Discovering that three crewmembers have never been on an away mission, Janeway takes them under her wing and attempts to bring them more into the crew.
At first glance this episode has similarities to the Next Generation episode Lower Decks, featuring as it does some of the lesser crew on Voyager. It's quite fun to see how menial some of these jobs are, one of which seems to be to press buttons every time a crewman is asked to. Played more for fun, this episode could have worked much better; one of the crew's estimates of an impact, followed by the words 'or thereabouts' is a great comedy moment, and the hypochondriac crewman could also have been put to better use. However, that's not to say this is a particularly bad episode. In fact, in comparison to most of this season, it's among the best.
The guest cast are very good at portraying the 'new' crew, easily accessible and with well-drawn characters. However, it's the plot that once again lets the side down. It's become oh so easy to find some spatial anomaly, and this is no exception. It's the way it's handled that drags the episode down. The biggest problem is that it all ends too soon and simply. Janeway's way out works, an alien is killed, first contact isn't established, but no-one seems to care. They're just glad to have escaped. They could have at least tried to apologize, but they learn nothing about this species at all, despite constant mentions of how they're explorers.
It seems a little unlikely that Janeway can find one mission that will use the expertise of three disparate personnel, and she also takes a lot more crap from them than she would from Tom Paris. I understand she's trying to give them a chance, but there's only so far she should go in her attempts to be a shepherd leading her sheep. There are some good moments, but the whole episode totally misjudges what we want to see as an audience: we want to know about the aliens, not how easily the Delta Flyer can run away. That's just annoying. It'd also be nice to see some interaction between the command staff and their crewmates, but we just get Paris being rather stand-offish, a fine trait coming from him. This episode is worth another try, if only because the 'new' crew are far more interesting characters than most of the main cast...
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