The Delta Flyer crew are attacked and captured by a Borg ship crewed by children, who are determined to acquire Voyager's deflector dish to send a signal to the Collective.
There are more negatives than positives about this episode, which is something of a shame. At the start the Borg children are quite creepy and threatening, especially the little girl whose manner is particularly cool and calculating. Their refusal to accept help when they have the ability to take what they want is the closest to seeing the Borg back to normal than we've got recently.
The problem is that the Borg's actions ahve become increasingly fractured in the years since their creation. Hugh managed to acquire individuality when separated from the Collective, as did Picard manage to reclaim his. Nowadays, it seems far easier for the Borg to acquire their individuality once more under the right circumstances. In the beginning, it appears that the Borg are acting as a Collective, but once they start referring to themselves as I, it becomes obvious that that isn't the case. As a result, the kids are, as Tuvok puts it, erratic and unpredictable, capable of doing anything with the full might of a Borg cube, if only they can work out how to run it.
It never all quite comes off. Once you realize the kids are not real threat, the tension evaporates and it's just a matter of time before Seven obtains their trust and takes them on board Voyager, now specially converted with a cargo bay to hold several ex-Borg in their regeneration chambers. Somehow this seems to be asking for trouble.
There are some great special effects in this episode, but just as things are getting interesting, it keeps wimping out. Kim's partial assimilation is subjected to the patented reset button technique (if only Picard had been 'cured' so easily), and both Voyager and the Delta Flyer are once again a good match for a Borg cube, something the Enterprise had big trouble with not that much earlier. Okay, so the children weren't as competent operators, but the cubes should still be almost inpenetrable. There are some great sets and amazing special effects in evidence, but even though the child actors are pretty good in general, there are too many aspects that don't follow what we already know of the Borg to make it work.
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