WHY WE LIKE IT: It looks beautiful.
WHY WE DON'T: Toilet humor.
REVIEW: I'm afraid this one is trying to do and be too many things to properly work. It looks real cool - the transwarp conduit, the planet, the race environment and high-speed action, the glowing computer at the end - but as a detour from the ongoing narrative, it really does feel like an unnecessary one. It has a last consequence, putting Zero's robot body out of commission for who knows how long - just to create more detours? - and that in itself is a bit objectionable.
So the kids are finally a crew again and arguing about Dal thinking himself the captain again. They take the Infinity through a shortcut via an old Borg transwarp conduit rather than spend 61 days aboard with Pog's stopped-up bathroom (told you there was toilet humor), but get pulled out by a Kazon device (oooh, Kazon, not that anyone has ever cooed like that about the Kazon), the owner of which wants a favor from our crew. He's training a pilot, he says, and he needs racers to go up against them. Voyager already did a race in "Drive", and the Strange New Worlds comics did one too recently, but the clearest analog is to the pod race in The Phantom Menace. It's an exciting enough set piece, though I'm not always sure which ship is which (doesn't matter). Over the course of the adventure, we'll discover all but the lead Kazon are robots, but he's also being controlled by an out-of-control A.I. obsessed with "improving" people by testing them to death. So it's the Borg, no it's the Kazon running young men through Oglamar, no it's a Landru Problem, yes and it's also controlling people in a kind of Borg way, and we're round the loop. It gave me whiplash.
We get back to Voyager a couple times to see how the mixed-up holograms are doing. Somewhat amusing, but the adults are slow on the uptake. Ma'jel is more intrigued by their behavior - just as we are by the odd slow-motion moment where an invisible creature tries to grab what it thinks is Gwyn(?) - but still slow FOR HER. What does she think she was protecting the others from in the previous episode? I guess she doesn't know, but a Vulcan on the Academy fast track should be coming to conclusions a bit faster. The best thing about the subplot is Zero in Dal's body feeling like they're experiencing corporeal form for the first time. It's not the real Zero, but you could imagine this as a Zero plot.
LESSON: I guess if you haven't seen it, it's new to you.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: The plot is all over the place, and that place is Star Trek clichés.
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