Ready guys? Because I wrote a book. This show is getting intense.

Alter Ego: Oh no what’s wrong with Harry? Oh no Harry fell in love with a character on the holodeck.

Okay real easy solution, delete the girl. Haha no we’re not friends, according to Tuvok. This is pretty excellent, I’m having a great time.

Awe Tom just wants his best friend there at the party.

I liked this episode. I think it was interesting to see Tuvok work with Harry, and led to some really funny moments. It was a simple concept, and I think Tuvok handled it well and professionally. I would posit that Tuvok isn’t entirely lonely, and I think that was the point of the last scene with Harry. He misses his family, of course, but any and everyone on that crew is willing to get to know him and his culture.

Coda: okay who let the captain and the first officer go on an away mission together for anything other than diplomacy? Half the time Riker wouldn’t let Picard go at all, T’Pol at least vocally objected. Chakotay says, “Hey, jump in.”

Oh I was wondering if and when this would become an issue. They have repeatedly encountered an alien race with an infectious disease and none of them have caught it yet. Oh wait that’s not what this is about.

So fun fact, my phone is DEFINITELY deleting parts of these sporadically when I pause and come back to them later, because I absolutely had written up the rest of this episode as I watched it and it’s just poof, gone. So unfortunately I’m definitely going to be missing details that I liked about the episode.

I love the way that this played out. We start thinking we’re getting a time loop episode, but then Chakotay ends up out of sink. Janeway goes through what are essentially nightmares, until she finally finds out that she did, in fact, die. All of those scenes were really well done, frightening and interesting. The moment you realize something is really wrong is when the dream doctor tries to euthanize her, but then your whole concept of what the episode is about changes. Obviously we’re having the what comes after death conversation, but we never get to know this alien species either, so we have this cool question of “What was really going to happen to her if she went with him?” So in general, it was a super interesting episode to me. With all of the “what happens when we die?” episodes, I find myself slightly disenchanted, just because I think there’s nothing afterwards, and find peace in that. So I don’t have a ton of interest in dwelling on that idea. That said, you can be interested in this episode without focusing on that, which is just good writing. I had fun with it.

Blood Fever: the way Chakotay reacts when Tom tells him that B’Elanna bit him is just gold. It’s an excellent combination of shock, disappointment, and confusion. Like he knows he heard him correctly but doesn’t want to believe it but definitely does.

Tom is an interestingly level character to me considering he has one of the “rough” backgrounds. I thought he would be more fighty, less moral, less calm under pressure. But it’s clear that despite the way he rejected his father’s lifestyle initially, he certainly learned from it. I also love when we get little details like “Tom Paris is a rock climbing expert,” or “Janeway played tennis and still remembers her ballet routine from when she was six.” Chakotay likes to do random holodeck programs with the crew and Neelix participates in combat drills. All of that makes characters more dynamic and believable to me.

Away mission, take two! I love watching Chakotay lead so I’m glad we brought him into this.

Just... why do we always have to have a Pon Phar episode? I don’t want to talk about it let’s get back to the rock climby bits. Actually wait I don’t like where this is going. Well, I have a lot more respect for Tom now.

Side note: this is one of those things I have a lot of trouble seeing- on full brightness the cave scenes look black to me. But I’m sure B’Elanna is getting way too close for comfort to Tom and Chakotay is making a bunch of shocked faces at stuff. And it sucks because their outfits looked AWESOME in the transporter room.

“You’ve never been hard to get, Tom.” “Well, I’m making an exception.”

“When we get back I’m sure that Star Fleet medical will... never hear about your personal experiences from me.”

Oh, my God. OH MY GOD. They’re showing so MUCH. God, stop! You know what? Somehow I’m MUCH more comfortable with a fight to the death...

I’m not gonna lie guys, sex makes me uncomfortable. I’m a very sex positive person, I’m all for people doing whatever however (safely), but Star Trek, when it comes up, they really just throw it out there, don’t they? The scene in House MD where Cameron shouts at Chase about how terrifying it is comes to mind. That said, this episode was exciting, multifaceted, and at least there was SOMETHING else going on. And then the borg at the end which genuinely caught me off guard because after all that, this isn’t where I expected to find them. Obviously Tom was my favourite in this, he was caring and I gained a lot of respect for him (I liked him before, respect is a lot hard from me). And the scene in the turbo lift was top notch. There is so much he wanted to say and all he said was essentially “I cannot pretend that didn’t happen.” Also, I found it funny that Tuvok and Chakotay were like “Somebody has to help her, guess it’s Paris.”

Unity: it’s a stun Bazooka!

Oh my heart it’s the borg. Oh they’re ALL THE BORG. Here we go with that gut wrenching feeing this show is so darn good at.

Chakotay is just so committed to being a good person. It makes me so happy.

This episode was definitely creepy. I think it was more to set up what’s about to happen in the rest of the series. The plot itself wasn’t terribly exciting, it was more that sickening feeling of stumbling into the Borg, but over and over. And you want to trust them because they seem like good people. Chakotay makes the important point- while they had good intentions, they didn’t hesitate to violate Chakotay when it served their interests.

Just an interesting thing I’ve noticed with the podcasts and listening alongside this show. Siddig from DS9 has also done a ton of community engagement since quarantine started, almost none of which I’ve engaged with. I did try it once. It wasn’t that it was bad content, it was incredible. I’ve just realized that I don’t want Julian the character not to be real. Obviously I know he’s fictional, that’s how this works. But I just don’t want to break that spell. I think it either comes down to the fact that I started engaging with that content AFTER I finished the series (as opposed to listening to the Delta Flyers as I watch the series, if a little behind) OR if it is more about the reasons that Tom and Julian are my favourite characters. I felt connected to, and was learning from, Julian’s care and forgiveness. I vaguely wanted to go to med school until COVID, have worked in healthcare and care a lot about it. I’ve always loved the doctor characters on these shows. Tom on the other hand is just incredibly interesting, although I think they could be doing more with his past. It doesn’t feel the same to acknowledge McNeill’s criticisms/discussions of his own character, even if it starts that dismantling process of the character itself in our heads. So that’s just an interesting thought to me. I do find it interesting to analyze why I choose certain characters to be favourites and Paris is definitely out of the ordinary to be a favourite character for me, so this was a cool observation.