Friday, May 9, 2008

5.10 counterpoint

As they pass through the Devor system, Voyager is subjected to numerous inspections by Devoran soldiers looking for illegal telepaths, led by a charming, arrogant inspector who camps out in Janeway’s ready room and pumps classical music throughout the ship; he seems to have more than a passing interest in our captain. The truth is, Janeway is hiding and helping a group of telepaths get out of Devoran space. She is also protecting the on-board telepaths – Tuvok and Vorek. All are being held in the transporter pattern buffer for the duration of the inspection.

When the inspector shows up alone – to defect – to atone for what he has done, Janeway is very suspicious. But he has information that they need, and he saves them from being caught by other inspection teams. Is she falling in love? Together, they work on a way to find the wormhole and transport the telepaths to safety. But time is running out. The inspector, who wants to go with Voyager through the wormhole, must return to supervise the last inspection, otherwise the mission will be in jeopardy. But it was all a ruse; he just wanted to find out the location of the wormhole. Janeway has been duped. He fires a torpedo at the revealed wormhole location to open it, planning on firing a second torpedo to seal it. At the same time, the telepaths are re-materializing in the cargo bay. But there is no wormhole at the coordinates, and barrels of vegetables materialize instead. Janeway has fooled him. The real telepaths are miles away, entering the wormhole in 2 undetected shuttlecraft. The inspector decides to forget the whole incident and let Voyager go, rather than reveal his failure to his superiors.

Inspector: You put out false readings!
Janeway: That seemed to be the theme for the evening.

I love the use of classical music as an off-beat backdrop. I cringed as Janeway set a record for rolling her eyes and pulling faces in this episode. And there’s a great expanding/shrinking nose on Turat – one of the most clever and humorous makeup jobs I’ve ever seen.

Great sfx: the security beacon sends out a pulse.

Nit: When the inspector says he’s going to miss having coffee, Janeway says, "I’ll give you the recipe." Recipe? Is there a recipe for coffee? I thought it was just water and…coffee! I mean, isn’t the problem that the guy doesn’t have any coffee plants/beans? This made me realize that Janeway is drinking synthetic coffee, made from a series of chemicals combined to imitate the coffee bean. Yuk – that’s even worse than instant coffee.

Nit: This has been talked about before. The Devor insult Voyager by calling it ‘kahari’. The inspector says, "Kahari—it means ‘stranger’". Fine- but why doesn’t the universal translator translate this word too? Why does it skip it every time, especially when it is so easily translatable?

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