NOW VOYAGER THE NEWSLETTER OF THE OFFICIAL KATE MULGREW APPRECIATION SOCIETY, INC. VOL. 5 NO. 3 * * * * EDITORIAL Janeway - Still Dreamin after all these years Disclaimer: Some of the words appearing in this article are not misspelled, they are part of the "southern" language and part of my background. For the record, I have an accent but I do not speak in this exaggerated manner... most of the time and I am in no way implying that being southern makes me a superior female. Remember... humor ladies, humor. ~ By Erin L. Blalock Ya'll might not believe this, but I'm southern. Born and raised in a little ole town called Memphis. And if you're wondering, I do wear shoes, I don't chew on hay and there ain't barn animals or a car on blocks in my front yard. It's true that we tend to take thangs slow down here, but that little tidbit is solely due to the heat and the over abundance of ever present rednecks who call you "darlin" and talk to your chest. And because of this environment, young southern ladies have learned to adapt to the deer hunting stupidity around them and emerge to what is commonly referred to as "The New Ladies of the South" here below the Mason Dixon line. Which brings me to Kathryn Janeway and the next season of Star Trek Voyager. Based on a purely genteel and southern state of mind, Kathryn Janeway is the essence of this "New Lady of the South." Let me elaborate for those of you unfamiliar with the finer ways of being this kind of woman. Our gracious Captain, and ultimately Kate Mulgrew, embodies many of the qualities that set southern women apart. We have seen Kathryn be vulnerable. We have watched single tears fall down a perfectly innocent and well-made face. Now we all know that southern ladies never appear in public without our rouge and lipstick. But we use that war paint to add the perfect touch to our own tears down here and like Kate, we use it all to get exactly the reactions we want and bring most men to their knees. We choose our words carefully and know just when to touch someone to make our point like Janeway. We stand our ground as rebel daughters and are purely devoted to our families like Kate. If you tied our hands behind our backs, we wouldn't be able to talk and we do have separate closets for our shoes and hats. But, if there is one thang we southern girls have perfected it's how to dream. This is easily done while sitting on your front porch with a pitcher of pink lemonade, your feet up on an ottoman and the skirt of your dress blowin in the breeze. And if Kathryn Janeway, and indeed the rest of us, is doing anything it's dreamin about this next season of Star Trek Voyager. The one absurdly repetitive desire for Janeway is for this little gal (I don't know about ya'll, but the fact that Kate Mulgrew is a size 4 is just too sickening for me. She's got 18 years on me and while I know I look good, I don't look that good.) to find love. Ladies, we have been down that dirt road and tried to pick up every torn jean, cowboy hatted young colt on the way. Our first Rhett Butler was her first officer and ya'll know as well as I do, we all have our sweet Georgia "sweep Kathryn up the stairs" stories floating around in our very imaginative minds. Then I do believe we had a holographic lord, an encounter with a "catfish" helm boy, an old fiancee impostor and an alien who just happened to be some serious eye candy. But what really frost's me is that we have these delusion filled good ole boy's who want Janeway to be the perfect role model for today's young ladies but disregard her ability to love. By giving Kathryn these rather pathetic, lacking and without substance types of "loves", they have shown that indeed you as a woman, southern or not, cannot have it all. Now any new southern woman worth the amount of money she pays for her nails to be done would quickly point out that this particularly male thought process is as old as their pa paw's teeth on the nightstand and is in total contradiction to the lessons we were taught since our first barn dance. So as I sit back in my wicker chair and listen to the crickets down yonder, the only dream I can dream for Kathryn Janeway is one of precious moments and pure delights in her life on Voyager. Since you're worth in life is based on the amount of friends you have and the number of barbecues you attend, I want to see her deepen the relationships with her senior officers and attend more parties in the Mess Hall. I want to see her curl up on her couch for late night talks with the girls, play hide and seek all over the ship or raid Neelix's kitchen at 3 am. To be rather honest, I want to see Kathryn Janeway as more than a stunningly beautiful, strong and determined leader. I want to see her be human, be what is most fascinating and rewarding about being a woman and be accepted. In my meek and understated point of view, I want Janeway to run with the big dogs and if she can't do that than I suggest those good ole boys keep her on the porch and let the rest of us hunt somewhere else. And as far as those amusing little diversions we call men are concerned, I don't really see a need on her part anymore. I know it's so distressing to see that I've grown frigid where Kathryn and men are concerned. But like the true southern lady I happen to be, tell me no more than once and you'll see nothing but the back of my head as I take my curves on to the next amusing diversion I can find. After all, she is a female Captain in the 24th century and if this "electronic age" is any indication, Kathryn Janeway can find a "happy bicycle face" at the drop of a warp conduit. I do thank ya for your time and ya'll come back now, ya hear? Another thought, the next day: Now I hope you enjoyed this little trip into the southern mind, but ya'll I just learned that TPTB at Paramount will indeed give our precious Captain a "love of her life" this next season. Once again life imitates humor because that love will be in the form of an alien or a hologram. Now I did refer to the electronic age as a possible answer, BUT would someone explain this to me?!? If the knowledgeable staff thought that getting Kathryn together with her first officer would send the wrong message to those of us who look to Janeway/Kate Mulgrew as an example of the kind of woman we want to be (in other words, that pairing would undermine her authority and is against "Starfleet" protocol) then what in the hell makes them think that pairing her with an alien she just met (This sends a message stating that it is perfectly fine to just jump into bed with someone without knowing them.) or pairing her with a hologram (Again, this pretty much proves that Kathryn is incapable of handling the ship, her crew and anything real at the same time, so it's better to drop Alice down in Wonderland.) ads credibility and depth to Kate's character? A character she has fought to develop and portrayed wonderfully since the shows inception. Yes, I am from the south and yes, I take things slow, but I am smart enough to know when I see Picard/Crusher all over again. And when you combine that lifeless pairing with the lip service given to the fans about Paramount constantly striving to give them what they want, that ladies and gentlemen is enough for me to change the channel to Deep Space Nine reruns and wait for Kate to take the stage in New York. REVIEWZZZZZZZZ Members are invited to submit reviews for this section, both current episodes seen in Canada and the U.S., and reviews of older episodes seen in other countries for the Overseas section. The Overseas reviews will be found at the end of the reviews section. A synopsis of the episode is included before each set of current reviews. The Nielsen rating covers only the Wednesday night UPN showing and does not include airings by other stations at other times. Send reviews by email to vulcan@iquest.net or mail them to Donna Christenberry, 1315 South Fifth Street, Terre Haute, IN 47802. We can't guarantee that all will be published, due to space limitations, but will try to include as many as possible. We reserve the right to edit reviews for length, content, grammar, etc. THINK TANK Nielsen rating: 3.7 Episode summary: During a clash with the Hazari bounty hunters, Janeway is offered assistance from a "think tank," a small alien ship containing a variety of life forms. Their spokesperson, Kurros, offers to help solve the dilemma with the Hazari, in exchange for Seven of Nine as payment. Jason Alexander! News at 11! "Seinfeld" star to guest star on "Voyager"! Can anyone say,"Ratings ploy?" "Think Tank" shoved a bunch of silly-looking aliens together onto a disappearing space station and joined them telepathically to solve the galaxy's problems - for a price! Jason played a smooth-talking shyster who mostly kept his hands folded together and enthralled his victims with his oily machinations. Along the way, the think tank guys managed to piss a whole bunch of people off and all the local dudes were just itching to get their hands on these guys. Personally, I don't think it was much of a stretch for Jason to play this character. Let's just say that he didn't show a whole lot of range. His best moment had to be his comments about coffee. Kate was very good here, and Janeway showed a lot of initiative in solving their dilemma. Working with their former enemy was a tad difficult, but they managed to pull it off. The finest scene in the whole episode was the very last one where all those aliens were bombing the crap out of the think tank. Maybe they should do the same thing to the executive producers of the show and hire some real talent when DS9 goes on permanent hiatus. - E. Klisiewicz Voyager is trapped by the Hazari, a race better known for their bounty-hunting skills than their intelligence. Just as the situation seems hopeless, the alien Kurros arrives to save the day. He's part of a crew whose mission in life is to solve problems - for a price. The price from Voyager is Seven of Nine, and Kurros makes certain that they have little choice but to pay up. Janeway makes just as certain that Kurros is the one who pays in the end. This was an episode about puzzles, manipulation, and the manipulation of puzzles. Manipulation always makes for an interesting plot premise because its power comes from exploiting doubts and fears, those dark places in the soul that can leave even the strongest character vulnerable and open to attack. Jason Alexander's Trek debut was a perfect vehicle for such a story. Alexander's performance of the slimy alien Kurros lent the show a delicious sense of - well - sliminess. Just that sickeningly arrogant half smile that Alexander sported throughout the episode was enough to make me uneasy, but it was his slick, smooth, car-salesman voice that really gave root to my aversion. He was so perfect! I didn't trust him from the moment he appeared in the teaser, but it wasn't an easily explainable distrust. In some ways my inability to pinpoint why I hated Kurros made his character all the more compelling. And of course, a viewer wouldn't realize what he was doing to Janeway until she does, when it's almost too late. I felt Alexander's portrayal was one of the strongest features of this episode. In many ways, "Think Tank" is very similar to the earlier episode "Counterpoint." Both episodes rely on the use of manipulation as a plot device, employed by men who enjoy the engineering of events and who try to get close to Janeway in order to get what they want. In both cases, Janeway out-thinks and outwits them, but comes close to losing something valuable in the process. We see her at her most vulnerable, particularly in "Counterpoint" where the stakes are high and the price is personal and a touch humiliating, but it's no secret that she will be hurt if she loses Seven of Nine as payment to Kurros and his crew of cunning mercenaries. Even if Seven voluntarily joins Kurros, Janeway will not be unaffected. She also can't fail to be affected if the Hazari capture "Voyager." These are interesting plot conundrums, and it appeared to be a lose/lose situation for Janeway and company. Watching Janeway prevail in such a situation should have proven to be a fascinating hour of entertainment. The key phrase is "should have." Aside from Alexander's performance of Kurros, "Think Tank" left me with a feeling that something was missing. Where "Counterpoint" emphasizes the manipulation of emotions, Kurros schemes using psychology. He's so confident of himself and of his control of the situation that he even goes so far as to mention Janeway's doubts and fears in their first interview, openly using his oily persuasion to make Janeway doubt herself enough to believe that she needs his help. Later he cunningly brings up the Borg's quest for perfection and Seven's probable boredom with her daily tasks to convince Seven of Nine into agreeing to be "payment" for his services to the ship. Kurros holds all the cards, yet he doesn't use his control to twist Janeway's emotions into a pretzel the way Kashyk does in "Counterpoint." His points of persuasion used on Seven are easily rebutted. He may offer Seven all she desires, but since he's not something she desires, it's easy for her to say no. He doesn't push the emotional advantage he could have over Janeway and Seven. He just tries to hustle Voyager's crew into doing what he wants them to do using tactics rather than emotion. Emotions are a much stronger motivation than logic. Because of this, "Think Tank" lacks the punch of "Counterpoint." It was too easy for Janeway to uncover Kurros' evil plot and to turn the situation around to her advantage. There's no point in Kurros' arrogance regarding his crew's superior thinking skills if all Janeway needs to do to unravel his schemes is push a button. On the other hand, if Janeway's so clever, why did it take her three hours to figure out that you out-think a think tank by giving it what it wants? Janeway prevails in both episodes, but I didn't get the sense that the stakes - Seven of Nine for the safety of the ship - were as high or as detrimental as Janeway's emotional betrayal in "Counterpoint," or that the puzzle of the think tank was really so hard to solve. Had "Think Tank" aired before "Counterpoint," I feel that it would have had a stronger showing. Quotes: "Do not destroy my faith in diplomacy." "Your diplomacy could use some polishing." - Kurros and Janeway - Linda Bindner Not one of the best episodes, but very watchable. I enjoyed seeing Jason Alexander as the bad guy. Granted, there was something a little off in his portrayal of a sinister yet Zen-like alien, but I've always liked Jason Alexander ever since I learned he was one of the singing gargoyles in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Maybe the real issue is that I've typecast him as a comedian and thus it was harder for me to take him seriously as a villain. But I enjoyed watching him, nevertheless, especially since I know he is a HUGE Trek fan and was very excited to do this episode. I thought the Janeway characterization was solid. She was cool and commanding under real pressure (escaping the gas cloud, dealing with the bounty hunters), she was rather buoyant and in a good mood (the caffeine jokes with Neelix, the banter with Seven about the Rubik's cube, the joke about "hold off on the torture"), she treated her crew well (she let Seven decide whether or not she wanted to join the Think Tank, she got their feedback about how to handle the Think Tank), and she showed her intelligence and hands-on approach (staying up late to work on the bounty hunter problem, investigating the bounty hunter's ship, etc....). The Think Tank aliens were pretty interesting as a collection of minds that solves puzzles for a price. I think they would have been more interesting if they had not been so ruthless - if they had showed mercy to the aliens in the opening scene who were worried about losing their food supply, and if they hadn't been the ones who hired the bounty hunters as a ploy to lure Seven from Voyager. If they really were the solution to Voyager's problem, then we might have cared about them a little more, rather than dismissing them from the get-go as the villain of the week. The Think Tank's one-dimensional nature made it a virtual certainty that Seven would NOT voluntarily choose to join them, as they would have only improved Seven's intellectual growth, but not her emotional growth. Other things I liked were the little plays on "think tank," such as the real Think Tank literally having a brain IN a tank and Janeway establishing her own think tank to out-think the Think Tank. Also enjoyable was the Rubik's cube device that Paris created to amuse our valiant crew; I always like to see evidence that they don't spend ALL of their free time on the holodeck. I also liked Seven - she had no obnoxiously rude or arrogant lines in this episode!!! Yet she was still as thoughtful and provoking as ever, and issued her zingers ("cheating is more efficient," "thinking has not elevated you") with typical aplomb. The episode wasn't very suspenseful because we knew the Think Tank wasn't benevolent, and it actually plodded in places, such as in the scene of Janeway's crew as think tank. But I'll give it a 7.0 for decent characterizations, plenty of Janeway, and a smattering of good scenes and amusing dialogue. - A. Goodhart What in heck is the point of having Jason Alexander play an alien who's not even remotely funny? I'm sorry if that's a shallow question, but I figured that if we were going to get a big-name guest star, the least "Voyager's" own think tank could do is give us a big story to go with him. This wasn't a dreadful episode - at least Kurros wanted Seven for her brains rather than her Borg assets like the folk in "Retrospect," her guts like the Hirogen in "Hunters," or her most obvious assets like the creep in "One" - but how many times can we sit through Seven-in-jeopardy stories before starting to wonder why in hell Janeway doesn't just jettison her pet Borg for the safety of the rest of the crew? Seriously, if Janeway ordered Torres to stay alive against her own wishes in "Nothing Human," I don't understand why she'd risk letting Seven decide to leave in "Think Tank." Maybe she never meant it - she suspected all along that Seven would choose to stay, and intended to find a way to persuade or force her if the girl chose otherwise. I prefer to believe she meant the choice to be an honest one, but it makes no sense. After she risked the entire crew to save Seven from the Borg a few weeks ago, I find it hard to believe she's ready to let Seven walk if the Borg announces it would make her happy. Janeway makes no sense to me at all. But this episode made even less sense. It was not exactly a surprise to find out that Kurros wanted Seven all along, but when he told Janeway to find and beam over to his ship with one other crew member, how could he be sure Seven would be the one Janeway would choose, so they could scan her? Really it would have made much more sense if Janeway had taken Tuvok. I rather liked the collection in the think tank, though their disembodied voices reminded me of the Gamesters of Triskelion in the original "Star Trek" series. The thinkers themselves looked like a gestating creature from the "Alien" series, one of those giant creatures which wanted to meet the whales in "Star Trek IV," and Nomad - or maybe I mean V'Ger. The episode was nicely filmed but the overall predictability of the images and plot alike didn't do much to show that fact off. And while Alexander had a surprising creepiness as Kurros, he didn't generate any chemistry with any of the cast regulars, and he was a bit too much like the guy who wanted to add Data to his collection in TNG's "The Most Toys." Nor was his character well-written enough to make Kurros seem like a real threat to Janeway, who was strong in the latter part of this episode - despite the weirdness of her willingness to let Seven walk - but who didn't look very bright for getting into the situation in the first place. Voyager fought the Kazon for months on end before she'd consider surrendering anything they believed in to trade for their safety, but now they're willing to think about swapping with these greedy sleazeballs after one attack? Maybe Janeway should kick her coffee habit and spend more time struggling with shipboard strategy than alien puzzles. - Em Wycedee JUGGERNAUT Nielsen rating: 1.7 Episode summary: Voyager rescues two crewmen from an abandoned, out of control Malon freighter that's about to unleash theta radiation. Torres leads an away team to board the freighter and contain the poison. Finally we get a Torres episode to follow up on her depression in "Extreme Risk," and it leaves me with one burning question: Why is it when Worf gets mad, it's excused as typical Klingon behavior, but when Torres behaves the same way, it's treated as a pathology which must be cured by alien meditation? First they won't let her grieve, then they won't let her refuse medical care by a mass murderer, now they won't even let her express a little frustration on the job. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, in Tuvok's book - and Chakotay's and Janeway's - seems to be limited to races whose behaviors fit their own personal codes of proper comportment. Yes, Torres was very naughty to break Doc's camera, but considering that she has a job to do in engineering making sure the ship runs properly and doesn't blow up, it's understandable that the oft-meddlesome doctor might drive her up the wall. At least she didn't break his nose. She's obviously a vastly better engineer than anyone else on board (well, except Seven, and Tom, and Neelix, but let's just block all those past episodes out for now), so like the exceptions Picard made for Worf to do things his way, Janeway should be doing the same for her Klingon Terrible. In "Extreme Risk," Torres' dislike of Janeway was portrayed as a symptom of her pathology. Here, it seems to be a part of her personality - and you know what? It makes sense. In the past couple of months, Janeway nearly killed and then demoted her lover, overruled Torres' own wishes not to be medically treated by a mass murderer, and turned increasingly to Seven of Nine as her expert on engineering matters. She's no longer warm, she no longer seems to care about Torres (or anyone else on her crew, save Seven) as a person. She may tell Tuvok she trusts her chief engineer, but I can certainly see where B'Elanna herself might doubt that. Paris was relatively sympathetic in his scene supporting his girlfriend, but he had no guilt about sneaking behind her back to ask Tuvok about how her training was going. Tuvok insisted that it was confidential, then made jokes about what a challenge it would be. Then Paris agreed that teaching his lady love to meditate would be like convincing a Ferengi to leave his estate to charity. Was this supposed to be funny? Because I certainly hope it's true. After a year and a half of kindler, gentler, pushover B'Elanna, I am delighted to see her resisting Janeway's Starfleet platitudes and Chakotay's talking to her like a 5-year-old. Yet once again, we're expected to take Torres' hot-headedness as a sign of her need for affection, psychobabble, and mysticism, rather than as an expression of the Klingon character she's had to repress for too long. Though one gets the feeling she's happier in Starfleet than she was in the Maquis, one really has to wonder whether she'd have found herself and her place in the universe a lot more comfortably among a group of people who know that Starfleet's lowest-common-denominator codes are too damn human-centric to be reasonable. Roxann Dawson gave a nuanced performance, showing us B'Elanna's embarrassment and unease as well as her rage, but she can't help looking over-the-top when the tantrums are written as tantrums rather than as integral Klingon traits. While we're talking about character continuity for Torres, since the writers went out of their way to resurrect the Malon, what happened to Torres' plan from "Night" to help the Malon treat their antimatter so that it wasn't so lethal? The idea was rejected by the Malon in the Void, but that doesn't mean she couldn't try again with a more reasonable candidate like Fezek. At least the episode made good use of Neelix, a former garbage collector from his life before Voyager; he might make a better boyfriend for Torres than Paris, considering that in this episode he seems to know as much about medicine and he's evidently more tuned in to her feelings. To ask a really dumb question: we know from the episode "One" that because of her Borg nanoprobes, Seven is resistant to radiation which is lethal to most humanoids. Not that I want to see any more episodes in which Seven and her superpowers save the ship, but why in heck was she not on the away team to the contaminated freighter? This could have been a perfect use for Ms. Borg and her Borg Things, and Torres still could have saved the day. Moreover, it would have made a lot more sense for Torres to be sparring with Seven, a perpetual antagonist, than with her oldest and best friend Chakotay. I did rather like the "Time Machine" plot in which the evil aliens and the not-so-evil aliens turned out to be the same exact species; this is one of the better pro-environmentalist episodes "Voyager" has done. -Em Wycedee As someone who was fretting at the time (that's putting it mildly) about Kate Mulgrew possibly leaving Voyager after season six, I was heartened to see how much the rest of the crew's interactions retained my interest. I liked seeing Chakotay with a backbone, being strong and firm with an edgy B'Elanna (even she looked a bit surprised). He was also pretty authoritative with the Malon too. I liked the scene with B'Elanna and Paris and their sweet little kiss - this is perhaps the first time I've felt their relationship mattered (other than the "Course: Oblivion" crew's wedding but you all know what I think about THAT wretched episode). The plot was mildly suspenseful, helped in part by a great Malon freighter set. It looked dark, dank, and dingy. I didn't pick up on the core crewman being the boogieman until B'Elanna identified him. It was nice to see an attempt to add complexity to the Malons; they weren't pure evil, which in my humble opinion is a pretty rare phenomenon anyway. I was curious though - what happened to the technology in "Night" which would have given the Malon a clean fuel? Why didn't anyone mention it in this episode? Another slight nit: B'Elanna's anger seemed forced and out of the blue. While B'Elanna is definitely one of the feistier members of the crew, we haven't really been treated to unprovoked rage or hostility very often. I think her rage needed more of a catalyst than the doctor getting in the way with his camera - I mean holo-imager. Nice clothes for the crew - B'Elanna's little frock with leggings outfit was cute, and I liked Tuvok's meditation outfit. My favorite part was the ending - B'Elanna was able to see in the crazed, embittered core crewman just where unmitigated rage could lead her. This made her actually try diplomacy - which she earlier disparaged along with Janeway - rather than give in to her own feelings of rage. But diplomacy fails, and B'Elanna is forced to clobber the crewman and leave him to die in order to save the sector (or something like this). But this time, unlike her rage at the doctor which didn't bother her one iota, it is obvious her rage deeply troubles her, makes her think, makes her feel unclean. So she tries the age-old method of purification through water. Or what passes for water in the 24th century, sonic waves. There were no tidy resolutions in this episode - B'Elanna must still deal with her anger, and the Malon are still using core crewmen to pollute other worlds and keep their own beautiful. But it was a nice little story - I give it a 7.5 out of 10. - A. Goodhart Engaging opening on this one. We don't see nearly enough of B'Elanna and Tuvok. Nice turn of tables when she remarks how cute he must have been as a child with his pointy little ears. Hey, does Paris know B'Elanna is in Tuvok's quarters and he's wearing a robe and lighting candles? "We were just meditating." Uh huh. I thought this would be exclusively a Roxanne Dawson vehicle but Robert Beltran displayed more fire as Chakotay in this episode than I can remember. Perhaps his character is a fighter, not a lover. His confrontations with B'Elanna and the alien crewmember added a lot of dimension to the character. I'd like to register my standard "Voyager" all-cheesecake no-beefcake complaint here. Why is B'Elanna the only one to take her shirt off in the hot grime? I guess if Chakotay won't even take his shirt off to box, he never will. I still have to lodge a complaint though, just for the record. You've got to like an episode which coins a new phrase: The Janeway Factor. There was a nice bit where Seven challenges Tuvok's belief in luck. When he attributes it to his experience with Janeway (not the way you think), Seven agrees that she beats the odds. Seven says she will factor it into her calculations from now on. For the writers, nice job of hiding the monster. Very X-Filesesque. There were even dark sets with green, backlit fog. When their communicators didn't work, I was expecting a call from Scully on the cell phone. Also for the writers, good example of the trust requirement. I'm also glad the writers didn't go for the "talking is always better than violence" route. In a compromise, B'Elanna did try diplomacy first. Every once in a while, though, someone's got to take the bad guy down. Brava to Roxanne Dawson for this and especially the final scene, in which she was able to convey quite a bit of anguish and relief without dialogue. Overall, this one gets two and a half out of five compression phaser rifles. - Walaleia SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME Nielsen rating: 3.4 Episode summary: To broaden her knowledge of human behavior, Seven of Nine gets lessons from the doctor on dating. During efforts to make a trade agreement with the monastic Kadi, Neelix unwittingly provides their ambassador, Tomin, with forbidden food and drink. I have to open this review with a couple of caveats. First, I'm not a big fan of the Sevenploitation episodes. I'm suffering from overexposure -hers. Second, I'm more of an action fan than a touchy, feely, mush fan. Sentimental fans should completely disregard everything I say. Synopsis: Seven tries to start dating with instruction from the Doc. Although the writers came close to showing us what we really want to see Seven do - fist-fight with B'Elanna - they just teased us. B'Elanna should have thrown the first punch after Seven's comment that everyone on their deck knew when Tom and B'Elanna had intimate relations. Who's stronger, a retired Borg or an angry half-Klingon? Inquiring, warlike minds want to know. Since he's a hologram, the doc's gossip mongering is pretty cute. So is the deviant alien morality police causing trouble for Neelix (who's supposed to be babysitting his immoral highness). Singing, however, is not cute. It's obnoxious. No more singing on Voyager please, especially from a hologram and a Borg. I'm pretty sure C-3PO and R2-D2 wouldn't stoop to this. It seems that I like Seven best when she is dashing the hopes of some inadequate yet inexplicably hopeful suitor. Such was the case with Harry. Merciless. Loved it. As Seven was getting ready for her first date, I had to wonder: if there is a mutual good vibe going on, how do you explain to your excited date that you don't quite have a full skin covering? Do you do that before you peel off your dermal regeneration suit or do you just try to get an honest reaction by withholding warning? Now that would have been an interesting scene. Overall I give this one only 2 out of 5 compression phaser rifles. No action, no cool graphics, and I doubt if any of us are really worried about Seven's ability to get a date. - Walaleia I loved this episode as a doctor episode, though I am ambivalent about it as a Seven of Nine episode; it was rather reminiscent of "In Theory," the TNG episode in which Data tries dating, but this time Seven fills the role as both observer of the human condition and would-be-participant. I actually found this episode more emotional because she does have feelings to be hurt, but the "My Fair Lady" story ripoff made the events seem more contrived than necessary. This story could have been told more movingly without the unnecessarily crass bet between the doctor and Paris. It is interesting to note that everyone who "loves" Seven does so only after they have begun to remake her in their own image of her. The doctor gets her to sing and dance with him, then Pygmalion falls for his Galatea. In a way, I actually found this an improvement on Janeway's relationship with her, which often seems entirely conditional on Seven learning the human values Janeway spouts and behaving according to the strict filial role the captain scripts. The doctor seemed more interested in whom Seven might be as a person than Janeway ever has. I did have to block out my memory of him "teaching" her social skills last season in "Prey," where he informed her that she should take blatant sexual harassment as a compliment. It's a real pity that Janeway has often been portrayed as a soul-stealing adversary of the ex-Borg, because logically Janeway should be the person to whom Seven would go for dating advice. I know it's probably anachronistic to think that because they're both women, they'd share a bond that Seven couldn't share with a man, but it is often the case that regardless of gender equality, people still prefer to discuss their sexual and romantic problems with a member of the same sex. Janeway is a human female, not a hologram, plus she does presumably have years of experience which Seven lacks. Then again, I can see why the writers would never have had Seven ask Janeway for any sort of dating advice. For starters, it would bring up the inevitable question of whether Janeway even enjoys dating since she hasn't done it in five years. It figures that Janeway had fun on Kadi - a planetful of prudes - with only a Vulcan for company. It is really, really sad that while "Deep Space Nine" is giving us several women who manage to integrate femininity and sexuality into their leadership personas, Janeway can't even wear a dress as her dress uniform. Robert Picardo's subtle, warm performance made it easy to feel for the doctor, and Jeri Ryan gave an absolutely terrific performance of the awkwardness and unhappiness of early dating. I also loved hearing them sing again. This show demanded good comic timing - at the beginning, for instance, when Seven suggested that dating leads to procreation and the doctor said "One thing at a time," then moments later he suggested that dating leads to marriage and she tossed his words back at him - both actors were admirably up to the task. I did have a few moments of unintentional howling laughter, such as when Seven said she was feeling tense from her chronographic sequencer. Does it never occur to her that her 4-inch heels might have something to do with it? Robert Duncan McNeill directed this episode; I did not particularly like Paris herein, either condescending to Torres about her probable lack of driving skills nor lecturing the doctor on love, but as a filmmaker McNeill's skills are admirable. And I must make note of Ethan Phillips playing the straight man to Tomin's wildness - lovely stuff. - Em Wycedee This terrific little episode treated us to wonderful character nuggets, as well as giving us larger insights into Seven's - and the doctor's - deepening humanity. It is a credit to the writers, by the way, that I am willing to suspend my disbelief and accept the doctor as having sentience, self-awareness, and even a soul. Ordinarily it is anathema to me to think of man creating these three S's out of inorganic, non-biological material. I always like to see episodes where Seven struggles with vulnerability and humanity and imperfection, rather than episodes where she is abrasive and arrogant. Even in the opening scene where Seven was spying on B'Elanna and Tom, she seemed a bit chagrined at B'Elanna's fury. And I loved her expressions of bewildered hurt during her awful date on the holodeck. The doctor notes Seven's interest in human courtship and suspects that her interest is more than scientific curiosity. With his typical buoyant enthusiasm, he develops a complete set of dating/social lessons for her (at least 35 - I wonder if he had a lesson on "The Goodnight Kiss" later on). I loved the references to these lessons, they were quite funny. Paris interrupts one of Seven's lessons at Sandrine's, and goads the doctor into placing a wager on Seven's performance at the ambassador's reception (a weak B story line). So the doctor rushes Seven's lessons, and convinces her to go on a practice date with a crewman. In another very funny scene, she logically and efficiently selects a date with the help of Harry Kim (who is informed by Seven that he is NOT one of the candidates). In another amusing scene where Seven defines dinner as the consumption of nutritional biomatter, she asks dateboy to join her for dinner. Now I thought dateboy was awful, he made no allowances for Seven's very new humanity, he had no patience or tolerance for her gaffes, and he lacked even the remotest hint of a sense of humor. What was he thinking, anyway, ordering LOBSTER in its shell for dinner? And once he saw Seven's discomfort with the lobster, he should have walked her through how to eat it. And he should have used humor to deflect Seven's embarrassment at splattering lobster all over him. Seven can be forgiven for not thinking about how to put HIM at ease, that's not something the Borg were noted for and her humanity is only a few years old. But dateboy himself needs some coaching from the doctor to see his date's very real distress and to respond with appropriate warmth and intelligence. Along the way, (this review is not in sequential order), the doctor's subroutines get worked up over Seven, and he is surprised to find how much he cares for her. I loved the moment when he was bopping around singing "You are My Sunshine" with Seven, and then he glances at her and is struck silent by the obviously tender feelings he has for her. And his awkward fluffing of her hair was just right. Picardo is such a wonderful actor, and the doctor is so well characterized. So the doctor takes Seven to the ambassador's ball, where Paris oh so smugly informs Seven of the wager the doctor and he made regarding her social skills. She is outraged and storms out of the reception. It's too bad that Janeway was off of the ship; she would have been a good person for Seven to vent and confide in regarding her dating experience and the Paris/Doc wager. Maybe we could have had one of those sweet Kes-Janeway moments that I miss, because when Seven is emotionally vulnerable she does project a certain sweetness. But this was not to be; Seven must have regenerated her Borg feelings in her alcove because the next time we see her and the doctor together she is essentially her old efficient self, although a bit more aloof and distant than usual. In the final scene we see Seven picking up roses from her alcove. She is observed by the doctor, who gives a wonderful speech about how much he has grown to care for her. Before I could pick my jaw up off the ground, we hear the door chimes and the doctor ends the program. Darn!! The rose scene was a holodeck simulation!! Seven enters the holodeck and gives the doctor a gift, stating that there are no dating candidates on board Voyager and she therefore doesn't need to continue dating lessons. There were so many wonderful humorous moments in this episode. The opening scene between B'Elanna and Seven was terrific - "there is no one on deck 9 Section 12 who is unaware of when you are having intimate relations"; the doctor and his "fortress ovum" speech was hysterical; Harry's hopeful "I play the clarinet" which was squashed by a terse "You are not one of the candidates, Ensign" in astrometrics was great. I really enjoy the rapport between Kim and Seven now; they tease each other but are highly supportive of each other. I did NOT like the Paris characterization in this episode. He was okay trying to calm B'Elanna, but he was so cocky and condescending toward Seven and the doctor. It's not like he is dating Miss Diplomacy himself, so why he should be so down on Seven's social skills eludes me. I also wasn't enamored of the ambassador subplot, but it was a parallel story (both Seven and the ambassador were sampling unfamiliar human "pleasures") and their experiences eventually connect at the reception, so it didn't really detract from the main story. I hate Voyager's formal dress uniforms. They make everyone look like dishwashing soap bottles. Finally, I can see why the doctor didn't share his feelings with Seven, but I don't think there would have been an ethical problem if he HAD, particularly the way he was thinking of going about it. In fact, I still hope that someday he does, when Seven is more emotionally mature and able to reciprocate. One final thought - Paris is aware of the doctor's feelings; who knows what he could do with that knowledge. This episode gets a 9.0. - A. Goodhart 11:59 Nielsen rating: 3.2 Episode summary: Captain Janeway reminisces about her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, her involvement with the Millennium Gate on Earth and learns a few things about the ancestor whom we see in flashbacks. How refreshing to watch an episode of "Voyager" that wasn't filled with fancy special effects, aliens with odd noses, female characters suffering nervous breakdowns, and Seven of Nine. This was a simple episode about Voyager's crew members helping one of their own on a personal journey. Fighting aliens and traversing strange anomalies may mean survival on Voyager, but so does taking a moment every now and then to focus on a crew member who might need some emotional support. Kathryn Janeway was trying to find a little bit of information on her family's history and her friends were there to help her. And, as an added bonus, Janeway's discovery of her family secrets didn't become some sort of lesson in humanity for Seven of Nine. I enjoyed watching the scene in Janeway's quarters with her and members of the crew sitting around and chatting. Janeway was very relaxed in that scene, draped all over her couch like a rag doll. After five years in command of this lost ship, she has proven to her crew that she is capable of handling any emergency the Delta Quadrant could throw at her. Her crew knows her abilities well enough that they can watch her relax with them, yet know that she is able to snap back into captain mode in an instant. And that goes vice versa as well: Janeway has enough confidence in her crew to let them relax in her presence without sacrificing any of her authority. She knows that she can enjoy conversation and coffee with them and when the next alien attacks, they will follow her orders without question. The final scene in the mess hall with champagne was a nice return to what had seemed like a growing tradition a few seasons back. I have missed those concluding scenes where the nine main crew members come together and make a toast to their success. Kevin Tighe has been around television for a long, long time. I watched him on "Emergency!" as a kid and I was rather intrigued when I heard he would be a guest star in this episode AND that he would be a love interest for one of Janeway's ancestors. Although he is 10 years older than Mulgrew, I thought there was quite a bit of chemistry between the outspoken woman and the crotchety old man who was trying to save his store. My favorite lines were "Is that a proposal?" that both of them shot at each other during the "dinner in Paris" scene in the bookstore. But those aren't the main reasons why I liked this episode so much. I liked it because it was refreshing to watch Kate Mulgrew finally get to play a decent character. Shannon O'Donnel was smart, attractive in a rugged sort of way, and certainly not afraid to speak her mind. She was a little insecure of herself and a bit in financial dire straits, but she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. She never apologized to anyone for her need to move around, even as she was proposing, so to speak, to Henry Janeway. She told him that while she can't promise she'll stay with him forever, if she does leave, he will go with her. I want her to command Voyager. I find it incredibly ironic that the late 20th century woman portrayed in this episode is far more liberated than the woman who lives in the 24th century. O'Donnel was by far more open, honest, loving, and certainly not afraid of her sexuality. Her obvious attraction to Henry Janeway didn't diminish her as a woman or weaken any of her strengths. Kathryn Janeway has evolved into a frigid and uptight woman, afraid of anything remotely resembling an intimate relationship. She has, over the past two seasons, been relegated to Mommy Janeway to a former Borg, a few dinners with her first officer (who looks like he'd rather be anywhere else but there), and has had only one male interest - but a man with ulterior motives. But then again, Kathryn Janeway is bogged down by the narrow-mindedness of 20th century writers. I would almost guess that Gene Roddenberry is spinning in his grave each Wednesday night as he watches Voyager's captain move farther and farther away from his idea of equality among all races and genders. I'm hoping that the scene in Janeway's quarters is the beginning of a change in Voyager's captain, that maybe she is finally learning to let people into her life. One small nit, and this is probably my own misinterpretation of a scene, but Kathryn Janeway appeared shocked at the discovery of Henry Janeway. It seemed to me that when Neelix found out that information, it was the first she had heard of this man. I don't understand how someone could know so much information (correct or not) about an ancestor and not know whether she had been born into or had married into the family. - Annmarie Daneker After watching "11:59," I have to wonder if Braga & Company want to rewrite "Voyager" history his way. In my opinion, you love or hate this episode, and I fall in the latter category for many reasons. I give Kate thumbs up for her performance as O'Donnel. She gave the character feelings and a soul. However, despite that performance, she alone couldn't carry the episode. I feel as if her talents were wasted on this episode. First off, the entire episode goes against the continuity established in previous episodes of Voyager. "Future's End" provided dialogue that Janeway had no clue what her 20th century ancestors were, and "Coda" reinforced what was mentioned in the novel "Mosaic" that Janeway was primarily influenced to join Starfleet by her father, Admiral Janeway. If Janeway's dialog in "11:59" had been slightly changed to state that O'Donnel was one of a few individuals who influenced her decision to join Starfleet, then I would have accepted the concept. But this rewriting of a major character's personal history goes against the grain of maintaining the show's bible that once certain aspects of a character's personal history are established they can't be changed. One can add to it or dance around it but not change it as dramatically as "11:59" has done. Second, the story and plot had a slow pace, there were dull, uneven connections from scene to scene, and the characters had very little chemistry. O'Donnel has some good moments with Jason Janeway but she and the elder Janeway provided no chemistry or sparks to make it believable that she had fallen in love with him. The story made it seem O'Donnel married Janeway out of easy necessary to keep her new job on the Millennium Gate. Captain Janeway's enthusiasm about her ancestor and her interaction with her crew were not convincing. I find it hard to believe that O'Donnel alone influenced her life so dramatically that she became a bit depressed after Paris told her that O'Donnel never took part of the Millennium Gate project. This again argues against continuity that Janeway's father was her primary role model, and others, such as Amelia Earhart (from "The 37's"), were secondary. Furthermore, I find it also hard to swallow that Janeway would have a nice, close chitchat with her crew in her quarters of all places. It would have been more believable in the mess hall or Chez Sandrine's. After all these years, why is she suddenly becoming so close to her crew especially after the recent months of her coming down on them? Totally doesn't make sense at all for the 180-degree change of attitude. If I could make a guess, I'd say that Braga is trying to provide a light Janeway episode after more than three-quarters of dark, Janeway-the-ruler episodes so as to convince fans that Janeway isn't all that hard-nosed toward her crew. Sorry, but "11:59" will not change overnight the dark feelings already established earlier in the season. Better luck next season. Overall "11:59" didn't cut the mustard as a convincing Janeway personal history episode. O'Donnel came out flat with her scenes with the elder Janeway. Captain Janeway, whose character has displayed such depth in the past, was one-layered with her revelation that O'Donnel alone influenced her to join Starfleet. The crew was just too open with her. The story was slow and didn't flow evenly, which showed that the directing was not good. The episode had too much of a 20th century sitcom feeling, which doesn't mix well with the Trek universe, and it screwed up Trek continuity too much. The only good thing was Kate's performance, but as stated before, she alone couldn't keep the episode afloat. To me, if they wanted to show good Janeway personal history, next time focus on staying in the 24th century with dialogue and some pictures for effects and do research in what has already been established. I clearly don't like to watch Trek to see people and places which can be easily found by driving to the nearest city and to watch continuity thrown out the airlock. "11:59" didn't provided the mirror of humanity that Trek was originally meant to do. It gave a copy of what we already know in our backyard. - George Padovan I was not looking forward to this episode. I couldn't imagine in a million years why - as much as I adore Janeway - I would care about Janeway's ancestors. Especially an ancestor I'd never heard of in any earlier episodes or in Jeri Taylor's Janeway biography book, "Mosaic." But I was enchanted by this sweet, slowly paced episode. In "11:59" we encounter a more casual, relaxed Janeway than usual - as well as her crew. I enjoyed these crew characterizations enormously; Janeway can't be stomping on wayward crewmen or kicking alien hinny every day of the week. It is easy to imagine that those on Voyager would have long stretches, months perhaps, of smooth flying, without threats, without supply problems, without crew problems, and would lapse into "everyday" life mode. Just hanging out with each other, whiling away the hours chatting and taking up new pursuits like genealogy or dating ("Someone to Watch over Me") or solving that Rubik's cube toy Paris created in "Think Tank." I also really enjoyed the flashbacks in this episode, which is a bit surprising because I didn't enjoy the flashbacks in "Dark Frontier" at all. Is this related to the fact I would probably enjoy seeing Kate Mulgrew read a phone book? Nawww. I think the real reason is that Shannon was much more likeable than Seven's parents were. This may seem odd, because Seven's parents really WERE engaged in heroic scientific pursuit, and Shannon was rather a drifter, just soaking up life experiences and trying to get by. In Janeway's mind, perhaps, Seven's parents might seem more admirable and inspiring than the deflated Shannon. To my mind, however, Seven's parents were too single-minded and arrogant to be admirable, not to mention extremely misguided and selfish to bring a young child on such a dangerous mission. Shannon, on the other hand, was open-minded and warm, calm and honest, and had an excellent rapport with Jason, Henry's son. I cared about what happened to Shannon, whereas I didn't care that Seven's parents got assimilated - they were just asking for it - I only cared that Seven - Annika - was a casualty of her parents' obsessive scientific curiosity. The depiction of Henry Janeway was interesting - an older man, a big-hearted curmudgeon anchored in the past. Captain Janeway definitely derives some of her characteristics - like stubbornness - from him. But Janeway's love of exploration and science easily have their roots in Shannon, although Janeway herself isn't privvy to this. I liked seeing how Janeway dealt with losing a heroine. For 40-plus years she's believed that Shannon was larger than life - flown into the state by the governor to work on the Millennium Gate, directly responsible for its creation, a famous astronaut, etc.... Her situation is similar to a child learning that Santa Claus doesn't exist. She could have breezily blown off her discovery, and she tries to project the image of having done so, but it's clear that she is profoundly disappointed. Her wry conversation with Chakotay about holographic B'Elanna and Captain Chakotay was well done, especially Chakotay's gentle response, "Don't be too hard on her, she didn't know she was supposed to live up to your expectations." Janeway even comes close to refusing to put Shannon's family portrait in her ready room. This tells us a lot about the exceedingly high standards of Captain Janeway. I enjoyed seeing the crew work around her disillusionment, telling her not to underestimate Shannon's role and value to her own life. And I like the way Janeway responds with humor to her crew's efforts to cheer her up, joking that if she hadn't become a Starfleet officer they wouldn't be lost in the Delta Quadrant. It's a joke, but it has a sting at her expense. This is a nice bit of continuity to the episode "Night"; it makes sense that everything that depressed her in "Night" would still be affecting her. The difference is that in "Night" she allowed herself to become incapacitated, whereas now - and prior to entering the void in "Night" - her guilt is a source of strength, fueling her obsessiveness to protect her crew and get them home. So why did The Powers That Be think this story about Shannon and Janeway was worth telling? Who knows? But I thought it was worth watching for its reminder that our present, and our future, are linked to our past, in ways we don't even know. I think about this whenever I look at a certain picture of my great, great, great-grandmother, who looks uncannily like me. It makes me wonder, what else did she bequeath to me? The episode also points out in no uncertain terms that the true nature of our past is ultimately a mystery, because it is filtered through human experience and expression. Even hard data like birth records isn't always clear or accurate - the paternity of one of my ancestors is unclear because family oral history differs from birth records. Anyway, I liked this episode a lot and give it a 9.0. - A. Goodhart "11:59" was a mixed blessing as far as Voyager scripts go. On the one hand, it was a delightful and relaxed excursion for Kate Mulgrew, who sparkled in every scene as her ancestor, Shannon O'Donnel. For some reason, I was reminded of her work in "Riddler's Moon." Maybe it was the sleepy pace, or maybe it was her performance, and it might even have been the setting in the Midwest. I will say that I went into this with a tired brain, and by the show's midpoint, I fell asleep on the couch. My foggy brain was never quite able to grasp just what the Millennium Gate was supposed to be other than some glorified shopping mall. "11:59" certainly wasn't very exciting, but one nice thing was seeing the other senior officers kick back and describe their own ancestors. I suspect that life on a starship would have a lot of this down time and very little action as it crossed the vast expanses of space. So, I don't have anything really bad to say, but this episode certainly won't win over any new fans. - E. Klisiewicz Janeway discovers that her role model, an ancestor from the twenty-first century named Shannon O'Donnel, wasn't the important personage she had always thought her to be. Janeway grew up thinking Shannon was instrumental in many of the Mars missions, only to find out that she had nothing to do with Mars beyond looking at it through a telescope. In fact, Shannon's only documented accomplishment seems to be that she was a consultant on the famed Millennium Gate, and married to a man named Henry Janeway. According to Captain Kathryn, this is hardly the makings of a role model. So only hours after proudly boasting of the famous woman who influenced her decision to join Starfleet, Janeway drops Shannon O'Donnel like the ancestral sludge she is. And as far as I'm concerned, this little pique of human failing saved this episode from the realms of the movie-of-the-week sludge that it is. Janeway's early preoccupation with Shannon was fascinating to watch, but not nearly as fascinating as her later, truer perceptions of Shannon. The fact that Janeway turned her back on a woman who was her lifelong inspiration once Janeway found out the inspiration wasn't deserved is typical of the disappointment and betrayal she must have been feeling. I can imagine that it took her quite a lot of soul-searching to come to terms with that disappointment. She must have gone through several definitions of "role model" before she settled on one she could live with. But all this makes you wonder which is real - the Shannon from Janeway's early golden vision, or the tarnished version that's the real Shannon? Are stories of grand accomplishments more believable, and thus more inspirational, than the real struggles of a woman down on her luck and rejected by NASA? Did it matter what Shannon was? Or was Janeway's perception of Shannon the important thing? Is it wrong to be inspired by a perception? For that fact, isn't all of history based on a perception? Janeway even delved into the "all of history is biased" theory when she started to research her own family history. If history is biased, which it can't help but be, then it's not history at all, but a perception of the facts. If it's a perception, then history can be anything we want it to be. If Janeway wants Shannon to be the perfect woman to make the perfect role model, then that's her choice. But if she wants to take the revised perception of Shannon that she has by the end of the episode, then she can create a new role model of Shannon, perhaps one more accessible and useful to her now that she's a starship captain rather than a young girl hungering for glorified adventures in space. In its turn, watching Shannon in the flashback sections was equally as fascinating as watching Janeway, most notably for Shannon's behavior that was so akin to Janeway's behavioral quirks. Shannon was depressed beginning with her introduction in the episode, and Janeway was depressed beginning with her introduction to the real Shannon. Shannon displayed that reluctance to get involved with people, that driving need to do it alone, that no-risks, no-commitments, no-roots-no-matter-the-cost attitude that we're all familiar with. We've seen this same uncomplimentary behavior from Janeway many times in the past. After all, how many times has Chakotay told Janeway that she isn't alone? At least Shannon only needed the jolt of stale cookies to realize that she could still be in control of herself while being involved in a relationship. The similarities between Shannon's character and Janeway's was an insightful addition to the story, and well implemented all around. However, except for Shannon's behavior, her backstory lacked detail, interest, and any kind of spark. The ploy of "stuck in the past versus stuck in the future" wasn't enough to pull the episode out of the mire of unanswered questions: What was so important about the Millennium Gate? Why was there no opposition to it? Why did Shannon get cut from NASA? Why was she destitute? Why did she spend so much of the episode looking like a hunted convict on the run, trusting no one? There was just too much detail left unexplored. It needed to be a two-parter for this to feel like a complete story. As it is, it's disappointing. Now, the parts that took place on Voyager, the parts that questioned Janeway's beliefs, and the facts, and history - the parts that make viewers question everything, from perception to fact to fantasy - now that's good entertainment! Quote of the week: "Shannon O'Donnel inspired me when I was a girl. She had a - an influence on my imagination, on my goals - I wouldn't have become a Starfleet captain if it wasn't for her." - Janeway - Linda Bindner RELATIVITY Nielsen rating: 3.3 Episode summary: In an episode that revisits Janeway's first day aboard the U.S.S. Voyager and then fast forwards 500 years beyond it when her ship is destroyed, Captain Braxton of the 29th century Federation Timeship Relativity contacts Seven of Nine to go back in time to solve the mystery of who planted the "temporal disrupter" which ultimately destroyed the U.S.S. Voyager. I enjoyed this story, just as I enjoyed it the first time I encountered it, in Vonda McIntyre's "The Entropy Effect" - the very first "Star Trek" novel from Pocket Books and one of the finest. In that book Spock chased a madman from the future whose double in the past had created a device similar to Captain Braxton's, causing similar chaos among past and present crews. Having read that novel, it was entirely too easy to predict all the twists and turns of this inferior copy, like Braxton himself becoming the psychotic saboteur. Still, it was fun to see Janeway wear the bun of steel again - and if it was less-than-fun to see Seven hailed again as the only person capable of setting the universe right, I guess that's the way it goes on this series. Other than the blatant theft of a previously better-told story - hardly a new problem on "Voyager," which gets most of its watchable episodes by recycling the previous Treks - my main criticisms of "Relativity" have to do with that pesky continuity issue. On the one hand, it was really nice to see Joe Carey for the first time in four years. On the other hand, the only thing we ever learned about Joe Carey (other than Torres broke his nose in "Parallax") was that he had a wife and two sons he wanted to get home to so badly that in "Prime Factors" he helped steal the Sikarian trajector to make an attempt. Here, he spends most of his screen time hitting on Seven of Nine. What's the point in resurrecting a character from the past if the writers are going to turn him into a different person? One might ask the same about Captain Braxton, whose ship and uniform have changed so much that if his name wasn't hammered into our heads, I for one would never have guessed that he was the same guy from "Future's End." I liked the references to that episode and to "First Contact," but if the writers think the temporal theme excuses the confusing plot circles, I'd have to disagree. My final complaint on this count is nitpicky but it's not minor. In "Caretaker," when Janeway requested that Paris accompany her on the mission to track down Chakotay and Tuvok, it was strictly as an observer: she made that point to him quite adamantly before reluctantly giving him the conn when Cavit and Stadi died. So why in heck does Janeway tell the admiral in "Relativity" that she must have Tom aboard as her pilot? It's just plain annoying that the writers couldn't read the script for "Caretaker" to remember the details I suppose we fans are meant to forget as well. There were some nice humorous touches in here: Janeway's ongoing temporal headaches, the early, cranky doc, Seven trying to win over her own trust. On the other hand, the speed with which Janeway trusted a Borg infiltrator on her ship before launch when she was about to head after Maquis saboteurs was almost comical itself. The pacing was good, but I'm not clear why present Captain Braxton could be arrested for crimes he hadn't yet committed - by that logic, Braxton was right to try to stop Janeway before she launched - and in general the amusing possibilities of time travel wiped out any scientific interest, since the timeline repair was turned into a joke. I may as well admit that I had a few fantasies during this episode. Of course, one was that Seven would stay dead, but I'd be willing to concede her role on the ship if just once the writers would stop resorting to gimmicks using her Borg talents. Another was that we might actually see some second-season Janeway/Chakotay interaction during the scenes with the Kazon, but we barely saw Chakotay (other than that fun scene in triplicate), except to criticize the captain for chasing sensor ghosts which of course were no such thing. The final, specious fantasy was that we might see Kes. We COULD have seen Kes - just as we could have seen Suder, Jonas, Hogan, even Culluh and Seska amid the Kazon, like we saw Carey. But this was more of a throw-a-bone homage to early "Voyager" than a genuine reunion like "Deep Space Nine's" final episodes. - Em Wycedee Grab your aspirin bottle, it's another temporal anomaly episode. This one pulled out all the stops by going to Voyager's past, present and future. I was actually surprised the most by the past. (Their past, our future - how's that Bayer working?) Two things are obviously very different about Starfleet compared to today's military. First, judging from the size of the admiral who greeted Captain Janeway in dry dock, the weight standard has been thrown out the air lock. Secondly, sexual harassment is apparently no longer punishable. "Come over here and give me a hug, Katie, and that's an order." Gee, that's certainly not demeaning in front of a crew she's about to command on an antiterrorist mission. Peeking into Voyager's infancy was interesting. As usual, the computer-generated graphics were great. It was also fun to see Janeway's first occupation of the command chair. What I would have really liked to see was the look on the hair stylist's face when they said they wanted the infamous long hairdo back. Seven's entrance was well written and staged for shock value. In a really good bit of comic relief, loved Seven's brush-off of Lt. Carey. It was particularly amusing (and accurate) because he didn't seem to realize he was being brushed. Seven probably walked away thinking, "What a waste of plasma!" and Carey probably walked away thinking, "She wants me." The guest cast was better than most. Captain Braxton, commander of the Relativity, is the exasperated timeline patrol after Captain Janeway. He refers to her as "That Woman." My philosophy is you know you've done something right when a short-sighted administrator refers to you as "That Woman." Cool graphics on the Relativity, too, but I wish we had a more lingering look. Maybe I'm the only one prone to spaceship lust. Speaking of lust, for the Janeway/Chakotay romance fans, there wasn't any in this episode. I'll bet, however, a few were hopeful when she reported to the doctor she'd been experiencing nausea and dizziness. Sorry, no bun in the oven - yet. Nitpick: Why doesn't B'Elanna from five years ago freak out when she runs into present (our future) Janeway with short hair? I don't care if they were at red alert; when someone with long, auburn hair cuts it, everyone comments. Best time joke: When Janeway says to Captain Braxton, who's been suffering a sort of "Groundhog Day" experience as an occupational hazard, "Come here often?" Overall: 3 out of 5 compression phaser rifles for this one. Some good jokes, a good cast, cool eye candy and a nice whodunnit ending. - Walaleia Not much to say here - a delicious cream puff episode that didn't leave me with much to chew! I did try to diagram a timeline and make sense of the temporal jumps and anomalies and questions I had. But after about half a second I threw my disbelief (and the diagram) out the window and decided to just enjoy the show. I loved this episode. From the opening scene with Captain Janeway beaming onto a pristine Voyager still at dry dock, I was hooked. Several little mysteries were folded into this confection of an episode. We the viewers want to know what Seven is doing on Voyager three years before she is removed from the collective, minus implants and wearing a Starfleet uniform. Then there is the mystery our crew faces within the episode of strange chronoton fluxes, ill crewmen, and hovering ping pong balls. Add in the mystery the Timeship Relativity is trying to solve of just who destroyed Voyager in a temporal explosion? The episode has many nice character moments. Mulgrew easily recaptured the early Janeway's easy grace and confidence as she strolled about her ship, her regal bearing and good nature as she addressed the admiral and answered his questions, and her unfettered happiness as she first arrived on the bridge of Voyager and sat in the captain's chair - her chair. I enjoyed her confrontation with Seven - she was tough, but in an inexperienced way, without the almost jaded edge that the Janeway of Season five has in similar encounters. I loved seeing and hearing her reactions to Tom Paris (give the boy a second chance, he's a great pilot) and the doctor (his program needs some work in the personality department). The fact that these stories weren't 100-percent consistent with what we know from the pilot episode "Caretaker" or the novel "Mosaic" just didn't bother me. The scenes with Seven and Tom were a lot of fun. They had the comfortable banter of real friends as Tom goaded Seven into participating in a ping pong match (call me a luddite if you will - I love to see those non-holodeck recreational activities). Seven was great - unflappable, taking time travel and temporal bombs in stride, fitting in better with the crew, respecting Janeway's talents. I did think it was hysterical that someone would detest Janeway so passionately - and this from someone who adores her! My husband laughed out loud when Braxton went into his Janeway tirade. Janeway is so strong and opinionated and confident and stubborn - it is natural she'd pick up a few enemies. As I said earlier, I just rolled with the episode's continuity inconsistencies. But I did have a slight nit: Janeway going back in time to stop Braxton seemed like an add-on to avoid yet another Seven-saves-the-ship episode. It seemed awkward in the episode. All in all, very watchable and enjoyable - it gets a 9 out of 10. - A. Goodhart WARHEAD Nielsen rating: 3.3 Episode summary: After Voyager receives a distress signal from an alien missile, the crew determines that it's a complex, damaged weapon with artificial intelligence and sentient consciousness. When they beam this mysterious device aboard, it interlinks with the doctor and insists Voyager help it to fulfill its mission of mass destruction. Some of the mystery and romanticism is taken away from the general life of the crew in this episode; yes, there is a night shift! The junior officers do have control of the ship at designated times! Janeway and Chakotay aren't superhumans who work twenty-five hours a day! I've always wondered about the existence of separate shifts, and this episode addresses that previously unexplored aspect of running a starship. I've also always wondered about the junior officers. Who are they, anyway? Isn't it amazing that the only people who ever seem to do anything on Voyager is the senior staff? Of course, I realize that this show is about the nine established characters, and it would be unrealistic to highlight the junior officers on a regular basis, but it's great to see a few pop up every now and then. The night shift's attitude in the teaser is relaxed and slightly informal, exactly what one might expect from a less stressful shift. Though Harry takes his command responsibility very seriously, the banter between him and the officer at conn is lighthearted and a refreshing change from the normal militaristic bridge talk we see during the latter half of this episode. It's so rare for viewers to get the chance to see the background details of these people's lives that I soak up every bit that the production team lets slip our way. We've watched Starfleet's commanding officers save the universe for 30 years now; I'm still interested in watching them do the same for 30 more, but at this point I find the mundane things like third shift more intriguing, simply because we've seen far less of it. I like to watch Harry play at being captain, making command decisions, then relinquishing his game when the situation moves beyond his authority. Turning the situation over to a superior is something that most of us can identify with. I like the fact that Harry had to wake Chakotay, who's still getting dressed as they walk down the corridor; that's so real, and I love all those little details. Another feature of crew life that's often overlooked is exemplified by the fact that Chakotay rather than Janeway is the head of the team attempting to rescue the ship from its bomb-induced hostage predicament. So much revolves around the captain that we tend to forget that Chakotay is the commanding officer of the crew. It's good to see a reminder of this every now and then. The bulk of the episode, the "bomb takes over the ship and threatens everybody with mass destruction" scenario, was a tad trite and overdone. I classify it as a typical crisis-of-the-week plot device, even though Harry saved the day rather than the captain or Seven of Nine. It's all the minor points detailing the regular life of the crew that made this episode unique and interesting. Quote of the week: "One of these days, you'll get the call to take the bridge, and maybe then you'll understand the burden of command." - Harry Kim - Linda Bindner In command on the graveyard shift, Harry answers a distress call. It turns out to be weapon of mass destruction with artificial intelligence. Not realizing it's a bomb, Harry is convinced by the doc to beam it on board to try to save it. The bomb then takes the doc's matrix and the crew of Voyager hostage to try to reach its target. It's hard to believe the crew has survived five days, much less five years, making the bad tactical decisions made in this episode. What is this thing? Gee, I don't know. Can it do us any good? Probably not. Can it do us any harm? Gee, I don't know. Okay, lets beam it on board instead of taking a look at it on this planet on which we can apparently operate just fine without any biosuits. Excellent idea. I see Voyager doesn't have any safety or standards evaluations officers. In her defense, I'm sure Captain Janeway was hoping it was some sort of MegaMelita but that still wouldn't solve the problem of coffee bean and filter supply. This is where I have to decry the lack of enlisted folks on Voyager again. They would have just put wheels on it and made it serve drinks and it would've remained harmless. Two thumbs up to Robert Picardo. I'm sure it's not easy playing a nuclear warhead. When the yelling got to be a little much I wondered what a nuke on Prozac would be like. Good performance from the alien of the week too. Inflection, syntax and mannerisms filled in the character quickly, despite having to filter through - whatever that goo is they make them wear (latex?). Even though I liked the alien, I liked the explosion of his ship even better. Strokes for the graphics and FX folks. Is anyone else tired of Harry feeling sorry for himself when he screws up? The next time he fumbles a mission and endangers the entire crew (this isn't the only time), there should be a deafening silence of confirmation when he says he's a loser and not worthy to lead. Here, Harry, take some of the warhead's Prozac and go color. In the script department, it was a nice twist to have the rest of the arsenal show up. I have to hand it to the bridge crew. Thirty-two nukes with Artificial Intelligence show up off the port bow and not a single choice expletive is heard. I could tell you what we would hear over HF if that happened today, but it couldn't be printed here. Overall: I'd give this 3 out of 5 compression phaser rifles. A little action, interesting concept, no singing and no Captain Proton - Walaleia Let's play "Plagiarism Association," shall we? "Warhead." "Wargames." Voyager. V'ger. Nomad. "Prototype." Mudd's androids. Data's exocomps. "Dreadnought." "Drone." "Darkling." "Dark Star." Smart Bomb. Maxwell Smart. "Terminator 2." I could go on and on and on, but what would be the point? Suffice to say that anyone who couldn't figure out exactly where "Warhead" was going after the first 15 minutes has obviously never sat through a Trek "we must try to preserve EVERY life - form no matter how evil it seems!" episode, nor a science fiction "our technology is killing us!" movie. As if that weren't enough, the Voyager crew tried out the really novel "let's get Seven's nanoprobes to save the day!" approach to the problem, then reverted to the just-as-novel "since the captain's willing to let her ship and crew be destroyed in the name of the Prime Directive, let's have a junior officer come up with a better plan!" solution. In other words - I thought this episode was very bad. Even Robert Picardo couldn't do a thing with it: he played a variation of the Evil Possessed Doctor from "Darkling," torturing hostages and all, but it came across as over the top and poorly rationalized. If the point was that an artificial intelligence doesn't have to act like a bomb just because it's built into a bomb, how come this one still had an explosive (yukyukyuk) temper? I liked the bomb best at the beginning, before it could talk, when it played R2-D2 to the doc's C-3PO. That sequence was truly inspired and highly amusing, with Picardo answering questions we could only hear as a series of beeps and whistles, using his wonderful vocal inflections to get laughs out of lines like "I'm sure you'll be quite handsome [as a hologram]." Kudos to Garrett Wang, who made Kim the most redeemable feature of this episode. He was charming as a bouncy kid on the bridge, and sympathetic believing he'd screwed up. Janeway joked to Chakotay that the eager ensign may be after his job - what a great idea! There appeared to be two captains in this episode, and I don't mean Kathryn and Harry - I mean the one with a rather short bob in engineering and a 2-inches-longer, straighter hairdo on the bridge. I realize it's ridiculous to focus on the captain's hair, but sheesh, it's hard not to notice when it starts acting like an alien shapeshifter. Can't they keep it consistent within a single episode? I got rather lost on the logic of why the 32 missiles which had passed the target threshold came all the way back to pick up one straggler instead of going on to wreak havoc on their destination. Seems like it would be lousy planning for a war to have your soldiers stop to do a head count, then go back for Private Ryan even before they could land on D-Day. - Em Wycedee Brannon Braga must be real proud of himself. Imagine throwing such a bone of an episode to us hungry hounds during sweeps. Can't you just see the smug little varmint sitting in his office on the Paramount lot, rubbing his hands together with evil derision? It's no secret that I despise this guy and think he is a clueless git who lucked into a job during the TNG years. He's foisted one brainless, recycled plot after another on the viewing audience and has obviously expected us to swallow the litter he calls screenwriting. Well I got news for you, Brannon. I got my Recycle Bin ready and waiting to eat your scripts. "Warhead" is appallingly and laughably Bad with a capital B. It is an insulting exercise for the highly talented thespians that make up the Voyager cast. I can't imagine why Kate continues to laud this man's talents, but hey, she has to pay the rent too, and it's not wise to bite the hand that feeds you. In any case, "Warhead" has a few funny moments. The Doctor is cute as he talks back and forth with the warhead, and he is really funny when he screams, "I must complete my mission." Or how about when his possessed holomatrix asks if the Doctor stops being a Doctor? In reply to Harry's response, he says that one never stops being a warhead either. We already got da big bomb in "Dreadnought", which was a far superior episode to this drivel. Brannon and company have ripped off so many of their own plots, and done it badly, that it's really sad. I also have to mention another case of a talking bomb: "Dark Star." This was John Carpenter's first film, and it was quite amusing. Everyone who's seen it remembers the talking bomb, who was the true star of the film. The only thing that Braga got right was that Voyager's talking bomb was also the star of this episode. Garrett Wang was OK, but it made me wonder about him and this Ensign Jenkins. Why is it that Harry Kim, an ensign, is part of the senior staff and this other ensign is part of the junior staff? Go figure. I also have to mention how stupid the swarm of missiles was at the end. Was this an excuse to give Foundation Imaging some additional work? Why on earth would the missiles come to pick up their fellow bomb? And are we supposed to believe they were aimlessly wandering in space for the last three years, just waiting and waiting for someone to recover their poor little abandoned bomb friend on the planet's surface? I guess we were also supposed to shed a few tears for his lost companion bombette. When DS9 goes off the air, it will be a truly sad day. Voyager will never equal the brilliance of its dark, Alpha Quadrant counterpart. I am happy that Ron Moore is joining the Voyager writing staff, but I have a gut feeling that not even he can save this series from the oblivion it so richly deserves at this point in its timeline. -E. Klisiewicz EQUINOX Nielsen rating: 3.2 Episode summary: The U.S.S. Voyager finds the Federation science vessel Equinox lost in the Delta Quadrant and helps it stave off an attack by creatures from another spatial realm. But when the doctor retrieves data from the Equinox research lab, Janeway learns that Captain Ransom has commited mass murder in the Delta Quadrant. He and his crew manage to escape, leaving Voyager to the mercy of the creatures. I loved this episode. I loved the premise that Voyager runs into another lost Starfleet vessel, corrupted by hardship, the specter of what Voyager could have become. Theoretically, that is, because I just don't believe that Janeway and crew would ever sink to the depths that Ransom and his crew did, no matter what happened to them. If Seska had been the captain of Voyager, then perhaps in dire circumstances, Voyager would become morally indistinguishable from the Equinox, but not with our Janeway as leader. I enjoyed the way the story unfolded, from its gripping opening teaser of an unfamiliar Starfleet vessel under attack to its gripping conclusion of Equinox stealing vital technology and leaving Voyager at the mercy of the attacking aliens. The body of "Equinox," while not as riveting as the beginning and ending, was also well done, with its steady unfolding of Ransom and crew's terrible secret. I loved the episode's character nuggets and interactions, like Tom being jealous of B'Elanna, B'Elanna encouraging his jealousy, and Harry teasing him. I liked seeing Chakotay flirt with Gilmore; it makes sense for Chakotay to be open to romance. Naomi was as winsome as always in her little cameo as bridge assistant. I was also interested in the characterizations of the Equinox crew - Ransom wasn't intended to be a cardboard villain, and the story of how he slid into his horrific actions was quite plausible. His hold on Gilmore and Lessing, however, was inexplicable. As long as Ransom was the only Starfleet captain in the Delta Quadrant, I can understand their allegiance. But once they encountered another Starfleet vessel, I'd expect them to welcome the chance to abandon their abhorrent practices. But perhaps they felt too tainted by their cruelty to ever be welcome on Voyager. Most interesting to me was Janeway's interactions with Ransom. Janeway tells Ransom, "If we turn our backs on our principles, we stop being human." She is clearly talking about Starfleet principles, whose protocols maintain order, provide structure and a code of conduct, link the crew to their past, and remind them of where they are going. She has taken strong measures to ensure that the crew follows Starfleet principles - in season five anyway - and has quickly stomped on wayward crewmen (Paris, Harry Kim) who break Starfleet's rules and regulations. But she is also speaking of principles more fundamental as well, principles that redeem us as a species capable of enormous evil. Principles that aid us as we struggle to do right, to make the best and most moral decisions. Principles that aid us as we struggle to fulfill our positive potential as unique individuals. Principles that aid us as we struggle to find a meaningful place in the world. Principles based on values such as compassion, courage, perseverance, hope, excellence, and, perhaps most fundamentally, a deep appreciation for life. Values that are personified by our intrepid crew, particularly Captain Janeway. Oh sure, throw some exceptions in my face - I can't explain "Tuvix" (where she separated the unique individual Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix) and won't even begin to try. But overall, this message is imbedded to various degrees in "Voyager" episode after episode. Life has incalculable value, especially sentient life, whether it is a hologram, a photonic life form, a nebula, or a humanoid, and deserves tolerance, understanding, and respect. And Ransom abandons this core principle. He doesn't appreciate alien life, he destroys it. Not for immediate self-preservation, not in self-defense, but to further his own desires and goals. I'm sure this horrified Janeway, and grieved her too, to see one of her heroes so far from his pedestal. Janeway is merciless in her judgment of Ransom; she clearly believes that those in power have an even greater responsibility than others to uphold principles, to avoid morally slippery slopes. This is understandable, because a leader's circle of influence is much larger than that of others. In particular, a Starfleet captain's actions have far-reaching, life-or-death consequences for those they lead, as well as for the alien starships and worlds that they encounter. Janeway takes this responsibility very seriously and has little use for renegades who don't. She is also pretty unsympathetic in her judgment of Ransom's crewmen, who were allegedly just following his orders. While they are not as culpable perhaps, they were rather compliant., and earn her disdain. Anyway, note that Janeway is not merciless in her treatment of the Equinox crew - they end up confined together in crew quarters, not in solitary confinement in the brig. It will be interesting to see if Janeway relents and shows Ransom and crew some understanding and compassion a la "love the sinner, hate the sin," or if her initial damning judgment stands. Although the way the Equinox crew hightailed it out of the war zone and left Voyager so vulnerable certainly won't win them any brownie points. One final comment - I don't understand why Janeway said she'd "walked the Line" on the Prime Directive rather than admitted she'd broken it from day one when she'd destroyed the Caretaker's array. Granted, nothing she's ever done even remotely approaches the murderous actions of Ransom, but that's because her violations have been guided by compassion rather than pure self-interest. Her decisions have been justifiable and she's even admitted to Kashyk that she'll probably have to answer for her actions in the Alpha Quadrant someday, so why would she deny it to Ransom? I find her denial very perplexing - I'm chalking it up to a continuity error rather than psychological issues. Well I'm looking forward to September. It's true that I have some ideas about what will be in the second part - clearly Janeway will not die (although nameless crewmen might), Seven and the doctor will return to Voyager, Janeway will chase down Ransom and see him get his come-uppance, and Voyager will likely figure out a way to communicate with the creatures. The unfolding of these resolutions, however, will make for a pretty good story. I give this episode a 10. -A. Goodhart Janeway answers a distress call from another Starfleet vessel in the Delta Quadrant which is under attack. Apparently they've suffered similar bouts with hostiles, only they are in much worse shape because the Equinox is only a small science vessel and they lost half their crew in their first fight. Janeway rescues them. While repairing their ship she comes upon evidence that they've been killing a certain Delta Quadrant species to break them down on a cellular level and use them to boost their warp drive. This is part one of two and the season cliffhanger. I adore those because they are usually a cut above the rest of the season. I also enjoy slamming my fist on the arm of the chair at the end and exclaiming, "What?!!! That's the end?!! They can't end it there!" Then I run to check the Internet to see how long I have to wait for the next season to see part two. It's a seasonal sci-fi fan ritual. "Equinox" lived up to the expectation right from the opening scene. Curiosity about a second Starfleet ship would have been hook enough. Add in alien attack, compression phaser rifle fire, smoke and freaky looking victims and it's just about perfect. Kate Mulgrew deftly portrayed the excitement the captain felt on finding another Starfleet crew in the Delta quadrant and the urgency to protect them. In the initial rescue sequence, she goes aboard herself to help look for survivors. Man, is Janeway good! Or should I say goddess? With one stroke of her hand across his neck, she brings a man back to consciousness from a two-day stupor! Maybe there's more to Kathryn Janeway than meets the eye; or hand, as the case may be. Even if she doesn't have special powers, it's bad juju to piss her off. The captain of the Equinox soon realizes this for himself. Even before Janeway discovers his dirty little secret, she broaches his slack protocol with him. It's a mild head butt but a good point. If command order isn't maintained in a military unit, any other kind of order is impossible (especially for one deployed or lost). He gathers she would never be game to take part in his murder-for-rapid-transit scheme. Paris/Torres romance fans might like the little jealousy bit that ensues when it turns out that one of the survivors is an old flame from Torres' Academy days. For the tress trackers, she also has a wave in her 'do in this episode. As they are making tactical decisions, for the first time in a long time, Janeway sides immediately with Chakotay. Though the first and second in command don't always need to agree, every once in a while is nice for unity of command. If they never agree on anything, it makes for a very bumpy mission. When the truth is learned, we get to see Kate Mulgrew at her best: The Hammer. I think I actually ducked when she started spitting nails at the other captain. For the writers' part, the point about principles is dead on. Those who complain about Janeway's adherence to lofty ideals may be a little less audible after seeing the alternative in the other captain. It was fun to see the EMH run into his evil twin, Skippy on the Equinox. Classic cliffhanging in the end: bad guys escape Voyager's almost continuously useless security team to take back their ship, they have Seven and the doc as hostages, they've stolen Voyager's warp core enabler, and made the jump. Meanwhile, back at the stranded Voyager ranch, the aliens the bad captain was slaughtering start to attack (humans all look alike). Janeway gets in a few good shots with her phaser but one yellow-bellied alien gets her from behind. Tune in next season.... Nitpicks: Why doesn't the holo-emitter projecting the bad EMH work for the good EMH? He disappears as soon as Skippy steals his portable emitter. Why, in the middle of a firefight, does Chakotay yell at the captain to look out instead of firing at the alien himself? Overall: 5 out of 5 compression phaser rifles on this one. We get to see lots of good Janeway in this one, energy aliens, good guest cast, interesting plot, a couple of firefights and the heart of darkness. It made a particularly good nail-biter considering Kate Mulgrew's interest in leaving the show. Those of us who don't read tabloids or watch E! probably had a second of angst about that being the final out. Someone who does follow such things, however, assured me she will return sixth season to kick ass and take names. That's good because she's irreplaceable in the role. Without Kate Mulgrew as Janeway, I'd stop watching. That means the bad captain would get away with it, Voyager would be stranded forever and I'd NEVER get to see Chakotay take his shirt off. In other words, no justice would be served. - Walaleia This episode, a magnificent melding of action and character, peppered with tough choices and eventual betrayal, is the perfect means to explore the many shades and individual interpretations of the Prime Directive. Starfleet's guiding principle is as often reviled as it is revered, both by characters and fans alike. Janeway has employed it to keep Federation technology out of alien hands, and it's been used against her to keep alien technology out of hers. She spouts its wisdom as if it's holy law, but bends and twists it to the breaking point if she feels it's necessary, usually when she's pushed into a corner. Everybody has their own definition of when it applies, how to apply it, and when it's irrelevant baggage. Personally, I've often found Janeway's Prime Directive lectures to be tiresome, and I've had the tendency to put it in the baggage category - until we were all introduced to Captain Ransom. Now, I admit that I'm beginning to see the light! There is a reason for the Prime Directive, and nothing can illustrate this point better than pitting two Starfleet captains of equal standing against each other in a quadrant far from home, in a situation where something as simple as the interpretation of a rule can lead to survival or death. What a grand idea! I have to say, this episode blew me away. Of course, in light of such a debate, a comparison of the two captains is inevitable. Captain Janeway and Captain Ransom. They're both Academy graduates. They both excel in science, and have a panache for command. They're both highly respected by heir crews. The same phenomenon brought them to the Delta Quadrant, and they both harbor a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility, an obsession, really, to get their crews back home to the Alpha Quadrant. But in Captain Ransom of the Federation Starship Equinox, Janeway's obsession has met its match! Ransom's obsession is equal in intensity to Janeway's, but lacking in basic morals and ethics, and there the comparison ends. Their situations may be the same, their backgrounds may be the same, their crews may even be similar in personality and dynamics, but the way they handle the challenges of the Delta Quadrant differ in one vital area: the ability to cross the line. I've often called Janeway the Captain Ahab of the Delta Quadrant, but after meeting up with Captain Ransom, I've moved Janeway to Ahab-in-training. Ransom clearly takes the Delta Quadrant prize for inhumanity. He slipped over the edge of human decency when he first considered using an alien life form to boost his warp drive (whether that life form was dead or not), and he cemented his position with each subsequent killing and conversion. Janeway, on the other hand, continues to successfully skim along that edge of morality without quite stepping over, though she comes close on more occasions than she might want to admit. She continually finds it acceptable to risk the lives of her crew if an action brings them closer to home ("Timeless"), and doesn't seem to have a problem with outright theft of technology for propulsion purposes as long as the exploited technology in question comes from the Borg ("Dark Frontier"), but she hasn't killed anybody for personal gain. For her, that would be the line where the Prime Directive moves from shades of gray to the dark flashes of Red Alert. (Though I would consider her actions with the Borg as clear infractions of the Prime Directive, her prejudice against anything Borg seems to absolve her of any responsibility or guilt.) As of yet, she hasn't crossed into that realm of lost ethics, and judging by her abhorrence of Ransom's actions in that most excellent confrontation scene in the conference room, she never would. Or would she? That's the big question that this episode poses for me. If Voyager's situation were as dire as the Equinox's, would Janeway lower herself to Ransom's level? If her ship were falling apart, if her crew were starving, dying, would she, could she, completely throw the Prime Directive out the window in return for passage home? Could she kill for the benefit of her crew, and in the process lose everything about her that's decent? A better question is: Would Chakotay stand by and let her? Would Tuvok, or B'Elanna? How far down the chain of command does principle and morality extend? According to Janeway, all the way; she has no sympathy for the decision of Ransom's crew not to protest the slaughter of aliens in favor of a more efficient warp drive. In her eyes, they had a responsibility to object, no matter the consequences. Ransom is desperate, but we've seen Janeway in desperate straights as well. "Year of Hell" comes instantly to mind, as does "Scorpion." She and Chakotay considered relocating the crew to a planet in that equally excellent cliffhanger two years ago, and that decision in itself shows that Janeway is incapable of stooping to Ransom's level. He never mentioned the possibility of colonization. Janeway's obsession may be to get home, but the goal is to ensure survival of the crew. Deep down, she's still aware of that. Deep down, Ransom's not aware of anything. He sold out his soul to an obsession, and betrayed and stranded fellow officers in the bargain. What a price to pay to get his crew, what's left of them, back home. Janeway's principles are intact, obsession or not, and for now her soul is relatively safe. Still, the similarities are too numerous to disregard. Ransom is evidence of what might have happened, of a Janeway that could have been. Gives you chills, doesn't it? "Equinox" is an incredible ending to a very successful season. Personally, I can't wait to see how the crew gets out of this one! Quote of the week: "It's never easy. But if we turn our backs on our principles, we stop being human." - Captain Janeway - Linda Bindner This was a cool season-ending cliffhanger for some science fiction show. Not "Voyager," since the continuity problems with pilot episode "Caretaker" really get on my nerves. But for some other series with a captain who needs to have her outdated rule book removed from her as...trometrics lab, this would have been a great installment. Of course Janeway was right, Ransom's behavior was beyond the pale, and her quick Kirk-like response reminded me of "The Omega Glory" episode in the original series. Still, I could not help laughing at her righteous indignation towards Ransom. Not only is she a big fat stinkin' liar if she thinks she's never broken the Prime Directive, but she doesn't even know that back home on Deep Space Nine, her precious Starfleet is taking advantage of Section 31's decision to commit genocide in order to win an Alpha Quadrant war she's never had to get her pretty hands dirty fighting. Ransom was a very compelling character, somehow dark yet open at the same time. It was obvious he wasn't playing on the level, but he didn't bother with out-and-out lies. It would have been nice if we'd gotten to hear Janeway confer with him scientist to scientist, not just captain to Captain. Actually, they never really did anyway, since Janeway always held the upper hand and made sure he knew it when she dragged him off his bridge and when she ordered him off his ship. Why bother to make the point that he was a fellow explorer and someone she admired if it never was brought up in their later discussions of ethics? Ransom was correct to remind Janeway that she has bulkheads protecting her and working replicators; she can't remember what she turned into in "The Year of Hell" and other episodes where things looked a little more grim for her crew. Remember those slip-ups with the Trabe, with Species 8472, and with the Caretaker himself? Janeway has hardly been a role model for obeying the Prime Directive, and frankly she didn't need to be. It's one thing to interfere a little here or there, quite another to commit mass murder, which is the issue she should have stuck with in challenging Ransom. I'd have been happier if she looked up that regulation about who was in charge because she didn't trust him, not because she wanted to be Miss Rule Book Know-It-All which is how she came across. In most of the cases when she has bent the rules, she hasn't even bothered with rationalizations. The Doctor was easily the most fun supporting character, with a restrained evil guise for a change. "They deleted my ethical subroutines," he announces before zapping his better half! Hardly original, but a good laugh nonetheless. Shall we dispense with the question of how a minor science vessel got an EMH, considering that Voyager supposedly had one of the prototypes along with its top-of-the-line systems? Sure, let's just take that for granted the way we were supposed to take EMH backup modules for granted last year after being told one could never exist. After all, two docs are funnier than one. In other character development, Torres meets up with her ex-boyfriend and reveals that she has taught TWO men to be better engineers than she is! Tommy gets a bit jealous, but that's probably because Maxwell outranks him and gets to pilot as well. Plus Maxwell doesn't condescend as much and shows more interest in Torres when sabotaging her systems than Paris shows while making out with her. Ah, the love boat. I wonder whether this Maxwell is related to the Maxwell who hated Cardassians on TNG; that would explain some of Torres' interest in him. Seven gets all excited at the idea of meeting a role model of Janeway's, but then she says, "I want to expand my knowledge of humanity." How many times do we have to hear her make that gratuitous proclamation to make Janeway feel good? Chakotay gets all excited meeting yet another blond with long hair, but she seems more interested in Naomi Wildman than in him. I did get a kick out of how quickly the Equinox crewmembers latched onto Voyager crewmembers of the opposite sex. Too bad it was all in the line of duty. My husband described the subspace aliens as looking "like the thing that ate the hot dogs in 'Ghostbusters' only with teeth," so I laughed whenever they appeared onscreen after that. Though when dead they looked more like the gooey rubberized dead humans from "Fight the Future." Between these dudes, species 8472, and the critters from "The Fight," subspace must be crowded. But I did like the storyline. For a show whose producers have said that cannibalism is something they stay away from, the use of sentient lifeforms to create fuel comes pretty close. Yet do we really know that these things are sentient? Does Janeway have any reason to believe they're not the cosmic equivalent of soft-shell crabs? I know Chakotay would be opposed to killing them anyway, but would Neelix? An interesting moral dilemma, though I expect it will turn out they're little subspace geniuses and Janeway will make restitution. I do want Voyager to catch up with the Equinox to get the doctor back - this show would be intolerable without him. But it's okay with me if Seven stays on board for awhile. Maybe she can teach that misguided crew more polite ways of using aliens, like assimilating them. In sum, "Equinox" was a fairly interesting season-ender, but in an odd way: I found Captain Ransom more compelling than Captain Janeway. While our heroine was citing regulations which said that her big guns made her best able to command, Ransom was dealing with the destruction of his crew, an intolerable situation for any rule book. His Federation rebels were not even mixed Starfleet-Maquis crew, but a group of scientists in a desperate situation. The Equinox was thrown into the Delta Quadrant and instead of meeting semi-reasonable Kazon or stupider-than-average Borg, they had to fight all the way. Of course they lost some of their ideals. That's entirely plausible, and tragic enough to make them sympathetic despite their despicable behavior. But it would have resonated more if we were given a single reason to believe the aliens had something positive to offer the universe. In return for their sad fall, the Equinox crew become the sort of family in space that Voyager's crew can't pretend to be. I could have wept at Janeway's surprise when Ransom let his officers call him by his first name. She sees that as the first step down the primrose path to murdering aliens, forgetting that she handed over nanoprobes to the Borg to slaughter 8472s in order to save her own ship. I kind of wistfully wondered where Trek would be now if we'd been watching "Star Trek Equinox" all this time instead of "Star Trek Voyager." I wouldn't give up the first few seasons, but at present, it's tempting to wonder what Voyager would be like if it were more like this desperate parallel. -Em Wycedee OVERSEAS REVIEWS CODA Definitely one of my favorite episodes. Also one of the saddest. This episode really makes me cry. The episode starts with a scene where Neelix and Janeway are talking about the talent night they had. Neelix is very enthusiastic about it and so is Janeway. It is really very cute to see how he tries to negotiate to keep Tuvok away from the next one. The next scene is with Chakotay and Janeway. Chakotay also talks about the talent night and compliments Janeway on her performance as the dying swan (I wish we had seen that scene too!). Janeway suggests that Chakotay will be the next one in the spotlight but he refuses. Then they fly into an ion storm and the trouble begins. The shuttle can barely land on the surface and Janeway is unconscious. Chakotay carries her out of the shuttle and tries to breathe life into her. Finally after some time he succeeds and Janeway is breathing again. What a hero!! Anyway, after this breathtaking scene, the next shock is already there. TheVidiians are approaching!! Hiding in the caves doesn't help and Janeway is being killed. Back in the shuttle again Janeway and Chakotay find out that they are in a time loop. Again the Vidiians come and this time the shuttle explodes. Back in the shuttle. Again the Vidiians come (will this ever stop) and yes it does. Chakotay calls Voyager and Tuvok responds. Back on the bridge Janeway is very surprised that Chakotay and the others can't recall a time loop and she decides to go to sickbay where the Doctor examines her. In his own self-conceited way the doctor explains that Janeway has the phage. He promises not to end his program until he has a cure for her. While she is sitting on the biobed she tells the doctor that she is very confident in him. She looked so vulnerable there that it brought tears in my eyes. After 40 hours of sleep she awakes and the phage has spread over her body. The doctor can only come to one conclusion. He administers euthanasia and again Janeway dies. Back in the shuttle again. They are definitely in some sort of a time loop. After crashing we see the same heartbreaking scene where Chakotay tries to breathe life into Janeway only this time he does not succeed. Janeway is dead and Chakotay cries. This time a second Janeway is looking down at the two. Back in sickbay the doc tries the cortical stimulator but nothing works. Janeway is really dead this time. When Kes is walking through the corridor she can sense Janeway and hurries to Tuvok and Chakotay. Of course a briefing follows and Chakotay is in charge. While they discuss what must be done Janeway is listening to them. In engineering she discovers a light and suddenly her father appears explaining what happened to her. Next day there is a ceremony to honor the captain. And there is Harry Kim. He is playing a wonderful part when he explains how the captain and he sat together eating fruit as does B'Elanna who explains that she thought she could not cope without the captain but that the captain only made her stronger and saw something in her B'Elanna had not seen. Janeway starts to cry and so did I. After the ceremony her father wants to take her into the matrix but Janeway refuses. Even now she is dead she wants to stay by her crew and help them. What a sweetheart. Suddenly she sees Tuvok, Chakotay and the doctor and then realises that that is the real her, dying on the surface and she refuses to go. She realises then that her father is not her father but some kind of alien and she sends him back. Finally we see the doctor, Chakotay and Tuvok and then Janeway coming back to life. The final scene is the most beautiful of all. Chakotay enters Janeway's ready room with a rose in his hand. The look in Janeway's eyes in indescribable. Especially when she invites Chakotay for a sail in moonlight on Lake George with a bottle of champagne. It's a shame we did not see that scene too. All in all a great episode, even after seeing it dozens of times. - Monique Hondtong, The Netherlands GREWPIE TWINS' REVIEW OF ROUND NUMBERS In the tradition of the Grewpie Twin Shallow Episode Reports, we offer up for your edification a movie review of the classic Kate flick Round Numbers, which has been the inspiration for many, many sweaty nights of lust-filled...pondering. Despite the very valid feminist commentary presented in this movie, the base smutiness of this offering is what sets it apart for special recognition in our vast collection of Kate appearances. If you think Kate is at her best when she's being a total hard-ass crude b*tch, and wearing nothing but a towel while doing it, this is the movie for you! (If you like Kate completely clothed and being prim and proper, why are you here?) When Kate's character Judith is driving horrendously up to the spa where the bulk of the movie is set and some driver screams at her "I hope you screw better than you drive!", we all raise our hands eagerly to be the one chosen to find out. This is second only to wishing we were Bimbo Binky in the scene where she's holding a tape measure around Judith's breasts and pinching her luscious sides for body fat. But, let's get down to the nitty gritty here. Our favorite scenes (like we could really narrow them down): 1) In the first five minutes, Kate grabs her breasts not once, but *twice*. That alone is worth the price of admission. 2) The shower/sauna scene. The one that lasts five minutes. And involves Kate in nothing more than a towel. Oh, and some sweat and toussled hair. And sighing things like "Ohhhh, Goooodddd". And the little IHOB chick who gets to stroke Judith's hair and bare arm gently in a wonderful comfort gesture. We were sighing "Ooohhhh Gooodddd" as well. Loudly. In fact, the neighbors were banging on the wall in complaint. 3) The massage scene, which follows the shower/sauna scene. More Kate in a towel. And we want to be Bruce The Masseuse in the worst possible way, especially in that 30 seconds where Judith is on her back and we can see his arms go underneath her body on either side....because we know where he is rubbing. The neighbors had called the cops on us by this point. 4) Any scene with Judith in the purple blouse. The way it slides off of her shoulder and the way the light hits it and shows off her breasts makes us extremely happy. Extremely. 5) The second scene with Bimbo Binky giving Judith a makeover. It involves Judith in a satin slip *ahem* being asked to consider her breasts. In case she she didn't, we did the job for her. In fact, we've been considering them ever since. When it comes down to it, we really can't recommend this movie enough. It has all of the elements critical for a great Kate Slut movie: bare skin, smart-ass remarks, sweat, and groaning. We will point out, however, that we ended up not liking Bruce the Masseuse since he ended up getting some and we didn't, but we will let Judith's husband slide since he was ugly and she didn't really care for him too much anyways. Overall rating: Five Drool Bibs KATHRYN JANEWAY, FEMINIST HEROINE SEASON FIVE IN REVIEW by Cybermum In a departure from the norm I thought to try another form Of looking at Trek in prime time And submit my reviews in rhyme. The season started with the plight Of Captain Janeway in the 'Night' She wallowed in self-scrutiny Which led to minor mutiny. And when the time came to condone The preservation of the 'Drone' She dismissed Tuvok, dissenter Choosing Seven as One's mentor. While Torres took some 'Extreme Risk' (Chakotay's treatment slightly brusque) In a space race to the wire, She approved the Delta Flyer. While an alien babe 'In the Flesh' With her scaly wiles did enmesh Chakotay. So what else is new? Janeway tamed 8472. In 'Once upon a Time' we found That rather than fables profound A 'Fleet child, galaxy-trotter Hears tales of Trevis and Flotter. 'Timeless', the one hundredth show Gave Harry Kim a chance to grow And once again to our dismay Gave us a frozen, dead Janeway. When Seven in acute distress Showed signs of 'Infinite Regress' Tuvok melded with no quibble; Janeway thought that she'd met Sybil. B'Elanna was caught in a hug With an ugly alien slug. Crell Moset upset some crewmen In the show called 'Nothing Human.' Paris disobeyed his orders Crossed the underwater borders Janeway sentenced with precision 'Thirty Days' was the decision. Janeway played clever cat and mouse With Kashyk, that Devoran louse, She was proved right in 'Counterpoint' Her instincts did not disappoint. The Doctor became dramatic His behavior quite erratic. Janeway opted to re-program Her 'Latent Image' hologram. And then there was exotica: Janeway: 'Bride of Chaotica'. Full of inventive Trek satire As well as some bizarre attire. Voyager lost one more shuttle In an episode quite subtle 'Gravity' of situation: Tuvok rebuffs adoration. Now this would be J/C'ers 'Bliss': If Janeway shared one little kiss With her Commander, but instead The wormhole was a place to dread. In sweeps month we went to high gear. Two special hours. 'Dark Frontier.' The Borg was lost. The Borg was found. Who wants it the other way round? When Harry Kim began to glow (A strange 'Disease' had laid him low) The Captain read the riot act And told him not to 'interact.' 'Course Oblivion' was up next Leaving us all somewhat perplexed Janeway's intransigent resolve Caused Voyager's crew to dissolve. What nonsense did those writers hatch? Chakotay 'Fight' a boxing match? Angry Warrior he might be - A boxer, not that I can see. A 'Think Tank' came up with a plan To capture our attention span Not a warp speed salamander Guest star Jason Alexander. B'Elanna needed food for thought She found it in the 'Juggernaught' A misshapen Malon creature Added to this creepy feature. In 'Someone to Watch Over Me' Seven became the counselee Of the Doctor who purported To know just how humans courted. Janeway traced her family line Back to '11:59' And found that she did not relate The truth of the Millennium Gate. If now is then, then when was now, The Captain swore to disavow Time travel. 'Relativity' Had much of this activity. Harry Kim talking to a bomb: A 'Warhead', with a calm aplomb. Well at the time it made some sense In Trek strange things have sentience. She opened a Pandora's Box When Janeway found the 'Equinox'. Another Captain - evil crew? We'll have to wait to see part two. So that's the end of Season Five Of Voyager, and now that I've Finished my poetic tricks I'll sit and wait for Season Six. FEMINISM, SUBVERSION, AND SIRENS (OR HEADLIGHTS) by Rachel Chaiah Gluck For what it's worth, Seven of Nine might be the most fortunate character on television. It is pretty difficult to make her sound incompetent, even for her lack of both emotional development and simple human tact. She is, of course, that lovely half-Borg creature who was assimilated onto Star Trek Voyager in order to boost last season's ratings and to keep afloat an entire network, United Paramount Network (UPN). This is, of course, the alien group that the 18-35 year old males must love the most. The fact that Seven was assimilated into their community from a young age (which must explain her own flawlessness), is surely the excuse the network execs have for putting her in a costume that no other alien in Captain Kathryn Janeway's realm, not to mention Janeway, herself, would ever wear...unless, of course, they wanted to make Janeway less of a mother figure and more like the forty-something sexual woman she is supposed to be. Naturally, Seven can get away with things like second-skin cat suits for daily wear. If she had grown up as a human being, one would have to wonder how, exactly, she would see herself. Does Seven simply lack that propensity to harbor insecurity that must drive every other post-adolescent woman on the starship Voyager insane? The blessing bestowed upon Seven is that she did not grow up with human insecurities besieging her every waking moment. Seven herself may not immediately be affected by human social constructs, but I am curious to know of her initial reaction to her post-Collective countenance. Beyond Seven of Nine, we should examine how Voyager's only child, ten year old Naomi Wildman, views the tall blond woman. Both she and Seven have a pre-established bond from an earlier episode in which Seven's past from the Borg haunted her in the form of multiple personality disorder. Is there a child-like connection between the two? It seems that there is, and they certainly know how to work well together, as is the case with the episode "Bliss" (guest starring Scarlett Pomers as Naomi Wildman). "Bliss" pits an alien captain, Seven, and Naomi against a monster who tricks species into thinking that they are getting exactly what they desire as a method of trapping them inside of his digestive tract for food. It is a clever episode, using both fairy tale simplicity and basic scientific curiosity to thwart the monster into spitting them out. The down side of this show, however, is that it gives Seven yet another opportunity to visibly outshine the star, Captain Janeway. Considering the breadth of both Kate Mulgrew's (Janeway) and Jeri Ryan's (Seven of Nine) talents, it is a shame that we still have not seen an episode in which Seven's appearance is truly put to good use. The character of Seven of Nine easily could break stereotypes involving female standards of beauty by actually living out her adolescence and openly confronting the fact that she looks different from everyone else on Voyager. Such an episode also could create a door of emotional relief for not only Mulgrew, but also the other women of Voyager, who assuredly would take some comfort in knowing that the cat suit doesn't have to be on screen merely for demographic value. Of course, sometimes it doesn't take a catsuit to ring bells. All one really needs is a good appetite for all things kinky, including the occasional "don't date, don't tell" policy offered in the job description (or the Oath of Office), or a good "hair tickle." Just ask the folks at FOX's Ally McBeal. Instead of silver, iridescent brown, or "she's finally learning what a wardrobe is" blue, the star attraction wears a bit of ditz along with her Armani. The odd thing is that, as irritating as it can be to watch Calista Flockhart try to sing the blues with her usual perky resonance, Ally is starting to grow on me. Never fear, I'm too busy to tune in every week to this series like I do with Voyager, and the lead is still a bit too flaky for my tastes. However, I have to hand some credit to David E. Kelley. The ditz act is truly fitting the schizophrenic reality of the times. Odd, isn't it, that a television show can offer some of the most creative commentary on a mess in national United States politics? If it wasn't for the fact that Ally, herself, occasionally overdoes the silliness and faux-klutz falls, I might be able to start comparing it to early nineties Murphy Brown. The method of addressing our nation's leaders, this week members of Congress instead of a Vice President, is priceless. As ridiculous as the Clinton escapades have been, most Americans are well aware that there are more important things to worry about than wondering how the leader of the free world spends his time with his stogies. Ally's method of attack is not as direct. When John Cage said, "Sometimes I get overwhelmed by common sense," I could have sworn I heard Diane English typing up a script in the hidden soundtrack. On trial is a couple accused of sexual harassment for being caught exhibiting their newfound love at work. They weren't "caught with their pants down," but their boss is unmoving in his desire to litigate instead of facing the realities of basic human nature. It certainly adds a new twist to the old adage that people should not mix business with pleasure. Lamentably, with the great must come the necessarily questionable. "Hair tickles" may make for great jokes over champagne and sticky fingers, but they left me feeling uncomfortable toward the woman who demonstrated this supposedly expert technique on the oddball head of the firm, Fish. Ling (Lucy Liu) is a feisty Asian beauty who runs her own company and wants to buy out her share of Ally and Company's Boston law firm. As wonderful as that description sounds, having only seen her character once, I'm not sure whether to laud producer Kelley for giving her some sarcasm and acumen to go with her seductiveness or to gag from the obvious placement of Liu in a role that is more than reminiscent of the Asian-woman-as-evil-siren stereotype. Ling's seductress role tends to overshadow her entrepreneurial zest and crass intelligence. Funny, but, for a moment, Ling both looks and feels a lot like Ally's version of Seven of Nine: another ratings-boosting jolt of energy-and sex appeal. What I would really like the Hollywood production companies to tell me is why they feel the need to bring in an obvious sexual object every time the ratings drop a notch. Is it really that difficult to ask the women who write for these shows exactly how they can improve the characters that they already have in place instead of needing to resort to the overt stereotypical solution? Some people might argue that roles such as Voyager's Seven of Nine and Ally's Ling are already breaking new ground: Seven does display intelligence behind that skin-tight faÁade, and Ling is a woman who, for all the audience knows, is simply out to do what she thinks is best for herself and the firm and just wants to utilize every spare moment she gets to have some fun in her life. However, until we start seeing more men in roles that truly subvert the obvious, I'll be hard-pressed to believe the hype. That said, I don't think the feminist movement can consider Voyager and Ally McBeal to be the paragons of role advancement, but at least they give us a format for advancing the argument into the next millennium. Letting a Picture Tell a Story by Annmarie Daneker One of the first tips I learned about taking good photographs in my career as an Army Public Affairs Officer was to let the photo tell the story. Learn to use a camera wisely, I was told, because the accompanying words I would eventually write were almost useless-an interesting photograph would tell a much better story. That's exactly how I felt when I first saw the artwork, a sketch of Captain Kathryn Janeway, on the cover of Now Voyager's last newsletter. It's not a photograph, but still it caught my eye and made a tremendous impact on me. Ute Koberstein, a young woman I had the pleasure of meeting at FedCon in Bonn, Germany, last year, drew the sketch. There weren't any words accompanying the drawing but they're not really needed because the expression on Janeway's face tells a complete story-of why Voyager no longer interests me. She's so sad: Her eyes are pained and her mouth is shaped in that downward pouty frown that Kate Mulgrew does so well. Janeway is obviously worried and concerned about something. Viewers have become well acquainted with this expression over the past two seasons. I would like to let my imagination take over and pretend that she is concerned about some alien terrorizing her crew or a treacherous space anomaly about to swallow her ship whole, but instead I know that she's in despair over some crewmember's predicament. Janeway is \ concerned about Seven of Nine finding her parents' old ship, Seven of Nine running the ship while everyone is in stasis, Tom defying her orders to save a watery planet, Seven of Nine being kidnapped by the Borg Queen, Seven of Nine finding perfection in a few deadly molecules, Harry defying her orders to stay away from a xenophobic race, Seven of Nine adopting a 29th century Borg drone, Seven of Nine finding a date, Torres refusing lifesaving treatment, Seven of Nine... Anyone detecting a pattern here? Janeway has become so concerned about the growing pains of her adopted daughter/Borg that she doesn't have any happy time for herself anymore. The first three seasons of Voyager featured many Janeway-centered episodes where she was concerned about her crew, but she almost always learned something about herself as well. She went on many personal journeys of discovery, some based on a crewmember's need, some centered on her own beliefs and experiences. She was a woman who felt her own personal life deeply but was also willing to challenge her beliefs and possibly accept things that didn't match her upbringing. But that hasn't happened in the past two seasons of Voyager. She's certainly gone on many adventures with her crew, but it's usually with or to save one certain member of that crew: Seven of Nine. Kate Mulgrew (and the rest of the cast, for that matter) has proven her talent far too many times for me to say the cause for this shift in character is bad acting. She was wonderful in such gems as "Deadlock," "Resistance," and "Sacred Ground" (which I consider to be one of Voyager's finest hours). Unfortunately, she can only recite the lines dictated by the writers and follow the guidance of that episode's director. Instead, I blame this downfall squarely on the shoulders of lazy writers and desperate producers and executive producers. Once the influence of Jeri Taylor and Lisa Klink were gone, so were the touching stories about the members of the crew and their survival in the Delta Quadrant. There are no longer moments between Janeway and Chakotay and no more champagne toasts on the holodeck after a particularly grueling mission. Does anybody remember that Neelix used to really, really get on Tuvok's nerves or that Harry and Tom were pals? Instead, we get episodes that are supposed to draw in more viewers, i.e. more stories that feature the former Borg drone: Seven saves the ship, Sevens finds out something else about Starfleet, Seven finds that another trait of humanity is irrelevant. I think the absolute worst and lowest was in "Hunters," where viewers were not only treated to Seven, the beautiful woman, once again in peril (this time aboard a Hirogen ship), but they got to see her tied up! Almost every male's fantasy comes true. I was not amused, although I did crack up at the silliness on the screen. TPTB hide behind the myth that more Seven stories are necessary to bring her character's background up to the same level as the others. After all, she didn't arrive on Voyager until season 4. But that's such a lie-we now know more about Seven that most of the other characters in the history of Star Trek. Do the math: If every one of the other eight main characters on Voyager had had as many character-themed storylines as Seven did during season five, there would have been over 40 episodes. But what hurts the most is that Seven's development has come at a high price: We no longer see Janeway playing tennis or painting or doing anything that was established about her character in the first three seasons. I was actually concerned, after "Future's End," that Janeway's tennis ball would follow her character around, much like Sisko's baseball. But we haven't heard any mention of tennis since then. And other "Janeway" traits have disappeared as well: Gecko spirit guide...gone since season one; her own personal holodeck stories...gone since she and Leonardo flew off that ledge aboard a crazy winged invention (she's been back to the program, but to teach Seven yet another lesson in humanity, not spend time with the maestro); her passion for jazz music...replaced by a devotion to classical music. When an episode isn't about Seven, the writers then rely on fancy special effects, pyrotechnics, and boring so-called romances to tell a story. For some reason, they believe that digitally produced aliens or foes with fancy prosthetics are interesting. Unfortunately, these alien traits are often more distracting then they are interesting. Tall men clomping around the set with high foreheads don't interest me as much as a well-written story about the conflict between some alien culture and Starfleet principles. I would like to personally take all the writers and TPTB out to one of this summer's most popular movies: The Blair Witch Project. A simple story, told through the words and actions of the characters. No special effects, no required girl-in-distress thrown in the mix, no pomp, no circumstances. Just good storytelling. I hated the 100th episode, "Timeless," for its reliance on a so-called romance. Tessa's presence aboard the shuttle served no purpose except to prove that, at the ripe old age of 60 (or so), Chakotay could still get laid. I can only imagine how the emotional impact of finding Voyager after so many years would have changed had Tessa been the daughter of one of the crewmembers or maybe even Phoebe Janeway, assisting in the search for her long-lost and long-dead sister. Instead, the writers gave us "they're having sex" as an excuse to have a young, attractive female present. It was an easy way out, an easy way to make sure that sex is a part of every other episode. The focus on Seven and high-tech aliens/special effects are basic formulas for episodes that Braga and Berman swear up and down work, which surprises me. Even a casual television watcher can see that these ideas have failed the series. Ratings have dropped in the past two years. Each week, less and less viewers tune in to watch Voyager. In fact, the ratings were so low last season that UPN had to give away free airtime to advertisers because the network couldn't achieve the ratings they had promised. They did this, of course, at the show's expense: Lines were cut from several episodes of Voyager to fit in the extra commercials. And they did this to reruns as well, so viewers were left wondering what had happened to an episode they had already watched. Why TPTB can't see that a new tactic is needed to keep Voyager worth watching is totally beyond me. But, actually, TPTB have thought up a new tactic for success on Voyager for the upcoming season and what I've heard scares me. I think this year might be the one fans label What Were They Thinking? and scratch their heads in frustration. In another desperate attempt to lure that precious demographic of 18- to 49-year-old males, TPTB are planning to have professional wrestlers co-starring on Voyager. It makes sense, in an odd sort of way...professional wrestling is not only the hottest sport at the moment, it's also the one UPN series that actually gets viewers. I also hear that a romance is being pushed for the character of Kathryn Janeway. Now, as a female officer in the armed forces, I will be the first to argue that a woman can handle authority and a relationship. I've argued that point so many times before with non-believers that I could do it in my sleep. But with the track record of the show's writers and how they seemn to want to handle any type of relationship, I think I'd rather have Janeway stay single and unhappy. Tom started out as the show's stud: A gambler who liked to flirt and spend his downtime chasing the female crewmembers and holodeck characters. B'Elanna started out as a hotheaded human-Klingon hybrid who would never let anyone walk on her turf. By about episode three of their relationship, Tom was the Number One Straight and Narrow Guy and B'Elanna was letting him take away a book she really didn't want him to see. And let's not forget their childish and silly relationship-building scenes...if I wanted to watch high school sexual hijinks, I would watch Dawson's Creek. Once again, in my pretend world, I imagine that Kathryn's supposed love affair would be great and passionate and enhance her life. Her lover would make her come alive and glow and we would get to see the beauty of her falling in love. She would smile once again, perhaps even do fun things with her lover, like play Velocity or tennis on the holodeck or dance a pas de deux for Talent Night. But then I wake up and realize that such a story will NEVER happen on Voyager, not with Braga and Berman at the helm. Instead, Kathryn will spend at least two episodes fretting over whether or not she should be distracted by such a relationship, which means more of Kate's pouty frowns. Once her patient lover convinces her that it's okay for her to be a passionate woman and that her ship won't implode around her if she has sex, then she'll find something else to worry about. Perhaps how Seven of Nine is adjusting to not being the focal point of Janeway's life anymore. But then, of course, the lover will have to die. The great captain of a starship can't have somebody hanging around her bedroom, dragging her down and threatening her ability to make sensible decisions concerning the lives of her crew (oh please please note the sarcasm here). It will be a great and tragic death, probably some desperate act of love that saves Voyager. Then there will be at least one more episode featuring the pouty frown, as Kathryn Janeway mopes around the corridors of her starship, in misery over her loss. So, not only does Ute's sketch cover the emotions of the past two seasons, but it might be prophetic about the new one as well. Such a romance would also officially mean the end of any chance of a Janeway/Chakotay romance, something many, many people have pushed for in the show's five-year run. I don't think anyone can deny that there is (was) a lot of chemistry between Mulgrew and Beltran. The two senior officers had an unspoken language between them: The sideways glances and the way Chakotay stood just behind her, as if to remind her that he would always support her. Now Chakotay has become bridge wallpaper and Janeway runs to appoint Seven of Nine as leader of whatever specialty team is needed to get them out of the current bind. Seven's presence in Janeway's life completely changed the dynamic of one of Voyager's most natural and believable relationships-she came between two people who relied upon each other for survival. There is such little conversation and contact between the two anymore-their interaction is limited to proper staff meetings, arguments about Seven of Nine, and uncomfortable dinners. Chakotay has drifted far away from Kathryn; there is barely even the slightest hint of a friendship now. I can live without a romance between Janeway and Chakotay, but I would at least like them to be friends again and talk to each other once in awhile. I think if I had lost the chance with such a man as Chakotay, I, too, would look as sad as Kathryn Janeway on the cover of Kate Mulgrew's fan club newsletter. Why TPTB didn't jump at the chance to exploit this aspect of the show that has such a large fan base is beyond me. Perhaps because the viewers such a storyline would attract weren't a part of the desired demographic: Mostly women wanted a romance, not 18- to 49-year old males. What TPTB have done to the character of Kathryn Janeway is clear in Ute's sketch. Someone needs to send them a copy and maybe they will finally see what their central character has become since the end of season three. VOYAGER PEOPLE TIM RUSS, VOYAGER'S VULCAN DIRECTOR by Michelle Erica Green People who only know Tim Russ from his portrayal of Tuvok on "Star Trek Voyager" miss out on ninety-nine percent of his range. An accomplished musician as well as an actor, Russ works behind the camera as well as in front of it - he has directed episodes of "Voyager," and wrote and produced an award-winning independent film, "East of Hope Street." At the annual Shore Leave convention this July in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the actor sang, showed clips from his movie, and cracked the audience up in a way his Vulcan character would never dare. Five years ago, Russ took on the task of playing the first series-regular Vulcan since Spock. He is committed to remaining with "Voyager" for another two seasons, through the end of what is expected to be a seven-year run. A Trek fan since childhood who appeared on "Deep Space Nine" and in "Generations," Russ was thrilled to be cast as the logical Vulcan tactical officer. Yet after many months of playing the same character, he wanted new challenges, so he took up directing for the series, then producing his own films. "The difficulty with Tuvok from an actor's standpoint is that you don't get a chance to cut loose very often, and you miss that," explained the actor in an interview just before his appearance at Shore Leave. "I haven't had a chance to really go all-out for four or five years. It's the opposite of what I've trained for, but on the other hand it's a challenge to try to allow the slightest, most subtle emotions. One of my acting parners said Tuvok is the character who can play Hamlet with his eyebrow. That's basically what I'm doing: playing the emotional content of what's going on with very, very subtle gestures and inflections." From a creative standpoint, Russ noted, playing the stoic Vulcan got a bit restrictive. "I've always made the analogy that it's like having Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel over and over, only this time he puts God on the right side instead of the left side," the actor explained, laughing, "Not that I equate myself with Michelangelo as an artist! But it's the same basic creative thing, as opposed to getting a new canvas." "'Voyager' is the same gig that I've been doing for the past five years," he added. "Directing is a new slate. Music is something that I've always been involved in; it's a different type of expression. Producing is not terribly creative - in fact it's a pain in the ass - but in terms of bringing a project from script to completion, it can be very rewarding. And doing other types of projects, voice-over projects, narration projects, animation projects, all those things I've had a chance to do since coming on board the show." Russ learned some of Tuvok's backstory along with viewers last season in the episode "Gravity," which revealed that Tuvok was nearly the opposite of Spock as a child - while the half-Vulcan hybrid of the original series spent much of his life trying to be a perfect Vulcan, Tuvok rebelled against tradition and craved emotional freedom. The actor noted that he had already considered the differences between the characters, however. "Tuvok is 100 percent Vulcan, not half-Vulcan; he didn't have to prove himself as Spock did, which is the main factor I used to distinguish myself from his character. His character had to prove something to himself as well as others. Mine did not, because I was already Vulcan. You can imagine Spock growing up, being taunted or looked down upon or ostracized by his fellow Vulcans. Could you imagine being the only kid in his entire region having to deal with this sort of thing? It's exactly the same sort of thing we go through today - being teased for being overweight or having one arm or whatever, not being perfect or being the same." Because he never had to prove his Vulcan pedigree, and because of his age - married for several decades, Tuvok is a grandfather - Voyager's chief of security is comfortable showing aspects of himself which Spock tried to repress. "I don't think Tuvok is nearly as stiff and unrelenting as Spock's character was - I think he lets his guard down," Russ observed. "He has a very dry sense of humor and sometimes he exercises it - he'll never admit it, but he does. Vulcans don't admit to that stuff, but they do it. He just says things to people from time to time, he's picking with them. He's not trying to be funny, but he's funny to us in the circumstance." Seven of Nine has a similar sense of humor, based on her wry observations about human foibles, and although she and Tuvok have shared several memorable screen moments - notably in "The Year of Hell" and "The Raven" last season, when Tuvok ironically assisted in the former Borg's development as a human - Russ is one of many cast members who feels that his character's screen time has been compromised since Seven arrived on the series. "I think it's going to be a little bit different coming out of the gate, but definitely from a network standpoint, they are still promoting Jeri [Ryan] to try to sell the show, which I never really understood," admitted Russ. "The show has its own audience; we're not going to be an "E.R.," we're not going to be a "Cheers," it's just not that kind of show. The ratings have been the same since the show started." Vulcan fans are as passionate as Klingon fans in their insistence on the reality and coherence of the alien culture, but although several "Voyager" stories have embellished upon or twisted original series canon, Russ said the number one complaint he gets from viewers about Tuvok stories is simply that there aren't enough of them. "This year I haven't had a really heavy episode yet and I haven't been really heavy in the shows yet, but I guarantee you, it will happen, and I will have more than my share of 16-hour days. I have people complaining about this or that, from people who like the Vulcan character. The goal is to tell the story, not to make sure something is totally consistent with episode 332 of "The Next Generation." Mostly they're complaining about not seeing enough of me on the screen." Though he misses the opportunity "to cut loose," Russ occasionally gets an out-of character moment such as Tuvok's psychotic rage in "Meld" when he linked his mind with that of a murderer. In the Klingon-heavy show filming the week he attended Shore Leave, "there's a moment where I do break from this Tuvok veneer, but it's because of the circumstance of what's happening, it's not reality. The very next show coming up it's the same situation: I have to do all kinds of things in there, but we discover story-wise that it's not happening in real time. There is a lot of that on 'Voyager.'" The story Russ gets asked about most often, of course, is when Tuvok will be due for pon farr, the biological drive which necessitates that a Vulcan take a mate, engage in ritual combat, or die. Well? "That's the 64,000 Question," confessed the actor. "But I think there are a series of built-in difficulties with that story. How do we make it different from what we've already seen? Is he going to have ritual combat with one of the cast members? That's been done. Is he going to take a mate, another woman on the ship? Given that he's already got a wife, that's not going to look good with the Star Trek family viewing audience; it doesn't send a very good message. We can't have him go onto the holodeck for an hour - that would be boring and stupid. What's he going to do, sit there by himself meditating or recreate his planet? So I think we're sort of stuck." Russ observed that for all we know about pon farr, there's much more that we need to find out. For instance, we learned from Spock in the original series episode "Amok Time" that the Vulcan mating drive operates on a seven-year cycle. "If it's an insect and it doesn't mate until the seven-year cycle is up, it's going to mate at seven years - not a day before or after. So if he's in that mode, then I assume that is has to be something that is pretty well fixed. But is it exactly seven years, or can it be eight or six? It's not certain whether it happens exactly on the hour." As the actor pointed out, Tuvok is not a human being, and his control may operate very differently. Both Spock and Vorick - the young Vulcan of "Blood Fever" who tried to mate with B'Elanna Torres but was defeated in ritual combat - were experiencing their first pon farr. Might it operate differently in a Vulcan of Tuvok's age, married for many years? Sarek, Spock's father, had a human wife; does that mean a Vulcan betrothal (according to Spock, always arranged at age seven) can be negated? We have no canonical answers, which just raises more questions. "What are all the particulars of this phenomenon?" demanded Russ. "What happens if the wife dies? If she's human, she's not even part of the whole ritual - she couldn't have been betrothed to Sarek. And in the original story, the character says she can choose whether she takes him or not, so that's not fixed. What else isn't fixed? If you don't go back to the planet, do you necessarily die if you don't go through a fighting ritual or if you don't take a mate? That's what has to be determined, the ritual and the actual pon farr experience. If Tuvok is not on his home soil, will he perish if he does not perform some kind of ritual? Can he exist in that part of space for that many years without that kind of contact? What are the actual facts and what are the variations? We only have the basics, so that's what has to be figured out in the story." When the writing staff was working on "Blood Fever," which was originally meant to be a Tuvok episode, the actor spent quite a bit of time discussing these matters with the scriptwriter. "I spoke to the writer for several hours while they were in the process of putting it together, because initially it was going to be me, and they switched the character because they didn't want to deal with the difficulties of it." Are there Tuvok storylines Russ would particularly like to explore before Voyager winds down its run? "I told [executive producer] Brannon Braga at the beginning of the season that we need to pair us up with some other people we haven't worked with," the actor revealed. "Chakotay and I have never had a lot together, only a few moments here and there. I haven't worked with Beltran really. Roxann I haven't worked with very much at all; we just completed this scene last week in my quarters, which is very unusual, I think we had one scene last season. I haven't worked with Garrett hardly at all. Once in awhile you get a scene or two, but you've got to have a storyline." As Janeway's oldest friend, Tuvok shares many scenes with the captain, and he has served as a mentor of sorts to Seven of Nine in the early days when she resisted her humanity. Most of the landing parties of late have been led by Tuvok and Paris. "I've had a lot with Paris, it's been heavy in the past three years," observed the stage veteran. "'Gravity' was all Tuvok and Paris, though I did get a chance to work with Bob [Picardo] a little bit more on that. 'Future's End Parts I and II' were with Paris, 'Bride of Chaotica' was with Paris. I really enjoyed that one, myself. When they first started the series, they wanted to break away and do some stuff that was fun. That is absolutely a kick and it's kind of cool - the concept of phototronic characters coming into this program and thinking it's real and playing it out." Russ is juggling many balls at the moment as an actor, writer, director, producer, singer, composer, and speaker who alternates his weekends among playing music in coffeehouses, developing new film projects, attending Star Trek conventions, and spending time with his four-month-old child. "I want to keep busy outside of 'Voyager,'" he said. "It's a very good position to be in, working on a relatively successful television show - people will return phone calls. I've got open doors to television departments and feature departments at the studio, and it's not a good idea to let that kind of opportunity go by. That is what gives you longevity - not waiting for the phone to ring for the next acting gig, which is not guaranteed." "My main interest is creating projects of my own from the ground floor, which would mean producing feature projects and developing and producing television or video projects," he added. "I'm interested in producing and directing these projects, not necessarily appearing in them. Writing I'm not as excited about - I don't really enjoy the process. I'm working on a feature now with a writer, and my role is basically executive producer in terms of paying the writer to work on the story outline. But I will own the project, and then from there shop the project to see if we can get it done." Russ and Nate Thomas, an independent filmmaker who was a longtime friend of the actor, worked together on 'East of Hope Street,' for which they raised the funds and wrote the screenplay. Thomas directed the film based on his own experiences working for a decade in a Los Angeles residential treatment center for pregnant teenagers; Russ starred in the gritty drama, shot on a budget of under $100,000. Having won acclaim at film festivals, the producers are now seeking wider theatrical distribution. "Because of 'Voyager,' the resources were there for me to put money in to getting a project made," noted Russ, who thought 'East of Hope Street' was likely to earn critical attention because of the subject matter despite the lack of studio backing. Though he says he might have chosen to do a comedy or satire for his first production, Russ thought the true story upon which 'East of Hope Street' was based would make a strong story. "Basically we simply put the true story in motion, and put together a linear script. We did have to write the dialogue, but we knew what was going to happen from start to finish." The central character, who must overcome an abusive home and the painful facts of life growing up in an inner city, was based on a young girl Thomas knew from his social work. "I play an autobiographical character, my partner - he worked in the home for ten years," Russ recounted. "The girl was from El Salvador. She was brought here, taken out of an abusive home. She was abused in the foster care system. She became pregnant, she had the child, she got involved with some guys and I think a friend of hers was killed. The only thing we put in was that she was wounded - that was the only thing that did not happen. But being raped and attacked...that all happened." A tough story; was it tough to write? "The process is probably more therapeutic than anything else," said the actor, who was himself raised on Air Force bases around the world by his military family. "I did not come from that background. But I'm profoundly aware of the effect of your environment in growing up on your behavior as an adult. That environment is critical for what occurs in the individual. I look at people who are put into the prison system and go down death row, and they're executed by the state, when in fact they never had a chance at the beginning. They came into this world, they have no control over their destinies - if adults are abusing them, by the time they're old enough, they will act out." "I was very good friends for twelve years with a forensic psychologist who's in the prison system at Chino, on the ward with very hardened criminals," he added. "I'm very much aware of why people do what they do, and it helps in writing because people's motivation comes from what has happened to them in their pasts. It helps in driving these characters in the writing." Russ said his training as an actor contributed to his understanding of the process. "I want to know why the characters I'm playing do what they do. You actually try to step into their shoes and feel what it is they're feeling. Now, it's impossible for me to feel what somebody went through as an abused child, so I have to imagine what that is like and get as much into that as I can to be able to portray it. But at least having an understanding of the fact that what happened to this individual as a child directly relates to how he acts as an adult makes it easier for me to portray that character. It is extraordinarily beneficial to always have a first-hand knowledge, but nobody lived on a starship in the Delta Quadrant and that's still being written every day." Of the decision to produce the film independently, the actor explained, "When you're trying to get something done in the studio process, unless you are relatives of the people who run them or Matthew Broderick wants to do your project, you're not going to get in that door. You have to do it on your own, because you can shop that thing until you're blue in the face. There's only 25 or so major motion pictures made every year by the studios. My partner brought this story to me. It was something we could probably do on our own, for not a lot of money, and we got a couple of breaks in production; we were able to make the thing for what we initially budgeted upon with a typical ten or fifteen percent overrun." The well-reviewed movie was named Best Urban Drama at the 1998 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, and won Best Feature Film and Best Actor at the New Orleans Urban Film and Video Festival. Having directed the acclaimed alternate history episode "Living Witness," Russ will direct another episode of "Voyager" either at the end of this season or the beginning of next season. "It's entirely up to the good graces of the producer - he has been giving people the opportunity since 'Next Generation,' the person to thank would be Jonathan Frakes because he blazed the trail," Russ explained. Almost half the Voyager cast will have directed by the end of this season - Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, and Robert Picardo. "It takes a lot of time, you have to go in there on your days off. And it can take up to three years to get a slot. It's not an easy process, a lot of sitting on screenings and talking to the editors, all the time you have on the outside of the show." Does the Washington, D.C.-born actor expect to be directing an episode set in the Alpha Quadrant? "Bob thought we were going to get back last season, I was standing next to him when he told some reporter, 'Yeah, we'll get back at the end of last season,' and I said,'No, I don't think so," laughed Russ. "If they decide to launch a new series, that's when they'll bring us back, because they'll probably tie that in. That to me would be the strategical thing to do." Then should we expect a new series before "Voyager" makes its exit? "The higher-ups would rather not have anything at all on for at least a year or two, they'd rather take a big breather, but it does not make sense to the studio," the actor suggested. "Paramount is about money, and they just want to milk the cash cow. The children who are watching the show now know 'Voyager.' There are some growing up who haven't even seen 'Next Generation,' they're going to know a lot about this show. They'll be able to watch the older shows in syndication, but that's not the same as growing up with the new show that's on the air. The show that follows us will bring in another generation of kids watching it for the first time. You have people growing up with Star Trek who are going to be the next series of fans." What about people like Russ and myself, who fell in love with Classic Trek not during its original run in the '60s but in syndication in the '70s; couldn't that situation repeat itself? "I think that those shows in syndication don't run in sequence," he pointed out. "With DS9, that could be very difficult. I heard it was spectacular, but you need to see it in sequence. 'Next Generation' doesn't necessarily run in sequence, but it helps. Ours you don't need to see in sequence; right now you could watch an episode from first season right next to a show this season. The only difference might be the people involved. You could have Jennifer [Lien] in one but not in another." I think you can get away with that with 'Voyager,' and then they can sell the show very easily in that regard - people can tune into the show right now who've never watched any Star Trek at all and be able to pick up on it because we don't have a history with one particular character for a long time," added Russ. "We see the characters come, we see them go." In terms of his own favorite episodes, "different ones you like for different reasons," he noted. "I thought 'Gravity' was a great show, I was very happy to get that. 'Future's End' was one of my favorites because I liked the story and it was fun to shoot it." In that two-part episode, Voyager is transported back to Earth in the 20th century, and Russ got to spend time filming on the beach in Santa Monica in a sleeveless shirt. "I'd rather do that than sit in a stuffy studio all day!" he laughed. "It was a very relaxing, very pleasurable two weeks, and there was a lot of fun stuff in that show." "There are some other stories that I really liked," Russ continued. "'Distant Origin,' with the alien archaeologists discovering who their ancestors were. It was beautiful. I really dug "Nemesis," Ken Biller's story on the planet with the rebel force that brainwashed Chakotay. Here we're thinking these guys are the good guys when in fact they're the bad guys, and the guys who are ugly are the good guys. The dialogue in that story was very cool because it wasn't straight-across English, it was fragmented and modified. I thought it was brilliant the way it was written." Neither "Distant Origin" nor "Nemesis" were Tuvok-heavy shows, but Russ agreed that they were very "Classic Trek" in tone. Of the Tuvok episodes, he was challenged most by "Meld," in which he linked his mind to a Betazoid psychopath named Suder and could not control the ensuing violent impulses. He also enjoyed "Flashback," the episode in which Tuvok relives his time serving under Captain Sulu on the Excelsior. "That was a great, well-written, very difficult show for me to do - a lot of work in it, but a great story and a great challenge, to have to play the past and the present all in the same moment," the actor recalled. "It was really clever and really well-done." At this point, Russ sounds as if he would rather direct a great episode than star in one. "It doesn't bother me in the least to step on the other side of the fence for awhile," he noted. In terms of his goals as a performer, "I would love to do a Mad Max or a 'Waterworld' type of flick, with a really bizarre nebulous period in time, that sort of action-adventure thing. I've only done a couple of things that were close." A star of "Heroes of the Storm," a television movie based on true-life stories from Operation Desert Storm, and as the Answering Machine Guy in NBC's "The People Next Door" - in addition to playing a slave in "Roots: The Gift," which also featured Trek stars Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, and LeVar Burton - Russ is comfortable with the idea of segueing out of acting over the next several years if that's where his career leads him. "Hopefully I'll either be directing or producing projects and still playing music," he said. "The acting is always going to be there - it doesn't go away." Neither do conventions or appearances-Russ sang at the Godzilla convention in Los Angeles and at Fantasticon and the New Grounds Coffee House in August. His film opens November 5 in L.A. That could be the start of a whole new chapter. This article originally appeared in Mania Magazine of anotheruniverse.com MARY P. TAYLOR'S ADVENTURES IN TIME AND SPACE by Michelle Erica Green To commemorate 20 years of Star Trek novels, Pocket Books decided to commission a collection of excerpts and essays on the printed fiction's contributions to the franchise. Yet when selecting an editor for this tribute volume, senior editor John Ordover chose a well-known fan rather than one of his famous writers. The result, Star Trek: Adventures in Time and Space by Chicago attorney Mary P. Taylor, presents a Trekker's view of the best Star Trek literary voyages. Before going any further, I had better admit that of course I know Taylor personally - in fact, she served on the board of directors of Now Voyager for several years and got us our tawx-exempt status. Mary is also well-known to many readers of the Star Trek forum on America Online, Simon and Schuster's Star Trek Books web site, and various fan club newsletters under various screen names. You, too, can write to MaryT2054@aol.com if you have a question or comment about Adventures in Time and Space. Like any anthology, it highlights the editor's preferences - in this case, an admitted bias in favor of books based on the original series. Yet because it was put together by a fan, the book reflects a passion for characters and themes popular with many viewers, as opposed to more esoteric elements that have achieved critical attention. You won't find chapters on 24th-century feminism or on homoerotic subtext in Kirk/Spock stories, but you will find almost 600 pages of excerpts and annotation, plus a timeline placing all the novels within the Star Trek chronology. "The whole idea was a sort of clip show for the Pocket books, to present the ones I thought were the best," recalled Taylor, who had never before written a book. "There were some topics that were pretty obvious, like 'James T. Kirk,' but a lot that were not so obvious. My assignment was to put the categories together, select the books for the categories, and explain why I thought the particular excerpts fit the topics. John gave me a lot of independence and leeway on this." "It's not exactly true that Mary Taylor wasn't a publisher author - she doesn't write fiction, but you'll recall that she 'published' lots and lots of reviews, commentary, and straight-out complaints about the Trek novels on Compuserve a few years back," Ordover noted. "While I didn't always agree with what she was saying about the books, I always thought her writing was excellent. For a book like this, I needed someone who could write well and had passionate feelings about the Trek novels. Mary came instantly to mind." "I've known John for a number of years because we're both active participants in Compuserve's Star Trek forum - after many discussions about the books, about the show, about politics, we started exchanging e-mails and occasionally talking live, and I guess over time he became somewhat acquainted with my writing," said Taylor. "He also knew that, being a lawyer, I was comfortable with writing and making deadlines. He came to me with the project, and I thought it sure sounded interesting to reread a lot of the Star Trek books, I did not reread all of them. Originally we had thought about including the back cover blurbs for the books that were not in my excerpts and commentary, but it turned out that the book was quite large without them, and it worked without them." Taylor's commentary introduces the excerpts, but does not summarize the books in most cases. She does explain crossover collections which involve multiple television series, as well as the New Frontier line, which creates a new ship and captain who voyage only in the Pocket Books. Thematic chapters such as "We Are Family - A Study In Our Humanity," "Heroes Under Fire," and "Humor in Starfleet Uniform" complement such topics as "Most Logical - Spock of Vulcan" and "The Shakespearian Captain - Jean-Luc Picard." "I think I'm more interested in character than in anything else, and in reasonable and logical developments of character and exploration of characters' backgrounds," observed Taylor, who added that she didn't cry when the Enterprise blew up but she did cry when Spock died - "It was devastating, and I wasn't connected enough to fandom at the time to realize he was going to come back." She also likes solid plot-driven stories. "I pretty much like anything that's a good story, whether it tells us more about Spock and his background or has a rousing action-adventure with Kirk at the helm." If she sounds prejudiced in favor of the big two, she pleads guilty, but notes that there are more than twice as many original series books as any other. "The whole idea of the book is that it's in celebration of Pocket's 20th anniversary of publishing Star Trek novels, so it's the whole history," she said, adding that she got very little input from Paramount. "Paula Block at Paramount licensing sent back a couple of comments saying this or that book she did or did not enjoy, but she did not tell me that I had to exclude anything that I wanted to include, and she only had two suggestions for books that I had forgotten - and I ended up including them not because she told me to but because they worked and I liked them." Would Paramount have said no if she had wanted to include the controversial novel Killing Time - written by Della Van Hise, a famous K/S author, and edited to excise homoerotic subtext after an initial printing which included a pseudo-rape scene? "Yes, probably," laughed Taylor, joking that she wanted her book to be PG-13, and adding that she never considered Killing Time because she thought other books were much better. One book that I would have loved to include, but could not for legal reasons, was the Barbara Hambly book Ishmael, which wanders into another universe that does not belong to Paramount," added Taylor. Ishmael features characters and situations from the 1968 television series Here Come the Brides starring Mark Lenard, who also played Spock's father. "That was a fun read, but I think they had to work out a deal just to publish it in the first place." Was she sorry not to get to include excerpts or commentary from any of Bantam Books' Trek novels, which preceded Pocket Books' series? "I frankly do not think the Bantam novels are as good as the Pocket books, that's my personal opinion on them, although I definitely enjoyed them," said the author, who mentioned the James Blish episode adaptations and other Bantam fiction in her introduction. "We couldn't include them in any event because Pocket doesn't have the right to publish excerpts from Bantam. But Adventures in Time and Space was always conceived as a celebration of 20 years of Pocket Books' Star Trek novels." Taylor's favorite among the more than 200 novels is Josepha Sherman and Susan Schwartz's Vulcan's Forge, though she also greatly enjoyed the sequel Vulcan's Heart. As for her least favorite, "Let's put it this way: I did not spend a lot of time on books I did not like. I knew that I had limited space to begin with, I knew I was going to be making tough choices among books I liked, so there was really no point in spending my time rereading books I did not like." Instead she started by looking at a list of all the published Pocket books, which are usually available in the recent paperbacks, making notes and "doing very preliminary rough categorization, what books I remembered were the great Spock books, what were the great Kirk books. Some really stand out - like Best Destiny just leaps out among Kirk books, you can't not include it. Then I started reading nearly all the books again in August last year, and as I read, I kept refining the categories." Taylor took notes in a Star Trek notebook she had bought at the now-closed Viacom store in Chicago, and kept to a strict reading schedule that reduced her private time to nil. "My life consisted of reading Star Trek books, writing about Star Trek books, and working at the office - we were very busy through that whole period. I slept, I ate, I went swimming, and that's all I did. The only social things, the whole six months, I went to Las Vegas with some friends in a local Star Trek club, and I went to a one-day Star Trek convention in January!" There were some books that Taylor no longer owned and that Ordover could not find in the warehouse, so Taylor was forced to rely on good used bookstores. "There were books that I scrounged from friends...and I actually gave some of those back!" she laughed. "There was a lot of random selection in the reading order. I read what I felt like reading at the moment. I would finish a book and look at the pile and decide what grabbed me. Some mornings one just doesn't want to get up and read tragedy; those mornings would be good mornings for something like Q In Law." Yet when she sat down New Years' weekend for her "close-to-final organizing" of the structure, "it all fell into place. I wouldn't say it was easy, but it was easier than I expected it to be." Relatively few Voyager books warranted inclusion in Adventures in Time and Space, though former executive producer Jeri Taylor's Mosaic and Pathways both made it in. So did one of the stories from Strange New Worlds - the anthologies of fiction written by fans, to whom Ordover has always been friendly. "The lack of Voyager books is not commentary on the quality - I think Christie Golden is the best writer, it's just a matter of their being fewer Voyager books than there are others," said Taylor. "There's not that many DS9 books either, although the DS9 books that I include I think are absolutely stunning books." She added, "I had completely forgotten just how much TOS there was, even though they're squirreled away all over my house, and even though I read them constantly. So many of them are so good. The hardest thing about this book was deciding what not to include. I don't think that either John or I foresaw that I would end up with the 70-some books that I've got. Some excerpts are only a few pages, and some are 15 pages...whatever I thought worked to illustrate the point I was making. The last weekend I did end up taking out several books because it just went too long. I didn't want to bore anybody." Though she's not burned out on Trek by any means, Taylor admits that first month after she completed the manuscript, she did not read any Star Trek at all. "I had read nothing else for six months, I don't even think I read the newspaper. I had a lot of reading to catch up on. A friend of mine gave me an Anne Rice book as a birthday present, but my birthday is in January and she didn't give it to me until February when I turned the book in! I was still watching it on TV - I even watched the DS9 finale despite stupid WGN breaking up the episode into two parts." Though it had never occurred to Taylor that she might publish a book someday, "for all that I read everything under the sun and I have many, many friends who are writers," she said that she had so much fun working on this project that she hopes to do so again. "I don't know what at this point - right now my writing efforts are mostly in the legal realm," she noted ruefully. "I have not seriously thought in terms of writing fiction, I've never really written fiction outside Star Trek adventures when I was twelve. But there's a good chance I would do something like this again. It almost seems obscene that one could actually get paid for doing something that enjoyable. This project has taught me that I can get professionally published; it was an eye-opening experience from that perspective." Taylor welcomes feedback and hopes Adventures in Time and Space provokes discussion - even dissent, though she hopes people will enjoy the book. "As the book has become more real, the whole experience has become more surreal - when I got my advance copy from John, I just carried it around with me for a few days showing it to everybody," confessed the fan. "I even took it over to the Waldenbooks where I've been buying books for years to show it to the manager. They are probably going to have a book signing for me. I'll go to cons and sign books! It boggles the mind." BOOKS AND COLLECTIBLES Members are invited to submit reviews for this section. Send reviews by email to vulcan@iquest.net or mail them to Donna Christenberry, 1315 South Fifth Street, Terre Haute, IN 47802. We can't guarantee that all will be published, due to space limitations, but will try to include as many as possible. We reserve the right to edit reviews for length, content, grammar, etc. GET A LIFE! by William Shatner with Chris Kreski Published by Pocket Books For years, William Shatner was clueless about Star Trek conventions and Star Trek fans. Even though they were the bread and butter (and still are) that enabled him to buy his Kentucky horse farm, or take safaris to Africa, he didn't seem to have much regard for them. Something apparently changed Bill's attitude, and he decided to write this book. And it's a good thing he did, because "Get A Life" is lots of fun. Once you get past Shatner's monumental ego, you'll have no trouble diving into his adventures behind the scenes. Shatner's "research" for this book consisted of crashing conventions in a rubber mask and parading around incongito in dealer rooms and other areas. He must have had a partner in crime who shot the photos, because many of the pictures show him with the mask on. Until recently, I never particularly cared for Shatner or Captain Kirk. As much as I loved the show in syndication, and as good as some of the subsequent movies were, Kirk was never my favorite character. Spock and Bones did it for me, and even Scotty with his broken down engines was more real than the guy with the ripped shirt who always got the girl. Shatner begins by chronicling the very first Star Trek Convention and all the work that went into organizing it. The accounts are interesting, and when you consider that nobody had the Internet in those days to spread the word, the fact that so many people turned out for the con is nothing short of amazing. He moves on to interviews with Leonard Nimoy, Jeri Ryan, Terry Farrell, comedian Kevin Pollak, and numerous fans of the original series. Kate fans will be pleased by the inclusion of footage on the four captains at Grand Slam along with several photos of the event. Shatner obviously hasn't done *all* his homework and must not be much of a B5 fan, because at one con, he mistakenly identifies Claudia Christian as Tracy Scoggins. The picture in the center of the book is definitely Claudia, and I can't blame her for telling him to get lost. Bill also does a rundown of the most frequently asked con questions and shares his most well known con stories. Most of them have nothing to do with Trek, but they're still funny. It becomes clear that Shatner owes much of his livelihood to his association with the Trek franchise. He freely admits this and is grateful for all it has given him. In short, this is a very enjoyable book that is *the* perfect summer read. -E. Klisiewicz DELTA QUADRANT 9 An Orion Press Fanzine [Orion Press, c/o Randall Landers, 3211 Saddleleaf Avenue, Albany, GA 31707, orionpress@mindspring.com] Delta Quadrant 9, published by ORION PRESS, is the July '99 issue of the semi-annual series. It was released in digest-style, the publisher's new format for all of its fanzines. Diane Bellomo provided the two 'Torres Tales' with "The Fourth Stage" and "B'Elanna's Choice". The former addresses Torres as she tries to work through her grief after the loss of her compatriots. This story is a direct continuation of the episode "Extreme Risk". I enjoyed this since it kept the dichotomy of the character intact instead of being too soft (Human) or too hard (Klingon). It stuck to the topic of her grief. In the latter, Tom, and especially B'Elanna, have decisions to make concerning the consequences of their actions in the episode "Scientific Experiment" where they were victims of hormone tampering. The story was very good, especially since it was able to get its point across without becoming preachy, sappy, or offensive. In "Better Late Than Never" by Ann Harding, Janeway helps a relative cope with the loss of a crewman who didn't get to return to the Alpha Quadrant. This was a nice, a good, story. Not 'good' in that it could have been better, but 'good' in that it accomplished exactly what should have been done, respectfully. The Janeway/Chakotay fixes come from two directions this time around. "Of The Same Mind" by Cat Lain took place in this universe and was very good; and Lain came up with one of the best J/C situations I've read. It was good to read in the way that Kirk and Spock friendship stories are good to read. Not only did Lain keep the personalities and strengths intact, but also made the characters equally friends and 'special friends'. In "Filling In The Blanks", Andra Marie Mueller returned to her alternate universe with Commodore Janeway and her husband and First Officer, Chakotay. This wasn't a 'bad' story. In it, Chatokay did everything he could, including nothing, to help an amnesiac Janeway remember, but without doing further harm. The final stories were both ensemble-oriented. "Mary Sue Fails" by Riss isn't a 'Mary Sue' story. It is a day-in-the-life short story that's nicely developed. As the fanzine ender, BEKi took a step back away from Chakotay and/or Paris stories to write "The Not-So-Long Voyage Home". A short, sweet, funny bit with a cute ending, full of characterization. The color cover is a really nice landscape piece of Voyager against the background of space and space stuff by Beverly Chick. It looks like one of the shots from the opening credits. -Rhonda E. Green DQ9 is a fairly good addition to the Orion stable of zines. It suffers from some of the same problems as previous issues, but it's still better than Brannon Braga's weekly drivel. My two favorite stories are "Mary Sue Fails" and "The Not-So-Long Voyage Home. In the former tale, Voyager attracts the unwanted attention of an alien vessel and must dodge through an asteroid field to avoid them. I like Riss's dry sense of humor and the way she describes the characters. She takes gentle potshots at Tom Paris's piloting skills, B'Elanna's legendary temper, and Seven of Nine's...er....enhancements. It's a simple and extremely short story that would fill no more than a few minutes of screen time, but it was refreshing and fun. As for the latter tale, BEKi brings the crew home through the Nechrid Expanse. It turns out that Tuvok miscalculated the distance between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants and the crew end up in Romulan space. Again, this would be a footnote on the boob tube, but it was a cute little story. The rest of the stories range from good to mediocre. In "B'Elanna's Choice", Diane Bellomo serves up something a bit different. You may all remember the scientific experiments performed on the Voyager crew in "Scientific Method." In this story, which takes place right after that episode, B'Elanna becomes unexpectedly pregnant. I've been waiting a good long time for *any* kind of story to deal with pregnancy in a realistic light. Every other scenario has Janeway and Chakotay breeding like rabbits without regard for the narrow confines of life on a small starship. Bellomo goes one step further and has Torres talk with various people such as Ensign Wildman about childrearing. I especially enjoyed the ending, because it was open ended and let the reader interpret it for themselves. The only jarring note in this story was a bit of vulgar language and some descriptions of rough sex. Frankly, given Orion Press's predilection for PG rated fanfic, I was a bit surprised by this. Otherwise, I liked this one quite a bit. Her other story, "The Fourth Stage", doesn't fare so well. It deals with B'Elanna's depression after learning about the end of the Maquis in the Alpha Quadrant. The episode it follows in the Voyager timeline is "Extreme Risk". That episode didn't do much for me, so unfortunately, neither does the story. Ann Harding is well known for her Tom Paris stories, and her heart is always in the right place. In "Better Late than Never", Janeway has a meeting with Owen Paris to discuss his deceased son. What Ann needs more than anything is a good proofreader. There were so many glitches in this story that it detracted from an otherwise decent story. "Of The Same Mind" by Cat Lain starts out on a high note and ends up dishing up the same old J/C fluff by story's end. I don't mean to sound harsh, but to me, this pairing has grown tiresome and rarely offers up anything new. The story deals with an accident that forces the doctor to transfer Janeway's mind into Chakotay's body. If anyone remembers Lily Tomlin in "All of Me," then you know what this story could have been. In fact, I would have loved to see this premise put to film. I think Kate Mulgrew has a flair for comedy. But there is not a glimmer of humor to be found anywhere. Lain could also have spent a little more time talking about "Tuvix," which this story resembles. She skates across these issues and turns this into melodrama. "Filling in the Blanks" by guest editor Andra Marie Mueller has a simple enough premise: guy has girl, guy loses girl (in a manner of speaking), guy gets girl. Any questions? All flippancy aside, this is a story for all J/C-starved viewers. In an alternate universe, Janeway and Chakotay are married with three kids and live in the Alpha Quadrant. Mueller seems big on family values, and there's nothing wrong with that, but she tends to pollute her stories with uninteresting guest characters and assumes that the reader has memorized every relationship introduced in her earlier stories. In this story, Janeway loses her memory, so it's up to Chakotay to help her remember that they're a team in every sense of the word. Besides the tepid subject matter, the story is also too long. The story title says it all. "Filling in the Blanks" is little more than harmless filler from someone who has some writing talent and clearly loves the characters but presents nothing new in the Voyager universe. In summary, this is definitely not a bad zine, and since Orion is now offering its zines in a new, lower priced format, it's worth picking up. -E. Klisiewicz DELTA QUADRANT 10 An Orion Press Fanzine [Orion Press, c/o Randall Landers, 3211 Saddleleaf Avenue, Albany, GA 31707, orionpress@mindspring.com] DQ10 contains only two stories, and one of them is easily the best Voyager story I've ever read in this zine. Laura Taylor's "The Disarmament of Hostilities" consists of Janeway's experiences with the infamous Gul Dukat. Now from canon, we know that Janeway had no contact with Dukat, but that's OK. In Taylor's universe, the two match wits on a joint expedition during Cardassia's conflict with the Maquis. To get there from here, Janeway's ship is threatened by a nebula and she resorts to using Cardassian technology to solve their dilemma. How she got her hands on this technology is the premise for this adventurous tale. I just loved Dukat and Janeway together, and I was so happy that Taylor didn't stoop to throwing them in bed. Janeway has good reason to despise the Cardassians, but she manages to rise above her personal biases and joins them on a mission to take down a Maquis base. These particular Maquis include some familiar faces, but I won't ruin it by telling you who is involved. Lots and lots of fun! The second story pales in comparison to the first, but it was OK. In Ali Hodge's "The Sacrifice", Chakotay mistakenly tries to protect the captain from a misogynistic alien race. His efforts get him thrown in the brig, but by story's end, it draws the captain closer to her first officer. DQ10 is a strong addition to this series of zines, and I highly recommend it. -E. Klisiewicz Orion Press is ahead of their game. "Delta Quadrant" is usually released in January and in July, but this time around, there were two issues of DQ released in July. "Delta Quadrant 10" included two novelettes. They are both Janeway stories. [Huzzah!] The first being a Captain Janeway and Gul Dukat story, the second being a Janeway and Chakotay story. Other than this fanzine, I'm unfamiliar with the work of the two featured authors. For me, they're new. As such, it was interesting to note the, for me, never-before-seen - hinted at, but not seen - interpretations of Janeway, Chakotay, J&C, J/C, and their crews and their relationships. The trip was not unpleasant. It kinda sucks because I've already made my romantic VOY investment in P/T; but with the better and better J/C being turned out... Starfleet sent Janeway and Tuvok on a diplomatic mission in "The Disarmament of Hostilities" by Laura Taylor. The similarity between a situation affecting Voyager and something in her past compelled Janeway to remember when she and Dukat had to decide to fight for or to accept the coming war or the continuing peace. The present-day and past adventures were interesting, but I really enjoyed this story because it showcased parts of the characters' personalities that have been shown for brief periods and/or mentioned, but never really explored by the televised series, i.e. their skills at subterfuge, at diplomacy, at ruthlessness, et al. What was good about the characters was how well they were written. Taylor was right on target with both of them. What was nice about Janeway, in particular, was how she was given equal treatment as Dukat. As an officer of the military and as a commander of men. Society stills holds to the differences between men and women. Xena: Warrior Princess was the first show [that I know of] to overtly turn this 'fact' into 'fiction'. I'm not making a judgment on the difference or its existence. I am just saying that it was nice to see Janeway being treated no differently than Kirk or Sisko or Picard would have been. "The Sacrifice" by Ali Hodge was a different kind of J/C. In it, the characters showed their feelings for one another, yes, but did it by acting in ways not, or not usually, seen. With this fresh viewpoint, it was nice to see the characters be the same, but at the same time, be 'new'. The plot: in order for Voyager to go through these aliens' space, they have to provide proper payment. [This sounds like a lame story, yes, but if I tell you any more, it'll give stuff away.] Truly, my only disappointment was that the author couldn't find ways for the main characters to have a larger, albeit unnecessary, role in the story. [Khan in STII was treated similarly.] However, even this didn't change the type of story from J/C to ensemble. I liked the adventure that prompted the J/C part of the story. It was believable and it provided realistic circumstances in which the characters had to act. Finally, not that I didn't enjoy it the story, because it was a good read. With the good ending, though, I felt that some of the power of the ending was discounted by the actions in the epilogue. Artwork for the cover and for the first story - and exhibiting Janeway in simply new (!) lights - was provided by Lauren Francis. -- Rhonda E. Green A SEPARATE PEACE by Andra Marie Mueller An Orion Press Fanzine [Orion Press, c/o Randall Landers, 3211 Saddleleaf Avenue, Albany, GA 31707, orionpress@mindspring.com] A J/C story. Mm. Eh. An Alternate Universe story. Mm. Eh. Not necessarily reasons against the story or reasons to avoid the story, but reasons that could possibly used at some future point to explain why I really didn't like it all that much. I got the fanzine because it was: (1) a VOY fanzine and (2) written by an author with whose work I was familiar. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Andra Marie Mueller has outdone herself with her "alternate universe" tales. "A Separate Peace" was the best story she's done yet and the best J/C story that I've read. For this novella, Mueller asked two questions... "What if Janeway and Chakotay had met before their tenure on Voyager?" And "What if Voyager was never transferred to the Delta Quadrant?" The story explored the Dynamic Duo from their time as Starfleet lieutenants (before Chakotay turned freedom fighter/terrorist - depending on who you talk to) to the present day. Who else?: All the players that Trek fans know and love were there to join in the festivities, and a good time was had by all. Where?: The story trekked [ha, ha] from the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant, from Starfleet Command to the Bajoran station, Deep Space Nine. Why?: I wasn't aware that J/Cers needed to answer this question. My bad. When?: The story took place at the very beginning of the Cardassian/Dominion partnership which preceded the Dominion War. The Maquis were still alive and causing trouble for various people. What I enjoyed most about the story was the characters. What I enjoyed most about the characters, and what made early J/C so difficult for me to read, was that in Mueller's novella, neither character was compromised. They were, at all times, the passionate and strong personalities and leaders that viewers have been led to believe that they are. [The show's writers told us that they are, so they must be.] At no time did one character repress part or all of him- or herself in order to make the relationship between them work. They started out as and remained individuals. Also, Mueller stayed away from exaggerated, overblown and/or soap-opery dialogue between and about the characters. Everyone's speech was 'realistic'. [I accept that many of my Now Voyager brethren get all giggly just thinking about the 'angry Warrior' speech. Me? It makes my skin crawl every time.] Outside of the romance, Janeway and Chakotay were written wonderfully, not just in terms of their dialogue, but in terms of their physical and mental behaviors. The adventure in which everyone was embroiled was very well written and was a story in and of itself that didn't need the romance to justify it. Like the keeping of the Duo as individuals complementing one another, this made for a good partnership of the romance alongside the adventure instead of having one subjugate itself. The only problems that I had with the story were on the editing front, a distressing situation since the novella had two editors . Though consistent, the spellings of common characters' names and everyday places used on ST:DS9 were atrocious. A drawing of Janeway and Chakotay, provided by the mucho-talented BEKi, graced the cover. - Rhonda E. Green I am anti-J/C these days, but I decided to give this novella a chance for two reasons. First off, it takes place in an alternate universe, and any universe is more interesting than Braga and Berman's vision of the Delta Quadrant. More important than this, fan fiction writers are still giving us the best bang for our buck. Mueller takes a lot of liberties with her alternate universe and ignores a lot of canon. She draws characters from TNG, Voyager, and DS9. Admiral Alynna (Mueller misspells her name) Nechayev is actually likable, which is an amazing feat in and of itself. Voyager still resides in the Delta Quadrant and the Federation is on the brink of war. While pursuing the Maquis, Janeway is kidnapped off her ship by a certain Captain Chakotay. It seems that the two had an affair and were on the brink of marriage when Chakotay resigned his commission. They have unfinished business, and Chakotay hopes to remedy the situation. Despite some rather vivid torture scenes, Andra lays on the gooey sentiments 'til she's blue in the face. I have nothing against children, but I'm tired of reading stories where J/C have kids. In this case, it's downright irresponsible of Janeway to have unsafe sex. You'd think that her birth control boosters would be up to date, wouldn't you? After all, this is the 24th century. I'm still waiting for a story where Janeway gets pregnant and seriously weighs the pros and cons of becoming a mother and maybe even has doubts about her choice. And has anyone noticed that the kids in these stories are always perfect little angels? They never, ever cry and they sleep all the time. Heck, I'd pay to see or read something where the baby has colic and the parent is ready to tear their hair out. Torres would probably be a good candidate. Mueller also sets part of the story on a Maquis colony in the Badlands. This planet has the same animals as Earth. Isn't that a bit far-fetched? Grizzly bears on some way out colony? I just couldn't buy that. I also had trouble with her version of the alternate universe. For example, Julian Bashir infiltrates the Maquis settlement, which is OK by me, but he also knows that he's genetically engineered and nobody is upset about it. What's more, it doesn't fit into the DS9 timeline. This novella takes place at the onset of the Dominion War, which lasted several years. Julian didn't find out he was genetically engineered until Season 6. Maybe this is part of her alternate universe scenario, but stating that he was genetically engineered added nothing to the story. In addition, Mueller has so many peripheral characters that at times, I don't know whether she's coming or going. It's always best to stick to the main characters, and if you introduce peripheral characters, then they should be few in number and not central to the plot. She's managed to drag in Edward and Gretchen Janeway, Phoebe (more on that in a moment), Phoebe's family, Mark Johnson, Owen Paris, numerous members of Starfleet and the Maquis, Sisko, Bashir, Worf, Kira, Dax, and a bunch of made-up members of Chakotay's family. At one point, the name Tara Bennett jumps out at you. She's supposed to be Chakotay's sister, but you'd never know that from the story. Tara is mentioned in passing by first name only, and it was only after a bit of head scratching that I realized who she was talking about. Tara also seems like a funny name for someone of Native American descent, especially when the other siblings all have Indian names. And moving right along, we have this incredibly close relationship between Janeway and her sister Phoebe. I never got the impression that the two were close, but maybe I should go back and read Mosaic (god forbid) to check and see. I have to give Andra credit for a few things. Despite the fact that I found the story rather boring and predictable, I have to admit that it's well-written sap. She also has a very good ear for dialogue. These characters are not terribly complex, but it's pretty easy to hear them saying the words she's given them. So, all in all, it's certainly not a bad story. It's just not a terribly compelling one. -E. Klisiewicz DELTA QUADRANT OF VENUS 2 by Em Wycedee with illustrations by Her Slave An Agent With Style Fanzine [Agent With Style, 411 Doris Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21225-2807, zines@agentwithstyle.com] This adult zine is pretty much all Janeway, Chakotay, and Janeway/Chakotay. If that pairing doesn't do anything for you, neither will DQVII, though some of the gorgeous drawings are worth having anyway (provided you're over 18 and can handle nudity). If you live for J/C, however, the zine provides it in abundance. As the author jokes, it starts with "a bang" and continues to send the captain and first officer through every possible permutation on that theme, with some occasional heavy angst and a some traditional romance. "Unforgivable" and "Coffee Talk" have appeared in Now Voyager, so people here have some idea of the writer's style. The most successful stories in my opinion take off on canonical episodes. "Captain Miller's Tale," for instance, puts a new spin on "The Killing Game" and explores what Chakotay might have been feeling in the body of Captain Miller. "Crazy" gets inside Janeway's head during "Scientific Method," while "Shooting Protons" and "Bronze Statues" take off from "Bride of Chaotica" and offer an interesting glimpse into what Janeway and Paris' relationship could be like if the writers weren't so mired in throwing Tom at B'Elanna. A "Timeless" story from Tessa's perspective gives her the personality she needed in the episode and adds insight into why Chakotay decided to go back on a suicide mission to save his captain. Dark stories like "Penetrating" and "Underground" will not be for everyone, though as a hurt-comfort fan I liked seeing Kathryn rescue Chakotay from the bad guys. The over-long concluding story "Mid-Flight" ends on a hopeful note for the characters and the series. I have to admit, though, that my favorite story was "Denial." It's no more believable in canon than any of the other stories in this zine, but I'm glad to see Chakotay and I live in the same state about that. - Barbie's Friend Midge WAYFARERS 1 [Orion Press, c/o Randall Landers, 3211 Saddleleaf Avenue, Albany, GA 31707. ] The long-awaited, much-delayed "relationships" fanzine series has finally arrived! I find it interesting that this fanzine exists, in this form, in the first place. ORION PRESS offers other 'second series' fanzines for each television program which publishes darker material. I'm surprised that they chose not to have one for ST:VOY, allowing a separate forum for the "tortured Pilot", "angry Warrior", "depressed Engineer", and "Starfleet vs. Maquis" stories. Especially with the abundance of "tortured Pilot" and "angry Warrior" stories out there. The relationship stories could easily be merged into Delta Quadrant, since that series has already printed such stories on a regular basis. Hm. But that's why they get paid the big bucks. I think that it's worth mentioning that the fanzine's editor, Brenda Shaffer-Shiring didn't require that stories conform to events found in Jeri Taylor's novels, Mosaic and Pathways. In "Out of the Ashes", Andra Marie Mueller returned to her beloved Alternate Universe. In this place, Janeway survived the final engagement with the Krenim ship from the episode "A Year in Hell, Part 2"and time did not re-set itself. As the crew limps along home, dealing with their losses, Janeway and Chakotay have a new life together. A plus for this story was that it was the first time in the AU that the captain maintained her strength and 'command' - as opposed to becoming all weepy and mushy and 'girl-y'. The story wasn't gripping and edge-of-your-seat, but it was very nice because of how Janeway was handled. "New Resolutions" by Diane Bellomo takes place after Janeway received her "Dear John [Jane?]" letter. Our captain remembers and compares moments with Mark on Earth and moments with Chakotay on New Earth and realizes that she's been unfair to herself and her first officer. This was a really nice story, not so much for the ending, in which the reader knew the two would get together (it is J/C, after all! duh!), but for the cutting room floor scenes between J and C on New Earth. They were really well-written, in character for the most part, and were ro-mantic. "Shadows" by Andra Marie Mueller was a quiet, touching J/C story. Janeway and Chakotay examined their meaning to one another after she found him reflecting on the incidents in "Nemesis". Fan fiction writer extraordinaire, BEKi usually writes Chakotay stories or Paris stories for ST:VOY and even then, the 'other' character has some important placement in the story. "A Man Alone" by BEKi, a short novella, features both characters, and their respective others. In the episode "One", Seven of Nine spent some of her time returning Paris to his stasis chamber. It was determined that he was claustrophobic. BEKi chose to explore that claustrophobia. The story involved Chakotay acting as a 'counselor' to help Paris come to terms with it, where and why it started, and learning to deal with it. Not only is the author capable of writing believable dialogue, including arguments, but I swear that he/she provides the best Janeway and Chakotay conversations out there. This was a wonderful and wonderfully well-written story in that the impetus 'situation' didn't detract from the scenes with the couples, nor did it seem disconnected. BEKi has a great gift - excellent character development - that makes the reader able to sink into her world and get attached to these "people" who we thought we knew. "A Friend in Need" by Valerie De Vries was of the "tortured Pilot" variety starring Paris and the Doctor. The story was very, very good, mainly due to the emotions that the circumstances engendered. However, it's those circumstances that made the story need to stretch a bit to reach the fanzine's relationship theme. Be aware that it had serious subject matter. "The Gift" by Kathleen Speck was a Kim story. A member of the crew helped Harry beat Tom at pool and in the process they fell for one another. I hate to say it, because it seems so trite, but the story was, well, sweet. I liked it; it was a perfect Kim story. He' s a sweet guy and he rated a sweet story. The absolute gem of the fanzine was the closing story, "One Night in the Captain's Cabin" by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring. The story was too short to give a synopsis, and giving such would also interfere with why this was such a great[!] story and worked as the fanzine's capper. Art credits go to Joey Rodrigues and to Anja Gruber, who supplied a Chakotay and Kathryn drawing for the cover. - Rhonda E. Green THE FUNNY PAGES For reasons I certainly can't explain but which I am sure is Cybermum's fault, there has been a spate of online limerick-writing. Limericks are a very convenient means of offering episode criticism, actually. These are by Carol Kassie, Beth Schuman, Annmarie Daneker, Em Wycedee, Jim Wright, Christine Osborne, Leslie Magowan, and Michelle Erica Green, but I think I will not incriminate anyone further by noting who wrote which! ELOGIUM When Kes started acting outrageous, Her desire proved to be contagious. The aliens turned blue- The first officer, too- But for Janeway, that was advantageous... THE 37s Lost over the ocean with Fred, She was widely presumed to be dead, But Amelia Earhart Got a new start When aliens froze her instead. RESOLUTIONS Stranded with Chakotay so hunky, Kathryn stayed a dull science junkie. Even in that warm climate She preferred a primate, So Chak was left spanking the monkey. UNITY When Chakotay joined the Collective For a full-body bio-corrective, He opened his mind Riley answered in kind Then they turned toward matters erective. SCORPION PART II Chak used to be Janeway's best friend, Her path he would always defend. But now she's the ice queen, Snotty, prudish, and mean, Her path she's not willing to bend. THE KILLING GAME Captain Miller had followed Catrine To a Klingon-infested ravine; He thought he might get lucky, But his timing was sucky When he had to go to the latrine. LIVING WITNESS Evil Janeway pulled off one black glove, Said, "Chakotay, I'm needing some love." But her tattooed XO Was in a blow-by-blow With Tom Paris, when push came to shove. UNFORGETTABLE After five years of mooning a lot, Chakotay found Kellin quite hot. She came onto the ship For the rest of the trip, Knocked on his door, then...I forgot. NIGHT Captain Janeway was really more fun When she had her hair in a bun. Since she chopped off the length She's lost all of her strength... Now all she's got is a big gun. COUNTERPOINT After five years of celibate bore, Janeway's ship met up with the Devore And though she won the struggle, Kashyk snuck in a snuggle, So I'd have to say he won the war. THE FIGHT There was a man named Chakotay Whose hair was lovely black and gray Till he went for a bottle To get rid of the mottle; Now his locks look just like a toupee. BRIDE OF CHAOTICA When Kate's dressed as the Bride of Chaotica, Our thoughts turn of course to erotica, But since this Star Trek Libidos stay in check; One cannot even think of exotica. FULL OF BEANS...OR BEAN THERE, DONE THAT by King Ralph We find it rather obscene That our Captain can't live sans caffeine. It's one constant chug From a steaming hot mug For our venerable Voyager queen. >From a replicator or a cafe, Decaf, cappucino or latte, She lives for the next sips To pass over her lips As she wends her way through the skyway. Five minutes without causes shakes And leads to a lot of mistakes. Her level of calm Is soon removed from Decisions she must often make. Like an eruption of volcanic lava Is Janeway deprived of her Java. She frets and does pout If she is without A main-line to her vena cava. "Oh coffee must run through my blood If I am to survive a flood; The buzz in my brain Saves me going insane Just keep pouring that hot mocha mud." DATING ADVICE FOR A CAPTAIN WHO DEFINITELY NEEDS SOME by Cybermum If you want bit of a fix Of incredible sexual tricks As odd as it seems If you want to raise screams You'd be the best served by Neelix. If you want to deal only in logic And you'd like to play games biologic Give Tuvok a go: He's a Vulcan you know And will make love in terms analogic. Now the pickings would have to be slim If you wanted to do Ensign Kim I think you should try An experienced guy And leave Kim to work out in the gym. Tom Paris is next on the list Of crewmembers who might be kissed But B'Elanna's right hook You must not overlook... Perhaps he should just be dismissed. And then of course there's the Doc Except for one stumbling block. You'd have to consider His holo-emitter Which might give off a bit of a shock. This leaves you one natural choice As to with whom you should raise your...voice. Your handsome first mate Is the natural date And would make all J/Cers rejoice. COPYRIGHT VIOLATION CORNER TO HAVE AND TO HOLD by Patricia Leathem Place: Deep Space Nine Docking Ring. Time: Shortly after Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant. Captain Kathryn Janeway sat at her desk in her ready room aboard Voyager trying desperately to think of one single good reason why she shouldn't just leave - board the next shuttle and get the hell out of here. She had certainly put in her time since they'd arrived home, faithfully attending all of the various parties, celebrations, meetings and interviews. While the rest of her crew were at home with their families and friends, she was stuck behind this desk downloading reports. She sighed heavily and turned her attention back to her computer. "Duty calls," she reminded herself. Next week, she was scheduled to make a full, detailed report of all that had happened to them on their accidental detour into the Delta Quadrant. She was finding the hardest part of this particular task was deciding which details to include in her reports, and which to diplomatically leave out, which adventures to extrapolate upon and which ones she would accidentally forget to mention. She knew her methods and decisions, as well as those of her crew, would be closely scrutinized by Starfleet now that the initial "welcome home, we can't believe you made it" sentiments had worn off. In fact, Starfleet had informed her, in no uncertain terms, that her Maquis crew members would eventually have to stand trial. She was confident, however, that in light of their service to her and to Voyager, they would be cleared of their crimes. She wasn't about to let any of them be put in jail after everything they went through to get home! The very thought of that scenario set her teeth on edge. If it weren't for Chakotay's calming presence, she probably would have gone over the edge by now. He had offered to help with her daunting task and had been as invaluable to her now as he had been during their voyage. She smiled at the thought, but then was struck by another. She had asked Chakotay to cross-reference a few things for her, a task that should have taken only a few minutes. It had been over a hour. She surmised that he had taken a little sidetrip that led directly to Quark's bar. Then, as if on cue, the doorbell chirped. "Come in," she called, not hiding the irritation in her voice. She didn't even look up when she heard the swish of the door. "It's about time, Commander - I thought you got lost." When she didn't get a response to her quip, she looked up with concern. Immediately, she felt the color drain from her face. She knew this moment had to come soon or later, but she was hoping it would be on her terms. She swallowed over the considerable lump that had formed in her throat but found she was completely unable to speak. "Hello, Kath," the visitor replied quietly, his voice slightly tinged with awe. She pushed herself to her feet and stood gazing at the man who stood before her. There was so much to say and yet neither spoke. "You know," he said with a devilish glint in his eye, "a simple 'hi Mark' would suffice." She let a breath escape through her tightened lips and slowly walked to the other side of the desk. She stood before him and looked into a face she thought she'd never see again - the face of a man whom she had once loved very deeply - a man who, thinking she was dead, had married another. "I'm sorry," she replied, at last finding her voice, "I guess I just didn't expect you to be here." "I could say the same for you," he chuckled. "Touche," she replied with a smile. "Oh, Kath, when I heard the news, I... couldn't believe it. I had to come see for myself. But, that wasn't easy! You're quite a celebrity, it seems." "Well, I'm glad you made the effort," she said much more coldly than she intended. "And, as you can see, it's all true. Here I am." "Yes, here you are," he said, smiling, "every bit as beautiful as the day you left. Maybe even more so...somehow." He chuckled and shook his head, "I don't know what I expected to find." He stopped and she felt him studying her. "I guess I expected to find a battered and bruised Captain whose spirit had been broken. I should have known better." "Oh, the bruises are there," she assured him, "if you know where to look." She brushed by him, ostensibly to offer him a cup of coffee, but more so to escape from the increasingly uncomfortable situation. He reached out and grabbed her arm, turning her toward him. "I'm sorry," he said simply, forcing her to look at him, "if only I'd known..." He reached over to touch her cheek but she grabbed his hand before he made contact. She felt tears well up behind her eyes, but was determined not to let him see them. "Don't," she said forcibly, pulling his hand away. "Just don't," she repeated and pried her arm from his grasp. She walked a few paces and stopped, her back to him. She put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes tightly, forcing back her emotions. After several torturous moments of silence, she sensed Mark had turned and moved closer. Still, she jumped when she felt his hand on her shoulder. "I can't imagine what you've been through, but I knew that if anyone could beat the odds, it would be you. You're a hero now, you know - and not just to me." "I'm no hero. I just did what I had to do - to survive. More importantly, I had a promise to keep to my crew. I told them I'd get them home and I believe in keeping my promises." Her words hung icily in the air. He nodded in understanding, her subtle point not lost on him. She walked toward the sofa and for a moment simply watched the activity of the station - the shuttles, the ships. Again, sights she thought she'd never see. But her mind was not on the ships or the shuttles. She heard Mark's footsteps behind her and she turned, bending down to retrieve the freshly brewed coffee from the table. "We've got a lot of catching up to do," she said, trying to push the resentment from her voice. "Would you like a cup of coffee-" He smiled, but held up a hand. "No, thanks. I've given it up." "What?" she said, truly surprised. "I guess some things really have changed." She poured herself a cup and motioned for Mark to sit. She sat down a respectable distance from him and peered at him over the rim of her cup. "I've never known you to turn down coffee." "Well," he sighed, "it wasn't exactly my idea." She took another generous swallow of the contents of her cup and laughed darkly in understanding. "Your wife?" she questioned. He nodded and after a moment continued. "She pretty much made me give up everything...that reminded me of you," he finished. She felt the tears sting her eyes again and quickly turned away until she regained her increasingly fragile composure. "I guess ... I can't blame her," she said quietly, her slightly trembling voice betraying her. "But, you do blame me, don't you?" She turned and looked at him harshly, "What?" "You blame me for not waiting, for not trusting you'd come home." "That's ridiculous," she said, waving him off. I didn't expect you to wait for me." "You didn't? Are you sure?" She looked at him incredulously - and then it hit her. In all the years she'd tried to convince herself otherwise, she had indeed expected him to wait - illogical as it was. Then, for the first time since he'd arrived, she actually looked him in the eye - and most unexpectantly she answered, "Maybe... I did." "And that's why I'm here. You have to know what I went through. I need..." She stood abruptly, crossed her arms, and stared at him. "What you went through?!" Something in those words irritated her and she felt a deep indignation rising inside. Mark obviously sensed the same thing because he quickly tried to retract his statement. "Kath, I didn't mean..." But, it was too late. She cut him off, again. "At least you had your friends and family to help you through. I didn't have that, at least not at first!" Mark tried again. "Kathryn..." "I had to order my crew to destroy the array that had flung us to the wrong side of the galaxy - to destroy our only way home! And then, I had to live with that decision for a good, long time." By this time, Mark had resigned himself to the fact that he had somehow angered her and he would just have to wait out the storm. He said nothing as she expelled years of pent up frustration and bitterness upon him. When he sensed she had calmed somewhat, he attempted to speak. "I didn't mean to upset you," he said contritely. "I just wanted you to know that my decision to go on with my life, without you in it, was not an easy one. I just wanted to make sure you understood that. That's all." "I do. I do understand," she protested. "But, that doesn't mean it didn't...hurt." She sat down again, her arms still folded in front of her. "I didn't intend to lash out at you like that - to take all of my frustrations out on you. It really wasn't fair of me. I'm sorry." Unexpectantly, he burst out in hearty laughter. She stared at him in disbelief. After a minute, he explained himself. "It's good to know that some things haven't changed at all." She turned on him. Was he trying to provoke her?! Then she saw the twinkle in his eyes and realized that was exactly what he was trying to do. He grinned at her and laughed some more. And much to her dismay, his laughter was contagious and she found she was smiling, in spite of herself. He moved closer to her and she let him. He cupped one of her hands in his. "When I first heard Voyager had disappeared, it didn't upset me at all." He smiled as he watched dismay and shock wash over her face. "Because I didn't believe it," he added quickly. "I thought it was all a big mistake and you'd come home to me right on time. We'd laugh about the rumor and you'd tell me all about it over a steaming cup of coffee...then, three weeks went by. And then three months. I watched the friends and families of your crew mourn, but I didn't mourn with them. I knew you were alive and you were coming home. I held to that belief for a long time, Kath. I missed you so much. But, eventually a whole year had gone by, and then two. Starfleet was still looking for you, but they no longer held any real hope that you'd be found." Kathryn sat transfixed by his story, painfully recalling her own feelings during that time. Mark got up and ordered himself a juice from the replicator, causing her to blush at not having offered him anything after he turned down the coffee. He sat again and stared into the glass. Without looking up, he continued. "Then, one day, I ran into your sister in the botanical garden. The same garden where we..." "Yes, I remember," she cut him off. They both shared a a smile at the memory. Then Mark continued. "We sat and talked for a long time, your sister and I. I thought it would help to talk to someone who missed you as much as I did. But, it only served to make me more miserable." "Why was that?" Kathryn questioned. "I think it was because we had been talking about you in the past tense - the whole time - about things you had said or had done, but not what you would say or would do in the future. And it was then that I realized I had begun to give up, to lose hope - not intentionally, of course. It just happened. I knew it was time to let go, to move on." Kathryn, by this time, had decided it wasn't worth the effort to hold back the tears and let them flow freely down her cheeks, unchecked. "I buried myself in my work and it was there I met my wife. She comforted me and helped to fill the void you left in my life. I fell in love with her." Kathryn rose and began pacing, trying desperately to walk off her anxiety. "What about you, Kath?" he asked, watching her intently. She stopped and turned to look at him. "What about me?" "Were you alone all of these years?" he asked pointedly. She looked past him, purposely avoiding his gaze. "I was the captain. I didn't have the same liberties as the others. But, I was never - alone." She sat down again. A silence fell over the room. She turned away from him and cleared her throat. "I was, however, very lonely at times," she admitted quietly. She turned back to look at Mark and saw a deep sadness in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he replied, his compassion evident in his features. "I'm sorry you had to go through that." She simply nodded her head and wiped away a stray tear. "I don't think I truly let go of you...until I received your letter." She watched as a pained look passed across his face. "I spent many sleepless nights trying to decide if I should tell you," he explained. "But, in the end, I knew it wouldn't be fair to you if I didn't." "You made the right decision. But it wasn't easy to hear." He moved next to her and again took her hands in his. "I know a lot of things have happened between us and to us, but I was hoping that we could..." She stood abruptly and turned her back to him. "Don't say it." "Don't say what?" he said, sounding genuinely annoyed. "Don't say 'we can still be friends'." "Well," he stated calmly, "I don't see why we can't be friends." He walked to her, put both his hands on her shoulders, and leaned in to her ear. "But, that's not what I was going to say." She turned to face him and again crossed her arms in front of her. "Really?" she said, her voice skeptical. "Then what were you going to say..." "I was going to say," he said, picking up his juice glass, "that I was hoping you'd give me the chance to show you up on the tennis court." He raised his glass, took a long drink and peered at her, his eyes challenging. She smiled back at him, tauntingly. "You could try." Finally, the ice was broken and she found herself in his warm and friendly embrace. He spoke quietly into her hair, "Welcome home, Captain." She pulled away from him and wiped at her tear-stained face. "There's one more thing, Kath. It's about Molly." He put his hand on her shoulder in comfort. Kathryn knew what was coming and mentally steeled herself. She didn't have the strength left to hear him say the words and held up her hand to stop him. "How?" she asked solemnly. "When?" "She didn't suffer at all. She died in her sleep last summer. She was pretty old for a dog. But, no matter how many doggy treats I gave her, she never stopped looking for you. Sometimes she'd just stare at the door - waiting." After a moment, Kathryn spoke quietly. "Thank you for taking care of her. I'm sure she had a wonderful..." She couldn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to - she knew Mark understood. She let one more small tear escape in memory of her furry companion, but smiled remembering Molly's sweet, soulful face. Mark turned abruptly and headed for the door. "I'll be right back," he said, winking. Thankfully, this gave Kathryn a few minutes to collect herself, although she was riddled with curiosity. When he returned, he held in his arms a wiggling, squirming, little puppy. 'This," he said, "is Molly's great-grandson. We call him Comet, but you can call him anything you'd like." He handed over the bundle and Kathryn took it from him gleefully. She held the rambunctious puppy in her arms as he covered her face with sloppy kisses. "Hello, Comet," she said and began to laugh. "You're quite the lively one, aren't you? Yes, I think Comet is the perfect name for you. Always on the go." His sweet face did remind her of Molly. She smiled brightly. "Thank you. Thank you, Mark." Without even thinking, she leaned over and kissed him squarely on the lips. Realizing her mistake immediately, she pulled away - but not quickly enough. Mark had fastened his eyes on her and it seemed as if the years they had been apart just slipped away. "I'm sorry," she breathed, the puppy long forgotten. Mark did not answer. He simply pulled her closer - until she was close enough to feel his breath on her face. She closed her eyes in anticipation - and then, like a knife, the sound of the door chime ripped through the ready room, startling them both. They pushed away from each other quickly. They glanced at each other once more and suddenly broke out in relieved laughter. Kathryn shook her head and called out, "Come in. Chakotay strode through the door, computer PADD in hand. "Kathryn, here are the..." He stopped mid-sentence. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you had company." "It's alright, Chakotay. Let me introduce you. This is Mark Johnson. Mark, this is Commander Chakotay, my first officer." Mark and Chakotay shook hands. "Nice to meet you," Chakotay stated, stealing a glance in Kathryn's direction. She nodded briefly, confirming that this was indeed "the" Mark. "Same here," Mark replied. He turned back to Kathryn and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Remember, whenever you get back to Indiana, we have a date." "Wouldn't miss it," she replied. He turned and walked toward the door but was waylaid by Comet, as the puppy raced between his feet, chasing a seemingly invisible playmate. He bent down and scratched the puppy between his ears. "You take good care of her pal, you hear me," he said. "She needs you." He stood, and as he did, he slapped Chakotay on the shoulder, suggesting he may not have been talking to the puppy at all. He turned, winked at Kathryn, and then was gone. Chakotay eyed her carefully but she gave him no hint of what had transpired during Mark's visit. She simply took the PADD from his hand and walked to her desk. Once seated, she began to idly scroll through the items, purposely not looking at Chakotay. She pretended not to notice when he sat down in the chair directly across from her. After a moment, obviously unable to stand the suspense, Chakotay blurted out, "Date?" She smiled coyly, enjoying the moment. She placed the PADD back down on the desk and leaned in toward Chakotay. "Yes," she whispered, "a date." He stared at her skeptically. When it became obvious to her that he wasn't buying her story, she relented. "Well, not exactly...a date." She leaned back in her chair. "He thinks he can still beat me at a game of tennis." Chakotay chuckled, "I've seen your game. I think he's got a good..." He looked up and realized she was glaring at him "...good chance of losing," he finished. She smiled at him, shaking her head. "Seriously though, I'm worried about you," he continued, the tattoo on his forehead twisting out of shape. "Are you all right?" "I'm fine," she replied and picked up her PADD. "I'm fine," he echoed, mocking her. "That's what you always say." He paused and continued, his voice taking on a serious tone. "You know, we're home now. You don't have to worry about keeping up appearances. If you're upset, it's not a crime to show it." She studied his face as his words sank in. He was right. When Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant, even in the worst circumstances, she could never let the crew know if she was upset, frustrated, or...afraid. She'd learned to mask her feelings for the sake of her crew's morale. Every Starfleet captain had learned to do that. But, perhaps she had learned the lesson a little too well. She'd even learned to fool herself on occasion. "It was difficult," she admitted softly, "but necessary. I'm glad we talked." "Good. I... " Chakotay stopped, looking suddenly alarmed. In the next second, Comet hopped up on his lap and began giving him his customary slobbery greeting. The surprise on his face amused Kathryn greatly and she let out a deep-throated laugh. "By the way, meet Comet, my dog," she said, leaning back in her chair and placing her feet on the desk. "He seems to like you." "Your dog, huh?" he said, unsuccessfully pushing the puppy away from his face. "Um hmm. A little gift from Mark. And I'm going to tell you what I always told him." Chakotay looked up expectantly, "What's that?" "Love me, love my dog." "I see." She watched as he looked around, tucked the dog under his arm, stood up and walked to the table where Mark had left a worn but well-loved leash. He picked it up and attached it to the dog's collar. "I guess we'd better get to know each other a little better then, Comet," he said to the dog as he gently put him down on the floor. He walked to the desk and offered his hand to her. "Are you coming with us?" "Depends. Where are you going?" "I don't know. I guess we'll figure that out when we get there." She smiled, grabbed his hand, and stood. "Sounds familiar. Wouldn't miss it." Comet pulled at his leash in anticipation, bouncing this way and that with excitement. He pulled so hard that the leash flew right out of Chakotay's grip. "He's going to be a handful," Chakotay commented wryly. "I fought the Borg and won. I think I can handle a..." she stopped, her mouth gaping open. "Oh, Comet!" In the time it had taken her to not finish her sentence, Comet had found a stray PADD that was within his reach and was happily chewing on the edge of it. "You were saying," Chakotay chided. "I was saying that Comet may require..." she stated, as she wrestled the PADD from the dog's mouth in an impromptu tug-of-war game, "...some training." Chakotay smiled, picked up the leash again, and offered his arm to her. She took it and they walked out onto the bridge. Repair crews were busy restoring, remodeling and refitting the ship that had safely guided them across the galaxy - and back home. As she crossed the bridge and passed her chair, she stopped. An overwhelming feeling of awe suddenly enveloped her. This was it - the place that they had struggled for, longed for, and nearly died getting back to, on more occasions than she cared to recall. She had kept her promise to her crew. She had gotten them back home. She turned and looked up at Chakotay. He smiled back at her. She knew, as always, he understood. She let go of his arm and slipped her hand into his. It suddenly felt like home. ALL ABOUT NOW VOYAGER Greetings from the Kate Mulgrew Appreciation Society, KMAS Inc., a Maryland non-profit corporation. We're at P.O. Box 88341, Carol Stream, IL 60188-8341, and online at KMASinc@aol.com. KMAS Inc. is Kate Mulgrew's official fan club. Current yearly dues are $25/U.S., $30/Canada-Mexico, $40/Overseas (U.S. bank funds only). Send Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope for information including copies of our submission guidelines or bylaws, or $5 for a sample issue of Now Voyager. E-mail us for the electronic edition of this quarterly newsletter. Now Voyager is on the World Wide Web at http://members.aol.com/nowvoy/. This newsletter is a not-for-profit, amateur publication and is not intended to infringe upon any copyrights. All material is copyrighted by the authors except for the trademarks and patents of Viacom, Inc. and other corporations. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced or forwarded without permission, in print or electronically. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors, KMAS Inc., Kate Mulgrew, or Paramount Pictures. ____________________________________________________ KMAS INC. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Michelle Erica Green, President Joan Testin, Vice President Beth Schuman, Secretary Connie Bell, Treasurer Paul Anderson, Assistant Secretary Donna Christenberry, Assistant Editor Peter Castillo, Legal Advisor Jeanne Donnelly, Charity Coordinator Sashi Alexandra German, Newsletter Coordinator Cheryl Zenor, Web Designer NOW VOYAGER STAFF Erin Blalock, Membership Director Nancy Molik, Convention Coordinator Lauren Baum, Treasurer Emeritus Member of The National Association of Fan Clubs ________________________________________________