When Voyager finally decodes a message from Starfleet, it leads them to an experimental starship, the Dauntless. Its quantum slipstream drive promises to get them back home to the Alpha Quadrant in a matter of months... if they're willing to abandon Voyager. But something doesn't seem right to Captain Janeway, and the alien cryptologist they've been working with may have something to do with it.
A tremendous amount of information about the making of this episode was made public, when the book Star Trek: Action! was published in 1998. It took fans behind the scenes of production on Star Trek: Insurrection, Deep Space Nine (for the episode "Tears of the Prophets"), and Voyager (for this episode). Even the highlights of the book, readily available on fan websites, could send one down a deep hole of exactly how this episode was initially conceived and how it transformed along the way.
An incredibly long story short, the kernel of inspiration here was to put Seven of Nine in command of another starship, in a clash of wills and technology against Janeway and Voyager. But the pace and budgetary restrictions of production, combined with no credible notion of how to build to that kind of conflict, transformed the idea into to what we got: Janeway and Seven at loggerheads as usual, but forced to work together to overcome an alien bent on their destruction.
There are some noteworthy elements to this episode. Foremost is a great guest star in veteran actor Ray Wise, who plays the alien Arturis. Wise plays at least three distinct modes for the character, and all work well. He seems genuinely helpful and not overly suspicious at the beginning, becomes a mustache-twirling villain when he springs his trap, and is ultimately a sympathetic and pitiable character when the reasons for his actions (and his final fate) are revealed.
The interactions between Janeway and Seven are good throughout. Seven starts out particularly petulant as the two play "Velocity" (a combination of skeet shooting, dodgeball, and racquetball?). Seven delivers a forceful monologue about how her values do not match those of the Voyager crew, before in the end coming to see herself as part of that crew. She has another great scene with B'Elanna, in which the two acknowledge that not-so-good things that might await them when they return to Earth.
Yet even if you aren't comparing "Hope and Fear" to the story idea that "might have been,"
it feels like a rather weak finale. It's ultimately yet another "way to
get home quickly doesn't pan out" episode. And though it aims to
showcase just how far Seven of Nine has come over the course of one
year, the previous week's episode did exactly the same thing (and put her under far more pressure). Other characters besides Janeway and Seven of Nine are barely featured at all, and that sort of leads things to look like only Janeway suspects the trap being set for them here.
Other observations:
- The Dauntless does seem like it might be authentic; Majel Barrett is the voice of its computer, as with all Starfleet vessels.
- The Starfleet Admiral seen in the message from home is the same one in Star Trek: First Contact.
- It's rare for characters other than the captain to record a log entry on Star Trek, and basically unheard of to get more than one character doing so within a single episode. But here, we get interwoven entries from Janeway and Seven at the same time.
- This week in "don't scrutinize this too much": Voyager somehow catches up to the Dauntless after we were specifically told it couldn't, and then it fires four photon torpedoes, an incredible reduction of its supposedly limited supply.
There's good acting all over this episode, but unfortunately, it's mostly laboring to shore up a subpar script. I give "Hope and Fear" a B-.
And with that, I've reached the end of another season of Star Trek: Voyager. I would say it's the series' best season yet, mostly having to do with a run of stronger episodes involving a new alien race, the Hirogen. My picks for the top five of season four are "Living Witness," "The Killing Game," "Prey," "Message in a Bottle," and "Hunters."
Up next: season five!
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