Proton (and the fact that Tom has grown beyond it, while Harry is still trying to use it to manipulate his friend)… there's lots of little moments like that which manage to be included but which also manage not to be intrusive, the right way to handle continuity.
• One piece of continuity that's a shame though – instead of our regular Borg Queen in the form of Susanna Thompson, we instead get Alice Krige stepping back into the role for the first time since First Contact. This was simply due to a scheduling conflict and Thompson being unavailable, but it would have been nice to have the right queen for the finale. Krige, unsurprisingly, is excellent in the role as ever.
• There is an argument I've seen more than once that Admiral Janeway shouldn't know about the hub because Captain Janeway doesn't, but this is clearly nonsense. Admiral Janeway explicitly tells Captain Janeway that she has quite a few more encounters with the Borg before she got back to the Alpha Quadrant, during which time she could easily have found out about it. And even without that explanation, she has twenty years’ experience over Captain Janeway and is teaching about the Borg at the Academy, where presumably she would also be privvy to information collected from other ships who also encountered the Borg, any one of which could have found out about the transwarp hub.
• Equally, there's an argument that it's awfully convenient for Admiral Janeway to turn up exactly where the hub is and where Voyager is, but it's made perfectly explicit that this is where she aims for, and moreover she aims for that location because that's the way to get Voyager home, a confluence of timing and luck, which is why she doesn't turn up a few weeks earlier to save Carey or whatever. It has to be there and it has to be then because that's where the transwarp hub is.
• The transwarp hub itself, with its skeletal silhouette sitting round a blue-white sun or planet is a hugely arresting visual and a really striking special effect.
• Indeed the production quality of the whole two-parter (grassy knoll aside) is really of superlative quality, so all praise to everyone involved.
• If there's a flaw here, it's that the Borg Queen is a bit on the naïve side at times, but I like the fact that she makes one small miscalculation – choosing to allow Voyager to continue on its way early in the first episode, choosing stealth over a full-frontal attack - and from that everything becomes unravelled for her. Actions (and inactions) have consequences, and all that. Equally I really like that both Captain and Admiral Janeway are able to use the psychology of what they know of the Borg Queen against her, so they know she will lash out in frustration to assimilate Admiral Janeway once she's been discovered (this is also an excellent parallel of the scene in "Unimatrix Zero", when the Borg Queen lashed out but Janeway was a hologram on that occasion. Janeway's remembered and learned from that). It's again showing us the tactical thinking that makes Janeway a great captain, rather than just telling us how good she is.
• Some more great production as the Borg Queen gradually comes undone, and we see the fire of the explosion reflected in her dead eyes before the hub detonates.
• Oh all right, there's one other flaw here. There's a real shot at final-moments tension when Voyager needs to escape the transwarp corridor because they won't survive the pounding they're taking to reach the exit for the Alpha Quadrant but they can make it back to the Delta Quadrant. Then there's a cut to the Borg Sphere arriving in the Alpha Quadrant, and we get a scene on Voyager with Tom informing Janeway they're "right where we expected to be", then the Sphere explodes and Voyager sails through the wreckage. It should have been made clearer that Voyager basically backs into the Sphere to survive, then destroys it once they emerge in the Alpha Quadrant. It's obvious that this is what happens, because there's no other explanation, but it could have been made clearer on screen.
• Janeway's disbelieving "we've done it", as she simultaneously feels relief, fear, and the weight of seven years' worth of pressure leaving her shoulders is another brilliant moment from Mulgrew.
• And the very final line of the series, "set a course... for home" is the same as the very final line of "Caretaker", truly bringing the journey to its conclusion. Just lovely.
Season Seven Summary
Season Seven Cast
It feels a bit strange to be writing a summing up of the seventh season when I've just finished writing about "Endgame" and the conclusion of the series, but it needs to be done so here we are. If there's anything that Season Seven can be described as – other than "better than Season Six", which it unquestionably is – then I think I'd have to go for "raggedy successful". It is, by some distance, Voyager's least watched season, but given the marked, noticeable improvements over what came before it that seems like a shame. There's certainly a degree of loose thematic unity to the season – all those debates around rights, and the positioning of rights and freedoms within different societies – not quite as tight as, say, Season Four, but more than enough to give a shape and degree of cohesion to the season as everything moves towards the inevitable end. That does the season quite a lot of favours, because the stories themselves are a bit all over the place, jumping from character pieces to anomalies to time travel to continuity and back again without really settling on a consistent approach. The main focus of the rights debate is on holograms and the way they're treated – an obvious analogy, but an effective one nonetheless – and that finds its ultimate expression in "Author, Author", but in many ways "Flesh and Blood" is just as important to the debate, giving a big anchor to the rights debate early in the season in a generalized form (i.e. regarding a number of different holograms) so that later in the season we can build to a more personal debate when it comes to the Doctor. But these are very different types of story - "Flesh And Blood" is a big action piece with a thematic core, and "Author, Author" is largely, if not exclusively, comedic and very small in scale (it's a bottle show). The unity of theme though helps to keep things feeling like they beyond together despite the vast tonal differences and differences of approach.
As I mentioned in a number of reviews, the other thing that Season Seven is really successful at is building forward momentum. There's very little naval-gazing going on here, and the fact that the season spends a lot of time building the character work so that everyone has a real shot of moving forward is something very much to be commended. Even Poor Old Harry gets to have a bit of movement, and if "Nightingale" isn't the strongest episode of the season, the fact that the season takes the time even to give the most minor character on the crew something new to do is demonstrative of the ambitions it has. Seven's character continues to develop too, and because she's had probably the most detailed and specific character of anyone on the show the fact that they can still find new places to take her without just repeating themselves also speaks highly of Season Seven's ability to get hold of a character and take them to interesting places. For Seven this means developing another side to her humanity, this time romantic, yet this is dealt with in a remarkably subtle way, and definitely not taking the expected path. Because if you show me someone that thought Seven and Chakotay would have a relationship together at the beginning of Season Seven then I'll show you a liar. Yet it's the very unexpectedness of their blooming relationship that makes it work – it's not predictable, it isn't following the same path that Tom and B'Elanna's burgeoning relationship did back in Season Three, and it's allowed to stand as its own thing. And because it happens more towards the end of the season it also means that it gives a narrative drive to both characters at a time when we'd otherwise be expecting conclusions or reflections. It is, to put it another way, a smart use of both characters, and the fact that we finally manage to find a female character that Chakotay manages to have a bit of a spark with aids this hugely – just watch "Natural Law" alongside "Unforgettable" and see what a different that spark can make. Neither are exceptional episodes, but one it's almost impossible to remember, and one works really rather well. And there's more rapport between Seven and Chakotay in their one picnic scene in "Endgame" than there is in almost any other relationship he ever has. By finding new combinations and new ways to make the characters which we're otherwise very familiar with, Season Seven is able to find an approach that really works for the show.
Just as well really, since Season Six really made it look like things were going to limp to a fairly unspectacular close. But other thing that Season Seven does is act as a counter-argument to that point of view. Voyager absolutely does not limp across the finish line. Season Seven isn't the best season of Voyager, and there are a few obvious stumbles (hello, "Prophecy"), but it's better than it has any right to be, and it embraces that sense of forward momentum in sharp contrast to Season Six's business-as-usual approach. Season Six was content to trade in fairly static storytelling, which made it looked like a whole lot of going-nowhere-fast, but Season Seven's determined approach to keep things moving means that it... well, keeps things moving. Sure there are stumbles along the way, but there's a real sense of commitment to doing something interesting with the show in its final hours. In purely storytelling rather than character terms, B'Elanna's pregnancy, Seven and Chakotay's romance, even Neelix's early departure, are all woven into the very fabric of the season, and feel like they matter just as much as anything else. Indeed, Neelix's departure (and there's a certain symmetry to the fact that the two leads who depart the show prior to its conclusion are Kes and Neelix) is a markedly bold and unusual choice. Writing out a major character so close to the end could have been done any number of ways, but it's especially pleasing that it's not a "shock death" to add "drama", but something rather more constructive – someone reconnecting with their own culture and finding something (and someone) to care about. Of course you could argue the shock-death quotient is taken up with Carey a few episodes’ earlier, but... you know. It's Carey. He's a nice guy and all, but he's not exactly a major player in the way that Neelix is. Yet this is something that Season Six would never have attempted (both Neelix and Carey), so we see the sense of development running through the show returning. Obviously it should never have left in the first place, but the most important thing is that, in time for the show to bow out, it returns in a way that meaningfully adds to the sum total of what Voyager is.
Because the flaws of Season Seven are pretty easy to explain – there's just a few dud episodes in there. Not everything can land successfully, and things like having Tom and B'Elanna's baby (not really) be some Klingon prophecy, or the cheesy daftness of a space-race in "Drive" are pretty forgivable in the grand scale of things. As we've observed a few times, the bad episodes are a lot easier to put up with when there's something decent lying on either side of them. "Nightingale" might trade too heavily in clichés, but at least when it does it's doing it for good character reasons. It doesn't quite work, but doing it to progress Harry is a much better reason than doing it because you've obviously run out of other things to do or say. And structurally the season, having two two-parters (three, if you want to include “Endgame”), feels more of a part with the likes of Season Four, which has the same structure. This kind of parallel structure to the season just by default makes it feel more successful, as if there’s a return to the kind of structure that’s worked in the past but without just replicating the contents of that structure wholesale. So we have the same general shape to the season, but not covering the same kind of material. Compared to the flat linearity of Season Six this was definitely the right move to make, and gives everything a lift. The material following “Workforce”, the second two-parter, continues to drive the narrative of the show forward, even when that takes unexpected directions, such as Neelix’s departure, and the gradual increase in communication with Earth means that structurally we get an increase in the number of episodes where that contact is relevant to the events that play out. This means that, by the time “Endgame” comes round, the return home feels like something the season has been building towards, rather than something that just gets dropped in at the end of the series as the inevitable conclusion of the show.
So the final season of the show comes good in the end. “Endgame” isn’t a perfect finale, but it’s still bloody good, eminently worthy of redemption, and the show closes out with a return to Earth, as it always should have. I suspect the reputation of Season Seven will likely not change – the material is probably the least known across the whole of Voyager, which doesn’t exactly help, but it still deserves some praise for correcting the flaws of the previous season, and never falling into the trap of navel-gazing or reflexive self-praise, while always having something to say. And, really, that's what makes Season Seven such an interesting proposition – it never runs out of things to say. It doesn't act as a summary of the show it's concluding, but instead does something much more challenging – it manages to find new and inventive ways to keep the momentum going right up until the final scene of "Endgame", and for that alone credit is due. So thanks, Season Seven, for being a worthwhile concluding season, and for getting the crew home.