Voyager is crossing the Void, a region of true emptiness, with no stars or other phenomena. And with the expectation that they'll be there for two years, Janeway begins to doubt her decision that stranded them in the Delta Quadrant. But when they encounter aliens who use the Void as a waste dump, and other aliens affected by this destruction of their home, the crew finds a new cause to rally behind.
The writers of Voyager set themselves an impossible task here. "Monotony" is perhaps the hardest thing to dramatize for an audience, without actually engaging in numbing repetition. To do that would be the death of entertainment (and ratings) on a broadcast television show, so how deeply can we really get inside the notion that the crew have been traveling this Void for two months and are facing the prospect of two more years of it? Not very, of course.
Still, they do a pretty good job of showing us a crew on edge. We're confronted with the stark visual of black nothingness around the ship. Duty shifts on the bridge are thinly staffed. Characters have short fuses. Neelix is having panic attacks, and awakens from a nightmare to turn on all the lights. Chakotay goes to Tuvok for advice, with the latter noting how rare that is. Even Tuvok is affected, meditating in the astrometrics lab so that he can see the stars. People are fighting over the holodeck forcefully enough to break it. (OK, that last thing, I don't love so much. Paris and The Doctor seem childish.)
Most significantly, of course, Janeway is hiding out in her quarters, regretting the decision that trapped them all in the Delta Quadrant to start with. Janeway is so often written as maximally decisive (to the point of ignoring the advice of others) that I like seeing this human side of her, seeing that her resolve is not that steely. But it's less effective for me that the episode then aims to put her in the position of making the Caretaker decision all over again. This time, she gets to save the aliens and take the shortcut home. So it kind of doesn't matter that she was willing to sacrifice herself this time; it fundamentally isn't the "Caretaker choice" when you can have it both ways.
Layered in with these psychological elements is a good, old fashioned Star Trek allegory. An alien race is causing an ecological crisis, and they don't want to change their ways because doing so would threaten the backbone of their economy. While I appreciate how directly this story dramatizes a real-world issue, I'm a bit disappointed at how this muscles out all the more emotionally compelling dread of the first part of the episode -- simply being stuck in the Void. (After months in there of absolutely nothingness, now they encounter two alien races in the same day?)
Other observations:
- This episode marks the first appearance of the Captain Proton holodeck setting, a Flash Gordon send-up with deliberately cheesy visuals, music, and acting -- plus black-and-white photography. Fun as all that is (especially Seven of Nine's failure to get into the spirit of it), how does the holodeck keep working when power goes out all over the ship?
- At one point in this episode, Tom and B'Elanna play a game they call durotta. It's actually a real-world game, Quarto.
- Thirteeen(!) photon torpedoes are fired in this episode. Fastidious fans tracking the use of this limited resource note that this is the episode that crosses the line: more torpedoes have been fired than Voyager was said to originally have.
- The "Void aliens" are understandably sensitive to light. It might have been cool if they'd had no eyes or sense of vision at all.
There are sort of two episodes here in one, and I think they aren't perfectly harmonious together. Still, there are enough good pieces here that I'd give "Night" an effective B.
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