'Scorpion II'

Stardate: Unknown
Written By: Brannon Braga and Joe Menonsky
Directed By: Winrich Kolbe
Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5)

Continuing with Voyager tractored by a Borg cube, the weapons to defeat Species 8472 start being designed.  Janeway and Tuvok are aboard the cube and as they begin talks the Borg wish to temporarily assimilate them to make communication easier.  Naturally Janeway and Tuvok resist and the Borg are willing to choose a representative for the Borg with which Janeway and Tuvok can communicate with.

This Borg, who becomes Voyagers newest crewmember, is called Seven of Nine.  A Human.  Naturally, you must suspend belief for a moment.  How is it possible for a Human drone to be here, all the way in the Alpha Quadrant (I know we find out later, but this was my initial reaction)?  Oh, well, Jeri Ryan plays the part pretty well, especially with all the Borg makeup.

Soon a single 8472 ship attacks the duo of ships and the Borg Cube rams it, in a pretty nifty action scene.  Janeway is critically injured when a beam from the 8472 ship causes an over-load in the Borg cube, before it kamikazes, and disrupts her neural pathways or something like that.  The Borg beam some drones, Tuvok and the injured Janeway to Voyager.

While Janeway�s still conscious there is a nice scene where the injured Janeway tells Chakotay he�s in command and that he must keep the alliance and get the crew home, and also that they (the crew) �will threaten you, but they need you� which I found rather amusing.

The first thing Chakotay does is call a staff meeting telling the crew of his decision; to break the alliance with the Borg, disobeying the captains order.  Chakotay doesn�t trust the Borg and never did, but he is torn by his loyalty to Janeway.  He believes he is doing what�s right for the crew.  He says to drop the Borg off at the nearest habitable planet and give them the Nano-probe technology.

After a really cool SFX scene where they show Borg cubes being slaughtered by 8472 ships the Borg aboard Voyager decide to take over the ship.  Seven of Nine accesses Deflector control.  When Chakotay realizes what�s happened he threatens too decompresserize the Cargo Bay.  I didn�t think Chakotay would, but the next thing you see is all these drones flying out the airlock into space.  Seven of Nine is the only drone to survive and manages to open a singularity into another dimension or plane of existence, the 8472�s home.

Fluidic space is the name of this place and it�s filled with matter.  Seven says that the 8472�s will soon attack and Chakotay concludes that they started the war, and Seven confirms.

Much to Chakotays dismay, Janeway is revived and is naturally very angry with Chakotay.  They argue again, and it�s still hard to tell who�s right, and again, Janeway wins the argument because she�s in command.  But this time they sort out their differences to work together.

Janeway tells Seven that Chakotay is in the Brig (but you find out he isn�t really) and decides to fight Species 8472 in their space.  And within no more than a few hours all sorts of Borg gizmos are attached to Voyagers hull. 

This is all ridiculous.  First of all it would take a good day�s work, at least to make and attach all this technology, secondly, where did all the Borg technology come from?  I didn�t seem that much was brought over from the Cube.  This all a bit of a muddle, but sure enough, virtually as soon as the technology is up and running, Species 8472 ships appear.

The battle is quite short and ends up being fought back in the Delta Quadrant where the 8472 ships decide to back down.

Their trouble aren�t yet over though, Seven than goes on to attempt to assimilate Voyager, I guess some species never learn.  But Janeway has everything under control, Chakotay is actually hooked up to a Borg alcove and using his Borg device from �Unity� he speaks to Seven of Nine trying to get her to back-down.

When that doesn�t work, B�Elanna just send an energy beam into the link and Seven is incapacitated.

Naturally everything is now sorted out and Janeway and Chakotay have apologized etc.  Janeway also decides to keep Seven on board Voyager.

�Scorpion II� was not an awful conclusion to �Scorpion� and it had some great plot developments, like the Borg starting the war.  While the acting was pretty good, SFX was naturally excellent, and the idea interesting, the plot itself is too rushed to make full sense of everything happening.  �Scorpion II� is simply good, not bad, not fantastic, just good.