A huge space creature is luring Voyager inside its maw by causing the crew to hallucinate their greatest desire: that they've found a shortcut home to Earth. Only Seven of Nine and young Naomi Wildman are immune. Once the crew succumbs and loses consciousness, it's up to those two to save the ship -- with the help of an alien captain obsessed with destroying the creature who has them all trapped.
This story was the invention of Bill Prady, creator of The Big Bang Theory and numerous other sitcoms -- and it aired just months before his first big show, Dharma & Greg, began. No, this episode is not comedic in any way -- but then, that's the job of a writer "gigging" their way around Hollywood: to completely adopt the look and feel of different shows as they pitch different story ideas. Obviously, there was an intriguing enough science fiction idea in this pitch for the episode to get made, though it lacks the moral allegory level that most top-shelf Star Trek has -- the closest you can come to that is to say maybe this is a cautionary tale about confirmation bias?
There are a lot of fun elements to this episode. I like seeing how Janeway's skepticism of an apparent wormhole to Earth erodes quickly under the spell of this giant space creature. The little details surrounding just what everyone is imagining are fun: Janeway's ex-fiance is available again, Chakotay has received a pardon for his crimes, Neelix is being made an ambassador, B'Elanna thinks her Maquis friends are not dead after all, and Tuvok is reunited with his wife. We even see some of this stuff in several... call them dream sequences?... shot with interesting lighting and an over-cranked camera frame rate. It's a nice little twist on the recurring "shortcut home doesn't pan out" episode, in that the audience quickly learns it was never real in the first place.
I also have to admit, if you're going to add a "cute kid" to juice later seasons of your show, the way Naomi Wildman is used here works pretty well. The script walks right up to the edge of several annoying "lines" without crossing over. Her early Starfleet-ing lessons aboard the Delta Flyer skate up to the line of cloying, but stay on the right side of charming. Later on in the crisis, Naomi is just frightened enough to seem realistic without being too burdensome. And she offers just the right amount of emotional support to Seven without seeming overly precocious. It's surprisingly well executed.
But the particulars around this giant alien creature don't hold up to much scrutiny. It clearly can project different "wishes" into the minds of its victims -- not only does each Voyager crew member see a different version of what it means to get home, but the alien captain Qatai is seeing something completely different. So why don't Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman get a hallucination more tailored to them? Late in the episode, the entity tries to deceive them into thinking they've escaped when they haven't, so they are susceptible -- its just apparently not even trying. (But I suppose it's also not clear how much of this power is voluntary versus animal instinct?)
The Qatai character is fun thanks to the performance by perennial Star Trek guest star W. Morgan Sheppard, but he also doesn't make a lot of sense. We're told his ship has been inside the creature for decades, but Voyager happens to show up just before the ship is about to be destroyed? After that long a time under the creature's effects, how could he ever believe that he's meeting the Voyager in reality? Then there's the ending that really makes him out to be a Captain Ahab, determined to slay his Moby Dick. It's a fun idea, but also an odd way to close out an episode that really hasn't been about him.
Other observations:
- Naomi's creepy stuffed Flotter doll is back.
- It seems like director Cliff Bole has decided that since they rented the slow-motion camera anyway (to shoot the dream sequences), he might as well use it for other stuff too. But it's really weird for Seven of Nine to blow into engineering like an action movie, stunning everyone in sight.
- I like the Seven vs. the whole crew interplay of this episode. It feels more realistic, in that Seven is able to outwit them in moments, but that ultimately the combined efforts of everyone against one person are enough to overcome Seven.
- Naomi's summation of Borg philosophy is fun: two heads are better than one.
"Bliss" is sort of a fun diversion, but without much lasting impact. It needed to make more of the personal stakes somehow, or to somehow use the Qatai character to make a more forceful commentary (about revenge or slef-deception... or something). I give the episode a B-.
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