Star Trek 591: Blink of an Eye

591. Blink of an Eye

FORMULA: Wink of an Eye (-W+Bl) + Who Watches the Watchers + Children of Time

WHY WE LIKE IT: The premise.

WHY WE DON'T: The rushed ending. The technobabble.

REVIEW: Blink of an eye features such a strong science fiction premise, that it can be forgiven its wild technobabble. It attempts to describe what is after all an impossible planet, so I suppose tachyon cores and such are par for the course, though at times the thick atmosphere doesn't look like something you could see stars out of, nor is it explained how Voyager can remain in geostationary orbit around it. But that's just background noise.

What's really interesting is seeing a culture evolve from stone age to super-science all the while basing their culture on Voyager's presence in the sky. At first, the ship is just a bright star, but it's later revealed to be a mysterious sky ship. To some, the ship is inspiring, to others, dangerous on account of the earthquakes it seems to cause. Every time we take a look at the planet, centuries have passed, but we often get more anthropological details than we normally would. Voyager has spawned everything from songs to a line of action figures, not to mention a space race.

The Doctor gets an unusual experience when a 3-second away mission turns into minutes, and thus, years. It's too bad the story is so crammed with information already that we don't get many details on his time there, on his wife and (presumably adopted) son. We likewise don't get to spend much time with any of the characters, because it's always time to move on. Various evolving attitudes are well explored though, and we finally do get a longer-lived character, astronaut Gotana-Retz, who gets aboard a fixed Voyager, at least, until his body starts to speed up to normal. He becomes a man out of time, but one that can help steer his civilization in the right way and help Voyager get out or orbit.

From there, things get a bit rushed. The planet goes from firing tri-cobalt torpedoes at the ship to (in what can't be more than a few years) flying spaceships out to it and using transporter technology to get back aboard. It's hard to say how much time passed between Gotana's original mission and his Bermuda-triangle-like return to the planet, but it still seems to be quite the leap. A simple transition scene to show more time had passed would have helped matters, and one last tremor as the ship left, while I'm editing the script, though it was a nice idea to have the ship leave while Gotana was still alive.

LESSON: Civilizations can rise and fall during an irrelevant Naomi Wildman scene. Think about it.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: The premise and unusual storytelling it affords transcends the scripted impossibilities needed to create it, though it could definitely have used more time to develop.