'Basics II'

Stardate: 50032.7
Written By: Michael Piller
Directed By: Winrich Kolbe
Rating: **** (out of 5)

Now that's more like it.� "Basics II," while setup quite obviously from 'Basics I,' still manages to be an excellent episode from start to finish. But not perfect.� It certainly starts exciting with Ensign Hogan being killed by a creature that we don't get to see until later.� But it certainly makes me want to see the rest!

I was soooooo surprised to see that Paris has survived and I couldn't believe that Paris contacted the Talaxians.� He's smart that Paris. Esepcially once the Gods (writers) are on his side! :-) But not as smart as we are led to believe.� He tells the Doc, through the Medical comm link, that he must cause a Phaser Coupling overload, but how is the Doc meant to do that believing he was by himself and go to Engineering?� Lucky Suder was secretly, without anyone else knowing, on board.� And it was never said Paris knew Suder was on board so those Gods, they must be crazy! ;-)

I liked seeing the crew rough it out like this, more so than in "Resolutions," becuase this is the entire crew!� There seemed to be about 100 people missing though.� I thought the crew compliment was more than this. Anyway, seeing Janeway cutting her hair to make a fire was certainly way outside her comfort zone, although I don't know if that would start a fire it showed us how willing the crew is to survive, no matter what the cost.

The Doc was excellent here,as always, he had a lot of good lines, especially the "Sticks and stones don't break my bones, so you can imagine how I fell about being called names!"� LOL!� I loved his lies too, never mess with the EMH!

But while the Doc was excellent, than I don't know what to say about Suder. Brad Dourif does such a brilliant job with Suder, it's so unfortunate that the character is killed off.� Suder dies in the perfect way, but his character should've been able to stay on even if it is a highlight of the episode.

The natives of the crews temporary home are the typical proto-human types shouting and screaming and fighting with each other.� But we find that it is their fear, and not their nature that takes on an aggressive form which is different for an action-like genre.� Near the end Chakotay saves one of the females from a rock surrounded by Lava and the crew wins the proto-humans friendship.

Probably the neatest scene of the episode was when the 'CGI Monster', which killed Ensign Hogan, is found sleeping where Chakotay and others are hiding from the proto-humans before their friendship.� This thing ends up waking up and chases the group out of the cave.� I just love the look of that thing!� It's not the best CGI ever, but it sure looks cool anyway, especially for a TV show.

I don't know about anyone else, but I never thought that the baby was Chakotay's.� I thought the entire time that it was Culluh's baby and Seska was lying in Part I, not that Seska herself had no idea!� Well, Voyager's best villain, and the best femlae villian since Sela, is killed at the end, Seska will be missed. I believe Seska's baby was going to be killed in the episode also, but they cut that bit out deeming it too violent, just a bit of trivia for you! And something I think would've been a good edition to the episode. I guess we might see this baby again. (The actualy baby, not Seska, although that would be great too!)

I loved Voyager theme being used when Voyager flew through the clouds and down onto the surface, very touching.� And this is the second time Janeway has been rescued from somewhere just as it's getting cozy.� I hope she still knows that her mission is to get back to Earth.

Well, after the main action and adventure is over, it's back on course for home.� And amazingly, it looks like all those Talaxian's fixed the ship for the Starfleet crew, otherwise how would they so easily be able to get into Warp and land and use transporters and everything else, how nice of them. (Is the sarcasm too strong?)

"Basics II" was better than the original.� It had a lot of action, it made more sense than 'Part I' did, but did have some flaws, this is still enjoyable, fun and reccomended to see!