'Retrospect'

Stardate: 51679.4
Written By: Andrew Shepard and Mark Gaberman
Directed By: Jesus Salvador Trevino
Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5)

�Retrospect� is a Voyager episode with a great story; a Seven episode disguised as a Doc episode, but in typical fashion it has a lot of un-answered questions and logic problems. 

It seems logical that someone would try to extract nanoprobes for use as weapons, it�s the perfect kind of weapon that could make its seller rich.  And Seven coming along would be the perfect opportunity for such a thing to happen.  Kovin seemed like the perfect person to fashion such a plan and would certainly benefit from it; he also had the capability. 

Seven believes Kovin did in fact take nanoprobes from her, using a technique to revive repressed memories with the Doc�s help.  Everyone seems confident that Seven is right, her apprehension with Kovin and her behavior in Sickbay proves she is under stress.

There is also sufficient evidence to convict Kovin.  But with all this evidence he is innocent as you discover near the end, but in fright of losing his life as a trader he commits suicide.  And naturally Seven learns a lesson, along with the Doc, believe whatever you want, but keep your mind open to other possibilities.

But here are the problems: First Janeway jumps into the investigation quickly and believes Seven�s right.  Wouldn�t more investigation of the memories have been better?  Wouldn�t a mind meld with Tuvok help uncover more memories?  Or maybe one of Chakotay�s famous Spirit Guide tours?

I wonder if Janeway considered that Seven could be trying to get back at her from the events in �Prey� which are touched on here?

And what did in fact create these feeling in Seven for Kovin, and what made her feel uneasy about the Sickbay, which later on seems no problem for her at all?  This is a major part of the plot that is dropped very quickly.

And Kovin must�ve been running for other reasons because he had a ship and his transporter ready and waiting to get out.  And to help proceedings with Kovin a mind-meld could�ve been used to see if he�s telling the truth.

I found it unfair that the Doctor should tell Seven that it�s okay to feel hatred and that she�ll feel much better when justice is done.  And if that�s bad, later he suddenly changes his mind and defects, so to speak, to Janeway�s side.

And finally, the last one, that hasn�t got anything to do with this story but the coded Starfleet transmission.  Why did Starfleet make the message so coded?  Is that really necessary?

But despite these errors the moral shines through making you forget about the bulk of the errors.  And the Doc�s decision to delete his added subroutines is understandable, but not necessary.  The Doc should�ve learnt by now that running away from his feeling, and subroutines, isn�t the way to go and I was glad to see Janeway doesn�t allow him to go ahead.

I know I�ve cribbed a lot, but with a good meaningful story, and some beautiful CGI (are they using a new program or something, the CGI was of abnormally high standard), we get quite a solid episode of Voyager.