Season 5 Ep 35 "Warhead"/ Season 5 Summary
Feb 25, 2016 12:00:37 GMT -5
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 25, 2016 12:00:37 GMT -5
Season Five, Episode 25 - "Warhead"
Torped'oh!
Well. What to say about "Warhead", what to say... Things have been going so well of late it’s a bit of a shock to the system to go back to something which is merely fine, which is what "Warhead" is. It's... fine. Difficult episode to get worked up about, really. It's not bad, it's definitely not, but it's also a real patchwork quilt of other Voyager episodes, so it all feels very indistinct. In terms of the major plot points we have the talking bomb from "Dreadnought", the Harry-takes-command from "Timeless", the self-pitying Harry also from "Timeless", the "evil Doctor" from "Darkling"… you get the idea. Everything here is pretty familiar, and even the more macro beats, like trying to use Seven's nanoprobes as a get-out-of-jail-free, or the higher-than-usual levels of bafflegab all render the episode achingly familiar. But as we saw with "Someone To Watch Over Me", an episode doesn't have to necessarily be innovative to be affecting. As Terrance Dicks once said, "always start with an original idea. It doesn’t have to be your original idea," and "Warhead" definitely starts with someone else's original idea(s).
This becomes something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand it allows lots of narrative shortcuts, so we don't have to spend ages labouring over the set-up - sentient bomb on the ship, it needs to be stopped. Clear enough. Not original, but clear. The twist, if you want to call it that, this time out is that it's both Harry's fault that the bomb ends up on board and Harry who needs to save the day. In fact, as set-ups for an episode go, seeing Harry on the night-shift, making decisions, and just being who he is, works remarkably well as set-up's go - again, it's not what you would call a ground-breaking approach or anything, but it largely serves the character well, and it's quite nice to see some of the drive and ambition we were told Harry had in the early days actually being translated into him doing things which demonstrate that. Wang is largely good here too, and the petulance and self-pity we've seen in the character before is written towards but never dominant - you can see it bubbling under the surface during a few of the scenes in sickbay but it's never allowed to become crushingly self-indulgent. It's a side of the character that seems to be working well for both Harry and Wang - could it be we've found the key to making Harry work a mere five full seasons into the show's run? Watch this space... Still, on the other hand... yea you've seen all this before. No question.
Meanwhile, over at the Robert Picardo Acts Evil table (a table we'll be dining from over the course of the next two episodes as well), Robert Picardo gets to act evil again. Although, actually, not evil so much as resolutely and uncompromisingly determined. He gets to do lots of over-the-top shouting, which I imagine was fun, but rather than the leering, one-dimensional cliché that got dragged out during "Darkling" we get... well, not a fully rounded performance or anything, because the character as written spends about 95% of his time bellowing and stamping around sickbay so it's not what you'd call nuanced, but nevertheless a character which is a lot better delivered than the Jekyll And Hyde rent-a-monster of Season Three. There's a couple of moments that he does threaten to take it just a bit too far, but mostly the performance stays on the right side of scenery chewing and also doesn't swamp out Wang, which in some stories (and performances) he very easily could have done. Indeed, his final scene as the bomb, after having conceded that Harry was right, is a really great moment from both Picardo and Wang, and although they're an uncommon pairing they do work well together. We're spared any undue over-sentimentality from Picardo, who brings his performance down to just the right level, and Wang matches him, again showing he's good at playing quiet and knows how to make those moments work. This isn't a revelatory performance from either of them, but they're both good and deserve credit for it.
The more I think about this episode, actually, the more I think "good" is probably the way to describe it. Not great or outstanding or anything, but good. There's lots of nice little moments for just about everyone - Janeway ultimately refusing to back down to the bomb, Seven's attempt to disarm it, B'Elanna giving Harry a pep talk... lots of little moment scattered through that, again, aren't original but all work. And crucially, the episode never drags - the pace is fairly sprightly, we move from scene to scene and setting to setting at a brisk pace, and we never linger on anything long enough for it to become stale or obvious. The bomb itself suffers more from having been seen before than it does because of anything that’s written here. Quite apart from "Dreadnought", anyone who's familiar with Dark Star will immediately spots some parallels as well, yet this episode just about manages to make its lack of originality work in its favour because the conclusion is different both to Dark Star and "Dreadnought", with the bomb here finally being won round, rather than defeated in a more conventional way. That has the potential to lack drama, but because Wang and Picardo are on form it never feels like an anti-climax, and we still get a cathartic series of big explosions at the end anyway. It would be hard to claim there's much of a sense of threat in this episode because, other than maybe the bomb trying to blackmail Janeway into taking it to its target, there really isn't, but it doesn't suffer too badly from this because everything else manages to convince. The late-in-the-game arrival of an additional thirty-two missiles ought to up the tension, but since it's clear that one missile can destroy Voyager the arrival of more doesn't really change the stakes, only the numbers. Still, it's a disconcerting moment when we see all thirty two missiles jumping to warp after scanning and identifying Voyager, so it does if nothing else provide a fairly memorable cliffhanger into the commercial break. This is another episode which also gives something of a sense of scale to the space Voyager is passing though, which is always to be encouraged. The fact that there's a war between two races who we never meet, or a merchant whose greed ends up getting him killed, gives a real sense that this is a properly populated region of space, with lots of things going on off-screen, rather than feeling like this space only exists while Our Heroes pass through. It's not a big thing, but it's definitely another strike in "Warhead"'s favour.
Still, I don't want to get carried away here, because there is a lot of familiar material here, and in honesty I don’t think this is an episode which can be wholeheartedly recommended. Yes, everything it does it does fine, but the fact of the matter is that it really isn't original at all, and it badly lacks an additional idea that really would have brought the whole thing to life, or an extra dimension that would have animated the debates. The ending of the bomb being won round by Harry's arguments is nice (especially given B'Elanna's earlier line that, "I don't think Starfleet diplomacy will get us out of this one"), but it’s not really enough to justify forty-five minutes of largely recycled ideas, even if it is well done in and of itself. There's a real-world analogue here, with the idea of bombs being launched by accident being especially prevalent during the 80's Cold War era, but there's not enough of a connection here to really make that idea sing, and referring to the bomb as a "weapon of mass destruction" may have seemed timely at broadcast but it sounds rather clichéd now (and didn't sound original or compelling then, either), more likely to inspire eye-rolls than a sense of danger. So if you're going to remember this episode - and I wouldn't really blame anyone who didn't - then it's probably best to remember it for a good Wang performance, a good Picardo performance, and very little else. That's rather damning with faint praise, I suppose, but for poor old "Warhead" there's just not really much else to say.
Any Other Business:
• While Harry takes command of the night-shift on the bridge, there's a new ensign at the helm we haven't seen before, Ensign Jenkinks. She gets about six lines, but makes an immediate impression.
• It doesn't impact anything in this episode, but it's a nice little scene at the beginning with Tom desperately trying to get something together for the anniversary with B'Elanna he's forgotten. It's little moments like these that continue to make their ongoing relationship feel like a reality, rather than something we only drop in to when a story needs some Big Emotional Stakes.
• That easy rapport between B'Elanna and Harry is still there during their scenes together in sickbay. I do love scenes between the two of them.
• The timeline of this episode doesn't line up at all - the missile Voyager recovers has been stranded on the planet for three years, then we come across the other missiles (which are warp capable) who were fired at the same time (i.e. three years ago) and crossed the two light-year threshold after which they can't be diverted from their mission, but which appear to be just hanging around waiting for "our" rescued missile to mosey on by before resuming their course. What?
• More praise for Wang, who really does well with the material here. A lot of the episode rests on him being able to give a good performance so I'm happy to report that he more or less pulls it off here.
• The set that Harry and the Doctor beam down to is woefully inexpensive. Did we run out of caves this week or something?
• In terms of unoriginality, Janeway has to deliver the line "we're going to find a way to out-smart the smart bomb", in the same way she just five episodes earlier had tell everything they were going to out-think the think-tank. Someone really should have caught that.
• Some nice work from Mulgrew when refusing to back down to the bomb's commands, and it's an interesting little "character" beat that the bomb tries to force everyone to abandon ship, rather than just killing them all outright (by turning off life-support, say).
• Picaord's delivery of the line, "I am, after all, a weapon of mass destruction" is delivered absolutely flawlessly, an emotive delivery entirely distinct from the way the Doctor would say it, so much praise for his work there.
Season Five Summary
Season Five cast
Season Five is, as must be clear now, very much a game of two halves, which more or less swivel around the two-parter "Dark Frontier". Almost everything that comes before "Dark Frontier" is a character piece, taking the time to highlight a single character of the week and give them something to really get their teeth into. And the majority of episodes after "Dark Frontier" demonstrate the show pushing at its own boundaries and trying out new things to see what does and doesn't work. The remarkable thing about the experiments is that they almost all work, and the remarkable thing about the character pieces is that they almost all work. But there's a price to be paid for this, and that price is that Season Five doesn't have the thematic or character unity that Season Four did.
Season Four pushed at the boundaries of what Voyager was capable of as a show, but it did it in a way that pushed it more into alignment with the likes of DS9, providing thematic unity to a season with an over-arching development. The experimentalism of the back half of Season Five pushes at the boundaries of what the show could do in a completely different way, but it does so by building on the back of a lot of solid character work in the first half of the season. Because Season Five takes real time to invest in its characters at the beginning of the season it means that much more when it challenges the limits of what can be done with the series near the end. To put it another way, the season gives itself a firm foundation at the start to build the more interesting material at the end. One of the things Season Five definitely does differently from Season Four is de-emphasize Seven. This makes sense - Seven was the dominant driving force of Season Four, and it would be easy to get burned out on her, should Voyager become the Seven-and-Janeway show. Indeed the Seven-and-Janeway show would have been an obvious route for the producers to go down - Seven was a huge hit from the moment of her introduction and remains an extremely compelling character. Yet that's not what the season does - instead it opens with an unusual, thoughtful ensemble piece ("Night"), then gives Seven her Big Character Episode ("Drone"), after which it's not until "Dark Frontier" that we get another episode that specifically focuses on her. This has two effects - firstly, it allows us to see Seven properly integrating with the crew, no longer standing above and apart, but actually becoming a useful member of the ensemble. And secondly it allows the foregrounding of other characters who were given less prominence during Season Four's thematic groundwork. In this, the season must be adjudged a resounding success. Not only does virtually every character episode work (even Harry gets to shine in "Timeless"!) but it gives the show a chance to breathe again. One of the upshots of the tight focus on Seven and the thematics of consequence in Season Four is that it can make that season feel very claustrophobic and enclosed. That's no bad thing - the season absolutely shines in this regard - but it's also a pleasure to move into a season that allows for more space and light. That's really what the string of character-based episode bring to the season - a widening of focus while still addressing specific characters.
Then there's a big Borg two-parter, which tries to split the difference between the character work that precedes it, and the more experimental material that follows it. "Dark Frontier" remains frustrating when seen as part of the season, just as it is when actually watching it, because it just needs to be that teeny bit stronger to really bridge the gap between the two halves of the season. The character work for Seven and Janeway, which feels partly like a throwback to the previous season, is basically perfect, but the flashbacks don't really work, and the heist on the Borg is just a bit too conventional to fit in with the material that is to come later in the season, even though it's not something we've seen before. There's lots of new stuff discovered, and the action-adventure core does work well, but it's just not quite enough to provide the central pinning that "Year Of Hell" gives Season Four. That's a shame, but the material that follows "Dark Frontier" is of a strong enough nature that although there's no big unifying force, the challenging aspects of the latter part of the season still function perfectly well. It's a shame that it's "The Disease" which directly follows "Dark Frontier" really, because it's about as unchallenging as one can imagine, but the narrative sophistication and genre expansion that most of the rest of the season takes really demonstrate that the show has the confidence and ability to try new things rather than just playing it safe or falling back on established types of episodes. Certainly as far as Voyager is concerned, there's never been an episode even close to something like "11:59" or "The Fight" and this restless sense of wanting to try something new imbues real energy into the back half of the season. This isn't quite the roller-coaster barreling to the end of the season that Season Three gave us, but rather a more measured, considered approach, and it works wonders. The season ends with a big return to the embrace of the action-adventure aesthetic with "Equinox", an aesthetic that has, a few episodes aside been very much downplayed this season ("Relativity" is probably the best expression of it in Season Five), but the return to that mode of Voyager is made to feel all the more satisfying because we've been off trying out different things successfully before we reach it.
The act of sitting through the whole of Season Five also makes it clear that, while lacking Season Four's unity of purpose, it's also able to mark out its own style and chart its own course away from what's been done before. This is vital if the show is to avoid becoming repetitious, as a the-same-only-more approach to the season would undoubtedly have been. After all, the temptation is always to follow success by repeating the same patterns, to "give the fans what they want" and at this point in Star Trek's history the gravity of fan opinion is exerting a stronger and stronger pull, so credit for absolutely not just giving the fans "what they wanted", but instead being prepared to take chances. That's not always an easy thing to do, resist the pull of what's expected, and we've seen experiments tried and fail before, so to have gotten everything so right here is really a remarkable feat. Is Season Five as strong as Season Four? Well, it depends what you want out of a season, really. Looking back over both they have about the same number of dud episodes (two for Season Four, "Mortal Coil" and "Unforgettable", two for Season Five "Once Upon A Time" and "The Disease" - a remarkable strike rate for both seasons) but both seasons do different things. If you're more concerned with character work then Season Five is the season for you, if you're more concerned with unity of purpose then it's Season Four all the way. But what both of these seasons demonstrate is that there isn't a single approach to Voyager that works, but rather a multiplicity of approaches which can yield dividends. That demonstrates a show which is robust health, because when a focus becomes too narrow it tends to mean that ideas run out that much faster, but by keeping its options open Voyager instead finds new and interesting ways of delivering on its promise. Is Season Five better than Season Four? Probably not quite, if I'm really honest, but it's an incredibly close-run thing, and had "Dark Frontier" been of the calibre of "Year Of Hell" then I really don't think I would be able to choose between them. The fact that they take such different approaches yet sustain basically the same level of quality is a proper achievement deserving of real acknowledgement. Going into this season I didn't remember it being nearly as strong as it turned out to be, so to be able to conclude this season in the knowledge that everything just went right is very satisfying indeed, and I shall be singing its praises a lot more in future. That's two excellent seasons in a row - so the big question is, can Season Six manage the same feat? Let's find out in twenty-six episode's time!
Torped'oh!
Well. What to say about "Warhead", what to say... Things have been going so well of late it’s a bit of a shock to the system to go back to something which is merely fine, which is what "Warhead" is. It's... fine. Difficult episode to get worked up about, really. It's not bad, it's definitely not, but it's also a real patchwork quilt of other Voyager episodes, so it all feels very indistinct. In terms of the major plot points we have the talking bomb from "Dreadnought", the Harry-takes-command from "Timeless", the self-pitying Harry also from "Timeless", the "evil Doctor" from "Darkling"… you get the idea. Everything here is pretty familiar, and even the more macro beats, like trying to use Seven's nanoprobes as a get-out-of-jail-free, or the higher-than-usual levels of bafflegab all render the episode achingly familiar. But as we saw with "Someone To Watch Over Me", an episode doesn't have to necessarily be innovative to be affecting. As Terrance Dicks once said, "always start with an original idea. It doesn’t have to be your original idea," and "Warhead" definitely starts with someone else's original idea(s).
This becomes something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand it allows lots of narrative shortcuts, so we don't have to spend ages labouring over the set-up - sentient bomb on the ship, it needs to be stopped. Clear enough. Not original, but clear. The twist, if you want to call it that, this time out is that it's both Harry's fault that the bomb ends up on board and Harry who needs to save the day. In fact, as set-ups for an episode go, seeing Harry on the night-shift, making decisions, and just being who he is, works remarkably well as set-up's go - again, it's not what you would call a ground-breaking approach or anything, but it largely serves the character well, and it's quite nice to see some of the drive and ambition we were told Harry had in the early days actually being translated into him doing things which demonstrate that. Wang is largely good here too, and the petulance and self-pity we've seen in the character before is written towards but never dominant - you can see it bubbling under the surface during a few of the scenes in sickbay but it's never allowed to become crushingly self-indulgent. It's a side of the character that seems to be working well for both Harry and Wang - could it be we've found the key to making Harry work a mere five full seasons into the show's run? Watch this space... Still, on the other hand... yea you've seen all this before. No question.
Meanwhile, over at the Robert Picardo Acts Evil table (a table we'll be dining from over the course of the next two episodes as well), Robert Picardo gets to act evil again. Although, actually, not evil so much as resolutely and uncompromisingly determined. He gets to do lots of over-the-top shouting, which I imagine was fun, but rather than the leering, one-dimensional cliché that got dragged out during "Darkling" we get... well, not a fully rounded performance or anything, because the character as written spends about 95% of his time bellowing and stamping around sickbay so it's not what you'd call nuanced, but nevertheless a character which is a lot better delivered than the Jekyll And Hyde rent-a-monster of Season Three. There's a couple of moments that he does threaten to take it just a bit too far, but mostly the performance stays on the right side of scenery chewing and also doesn't swamp out Wang, which in some stories (and performances) he very easily could have done. Indeed, his final scene as the bomb, after having conceded that Harry was right, is a really great moment from both Picardo and Wang, and although they're an uncommon pairing they do work well together. We're spared any undue over-sentimentality from Picardo, who brings his performance down to just the right level, and Wang matches him, again showing he's good at playing quiet and knows how to make those moments work. This isn't a revelatory performance from either of them, but they're both good and deserve credit for it.
The more I think about this episode, actually, the more I think "good" is probably the way to describe it. Not great or outstanding or anything, but good. There's lots of nice little moments for just about everyone - Janeway ultimately refusing to back down to the bomb, Seven's attempt to disarm it, B'Elanna giving Harry a pep talk... lots of little moment scattered through that, again, aren't original but all work. And crucially, the episode never drags - the pace is fairly sprightly, we move from scene to scene and setting to setting at a brisk pace, and we never linger on anything long enough for it to become stale or obvious. The bomb itself suffers more from having been seen before than it does because of anything that’s written here. Quite apart from "Dreadnought", anyone who's familiar with Dark Star will immediately spots some parallels as well, yet this episode just about manages to make its lack of originality work in its favour because the conclusion is different both to Dark Star and "Dreadnought", with the bomb here finally being won round, rather than defeated in a more conventional way. That has the potential to lack drama, but because Wang and Picardo are on form it never feels like an anti-climax, and we still get a cathartic series of big explosions at the end anyway. It would be hard to claim there's much of a sense of threat in this episode because, other than maybe the bomb trying to blackmail Janeway into taking it to its target, there really isn't, but it doesn't suffer too badly from this because everything else manages to convince. The late-in-the-game arrival of an additional thirty-two missiles ought to up the tension, but since it's clear that one missile can destroy Voyager the arrival of more doesn't really change the stakes, only the numbers. Still, it's a disconcerting moment when we see all thirty two missiles jumping to warp after scanning and identifying Voyager, so it does if nothing else provide a fairly memorable cliffhanger into the commercial break. This is another episode which also gives something of a sense of scale to the space Voyager is passing though, which is always to be encouraged. The fact that there's a war between two races who we never meet, or a merchant whose greed ends up getting him killed, gives a real sense that this is a properly populated region of space, with lots of things going on off-screen, rather than feeling like this space only exists while Our Heroes pass through. It's not a big thing, but it's definitely another strike in "Warhead"'s favour.
Still, I don't want to get carried away here, because there is a lot of familiar material here, and in honesty I don’t think this is an episode which can be wholeheartedly recommended. Yes, everything it does it does fine, but the fact of the matter is that it really isn't original at all, and it badly lacks an additional idea that really would have brought the whole thing to life, or an extra dimension that would have animated the debates. The ending of the bomb being won round by Harry's arguments is nice (especially given B'Elanna's earlier line that, "I don't think Starfleet diplomacy will get us out of this one"), but it’s not really enough to justify forty-five minutes of largely recycled ideas, even if it is well done in and of itself. There's a real-world analogue here, with the idea of bombs being launched by accident being especially prevalent during the 80's Cold War era, but there's not enough of a connection here to really make that idea sing, and referring to the bomb as a "weapon of mass destruction" may have seemed timely at broadcast but it sounds rather clichéd now (and didn't sound original or compelling then, either), more likely to inspire eye-rolls than a sense of danger. So if you're going to remember this episode - and I wouldn't really blame anyone who didn't - then it's probably best to remember it for a good Wang performance, a good Picardo performance, and very little else. That's rather damning with faint praise, I suppose, but for poor old "Warhead" there's just not really much else to say.
Any Other Business:
• While Harry takes command of the night-shift on the bridge, there's a new ensign at the helm we haven't seen before, Ensign Jenkinks. She gets about six lines, but makes an immediate impression.
• It doesn't impact anything in this episode, but it's a nice little scene at the beginning with Tom desperately trying to get something together for the anniversary with B'Elanna he's forgotten. It's little moments like these that continue to make their ongoing relationship feel like a reality, rather than something we only drop in to when a story needs some Big Emotional Stakes.
• That easy rapport between B'Elanna and Harry is still there during their scenes together in sickbay. I do love scenes between the two of them.
• The timeline of this episode doesn't line up at all - the missile Voyager recovers has been stranded on the planet for three years, then we come across the other missiles (which are warp capable) who were fired at the same time (i.e. three years ago) and crossed the two light-year threshold after which they can't be diverted from their mission, but which appear to be just hanging around waiting for "our" rescued missile to mosey on by before resuming their course. What?
• More praise for Wang, who really does well with the material here. A lot of the episode rests on him being able to give a good performance so I'm happy to report that he more or less pulls it off here.
• The set that Harry and the Doctor beam down to is woefully inexpensive. Did we run out of caves this week or something?
• In terms of unoriginality, Janeway has to deliver the line "we're going to find a way to out-smart the smart bomb", in the same way she just five episodes earlier had tell everything they were going to out-think the think-tank. Someone really should have caught that.
• Some nice work from Mulgrew when refusing to back down to the bomb's commands, and it's an interesting little "character" beat that the bomb tries to force everyone to abandon ship, rather than just killing them all outright (by turning off life-support, say).
• Picaord's delivery of the line, "I am, after all, a weapon of mass destruction" is delivered absolutely flawlessly, an emotive delivery entirely distinct from the way the Doctor would say it, so much praise for his work there.
Season Five Summary
Season Five cast
Season Five is, as must be clear now, very much a game of two halves, which more or less swivel around the two-parter "Dark Frontier". Almost everything that comes before "Dark Frontier" is a character piece, taking the time to highlight a single character of the week and give them something to really get their teeth into. And the majority of episodes after "Dark Frontier" demonstrate the show pushing at its own boundaries and trying out new things to see what does and doesn't work. The remarkable thing about the experiments is that they almost all work, and the remarkable thing about the character pieces is that they almost all work. But there's a price to be paid for this, and that price is that Season Five doesn't have the thematic or character unity that Season Four did.
Season Four pushed at the boundaries of what Voyager was capable of as a show, but it did it in a way that pushed it more into alignment with the likes of DS9, providing thematic unity to a season with an over-arching development. The experimentalism of the back half of Season Five pushes at the boundaries of what the show could do in a completely different way, but it does so by building on the back of a lot of solid character work in the first half of the season. Because Season Five takes real time to invest in its characters at the beginning of the season it means that much more when it challenges the limits of what can be done with the series near the end. To put it another way, the season gives itself a firm foundation at the start to build the more interesting material at the end. One of the things Season Five definitely does differently from Season Four is de-emphasize Seven. This makes sense - Seven was the dominant driving force of Season Four, and it would be easy to get burned out on her, should Voyager become the Seven-and-Janeway show. Indeed the Seven-and-Janeway show would have been an obvious route for the producers to go down - Seven was a huge hit from the moment of her introduction and remains an extremely compelling character. Yet that's not what the season does - instead it opens with an unusual, thoughtful ensemble piece ("Night"), then gives Seven her Big Character Episode ("Drone"), after which it's not until "Dark Frontier" that we get another episode that specifically focuses on her. This has two effects - firstly, it allows us to see Seven properly integrating with the crew, no longer standing above and apart, but actually becoming a useful member of the ensemble. And secondly it allows the foregrounding of other characters who were given less prominence during Season Four's thematic groundwork. In this, the season must be adjudged a resounding success. Not only does virtually every character episode work (even Harry gets to shine in "Timeless"!) but it gives the show a chance to breathe again. One of the upshots of the tight focus on Seven and the thematics of consequence in Season Four is that it can make that season feel very claustrophobic and enclosed. That's no bad thing - the season absolutely shines in this regard - but it's also a pleasure to move into a season that allows for more space and light. That's really what the string of character-based episode bring to the season - a widening of focus while still addressing specific characters.
Then there's a big Borg two-parter, which tries to split the difference between the character work that precedes it, and the more experimental material that follows it. "Dark Frontier" remains frustrating when seen as part of the season, just as it is when actually watching it, because it just needs to be that teeny bit stronger to really bridge the gap between the two halves of the season. The character work for Seven and Janeway, which feels partly like a throwback to the previous season, is basically perfect, but the flashbacks don't really work, and the heist on the Borg is just a bit too conventional to fit in with the material that is to come later in the season, even though it's not something we've seen before. There's lots of new stuff discovered, and the action-adventure core does work well, but it's just not quite enough to provide the central pinning that "Year Of Hell" gives Season Four. That's a shame, but the material that follows "Dark Frontier" is of a strong enough nature that although there's no big unifying force, the challenging aspects of the latter part of the season still function perfectly well. It's a shame that it's "The Disease" which directly follows "Dark Frontier" really, because it's about as unchallenging as one can imagine, but the narrative sophistication and genre expansion that most of the rest of the season takes really demonstrate that the show has the confidence and ability to try new things rather than just playing it safe or falling back on established types of episodes. Certainly as far as Voyager is concerned, there's never been an episode even close to something like "11:59" or "The Fight" and this restless sense of wanting to try something new imbues real energy into the back half of the season. This isn't quite the roller-coaster barreling to the end of the season that Season Three gave us, but rather a more measured, considered approach, and it works wonders. The season ends with a big return to the embrace of the action-adventure aesthetic with "Equinox", an aesthetic that has, a few episodes aside been very much downplayed this season ("Relativity" is probably the best expression of it in Season Five), but the return to that mode of Voyager is made to feel all the more satisfying because we've been off trying out different things successfully before we reach it.
The act of sitting through the whole of Season Five also makes it clear that, while lacking Season Four's unity of purpose, it's also able to mark out its own style and chart its own course away from what's been done before. This is vital if the show is to avoid becoming repetitious, as a the-same-only-more approach to the season would undoubtedly have been. After all, the temptation is always to follow success by repeating the same patterns, to "give the fans what they want" and at this point in Star Trek's history the gravity of fan opinion is exerting a stronger and stronger pull, so credit for absolutely not just giving the fans "what they wanted", but instead being prepared to take chances. That's not always an easy thing to do, resist the pull of what's expected, and we've seen experiments tried and fail before, so to have gotten everything so right here is really a remarkable feat. Is Season Five as strong as Season Four? Well, it depends what you want out of a season, really. Looking back over both they have about the same number of dud episodes (two for Season Four, "Mortal Coil" and "Unforgettable", two for Season Five "Once Upon A Time" and "The Disease" - a remarkable strike rate for both seasons) but both seasons do different things. If you're more concerned with character work then Season Five is the season for you, if you're more concerned with unity of purpose then it's Season Four all the way. But what both of these seasons demonstrate is that there isn't a single approach to Voyager that works, but rather a multiplicity of approaches which can yield dividends. That demonstrates a show which is robust health, because when a focus becomes too narrow it tends to mean that ideas run out that much faster, but by keeping its options open Voyager instead finds new and interesting ways of delivering on its promise. Is Season Five better than Season Four? Probably not quite, if I'm really honest, but it's an incredibly close-run thing, and had "Dark Frontier" been of the calibre of "Year Of Hell" then I really don't think I would be able to choose between them. The fact that they take such different approaches yet sustain basically the same level of quality is a proper achievement deserving of real acknowledgement. Going into this season I didn't remember it being nearly as strong as it turned out to be, so to be able to conclude this season in the knowledge that everything just went right is very satisfying indeed, and I shall be singing its praises a lot more in future. That's two excellent seasons in a row - so the big question is, can Season Six manage the same feat? Let's find out in twenty-six episode's time!
