There are a few things about Unity that don't make sense. Why didn't Riley tell Janeway that the Cooperative would cause the Borg cube to self destruct after they'd gotten what they needed after reactivating the generator? Surely, Janeway would have been far more likely to have agreed to help them had she known this. Barring that, Janeway could have left them a shuttle and let them do it themselves after Voyager had left the area. At the end, janeway better understood why they did what they did out of sheer desperation, than did Chakotay who'd originally wanted to help them, but was now angry that "they didn't hesitate to force me when it suited their purposes". But what did he expect them to do?. He knew the hostiles were there with a battering ram bent on killing them. Should they have just submissively bowed their heads and died? I'd have done the same thing in such a desperate situation to save my own life, too, if that was my only choice. After all, they saved Voyager, too.
"Unity" is a great episode for Chakotay, and a nice bit of directing by Robert Duncan McNeil, but the script's not as polished as it should've been, or needed to be. Riley's given charge of her cooperative, but it's never clear why, beyond the simple fact that the show wants a woman in charge. Her leadership skills are simply not onscreen. She's very sweet, you know she's a good girl, deep down. But it would've been helpful to see her outside of being Chakotay's nurse and the Romulan's buddy. It may have been deliberate, to make her seem in-over-her-head, but I don't know why. When she meets Janeway and Kathryn's poo-poo'ing Riley's idea, Riley doesn't try to become more persuasive, somehow. She doesn't become impassioned about her cause, at all. She just gets this hang-dog expression and shuffles her feet, as she leaves the room. This woman is bereft of passion. Were she a diplomat, maybe, I'd kind of accept it, I guess. But she's been made to hang tough in a world that's out gunning for her. She can't not try to seize the moment. Which makes the case for her having only one intent, the whole time, which was to employ The Borg Telepathy Option. Had Chakotay not been injured, would they have trumped up some excuse to drill a hole in his head and fill his mind with Borg thoughts, anyway? So ... if The Borg Telepathy Option wasn't her motivation from the onset, which it seems like it was not ... then, it just makes Riley appear weak. Again, she's supposed to be a fighter. It's great that she's still sweet and femme, I'm all for that ... but she has no fight in her. Maybe it's just where she happens to be, when we meet her. Like she's losing her edge, I don't know. We're just not given enough information. Everything's set up to make it so Riley has to use Chakotay to do her Dirty Deeds, for the sole purpose of judging her for it, later.
All we know about the politics of the colony comes from Riley herself. Who's to say that she was telling the truth about the raiders? In retrospect maybe the "raiders" were storming the cooperative to prevent them from reactivating the Borg hive mind? Good episode.
I have a question about Unity. Whatever Borg tech. they used to heal his injuries in this episode. Wasn't it that technology he still had in his brain that enabled him to stop Seven from getting them all assimilated in Scorpion 2.
I think there's your explanation. It wasn't the cooperative's original intention to destroy the cube at all- so that's why Riley didn't say so, but after letting a woman behind the steering wheel (so to speak) they had to come up with a plausible excuse for this disastrous result ...
I just saw this episode for the first time and I am very surprised by some of the above comments. Riley was not "in-over-her-head" as was suggested above. From the beginning of the episode, she manipulated Chakotay and she was willing to consider all options. Eg, she sent the distress call using a Federation beacon (which she did not have to do, they could have sent a generic distress call and not pretended they were not part of the Borg) and called down the away team into a battlezone after which one of the Federation officers was killed, not for a standard distress call but because the mini-collective wanted Voyager's help to reactivate the cube. Riley and the mini-collective hid from Chakotay that they were going to take control of him even during their connection in the hive mind. She did not discuss with Janeway that reactivation of the entire Borg Cube was necessary; she said that they would take all precautions and do only what was necessary for their purpose. If Janeway knew that they planned on reactivating the whole cube and then were going to self-destruct it, that would make Janeway less likely to agree to their option, not more. What if the self-destruct sequence didn't work? It just opens up many more possibilities for things to go wrong. I do not see Riley being timid in the meeting with Janeway. She played her cards and knew that they were going to take control of Chakotay if Janeway did not agree. There was nothing else she could have done to convince Janeway - it was a option that there was no chance Janeway, or any federation captain, would agree to. Firstly there is no way that they would leave a shuttle when Voyager has limited resources and is in the middle of the Delta Quadrant. Secondly she told Chakotay that the implications of reactivating a borg cube and creating a mini-collective were profound and unpredictable, indicating that she wanted to be no part of it.
The cube was fully activated because Chakotay hit the wrong switch as he was phasered, so it is entirely possible Riley had sufficient measures to turn on what was needed but keep the rest of the cube off and not be a danger to anyone else. I agree that it was a good episode, especially when compared to a lot of the middle of season 3.
(You can pick and choose between sexism and racism, really, by choosing your spinoff context. The proper quip in general is the more specific "letting Deanna behind the steering wheel" - but considering the forum, and the hard statistics, "letting Chuckles behind the steering wheel" would be far more appropriate!) Timo Saloniemi
Actually, when I made the comment under criticism back in 2017, if I recall it correctly, it was meant to be a reference to both that tired Deanna behind the driving wheel joke and a stab to people who say these kinds of things in earnest. I had hoped the sarcasm would have become clear by the ridiculousness of the comment itself, but making these kinds of remarks in bare text without any further communication context (such as intonation or body language) is highly dangerous in terms of misunderstandings and I should have anticipated that. For those of you who were offended by this comment, please accept my apologies.
When I watched Voyager for the first time last year I was spoilered about a later episode (the one where Chakotay gets brainwashed) so I was very wary of Riley, thining it was this one! I wondered why Chakotay did not question anything she was telling him. She told him his co-worker was dead and he did not even ask to see her dead body. My only excuse is that he was badly hurt and probably not thinking straight. But he should have been much more suspicious.