WHY WE LIKE IT: It's about friendship!
WHY WE DON'T: Did we just lose one of the show's best designs?
REVIEW: With Zero's suit in disrepair, they can't do much and feels like they've become a burden to the crew. Then they get a telepathic call from a colony of non-corporeals - Medusans, Paxans (Clues) and Callamarain (Déjà Q) - who offer Zero a humanoid body, just like theirs (so are we still calling them non-corporeals?). Why would they refuse? It's an interesting concept, and well worthy of reversing the old TOS title. And surprisingly, it's more permanent than expected!
After all, when TV does something like this, and you fully expect there to be a catch-22, and that therefore the gift would be refused by the end. Or the gift-givers evil. Imagine if Riker had accepted the power of the Q in Hide and Q. In this case, there IS a catch - not too surprisingly, the bodies don't last long once they've left that one planet (no clue as to how the ambient radiation or whatever is making bodies, mind, that's a magical leap too far for me), but that doesn't mean Zero can't accept the sacrifice and leave. I like that what helps them make that choice is that the natives didn't give all the information available, as if to trick Zero into staying, but the kids, once informed, did, at some risk to their lives. Nice, too, that the colony didn't then react badly to the choice. Perhaps this is somewhere Zero can eventually settle down. For now, Zero is a humanoid, and they just got a Starfleet redesign too. This isn't as iconic, but it does promote character development, so we can't say no.
We got a little of Zero experiencing sensations in the previous episode, via their hologram mind in Dal's holographic body (and in this episode, Janeway and crew quickly crack the mystery and head after the Infinity, which looks competent, so good). In this episode and, I'm sure, the ones to come, we get a whole lot more. Zero gets their first hug, and eats, and dances, and runs (the sixth sense is fear). The episode looks and sounds absolutely beautiful with its African music and giant, flying, flower-eating manta ray sequence. It's a Feast of Senses for the audience too.
LESSON: Friends don't lie to you.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: A gorgeous-looking chapter that does something new with one of the characters.
Comments