“Child’s Play”
Written by Paul Brown and Raf Green
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 6, Episode 19
Production episode 239
Original air date: March 8, 2000
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Since Voyager now has five kids on board, they hold a science fair. Azan and Rebi cloned potatoes (they apparently wanted to clone Naomi, but Seven convinced them to try something simpler first), Mezoti developed a colony of ants that are bioluminescent, Naomi created a detailed scale model of her father’s homeworld of Ktaris, and Icheb created a sensor array designed to seek out wormholes.
Janeway then informs a shocked Seven that they’ve tracked down Icheb’s homeworld and are en route there now. Janeway has spoken to Icheb’s parents, and are looking forward to being reunited with their son.
Seven is not particularly sanguine about Icheb leaving. The Brunali are an agrarian society who don’t even engage in space travel anymore. Icheb’s interest in astrophysics will atrophy there. She has bonded with the four Borg kids, and doesn’t want to lose one of them, but Janeway is adamant that they reunite him with his parents.
It takes Seven a while to tell Icheb where they’re going. He’s completely engrossed in his project to improve Voyager’s sensors and help them find wormholes that might get them to Earth quicker. He’s fascinated by the expansiveness of the galaxy, after spending his time as a drone not caring about anything outside the Cube. When Seven finally gives in and tells him what’s happening, he’s uninterested in meeting parents he doesn’t even remember.
When they arrive at the Brunali homeworld, Seven reports that they’re dangerously close to a Borg transwarp hub. The world itself only has a scattered population, in tiny settlements all over the world of less than 10,000 people each. Janeway has Tuvok constantly scan the hub for Borg activity.
Icheb beams down, accompanied by Janeway, Tuvok, and Seven. He is (re)introduced to his parents, Leucon and Yifay, and then asks to return to Voyager immediately.
Janeway invites Leucon and Yifay to Voyager, and they discuss the situation in the briefing room. Seven is concerned about his medical needs, particularly with his need to regenerate in a Borg alcove. She also thinks the Brunali should relocate to a world that isn’t so close to a transwarp hub, but Leucon and Yifay insist that they will never abandon their home.
Seven is brutal in her interrogation of the pair to the point where Janeway orders her to wait in the captain’s ready room. Janeway then apologizes to Leucon and Yifay and asks them to remain on board, to reacquaint themselves with their son in an environment where he’s more comfortable.
The Janeway upbraids Seven, who is unrepentant. Besides all her other concerns, the Brunali are sitting ducks for further Borg attacks. She’s convinced that he’ll be reassimilated if he stays. She also believes that anyone who would put their own goals over the safety of their children is irresponsible, and Janeway pointedly asks if she’s talking about Leucon and Yifay or the Hansens. Seven candidly says, “Both.”
Buy the Book
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Janeway convinces Seven that this is, ultimately, not either of their decisions—it’s Icheb’s. Let him get to know his parents and his homeworld and make his own choice.
In Cargo Bay 2, Mezoti, the twins, and Naomi are all curious about Icheb’s experiences with his parents and if he’s going to stay. Azan and Rebi lament that they don’t remember their parents, either, and Naomi also mentions that she’s never met her own father. Seven then arrives and says that Icheb’s having dinner with his parents. He doesn’t want to go, but Seven allows as how it’s not optional.
Yifay has prepared a meal using Neelix’s galley. It’s Icheb’s favorite food from when he was a child, and he finds himself enjoying it immensely.
The next day, Icheb beams back down and Leucon and Yifay show him the world. The Brunali have become very adept at genetic engineering, mostly in creating crops that can survive on the ravaged world. When Icheb asks about space travel, Leucon allows as how re-achieving that is still in the future, but it will be possible due to the brilliance of the next generation of Brunali, like him.
Icheb informs Seven that he’s spending the night on the surface. Seven points out that he needs a regeneration chamber, and Leucon offers to beam back to Voyager to help fabricate a portable one for him. While he and Seven do so, Leucon tells her the story of how Icheb was assimilated. The Brunali have been cautious in developing new technology, as anything too advanced will get the Borg’s attention. They developed a fertilization array four years earlier, and Leucon promised to take Icheb to see it. But Icheb couldn’t wait, and snuck out one night to check it out. Unfortunately, the Borg also detected it and assimilated it, and Icheb with it, along with everyone else in the area. Seven admits that she’s had to deal with Icheb’s impatience a few times herself.
Leucon, Yifay, and Icheb spend the evening looking at the constellations. It’s a pleasant night, and the next morning Icheb announces that he is staying with them. Seven is sad, but respects his decision. She gives him a ton of padds with astrometric data and also a telescope. Icheb promises to use the telescope every day, and also wishes Janeway and the crew luck in their journey home.
As Voyager tootles away from the Brunali homeworld, Mezoti finds that she can’t settle enough to regenerate, as she misses Icheb. She’s also worried about him—what if he’s reassimilated? Seven assures her that the Borg won’t take much interest in the Brunali as they are right now, they’re too technologically backward at present. But Mezoti asks if he’s on a ship again, what then? Seven is confused, as he was assimilated on the planet, from what Leucon said, but Mezoti has perfect recall of the records on the Cube she was on, and Icheb was assimilated in a one-person transport all by himself.
Seven goes to astrometrics and looks through the records they downloaded from the Cube they found the Borg kids on. There are inconsistencies between those records and Leucon’s story: Icheb was indeed captured on a single-person craft, not on the Brunali homeworld, and also there were no Borg attacks on the Brunali homeworld four years previous.
Janeway isn’t sure this is enough to justify going back to the planet, but Seven insists, and Janeway agrees.
On the Brunali homeworld, Leucon is reluctant to do what needs to be done, but Yifay talks him into it, using the same arguments he used on her four years earlier. They then sedate Icheb with a hypospray and prepare to launch a ship.
When Voyager returns, Leucon and Yifay are evasive and equivocating. Tuvok’s scans reveal that Icheb isn’t on the planet. They do, however, detect a Brunali transport appearing to be traveling at warp 9.8, even though that’s not possible for a ship of that design. Paris determines that they’re emitting a false warp signature, which Seven says is bait for the Borg. Leucon and Yifay admit that Icheb is on that ship, and he’s fighting for his people using their genetic expertise.
It becomes clear that the pathogen that wiped out all but six of the drones on the Cube in “Collective” was introduced by Icheb. And they’re using him for that purpose again. Despite Leucon and Yifay pleading that it’s the only hope for their civilization (not to mention that they’re risking going into battle with the Borg), Janeway orders red alert and for Voyager to catch up to the transport.
They do catch up to it, but right on top of the transwarp hub, and a Borg sphere is coming through. They manage to beam Icheb to sickbay, but then the Borg arrive. Seven beams a photon torpedo onto Icheb’s transport, which serves as a grenade. It does enough damage to the sphere to allow Voyager to escape.
Icheb recovers, and discusses what happened with Seven. For her part, Seven is livid that his own parents used him this way and says he shouldn’t forgive them. But Icheb is more concerned with whether they would forgive him. He was specifically created for this purpose: he was genetically engineered to be a weapon against the Borg. He actually feels bad for not being able to serve his function. But he also throws himself back into his studies on Voyager, to Seven’s relief.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Icheb wasn’t infected with the pathogen, he was genetically engineered to create it. It apparently only works on full Borg, as it never seems to infect him or the other kids, or Seven.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway serves as Seven’s counsel throughout the episode, giving her reality checks and playing devil’s advocate—and also making sure that she does what’s best for Icheb.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. When examining Icheb, who is complaining of a stomachache just prior to his reunion with his parents, the EMH jokes that his stomach is filled with butterflies, and then has to explain that human metaphor.
Half and half. Torres is particularly intrigued by Icheb’s fancy-shmancy sensor array at the science fair.
Resistance is futile. After practically begging Chakotay to let someone else take care of the Borg kids just one episode ago, Seven has become incredibly attached to the kids, and does everything she can to shitcan Icheb’s return to his people.
Do it.
“We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.”
“Perhaps not.”
–The Borg doing their usual dance and Seven saying fuck you
Welcome aboard. Tracey Ellis plays Yifay, while we also get all the youthful recurring regulars in Manu Intiraymi as Icheb, Marley McClean as Mezoti, Kurt & Cody Wetherill as Azan and Rebi, and Scarlett Pomers as Naomi.
And for the second week in a row we have a Robert Knepper moment with a recurring player on Supernatural! I knew that Mark A. Sheppard had appeared in a ton of genre productions, including Doctor Who, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and, yes, Supernatural, not to mention the genre-adjacent Leverage, but I’d totally forgotten he’d been on Voyager. He pays Leucon with an only occasionally successful masking of his natural British accent.
Trivial matters: This episode establishes that the pathogen that trashed the Borg Cube in “Collective” came from Icheb himself.
Icheb is looking at a star chart in astrometrics, and one of the worlds on the chart is Jouret IV, which is a world the Borg destroyed in “The Best of Both Worlds.”
The name of the planet where Naomi’s father Greskendtregk comes from is established as Ktaris. Naomi gets to finally visit Ktaris in the Voyager novel Atonement by Kirsten Beyer.
Set a course for home. “I never assimilated butterflies.” This is an episode that was much more effective when watched the first time in 2000 than it was to rewatch it twenty-one years later, knowing full well that Icheb will remain on board Voyager to the end of the series (and also appear later in the Alpha Quadrant as a Starfleet officer in Picard’s “Stardust City Rag”).
Knowing all this makes it impossible to invest in Icheb’s growing attachment to his parents, because you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Worse, that other shoe completely changes the tone of the episode. What should be a fascinating custody battle between Icheb’s adoptive parent (Seven) and his biological ones instead hits us with the surprise twist that Icheb was created to be a weapon.
This creates several problems. The first is an out-of-the-box one as we have yet another case where the folks on Voyager escape from the Borg completely unscathed. It’s growing tiresome and is utterly ruining the Borg as a threat. Since it’s just one sphere it’s less frustrating than, say, “Dark Frontier,” which Voyager had no business escaping from intact, but it’s still absurd.
The second is internal to the story. The pathogen Icheb creates has already been proven not to work beyond a single Cube. All the Borg did was cut that Cube off from the Collective. Plus, it’s the Borg, whose entire schtick is assimilation and adaptation. The one consistent thing about the Borg from when we first met them way back in TNG’s “Q Who” is that the same trick will never work on them twice. They scanned the Cube Icheb and the gang were on and cut it off from the Collective, but I find it impossible to credit that they haven’t already long since adapted to that pathogen and would’ve been completely unaffected by it this time. And this is something that the Brunali should have known, having dealt with the Borg, y’know, a lot.
It’s a pity, because up to the rather tiresome surprise twist, the episode is very effective. Both Jeri Ryan and especially Manu Intiraymi do a superlative job of showing the difficulties that Seven has in letting go of her parental relationship with Icheb and Icheb has in returning to a home he doesn’t actually remember. And the front that Leucon and Yifay put up works very well, and you wish there had been a more genuine conflict between Seven’s growing attachment to Icheb (and the other kids) and Leucon and Yifay’s desire to get their son back. That the latter desire was solely so they could use their (ineffective) weapon again undercuts the conflict, and artificially boosts Seven’s position, taking the easy way out.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest book is All-the-Way House, the latest in the Systema Paradoxa series about cryptids. AtWH is about the Jersey Devil, and takes place in 2020, 1909, and 1735. It’s out this month from the NeoParadoxa imprint of eSpec Books. Ordering links here.
“I’d like the data you’ve collected on Icheb’s species so I can prepare him for reassimilation.”
After a couple of appearances where his character didn’t really extend beyond “the tall one”, we finally get to know Icheb and to see the bond between him and Seven that was recently showcased on Picard. There’s something nicely believable about the way that Janeway’s half-maternal/half-mentor role towards Seven has been passed forward into Seven’s relationship with the Borg children.
Unfortunately…this one triumphs over “Ashes to Ashes” in that it actually is half a good episode, but it has the same problem, as Keith says, of making a sudden swerve in the last half which renders everything that’s gone before pointless in order to get the pieces back they want them for next week. (A trait that outgoing executive producer Joe Menosky will take a bit of a swipe at in three episodes’ time.) So we see Icheb reuniting with his family and bonding with them, and see Seven moving from being a jealous jerkass with parental issues to accepting this is where he belongs. And to be fair, whilst Lindsay Ballard was obviously just a guest character who’d never be seen again, here it does actually seem possible, given he’s only just joined, that this might be Icheb’s final exit, providing you’ve avoided any Late Arrival Spoilers.
But then the episode suddenly announces that Seven was right after all and Icheb’s parents are evil child sacrificers. It leads to a tense ending where Voyager put themselves at risk to stop Icheb being assimilated (and put a Borg sphere out of action in the process!). And there is at least some attempt at nuance in the last scene as Icheb can’t bring himself to hate his parents, understanding why they did what they did and worrying that he let them down. Plus it’s nice to get an explanation for the pathogen from “Collective”. But it still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
I am getting frustrating Kes vibes from Mezoti: A likable and watchable character played by a capable actress who seems to be being set up to be there for the rest of the show’s run but whose time will be disappointingly short. The Doctor mentions Naomi’s mother, the first indication that she’s still around since “Survival Instinct”, although Neelix is still the one acting as parent figure to her at the science fair.
Funnily enough, I always found the first half of the episode to be boring (I think I was a little burnt out on Seven Learns A Very Valuable Lesson About Her Humanity episodes at the time), and the second half to have the more interesting ideas. I actually like this one because I think we get to see a bit of a different perspective on the Borg. We are used to seeing them from the POV of our Starfleet heroes, who live outside of Borg space, and have to deal with them in (relatively) small numbers as an incursion. The Brunali have to live with the Borg being right next door (cosmically speaking, anyway), and how they’ve adapted to that threat is pretty interesting to me. Deliberately keeping themselves at a low level of technology for survival (as opposed to say, the werdio Luddites we see in other Trek episodes like “Paradise”) is a neat strategy. Obviously you shouldn’t genetically engineer people to use as bait, but it is still a clever way to try to deal with the Borg (and not all that different from some of the methods Starfleet has either tried or seriously considered), while still keeping a relatively low profile. It’s both an interesting strategy and a mark of their desperation to get rid of the Borg that they would even consider doing such a thing (although I agree with KRAD that it shouldn’t work twice, at least not with Icheb. It would have made a little more sense if they had a different genetically engineered kid with a different “disease” to spread.)
And obviously it is always a delight to see Mark Sheppard, taking a break from being the King of Hell to romp around on an alien planet.
This was the first thing I knew Mark Sheppard from, though for years I mistook him for Mark Allen Shepherd, the guy who played Morn on Deep Space Nine. Even after I figured out they were two different people, it took me years longer to realize that Sheppard is the son of W. Morgan Sheppard, who guest starred in TNG: “The Schizoid Man,” The Undiscovered Country, VGR: “Bliss,” and the 2009 movie.
As for the episode taking the easy way out, given that they apparently intended to keep Icheb around as a semi-regular, I’m not sure what other option they had than to establish his parents as unfit guardians.
“…the same trick will never work on them twice… And this is something that the Brunali should have known, having dealt with the Borg, y’know, a lot.”
I’m not sure that follows, given that the Brunali have apparently “dealt with” the Borg mainly through avoidance and accommodation rather than direct conflict. Yes, a victorious tactic will only work once, but if they’ve never beaten the Borg, just found ways to adapt and avoid their notice, they might not actually know that.
Besides, it takes a degree of fanaticism to be willing to sacrifice your own child, and fanatics are not known for their ability to rethink their approaches in light of objective evidence.
My biggest conceptual problem with this episode was the idea that the Borg would have let the Brunali survive at all. We’ve never seen the Borg just raiding a civilization piecemeal for its technologies; rather, they swallow up the whole civilization in one gulp, leaving at best a handful of fleeing refugees like the El-Aurians or Arturis’s people. So the premise here was very much out of character for the Borg.
I’d thought it was Mark Sheppard but decided against it. I guess alien face prosthetics change the face more than I thought.
This episode definitely suffers on a second watch. It’s not fun waiting for his parents to turn evil. Them sending Icheb back out right away seemed a bit of narrative convenience but I suppose it’s forgivable. They’re lucky Voyager came back because the plague presumably wouldn’t have worked a second time. The sphere might have decided to investigate the planet more closely
I actually quite like this episode and don’t mind the twist at all. I really honestly enjoy any story that takes a look at another species’ desperate attempts to avoid the Borg. It would’ve been a little more interesting to focus more on how avoiding assimilation has impacted their culture though. It’s never been clear to me if it was the colony as a whole or only Icheb’s parents that use genetic engineering to create a sacrifice. Is it their whole world and only one child is occasionally found to be suitable for sacrifice? Is this a grand honor in their culture? It might’ve been a little more interesting to see the conflict be Icheb pulled between Voyager’s recent culture and his home world’s culture that he has no memory of. It might’ve made for a nice little Prime Directive episode, rather than yet another episode culminating in an unlikely escape from the Borg.
I still like the episode a lot though. I was a kid while watching Trek in the 90’s, so Icheb, Naomi, Jake, Nog, and Wesley were all characters that landed really well with me. I’m still partial to any episodes focusing on them and I think that nostalgia may make me give more leeway to their episodes than others.
Resistance is futile. After practically begging Chakotay to let someone else take care of the Borg kids just one episode ago, Seven has become incredibly attached to the kids, and does everything she can to shitcan Icheb’s return to his people.
Yeah, this is some serious mood whiplash– and perhaps exposes that because Voyager did continuity so rarely, they really botched this mini-arc. So in a four episode stretch, the four kids are rescued from the Borg and brought on board, then don’t appear in “Spirit Folk”, then Seven is in full “I don’t even like kids and I have no idea what I’m doing” mode, and now she’s heavily attached to the point where she’s running science fairs while fighting off the biological parents. Of the relevant episodes, only “Ashes to Ashes” has a stardate, so we can posit long time periods between to make this all work, but geez.
@@.-@: They’re lucky Voyager came back because the plague presumably wouldn’t have worked a second time. The sphere might have decided to investigate the planet more closely
I think they might actually be screwed no matter what. If the plague works, then the collective is down at most one sphere and nothing changes. If it doesn’t work, then the Borg are assimilating Icheb’s knowledge, who now knows that the planet is the source of the technology and fake warp signature, which should move the planet up the priority list. And with Janeway snatching the kid and running… well, the Sphere is going to finish repairs or get rescued eventually, and at that point the Borg presence in the area might just decide to take a closer look at the planet, because clearly something is going on they might be interested in.
Mazati tells Seven that she hopes Voyager doesn’t find her parents, but it doesn’t seem likely they would since the show established that she is Norcadian, a species referenced in “Tsunkatse,” and unless they’re flying in circles like they seemingly were in season two, it would seem they’re actively flying away from Norcadian space. I don’t remember under what circumstances she was put off the ship in “Imperfection,” but I’m sure it flew in the face of continuity.
@7/bgsu98: “but I’m sure it flew in the face of continuity”
And we know Voyager never did that, right? By the way, the Malon say hello. ;)
Although there is no reason why a civilization’s territory has to be a single contiguous block. The United States includes Alaska and Hawai’i. The British Empire included territories as remote from the UK as Australia.
The Malon, the Hirogen, the Talaxians, the Hierarchy…
@9/bgsu98: As I keep saying, it’s not a problem for the Hirogen, who were established from the start as a wide-ranging nomadic culture that used a communications relay network spreading halfway across the galaxy. As for the Hierarchy, their territory would only need to be moderately large or widespread on a galactic scale, since Voyager only made a couple of small jumps totaling no more than 1000 light-years in season 6.
As for the Talaxians in “Homestead”… well, I’m saving my rant for when we get there. Let’s just say it definitely is a problem.
Once upon a time, the Borg were not concerned with individual members of a species. But by season 6 of Voyager, they apparently fall for bait traps consisting of one ship and one individual.
No Chucky, no dice.
I like this one. Pretty much any time Janeway butts heads with Seven tends to be a winner or at least interesting. And Seven here is definitely passionate about her cause, and it’s emotionally effective, and the audience (or myself, anyway) was cheering her on. When I watched it for the first time, I found it to be pretty effective how we’re conditioned to believe Icheb will not be returning to the show either because he will stay behind on the planet or he’ll die/be re-assimilated by the Borg on his next encounter with them. So it was pretty cool when he winds up back on Voyager. It was also a cruel surprise what his parents had intended for him. While you can sort of sympathize with their cause, they are ultimately cowards because they are sacrificing their child instead of themselves. I’m not sure if they said in the episode that adults couldn’t be a carrier for the pathogen, and if they can’t, at least find a child/juvenile/teenager, whatever, that is fully informed on the plan to infect the Borg, and be a willing participant in the situation – not knock out your own kid and send him in to the lion’s den completely ignorant.
Also, the Borg were already long-ago ruined as a villain. Thanks Voyager.
The Borg were for sure ruined in “Dark Frontier,” though “Unimatrix Zero” will put the nails in the coffin by portraying assimilation as nothing more than dressing up in latex, shaving your head, and gluing vacuum cleaner attachments to your body. Remember when assimilation involved the amputation of limbs and removal of eyeballs?
@13 I got the impression that Icheb had been specifically bioengineered to carry the pathogen, and that it wouldn’t be able to just say, be injected into an adult.
They didn’t indicate that the Borg ever knew what destroyed the cube. The doctor knew it was some pathogen that attacks cybernetic organisms, but the Borg apparently decided to quarantine the cube and not come back for the children, and determined further investigation would be irrelevant. If Icheb was sent back they’d have no reason to know the pathogen came from him and why not assimilate him for the same reasons they did before.
@11 I think the false warp signature of a crazy fast ship was meant to make Icheb look like a worthy target for assimilation. Why Voyager can figure out its a trick in 2 seconds, and the Borg wouldn’t, I’m not sure.
I was skeptical fo the idea that you could fake a ship having a faster warp drive than it actually does, since you can measure how fast it actually is moving. But on reflection, I think I see how it could work. To measure an object’s velocity in space, you have to calculate both its angular motion (side to side) and its radial motion (toward or away from you) and combine the vectors. And it can be hard to measure radial velocity accurately, so you can conclude that something is moving faster radially, and thus at a sharper angle toward/away from you, than it actually is.
The Borg were tops in “Q Who” and the “The Best of Both Worlds” 2-parter. They were scary as well in First Contact although I’m no fan of the Borg Queen.
Funny how DS9 opened their series with the Borg and never used them again. That’s showing restraint. They also created their own effective villain in The Dominion and so didn’t have to rely on a TNG invented baddie.
@16 The Borg would only be able to see it from very far away, Voyager is right next door astrographically speaking.
I thought the Borg were plenty terrifying in “Descent, Part I.” Not so much in Part II.
I think of the Borg in “Descent, Part I” as ex-B’s, so not the real hive-mind Borg. But yes, still scary in their own way.
I think it makes sense the Borg wandered into the trap. And part of that is that they don’t place much value on one drone or one ship.
If there really is a ship that fast, it’s worth their attention to assimilate.
If it’s not really a ship that fast, then their long range sensors have been fooled, and it’s worth their attention to assimilate so they can learn how and develop a countermeasure.
If it’s just a sensor ghost or some natural glitch, no real harm done– the whole point is that the planet is right outside a transwarp whatever, so the sphere presumably didn’t go very far out of its way.
If, as here, it’s a trap then fine– let the Sphere take the punch. If it wins, assimilate the ship and learn as much as possible about the weapon. If it loses, then the Collective can analyze the attack and once again develop countermeasures.
The reason equally fast warp signatures in the AQ don’t attract any Borg attention is that it’s so far out of their territory. Either they’re not aware of it, or it’s not worth the trip and too far down the Collective priority list. Presumably the DQ locals have figured out how to go fast, but not fast enough that it attracts unwanted Borg attention.
@20, 21
I thought the scariest Borg in that episode was the one they capture, who then proceeds to tell everyone precisely how he can kill them according to the anatomy of their species. A chilling use of knowledge from the Collective.
@17 you make an important point. I used to research quasar jets and we’d end up measuring velocities greater than the speed of light. Now obviously the material was not moving superluminally but appeared so due to the effects you describe.
Also since warp speed is based on moving through subspace or whatever technobabble they use we don’t really have a good idea how they measure warp velocity, and thus can’t really understand how you’d go about faking a velocity.
@24/Joshua Arenson: My college astronomy professor, Dr. Michael Sitko, was a quasar guy, so I learned about the superluminal illusion back then. Let’s see if I can remember how it works (bear with me, folks)… it’s because the jets are getting closer at nearly the speed of light, so it takes less time for the light to reach us because it’s a shorter distance, and when that’s combined with their high sublight velocity approaching us, it creates the illusion of FTL velocity. E.g. if something is coming toward us at 0.9c and starts out 100 light years away in the year 2000, then the light reaches us in 2100. But ten years later in 2010, it’s only 91 light years away, so the light it sends out reaches us in 2101. So it looks like it’s traveled 9 light years in just 1 year. Something like that, although I think there’s a relativistic component I’m leaving out.
One thing I appreciated about this episode is that it remembered an element of the Borg that was established in their very first appearance but gets comparatively little play. I quote Q: “The Borg is the ultimate user. They’re unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They’re not interested in political conquest, wealth or power as you know it. They’re simply interested in your ship, its technology. They’ve identified it as something they can consume.“
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
In the first half of the episode I was thinking maybe at the end Icheb will chose to stay on Voyager because this will give him better opportunities and his parents will give him their blessing because they will see this is better for him. I’m not sure it would’ve been a better episode, but a more predictable one for sure.
Do we know for sure they actually did this? We only heard the false story from Icheb’s father. I would rather think that the Borg assimilated the entire planet a while ago, but a part of the population survived and built the society we saw in the current days.
@14: “Remember when assimilation involved the amputation of limbs and removal of eyeballs?”
Yeah, it’s not like Picard was back to being fully human for the rest of the series after being assimilated in their big season-spanning two-parter. Oh, wait…
I have a question. Who invented the borg? Originally, on the writers staff, I mean. It wouldn’t be Star Trek without them, and Voyager as a whole — and especially in this late phase — was a borg show through and through.
I remember when I first saw them on TNG (back when they were still frightening). But I never heard anything about who came up with the concept.
Best — André
@28: Picard was always physically intact after being restored from being Locutus (I never understood why the Borg gave him a name) but he always bore the scars of psychological trauma (see “Family”, First Contact, Star Trek: Picard). Voyager for the most part made coming back from assimilation seem like no big whoop.
@29/Andre: The Borg were invented by the late TNG showrunner/writer Maurice Hurley (also the guy who got Gates McFadden fired from the series). The Borg were originally conceived as being insectoid in appearance, which was dropped for budgetary reasons. And they were originally going to be introduced in a first season cliffhanger but then they were only alluded to as the mystery behind the destruction of the Federation and Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone in “The Neutral Zone.”
@30 – There is absolutely no way that Picard should have been back in the centre seat as fast as he was, if at all, after being assimilated. As the first person that was recovered from being assimilated he should have spent months om thera[y, both physical and psychological. The fact that he was still connected to the Borg, as seen in First Contact, should have kept him off the bridge permanently.
@30/garreth: “Locutus (I never understood why the Borg gave him a name)”
As the Borg explained to Picard in Part 1, “Your archaic cultures are authority-driven. To facilitate our introduction into your societies, it has been decided that a human voice will speak for us in all communications.” The intent was to give the Collective a single face and voice that non-hive societies would react to as an authority figure. So he was given a name because those societies use names. Also, “Locutus” is derived from the Latin for “speak,” so it more or less means a speaker or spokesperson. It was a way of defining his role to the cultures he was created to address.
There’s no way Data should have been allowed to continue serving on the flagship after “Brothers.” There’s no way La Forge should have been allowed to continue serving on the flagship after “The Mind’s Eye.” There’s no way Spock should’ve been allowed to continue serving on the flagship after “The Menagerie.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Resistance is futile. After practically begging Chakotay to let someone else take care of the Borg kids just one episode ago, Seven has become incredibly attached to the kids, and does everything she can to shitcan Icheb’s return to his people.
As a parent, I relate to this. There is a lot of extreme feelings in parenting.
@30/garreth: That’s certainly true but, at least in regards to Janeway and co, they were only altered physically, retaining their own minds, so it makes sense they’d have less psychological scars. I wouldn’t say Seven was less scarred than Picard by the experience.
Just realized this is the second episode in a row to barely feature Paris. Not necessarily a bad thing (amirite Keith?), but just worth noting.
One of the best scenes in Picard season one was Picard and Seven bonding over their shared trauma of being former Borg.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@36/cap-mjb: I did say “for the most part” because I thought the show did a good job of its portrayal of lasting trauma done to Seven, not to mention the other members of her unimatrix in “Survival Instinct.” But without having re-watched “Unimatrix Zero” recently, I was in fact referring to how it was no big deal how Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres, transitioned to Borg and back with no consequences. But yes, even if there minds weren’t effected, they should have still gotten the amputation and eye removal treatment.
I like this one a lot. To me, the episode absolutely sells Icheb’s growing struggle, and especially Seven’s inability to let go.
Personally, I feel the twist that the parents engineered their son to be a weapon to be quite effective. On one hand, it might make it easier for Seven to be the better parent in this debate, eliminating a lot of that moral grey area. But it’s still very effective as a cautionary tale about abusive parenting. If anything, Child’s Play is the tragedy of Icheb. Discovering that you’re only loved for your practical usefulness rather than your own self has to be a devastating blow for any child. And I find Manu Intiraymi plays this aspect of the character remarkably well. Like Seven, he no longer has a home to call his own. Which is why I find it resonates emotionally (it also really amps up the tragic aspect when we learn he was a casualty all those years later on Picard).
This way, he gets to embrace his newfound Voyager family and discover this new potential as he chooses the Starfleet path. It’s a nice way for Voyager to attempt a story that TNG previously did with Wesley, and DS9 with Nog.
Given the Brunali don’t have the range and access to information Starfleet has, I can see why they would try a doomed tactic against the Borg twice, especially as @3/Christopher pointed out, if they avoided the Borg rather than confront them directly, they wouldn’t know how effective their efforts might be. And yes, they come across as fanatics.
I’m surprised no one has commented on Voyager interfering with Brunali internal affairs. They may not like it, but many cultures have sent their young people off to die for their family/tribe/nation. But because they had a prior relationship with Icheb, they felt entitled to interfere with this culture’s solution to their Borg problem. Regardless of whether the solution would have worked or not, did they have the right to intervene?
@41/Stacy Garrett: It surely was a missed opportunity if at least one Starfleet character didn’t raise the objection of the Prime Directive. I’m sure Janeway felt she could disregard the directive anyway since Icheb was a child/friend, and the Brunali didn’t exactly pose a threat to her ship and crew.
@41 That’s a great point, and it would have been interesting to have the episode get into the mentality of a “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” type society.
@41/Stacy Garrett: I don’t agree that rescuing one person from a society’s abuses is a Prime Directive violation. It doesn’t force them to change their overall cultural practice, it just rescues one victim thereof. There’s nothing to stop the Brunali from trying again with other children. But that’s exactly why Icheb didn’t need to be sacrificed.
The Prime Directive is not an excuse to turn a blind eye to suffering. It’s a reminder to respect people’s right to self-determination. And surely that applies on an individual level as well as a civilizational one.
It’s the same conflict on TNG’s Justice. On one hand, Picard couldn’t rescue Wesley from the Edo, due to the risk in violating the Prime Directive (by angering their god and beliefs). On the other, it was in Picard’s legal right to safeguard his crew and passengers.
Icheb is a survivor of Borg violation, now under Voyager’s protection – and very much a willing passenger and future crewmember. By all means, Janeway has every right to guarantee his safety, especially if the parents are proven as a threat.
Also, a trivia note: before Voyager first aired in 1995, Paul Brown was a writer/producer on X-Files (the year Scully was abducted). While this is his only Voyager credit, he’d later contribute to Enterprise’s Rajiin, in the middle of the Xindi story arc.
@45/Eduardo: I don’t think it’s the same. In “Justice,” the issue wasn’t about “angering their god”; it was simply that Starfleet personnel are obligated to respect local laws. We’ve seen that in other episodes like “Wolf in the Fold” and “Ex Post Facto” — when a crew member is charged with a crime under a planet’s laws, the crew has to work within the planet’s legal system and accept its verdict rather than breaking the law by just beaming their crew member away and warping out of orbit.
But there was no indication that what Icheb’s parents did to him was mandated by Brunali law; it just seemed to be something they did on their own initiative. For all we know, his parents were the ones breaking the law by sacrificing their son. We didn’t see enough of the Brunali society to know whether this practice was culture-wide or just something this one fanatical couple decided to do.
Also, there’s a difference between a Starfleet crew member and a native of the planet. Starfleet policy is to respect local law and accept local judgments against their officers. But that doesn’t mean Starfleet has the right to force a planet’s own people to submit to unjust laws if they’re unwilling to do so. The whole point of the Prime Directive is not to force Starfleet’s own judgments on others. We’ve seen in cases like DS9: “Captive Pursuit” that persecuted aliens can request asylum from the Federation, if that’s their own choice.
@39/garreth: Well, there’s not many other examples. Icheb and co suffered enough assimilation to lose memories of their prior lives but otherwise basically chilled out in maturation chambers and got ordered around by First for a bit: You might expect a bit more trauma from the fact they killed at least one person in a failed attempt at assimilation, but I guess kids are resilient. Meanwhile, Janeway, Tuvok and Torres apparently got the best of both worlds (so to speak): Like Picard, they just had a bunch of easily removed prosthetics slapped on, unlike Picard, they mostly remained in control of their actions and just got to sneak around a Borg cube in costume rather than being forced to lead the slaughter of thousands.
@8 I just watched “Imperfection” last night, and it was the twins’ species that Voyager found, and Mazati chose to leave the ship with them for reasons not given, so we can assume she never was reunited with her own people.
On an unrelated point, the twins had no dialogue, and I was surprised to see them speak in a recent episode (I can’t remember which one), as I thought they were basically glorified extras during their entire run on Voyager.
@48: Well, that’s nice Mezoti got to at least stay with her ex-Borg friends/family. She most likely has little to no memory of her original family/people/planet. Too bad she couldn’t stick around on Voyager though.
@46 – But ignoring local law is exactly what Picard did in Justice. Also, On Capella IV, Kirk touched Eleen and prevented her from being killed, acts that carry the death penalty under Capella law,
MAAB: You carry a child who would be teer.
ELEEN: I must die.
(Maab raises his knife, and Kirk pulls her away.
KIRK: No!
(There’s a fight. Starfleet loses.)
MAAB: No man may touch the wife of a teer.
KRAS: She was prepared to die, Earthman.
ELEEN: I was proud to obey the laws. Kill him first. He laid hands upon me. It is my right to see him die.
@40 “I like this one a lot. To me, the episode absolutely sells Icheb’s growing struggle, and especially Seven’s inability to let go”.
Yes, I entirely agree with that. Seven’s emotional struggle is what makes the episode really work for me. And it’s not only her difficulty to see Icheb go, it’s also the fact that the situation brings her to face her feelings of anger and resentment toward her own parents, who put her in harm’s way when they took her with them to chase the Borg. I particularly like the fact that Seven admits these feelings, both to herself, and to Janeway. As Janeway points out – it’s not like Seven to admit something like that, and It’s a big progress for her.
@50/kkozoriz: Yes, of course, and that’s where the story conflicts came from — whether to honor the Starfleet policy of respecting local law or to violate it in the name of a greater principle. If the policy didn’t exist, there’d be no conflict. Picard made that whole speech about it at the climax of “Justice” — “There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute.”
@48: That’s what I thought as well, but one of them spoke in “Collective” and I think they’ve both had dialogue in their two other appearances so far, certainly in this one.
@52 – But that’s not Picard’s call to make on the Edo planet. And not Kir’s on Capella for that matter. It’s perfectly fine for him to make that comment about Federation member planets but it’s not his place, nor the Federation or Starfleet, to make that determination for someone else on their own planet. That’s the whole thing behind the Prime Directive. People (aliens, whatever) are free to make their own rules for their own planets. The way Picard presents it is that pep[le are free to make their own rules as long as they align with what the Federation deems proper.
Did Wesley break the law? Yes. Was the law administered fairly by the EDO? Yes, by their rules. Would it be considered fair on Earth? No, it would not. Is that fact that Earth wouldn’t act that way relevant? No, it is not.
@54 Kkoriz
No, it wasn’t in Picard’s authority to make that call. It was in his authority to APPEAL to the Edo God to release Wesley, which is what he did. The law was imposed by the Edo God. The Edo God would have authority to suspend it, which it/they did.
In Friday’s Child it could be argued that Kirk should have been killed for touching Eleen. But the ruling Tyr never imposed it, (yes, Kirk ran). By the end Eleen was regent for the new Tyr and she would have had the authority to suspend the sentence. (We don’t know if that is what happened since it never appears on screen, but it is a logical deduction) It can also be argued that Kirk was acting because the Klingon was influencing the new Tyr, so Kirk reasoned local law could not apply since the events would not have happened if the Klingon had not encouraged and supported Maab to rise against Akaar.
I’m not sure I understand why Icheb’s parents sent him back out as Borg killer again. They initially sent him out to kill (all?) the Borg. They get him back, learn that he’d been assimilated by the Borg and rescued by Voyager, but there’s still Borg. So it obviously didn’t work as they intended, or even if it worked at all (since Voyager didn’t share their findings about the disabled Borg ship, at least not on-screen). So they send Icheb out again to… not kill all the Borg again? Even if they knew they were successful in killing one Borg ship, is it worth anything to kill just one more Borg ship? Seriously, keep your kid alive and home and start working on a Plan B.
Oh, and Crowley!
Looks like my first comment was removed, I’m guessing because I double posted (I bought a cheap mouse 8 months ago and now it’s started double-clicking every time). Basically my gist was I don’t understand why Icheb’s parents sent him out again as a Borg killer since it obviously didn’t kill all the Borg the last time they tried it. So if they manage to take out another Borg ship again, is it worth sacrificing your son for? I realize they bred him to kill Borg ships, but since it didn’t really work, maybe keep him home and alive, and try to come up with a Plan B.
@58: Maybe even taking out one Borg ship, which is plenty destructive on its own, is worth the sacrifice of their son, which was what he was bred for anyway.
Is it still canon that Odo’s people send (some of?) their offspring out into space at random to collect information about who’s out there… without knowing that that’s why they are out there alone? Aliens are alien, culturally and biologically.
Starfleet have had some success against the Borg with weapons which alter their behaviour while being used. As a biological weapon… I think one reason why the AIDS virus was and is such a challenge to both human biology and human biological science is its rapid mutation. Icheb’s built-in biological weapon could be similarly flexible.
I think I like this episode better than the main review, there are some strong performances in it, I particularly think the scene between Janeway and Seven where Janeway asks “who’s parents are we taking about” is amongst the best in the entire series run.
@61,
Yeah, the conversation in Astrometrics between Janeway and Seven is definitely a favorite moment of mine from Season 6.
I loved this episode and would have given it an 8 or 9. I disagree with you, krad; I think the episode is very touching emotionally. You feel happy for Icheb at first that he is finally being reunited with his parents after being abducted and assimilated years prior. But his parents ultimately do not have his best interests at heart and want to use him as a weapon rather than love and accept him for who he is.
It is a stark reminder that not all parents are good to their kids, even if they put up a front of kindness and compassion to everyone.
I felt sad for Icheb at the end of the episode that he would probably never be able to see his parents again.
There is a dynamic in many families that I witness in which people feel obligated to spend time with relatives and have a relationship even though they make them miserable. But I always say it is not the length of a relationship that matters, or whether you are related; it is the quality of the relationship that is truly important.
I have been estranged from a few family members for over 7 years because I do not feel they respect me and I feel happier without them in my life.
What I admire about the first half of the episode is that you really feel for both 7 and the parents. While the plot twist may be a little convenient, or a lot, it had a touch of mythology to it: the sacrificial child. And I did like that the pathogen that killed the cube was at least explained. In a series that’s continuity challenged, it’s good to have some connective tissue.
I guess I’m willing to forgive a lot because of the performances and the overall themes of choice and control.