Dark Frontier

Voyager encounters the Borg and Janeway hatches a plan to move closer to home.

This is an enjoyable feature length episode with great production values and good character moments. However, some aspects feel like a retread of the movie First Contact and there are some action movie clichès.

If you like Borg episodes and are a fan of characters like Seven and Janeway I think this is a good one. The plot contains some holes and a few inconsistencies in relation to previous episodes, but for me this does not reduce the overall entertainment.

Importantly the writers put Seven in a position where she has to show the values she acquired since joining Voyager and how much she has developed as a character. This works well with Janeway's equally important and prominent role in what happens.

Visually it is one of the strongest episodes in the Star Trek franchise and you can see a lot of resource has gone into making the Borg scenes a spectacular as possible. This gives a fairly epic feel to what is a pretty simple character story.

When the previous episode ended, Seven walks away from an incursion mission onto a Borg ship. In other words, she rejoins the Collective! Soon you see the Borg Queen do her mega-cool entrance and she talks to Seven--informing her that her time on Voyager was all part of the Borg's master plan (yeah, right--you just don't want to admit you screwed up, Queenie!).

Aboard Voyager, they make a discovery--that the Borg were beaming messages to Seven and perhaps she wasn't responsible for her recent actions. Naturally, the Captain wants to do on a rescue mission-- but they have to locate Seven first.

What is the Queen's/Borg's plan? There obviously is more to the plan that we've seen so far.

I generally enjoyed this episode. After all, it involves the Borg. However, I was surprised just how talky it all was when the Queen began talking and talking and talking to Seven--and it did seem to go on way too long and didn't make a lot of sense.

The first half sets the scene for the final confrontation. Janeway decides to take advantage of a Borg mishap to steal a warp core from them. In order to do so, she needs to put everyone in danger. Seven begs to go with the away team. This leads to dire consequences and a return to her roots. She meets a Borg queen who knows her and claims to need her to bring about the destruction of earth.

After realizing that Seven was being manipulated into her desertion by the Borg, Janeway decides that she will attempt a rescue. Except for the maudlin scenes of Seven's childhood and her rather clueless parents (brilliant scientists though they are), this is quite exciting. At times it's hard to see what the Borg have to gain, but they are intrigued by the one member of their species that has left the collective and become and individual. Of course, it's all about going to Earth and taking over the population, turning all earth people into drones. Seven vacillates between her humanness and her Borgness. She is, indeed, conflicted. It's an exciting conclusion and, of course, this being a TV series, we make assumptions about the conclusion.