609. RepressionFORMULA: Inquisition + The Mind's Eye + The Alternate + Worst Case Scenario
WHY WE LIKE IT: The reverse twist.
WHY WE DON'T: The actual twist.
REVIEW: It's the one with Teero Anaydis, the Bajoran/Maquis brainwasher who's so good, he could make a sleeper agent out of a Vulcan, triggering him to make sleeper agents out of the rest of the Maquis. It's a clever plan, though with Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, Teero lost his greatest weapon. Now that Starfleet can make contact with the ship, however, Teero can trigger Tuvok and rebuild the Maquis.
This begs a ton of questions I can't quite answer. WHY is Teero doing this? Or rather, why now? How does a Maquis crew in the DQ serve his fanatical purposes? Also, just how complex were his instructions? With a simple incantation (the trigger), he has Tuvok turn the Maquis into, well, what, more determined Maquis? How would that have worked in his original plan? Or is Tuvok liberally applying vague orders? B'Elanna even forgets her marriage here by the power of suggestion. And since Teero never gets his comeuppance, he has to remain a bogeyman with mysterious plans.
As the episode is structured, it's a murder mystery (although the murders are comas) in which the investigator is actually investigating himself. Almost a cliché in science-fiction by now, and even on the first viewing, you never eliminate Tuvok from the suspects. It becomes obvious at the halfway mark, he loses control of his emotions (again), and then triggers a mutiny. This part of it well done at least, though the return to the old Maquis "uniforms" is a little silly. The reverse twist, of course, is that Tuvok works through Teero's programming and becomes the inside man once more, this time working against the Maquis to put the ship back into Starfleet hands.
It feels like they ran out of time, however, because once Tuvok deprograms Chakotay, it's all over. Everything's back to normal. The wounds reopened by the investigation, revealing a new paranoia between Starfleet and Maquis, suddenly healed (though it was nice to see Tabor and Chell again). The ship back in good hands. And Tom Paris' 3D movie theater being put to its proper use. It's too quick and easy. Maybe they should have skipped the ironic fluff about watching 2D movies with 3D glasses on a 3D holodeck (which we're watching in 2D) to make room for a proper climax.
LESSON: Don't listen to the voices.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A good bit here and there, but it pulls in so many directions, it skimps on some essential details.
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