Written By: Jeri Taylor
Directed By: Nancy Malone
Rating: **** (out of 5)
I�m glad �Coda� didn�t following the horrid �Persistence of Vision� from Season 2 by having a great setup but a laughable conclusion. �Coda� continues on a high right through and hardly slows down. What I guess is that the beginning of �Coda� is what actually happens, however did the Vidiians shoot down the shuttle at all? We are never told exactly what in the beginning is real and what isn�t.
The story is simply as Janeway goes back and forth to the shuttle, the planets surface and Voyager and trying to makes sense of why she keeps reliving events and why the Doc decides to kill Janeway after he believes she has contracted the Viddian�s devastating disease, the Phage. After we finish with this section we get Janeway outside her body and watching her funeral and watching her crew trying to find her presence; which I�m glad was a dream because that is an extremely stupid thing for Starfleet officers to do.
�Coda� starts heading somewhere once Janeway�s father appears and tells Janeway that she must make the transition to ever lasting peace once she is satisfied the she has died. Janeway refuses to believe she is dead and refuses to give in and make the transition. Once Janeway�s father pushes the issue and she starts seeing what is really happening from her perspective and not her mind, Admiral Janeway�s true intentions are revealed. He is apparently an alien trying to take Janeway to her final destination - heaven and is trying to help.
In the last few minutes Janeway reflects on the events. The problem is that Janeway actually believes it was an alien, however it is just as possible that her mind created the entire thing and it was a kind of coincidence that there was an alien in her cerebral cortex. If �Coda� is trying to get the audience to think about whether death is alien controlled than this was the wrong way to do it, all this did was say more about Janeway as a character then as an insight to death.
As a Janeway episode, �Coda� works well, however disregards the events from �Sacred Ground� where Janeway starts to believe science isn�t always the answer. It�s a pity that this wasn�t incorporated because it might�ve made a good difference. What �Coda� says about Janeway is that even in death, she doesn�t accept what she sees without any direct evidence.
Janeway�s imaginary funeral was very touching, especially when Harry had his turn and Janeway was seen crying. It looses its punch because it wasn�t real though. The reason is that everything was created from her mind, or at least that�s how I�m interpreting the events, and so she was projecting what her mind felt was how people regarded her, not what they actually thought.
Admiral Janeway was portrayed nicely by Len Cariou, however I never got the feeling that these two where father and daughter. There was no real closeness to them that would�ve added even more depth, however Janeway saying �Daddy� was close. Acting in general was quite good, however Kate Mulgrew�s initially reaction to Admiral Janeway didn�t help with adding realism to the Janeway-Admiral Janeway relationship.
�Coda� was still a strong episode which I enjoyed a great deal. It was another very good Janeway episode.