Written By: Ronald Wilkerson
Directed By: Terry Windell
Rating: *** (out of 5)
Don�t get me wrong. I quite like the idea of aliens who procreate by taking the dead of other races and reanimating them. It would�ve been nice to find out more about Kobali culture, like why can�t they procreate naturally? Did they ever procreate naturally? It would�ve been good to have the Kobali as more of a species than a plot device, especially seeing as many of the Kobali�s characteristics are displayed through Lindsay Ballard. We get enough to understand what�s happening, of course. But not enough to really make us understand on the emotional level.
Lindsay Ballard is a great character. I really liked her attitude, and she was cute! However the little problem that we�ve never seen her before makes this even less emotional. If we had seen Lindsay in Season 4 (as the episode mentions Hirogen we can tell which season) and she dies and we know Harry is close to her, which is enough for a really good story of its own anyway, than this would�ve succeeded more. And throughout the whole episode I was thinking, �why couldn�t Ensign Jetal (from �Latent Image�) have been brought back?�
Garret Wang shows us one of his better performances and actually manages to help save the episode from total doom. Not that the episode is a total clunker but it naturally helps to have good performances.
Because the episode doesn�t manage to make you really care about what�s happening there is enough of a story here for a good distraction. We get the aliens of week with their big guns firing at Voyager, we get some stray drama and some touching moments but that�s it.
I enjoyed how Lindsay�s list doesn�t work out how she wants it which is a nice touch adding in some of the absent emotions and making Lindsay�s final decision more realistic. The dinner between Lindsay and Janeway was a very good scene. But the issue of her death and why she was chosen for the mission which killed her was simply �there� and not an issue that the writers expanded on at all which is a pity.
I didn�t like how the Doc could easily transform Lindsay from alien to human. Surely it would take more effort to change the DNA of someone!! It would�ve been more realistic from a science point of view and a drama point of view to have her stay alien, all the face-changing thing did was too add cool looking SFX.
What �Ashes to Ashes� serves as is a good example of one of Voyager�s major flaws. The minor characters on Voyager, which never change, unlike on the Enterprise and DS9, should be more important. We should know how the events on Voyager make the crew react. We need more than just Naomi Wildman. It�s too late to change, but this episode is a good example of why we should see more of the minor crew.
So �Ashes to Ashes� manages tell a convincing enough story with the limits Voyager has presented with itself. In that case its quite good, otherwise, it�s fairly forgettable and without any convincing emotion that such a premise should have.