Voyager encounters a distortion ring that changes the shape of the ship and causes crew members to disappear.
MESSAGE FROM THE MODERATOR: This is the last of the held back episodes from the first season.
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By BrianB on Friday, July 09, 1999 - 6:12 am:
By this episode, I'm really tired of Paris' "Sandrine's French Pool Hall" program. Thankfully it did end soon. Why don't they take up bowling? Before there were holodecks, TOS's Kevin Riley made mention of a bowling alley on the Enterprise. Or was he just too far gone at that time?
Chakotay seems to have bested Tuvok in a logic fight again.
Now that Kes is two-years-old, does this mean she's old enough to save the ship or at least take it over when she's high?
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By Mark Swinton on Saturday, October 23, 1999 - 2:52 pm:
"You're not going to believe this, Captain... but twenty million gigaquads of new data has been downloaded into the ship's computer".
Really? What "new" data would that be then? It certainly can't be about the road ahead, because Voyager still goes on discovering new things throughout the series. In short, why do we never learn any more about this "new data" later on in the series?
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By Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, July 27, 2000 - 2:27 am:
If the spatial distortion has enclosed the ship like a ring, why not fly up, or down? They should have said sphere, or shell, instead of ring.
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By Rene on Wednesday, March 07, 2001 - 2:56 pm:
"In short, why do we never learn any more about this "new data" later on in the series?"
This episode had a lame ending. I know.
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By muas on Friday, December 28, 2001 - 10:01 pm:
Really? What "new" data would that be then? It certainly can't be about the road ahead, because Voyager still goes on discovering new things throughout the series. In short, why do we never learn any more about this "new data" later on in the series?
It didn't necessarily have to be about 'the road ahead'--it could have been anything. I thought it was insinuated at the end of the episode that the distortion, or creature, or whatever, goes from ship to ship, and gives the ships any info it has as well as adds that ship's information to its databanks (wherever they might be in a distortion).
And there are plenty of reasons why we may have never heard about it in the future: it wasn't relevant at any time, it was lost in a battle, it turned out to be encoded or in a different language, or whatever.
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By Zarm Rkeeg on Monday, September 22, 2003 - 6:31 pm:
Why would Kes' locket cost two weeks of replicator rations? I had the impression that replicators took some sort of molecular matter and re-arranged it into foods, objects, etc. if this is the case, the complexity of the object shouldn't matter, only the number of molecules used. Otherwise, would a slice of bread take 2 weeks rations as well? it's fairly large and has all those complex little holes.
The only explanation I can think of is that replicator use is monitored, and non food/essential items cost more ration.
Any ideas?
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By Zarm Rkeeg on Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - 1:18 pm:
P.S. I'm starting to keep a running total of the number of times neelix says "Pus hog."
At 2 so far...
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By Mark Swinton on Sunday, September 05, 2004 - 4:47 pm:
By the by - did we ever see Kes wearing that locket after this episode? I certainly don't recall seeing it ever again!
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By John-Boy on Sunday, October 02, 2005 - 8:51 am:
This episode first aired on UPN 10 years ago today.
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By Will on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - 10:20 am:
Amazing that with the rooms and decks rearranged that they were still able to maintain normal power and life support, and weren't cut off in any way from the ship's power plants.
And yes, KAM, I think it was ridiculous on the part of Tuvok (a.k.a. the writers) to fly the ship through the distortion, thinking only in 2 dimensions like Khan in T.W.O.K., when Voyager can fly in any direction, doing backflips and corkscrew maneuvers if necessary. One line of dialogue, as KAM said, stating the distortion had encased them in an orb-shape would have made Tuvok's bad idea seem like the only option left.
I'm guessing that Janeway was simnply panicking (and understandably so) when her arm was stuck in the distortion, warping it out of shape, and that it wasn't actually painful, otherwise when the distortion passed through everyone at the end nobody displayed any symtoms of pain, they just stood there.
I'm a bit surprised there are so few nits for this ep. I thought it was packed full of them, or at least strange observations.
Three times in this ep people leave their post for no good reason. Harry on the bridge at the beginning to look for Janeway, when somebody else should've done it; Tuvok on the bridge to look for Janeway et al, when he was in command; and then BLT beaming away from engineering with Tom, when she knew something was wrong with the ship and Tom could've gone by himself. Both Harry and Janeway (I think) said the computer wasn't accepting voice commands but both times the computer made it's standard chirp, so it was accepting commands it just couldn't follow through on them.
Kathy, Chuckles, and Tom in a malfuctioning turbolift and not one of them think to try a different one, they haven't yet found out the ship is being twisted, or crawling up the turboshaft/Jeffrey's Tube(?). About this whole twisting thing, how is it that rooms from various decks can shift to others without seeing any physical change? In fact, until Janeway gets her arm caught in the distortion there was no visible difference. Speaking of that scene, why did Harry think closing the hatch would protect them? After the computer compiles all the tricorder data we see the ship simply contorting, yet we only see this a couple times on the ship.
That lady in the pool hall holo-program, who is supposedly French, has a terrible accent, or a fake one rather. Chuckles seemed quite annoyed this whole episode, especially with Neelix and Tuvok. The whole ep they were trying to get to the bridge. The bridge may be the top of the ship but it isn't absolutely essential to be there in order to control the ship. Janeway gives Harry some pretty high praise in the Jeffries Tube yet the only time we see him with a promotion is in time travel eps.
When BLT is working on some panel in the holodeck there's a piece of machinery with a circular center and arm-like protrusions coming out of it. This has been shown before but I don't remember where, I think in an alien engine or shuttlecraft. Also, Harry says he's going to work on the holodeck something, and he leaves the room. So what was BLT working on inside the holodeck?
Well, here are mine, for what they're worth.
Couldn’t he have just bought her dinner?
Paris tells Kes that the locket her gives her as a birthday present in the teaser required two weeks of replicator rations. Let’s be generous and say that each crewmen are given no more than one replicator ration per day, and have to eat Neelix’s food for the other two meals. That would mean that Paris needed enough replicator rations for 14 meals to replicate the locket. Is the mass of 14 meals really equal to the mass of a locket?
And you thought Neelix was already ugly…
In the beginning of the episode, Neelix assures Kes that his jealous days are behind him, saying that she’s seen the last of “that green-eyed pusshog.” So green is the color of envy in Talaxian culture as well?
Given that guy in the towel she ran into, she should consider herelf grateful
In Act 1, Torres, trying to get to Engineering, winds up in the Mess Hall. The blue-uniformed officer she talks to has no pips on his uniform.
(Insert your own joke here.)
The creators went to the mannequin factory again for the extras. Check out the guy in the towel that Torres accidentally walks in on after she makes it back to Engineering. He’s stiffer than a surfboard! They could’ve saved money by putting a dead corpse in a towel and standing him up on cue.
Paris gives Kes a locket. The ship flies into a “ring”. What is this, Star Trek, or an ad for Tiffany’s?
There are constant references to the spatial anomaly as a distortion ring, a two-dimensional shape. Not a distortion sphere, or nebula, or field. Why doesn’t the ship simply fly out of it?
quote:Luigi Novi: In Act 1, Torres, trying to get to Engineering, winds up in the Mess Hall. The blue-uniformed officer she talks to has no pips on his uniform.
As to replicating the locket, maybe it takes more energy to make metal(or whatever the locket was made of) than food? Or perhaps there are two sets of rations, one for food and one for materials(though I agree that the implication is that there is not)
Kahn commenting on Luigi's post: "He asks me and I shall have him..."
And you thought the borg extras in "First Contact" were rigid!
The creators went to the mannequin factory again for the extras. Check out the guy in the towel that Torres accidentally walks in on after she makes it back to Engineering. He’s stiffer than a surfboard! They could’ve saved money by putting a dead corpse in a towel and standing him up on cue.
During one of the corridor sequences with Neelix and Kes, the locket does not appear around Kes' neck. The other times she is wearing the locket.
"New Data" revealed:
How to avoid Time Travel scenarios
Keeping your shuttles in one piece in 3 Easy Lessons
Curing Holodeck Hiccups
Contacting Primative Cultures without violating the Prime Directive
Avoiding Starship takeovers by hostile alines made easy
How to use Warp Drive
...and as you know, the crew never utilized the new data.
Sorry...should be:
Avoiding Starship takeovers by hostile ALIENS made easy
(My spelling got caught in the gaseous entity)
It's amazing how the distortion managed to rearrange things so neatly. We don't see things like bulkheads pushed halfway out into the corridor with their innards exposed, or the mess hall being cut in half with half of the bridge occupying the space the other half is supposed to be, or decks that have a sudden 4 foot drop.
The whole business of Holodoc repeatedly being sent back to the holodeck does not make sense. Computers on a network use addresses to identify machines and send data where it's supposed to go. If the sickbay computer that runs the holo-emitters is 'cut off', then Voyager's computer voice should say "unable to comply" or else nothing happens when Holodoc tries to go there.
Here, it looks like they are treating Holodoc's intra-ship movements like people riding in those penumatic elevators on The Jestsons
I need to add that networked computers have a 2 way 'conversation' while a file is being transfered. 'Messages' such as 'verification ok', 'request next packet', 'request resend packet' and so forth. If the sickbay computer isn't communicating at all, then the holodeck computer will assume it's down, or otherwise not connected, and not try to send Holodoc back there.
What dosen't make sense is that holodoc's "packets" were addressed to sickbay, and yet somehow these addresses got changed in transit so the packets were addressed back to the holodeck. I thought the anomoly only affected things physically, and the system malfunctions were purely due to physical causes. It was revealed at the end that the anomoly was caused artificially, and the crew found data both downloaded and uploaded to Voyager's main computer, so maybe the entity responsible for it was manipulating Holodoc's data packets, but they never mention this.