OVEG: Caretaker, Part I

Description: How does it all begin? Why with exposition of course! We're offered a brief explanation of the Maquis and their fight, no doubt to explain to the viewers why the crew of a Federation ship look like extras from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, although that doesn't really cut it for me. Their clothes always look like they were chosen for maximum squalor in an era where replicators are prevalent, and look about as comfortable as a burlap sap. But hey, at least they've got those earth-tones going, a sure way to pick up your spirits!

What follows is fairly routine for the Maquis. They're on the run from a Cardassian ship and escape into the Badlands, an area of space that's the galactic equivalent of acid reflux. The Cardassian ship gets damaged and is forced to break off pursuit, but the victory is short-lived. An alien force rips them away and they disappear. Someone must investigate, and that, God help us all, is Voyager. The reason, see, is that her chief of security was on the missing ship, and she thinks the best way to track them down is to bring in a former Maquis terrorist and use him as a guide, so they find Tom Paris at a Federation Penal Colony in New Zealand.

Now, the sensible thing, considering that Earth and Deep Space Nine are days away from each other, would be to bring Paris to the station where Voyager is and discuss things, but we are introduced to Janeway here, in more ways than one. First we're introduced to Janeway's voice, and I must say, it was a rude awakening. She's got the vocal timbre of the Marlboro Man. We also get to see the patented Janeway walk, which is to clasp both hands behind your back rather than letting them swing freely. Now, this technique can work under certain circumstances, like if you're an English bobby strolling down the street, but when you're speed-walking cross country, the appearance is, in a word, stupid. But we haven't really gotten to the crux of the introduction, which is how Janeway approaches a problem. Always choose the answer that will most hamper the mission. Think about this: she's got to spend days traveling to Earth to meet with Paris and discuss the plan. Now, whatever his answer is, it's going to take days to get back to DS9. If she'd simply had them fly him to the station, then whatever his answer is, they could leave immediately! Either he's on a flight back to New Zealand, or he's on board the ship, but they've shaved days off the mission time. But again, that's not the Janeway way.

Fortunately Paris is now able to delve into the backstory of his relationship with Chakotay, which would be important if their animosity lasted beyond the pilot. However, he does agree to come along as an observer, but the goofy part is, he's given a Starfleet uniform and Janeway calls him "a member of my crew." Here again we see the first hint of Janeway of Borg, assimilating lowlifes into her crew. He meets up with another new member of the Voyager crew, Harry Kim, who is in Quark's Bar on DS9. Savor this, fair viewers, as it is as close as you're actually going to get to a quality program. Quark plays Harry for a fool, nearly swindling the poor dope into buying a box of shiny rocks (our Best Moment for this episode), but fortunately, Paris steps in and rescues him. So long Quark; you made our lives brighter just by your presence, and we'll see you over on a more interesting show!

Harry and Tom actually board Voyager and check in with the ship's doctor, who shows all kinds of contempt for him. It seems nobody but our poor, gullible Harry likes him. The part that fascinates me, however, is that the doctor is treating a patient, apparently something pretty serious. However, the ship just recently launched (from episode Relativity). Maybe it was a sudden onset of appendicitis, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Janeway ordering a crewman to do something monumentally stupid that landed the poor dope there.

After sickbay, Tom and Harry meet up with Janeway, where Harry learns not to call her "sir". "Ma'am is exceptable in a crunch." But she wants to be called "captain." So, Captain Crunch leads her crew into the Badlands, where they too encounter an alien force that rips them away across the galaxy. This is pretty catastrophic, as the whole ship is now trashed, and the first officer and helsman are dead, and worst of all, Janeway's hair is messed up! Oh the humanity! The chief engineer is dead, so Janeway heads down to engineer to berate the reactor into working properly or something. Meanwhile Harry and Tom bring people down to sickbay where more disaster welcomes them. Harry dons a giant asbestos oven mitt and a fire extinguisher and takes care of extinguishing the gas fireplace, I mean, the raging inferno. The doctor is also dead (things don't look good for Chakotay; so far everyone who hates Paris is dead... how convenient...), so Harry activated the Emergency Medical Hologram.

Robert Picardo... thank you for bringing a ray of sunshine into this show.

The EMH quickly gets down to business, showing his "lousy bedside manner" that makes him so loveable. Picardo steals every scene, and he delivers an amazing performance even when he stuck alone in a dark room.

Soon the entire crew starts vanishing, eventually showing up at some large array, where they encounter a "welcoming bee" in what looks like eastern Indiana. Naturally *every* *single* *person* cannot walk around this place without having their tricorders out. [Kneebler commentary]: If you dropped these shmucks in the middle of a completely empty desert, each one would insist on walking with their damn tricorders out. It's like elderly drivers with their left blinker on.

They are soon waylaid by a community theater production of To Kill A Mockingbird. An old bitty is bringing out plates of this and that and people are dancing around in circles like a bunch of idiots while banjo music plays. After about ten seconds of this I decided that the takeover of the agricultural industry by commercialized farming could only be a good thing if it stamped out this kind of crap. A young woman tries seducing Tom, apparently mistaking him for one of her cousins. Harry and Tom, however, figure out there's something in the barn (that's the rule of cinema/television; if there's a barn, there HAS to be something sinister inside it). The girl completely spasses and cleans Tom's clock, and then the townspeople show up armed with pitchforks. Why is uncertain, since they are all beamed into the medical testing chamber rather than forced, but apparently it's another chance to show rural people acting rural. The Voyager crew fines themselves lying on tables with a thing stabbing them in the diaphragm. Too good for 'em, I say!

And now it is time to enter the valley of the shadow of the sub-plot. Both crews have been returned, but Harry Kim is missing, and we learn that B'ellana Torres, the engineer of Chakotay's ship, is also missing. Janeway suggests that he meet with her to discuss how to find their missing crewmen, and he agrees, arriving with Tuvok and Extra-Man (able to stand there and hold a gun like a roughian without breathing a word). But apparently even his super-extra powers were unable to snoop out the fact that Tuvok was an infiltrator and in fact the missing security chief Janeway was talking about. Allow us a few moments to further the Chakotay-Paris arc and it's time to actually do something, namely, return to the array to try to find the missing crewmen.

So they break out the phaser rifles and head over, to the array, which still looks like a Norman Rockwell wet dream. Thank God for small miracles, because most of the people are gone, leaving only the lone banjo player. Janeway gets into a furious argument with the banjo player ('scuse me a moment while I laugh at just how stupid that is). He tells them they don't have what he needs, but that the missing crewmen might, and that he's not going to send them back home either, although it would be nice to see him hit some of them with the banjo (I would have). And faster than you can sing "duh duh-duh duh duh duh duh-duh duh" he sends them back over to Voyager.

We then discover that Harry and Torres are in some medical lab suffering from a really gross disease (apparently their skin is secreting mucus in some places). Torres goes all nutty and people in white coats have to restrain her before one of her boobs nearly flops out (Hey, this is Voyager, not Enterprise!). Janeway and Chakotay then agree to head to the fifth planet which is receiving energy bursts from the Caretaker's array, but not before allowing her a chance to whine about Harry.

Rating: 4

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