“Survival Instinct”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Terry Windell
Season 6, Episode 2
Production episode 222
Original air date: September 29, 1999
Stardate: 53049.2
Captain’s log. Voyager has docked at the Markonian Outpost, a major commercial hub for the sector. Janeway invites several folks on board, and there are many exchanges of gifts—and also some security issues with so many new people on board, to Tuvok’s great annoyance.
Naomi arrives in astrometrics to go to lunch with Seven, who is awash in work and claims to be unable to keep the lunch date. However, Naomi convinces her to take a break and join her for lunch as promised. Seven is uncomfortable in the mess hall, packed as it is with, not just Voyager crew, but all their guests. Naomi is surprised, since as a former drone, she should be used to crowds, but that’s precisely why Seven hates them now.
Then an alien named Lansor approaches Seven, asks for her by name, and offers her some Borg cortical nodes for sale. The sight of them triggers a flashback in Seven to a mission from eight years previous where all nine of her Unimatrix crash landed on a planet and were cut off from the Collective. She accepts the nodes, saying that Janeway will give him a fair price. Lansor then speaks telepathically with two other aliens—one of whom is a Bajoran—and says that she took the nodes.
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Seven and Torres examine the nodes, with Seven wondering why it triggered a flashback. The computer informs her that it will take five hours to perform a complete analysis, so Seven decides to regenerate. In the mess hall, the three aliens speak telepathically about their next step now that Seven is regenerating—they can detect it through the nodes’ being plugged into the computer—and they can’t proceed until all three of them agree. Once they have consensus, they go to Cargo Bay 2 and probe Seven with tubules. Seven wakes up and tries to fight back.
However, their actions triggered a security alert, and Tuvok and two guards show up and stun the trio.
They’re brought to sickbay, where the EMH reveals that they’re ex-Borg like Seven, but their implants were removed by a surgeon less skilled than he. Seven now recognizes the three of them: they used to be part of her Unimatrix. Lansor was Two of Nine, the Bajoran is Marika Wilkarah, who was Three of Nine, and the third alien is P’Chan, formerly Four of Nine. They were all on that mission she flashed back to.
Eight years previous, the Unimatrix crashed on a planet and were cut off from the Collective. They scavenged parts from one of the drones who died in the crash to create a beacon that would draw the Borg back to them. But as time goes on, all four survivors start to remember their lives before being drones. Seven—who was assimilated as a child, and therefore has fewer pre-Borg memories—insists that they remain drones and not be individuals. Seven also found a fifth member of the Unimatrix, who dies in front of her.
The mystery is what happened next. All four them have no memory of anything past when they were sitting around the campfire trying to survive until their rescue. There’s a memory gap that they all have. But after they were reassimilated into the Collective, Two, Three, and Four were all telepathically linked in a kind of mini-Collective in addition to being part of the larger Collective. This enabled them to eventually separate from the Borg. But they’re in a weird kind of limbo—freed from the Collective, but not fully individual, as none of them know where one of them ends and the other two begin. They finish each others’ sentences, and each is lost in the others’ thoughts. They want to be completely separate, and they were hoping Seven would hold the key.
Unfortunately, Seven has the same memory gap. Although there is a risk that she will be sucked into the mini-Collective with them, Seven agrees to let them access her memory files, in the hopes that they can unlock the gap.
They discover that the trio became more and more individualized as time went on waiting for the Borg to rescue them. Seven kept trying to kick them back in-bounds, as it were. Finally, Seven imposed the mini-Collective on the three of them to force them to act like proper drones once again.
Lansor, P’Chan, and Marika are outraged to learn that Seven was responsible, and they break the neural link, which puts all three of them into a coma. The EMH says there are only two options: remove the micro-cortical implants that link them, without which they’ll die, as their brains have become reliant on them to function; or send them back to the Collective. This is complicated by the fact that the trio are all comatose, and can’t decide for themselves. After discussing it with both Chakotay and the EMH, Seven decides that just surviving isn’t enough—freeing them of their link will allow them to live, even if only for a month or two.
The trio are grateful to Seven for making that decision for them, as they’d rather live a short life as individuals than return to the Collective, or continue as they had been. Lansor is going to remain at the outpost and meet new people. P’Chan is going to an uninhabited planet and just be alone in the open air. Marika asks to remain on Voyager. She was an engineer on the U.S.S. Excalibur before she was assimilated, and she likes the idea of living her final days on a starship. Marika also tells Seven that she can’t forgive what she did, but she understands it.
Later, Seven is working in astrometrics, and is joined by Naomi, who thought she might like some company.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Seven’s solution to the other drones getting too individualized is to force them into a mini-Collective. Hilariously, this has the unintended consequence of making it easier for them to separate from the Collective later on.
There’s coffee in that nebula! One of the gifts from the Markonian outpost is a plant that tries to eat Janeway’s hair. Our cat does the same thing…
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok is rather perturbed and exasperated by the number of security concerns that come with all these guests on board. He also does his job supremely well when the trio of ex-Borg invade Seven’s sanctum, showing up and stunning all three in a remarkably efficient method. Given how incredibly incompetent starship security tends to be in Trek (as seen in the original series, TNG, Enterprise, Discovery, Lower Decks, and here), it’s worth commenting when they do their job right for a change.
Half and half. Torres tries to be friendly to Seven and gets her head bitten off for her trouble. Torres then turns to leave, at which point Seven belatedly and abashedly apologizes.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix disappoints the mess hall patrons when he tells them he’s out of marsupial surprise, whatever that is (it apparently involves pouches). He attempts to convince said patrons that pizza would be a great alternative…
Forever an ensign. Kim and Paris got into a brawl on the outpost due to their completely misunderstanding the rules of a game they were challenged to. The scene with them abashedly explaining what happened to a Janeway who is at once amused and exasperated, is really just there to give Kate Mulgrew, Garrett Wang, and Robert Duncan McNeill something to do, but it’s delightful enough that I don’t mind that much.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH suggests returning them to the Collective, a notion that Seven rejects by pointing out that it would be the equivalent of forcing the EMH to be confined to sickbay and lose all the things he’s learned since being activated.
Resistance is futile. Seven was assimilated as a child, so becoming more individual wasn’t something she particularly wanted, as her memories were that of a scared child whose parents were killed in front of her. So she resisted the flooding of memories of her pre-Borg life in a way the other three didn’t, and resulted in her forcing them into the mini-Collective.
Do it.
“You have to admit, the generosity of our guests is very impressive.”
“As is their proclivity for criminal behavior. This morning’s security report.”
“Broken ODN line, some missing personal items, damaged scanner relay—all in all, not that bad.”
“There is a second page to the report.”
“Well, some of these incidents are a little more serious, but on balance, I still think we did the right thing.”
“There is a third page.“
–Chakotay, Tuvok, and Janeway discussing the security concerns of all the visitors.
Welcome aboard. Bertila Damas, last seen as Sakonna in DS9’s “The Maquis” two-parter, plays Marika. Tim Kelleher, last seen as Gaines in TNG’s “All Good Things…” and who will play Lieutenant Pell in Enterprise’s “The Communicator,” plays P’Chan. Recurring regular Scarlett Pomers is back as Naomi, and Jonathan Breck plays the dying drone.
And then we have the amazing Vaughn Armstrong as Lansor, his fifth of a dozen roles on Trek. He previously appeared as Telek R’Mor in “Eye of the Needle,” and also played a Klingon in TNG’s “Heart of Glory” and two different Cardassians on DS9, in “Past Prologue,” “When it Rains…,” and “The Dogs of War.” He’ll return in “Fury” (as a Vidiian), “Flesh and Blood” (as a Hirogen), and “Endgame” (as another Klingon), have the recurring role of Admiral Forrest on Enterprise, and also play a Klingon and a Kreetasian on that show.
Trivial matters: This was the only script (and one of only two writing credits) for Ronald D. Moore during his abortive term as co-executive producer of the show, which ended after this episode. He went on from here to become a co-executive producer for the second and third seasons of the Roswell TV show on the WB.
Seven mentioned in “One” that she was separated from the Collective for two hours. The flashbacks in this episode seem to cover a longer timeframe than that, but that can at least be partly explained by the subsequent memory erasure.
The story of Marika’s assimilation by the Borg was told in the short story “Making a Difference” by Mary Scott-Wiecek in the New Frontier anthology No Limits. New Frontier is a tie-in-fiction-only series that took place on the U.S.S. Excalibur. Written mostly by Peter David, NF had established early on that the Excalibur had had more than one encounter with the Borg prior to the series’ commencement, and Scott-Wiecek’s story told of two of those, including the one where Marika was taken.
The Excalibur was seen on screen in TNG’s “Redemption II,” also written by Moore.
Regular commenter Christopher L. Bennett wrote a sequel to this episode that focused on Marika’s time on Voyager in the Distant Shores anthology, entitled “Brief Candle.” This story also fleshes out the Markonian Outpost.
Seven talking with Chakotay about the dilemma with what to do with the trio makes sense, as Chakotay himself was part of a collective of ex-Borg in “Unity.”
We see some Voth (from “Distant Origin“) amidst the aliens on Voyager, and we see a Mawaki cruiser (from “Year of Hell, Part II“) among the ships at the Markonian outpost.
Set a course for home. “Survival is insufficient.” Oh, what might have been…
Ronald D. Moore is one of the best writers of Trek in its screen history, and this episode is a lovely tease of what kinds of stories we might have seen had he not quit in disgust. This particular story has one of Moore’s hallmarks: looking at the characters’ pasts and using it to inform the story in the present. We saw it in Moore’s very first script, TNG’s “The Bonding,” which made excellent use of Picard’s discomfort with families on his ship, the history of the Crusher family, the death of Yar, and Worf’s general personality profile to craft a superb story that also subverted the usual Trek trope of the faceless away team victim.
Likewise with Moore’s first Voyager script. He took her comment in “One” about being separated from the Collective and built a story around it, one that also made good use of Chakotay’s past experiences in “Unity,” the EMH’s ongoing development, Seven’s assimilation story as seen in “The Raven” and “Dark Frontier,” and what was established in TNG’s “I, Borg” about how a drone separated from the Collective might behave to craft another excellent story.
Massive amounts of credit must go to guests Bertila Damas, Tim Kelleher, and the great Vaughn Armstrong, who beautifully played the trio of ex-Borg who were all living in each others’ heads. Credit should probably also to director Terry Windell for shooting those bits in a way that didn’t seem forced or labored. The delivery was effortless, and convincing. Windell also gets credit for a nice touch: the flashbacks are filmed in a slightly different aspect ratio than the rest of the episode.
I loved the use of Chakotay in this one, too, from his stumbling through the bridge with the ungainly gift to his confab with Seven where he asks the direct question of what would be better: living in the Collective or dying as an individual. Robert Beltran and Jeri Ryan perform the scene magnificently, as do Ryan and Robert Picardo in the next scene where Seven expertly uses the EMH’s own history to explain why extending these patients’ lives at any cost isn’t worth that cost.
And I loved the Markonian outpost, and wish we’d gotten to see more of it. Given how few friendly faces Voyager has encountered in the Delta Quadrant lately (I’d say the last completely friendly folks they’ve dealt with was way back in “Thirty Days”), it’s nice to see them actually having friendly interactions with cultural and gift exchanges and stuff.
This is a good, strong, powerful episode from one of Trek’s best, and it’s so very disappointing that Moore didn’t stick around.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also reviewing The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for this site, with the season finale coming tomorrow! Woot!
The line “Survival is Insufficient” from this episode is a huge re-occurring theme in Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven.
This is one I like a lot more on it’s own than I do in context. I love Ron Moore’s work, and this is a great character piece with some really good acting, that all-too-rare for Voyager concept of continuity, and a moral dilemma that doesn’t have a magic third option- either they have to live as a mini-collective or die as induvials with no technobabble to save them. But it also has two of my pet peeves- one of which is how often Voyager stumbles across things from the Alpha Quadrant (there is really no reason why one of the former drones has to be a Bajoran, and then they don’t do anything with it, like have her be even mildly curious about what has happened to her war-torn home planet) and the Villian Decay of the Borg (seriously, how many people managed wander away from the Borg? We see tons of them interact with Starfleet, especially Voyager, and there have to be more that we don’t see), who apparently shed still-living drones like Skreeans shed flakes of skin. It’s a great episode to watch on it’s own, but watching it as part of the re-watch was less enjoyable for me.
ETA: While I second KRAD’s point about security doing their job (for once…) I loved having all the aliens on board! It was a great break from the “4-5 representatives of a whole planet beam on board” and made for a great sense of atmosphere! When I first watched it, without knowing it was Ron Moore’s story, one of my first thoughts was “It feels like the Promenade on DS9!!”
Why does it feel like half of the Borg encountered by Voyager out in the Delta Quadrant are from the Alpha Quadrant, and so many are former Starfleet? It seems to me that if they’re out there assimilating entire civilizations (with populations in the trillions), the odds that two out of four members of a given group are both originally AQ species seem astronomically low to me.
@1: Should have read your comment before I posted mine, since we had the same gripe. Great minds… :-)
I thought this was an excellent episode, one I can frequently get into because of the story, which is tragic, and the acting.
I too was a little annoyed that we encounter yet another Alpha Quadrant alien/former Starfleet officer that’s an ex-Borg. I assume, or thought the audience was supposed to presume, that the Excalibur was also at the battle of Wolf 359 and so Marika was picked up there like the other ex-B’s from “Unity.”
I frankly was shocked that the EMH would even suggest returning the ex-Borg trio to the collective as to me, and I would assume to many others in the audience (and to people in-universe), is a fate worse than death. But I get it was suggested in such a way to give Seven the opportunity to vocalize why it was such a bad idea.
The stuff with the alien space station was filler but harmless filler and it’s a nice change to see the corridors of Voyager packed with (friendly) aliens.
Such a bittersweet and beautifully played ending with Seven’s former fellow drones saying their goodbyes to each other. I always think about if only they hadn’t done the neural link in the first place and then breaking it, that maybe the EMH could have found a way to successfully remove their link to each other and it wouldn’t be fatal. Great writing by Ron Moore.
@krad, Seven’s parents weren’t killed in front of her, they were assimilated. But one can argue that is essentially a form of death for the persons they were prior to their becoming Borg.
I really liked how they had the three Borg finishing each other’s thoughts. It was highly effective at showing why they so strongly desired individuality.
Typo alert.
@@.-@ – Typo fixed, thanks!
Ronald D. Moore is one of the best writers of Trek in its screen history, and this episode is a lovely tease of what kinds of stories we might have seen had he not quit in disgust.
Or the kinds of stories we’d have seen from the very beginning had Moore declined Ira Behr’s offer to join the DS9 Writers Room and had followed Braga on over to VOY’s inaugural Season.
I’ve brought that up throughout the Rewatch and it’s still one of the more interesting What Ifs of VOY for me. DS9 would’ve survived Moore’s absence still it had Behr and Wolfe (for another 3 Seasons at that point).
But I don’t know if a TNG-era Moore would have lasted on VOY without Behr’s guidance and encouragement or if he have toughed it out in order to keep writing for Trek.
I’m surprised that the option of sending the Borg back to the collective was even floated. There’s the obvious humanitarian concerns, but this sounds really dangerous to Voyager and others. Somehow summoning a cube isn’t an option, because who knows what the cube will actually do when it gets here. Even if they can find one, though, these three once assimilated again would know Voyager’s exact position. To the extent the Borg have any interest in the ship, this seems like a terrible idea. Voyager’s best defense is that they’re pretty far down the collective’s priority list and space is really, really big. So I’m guessing even if Seven had landed on returning them to the Borg, Janeway would have put the kibosh on this.
@1: like have her be even mildly curious about what has happened to her war-torn home planet)
Yeah, now that you mention it, you’d think she’d want to chat with the other Bajorans on board. We know from Nothing Human there’s at least one, right? Probably for the best she doesn’t ask too many questions, though, as far as the crew knows the Dominion War is still on and Bajor has a shaky future as the planet right in the Dominion’s expansionist path. She also says “Oh my God” instead of “By the prophets” or whatever. Granted, she might have picked up the phrase from humans, or be a Christian Bajoran or something, but it makes me wonder if the script specifies she was Bajoran or if they just pulled out makeup they had handy.
Definitely one of Voyager‘s finest episodes, and almost certainly the best episode of the weak season 6. It’s no wonder I wanted to follow up on it in “Brief Candle,” and I got to find some poignant emotion in Marika Willkarah’s final days. I also had the story overlap with the next episode, “Barge of the Dead,” and used it to clear up a couple of plot holes there (but that’s a discussion for later).
I don’t remember much about the story since it was so long ago, but I talked about it on my website here (see also the link to spoiler notes about the story): https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/home-page/star-trek-fiction/star-trek-short-fiction/#BriefCandle
garreth: From little Annika’s perspective, it was pretty much the same as seeing her parents killed in front of her….
Mr. Magic: What’s interesting about that what-if is that Moore was higher up on the pecking order in 1995. Braga rose to show-runner because Voyager‘s staff turnover was greater, where DS9‘s stayed pretty stable for the next four years. But Moore, had he joined Voyager from jump, would’ve been more likely to be the next in line to take over from Jeri Taylor when she retired.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What’s interesting about that what-if is that Moore was higher up on the pecking order in 1995. Braga rose to show-runner because Voyager‘s staff turnover was greater, where DS9‘s stayed pretty stable for the next four years. But Moore, had he joined Voyager from jump, would’ve been more likely to be the next in line to take over from Jeri Taylor when she retired.
Huh.
I’d never thought about that implication, but you’re absolutely right.
Definitely curious how that might have worked out. RDM would almost certainly have fought to experiment and push the show in new directions and to take risks — ironically thus becoming just like Behr.
But we also know Behr was able to run DS9 his way only because Berman’s attention was on VOY and the TNG films. So between him and UPN’s meddling…yeah, I don’t know how effective Moore’s hypothetical tenure as VOY showrunner would’ve worked out.
@9/krad: I figured you’d say that! And I agree, but just being literal about it, obviously the Hansen parents weren’t actually outright killed.
It seems there’s a pattern since Seven was introduced to make the second episode of each season focused on her: “The Gift”, “Drone”, and now this one. In the 4th season that was a given but I wonder if after that it became intentional. Upon further investigation, it also appears that since the 4th season every 3rd episode was focused on B’Elanna. Definitely some patterns going on here!
@8/CLB: I would say this is one of 6th season’s best episodes but I would argue “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy” coming up soon is not only the best episode of the season but one of Voyager‘s finest outings. I suspect it is a fan-favorite and on critics’ top 10 Voyager episode lists, and it’s also just a rare example of Star Trek succeeding at doing comedy intentionally.
@11 – Good catch. Sure enough, season 7 follows the same pattern.
While it ran, I only saw a few episodes of Voyager, and never got into it. Station Eleven is what got me started watching, especially once the pandemic started. I caught up and have been keeping pace with your rewatch since last summer, so it was only this week that I watched this episode that Station Eleven references “Survival is insufficient”. Quest Goal: Complete! I cried. Thank you for doing this series, I enjoy your commentary, and special thanks for being one of the distant voices that kept me company during quarantine.
gorgochameleodragon: Thanks so much for reading!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One of Voyager’s best. I too would have loved to see more of the station. Perhaps, we could have spent a couple of episodes there. I am a big fan of Moore’s work and was excited to see him on Voyager, even for just one episode.
Bobby
“A month as an individual or a lifetime as a drone. Which would you choose?”
It does indeed seem that around this time the show seemed to have settled into a formula of doing a Borg-centric story in episode two, but at least this one offers a new take on them and a new trauma for Seven. It was always obvious that she did terrible things as a Borg, but here we learn she did a terrible thing for the Borg as an individual. The episode can’t fully exonerate her for her actions nor fully allow her to make up for them. In fact, the ending is refreshingly bittersweet. For a short while, it almost seems to be presenting returning to the Borg as an acceptable outcome. I actually found it surprising that Chakotay was the one who gave Seven a nudge in the right direction, when Janeway or Tuvok are her usual go-tos as confidantes. (She and Chakotay haven’t really come over as that close up to now, and as recently as “Dark Frontier” he seemed to believe she’d choose the Borg over Voyager.) But yes, the link back to “Unity” would explain it. The scene with the Doctor that follows sees them nicely examine each other’s psyche. In a way, this is the choice the Doctor was faced in “The Swarm”, when he risked ceasing to exist rather than be returned to what he once was, and the decision he made for the wrong reasons in “Repression” only for Janeway to pull him back from the edge.
It’s nice too that the final reactions of the three Borg drones run the full gamut. Lansor doesn’t say anything to Seven, just giving her a nod of acknowledgement. P’Chan is too pleased to bear a grudge over her role in things. Marika doesn’t forgive her but isn’t going to waste time hating her either.
And in just a few lines, the episode subtly answers the long-standing question of why Seven insists on identifying by her Borg designation rather than reclaiming her human identity: She never got to be Annika Hansen. She might be an individual but in many ways she’s what the Borg made her.
Naomi makes her first appearance of Season 6, and her mother’s still being referred to as being around. (This may have started to change by her next appearance.)
A truly emotional and lasting episode that still works to this day. Survival Instinct is one of the few bright (if not blinding) spots in a very uneven season. Which is both a blessing and a source of frustration. Voyager’s episodic nature is a guarantee that every season has its share of hits and misses. Even season 6 still carries a few special ones mixed in. I only wish there had been more episodes like this.
That ending with Marika choosing to spend her last days on Voyager on her own terms hit me hard. To me, it ranks up there with the best of Trek, whether it’s The Visitor, Inner Light and also Voyager’s own Latent Image from last season. Plus, the story manages to give us a fresh spin on Borg stories that had been done before. Very much a mixture of Unity, I, Borg and Seven’s own history, but it feels new and interesting. A lot of that is the superlative character work with these three, plus Seven, without a doubt a credit to Moore’s ability in creating memorable characters (going all the way back to The Bonding a decade prior). Some outstanding performances all across the episode, plus a great framing device with the outpost and ongoing cultural and commercial exchange.
This is why I believe Equinox was the real point of contention and deal-breaker between Moore and the staff. If he had issues regarding his creative input not being taken into account, then it has to be that episode, because it’s sure as heck not the case in this episode or next week’s Barge of the Dead. They’re both superb shows with Moore’s footprints (as well as Fuller’s in the latter case). If there were any changes in these two that made their final cut anything less than what Moore originally envisioned, I’d be hard-pressed to find them.
@6: As for the “What if” discussion, I’d say Moore wouldn’t have lasted past Voyager’s second season, That season as marked by a constant tension between Michael Piller and the staff. With Taylor in charge, choosing a more conservative approach to storytelling, I’d argue Moore would have left, same as Piller, and bolted to DS9 just in time for that show’s fifth season.
Still, as I understand Moore originally moving to DS9 was Piller’s call. According to a number of sources, he’s the one who decided where each writer would go after TNG. He thought Moore and Echevarria needed to further themselves under Behr, while he needed Braga’s high-concept approach for Voyager. And according to a Naren Shankar interview, it was Piller who decided he wasn’t ready to join the spinoffs (despite still writing DS9’s The Quickening some time later).
@17: At the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, I believe Moore’s problem wasn’t just with the quality of each episode, but with, as we’ve been saying, the lack of follow-through. He felt that the events of “Barge of the Dead” should have marked a permanent change in Torres’ character, much as he felt “Equinox” should have affected Janeway and Chakotay’s relationship going forward, only to discover that everyone else intended to just ignore the events and carry on writing her the same way they’d always done. I think this was a source of disappointment for him on TNG, stretching right back to “The Bonding” where he introduced a character who was Worf’s honorary brother by the end of the episode and was then never seen or mentioned again, and I guess after his time on DS9, which seemed more willing to let characters change and grow, he didn’t want to go back there.
@1- Much as I like to complain about the Borg’s villain decay, I don’t actually have a problem with the way they shred drones. After all, the Borg are this massive entity, so vast and so non-individualistic, that it makes perfect sense to me that they’re entirely willing to cut off individual drones, or even entire cubes, when they feel they’ve been compromised by squishy feelings or shouting intergalactic robotentacles. I just wish we’d got more in depth looks at the different ways these cast-offs adjusted or evolved. Fingers crossed for Season 2 of Picard!
@18: I don’t think Moore had a problem on TNG as far as serialization and character growth. Yes, Jeremy was never mentioned again but he wasn’t a popular character and Moore never mentioned being bothered he never returned. Rather, Moore was directly involved in introducing and furthering one of the few character arcs on TNG which was the discommendation and restoration of Worf’s family honor and his further integration into Klingon society and Klingon Empire politics. This arc migrated over to DS9 and if anything, should be a source of pride for him on TNG. Moore’s gripe with TNG was the lack of conflict among the core characters and how everyone got along all of the time. That’s why he, and other writers, enjoyed writing for the characters on DS9 more.
I do agree though that with all of the freedom he had as a writer on DS9 that it was a big step backward to have to be stifled by all of the egos and politics over at Voyager and he didn’t want to sacrifice his integrity by remaining there and his input being ignored.
Hi krad, Ronald Moore and BSG have naturally come up in Voyager rewatch. I know you probably have your writing schedule planned out but wondering if when this is done if a BSG rewatch would be a possibility. I have enjoyed all of your rewatches, even for shows/movies I have not seen. I would love to hear your take on BSG, especially as Moore interpreted it!
@17,
You’re absolutely right. Piller was the one who guided Moore to DS9, not Behr.
Well, you’ve got to remember, I was a Star Trek fan. So I was a big fan. This was a godsend to be on the show at all. So as Next Gen was winding down, I did, I wanted to remain in the Star Trek universe, and the question was, where would I go? Would I go to Deep Space Nine, or would I go to Voyager? Which was just coming together at that point. Michael Piller brought me down to his office to talk about it and it was his idea that I should take a look at Deep Space. Because he thought it would play more to my strengths, I liked darker stories and more ambiguous characters. He could tell, there were things I struggled against on Next Gen about making the characters more ambiguous and less morally clear on some areas, and more continuing storylines.
He said, “I think you should take a look at Deep Space.” And also, Ira Behr, who I’d worked with on the third season of Next Gen, was now running the writer’s room at Deep Space. I loved Ira and really wanted to work with him again. So the combination of those factors became, “Maybe I should give Deep Space a chance,” and I sat down and watched a lot of the episodes. I mean, when I was working on Next Gen, I didn’t really watch a lot of Deep Space. I had seen the pilot, and maybe I’d seen an episode here and there. But Star Trek is so, the show was so all-consuming, when I got home and I was going to relax and watch something else, I didn’t want to watch more Star Trek. It was like doing something else.
So I really hadn’t seen the first two seasons in any great detail. But when I started watching it I was really interested in the characters and in the setting, and the space station, the geopolitics that were going on with Bajor and the Federation. Yeah, it really appealed to me. I decided to go to Deep Space.
That was my bad. I completely misremembered that interview.
I am definitely in the minority here, but I didn’t like this one much. I found the trio annoying, and I wanted them to just get over themselves and ask her already. “You know what her reactions will be. She won’t help us because she –” because she what? She was obviously a different person then. You’re going to assault her instead? Okay, you don’t want to ask Seven. How about you bring your plight to one of her superior officers? Yeesh.
@20: I think Moore had mixed feelings on the subject:
I was not a big fan of the actor playing Jeremy, so in that sense I wasn’t disappointed at all. It would’ve been interesting to continue the relationship on the Enterprise (with a different kid), but at that point in Trek, no one was even willing to think about continuing storylines, so it never came up.
He made similar comments about “The Inner Light” with regards the philosophy at the time. So I would say working on Voyager would have felt like a backward step to those early days.
@23/MeredithP: “I found the trio annoying, and I wanted them to just get over themselves and ask her already. “You know what her reactions will be. She won’t help us because she –” because she what? She was obviously a different person then.”
We know she’s a different person. They don’t. They only know her as the one responsible for forcing this fate on them, keeping them enslaved when they tried to break free. That’s not something you can set aside easily, no matter how different your attacker might appear on the surface.
“How about you bring your plight to one of her superior officers?”
If they still see Seven as their attacker/oppressor, they’d have no reason to trust the people who took her in and treat her as a favored crewmate. Okay, they know about Starfleet through Marika’s memories, but they might think Starfleet’s idealism has blinded them to what Seven really is.
Besides, they’ve been linked in their triad mind for so long that it probably doesn’t occur to them to turn to outsiders.
@25/CLB: They only know her as the one responsible for forcing this fate on them…
It’s shown in the episode that the ex-Borg trio don’t know it was Seven who was responsible for creating that trio’s mini-Collective until Seven allows them to access her memories late into this episode.
@26/garreth: Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Never mind…
Still, they don’t know that much about her life post-Borg, so I can understand why they’d be hesitant to trust her.
I agree with MeredithP in so much as the trio could have done the sensible thing and just asked Seven first but then you wouldn’t have gotten all of the tension and mystery in the first couple of acts and Tuvok shooting them down. So it worked for the purposes of drama and padding the running time.
“Why didn’t you just ask us from the start?”
“You might”
“Have said”
“No.”
@29: That was the same excuse the Binars gave in the 1st season TNG episode “11001001.” And that dialogue is pretty much word for word what the ex-B’s in this episode spout. What makes that even more of a coincidence is that here the ex-B’s trade off the vocalizing of their thoughts just as the Binars do in that TNG story. I wonder if Ron Moore, who joined TNG in its 3rd season, unconsciously plagiarized that portion of that earlier episode, or it’s simply very coincidental.
Uh, no plagiarism in mind, that was only a joking reference.
Oh, haha. I thought you were quoting dialogue from this episode and I instantly recognized it from another Star Trek series!
When the 3 ex-Borg were linking up their memories with 7, it looked like they were each inside a Borg regenerating pod. Have they always had 4 regenerating pods on Voyager, or was that something they cooked up with replicators for this particular procedure?
Quasarmodo: they have half a dozen pods in Cargo Bay 2, and have since Seven first beamed over with her gaggle of Borg in “Scorpion, Part II.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I know a lot of people boarded voyager from the station and were milling around but I would have thought that someone would have spotted an obvious Bajoran had just boarded the ship in the middle of the Delta Quadrant, especially as there are so many Marquis crew members on Board and their previous association with the Bajoran area of the galaxy. This is once again a tour de force performance from Jeri Ryan and the episode is quite rightly regarded as one the series standout episodes.
@35/chad: There are a few other TNG-era species that have nose-ridge makeup very similar to Bajorans, like the Ornarans and Brekkians in TNG: “Symbiosis” or the Tandarans in ENT: “Detained” (which is a reuse of the same makeup from “Symbiosis”). Not to mention all the Delta Quadrant species in early VGR seasons that looked exactly like humans. So Marika’s nose ridges wouldn’t necessarily have made her an “obvious” Bajoran; people might’ve thought she was just a lookalike species.
I feel compelled by an urge to post and must comply. I thought this episode was a great premise but a medium okay execution.
I agree that the premise of returning them to the Borg was bizarre and just a way to get the themes of the show spelled out; if it weren’t for the quality of the performances, that scene would be so dull and a retread of stuff we all know. There’s no way they would have wanted to return to the Borg. There’s no easy and safe way to safely return them to the Borg where they are now.
And what are the Borg gonna say “Oh great, three broken drones, how useful, we’ll take them!” There’s no way the Doctor would know that the Borg would or even could save them. And if our new premise is that Borg drone life is equivalent to a regular life, and that the Doctor of all people would believe that, then this is (I say charitably) not consistent writing.
I loved the busy ship of course, like everyone. I only wish that when Paris and Kim turned around to see the paddle game lurking behind them, they had freaked out with PTSD. Lost opportunity for amusing bit. “Captain, get that thing off the ship before it starts a war.” Such a clear setup for silliness and then near missed.
Our characters felt like they were being puppeteered by someone who didn’t quite get it. I love BSG, DGMW.
I can’t seem to save my edit so I will add my ETA here:
I for sure didn’t feel convinced of the Doctor’s ability to predict a month of clear-minded able life, and a definite certain death to follow, would result from this unique and risky unprecedented alien procedure. So easily corrected if we could have a reason, like “This implant will keep them alive but it will only last as long as the radiation that powers it” or “I’ve supplemented their glial cells but they are constantly regenerating with new codes, at the current rate of regeneration I would say my work will no longer be able to help them in 28 days 7 hours 22 minutes, I mean, approximately of course.”