Voyager approaches a planet that had been turned to ice 19 years earlier; 3 humanoids are discovered in stasis well beneath the surface; for some reason they did not emerge when the glaciers receded. Kim and Torres go in to find out what is going on, and discover they are being held hostage by Fear, a character they inadvertently created in the virtual reality program in which they live – it feeds off of their thoughts and needs them to survive. The doctor makes some headway with negotiations, but not before another hostage is killed. Eventually Janeway threatens to pull the plug, and she goes in, and realizes that Fear wants to be defeated, and she wins the battle. The set for this episode, with midgets, dancing clowns, and that glaring color scheme, reminds me a bit of either the villain’s lairs on the Batman TV series (except the camera isn’t tilted) or an inferior episode of Star Trek (The Original Series). But it certainly is fun to watch Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins of This is Spinal Tap) do his over-the-top thing.
Nit: When Harry Kim plays the clarinet in his quarters and his neighbor bangs on the wall, Kim complains about the acoustics and wonders where he can practice. Uh…how about on the holodeck? Surely he could create a holodeck image of a soundproof, padded room. And certainly the holodeck must be sound-proof, when you think about the racket that goes on in there (and we never hear about any of the x-rated holographic fantasies).
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