User Reviews

Season five of Voyager comes to an exciting conclusion in this cliff hanger episode which finds the crew of Voyager up against an unexpected danger... another Star Fleet ship; The USS Equinox. The opening scene shows the Equinox coming under attack from a strange nucleogenic lifeforms, they send out a mayday which is received by a surprised Voyager. At first the crew of both ships are happy to finally meet another Star Fleet vessel after several years struggling to survive far from home. It soon becomes clear that the crew of the Equinox have abandoned several Star Fleet regulations including the Prime Directive. As the aliens continue to attack Janeway decides that the crew of the Equinox will transfer to Voyager and abandon their heavily damaged ship. Captain Ransom and his crew aren't happy with this and plan to steal Voyager's shield generator and make a run for the Alpha Quadrant using an improved drive which utilises a rather sinister power source. As the episode concludes Voyager is at the mercy of the aliens and Seven is caught on the Equinox as it departs at speed.

This was a gripping episode which left me looking forward to seeing the conclusion when season six begins. As well as the regular cast John Savage put in a good performance as Captain Ransom, one could sense the characters determination to get what ever he wanted no matter what rules he has to break to get it.

We get full savage Janeway here. You can say a lot of things about Janeway but she is true blue starfleet all the way and you could feel her rage throughout the episode ---- I found it compelling in the 'oh boy, what is Janeway going to do next?"

I liked the switching of the Doctors ---- provided the episode with some drama/tension. I was expecting the Doctor (the good one) to be a voice in ransom's ear (or a member of the Equinox) but hey --- it worked out fine the way they decided to go.

There was a interesting (valid?) point brought up by a reviewer that we humans have been eating lifeforms to live for thousands of years ---- how is this any different from that? Well, I guess it's the ability to communicate? Damn, I have no good answer. But I do believe we can all agree that summoning space angels and then boiling them down into space fuel is bad form for a starfleet officer in the 24th century.

The episode pulls back a bit with Ransom at the end. He gets a noble death --- sacrificing himself for his crew. It's the starfleet way, right? It just did not seem to fit the narrative of the episode to me. The overall message of the episode is about what can happen to us when we are put under the knife and compromises need to be made to ensure survival. What would you do? Would you die or would you sacrifice space angels? It would be nice to say that I would upkeep my morals and ethics and die a noble death but I sure do love living.

This is a pretty solid episode that tackles some meaty subjects.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The overall score for season 5 is 6.64. That puts as the lowest scored season of Voyager for me. Voyager always has wonderful idea's or premises for episode but often they needed a script revision here or there to make it work ---- That is easy to say in hindsight with not knowing how it will work on the screen.

I have to say I am a bit bummed out by the lack of Neelix/Tuvok episodes. Jerri Ryan is a great actress and not to shabby on the eyes but her presence on the show has definitely reduced the screen time of Neelix/Tuvok.

My favorite episode was Latent Image ---- A wonderful exploration of the Doctors conflict on having to make an impossible choice between who lives or dies.

The boxer was my least favorite episode. Great idea but baffling method to tell the story.

Best performance: Janeway / Doctor.

Since this is to be continued, I won't say much, other than there is a rogue set of Federation employees on board a starship. One of them is played by Titus Welliver, who, until Bosch, never played a single positive character. In going to the aid of these guys, Janeway has to become a by the book Commander who talks Federationese. But the bad guys are robbing Voyager of her power and leaving her adrift as things end.

CAPTAIN JANEWAY should've had everything transported from the USS EQUINOX and then destroyed the ship after CAPTAIN RANSOM said he wanted to go back to it so he could retain command

I remember watching this episode on UPN when it 1st aired and ACTIVELY HATING the USS EQUINOX crew and cheering when MAXWELL BURKE DIED

still not as annoying as HARRY KIM centric episodes

my score for :

DRAMA 7 STARS out of 10 STARS

ACTION 10 STARS out of 10 STARS

BASIC COMMON SENSE 3 STARS out of 10 STARS

TOTAL : 20 STARS out of 30 STARS

The appearance of the Equinox makes for a great new plot element to Voyager, one which based on experience with Voyager, you know will ultimately lead to nothing, due to status quo and Magic Reset Button.

However, this is just another lead-in to Janeway the Tyrant; Janeway's opinions and interpretations are law, and anything counter to that is inherently evil.

Captain Ransom of the USS Equinox is under attack by weirdy aliens that are like ghosts, with powers to instantly remove shields and create holes in subspace to enter into the ship and attack people. Voyager finds them and rescues them.

Apparently this ship got caught by the Caretaker as well, and has been travelling through the Delta Quadrant trying to reach home.

Skipping past all the character introductions and meeting their Voyager counterparts, it turns out the Equinox and Captain Ransom have a DARK AND EVIL SECRET, because nothing like this ever happens in the Trek universe without the other captain being blatantly evil.

So it turns out that these spooky ghost-y aliens are actually nucleogenic lifeforms, and they traded an energy converter with the keeper species for one of them. They wanted to study it, but it died, and they realized they could somehow convert its bodily substance into energy to make them go home faster. They travelled 10,000 lightyears in two weeks.

It's NEVER stated in the episode whether they took more of these creatures to kill them and use their body, nor is it explicitly implied---given that they only took ONE and then travelled TEN THOUSAND LIGHTYEARS AWAY, it's kind of impossible for them to go back on a raid for more.

Nevertheless, Janeway the Despot decides this is EVIL, UNJUST, and a VIOLATION OF THE PRIME DIRECTIVES! And because SHE decides it, that makes it true, despite the fact that the Equinox didn't have the sort of special adventures the Voyager did that allowed them to HAX time and space and find wormholes or Kes or quantum multi-spectral interferometric bullshit bullshits to let them get home faster.

A one-hundred plus year journey (because the Equinox cannot go past warp 8) could be cut down to less than two months, but JANEWAY THE DREAMCRUSHER says THIS IS WRONG AND EVIL because it involved killing ONE alien spooky ghost thing.

So she decides in her insane mind to arrest ALL the crewmembers, regardless of innocence or guilt or the captain being responsible for their actions, and locking them in their quarters, where once they reach Earth in 20 or 30 years, they'll be put in prison for 30 years for... FOLLOWING THE PRIME DIRECTIVE IN TRYING TO FIND THE QUICKEST WAY HOME AND TO SAVE AS MANY LIVES OF THEIR CREW AS POSSIBLE! Yes, JANEWAY THE BABYKILLER sees breaking ONE part of the Prime Directive in order to follow ANOTHER part as not a moral ambiguity or a conundrum of survival, but an ABANDONMENT OF OUR OWN HUMANITY! She believes that the Equinox and all their crew should have just dropped dead under nonstop hostile alien attacks (unrelated to this issue of using the ghost alien) or else die of old age trying to travel to the Alpha Quadrant, rather than bending the rules for a greater good.

It's something SFDebris once stated as a comparison between Sisko, Picard, and Janeway; Sisko follows the Prime Directives, and breaks them only when they get in the way of human decency and compassion. Picard follows the Prime Directives, no matter what usually because of human decency and compassion.

Janeway the Tyrant, meanwhile, follows the Prime Directives no matter what, usually to the detriment of human decency and compassion.

And that malevolent scumbag Janeway has the GALL to claim that abandoning our principles is abandoning that which makes us human. And bending strict, inflexible, easily interpretable rules in order to SAVE HUMAN LIVES apparently makes us less than human, in the eyes of Janeway the Terrible.

Nice premise for a series and a show, but I have a hard time watching it. If I didn't want to see Voyager come home, I would stop watching all together. In this episode, there are so many ridiculous logical faults that irritates me to no end. Disabled ships that aren't disabled. Rouge captains that condemn other captains for illegal activity, but then want to commit murder. Janeway is a moron. The plots she is given are even more stupid. Equinox is no exception and perhaps among the worst. Copies of doctors that turn on and off their ethical programming. Phantom supplies, decisions a 6-year old could improve upon and the litany goes on. Ugh!

Real life humans everyday kill crores of animal to eat their flesh.. here this episode showing that, killing some aliens to make fuel so Ship Equinox can reach to home earth is inhuman. what a joke.