Bride of Chaotica!

Voyager is trapped is sub-space and attacked by photon aliens.

This is a fun tribute to camp sci-fi serials with great art design and enjoyable performances.

If you take Star Trek (or sci-fi) seriously you might struggle with the concept of Voyager characters performing in a Flash Gordon style production. I personally find it quite enjoyable, especially the performances of Katie Mulgrew, Martin Rayner, Nicholas Worth and Robert Picardo as they deliver the over-the-top dialogue and mannerisms. Others like Tim Russ and Jeri Ryan function very effectively as deadpan foils to the madness.

The production design is excellent, particularly the sets, costumes and use of black and white to make it feel like an authentic old fashioned sci-fi serial.

For me it's a 7.5/10, but I round upwards.

What a fun, campy episode this one is! It takes place on the hollodeck in a black and white parody of a 1930's Buck Rogers serial. A photonic alien life form from outside of Voyager has accidentally gotten into a battle with Paris's hollo-nemesis, the evil Prince Chaotica. That battle is holding Voyager in a subspace riff, and it's losing power. So members of the crew dress up and ham it up in the hollodeck.

It's a snappy little script, full of jokes and asides, and Janeway is particularly enjoyable as the vampy Queen Arachnia. The story is also highly self-referential, and not all viewers may enjoy that. It's a story about a story, and brings you in full consciousness that you are watching human actors pretend they're in space. You won't go into outer space with the gang in this one, but you will get that feeling like when you're watching a fun play, when all the actors are having a good time and the audience is in on the joke. I love it when series do episodes that are far outside their norm. If you like camp, you'll love this little episode. If not, then you might want to pass.

In the meanwhile the captain's performance is funny too

Any show that can make me smile and laugh at 5:50 AM before my coffee is even ready, gets a 10. I don't care about it not fitting into the ST protocol, I loved it. Starting my day with a laugh is the start of a perfect Friday.

This episode is a lot of fun with great set pieces and costumes. Most of the story is in black and white because it takes place in Paris' holodeck series of Captain Proton, which is some kind of homage to the early Sci Fi movies of the golden Hollywood era.

Although this episode is a little whacky, it isn't complete nonsense. The premise of the story sounds plausible. Voyager is stuck in some subspace fold which makes it pierce into another dimension. The inhabitants there are photonic life forms. Since their dimension also cuts through the holodeck, the holographic world of Captain Proton and the dimension of the photonic life forms are suddenly merged. And since holograms are also photonic beings, they now pose a threat to the photonic beings in the other dimension and are even able to kill them.

Of course, as always, just shutting down the holodeck isn't working. And since Voyager is still stuck, the only solution is to help those photonic beings defeat Chaotica within the simulation.

Mulgrew does a good job impersonating a queen and overacting as it was often done in those old Sci Fi movies like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. Both visuals, acting and dialogue really immerse the viewer into this story.

All in all a well done episode that 25 years later still has a special charm due to the cinematography, the sets and costumes. I think, although it is a different kind of episode, it still fits well into the Voyager canon.