Star Trek: Voyager — 5x02 — Drone

Aired 1998-10-21

SpaceOpera.com rating:5

Average reader rating:6.21

Synopsis

A Borg drone is born on Voyager.

Remarkable scenes

The doctor: "Early bird gets the gagh!"
The doctor: "I'm a doctor, not a peeping Tom!" Count 25 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
Mulchaey discovering the Borgified science lab.
Torres: "How many Borg hitchhikers are we gonna pick up on this trip? Maybe this is the Collective's new strategy. They don't assimilate anymore. They just show up and look helpless."
One: "Joke. A verbal comment or gesture, designed to provoke laughter." The doctor: "I see you've got your mother's sense of humor."
Janeway and Seven showing One what the Borg are all about.
One boarding the Borg ship.
One sacrificing himself.

Review

A 29th century Borg inspired by the technology of the mobile emitter is an interesting idea; in a way the episode makes fun of Voy: Future's End for allowing a piece of 29th century technology to exist in the 24th century in the first place, which is something that rather annoyed me about Voy: Future's End's ending. I like a mobile doctor, but I dislike technology out of time. That said, I'm unsure how sacrificing One could possibly end the Borg problem. The raw material (the mobile emitter) still exists! Why would the Borg stop looking for the emitter technology after One died? Beyond this, the episode is mostly a Seven of Nine further explores her emotions rehash. While the episode is original and entertaining, I hesitate to give it a higher rating due to the logical and technical problems.

3 reader comments

"Why would the Borg stop looking for the emitter technology after One died?"
You assume the Borg collective was even able to assess the presence of the 29th century technology- also, for all we know, One could have sent false signals to the rest of the collective misreporting the whole series of events as a mishap, covering his tracks.
I know it probably wasn't written like this, and the mobile emitter was just a way to give the doctor more possibilities on the show, but I think in hindsight there's a good way to excuse bringing future technology into the show despite how many sci-fi rules it breaks. Voyager was integral in undermining the Borg… the point of origin for the series of events in Future's End could have been making sure Voyager secured the technology necessary to either aid in defeating the Borg or change history by making the Voyager mission successful. What set that whole thing into motion anyways wasn't really clear, but you could totally write up a big Q conspiracy around it.
by szycag | 09/21/2008 at 2:38 pm

What made me jump when seeing this episode were Seven's comment: "I don't understand. The Borg assimilate, they do not reproduce in this fshion."
So call me a nitpicker on details or say that I am wrong, but I clearly remember seeing a Borg baby already in TNG.
The Borg is very good at assmiliating technology as a collective, granted, but I have a hard time beliving the Borg nanoprobes come with both intelligence and engineering skills, but that incredible and unbelievable idea is presented here or how else would they know how to utilize the 29 century technology from the mobile emitter?
Also I find it weird that they find it so strange that the early (here 'proto') planetary nebula is expanding fast.
Else from that I like some details of this episode, such as the mobile emitter sprouting nanotech roots in all directions.
And the absurd idea that Torres would have a viewscreen in the shower. So overall I give this episode one 8.
by TheAnt | 10/12/2013 at 8:57 pm

Seems like I forgot until my current rewatch that this is one of maybe five or six episodes of Star Trek that bring me to tears. In that and other respects, it's similar to TNG's "The Offspring," but to me it exceeds even that episode's emotional impact because One made a conscious decision to sacrifice himself to save his new "collective" (how very Spock-like of him). J. Paul Boehmer is one of Voyager's best single-ep guest stars and blows it out of the water with his range, from the cold and emotionless drone that emerges from the transporter accident to the cunning individual who makes the decision to resist the Borg.
Jeri Ryan is at her absolute best in the series here, and episodes like this justify Seven of Nine's presence on the show. I think when she says that One is "hurting her" at the very end is usually when I lose it. Then the ep closes with the symmetry of her looking in a mirror again, this time with a genuine human emotion on her face instead of the phony one she was trying to conjure in the teaser.
This is one of those episodes where I diverge from some of the Star Trek fan community (all respect) in that I don't really care about scientific inconsistencies or impossibilities. The premise is intended to drive the characters and emotion, and boy howdy does it do it in "Drone."
Top 5 Voyager ep for me. Easily.
by RodimusBen | 11/22/2020 at 1:48 pm