Review

Mixed feelings about this one. On one hand it's got great special effects, a compelling story (mostly), and very real consequences. On the other hand the episode utterly fails to live up to its premise. The story it decides to tell isn't half bad, but the story they could have told with it could have been much better. And the flaws along the way ruin some of its greatness. Specifically, the idea of rescuing Borg children from the maturation chambers is a good one, but the idea of a Borg ship with all the drones excepting the children dead was a bad one. It's also inconsistent with Borg behavior. It's been said that the Borg usually return to salvage their technology. At the very least, they should have destroyed the cube. In a better version of this episode, Voyager could have encountered a damaged Borg ship and gone hunting for transwarp coils again (why didn't they do that by the way?) and they could have accidentally destroyed the power source to the maturation chambers. So now Voyager is faced with rescuing the dying children or completing their heist. They choose to save the children. Same outcome, better story. With a full compliment of Borg aboard, a much more exciting one too. In short, this was a fair episode, great consequences, decent ride, below average plot. Could have been improved upon easily.