Friday, May 9, 2008

4.24 demon

Low on deuterium and limping along, Voyager needs more soon or they will have to come to a halt. Seven finds a planet with a big supply of what they need – but it’s a ‘Y’ class planet, known as a ‘Demon’ planet because the atmosphere is highly toxic. Harry and Tom take a shuttle down, wearing specially altered environmental suits, and they find the deuterium in liquid form. While taking a sample, Harry gets pulled into the pool and Tom has to pull him out. Both of their suits are structurally damaged, and within a few seconds their oxygen runs out. When they do not return, Janeway decides she has no alternative but to land the ship. Chakotay and Seven find Tom and Harry – very much alive – and out of their suits, breathing the atmosphere. They are taken back to the ship for examination against their will (they want to keep working on the planet’s surface), and they can no longer breathe an oxygen atmosphere. Their entire cell structure has been ‘terra-formed’. Back on the surface, Chakotay and Harry find the ‘real’ Paris and Kim – still in their suits and barely alive due to backup systems. It seems that the liquid, which has organic qualities, has duplicated them, created life by reading their DNA. Voyager suddenly finds itself surrounded by and rapidly sinking into a liquid pool. New Kim explains that the substance has always been alive but did not have self-awareness until absorbing sentient beings – now it wants to survive by creating more. Janeway understands and agrees to supply DNA from the entire crew if the being allows the ship to be freed. In the final scene, Voyager leaves the planet, watched by a duplicate of the crew on the surface. Although the episode has some flaws, it gets an ‘*’ just for that cool scene of the liquid crew watching the ship take off.

Great line by Chakotay: "I guess the Borg never assimilated any Indian scouts." (This is after he one-ups Seven by using footprints to track Tom and Harry).

Nit#1: When Tom and Harry’s suits are running out of oxygen, that computer counts down when oxygen is going to run out. Interestingly, it never makes any mention of a backup system kicking in. This seemed inefficient, but of course it adds to the suspense of the episode.

Nit#2: I have to question Janeway’s decision to land on the planet. Before Harry and Tom went down there, she was planning on leaving orbit and continuing the search, leading me to believe that this was a viable option. But after Harry and Tom fail to return, she says there is no point in leaving – that the deuterium is here. Yet Harry and Tom have made no reports since leaving the ship, so she has no additional information about the viability of mining deterium. Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to sacrifice the lives of Tom and Harry and get away, rather than risk the entire ship? If they ran out of power later on, they could still use the escape pods.

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