Two New Voyager Reviews

O. Deus, TrekWeb's resident reviewer, has posted his thoughts on yesterday's Voyager episode, 'Critical Care'. O. Deus seemed slightly disappointed by the episode, saying that it "hits all the right notes but ends up having very little content"

Critical Care makes the right choice by instantly leaping into the story from the first second. Rather than featuring scenes of the Doctor's abduction, CC reconstructs pieces of it for us as the crew works to trace back the EMH and the thief who stole him. But then, it doesn't have much choice as this is an episode pressed for time. As with last week's installment, there are minor holes in the plot that can be traced back to the extra minutes UPN cuts out of Voyager to allow for more commercials. With that said, the addition of the "Voyager deals with amusing con artists" bit--which stops being funny about halfway through--is completely unecessary and more than a little inexplicable. Not only does this feel like a faded retread of Live Fast & Prosper from last season but the humor of the piece skews the dark tone of the episode so that neither the comedy nor the drama work very well.

Certainly the rest of the cast needs their screen time but if they really wanted a smuggler comedy episode so badly another one could have been written while the crew could have been tasked with a more serious storyline than Tuvok\Neelix routines (the Neelix food\big routine is also borrowed from Live Fast & Prosper) or better yet, the screen time could have been given to the main storyline. The absence of an active Voyager search for him might have made his isolation and his conflict a whole lot more plausible, while the current version makes it clear to the audience that he will be rescued as soon as Voyager untangles the MIB rejects cluttering its viewscreen.