Voyager Flashback: Unimatrix Zero, Part II

Star Trek: Voyager, having created a rather "Best of Both Worlds"-style cliffhanger in its sixth season finale, was also similar in resolving that cliffhanger: the payoff of "Unimatrix Zero, Part II" is not as good as the setup of part one.

Aboard a Borg tactical cube, Janeway, Tuvok, and B'Elanna retain their individuality, but use their assimilated status to deploy a virus throughout the Collective. The drones of the Unimatrix Zero "dream world" begin to retain their own memories when they wake, and can now resist the Borg. But when the Queen captures Janeway and compromises Tuvok, it falls to Voyager to rescue them. Meanwhile, Seven feels conflicted about her past relationship with Axum, leader of the Unimatrix Zero Borg.

Throughout this season seven premiere, I felt like the writers don't quite know what the most interesting -- or at least, most distinct -- parts of their story were. Too much of the precious 44-minute runtime is squandered on verbal sparring between Janeway and the Borg Queen, while other compelling story points get little or nothing.

There's a subplot about Tuvok being taken over by the Queen that's remarkably brief. Janeway actually makes the decision to kill Tuvok (at his request; but it's too late), but she doesn't ever deal with any of the emotional consequences of that decision. And why is the mentally formidable Vulcan the one who succumbs in the first place? You can conjure up an explanation if you want to -- perhaps his metabolism burns quickly through the too-miraculous drug that allows you to retain your identity after assimilation. But it sure would have been neat to actually visualize the confrontation between Tuvok and the Queen, rather than rely on Tim Russ to simply tell us that Tuvok was slipping.

What's happening to B'Elanna Torres, alone -- but free! -- aboard the Borg cube after Tuvok is lost and Janeway is captured? Surely she didn't just sit and wait for help, but no screen time is given to what she might be doing. How does Korok -- a single "awakened" drone all by himself on a Borg vessel -- manage to seize control, convert others, and come to Voyager's rescue? Why not spend more time dramatizing an actual conflict between Chakotay and Paris over rescuing the away team, rather than easily resolving it in a single scene? Then there's the relationship between Seven of Nine and Axum, which has the shape of a character arc without any of the actual content. What exactly changes between the two of them that she suddenly goes from "never wanting to see him again" to "sad to be losing him?"

Unfortunately, the Janeway/Queen conflict we do get in place of all that isn't all that compelling. For one thing, they aren't actually in the same place together; their confrontation is a holographic conceit. More crucially, the Queen's behavior never really makes sense. She's willing to destroy her own ships, holding tens of thousands of drones, to take out a few isolated Unimatrix Zero rebels. (And Janeway basically calls that bluff, encouraging her to go right ahead and destroy the whole Borg collective.) Later, the Queen concocts a virus to kill all those rebels, but then demands that Janeway convince them all to return willingly to the Borg. The Queen has already showed a willingness to just kill off huge numbers of her own drones, so why not just kill off these now that she can?

Other observations:

• Within moments of the start of this episode, we learn that Janeway, Tuvok, and B'Elanna still retain their individuality aboard the Borg tactical cube. I think it might have worked better to show us this in the final moments of the cliffhanger, giving us a tantalizing "now what are they going to do?" springboard to part two, rather than the basic "Locutus of Borg x 3" ending we got.

• I've been playing too much Legend of Zelda. I couldn't hear the Klingon name "Korok" without hearing "ya ha ha" in my mind (and expecting a seed I could later use to expand my weapons stash).

• It's quite fun that when the Borg Queen visits the illusory world of Unimatrix Zero, her trademark lighting scheme accompanies her.

• Also interesting is the story she tells about her own original assimilation. (I kind of dig these otherworldly aspects of the character.)

• How do you start a resistance within the Borg and not reference the famous "resistance is futile" line in some way?

I guess as long as you're cribbing from "Best of Both Worlds," why not also crib from another successful Borg episode of The Next Generation, "I, Borg?" The threat to the Borg here is the same as it was there: the spread of individuality. But where the Next Gen episode was about "rules of engagement" and racial prejudice, "Unimatrix Zero, Part II" is pretty much just straight-up-the-middle action tropes. I give it a C+.