Pathfinder

You don't have to love Barclay for this to be good. It's helpful if you've seen his TNG episodes, particularly his holodeck addiction.

This episode plays with that history and arguably depicts him relapsing into his addiction. That alone makes it compelling because it's a type of depth Trek or this era rarely reached into.

The climax is very good and I was extremely impressed with the remarkably restrained first contact. They could have very easily gone way over the top here and I bet they were heavily tempted to.

What a superb character and I'm grateful to the writers and Schultz for displaying the complexities and stupidities of society through him.

The truth about Barclay is that none of his outbursts are more childish or out of line than any of Captain Picard's.

But society is not a place where ideas are equally weighed, reason takes a back seat to popularity --- who you are takes precedence over what you say or how you say it.

It's rather like what Ezri Dax says about Klingon honor --- we see soldiers kamikazeing themselves even though they know Gowron is dishonorable and essentially a child.

But Gowron is at the top, and we under the top must obey without reason.

And so this sickness infects society --- the pretense of reason, the pretense of honor --- and kills people.

Therefore the Barclays and Ezris of the world are needed to counterbalance society's own insanity, disobedience is critical to wellbeing.

Barclay is a true hero.

Barclay from TNG is trying to contact voyager using his theory of micro singularities to form 2 way instantaneous audio. The episode gets going after the scenes with him and Troy (also from TNG) so I advise to keep going. She's acting as a councillor and friend to him to get him to open up as he recounts the main events of the episode after the fact.

Now we all who have seen TNG know what Barclay is like, a physics genius but somewhere on the spectrum and not able to maintain social relationships well. If he annoys you he annoys you, maybe skip to about half way through and you'll get all the really good stuff.

The end though.......

This one literally had me choking up at the end, lump in throat and tears in eyes. Shows don't do that to me often :') Admiral Paris is a great character I hope I see more of him but kinda doubt it lol

It's always great to see stuttering, socially awkward Reg Barclay in an episode.

Unfortunately, the forced character motivations hamstring the episode and keep it from becoming a really quality Voyager outing. Barclay has become obsessed with Voyager's plight (perhaps because they are stranded alone in the Delta quadrant, and he is stranded alone inside his hopelessly cringey social ineptness). He has developed a theoretical method of creating a singularity and using it to establish 2-way communications with Voyager. But his commanding officer, who otherwise seems patient and rational, refuses to allow Barclay to test this theory, or even to recommend it to higher-ups in Starfleet.

The burning question when watching this episode is then: WHY? Why wouldn't they let Barclay try? By all accounts throughout the story, there is absolutely no ramifications to trying... except to reach the stranded Voyager and finally establish full comms with them. One, of course, knows why this stubbornness exists.... to create drama as artificial as Barclay's wormhole! To make him struggle and finally prevail.... over nothing, really.

This really makes what is a watershed moment in the show a, well, a hollow pursuit.

If you have kept with my reviews I tend to not tow the line with the rest. That is, episodes others say are the best, I cannot stand, and certain episodes people hate (The Thaw, for example) I love.

This one is the best I have ever seen, and I have seen them all up to now. This episode embodies everything that made me love Star Trek TNG, and Deep Space Nine. It uses an old character in a very appropriate way and even brings back his faults in a great way.

The resolution is excellent and I would watch this episode over and over again. If only the whole series had this kind of writing.