Voyager goes home.
The core of the episode is ’Janeway versus Janeway’ – a fitting conflict perhaps, for a show that frequently didn’t have a clear enough picture of Janeway’s character from episode to episode. But the ‘future’ Janeway is given enough distinct character to make the conflict believable, and the resolution to the conflict rests on sacrifice rather than technobabble, which is a plus.
But for a show centred around the idea of ‘returning home’, it’s curiously unsatisfying when Voyager does get home. The false jeopardy created with the Borg sphere chasing them distracts the final sequence, and so as a result Voyager is back at Earth before we can even realise it. There isn’t a sense of reaction from the crew – Janeway manages only some disbelief. While that’s a reaction that makes sense, it rips the core out of what could have been an interesting emotional moment.
(Oh, and one final time – returning home to Earth isn’t very fitting, as the vast majority of the crew is from *somewhere else*).
637 down, 100 to go.