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Star Trek Voy - Season 4 - Episode 04

Star Trek Voy - 4x04 - Nemesis

Originally Aired: 1997-9-24

Synopsis:
Chakotay is caught in the middle of a war. [DVD]

My Rating - 2

Fan Rating Average - 3.23

Rate episode?

Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 63 6 8 18 16 17 10 15 6 6 6

Problems
None

Factoids
- This episode is not to be confused with the film Star Trek X: Nemesis.

Remarkable Scenes
- Tom's over enthusiasm for wanting to go rescue Chakotay.
- The revelation that Janeway and Chakotay are on opposite sides.
- Tuvok encountering Chakotay.
- Chakotay: "I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start."

My Review
There are nuggets of gold in this episode but you have to work hard to find them. Much of the basic premise is quite flawed, but there are nice things in the execution. I was especially fond of the alien slang. Unfortunately, the first entire 20 minutes of the episode is pointless fighting. We get a few decent scenes on Voyager concerning the plans to rescue Chakotay. I liked Tom's overly enthusiastic desire to rescue Chakotay. And I liked the fact that Janeway and Chakotay were siding with opposite sides. But again, the fighting took too much of the episode's time and served only to waste time. Additionally, the aliens Vori in this episode looked exactly like humans. Granted, we could justify this by saying there was a fair amount of illusionary tactics and mind control involved causing that, it still came off as kind of cheap.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Jawwad Riaz on 2010-09-21 at 8:36am:
    The only redeeming quality of the episode is the "beauty is the beast" idea ... but the rest of it a re-hash and mash up of so much earlier sci fi that the science fiction aspect of it (the mind control) is its weakest link.

    No explanation was given as to why a warring nation would go to so much difficulty just to recruit one person .. Not one of the worst of voyager .. but certainly the worst of the season so far.
  • From Wes on 2012-02-09 at 3:47pm:
    I do agree that while I watched the episode, I found the fighting at the beginning too long and quite boring. I wanted to see more of what was happening on Voyager and how Seven was interacting with the crew and helping in this situation. Then, by the end of the episode, you realize all the fighting is part of actually brainwashing you, the viewer.

    (Just a side thought. Seven's knowledge of all these alien races could really end the need to ask Neelix about anything except recipes.)

    I thought the overall idea of the episode was GREAT and something that usually happens to me in pretty good, mind bending movies. Wasn't it awesome how you were in the same boat as Chakotay by the end!? I totally felt the same thing as he did when looking at the ambassador. The point of the episode is a pretty good one and another great moral lesson from Star Trek-- it's so much easier to start hating than it is to stop hating.
  • From L on 2013-12-23 at 4:48am:
    A potentially powerful anti-war metaphor that was slightly spoiled by where it ended up.
    It would have been better if the alien's appearance was all in his mind and they were actually the same as the rebels, but apparently they really do look like that. I guess that allows for a 'don't judge by appearances' moral.

    The dialogue was fantastic and gave this episode more of a genuine science-fiction feel than is usual for Star Trek.
    If the speech was 'normal' I may have liked this less.

    Pretty decent as an 'issue' episode.
  • From thaibites on 2014-05-28 at 10:00pm:
    I thought this episode was pretty good. I knew all you soap opera lovers would hate it because all your "friends" and their relationships had limited screen time.
    I loved how we didn't see Voyager or any crew members other than Chakotay for the first HALF - that's awesome! That's very unusual and helps to break up the monotony. I'll admit that it does start off a bit slow, but once it gets rolling, things start to happen. The scene where Tuvok talks to Chakotay, and we see him through Chakotay's eyes was really cool and disturbing. Poor Chakotay was the victim of one huge skull-fuck!
  • From attractionmagnetical on 2015-03-20 at 1:40pm:
    I thought it was strange that Neelix had anything to say about this particular planet and its situation (the war, the factions, what any one thought of the other). Didn't we establish that he didn't have any knowledge of the area once they got to the Nekrit Expanse? Isn't that why he did all that dumb stuff with the drug deals in "Fair Trade"? This area is more than just "beyond the trade station" in that episode -- it's thousands and thousands of lightyears beyond; Kes pushed them beyond Borg space, 10 years closer to home. Why does Neelix have any insight here except, as Wes put it, about recipes?
  • From Dstyle on 2015-06-01 at 9:35am:
    attractionmagnetical beat me to the punch: why does Neelix know anything here? We're waaaay outside Neelix's area of knowledge. I can only assume this script was written for an earlier season and tabled until now, and that continuity error was not corrected.

    Also, is anyone else noticing how many shuttlecraft Voyager is losing? It's the third episode in a row where a shuttlecraft is destroyed. I really wish the show took these sort of things more seriously and that there were actually repercussions for losing shuttlecraft and firing photon torpedos and whatnot.

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