"The Darkling"
I went into this episode expecting it to be bad. Instead, I came out of it thinking of it as mid. Unlike Odo and Narissa in DS9's "A Simple Investigation", the last episode I watched over there, Kes and Zahir don't do anything for me. I can certainly understand Kes being interested in someone living a life of excitement and someone who's as different from the crew of Voyager as possible, but this wasn't the guy.
For the first 20 minutes, it seemed like this would be a very bland episode, the Doctor trying to incorporate figures from history into his program notwithstanding. Then, at the 20-minute mark, things take a dark, dark turn. The darkness from all of historical personalities in the Doctor completely take over and try to suppress the Doctor himself. It's like TOS's "The Enemy Within" except on steroids. Instead of one dark side of a personality, the Doctor has several.
A huge credit to Bob Picardo's acting performance. But it's more than just the acting and the constant scowl. The messed up hair. And the eyes. Those beady looking eyes. I don't know how they did it. Did they have Bob Picardo wear contact lenses? Because those didn't look like normal beady eyes. Either way, they were very effective at showing how dangerous whatever took over the Doctor was.
It truly felt scary when the Dark Doctor (that's what I'm calling him) was in the turbolift with that Ensign and Tom Paris. I seriously thought
something was going to happen.
Before the darkness fully took over, Lord Byron made me cringe. The Doctor unintentionally channeling Lord Byron made me cringe even more.
Back to the Dark Doctor. No one can figure out who's behind several acts of violence until it's figured out that the Doctor has been taken over by all the dark personalities. The Dark Doctor takes Kes hostage but the real Doctor seeps through and tries to protect Kes even while Kes is a hostage. The Dark Doctor tries his hardest to deny and takes Kes with him over a ledge, falling to what would've been their deaths... if the transporter hadn't rescued them in time!
I love it when Star Trek has the transporter do unusual things. And beaming two people mid-falling qualifies.
This episode continues with the idea of Kes growing and changing. Her wardrobe, her outlook, realizing she's lived a third of her life, and questioning if where she is how she wants to live it. I have to wondering if this was around the time when they were thinking of writing Kes out of the show next season? But I can't be sure. That might be what I know is coming influencing my thoughts. They
did set up Kim to be written off the show at the end of the season (even though he wasn't), so maybe I
am getting ahead of myself.
Regardless, I appreciate what they were trying to do with Kes, even though they didn't get very far with it. And I do like the Easter Eggs of so many historical figures. Then there's the Dark Doctor. I think those things are what save the episode.
I give it a 6.
Additional Highlights:
- Torres threatening to punch the Byron-influenced Doctor into the middle of the next millennium. I'm with you there!
- The holograms who were maimed by the Dark Doctor. That's some black humor right there.
"Rise"
This is an episode that has been almost three seasons in the making. Right from their first scene together when Tuvok escorted Neelix from the Transporter Room in "Caretaker". We're thrown right into the tick of things with Voyager destroying two asteroids on course for a planet that sent a distress signal pre-episode. A fragment is on the way to the surface and has to be stopped. Technobabble, technobabble, three shuttles are sent out, naturally Tuvok and Neelix are on the same one. With them are people from the Planet of the Week. The shuttle crashes, they can't communicate with Voyager or the other shuttles, and it become Tuvok vs. Neelix while figure out way out of the jam they're in.
I'm not going to lie, I think Janeway likes taunting Tuvok by assigning Neelix to him. She won't admit it, she'll come up with an official reason, but that has to be why she's
really doing it. It's her way of pulling a prank on a friend. There can be other reasons too, but you can't tell me that's not in there.
So we have Sklar (the Nezu Ambassador's Assistant), Dr. Vatm (the guy with the beard and the shaved head), Hanjuan (a working-stiff miner), and Lillias (a woman taking shelter and who fears the bombardments). I'm listing all of these out so I can keep their names straight. Otherwise, I'm not going to remember them.
Lillian is discovered on the planet's surface and holds Neelix at knife-point when they first encounter her. But that was just them getting off on the wrong foot. After that rocky start, Neelix and Lillian become fast friends. Tuvok wants Neelix to stop socializing and get back to work on figuring out how they can find a way to contact Voyager.
I have to say that I agree with Tuvok. NOT because of "I like Tuvok better!" (even though I do) but because in a Survival Situation, survival is what takes priority. In an Emergency Situation, making contact with those who can help is what takes priority. Although I
will say
Tuvok could've handled it better. It's illogical and inefficient to make Neelix feel resistant towards everything Tuvok says.
On the
other end, Neelix should be thinking about how if he wants to propose an idea or a solution to Tuvok, then he should also be thinking about why it's logical and how it works to their advantage to do what Neelix is suggesting over something else. Neelix manages to convince Tuvok they should to go on a lift to reach an altitude where they can communicate with Voyager rather than wait in a shuttle, hoping Voyager will be able to find them. But, on the way up, he doesn't explain why it's logical to go on top of the lift to see what Dr. Vatm thought was so important to get to before he died. "I just have a gut feeling"? No. How about, "Vatm was a Doctor, what was up there must have been of some type of scientific importance. Would it not be logical to examine the possibility?" Tuvok is Security Chief, isn't it his job to be thorough? Isn't it his job to figure out intent?
But, no. Tuvok is so determined to disregard everything Neelix says that becomes hiddenly emotional. Tuvok doesn't even want to consider that anything Neelix says might make even a little bit of sense. Lillias has Neelix's back. And Neelix stops the lift, forcing Tuvok to investigate. Which is what Tuvok
should've been doing anyway.
That's when Sklar shows his true colors and tries to kill Tuvok. On top of the lift, while they're in the clouds. For something made in the late-'90s on a TV budget, it doesn't look bad. Not great, but not bad. Watching Tuvok barely hanging on, after Sklar tries to fling him off the lift had me caught up in the moment. Then Neelix letting Tuvok back in and Tuvok stopping Sklar.
Teamwork makes the dreamwork!
Turns out Sklar was a traitor who was collaborating with an enemy race who wanted to use the asteroids as a cover to drive the Nezu off their colony so they could swoop in.
There were so many new characters and so many moving pieces that I can see why "Rise" through us right into things at the beginning. To set things up the way Star Trek normally would would've taken two full episodes and this isn't a two-parter type episode.
Tuvok vs. Neelix continues to be reminiscent of Spock vs. McCoy, even though I think McCoy was much better at holding up his end of the argument. That having been said, I got a kick out of Tuvok and Neelix battling it out over who has the last word of the episode.
Rarely do I comment on what other reviewers think (my review of Season 2 of
Voyager as a whole being the exception), but I don't get why
Jammer only gave
this episode one-and-a-half stars out of four. It's not a bad episode. In fact, I actually really liked it. It's as good as it gets when it comes to Tuvok vs. Neelix. On
Jammer's scale, I give it three stars. On mine,
I give it an 8.
For the Hell of it, here's a link to the re-mastered trailer for my first film, which I also just re-mastered. I was the writer, director, and editor. Enjoy!
