Voyager finds a race with the power to send them halfway home.
For the first 15 minutes or so this felt like an unwelcome step back to the bad old days of TNG Season 1. Something about the staging and set design of the planet rubbed me badly the wrong way. Super-advanced aliens are hard to write, and generally a bit boring. There was something creepily decadent about the alien society here, but that gets no exploration.
But once this became a story about the crew, and the divisions within the ship, it became a lot more interesting. The idea of ‘what are you willing to pay to get home quicker’ is one worth exploring. Tuvok’s decision to help out was a bum note, though.
The one cop out was the ‘catastrophically incompatible’ nature of the technology. That’s it, really? Surely there was at least the potential for a bit more investigation.
360 down, 377 to go.