Voyager Flashback: Displaced

Star Trek had already done its share of "someone takes over the ship" episodes by the end of Voyager season three. (Even Voyager itself had done a couple.) Still, the writers managed to find a novel angle on the idea in "Displaced."

Mysterious (but seemingly harmless) aliens are appearing aboard Voyager... just as the ship's crewmembers are vanishing one by one. Before our heroes can stop it, they all find themselves captive in an alien habitat, victims of a slow and subtle takeover of their ship. Now, they must find a way to escape.

The concept here certainly is clever, but it also doesn't feel entirely logical. Basically: the Voyager crew has to be pretty dumb for this kind of ship takeover to work. When Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres encounter the first alien on the ship, their first instinct should be to declare "intruder alert!" (They're even armed with a bat'leth at the time.) But they fall for the performance of a doddering old man, and from then there's no going back. You can twist yourself in knots trying to decide if the alien scheme here really makes sense. What's the right balance of abducting people by true random selection vs. taking out key threats that will make the plan work best

But there are still other moments where our heroes don't look too bright. Once they're all in captivity, they immediately trust the next stranger who shows up; yes, he does turn out to be exactly what he claims (an alien from another habitat), but there's really no reason not to expect a continuation of the con that landed them in trouble to begin with. When Tom and B'Elanna later get the drop on two of their captors, they walk away without scooping up their weapons. I guess the crew is smart enough, though; they're the first captives in 94 habitats to pull off an escape.

So yeah, I find the execution of this concept much weaker than the concept itself. But there are some decent scenes built around it. The running subplot of Tom and B'Elanna's relationship works well -- though I actually think some of its best moments come when other characters get caught in the middle. The Doctor's commentary on their interaction is quite funny (as is B'Elanna's move to silence him). The peak comes when Kim is too smart to answer the question, "you don't think I'm hostile, do you?" (What a trap!)

Other characters get nice moments too. Chakotay fighting to the last to keep control of Voyager is a nice bit of heroics. Tuvok throws some Vulcan shade on how puny Starfleet survival training is compared to what he practiced on his homeworld. And in the end, Janeway sure has fun twisting the knife (as she turns the tables) on her captors.

Other observations:

• No makeup at all on these aliens, just goofy hats.
  

• In the habitat that's -20° Celsius, you should be able to see the characters' breath. But refrigerating a sound stage is expensive, and this is many years before a TV show could plausibly add that with digital effects.
  

• At the end of the story, the plan is to return the inhabitants of all 94 habitats (150-200 in each one!) to their homeworlds. Seems like that project would take months or years. I guess Voyager delegated.
  

There's a fun gimmick at the core of this episode, but it's also one with too many plot holes to easily button up. I'd call "Displaced" a B-.