Voyager's night-shift receives a distress signal..
It has the feel of an original series episode, with a simple Cold War, sci-fi premise, but with 90s era technobabble.
The plot has a number of contrivances that I find implausible to the point of distraction. Certain characters get Voyager into a predicament with what feels to me like idiotic decision making that no amount of debate about sentience can justify. It might have helped my capacity to suspend the disbelief if the title of the episode was something other than "Warhead".
What follows is a body possession story where the central character is unlikeable and blinkered for the majority of the episode, until another plot contrivance suddenly changes their perspective to bring about what feels like an obligatory spectacular ending.
Robert Picardo gives a strong committed performance, but the writers make him so continually aggressive it is a hard watch for me.
Garrett Wang is required to be assertive and involved in some heated discussions, and I think he feels like the emotion is being unnaturally forced out at times. That being said it includes some reasonably good development for his character.
Some of the themes about sentient beings struggling to break free of their programming to think ethically feels an allegory of humanity at its most destructive. I like this aspect of the story a lot but little else.
It's a 5.5/10 for me but I round upwards.
It has the feel of an original series episode, with a simple Cold War, sci-fi premise, but with 90s era technobabble.
The plot has a number of contrivances that I find implausible to the point of distraction. Certain characters get Voyager into a predicament with what feels to me like idiotic decision making that no amount of debate about sentience can justify. It might have helped my capacity to suspend the disbelief if the title of the episode was something other than "Warhead".
What follows is a body possession story where the central character is unlikeable and blinkered for the majority of the episode, until another plot contrivance suddenly changes their perspective to bring about what feels like an obligatory spectacular ending.
Robert Picardo gives a strong committed performance, but the writers make him so continually aggressive it is a hard watch for me.
Garrett Wang is required to be assertive and involved in some heated discussions, and I think he feels like the emotion is being unnaturally forced out at times. That being said it includes some reasonably good development for his character.
Some of the themes about sentient beings struggling to break free of their programming to think ethically feels an allegory of humanity at its most destructive. I like this aspect of the story a lot but little else.
It's a 5.5/10 for me but I round upwards.