'Blink of an Eye'

Stardate: Unkown
Written By: Michael Taylor
Directed By:Gabrielle Beaumont
Rating: **** (out of 5)

"Blink of an Eye" is a fascinating Voyager episode that manages to examine a culture in its entirety while tackling the religious and cultural changes from Voyager's tampering.

The science that brings this occurrence to happen is something you are meant to just accept. It makes little sense, the point is that for every seconds that passes on Voyager, a day goes by on the planet, and I'm assuming by the inhabitants day.

A medieval character on the planet sees this 'new star' in the night sky and when he puts an offering to his gods on a sacred table, the ground shakes, making this man believe the Gods are trying to say something.

The ground shaking is actually caused by Voyager disruption into their atmospheric phenomenon which makes such an odd planet. What escapes me however is how the planet, in the beginning looks like a Uranus with a hole in the middle, but later on it looks like a normal planet? And it also escapes me as to why the night sky on this planet looks so normal despite the 'atmosphere.'

Anyway, later on we are in more Roman like times and we see that the planet has evolved and the characters try to communicate with the thing in orbit, trying to see if it will stop shaking their planet. And then we see more current times, our present times, where the inhabitants are trying to communicate with the ship by radio, and as the episode progresses we see even more advances in their technology and beliefs. This is fascinating as it is, but even more fascinating by how Voyager's appearance has changed their beliefs and society.

All of their myths, legends, toys, productions; everything revolves around the Sky Ship in orbit. Their whole Space Program is fueled by the unrelenting curiosity as to what the ship in orbit is, and why it's there and how it got there. Similar to how the Space Race was fueled by the Moon here on Earth.

Voyager watches with intrigue as the planet continues to evolve, eventually sending people up to Voyager, and inside. Voyager doesn't detect them until they have adjusted to their time frame. The astronaut that survives is intrigued with the whole deal. He can't believe his first dream has come true.

The next plot development doesn't make sense to me but it happens. The surface starts shooting at Voyager with weapons that are continuously getting stronger. Why in the Sky Ship did they start shooting on one of the most pivotal things for them, something that has intrigued them and pushed them to the limits of technology? The Sky Ship is one of their most important religious beliefs, why shoot it down? It's as stupid as us shooting down the moon. Why would we want to do that?

Anyway, the astronaut goes down to the surface and after a time they have decided to let Voyager go. The astronaut has missed centuries of his people past, his people didn't even believe it was him, but he sorts things out and as an old man he sees the ship go.

Interesting also is how at the beginning this was a Prime Directive issue. But they have gone past Voyager technology and probably have created their own directive for aliens without Quasi Repricol Drive that travels at a million times the speed of light! Ironic, isn't it?

This could've been the Tele-film that was promised this year. We could've seen the Doc on the surface, from which he stays three years and has a child, we could've seen how the Astronaut convinced his people to do what's right . . . it would've be great.

But what we have here is an episode with a fantastic plot, good acting from everyone, but the Early settlers of the planet where poorly acted, and some nice SFX. Unfortunately, given everything this episode crams in, it's got some annoying plot holes that hold the episode back a little.

It was missing just a few important elements, but it was a pleasing episode of Voyager anyway.