When the dormant personalities of assimilated people are awakened within Seven of Nine, it manifests as a sort of multiple personality disorder that threatens to overwhelm her own identity. The Voyager crew must locate and deactivate the errant Borg technology at the heart of the problem before Seven is lost.
Given the pace of television filming and the lack of preparation time, this kind of script is among the very hardest that can be thrown at a TV actor: playing multiple characters in a single episode. Jeri Ryan was especially challenged here, not only for the breadth of personalities awakened within Seven of Nine, but for the fact that Ryan was not a Star Trek fan prior to being cast on Voyager. This "assignment" to play a Klingon, a Ferengi, and more required stacks of video tape she scarcely had time to absorb.
Ryan is actually quite good in this episode, establishing many clearly different characters with efficient choices in physicality and speech. But it's perhaps not surprising that her "Trek aliens" aren't among her best characters; for example, her Ferengi sports a bit of a Stooges/gangster accent. But her young girl -- sometimes playful, sometimes frightened -- is surprisingly effective. And the speed with which Ryan has to switch from one character to the next (it's breakneck by the end of the episode) is something she always handles well.
Not only is Ryan digging into a turkey leg as a bellicose Klingon, laughing and playing with Naomi Wildman, and recounting Wolf 359 as a Starfleet officer... she actually gets some big scenes as her regular character. We don't often see Seven scared, but we do here (and it's distinct from the fear of the child character). And the scenes with Naomi Wildman all work well too.
It also turns out to be a pretty good episode for Tim Russ as Tuvok. The mindmeld that the Doctor dismisses as "Vulcan mumbo jumbo" is a brave rescue (though, of course, Tuvok would think nothing of being called "brave"). And the meld sequence itself is a showcase for some wildly different filming techniques that really work -- distorting lenses, dropped frames, and sinister angles inside the Borg hellscape of the mind.
But you really have to accept some hand waving in the story to get on board here; the script itself isn't nearly as good as Ryan's central performance. The main gimmick of the Borg "vinculum" contradicts everything we've been told about how Borg don't have centralized components in their design. The jeopardy is transparently and falsely manufactured: the Doctor tells us right before a commercial break that Seven is "gone," but quickly backtracks in the next act. Chakotay reopening the question now of whether Seven could be restored from the Collective feels like it's coming about a year too late after she's been around this long.
The ending especially makes no sense at all. The whole reason Voyager has to go after this vinculum is because no amount of distance from it will matter for the effect its having on Seven. Surely the Tron raincoat aliens that hacked it to kill Borg will "repair" it, or try this again on another Borg ship, which should put Seven right back in this situation at some point.
Other observations:
- Several effects shots of Seven's reflection keep the audience current on which character she's been taken over by.
- There's kind of a lot of animosity here between Voyager characters. Tuvok treats Neelix's concerns about mess hall security with withering disdain. And the Doctor says to Tuvok: "With all of these new personalities floating around, it's a shame we can't find one for you."
There's much about this episode that doesn't really make sense. But Jeri Ryan hoists it over her shoulders and carries it over the line. I'd give "Infinite Regress" a B.
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