Star Trek: Voyager — 1x09 — Emanations

Aired 1995-03-13

SpaceOpera.com rating:1

Average reader rating:4.29

Synopsis

Kim is held by an alien race.

Remarkable scenes

Kim carefully handling his discussions with the aliens.

Review

An episode which deals with an alien race's religion. The religious issues are largely handled well, but personally I wish there could have been more discussion of this new element they discovered. Much of the episode is scientific nonsense once the opening scenes are out of the way. The episode starts off giving you the impression that they will explore the rings around a planet, discover a new element, and being creating new technology from it. But it quickly deteriorates into a giant cross cultural religious debate. In the end, this new elemental discovery is largely forgotten; we never hear about it again. To me, this episode is a large missed opportunity and a severe waste of time. Only Harry Kim's performance redeems the episode, as he really does do a good job.

3 reader comments

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that your "factoid" solves your "problems." Perhaps the presence of one of these newly discovered elements explains the extra gravity on the asteroid.
by Fenix | 03/25/2011 at 7:04 pm

Problems:
1) As mentioned, "the asteroids support a class M atmosphere" ?!
2)Ok, pretty soon we learn that Ptera was "dying of a lesion to her mid-brain…but she didn't die until the [pod] was activated." Then how come she was diagnosed as having died from a tumor by the Voyager medical crew? No sense.
And while we're on the subject of Ptera dying, how is it that they were able to revive her "minutes after she died" the first time, but not mere seconds after she died the second time, due to not fully unexplained circumstances (it's assumed to be some kind of transporter problem?).
3) Why does it take more than half the episode to fully discuss the theoretical difference between corporeal death/transition and other possible interpretations? This is just frustrating. It's resolved eventually, but it should've really been addressed right away.
4)How does Starfleet academy graduate Ensign Kim, who had his type 2 phaser with him (you can clearly see it holstered while on the asteroid), become completely helpless and at the mercy of the alien doctors? WTF? If he was disarmed, it would've made some sense to show this, but I suspect they didn't show it because it doesn't make sense. Here's the first person ever to come back from "the afterlife," a creature of a race you've never seen, wearing clothing and carrying technology you know nothing about, essentially some kind of angel, or prophet, or profoundly paranormal being, in any case, and the first thing you do is somehow disarm him (this without even knowing what's a weapon and what isn't) ? No sense.
This is the first voyager episode, chronologically speaking, that pretty much just stinks.
by Annoyed | 08/10/2011 at 9:37 pm

The other problem on glaring display in this episode is Voyager’s amazing ability to jump huge distances in the blink of an eye.
In this case, they travel 0.6 light years in mere moments. Janeway doesn’t even have time to stand up!
by Mitchell O | 01/01/2023 at 11:47 pm