Star Trek Voy - Season 5 - Episode 05
Star Trek Voy - 5x05 - Once Upon a Time
Originally Aired: 1998-11-11
Synopsis:
Neelix comforts a little girl whose mother is missing. [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
None
Remarkable Scenes
- Naomi: "Neelix, don't move." Neelix: "What's wrong?" Naomi: "The Borg lady." Neelix: "She has a name, you know." Naomi: "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01. Don't look! She'll assimilate you." Neelix: "Naomi, Seven is a nice person. And she's a valuable member of this crew." Naomi: "I don't want to be in her Collective." Neelix: "I don't think there's much danger of that."
- Naomi: "The doctor talks too much."
- Janeway regarding coffee: "One more cup and I'll jump to warp."
My Review
There's nothing particularly wrong with this episode other than it's boring. The whole episode is an excuse to do something with the Naomi character, which is good in a way, as she's been neglected somewhat, but the way in which it was done was quite annoying. Shuttle crash episodes are a huge cliche, and putting Samantha Wildman in danger just so the writers could write a story around Naomi Wildman was kind of cheap. Getting to see elements of Naomi's daily life however was interesting, as it gives us a chance to see what life in the 24th century would be like for a child. We've had bits of this from TNG and DS9, but this episode is probably the best depiction yet. Still though, the writers have proven that they can write a decent story around children in TNG: Disaster, among others, and I would have expected better here.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
That holodeck program is the most inane thing I have ever seen. Naomi seems way too old to be entertained by such nonsense, and I frankly felt insulted being subjected to watching it. I kept jumping every time it came on in case my roommate was about to come in.
I find it odd that the shuttle crew were running out of air on an M class planet. The away teams sent out to rescue them were able to breathe the atmosphere without aid, so why couldn't the Paris or Tuvok find a way to ventilate air between the interior and exterior of the of the shuttle?
Placing the manufactured danger to the shuttle crew aside, I thought this was an enjoyable exploration of the way different people prepare for their own death (the shuttle crew), handle the death of family (Neelix), and the ethics of censuring the truth from a child.
Wait, they had Holographic entertainment when Janeway was a kid? She's in her early-mid 40s in the 2370s, which means this stuff had to be around in the 2340s. But wasn’t it established, in TNG: Encounter at Farpoint, that this was brand new technology during that time (circa 2360s)? I seem to recall Riker seeing the newfangled programs (which he had vaguely heard about) for the first time when he came aboard the Enterprise. Anyway, totally boring episode, aside from Naomi expressing her fear of the “Borg Lady” and trying to fake out Neelix with “I am borg”....
I actually really liked this episode a lot. Perhaps it's because I lost a close family member when I was young and just became a father myself, but I got a bit misty several times while watching this.