Review

A respectable episode with a decent premise but a poor execution. I was looking forward to watching Seven of Nine and the doctor maintain the ship as it passed through the nebula, but the writers unfortunately had to lean on the illusions crutch again to spice up what they perceived as a dull plot. With a little more effort, the premise would have been all the plot we needed instead of relying on cliches. That said, even the premise can be attacked somewhat. I find Voyager's "the only way out is through" mentality annoying. Space is incredibly vast. If there's no way around something, it must extend in every direction for hundreds, probably thousands of light years, and Voyager must be approaching it from its center. This happens routinely; alien territories, spacial anomalies, and Voyager always seems to clear it by the end of the episode. It gets old. Based on the diagrams shown in astrometrics, I don't see why Voyager couldn't have flown above or below the nebula; it was clearly longer than it was tall. This episode does, however, contribute to Seven of Nine's personality development. After this experience, she understands the need for companionship and doesn't consider it as trivial as she did at the beginning of the episode.