The Doctor and B’Elanna transport into a horror movie, while Ensign Kim is in a… different genre.
I’ve discussed the problem of the horror movie tone in Star Trek before. It’s pulled off here, but mainly by cheating. We know that the alien hologram is bad from almost the first moment we see him on screen. Horror is a combination of suspense and surprise – take both of those away, and all we get is a festival of shouting ‘behind you’ at the television.
The other half of the episode, with Kim and Seven working together, was better than I feared. Trek has never done that well with sex themes, but here it’s done on a fairly adult (if inept) basis, and that pulls it from the abyss of awful.
486 down, 251 to go. And two-thirds watched.