Aliens experiment on the Voyager crew.
A lot of this felt an awful lot like things that we’ve seen before. Most recently [Displaced](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2012/08/trekathon-474-displaced-voy/). The ‘inscrutable aliens do stuff to the crew’ hasn’t generally been interesting before. And we spend a lot of time with Janeway being cranky, people becoming sick mysteriously, and then the Doctor and Seven running around to fix things.
But two bits rescued the episode at the end. First, we have the aliens. If this was TNG, we would have sorted things out by diplomacy – it was all just a misunderstanding. But instead we get aliens who are arrogantly sure of the rightness of their own actions. The second part is the resolution, where Janeway essentially plays chicken with the aliens to get them off the ship. It feels consistent with her character, and highlights the difference to the other captains – Kirk would have fought, Picard would have talked, and I think Sisko would have found a loophole.
492 down, 245 to go.