RETROACTIVELY MAKING STAR TREK: VOYAGER GOOD, Part VII
The Big Picture
Three words: Odyssey is fun. As I said yesterday, space is an adventure. Sure, the Ulysses is lost in space tens of thousands of light years from home, but that doesn't mean they have to be morose. One of the most fundamental problems of Voyager was that it just wasn't any fun. They tried things like Neelix's bumbling, the Doctor's bedside "wit," the Tuvok-and-Neelix as Martin-and-Lewis debacle, and "The Adventures of Captain Proton," but no one was having any fun. Except for Tom Paris, those characters were dead people walking around. The cast had all the chemistry of a noble gas (see, science humor is inherently lame). Odyssey is the adventure of a lifetime, a firecracker waiting to be lit. We're here to have fun, folks, even as we're getting chased by alien brainsuckers and homicidal space babies. In this vein, the second season episode "The Race" will now be conducted on impulse power around all manner of objects, rather than a more velocity-oriented warp race. Let the following illustrate the attitude on Star Trek: Odyssey: "He's in danger. He may die. And I envy him the thrill of it."

The Plot Thickens
Season Five - In "Kingdom of Shadows," we meet the Rebel Alliance. Not actually Luke Skywalker's cohorts, but a vast collection of alien vessels, refugees and warriors from a thousand worlds, all of them lucky to have evaded assimilation at the hands of the Borg. The Tehlyri provide sanctuary to all the Collective's victims, including once-assimlated individuals who have been freed from the hive mind. Naturally, some species resent the deassimilated Borg, blaming them for the death of family and friends, but the Imperial Guard keeps order among the endlessly varied cultures in the kingdom. Rissa's father, Emperor Vorei, welcomes Captain McKenna and the Ulysses, thanking them for the safe return of his daughter and future leader of his people. The crew's prestige further enhanced by the tale of the Federation's defeat at the Battle of Wolf 359 (there is no shame in losing to the Borg) and the Enterprise-D's victory in orbit above Earth (because they were in the Delta Quadrant at the time, our heroes do not know about the second Borg incursion, seen in Star Trek: First Contact), the ship receives her first complete refit since entering the Delta Quadrant. The Ulysses is retrofitted with ablative armor, changing the hull's exterior appearance, and, ironically given the damage recently sustained in "The Killing Game," a massive Hirogen rail gun is strapped to the saucer section. Some of the emperor's more militant advisors, a group of long-lived El Aurians, have recently convinced him to take a more aggressive stand against the Borg; the Ulysses, with Princess Rissa aboard, joins a Tehlyri-led alien armada in an attempt to destroy a cube on its way to assimilate the throneworld of a powerful saurian species known as the Voth. (The key to the longevity of the Tehlyri resistance has been a strict policy of suicide to avoid capture; only a relative handful of Tehlyri even know the location of their hidden planet, the rest travel back and forth with their ships on autopilot, guided by an individual privy to the correct coordinates. Were a Tehlyri to be assimilated, the Borg would learn that there is a secret Tehlyri baseworld and begin searching for it.) The armada intercepts the cube already in heavy combat with the Voth fleet. The cube is destroyed, but at a cost of half the combined fleet and not before it can signal the Collective for assitance. Four cubes are detected after emerging from the Borg transwarp conduit network. A valiant resistance is put up, but the fleet is soon overwhelmed. The Ulysses dodges a tractor beam, but is boarded by a squad of Borg. Assimilation is avoided only when the captain of Rissa's bodyguard charges the Borg and detonates his imbedded kamikaze explosives. The ship suffers a massive hull breach, but narrowly escapes along with a handful of surviving Tehlyri and Voth ships. The ship returns to the Tehlyri stronghold, where they drop off the princess and take on a group of deassimilated Borg on their way back their homeworld in a nearby system. With a squad of Tehlyri guards also on board, the Ulysses resumes her course towards the Alpha Quadrant.

With a little genetic slight-of-hand by the Doctor, Kes becomes pregnant. After the one-month Ocampa pregnancy, Nick becomes a proud papa in "The Big Day," an all-out romp. In "In the Mood," love is in the air for just about everyone. Godfather Neelix babysits while Nick and Kes take-off on a romantic weekend, while Elisabeth and Benicio finally kiss (and more, nudge nudge). Sovok's been acting strangely: yep, pon farr, the Vulcan mating cycle. He tried to sate his urges with a holographic recreation of his wife, but it is not enough. He makes an unusual request of K'rena, admitting that he had used his Vulcan resentment of her Romulan heritage as a shield for his latent attraction to her. When all is said and done, Sovok is back to his usual Vulcan self, and K'rena drops by Dan's quarters. "I just don't want to be alone right now, and I'm comfortable around you." Kes is kidnapped by a hunting party of Hirogen while on an away mission with K'rena and Neelix; however, when the Ulysses catches up to mount a rescue, they discover that Kes was more than a match for her pursuers. The Hirogen had wanted to hunt Kes because of her awakened Ocampa abilities, but fell victim to having underestimated those abilities. "The Pirate King" takes place entirely away from the Ulysses, aboard the Revenge among Captain Cole and his murderous crew. While searching for a Tholian ship the Gorn's vessel had travel with before it was destroyed, Cole regales his bulky first mate with the tale of how he acquired a ship after being left behind in "The Mutiny, Part II" and his adventures in hunting Captain McKenna and her crew. In "Assimilation," the deassimilated Borg deal with their time in the Collective in different ways, some overwhelmed with guilt (a la Captain Picard, post-Locutus, in "Family") while others have been Borg for so long they have difficulty acting as individuals (Third of Five, a.k.a. Hugh, in "I, Borg"); it's all very touching and then they and their Tehlyri guardians disembark. The ship encounters the Las Vegas of the Delta Quadrant, a world-turned-casino inhabited by a race of energy beings obsessed with gambling. Like Vegas, there is both fun and danger to be had with the sums of money floating around; basically, I thought this up just so I could use the episode titles "Snake Eyes" and "Suicide Kings." In a crooked game, Neelix's Talax Falcon is taken from him, but the crew get it back by beating the house at its own game. Why have an episode like "The Heist"? Because I love heist movies. (And besides, if they put their minds to it I'm sure the dorks of Starfleet could be quite inventive thieves.) Because Ocampa only live to be seven years old, they reach physical maturity in just one year; so, Kes and Nick's daughter is a teenager by the end of the season. Puberty slowed her aging down, but she is still far closer in development to an Ocampa than a human. Liz, named for the captain, finds herself attracted to her father's best friend, Dan, and resents his slowly blooming relationship with K'rena. Although there have been several children born on board, only Liz and the twins, Noah and Naomi, born during season one to a mother who was pregnant in "The Stars My Destination," are old enough to go on Sovok's educational "Field Trip" while Kes prepares to take her final medical exams under the Doctor's supervision.

In the season finale, a Borg transwarp conduit opens near the ship, prompting fear until a Tehlyri warship emerges carrying Princess Rissa. The Borg managed to assimilate some members of the Tehlyri fleet that helped defend the Voth throneworld and, alerted to the existence of the Tehlyri base, are now relentlessly searching for it. The Tehlyri are trying to relocate, but need more time to evacuate a planet that has been their home for nearly two centuries. Will the Ulysses turn around and help the Tehlyri fight a battle they cannot possibly win, or continue on their way back to the Alpha Quadrant? Reflecting the family the crew has become since the dark days of "The Mutiny," Captain McKenna's decision to aid Emperor Vorei is greeted with cheers and the Ulysses prepares for war. Though it is usually too dangerous to risk using the Borg transwarp conduit network, Rissa cites desperate times and the two ships enter the vortex. In transwarp, the two ships encounter a Borg cube and play a tense game of cat-and-mouse, hoping the Borg have not yet penetrated their Tehlyri stealth modifications. Evading the cube, the ships emerge in Voth space and convince the High Prefect that his empire and its beloved doctrine (the Voth are dicks) will only survive if the Tehlyri can continue to resist the Borg. Trips to Krenim, Hirogen, and even Vidiian space yield more allies; when the Shadows call for help, people listen. "The Armada, Part I" ends with McKenna's ragtag fleet emerging from transwarp to the horrifying visage of a score of Borg cubes hanging ominously over the Tehlyri "homeworld," spoken for by an assimilated version of Emperor Vorei's El Aurian chief advisor. "We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

More to Come
Holy shit! Seasons six and seven, including the second half of "The Armada" and the series finale. Stay tuned.