Written By: Brannon Braga and Joe Menonsky
Directed By: David Livingston
Rating: *** (out of 5)
Cringe worthy are the Captain Proton scenes, but they are fun nonetheless. I loved how Dr. Choatica expected a robot to come out and the women screams and . . . the Doc comes out! And not in Black and White as the rest of the program is.
I liked how without �a couple of Borg Cubes� the crew�s bored. The Briefing scene was amusing, absolutely nothing to do, nothing to report, nothing to say . . . who are these people? Q?
A lot of the Dark exterior shots of Voyager are creepy. Especially when they loose power and the entire ship goes dark.
Janeway�s guilt doesn�t seem realistic to me. After four year in the Delta Quadrant she finally decides to feel the guilt of stranding the crew. It doesn�t seem very professional for her to dwell on events she can�t change - well, this is Star Trek and anything�s possible, but still. Anyway, she wouldn�t have wanted to be responsible for killing the Ocampa would she? Than again, the amount of interference they have caused in the Delta Quadrant, maybe it would�ve been more worthwhile to use the Caretakers array to get back?
Janeway�s guilt is justified, but they left it too late for the guilt to arise. We could�ve seen a mini-arc for Janeway�s guilt back at the end of Season 2 and it would be much more realistic. And even here, the guilt would�ve been much more realistic if the writers hadn�t have forgotten about it half way through the episode.
The main story is not bad. Aliens indigenous to the Dark Patch, or void as the crew charmingly call it, are being killed. Aliens who produce huge amount of waste, the Malon, are dumping it into this void, and the captain of the dumping ship is proud because he�s the only one who knows about the Void and the wormhole that leads in and out of it. Naturally Voyager is interested in a wormhole which can only be destroyed from the end they are at.
And naturally Voyager gets the best of both worlds being able to save the aliens, get the baddies, and get closer to home. All in a days work! The story isn�t bad, but there isn�t much more to it than what I�ve told you. The major complication, that the Malon are killing the Night Aliens, is given away early in the episode meaning Voyager, or rather Janeway, doesn�t look bad.
This is where �Night� fails. The episodes premise isn�t all that complicated. The Malon are easily defeated, there are minor risks involved in the whole affair, and everything is fine and dandy by the end.
But there is an issue that manages to help �Night� along, and that�s Janeway and the crews little �mutiny.� Tuvok knows Janeway better than anyone and when Chakotay asks him for advice on Janeway, Tuvok can easily predict that Janeway will try to make up for what she�s done, sacrificing herself in some way.
The �mutiny� is amusing because Janeway strides onto the Bridge as macho as she can be and the crew refuse to obey her orders, to prepare a shuttle so that she can destroy the wormhole and Voyager get through, even Seven disobeys!
The episode manages to be enjoyable with a simple story, a little bit of character work, great SFX and a nice score, especially when Voyager exits The Void, the elements all come together for a very grand scene.
�Night� doesn�t really add anything to the long term saga, the story is very simple and the Malon aren�t a huge threat, it�s nothing groundbreaking but it�s nice to watch anyway.