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Star Trek Voy - Season 3 - Episode 26

Star Trek Voy - 3x26 - Scorpion, Part I

Originally Aired: 1997-5-21

Synopsis:
Janeway faces an enemy more dangerous than the Borg. [DVD]

My Rating - 10

Fan Rating Average - 6.77

Rate episode?

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Problems
- The Borg vessels are disabled 5.2 light years away and Janeway orders to go there at warp 2. This would take months!

Factoids
- This episode is a candidate for my "Best Episode of Voyager Award".
- This episode is the first to feature Janeway running the Leonardo Da Vinci program.
- Tuvok claims the Breen use organic vessels.

Remarkable Scenes
- Seeing the Borg annihilated so easily in the teaser.
- 15 Borg vessels passing by Voyager. Chilling.
- Janeway: "In the words of Jean-Luc Picard: 'In their collective state, the Borg are utterly without mercy. Driven by one will alone. The will to conquer. They are beyond redemption. Beyond reason.' Then there's captain Amisov of the Endeavor: 'It is my opinion that the Borg are as close to pure evil as any race we've ever encountered.'"
- Paris upon seeing the destroyed Borg vessels: "Who could do this to the Borg?"
- The alien attacking Harry. I love his blood curdling scream.
- The alien bio ship firing on Voyager.
- Kes, regarding the alien that spoke to her: "It said the weak will perish."
- Chakotay regarding the Northwest Passage: "It's clear of Borg activity for a very good reason."
- Leonardo: "What do you see?" Janeway: "A wall. With candlelight reflecting on it. Why? What do you see?" Leonardo: "A flock of starlings. The leaves of an oak. A horse's tail. A thief with a noose around his neck... And a wall with the candlelight reflecting on it."
- Chakotay: "A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly he saw a fox. He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river. The fox said, no. If I do that you'll sting me and I'll drown. The scorpion assured him, if I did that, we'd both drown. So the fox thought about it and finally agreed. So the Scorpion climbed up on his back and the fox began to swim. But halfway across the river, the scorpion stung him. As the poison filled his veins, the fox turned to the scorpion and said, why did you do that? Now you'll drown too! I couldn't help it, said the scorpion. It's my nature."
- Voyager confronting a Borg vessel.
- Species 8472 destroying a Borg planet. The cliffhanger with a Borg vessel fleeing 8472 with Voyager in tow was fantastic.

My Review
One of Voyager's best offerings. Right from the beginning we're shown the ominous destruction of Borg ships by an unseen force. Afterward, we see more Borg ships in one episode than we've seen in all of Star Trek so far. The exciting plot and the great musical score grow more and more intense as the episode progresses until finally it ends with the best cliffhanger since TNG: The Best of Both Worlds.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Mike on 2017-05-28 at 2:07pm:
    I didn't really like the conversation between Janeway and Chakotay after she proposes the Borg alliance. Chakotay raises some good points and Janeway gives some good rationale for her decision. But she forces Chakotay into a bit of a false dilemma when she claims she is dealing with this alone. Chakotay never said he or the crew will abandon Voyager; they will indeed face the threat together. He owes her support once the decision's made, but he doesn't owe her complete agreement with everything. He's right when he says he's no good to her as just a nodding head.
  • From Azalea Jane on 2021-08-17 at 7:58pm:
    I haven't seen much past season 2 of Voyager yet but I'm jumping around to get some backstory for Picard. It's cool to get more exposition about Borg tech and I'm looking forward to Seven's introduction. It's rather chilling how much of the Milky Way has been assimilated by the Borg in the Trek universe.

    I'm always salty how they never send specialists with things like armor, helmets, gas masks, and specialized tools into hazardous away missions like this. Nope! Send three of our vital bridge crew with a couple guns and tricorders, that should do it. I know this is endemic in Trek and well-established by TOS and TNG, but this episode made me extra salty, especially juxtaposed with Enterprise, which I'm just getting into, and which actually uses freaking armored environment suits like any sane person would. And leaving Kim by himself? Rookie mistake! If they'd had a data collection specialist trained in hazardous environments and xenotechnology, accompanied by armed and armored security guards, all in environment suits, Harry wouldn't have gotten into trouble! #TrekkieProblems

    Janeway imitating captains was funny.

    Nice rope lights inside the biomass ship!

    Replicator rations while "Catarina" idles away in the holodeck? Urgh.

    Some Kind Of Counting: a drinking game!
    1. I might be able to create some sort of medical defense.
    2. Maybe we can develop some type of protective shielding against them.
    3. Some kind of subspace turbulence.
    4. Imitating the captain, huh? Surely that violates some kind of Starfleet protocol.
    5. I'm picking up some sort of bio-readings.
    6. It looks like a warp propulsion system of some kind.
    7. We think it might be a ship of some kind.
    8. The bioship is powering up. Like it's charging some kind of weapon.
    9. Some kind of parallel universe?

    SKO count: 9! Do these writers even hear themselves?

    Good episode though. Unique plot, lots of suspense, excellent cliffhanger. The scorpion parable is a pretty good analogy here. Looking forward to part 2.

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