Captain’s log: stardate unknown

The crew of the Voyager return to the holodeck and the restored Fair Haven program in this episode written by Bryan Fuller. It first aired on 23 February, 2007.

The holograms that populate the program begin to become suspicious of the crew and begin to think they may be fairies or spirit folk when they witness what they believe are supernatural occurrences, unaware that they are only part of a program. They react as any small town would at the time.

And that causes problems.

That puts me in mind of the Arthur C. Clarke about science appearing as to magic for those who are too primitive to understand it.

Micheal Sullivan (Fintan McKeown) is back and there’s still a nice spark between him and Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), which is a joy to behold. It’s nice to see the captain relaxing romantically.

Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) is constantly altering the program, to perfect it, or to mess with Harry (Garrett Wang). Some of which is witnessed by some of the other folk in the village, and superstition and witchcraft seem to be the rule of the day consequently.

While it’s nice to go back to Fair Haven, and see the Doctor (Robert Picardo) return as the fire and brimstone preacher of the town as well as all the wondeful character moments that fill the story, it’s not Fuller’s best work, and ends up being a bit of a silly holodeck story.

Captain’s log: stardate 53679.4

Robert Doherty pens this episode from a story by Ronald Wilkerson that first aired on 1 March, 2000.

While Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) is having dificulty with the Borg children – I won’t lie, they are going to start making me cranky real soon, I hope they leave soon… sorry kids. A former, presumed dead crew member Lyndsey Ballard (Kim Rhodes) who looks nothing like her former self, shows up in an alien shuttle asking to come aboard.

It seems her remains, following a burial in space by the Voyager, was discovered by a race known as the Koball, a race who’s manner of procreation involves reanimating corpses and altering their DNA to carry on their own gene code.

And while the Doctor can begin to restore her human appearance, how much of her is still human? And how will those who dealt with her death deal with her sudden return to life? And her changes?

And how will Lyndsey handle being back on Voyager, plagued by her past? Especially when her Koball father shows up…

I like this episode, and Harry is actually really good in this episode. When he gets a good storyline he can do a lot with it.

The Human Adventure contines next week as I explore Star Trek: Voyager – The Complete Series on DVD from Paramount Canada.

Boldly go…