With it fourth season permier, Voyager continues its tradition of uneven
production.  Scorpion gives us some very nice moments, but some
significant flaws.
On the good side -- Paramount gave us a credible solution to the
cliffhanger, with Voyager managing to leave its Borg alliance without
being assimilated.  There were also a few nice moments of character
development -- including, I must say, for the Borg collective itself
through its mouthpiece Seven of Nine.
I had problems with the whole "Janeway is sick, Chakotay is in command"
subplot.  Yes, Janeway's final comment was to "make this alliance work."
On the other hand, she *did* turn over command to Chakotay.  There
should not have been an issue of Chakotay disobeying Janeway's orders.
In command for an unknown length of time -- possibly forever -- Chakotay
had the obligation to use his best judgement to protect his ship and
crew.  The later exchange between Chakotay and Janeway would have been
better handled as an issue of philosophy than as an issue of obeying
orders.  Janeway is made to look unreasonable and petty on this point.
And while we are talking about it, both the Janeway and Harry Kim
temporary incapacitations were way too artificial plot devices -- not
necessarily in how they ere initiated, but definately in how they were
resolved.
Many fans will be unhappy with lots of details in Scorpion.  The
distance/warp speed numbers given at several points in both parts of the
story are out of kilter with previous continuity.  It was established in
Part I that Cube Ships use Transwarp drive, but in Part II Voyager had
no trouble keeping up with a cube ship across many light years of Borg
space.  There were other points, for those interested in nitpicking.
(And yes, I could invent rationalizations for each of them, but I don't
think the *producers* rationalized them, or they would have given us the
clues, such as pointing out that Voyager could hover within the
transwarp envelope of the cube ship and thus travel without using much
of its own power.)
The issue here is Voyager's place in the 30+ year history of Star Trek.
The fans expect Voyager to be consistent.  The leaders of the Voyager
production team have stated publicly many times that they don't think
they should have to comply with past Star Trek continuity.  They also
seem to have the feeling that science fiction is different from other
kinds of drama, and they can apply their own rules.
In the case of Scorpion II, they managed an entertaining story with
flaws that were fairly ignorable, if glaring.
--- GEcho 1.00
---------------