Voyager gets stuck in a hole.
The plot’s nothing to write home about, but well delivered. In short, Voyager finds itself in a bad situation, and Janeway builds an alliance that allows them to escape. Along the way there’s the unreliable ally, the implacable foe, and the misunderstood aliens. It’s a little sad that this episode is mainly elevated by the fact that it doesn’t make any of the unfortunate detours like B’Elanna’s history or Icheb’s feelings. But the episode delivers on the plot cleanly, and the subtext of ‘this is what its like in the Alpha quadrant’ was a nice reminder that Voyager is still trying to get home occasionally.
(But the good old ‘should we stick to the rules or act as necessary’ thing: didn’t we work through that in Season One?)
626 down, 111 to go.