Equinox

This episode begins with Voyager locating another Federation vessel in the Delta Quadrant. The USS Equinox is in bad shape which is the result from battling some sort of creatures. Exactly what they are and why they were there are hidden from Voyager's crew by the wily folks from Equinox. In fact, a lot is hidden and the meeting at first seems like good news. Eventually, however, Janeway learns that the Prime Directive has been routinely ignored by Captain Ransom (John Savage) and she locks the crew in their quarters until she figures out what to do with these jerks. The Equinox crew, however, has an ace up their sleeve--their holo doctor has no moral qualms about ANYTHING and soon he's set in motion a plan to rescue his morally ambivalent crew members. By the end of the show, these folks have escaped and they've stolen Voyager's deflectors--and left them to the mercy of the creatures angered by Ransom's nasty experiments.

This is a nice episode because too often the Prime Directive and and niceness permeates the show so much, it's nice to have a breath of fresh air...or is it stale air?! Regardless, it sets them up for a nice confrontation which will occur in the second part of this two- parter.

Voyager encounters a crippled Starfleet ship and crew.

This first part does a lot of set up for what is to come, with solid character introductions and it's main theme of individuals dropping the Federation values in survival situations. For me the loss of "humanity" when taking certain actions is always an interesting topic, as generally throughout life I have found people to be quite self-serving.

I do not think cliffhanger endings were particularly suspenseful at this point is Star Trek's run. We know the situation will be resolved very soon, but I am interested in finding out how this happens.

The guest characters are pretty good, mixing well with the regulars. Although John Savage's voice and mannerisms make the reveal about his character fairly predictable. Titus Welliver and Olivia Birkelund also contribute well.

Visually it's a good one, with some very good art direction and action sequences.