OVEG: Warlord

Description: The episode opens on the lowest of all possible notes: Neelix moaning in ecstasy under a woman's touch. This is why I put off this episode for so long, I could never get past the first ten seconds without wanting to throw up. The Talaxian woman is rubbing his huge, hairy, Jar Jar Binks feet, accented by Neelix's continued, unabated groaning. I'm a live and let live kind of guy, so if anyone out there has a foot fetish, well, most of the time I wouldn't pass judgment, but anyone out there who would actually find this scene arousing, please remove yourself from the gene pool. Let the nightmare begin and end here, for the good of us all.

It turns out this is the recreation of an exclusive club from his homeworld (complete with a pool, which is obvious for a man who had no idea what a bath was), and he's invited Tom and Harry to join in. The two work to make the place a little less uptight, including adding girls from Harry's volleyball program - score one for Harry's heterosexuality. Then again, he may have just been looking for his most preferred post-op look for when he makes the big switch. Add in a little Carribean music, and the place is pretty nice, until Tom and Harry are called to the bridge. The teaser closes out with a long, long, looooong close-up of Neelix's Jar Jar feet dancing to the music. It's about as repulsive as you can get without actually showing someone's intestines.

The emergency is a small ship that's heavily damaged and ready to explode. With all the radiation they have to move in close to beam them out, but Harry is working to beam through it, since he's the transporter chief and all that... or actually not, but why leave it in the hands of a specialist when you can assign it to the guy who never held that position in his life? Despite this, they manage to eventually beam the people over right before it explodes ("He did it in time, looks like I owe you a coke, Chakotay.") and sends them to sickbay. The aliens are very different from us, as they have multiple nostrils running up their nose and onto their forehead. One of the fuglys is too badly injured and dies while Kes tries to save his poor, wretched, mucas-filled life. The survivors soon tell Janeway that they're from Ilari, and that they were attacked by mercenaries who hunt the trade routes. Janeway agrees to take them home.

Meanwhile Neelix is waiting for Kes in his holoprogram, moping because she hasn't shown up yet. I'm sure it'll be a real picture for her as she comes in and sees him sitting there with three girls hanging on him - I think I'll try that on my next anniversary. He finally calls her on the comm while she's showing the refugees around the transporter room, and she comes down for lunch. In expected fashion, her finding a friend besides him gets on his nerves a bit, but this time Kes actually calls him on his need to constantly insert himself into every aspect of her life. She reflects that she has never had anyone besides him, and never realized a relationship didn't have to be with someone who was overbearing, furry, and had Jar Jar feet, and breaks up with him. Aw, guess you'll just have to find comfort in your foot massaging harem and the volleyball squad.

So Kes and the two survivors are waiting with Janeway in the transporter room for the representative of the Autarch, the grand poobah of the planet. Apparently since this is a routine transport it's left to the specialist to handle it, so the dude is beamed up... and promptly shot by Kes. She's joined by the two survivors, and they also kill Ensign Martin, even though Janeway's actually attacking them. It can't be helped, weapons are electromagnetically attracted to that gold suit. With Janeway instead knocked out, Kes manages to lock out the transporter room from transporter expert Harry Kim, beams her and the other two over onto a shuttle, all the while moving up two notches on the bitch scale. Apparently she's also managed in all this to devise this clever tractor beam-resistant shielding and warp field scattering engines from the plot-necessary magic hat.

So the shuttle shows up over Ilari while Kes does a little Night At The Roxbury impression - I know Lien probably liked getting to do something with a bit more range than Kes usually gets, but this bit comes off less like the intended leadership right now and more like a teenager with an iPod up all the way. We discover that she's now under alien possession (that's pretty much a Star Trek rite of passage) by a former Autarch who uses a whatchamadoodle to send his mind into other people's when his current body is threatened. She beams up and begins hassling one of her generals, and when he gives her lip about her current body, she uses Kes' mental powers to cause some type of attack on the guy. As you know, extreme mental power use or being under such an attack causes nose bleeds... well, remember, these aliens have six nostrils, so this is not a pretty sight. Then again, just having six nostrils pretty much prohibits the word "pretty" from being applied to you.

The current Autarch's son (Demmas) comes up to Voyager to engage in Acting! for the Voyager crew, explaining that the alien possessor is Tieran, who ruled two centuries ago. There's some similarity between Tieran and the Chinese Emperor Shi Huangdi, in that Tieran is presented as a military leader who united his people, advanced many cultural issues, but was kind of an insufferable asshole. Also like Shi Huangdi, Tieran feared death, but unlike the emperor, he didn't seek immortality by taking pills made of mercury (generally speaking, you won't find much success in everlasting life among the heavy metals), but with his magic doohickey. Now that he's taken over Kes, Demmas says, it's all over for her, but Janeway says they'll see if they can remove Tieran's consciousness rather than just kill her like Demmas wants.

Meanwhile Kes and her massive squad of three other people, one of whom is a doctor manage to overwhelm the Imperial guard, walk up, and kill the Autarch right there on the spot. Wait, so the plan that Tieran's general was agonizing over that caused their little tiff, the one planned down to the last detail was "walk in and shoot the assholes!"? Wow, this guy is the Napolean of his time. Kes puts on the holy dog collar and is apparently now the Autarch - sure beats having everyone gather around on a cold day to watch some guy in a suit screw up his oath.

Kes quickly goes about rewarding her followers, including making the general she mind-slapped with the title "First Castellan," which is a kind of castle overlord and not the guy who does the voice of Homer Simpson. She then starts tearing down the tapestries, bitching about her painting, and goes running around breaking shit - I'm pretty sure I saw this last week on Design On A Dime. But what really matters is when Kes-Tieran comes back and gives Tieran's wife a flower, and she makes it clear she's uncertain about the arrangement. Kes moves in to perform what I think would have been the first televised interracial same-sex kiss had they not chickened out by having an interruption. What's worse is that this interruption is none other than the Autarch's other son, the Human Turtle. Despite the fact that she murdered his father in front of him like half an hour ago, she manages to convince him to join with her against his brother, the rightful heir. Oh good, nice to see we're backing up the backwards practice of first born hereditary rule against our villain. Let's get those wise men working on the mercury pills!

Meanwhile Demmas lays out just how bad the situation is: even though he is supposed to be in charge, Tieran is charismatic enough to cause some to support him instead. If the situation is not dealt with quickly, then there will be civil war. Janeway replies: "There are always alternatives to war." Yes, I believe Chamberlain said the same thing. I'm curious to know if she'll be spouting that off the next time a Borg Cube flies towards Earth. Well, with that little nugget of smug out of the way, they head down to sickbay so the Doctor can provide the explanation for the mind transfer. Let's cut to the chase: there's really no reasonable explanation no matter how much techno-BS you want to use; we accept it because it's a science fiction staple, like FTL drives and time travel. Getting into the nitty-gritty is just more of the typical technobabble we get from these kinds of episodes. All we need to know is that there's a doohickey that did it, and that the Doctor has a way of interfering - anything more is pointless.

So the Doctor says his device will purge Tieran from Kes' mind, but Demmas' opinion is that having to attach it to her body makes it less useful than just shooting her, causing Janeway to get upset. Nobody kills her crew but her, dammit! So, knowing Janeway, Tuvok steps in and volunteers to use his Vulcan stealth to slip in and plant the device personally. However, he may be biting off more than he can chew, as Tieran is now engaged in full-blown monologue rant mode. We learn about his upbringing, his rise to power, blahbity blahbity blah, all while we hear of how Kes is resisting him mentally. His doctor wants to move him into a more compatible body, which only encourages the ranting. Anyway, it shouldn't be surprising that Tieran uses Kes' mental abilities to sniff out Tuvok, despite his clever plan of wearing a guard's uniform.

So with Tuvok captured we get the interrogation scene. It runs pretty much what you'd expect, including the part where the suggestion of torture is given with almost sexual glee, though Tieran doesn't resort to it. Instead he/she/whatever comes up to try to pull the information from his mind, causing Tuvok to grab her hands and hold them away, since doing the logical thing and just doing a nerve pinch would end the scene prematurely. However, after a few more minutes he does finally do a mindmeld, momentarily releasing Kes' consciousness. It doesn't last long, however, and Tuvok gets a Force push into the cave wall (because, being evil, the cells here are all caverns and not highly secured prisons).

With Tuvok out of the picture, it's time to send in the commandoes. To my utter dismay, Neelix also volunteers to be a member of the commando squad, and given that he's a draft dodging chef whose last action in a crisis was to escalate a bad situation into a lethal one, you shouldn't be surprised that he's added to the team. Then again, throwing Neelix into a combat zone doesn't sound as bad as I mull it over... so many accidents can happen, after all. No, but in all seriousness, this is the dumbest idea ever. Putting an untrained civilian with a history of both ignoring orders and betraying the Voyager crew to protect Kes into a rescue mission with Kes when you have a ship full of Starfleet personnel and experienced guerrilla soldiers is the worst possible move here short of arming your team with guns made out of sponges.

During the meeting, Harry brings up what he believes to be a weakness in the security system that will help them succeed and show how useful he is. Kes then appears on the screen and says that she knows about it and if they try to exploit it they'll be wiped out, thus bringing the cloud of shame to hover over Harry Kim once again, poor dumb Harry. She calls it a friendly warning as thanks for saving her life when the ship was exploding, but then starts snapping at them. She's irritable, see, because she hasn't been sleeping out of fear Kes would do something, and we soon see the two together in a dream world. It's admittedly well done - Kes's side looks like quarters on Voyager, Tieran's side looks like his throne room, and Kes makes it clear that she is going to never stop fighting Tieran. As Kes bears down on him, his half of the room is gone, a subtle way of showing who's winning here, and with Lien's performance wins best moment for the episode. Then Tieran's doctor wakes him up and says that it'd be a good idea to transfer to a new body... and being an evil overlord Tieran kills him with another mental nosebleed attack. There's some good forward thinking for dealing with the guy responsible for maintaining your immortality device.

Well, to show that Tieran's fully in control of his faculties after slaughtering his personal physician, he announces his pending marriage to turtle face. His wife is less than thrilled about this new relationship despite Tieran's assurances that it's just a political marriage... even though earlier he/she had shown contempt at a viceroy for wanting more land to support Tieran. So let's see... no to throwing a bit of territory to his followers, yes to holy matrimony with a tortoise. This is further emphasized when the newly appointed first castellan arrives with news of Demmas' fleet and Voyager launching an assault, and together likely able to overwhelm their defenses. Tieran refuses the recommendation to go to the shelter and instead goes on with dinner, forcing the castellan to join them at gun point. It's always hard to identify the right moment for physical threats during dinner due to the number of disagreements with etiquette books - I know I can never remember if laser pistols go with red wine or white.

To continue the descent into madness, Tieran issues a decree that every citizen must have a garden - this is my fear if the Green Party ever wins. As far as bizarre edicts go, this reminds me of a different Chinese ruler -Mao Zedong- who told his people to start smelting steel in their backyards. In general, always question a ruler who orders all citizens that they have to take up a new hobby. When the whole place shakes under bombardment, and the castellan now reports ground troops are being deployed against them, Tieran insists it's a trick and that anyone who even tries to leave will be shot as a traitor. Nice to see the self-appointed man of the people holding it together in a crisis... although considering the man of the people has a vagina, there's probably a few more things to be sorted out besides this attack.

Meanwhile, as you'll remember, Tom Paris is an experienced commando team leader, so he has no problem getting in and releasing Tuvok. They get jumped on the way out, but Tuvok finally remembers he has the nerve pinch and takes the two baddies out after only a few punches. Meanwhile Janeway, Chakotay, Neelix (God help us all), and a few other cronies sneak into the throne room. One blast with a wide-beam stun setting would end this fight now... but since we have a few more minutes to pad out, we'll just do single fire and let a few of our own people get killed too. Neelix finally guns down Kes personally, then puts the medical doodad on her face. However, turns out the bad guy jumped into the body of turtle face and Kes uses the doodad on him.

To my pleasant surprise, the episode does not end with Kes patching it up with Neelix - in fact, even though the breakup was done while under alien possession, it looks like she's just going to leave it like this. Hey, works for me - I've had a couple times where having someone else dump my girlfriend for me would've been a lot easier than doing it myself. And it's nice to see that Kes no longer be saddled with hedgehog the eternal shithead.

Rating: 5

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