Star Trek: Voyager — 6x19 — Child's Play

Aired 2000-03-08

SpaceOpera.com rating:5

Average reader rating:6.27

Synopsis

Icheb returns to his family.

Remarkable scenes

Janeway: "Why potatoes?" Seven of Nine: "Their first idea was to clone Naomi. But I suggested they start with something smaller."
Seven accosting Icheb's parents.
Seven debating her objections to returning Icheb to his parents with Janeway.
Seven discovering holes in Leucon's story.
Icheb's parents' true motives being revealed.
Voyager rescuing Icheb.

Review

A good connection with Voy: Collective, giving us the story of Icheb. Now we know where that pathogen came from. Unfortunately much of the plot concerns Icheb returning home unwillingly, something we've seen before in TNG: Suddenly Human and with Seven of Nine in a way. The revelation explaining Icheb's parents' true motives comes far too late and is resolved far too easily. This has the nice side effect of catching the viewer totally off guard, but I would have rather had a deeper story than a surprising one. Overall the episode is fairly decent though.

3 reader comments

According to Memory-Alpha.org, Leucon is played by Mark A. Sheppard, while Morn is played Mark Allen Shepherd. Despite the similarity in their names, they're actually different actors. So far for the Morn Appearance…
by tjrt | 02/10/2010 at 12:41 pm

I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. At first I felt like the stakes were too low: here was a brand new character that we, the audience, haven't known long enough to care about, suddenly faced with the decision to leave the ship. YAWN. Who cares?
But the episode actually shaped up nicely, and caused me to care about Icheb when I didn't before, which I suppose was the whole point of the episode. Captain Janeway was again faced with a difficult moral decision (a situation she finds herself in frequently, to the show's credit) and made the call to put the ship in danger to rescue Icheb. Perhaps not the decision I would have made in the same situation (needs of the many, Prime Directive, etc.), but complicated and ultimately defensible decision nonetheless.
by Dstyle | 07/27/2015 at 2:49 pm

this episode surprised me. these days i tend to leave voyager on and sort of half-watch it; i really had expected it to end when icheb beams back down to the planet, but when it kept going & getting more sinister i was suddenly gripped by it (so was my partner, who normally doesn't like such things, that probably helped).
basically i like any conceivable continuity in Voyager, so that definitely biased me towards the episode. and i like that seven has a little bit more to her now than her (& the doctor's) usual data-like dilemma. hopefully they draw this out more.
by parkbench | 03/01/2016 at 7:37 am