When Captain Janeway decides to steal some Borg technology from a cube in the middle of a regeneration cycle, Seven of Nine must confront her past and face a future without Voyager.
Dark Frontier could have been so much more. Seven of Nine being recaptured by the Borg, Voyager taking on the cyborgs to steal their technology, the much-touted reappearance of the Borg Queen. As a special 90-minute telemovie, there could have been a lot more going on.
Okay, there are a lot of Borg wandering about, which looks impressively like the busy hive the Borg ships are meant to. Okay, the special effects of the massive Borg city are superb, unlike anything seen before on Star Trek. The problem is that it's all style and no substance. The atmosphere is there, but no-one put much thought into an involved and involving story, and there's only enough plot really for a 45 minute episode.
There is one effective surprise when the Borg Queen explains that it was the Borg's plan all along for Seven to become trapped on Voyager, but Janeway's chat with the Queen for Seven's freedom is remarkably hopeful of the Captain from her bargaining position deep in Borg space. The fact that the Delta Flyer manages to survive an attack by one of the Borg ships is pretty damn impressive too.
With the resources available, this should have been so much more, and much more like the trailers that built it up. The only useful function it really serves in an hour and a half is to get the Voyager 20 years closer to home. But it's not really worth the time.
***
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