Star Trek: Voyager — 7x01 — Unimatrix Zero, Part II

Aired 2000-10-04

SpaceOpera.com rating:6

Average reader rating:5.28

Synopsis

The crew infiltrates Unimatrix Zero.

Remarkable scenes

Janeway and Torres deploying the virus.
Voyager getting pummeled thanks to the Borg having Tuvok's access codes.
The Borg Queen self destructing ships with drones she cannot hear.
Borg Queen: "Assimilation turns us all into friends. In fact, it brings us so close together we can hear each other's thoughts." Boy: "Is that fun?" Borg Queen: "Yes. It's fun."
The Borg Queen self destructing her long range tactical cube, trying to kill Janeway.

Review

The episode ends much as you'd expect it to. Janeway finds a way to use Unimatrix Zero to attack the Borg Collective. She also finds a way to get her and her crew unassimilated. The whole episode was much too routine. It lacked the danger that episodes like TNG: The Best of Both Worlds, Voy: Scorpion, or even Voy: Dark Frontier offered. The Borg resistance was a good idea, but isn't sufficiently elaborated. Overall, between its numerous flaws and lack of originality, this episode felt more like a routine action episode than the stunning season finale / premiere that it should have been. It was quite entertaining as a two part episode, but most disappointing as a season finale / premiere.

4 reader comments

Here are a few more problems:
A) Wtf is up with the queen's drones being able to go into Unimatrix Zero (and presumably retain their connected to the hive)? It doesn't really square, does it? Isn't that the whole point - that when you go there, you maintain your individuality? If the queen figured out a special means, or constructed a special piece of hardware, that might be understandable, but there was no mention of such a thing.
B) OK. Wtf is up with the queen's counter-plan to release her reprogrammed virus within Unimatrix Zero? If it's possible to release the counter-virus within Unimatrix Zero, why did Janeway and Tuvak and Voyager's pregnant chief engineer risk their necks (and then some)? Why didn't Seven just "take a nap" and release the original virus that way? If there was an explanation, it should've been shared with the audience.
C) Why did Janeway embark on this madness in the first place? This has got to be one of her craziest plans ever. To expose herself and two of Voyager's most critical senior officers (one of them with a baby on the way) to assimilation, was pretty much insane - experimental neural suppressant notwithstanding. Going Borg and coming back is no small matter, as we've been reminded over and over again (think: 3x17 Unity, with the ex-Borg who'd lost limbs and were otherwise horribly deformed; 6x2 Survival Instinct, with the hopelessly linked ex-Borg "Triad"; and any number of traumatic Seven of Nine episodes starting with 4x6 The Raven, in which she had a frightening relapse and started sprouting new Borg implants like they were acne, but including also 7x2 Imperfection, when her cortical implant failed and almost took her with it, and, in hindsight, 7x18 Human Error, when she encountered her Borg "fail-safe" device.) The point is, assimilation isn't something to fool around with! You don't just visit the Collective for a weekend and come right back. This should've been obvious to Janeway. It was an utterly insane tactical decision, even for her. It made for some interesting aesthetics, but not very thoughtful command. How the doc pieced them back together is beyond me.
by g@g | 01/31/2012 at 6:24 am

I just thought of another problem. The residents of Unimatrix Zero apparently have some Neo-like control over this Matrix-like pseudo-existence. This is hinted at when Seven is informed that she "doesn't have to look like that here," meaning she can change her appearance and get rid of her remaining Borg implants (which she does, and manifests some new threads also).
How this is done, and how far it extends, is simply not discussed, which presents plot problems later on. If they can change their appearance within Unimatrix Zero, if they have "supernatural" control over their environment, or perhaps only of their own forms, why were they such easy prey for the Queen's drones? Couldn't they have altered their appearance to, say, become twice as large, or turn into species 8472?
(Or into tigers or machine gun wielding, trenchcoat wearing kung fu masters?)
The Matrix-like dimension of the matter could've given the episode a bit more depth. If this was essentially a dreamworld, where were the lucid dreamers?
by g@g | 02/01/2012 at 3:34 am

One of g@g's thoughts above also occurred to me and really bothered me during this episode. I was bothered a lot by the fact that the Queen was purportedly able to release the counter-virus within Unimatrix Zero. Like g@g said, then why couldn't the initial virus be released that way?! I had trouble getting past that during the episode. I hadn't thought about the last point he made - that they could change their appearance, so why not make themselves "tigers or machine-gun wielding, trenchcoat-wearing kung fu masters"? :) Another good point!
by Abigail Chappell | 06/30/2013 at 12:01 am

Borg Queen: "There are 50,000 drones on that cube, but I can no longer hear 3 of them. <cube self destructs, image is replaced by Borg sphere> There are 2,000 drones on this sphere, but only one of them is silent to me. <sphere self destructs> Need I go on? Do you want me to stop?" Janeway: "No, by all means, please continue. You, ah, you don't really understand how war works, do you?"
Neither, apparently, does Janeway.
by Dstyle | 07/30/2015 at 4:48 pm