Janeway and Seven are playing ‘Velocity’, a competitive targeting game, and Janeway has won 6 of 10. Like a petulant child, Seven wants to keep playing and is annoyed that the physically lesser Janeway can defeat her. They are butting heads again. While trading with another planet, Neelix meets a helpful alien who aids negotiations with his highly developed language skills. He is looking to get to the next star system, and hitches a ride on Voyager. Janeway is working on the encoded message from Starfleet with no success; when she hears about the alien’s talent with languages, she asks him to take a crack at it, and he is able to easily see the pattern and figure it out. The message leads Voyager to a Federation ship, sent by Starfleet, which possesses a slipstream drive technology – it can get the crew back to the alpha quadrant in three months. This leads to more trepidation from Seven, who does not feel comfortable with thinking about Earth as her home – especially when Torres taunts her about being the only Borg there.
Janeway is suspicious of the circumstances of their good fortune – it seems too perfect and it all started when the alien came on board – and she continues to decode the message, discovering that the real message states that Starfleet has been unable to come up with any way to shorten their journey. At the same time, Kim and Tuvok have discovered alien technology on the ship. Janeway and Seven beam over with a security detail, but the alien gets away and converts the ship back to alien form, trapping Janeway and Seven behind a force field before Kim can beam them back. He is exacting revenge on Janeway, because when she helped the Borg defeat species 8472, this indirectly aided the Borg’s eventual assimilation of his species. He had planned to bring the whole crew of Voyager back into Borg space to be assimilated; now he is happy to take Janeway and Seven. Seven reactivates enough Borg implants to get through the brig’s force field and slow down the ship. Meanwhile, Voyager (which has had the slipstream technology installed as well, so as to attempt to accompany the other ship had they used it to go back to the Alpha Quadrant) goes in pursuit and is able to beam Janeway and Seven out just before they enter Borg space. The alien is assimilated by the Borg.
Back on the Velocity court, Janeway and Seven are getting on better, now that Seven has realized that she does not want to go back to the collective, that she belongs here.
I liked these dialogs between Janeway and Seven:
"(1) Janeway: We’d better think of something. We come face to face with your former family in less than an hour and that’s one reunion I’d like to miss…unless you’re looking forward to re-joining the collective.
Seven: (thoughtfully) I do not believe I am.
Janeway: Not the ringing opposition I was hoping for, but I’ll take it."
"(2) Janeway: In case I never get a chance to say this, I realize I’ve been hard on you at times, but it was never out of anger or regret that I brought you on board. I’m your captain; that means I can’t always be your friend. Understand?
Seven: No…however, if we are assimilated, our thoughts will become one, and I’m sure I will understand perfectly. (pauses) A joke, captain. You yourself have encouraged me to use my sense of humor."
Cool shots: the episode ends when the Velocity target darts between the camera and Seven, and Seven shoots it with a laser-type weapon, causing a white-out.
Nit: (This nit is relevant to the past few episodes) The writers go back and forth on what knowledge is shared when the Borg assimilate a species. In some instances, it suits the script for them to act as if, when a species is assimilated, all drones become instantly privy to all the knowledge of that species. In another case, Seven stated that only what is considered relevant knowledge for each drone is shared. This explanation easily covers up a number of nits, such as when Seven seemed to need lessons in how to chew and swallow food, despite having assimilated hundreds of species who already had that knowledge.
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