WHY WE LIKE IT: Big stakes.
WHY WE DON'T: Needed to be longer to pull off what it was trying to pull off.
REVIEW: The mission now is to use Asencia's wormhole machine to create THE wormhole that can send the Protostar back in time to Tars Lamora, closing the time loop and saving reality from the anomaly-hungry Loom. Some good recaps going on, and my punch the air moment is when they realize that the Protostar never went to Tars Lamora in the original timeline, but always deposited there by the kids themselves, creating/resolving a paradox. I was thinking the same thing all season. Of course, if it's all supposed to happen this way, why is Gwyn phasing in and out of reality? I mean sure, it's a motivator, but there are questionable things here, pretty much like any Star Trek time travel story.
I would have been quite content with one group of kids trying to figure all this out with Wesley, and another on Solum trying to connect the technobabble and fighting Asencia. These short episodes don't really have the room required to do all the Voyager space stuff as well. So the ship's fight with Asencia's warships is sluggish and boring, and when holo-Janeway complains about almost losing a nacelle on the Protostar, you wonder when that happened. We don't have time for this, though we'll perhaps allow Chakotay discussing her potential sacrifice if she is "reset" at the end of the adventure - the reason why she's so crabby. I'm sure they'll find a way. This show is into happy endings, in deference to its younger target audience.
The planet stuff is more exciting. There's a long climb to the satellite dish, a loose wire at the last second for Dal to go after, and a twin battle between Gwyn and Asencia (more or less over the former's heirloom) and between Murf and Drednok (which ALMOST makes you believe they'll lose somebody). It's all quite vertiginous, and as Dax would say "seat of the pants". I do question the ending, however. I do like how Gwyn's father arrives to "share" his willpower with her so she can take the heirloom back, but then the whole community adds theirs and I'm like, was Asencia's THAT strong? The father-daughter duo should have been enough, no? And now the super-powered Gwyn does, what, psionically lobotomize Asencia?! Probably nothing that dark, but these are explanations we might have gotten had we spend a little less time in orbit with the adults. I'm also in deep need of an explanation of how Gwyn's father becomes evil after all this. Maybe we'll get answers in the finale, I'll have to see.
LESSON: Time is the fire in which we burn (wait, where have I heard that one before?).
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A lot of stuff happens, and much of it gets short shrift. An uneven penultimate episode.
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