^ I didn't know the origin. I just think it's strange that one of the goofiest-looking aliens on the show keeps harping on Tuvok because he's not human. Maybe
that's why he does it.
I"m on to...
"Year of Hell, Part II"
I'm probably going against the grain here, but this one didn't really do it for me.
I liked a lot of things about the episode, but in the end I just felt kind of unsatisfied by it.
First, what I liked.
The look of the ship continues to impress, and the crew's increasing desperation. The part where Janeway burns herself while getting the deflector back on line does a good job of showing her determination, as does her sparring with the Doctor.
Which brings up a more interesting question--one that I believe has been raised once or twice before

--of whether Janeway abandons her "Starfleet principles."
It certainly appears that way in this episode. She disregards a direct order from the CMO, which is a clear violation of Starfleet protocol. It's the kind of thing that she reamed Chakotay and Torres out over in Season 1. As of now, it appears that she believes the ends justify the means--disturbingly, just what Annorax believes. (more on this later)
The rest of the VOY crew continued to impress, with Seven and Tuvok stealing the show.
The look of the episode was great--I really believed this was a critically-damaged starship.
The Chakotay/Paris experience on the Krenim ship was good, and Annorax was a compelling character who got more interesting.
Janeway's "final" scene, where she crashes into the time core, had shades of Picard in "Yesterday's Enterprise." Good stuff.
Now, the bad:
I still don't know why Janeway took a half-measure: abandoning most of the crew, while keeping the senior staff on VOY. This is an awful idea any way I think about it. The only way it works is if she thinks VOY is doomed, in which case she stays behind to "go down with the ship" while giving the rest of the crew a fighting chance--George Kirk in ST09 is the best example I can think of, though Mirror Forrest in IAMD is another. (I know both came "after" this episode)
There's no way that Voyager has a better chance of defeating the Krenim or getting back home with a half-dozen crew on board than 100 or so. Based on what we know about how the ship operates--even routine maintenance requires several departments--it just doesn't make sense.
Instead, she basically makes it impossible to keep Voyager operational and condemns the "other" crew to either death or exile. Space is huge! How could she track down all those shuttle and escape pods, even if she got the ship away from the Krenim?
This actually dragged down the episode for me, because it really makes no sense. I might have disagreed with her Borg alliance in "Scorpion," but I saw some logic in it. Here, there's none that I can see.
In the final battle, she runs the ship herself again, something that should be impossible in the best of circumstances, let alone when it's all shot to hell. And didn't some of the Voyager crew die when those two ships got destroyed?
Philosophically, is this where Janeway crosses the Rubicon? Or was it in "Scorpion?"
I can understand her desperation here, but it doesn't say a lot about Starfleet protocol that it goes out the window when things get tough. Was Chakotay so insistent on maintaining discipline with Paris because he was living well, or was it because he was able to beat the crap out of Paris if push came to shove?
So some disturbing questions here.
And I'm not saying I hated the episode, or that it wasn't entertaining. It's just that it has Janeway make a really, really illogical decision that in the end doesn't really contribute to the story. They could have had much of the crew killed by a compartment blowout or something if they wanted to winnow down the crew, though there isn't much point in doing so, since we usually only see a small part of it anyway.