| Review : |
A good story that suffered from bad pacing. It took a full half-hour to set the scene, then the actual rebellion and the resolution were crammed into the last quarter-hour. If the Marquis rebellion had happened about half-way through, and Tuvok's recovery happened in the last quarter-hour, it would have worked much better. You could have even had a scene between Tom and B'elanna where he tried to convince her to stop Chakotay, then tried to rejoin the Marquis so that he could stay with her. As it was, Tim Russ put in a very good performance, and it was very disquieting to find out who the attacker really was (although they should not have telegraphed it, but let us work it out at the same time as Tuvok). I can't fault most of the script and the production, nor any of the acting. Generally good, but it loses a star for the bad pacing. |
| Review : |
I suppose that with Voyager getting closer to home with each episode (although rarely shown at warp in this or in other episodes), we will begin seeing more "Alpha Quadrant issues". In other words, it is bizarre, and yet somehow fitting that a Bajoran holdover from the Occupation should be the antagonist here. Anyway, I also think this rather good episode suffers from bad pacing. The build-up lasted 25-26 minutes, the eventual realization that Tuvok was under some insidious form of mind control took 10 minutes, the ship was taken over in under five minutes, and everything was back to normal with no hard feelings in about two minutes. This is one of those episodes that would have been a good season-ending cliffhanger! Imagine scenes in which Tuvok has vivid nightmares about his time in the lab. I can see a tense scene in which a bewildered Tom has B'Lanna at phaser point. I would have also enjoyed a more drawn-out erosion of Tuvok's carefully controlled veneer of logic. Thus, not a bad episode, just an episode that did not get the screen time it deserved. |
