Star Trek Voy - Season 6 - Episode 02
Star Trek Voy - 6x02 - Survival Instinct
Originally Aired: 1999-9-29
Synopsis:
Seven is confronted with her past. [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
- Borg species designation: 521, Shivolian.
- Borg species designation: 571, name unknown. Humanoid. They worship Brothera.
Remarkable Scenes
- The sight of the trading outpost and all the people aboard Voyager.
- Seven's flashbacks.
- The former Borg attacking Seven.
- The flashback depicting the crashed drones beginning to regain their memories.
- I like the scene when Tom and Harry get into trouble for getting into a fight.
- The revelation that Seven was responsible for linking the drones together.
- Chakotay arguing to Seven for fleeting freedom while the doctor argues for survival.
- The different reactions of each of the three drones once they were freed of their neural link.
My Review
A great episode exploring both the psychology of the Borg Collective as well as the psychology of Seven of Nine. The three former drones in this episode give a wonderful performance playing mentally tortured pseudo individuals. And the ethical issue of whether a month of freedom is better than a life of slavery was well presented. Additionally, I enjoyed the connection between this episode and Voy: One. In that episode, Seven stated that she'd once been separated from the Collective. It's very possible she may have been referring to the events described in this episode. A nice bit of continuity.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
I actually thought this was easily the best psychological exploration of the Borg in all of Star Trek (much better than TNG's I Borg), and one of the best Seven of Nine episodes in all of Voyager.
The triad's description of what it was like to be intimately and perpetually linked to two others was fascinating and quite compelling.
Basically, by "scaling down" the notion of belonging to a collective intelligence, reducing it down to just a group of three, effectively demonstrates what its really like to be sentient but not fully differentiated...no other episode gets this across as well as this one.
There are other redeeming features in the episode, but that's the main one, and a very important feat. I gave it a 10.