Story: Survival Instinct
Written By: Ronald D. Moore
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Year: 1999
Ronald D. Moore writes his first and only lone script for Voyager in this Borg-related script in which Seven is confronted by three ex-Borg who have left the Collective, but are still connected together as a trio. Several years prior the four had crashed on a planet while still full Borg, and felt their connection from the Hive mind slip, only Seven was reintegrated back into the Collective. She decides to help them separate from each other by using her memories in order to figure out how the link works and how it can be broken.
Despite Voyager having that air of suckiness about it, Moore knows how to write a script, and having bad-ass Borgy-flashbacks with a solid premise makes this a decent episode. Everything not about Seven is rather mundane or bad, but luckily the bulk of the episode revolves around the Borg storyline.
It is a shame Moore wasn’t able to work with Voyager better, but the Writing room (and the show in general) had a completely unhappy atmosphere, and Moore had just come of the incredible high of quality and happy atmosphere of the DS9 experience, so going over to the constant suckiness of quality and unhappy production team o f Voyager was seriously jarring...and then having his former writing partner and new boss undermine him and leave him out of meetings didn’t help matters. I don’t blame him for quitting, and he went onto create the remake of “Battlestar Galactica”...so leaving Trek worked out for the better for him. I do think Enterprise could’ve benefited greatly from having such a strong writer and TOS fan as Moore, but I’m glad he left and grew.
So this episode is solid, because of Moore and the acting strength of Ryan, but it isn’t lacking in some Voyager crud, but I won’t let that ruin it for me.
NEXT TIME: Moore’s Last Voyager Episode
Written By: Ronald D. Moore
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Year: 1999
Ronald D. Moore writes his first and only lone script for Voyager in this Borg-related script in which Seven is confronted by three ex-Borg who have left the Collective, but are still connected together as a trio. Several years prior the four had crashed on a planet while still full Borg, and felt their connection from the Hive mind slip, only Seven was reintegrated back into the Collective. She decides to help them separate from each other by using her memories in order to figure out how the link works and how it can be broken.
It is a shame Moore wasn’t able to work with Voyager better, but the Writing room (and the show in general) had a completely unhappy atmosphere, and Moore had just come of the incredible high of quality and happy atmosphere of the DS9 experience, so going over to the constant suckiness of quality and unhappy production team o f Voyager was seriously jarring...and then having his former writing partner and new boss undermine him and leave him out of meetings didn’t help matters. I don’t blame him for quitting, and he went onto create the remake of “Battlestar Galactica”...so leaving Trek worked out for the better for him. I do think Enterprise could’ve benefited greatly from having such a strong writer and TOS fan as Moore, but I’m glad he left and grew.
So this episode is solid, because of Moore and the acting strength of Ryan, but it isn’t lacking in some Voyager crud, but I won’t let that ruin it for me.
NEXT TIME: Moore’s Last Voyager Episode