Trekathon 592: Dragon’s Teeth (VOY)

Seven awakes an alien civilisation from sleep.

The title of this episode is pretty much a spoiler – if you know the legend of the dragon’s teeth, you also know they aren’t going to be fighting on the side of the good guys. So from the start you can be pretty sure that the aliens here are going to turn out bad.

But the sudden yet inevitable betrayal is built up nicely, and it was a cool touch using ancient cultural references as the clue that gave things away. Although I didn’t like it that the main reason things were discovered ultimately comes down to some children being mean about Neelix behind his back.

But I see a wasted opportunity here. This story could have been part of a broader arc. We could have seen Voyager going through a region of space where an ancient evil empire had been overthrown for many episodes. And then we could have had a far more effective fakeout, to discover that *these* are the aliens who were in charge, not more victims. Serial story telling can give you better results.

592 down, 145 to go.


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