Denara

Story: Lifesigns
Written By: Kenneth Biller
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Year: 1996

Voyager finds another victim of the phage, and the Doctor creates a holographic body and stores her brainwaves there (I guess). He then attempts to save her life before the synaptic patterns degrade and she is dead forever. But he falls in love with her. I’m not a fan of instant love stories, but this one just passes muster because Picardo is such a great actor and a joy to watch in this role. So I pretty much gave it a grade of “at least it’s not Chakotay”.
Two smaller stories also take place in this episode, one is sort of picking up where the Paris story that disappeared part way through “Dreadnought” left off. He is showing up late and not taking his job seriously. He tells Chakotay that he doesn’t like him or how he does his job, and when he is replaced on the bridge for NOT DOING HIS JOB he shoves Chakotay to the ground. I’d like to feel for Paris, but the guy is literally doing exactly what would get you taken off your post. We’ll see where this one takes us in future episodes I suppose.

There is also yet another scene in which the former Maquis guy sends info to the Kazon by explaining the plot of the episode (in this case Paris vs. Chakotay) and is promptly asked to sabotage Voyager. He refuses until he finally can talk to Seska, and this time we get a second scene where she finally does reply to him. She tells him to sabotage the ship, because she wants to take Voyager from Janeway, and wants to get away from the Kazon with her baby. So at least this story is going somewhere finally.

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