One

I am beyond sick of Seven of Nine. This whole season has been probably 90% Seven of Nine. This one is nothing but Seven of Nine, with a little bit of the EMH. The plot is dull, like the writers had to come up with something for her to do while alone for a month. The story is as boring as it would be to be the only one running a ship for a month. When the show first aired in the '90s, I stopped watching at around this time because it wasn't Star Trek anymore; it was just Seven Seven Seven. That character destroyed all of Star Trek, the biggest shark-jump of all time, and this episode is the dullest yet.

Not a big Voyager fan. But I think the best episodes are either Tuvoc or Seven of Nine centered. Geri Ryan displayed her acting skills in this episode.

Seven of Nine and The Doctor navigate Voyager through a dangerous nebula whilst the rest of the crew go into stasis chambers.

The writers include some good psychological moments and character development for Seven, plus it provides strong material for Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo in their dialogue exchanges. Both actors do excellent work here. However much of the plot unfolds in a very predictable way, especially the scenes involving the guest character.

There are some worthwhile themes explored in relation to Seven's backstory, social skills, the need for companionship, belonging and of course the effects of isolation on certain individuals.

Visually it has a number of strong moments that heighten the psychological stress the lead character is experiencing.

This is an interesting character building episode for Seven of Nine. Similar to the movie "Passengers", she is the online wake person on a ship (well the doctor is also around). To pass a radioactive nebula that burns the skin of anyone on board but Seven, the doctor puts the whole crew into stasis to protect them. Seven, now in command, has to make sure, that the ship will travel safely through the nebula for at least a full month. And although Seven never has been fond of social interactions with her crew mates, the days of loneliness suddenly make her feel uncomfortable and she realizes, she needs the crew more than she thought.

While I doubt that just one month of being alone on a spaceship with holodecks, that can create any diversion you could ever dream off (sports, a visit to your favorite city, nightlife, nature, climbing the Everest, fight historical battles, a romantic affair...) would be too hard to survive, it still is not a half bad depiction of being alone with the burden of responsibility for a ship full of over 140 people.

The showdown at the end, when Seven has to shut off life support to power the engines for the final few minutes to exit the nebula, is a little bit over the top though. This spaceship is huge. Even if you would shut down life support, there would be so much oxygen in the air, that a single person would be able to breathe for months. The temperature would also not drop to absolute zero right away. This ship is insulated, it would take time until it gets colder inside. So, Seven could have easily disabled life support and would have been perfectly fine.

Also, when they show the nebula on the computer display, it is quite wide but not very tall. Again, the writers do not think three dimensional. When it would take a year to fly around it, it would hardly take so long to fly over it! And by the way: What is a year of detour anyway? Unless they find a shortcut or are rescued miraculously, they will need around 60 more years until they will be finally at home. Most of the human crew members on board are around 30 to 45 years old. Even by Star Trek standards it is safe to say, that some of the crew will die of old age before they reach earth anyhow. And others will be 90 or 100. And what does it matter if you are 95 when you are back home or 96? At that age, you won't do much more than feeding pigeons in the park or tell your grandchildren about your adventures. Can we talk how dangerous it would be to fly at least for a month through an unknown nebula with only Seven and the doctor alive? They have encountered strange things in nebulas before. They never could rely on the idea that all will be fine. If something went wrong with propulsion, they could have been dead in the water in the middle of the nebula with no chance to be able to repair the damage because everyone would just burn to death in a few minutes after the crew had left their stasis chambers. And how comes Voyager carries like 140+ stasis chambers anyway? Are they stored in the same cargo bay where all the shuttles are stored? They destroyed like a dozen of them already and still don't run low.

As Voyager nears some nebula, it begins exerting a weird effect on everyone except Seven of Nine and the Doctor. However, to go around it would add a year to their trip, so Captain Goody-Goody (just wanted to see if you were looking) decides to have everyone placed in stasis while Seven commands the ship with help from the Doc. While this sounds like a reasonably sane idea, things don't work out so well, as soon she begins seeing and hearing things and she might not be able to do it all by herself. Is this real? Are there aliens on the ship or projecting these weird images? Will they make it through this nebula?

Despite being almost a one-woman show, this is a pretty good episode. I particularly liked the conversations between her and the crew during the worst of the hallucinations--they were darkly funny. Worth seeing and unique. And, I appreciate the character development in Seven.