This is one of those action-packed episodes that is super fun to watch. Mostly I like Star Trek for how it makes you think but sometimes it's nice to take a load off and just have some fun. The whole idea of Unimatrix Zero is cool and unique and Voyager wanting to help preserve it is a great premise. Not to mention I always love Borg episodes that involve Janeway and the Borg Queen.
What I don't really love is the way they jump the shark toward the end when part of Janeway's plan is to have her and her away team actually become Borg drones with some sort of inhibitor from the doctor to keep the voices of the collective out of their heads. When Picard got assimilated in TNG it was a huge deal. Bringing him back was treated as no small task and he had to suffer with their implants in him for pretty much the rest of his life. Seven of Nine reinforces this notion that leaving the collective is a life-long process even if we're only talking about the superficial mechanical components and ignoring the mental journey.
They brush off this over the top plan by feeding the audience some hand-waving explanation about them not being Borg for too long so they can be totally reverted back to normal. This flies in the face of Locutus who was a Borg for less than a day and struggles the rest of his life because of it.
Ultimately it's still a fun episode. I just wish the writers could have thought a little harder about a clever Janeway plan that didn't involve trivializing assimilation, which up until then was a much scarier consequence than this episode makes it seem.
What I don't really love is the way they jump the shark toward the end when part of Janeway's plan is to have her and her away team actually become Borg drones with some sort of inhibitor from the doctor to keep the voices of the collective out of their heads. When Picard got assimilated in TNG it was a huge deal. Bringing him back was treated as no small task and he had to suffer with their implants in him for pretty much the rest of his life. Seven of Nine reinforces this notion that leaving the collective is a life-long process even if we're only talking about the superficial mechanical components and ignoring the mental journey.
They brush off this over the top plan by feeding the audience some hand-waving explanation about them not being Borg for too long so they can be totally reverted back to normal. This flies in the face of Locutus who was a Borg for less than a day and struggles the rest of his life because of it.
Ultimately it's still a fun episode. I just wish the writers could have thought a little harder about a clever Janeway plan that didn't involve trivializing assimilation, which up until then was a much scarier consequence than this episode makes it seem.