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Star Trek Voy - Season 7 - Episode 04

Star Trek Voy - 7x04 - Repression

Originally Aired: 2000-10-25

Synopsis:
Maquis crewmembers are mysteriously attacked. [DVD]

My Rating - 4

Fan Rating Average - 3.36

Rate episode?

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# Votes: 43 4 17 7 14 12 12 7 7 5 5

Problems
- Tuvok runs out of his quarters without a comm. badge. But when we see him in the hall in the next scene, he's mysteriously acquired one.
- Janeway says Voyager is 35,000 light years from Earth in this episode. This corrects the previous incorrect statements that it was in fact 30,000 light years from Earth. Unfortunately, the previous claim was made several times across several episodes. Still, I'm more willing to believe this episode.
- A female Vulcan aboard is hard to rationalize with Voy: Counterpoint and Voy: Blood Fever. In the former, she would have had to have been shown hiding among the transporter people. And in the latter, she could have served as Vorik's new mate...

Factoids
- Voyager is said to be 35,000 light years from home in this episode.

Remarkable Scenes
- "Let me get this straight. You've gone to all this trouble to program a three dimensional environment, that projects a two dimensional image, and now you're asking me to wear these to make it look three dimensional again?" Tom: "Great, isn't it?"
- Tuvok discovering himself to be the guilty party.
- Tuvok "activating" Chakotay.
- Chakotay "activating" Torres.
- The ensuing Maquis takeover.
- Tuvok shooting Janeway with a defective phaser.
- Tuvok undoing the damage he did.
- Tuvok explaining to Janeway how he knew the phaser would be defective.

My Review
An episode with a poor premise spiced up with great acting by Tuvok and some fun action scenes. Yeah, the timing is way off for a Maquis takeover. But at the same time, this exact story couldn't have been done until Voyager reestablished contact with Starfleet. There were two remarkable details that I thought made this better than the average mind control plot. Contrast this episode with TNG: The Game where everyone is totally out of their minds. Now look at how it's done here. Tuvok, after having mind melded with everyone, simply says "pah'tem'far, b'tanay" to Chakotay. Chakotay simple responds with "understood", and in that instant he is "awakened." He says the same to Torres, who replies with "I understand." The two of them probably went on to "activate" more people. The "activated" Maquis didn't act any different than they normally do, with the exception of to whom their loyalties lied, which I thought was kind of creepy, but cool. Overall, not too bad.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Psycroptic on 2013-04-10 at 9:38pm:
    Finally an episode where tuvok gets to do something
  • From The Emergency Obumpresidential Hologram on 2022-03-07 at 11:45am:
    Chakotays phasor test was pretty unreliable, Tuvok should have just aimed to miss Janeway. No risk.

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