Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Dreadnought

Well, boys and girls, sometimes in life we do things that we just don't think through, and they come back later, and they haunt us. And the moral of the story is...don't reprogram Cardassian missiles, 'cause they'll twist around in your hand and bite you on the butt.

Anyway, this is a spoiler-filled review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Dreadnought." This review is intended solely for the enjoyment of my fellow Voyager fans, especially those who are getting really tired of all the "Voyager sucks" comments out there, particularly since they're usually full of spelling errors and made by people with screen names like "PCRD4EVR" and "NOFATCHICKS." So, since in this episode it's two women (gasp) who save the ship, this just might not be your thing, and if so, why not go somewhere else?

Like, say, Candy USA?

Nope? (snicker) Okay then...

PLOT
During another prenatal exam, Wildman discusses the trouble she's having coming up with a name for her baby. The Doctor sympathizes (in his own way) and reveals far too great a knowledge of names and their unfortunate associations. My personal choice for him, "Frederick" (well, actually, I just want plain "Fred") bears a close resemblance to a rude word in some alien language, and so on. Kes offers up her father's name for the baby, much to the Doctor's jealous displeasure. When Wildman leaves, she offers up her uncle's name instead, but it hardly compensates.

On the bridge, we find that Voyager has encountered some debris of an unmanned ship or probe. The materials of the debris suggest some respectable firepower, so they transport some of the material to the ship for analysis, and Torres and Chakotay inform Janeway that the energy signature is Cardassian. This means that Torres is responsible for the damage.

What? says Janeway's expression.

In conference (Paris comes in late, looking a little sloppy), Torres explains that back in the Maquis days a Cardassian super-missile with a super-sophisticated guidance system and super-duper quantum torpedoes was aimed at a Maquis munitions depot. Now, the missile is armed with 1,000 pounds of matter and a 1,000 pounds of anti-matter, which makes for one whompin' explosion, enough to destroy a small moon. Unfortunately for the Cardassians, the super-missile came equipped with a decidedly unsuper-detonator, so the missile skipped off the Maquis planet's atmosphere and settled into orbit.

Torres managed to get aboard this super-missile and (because she doesn't exactly share my view of things) named it "Dreadnought" [Hence the title!]. Over the course of weeks she painstakingly reprogrammed it to destroy a Cardassian military target instead.

Chakotay cuts her off here, and says that they decided to send the missile at this target, but that it disappeared in the badlands. They had assumed it was destroyed.

[Don't you get the feeling that one of these days we're going to run across some really, really confused pizza delivery boy who was using the Badlands as a short-cut to make it there in 30 second or less?]

They now need to find Dreadnought so that Torres can get aboard it -- she knows all its systems -- and disarm it. Janeway nods and ends the conference, and as the officers file out Chakotay tells Paris he expects his officers to be on time and properly dressed.

"Bite me," say Paris' eyes, but, with a look at the captain, he just nods and leaves.

A distracted Torres works with Paris down in engineering, trying to figure out a way to trace the missile's path. Paris gets her to talk about what's on her mind, and she says Chakotay covered for her at the meeting: the Maquis didn't decide to send the missile, she did, on her own. She recalls the moment when Chakotay pulled her over and told her he was disappointed in her, and that he thought she trusted him. Her insecurities and self-hate showing clearly in her eyes, she looks at Paris, and he tells her she can't blame herself. That was whole different lifetime ago. He says he's been surprised at well she's fit in here at Voyager...and a little envious too.

Well, she asks, what's up with him lately anyway? Look at him, being late and having quarrels with people on the ship. What's wrong?

I've been wrong, he says enigmatically, about a lot of things. Then he switches off his real-person look, walks away from her and talks about scans. Torres looks frustrated.

Paris is looking a little neater now as he sits at the conn and Voyager finds some signs of Dreadnought's trail. Torres leads Kim through some fake-out defenses she programmed into the missile (hmmm, that's one devious missile), and they eventually find it, hurtling along in space. It's on a direct course to a heavily populated planet ten light years away, Rikosa, and will get there in about three weeks.

Worse yet, the targeting scanners are activated. Evidently Dreadnought has decided that Rikosa could benefit from a little taste of missile-love.

Jonas tries to get past Lorrum and speak with Seska directly about Dreadnought. Lorrum has no trouble telling Jonas to bite him.

Janeway contacts Rikosa's First Minister Kellan to warn him that the missile is headed his way, and he asks her if that's some sort of threat. Janeway restrains from pointing out that she's less than interested in his little pissant planet and says she's only trying to help. Kellan responds that he's heard really bad things about Voyager, and he's suspicious that they're really trying to disarm this missile. He signs off in a snit.

"Bite me," Janeway says to the viewscreen.

Voyager sidles up to Dreadnought and Torres easily gets the missile's shields down. She beams over easily as well, and after Dreadnought treats her to a DNA scan, the missile welcomes her aboard (in Torres' own voice), tells her the time of her last visit, and asks if she slept well.

"Not really," Torres says, going immediately over to a Cardassian control panel. Torres tries to explain to Dreadnought that it has misidentified its target. They are, in fact, in the Delta Quadrant. Dreadnought resists this idea, then agrees and stands down its targeting sequence. Torres orders Dreadnought to return to "stage 5" and beams off.

In the ready room, Chakotay and Torres clutch their hands and drool over the spare parts and torpedoes they can salvage from Dreadnought, and Janeway smiles at the thought that maybe the missile has some more of those cool phaser rifles.

But then Paris signals from the bridge that Dreadnought has taken off at warp nine. At that rate, it will only take the missile fifty-one hours to reach Rikosa.

Well, Voyager catches back up, but Torres can't get those shields down again. Janeway tries using Voyager's type six photon torpedoes, but Dreadnought just hails the ship and warns (in Torres' voice again -- very creepy for our engineer) this Federation ship that the missile has been taken over by the Maquis and is headed for a Cardassian target. Torres demands to know why Dreadnought tricked her like this, and Dreadnought responds that since they obviously cannot really be in the Delta Quadrant, Torres is trying to trick it. Torres must be working for the Cardassians under duress.

Torres objects that she never programmed the missile to lie to her, but Dreadnought replies that, in fact, she did program it to engage in all sorts of underhanded scenarios to avoid enemy capture. In fact, this is Scenario 7. Torres tries to reason with Dreadnought and explain that there's been a horrible mistake.

"Bite me," says Dreadnought and hangs up.

Janeway and Chakotay go over to Torres and wait for her to explain what she's going to do next. Looking like she wants the deck to open and swallow her up, Torres pulls some technobabble out of a hat. If they attack Dreadnought and get it to use its main weapon, that might lower its defenses enough so they can destroy it.

Well, suffice to say they try this and it doesn't work. In fact, Dreadnought's plasma bursts rip through Voyager and knock out its engines.

In her ready room, a very worried Janeway talks to Kellan on her personal viewscreen [When are we going to get those, AT&T?]. He says they're projecting about two million causalities when the missile hits. Rikosa will be launching its defense forces against the missile, but they're a peaceful people. Janeway says she feels terrible about this, First Minister, and Kellan tells her to call him Kellan.

So then Janeway feels even worse.

In the transporter room, Kim gives Torres a little pep talk about not blaming herself, then they manage to beam her over to the missile.

Once again Dreadnought scans Torres and asks her about her day. Torres says "Bite me" and tries to access the targeting systems again. Dreadnought turns off the controls. Torres rips open a panel and starts operating, and at first she seems to be getting the upper hand, and this almost disappoints her. Somehow she thought Dreadnought would put up more of a fight.

The Rikosan fleet arrives and Janeway can't get them to back out of their assault. Torres hopes to use the assault as a distraction [Is that a put-down or what? Fortunately the Rikosans can't hear her.] and asks not to be beamed out. Voyager tries to draw fire and help out, but the Rikosa ships drop like flies (Torres pleads with Dreadnought not to kill them, but we get more of that "Bite me" stuff) and eventually the Rikosan fleet retreats. Personally, I had flashbacks to the Broncos/Forty-Niners Superbowl a few years ago. Ouch!

Anyway, inside the missile, things aren't going any better for Torres. There's only one hour and nine minutes left now before Dreadnought will reach its target, and when Torres tries to talk to Janeway, Dreadnought realizes Torres won't be giving away any more tactically valuable information and closes down the link and the transporter lock. Torres tries the self-destruct, which naturally doesn't work.

Imitating a certain Starfleet captain in velour who enjoyed talking computers into suicide, Torres engages Dreadnought in a hypothetical game of "What if," like they used to do in the good old Maquis days. What if they are actually in the Delta Quadrant and what if Dreadnought misidentified the target? How would that happen?

Dreadnought says this might happen if some of the targeting files were damaged. Torres asks for a display of the files, and gets an edited directory. We don't know if the files are damaged, but there's one file in there Torres doesn't recognize, and old Cardassian file she missed before.

Thank goodness for sloppy work!

However, Dreadnought decides it's no Nomad and that Torres must be a traitor to the cause. It shuts off life-support and tells Torres it's getting ready to reach the target.

Kellan and Janeway talk on her viewscreen again. He says his people are crowding off the targeted landmass as fast as they can, but it's not going to do much good. Janeway says there are still forty-one minutes left, and she can use Voyager as a detonator in the missile's flight path. Kellan is amazed that she would do this for a people she didn't even know a couple days ago, and she says that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the...oh, you know!

Kellan tells her she's made a friend, and Janeway, being Janeway, doesn't snarl back, "Goody, now you can write it on my tombstone," but says she still hopes they can celebrate that friendship together.

Panting and fading a bit in the thin air, Torres manages to reactivate that Cardassian file, and a male voice announces that things don't seem to be going right on the missile. Dreadnought's Torres voice asks who the hell this guy is, and Torres asks Dreadnought to identify the target.

"The target is a Maquis outpost," says the Cardassian voice.

"The target is a Cardassian outpost," says Dreadnought.

"Bite me," says the Cardassian voice, and the programs try to purge each other from the system. Torres takes advantage of this distraction to open up the warp core and crawl inside.

Meanwhile, Janeway has made her intentions to destroy the ship clear to an extremely reluctant Chakotay, who starts the ship's evacuation by removing all but the senior officers from the bridge. Janeway contacts the computer and -- ONE MORE TIME! -- initiates the self-destruct sequence, setting it at 20 minutes.

With eleven minutes to go, Torres is scooting down the warp core tube on her back. With Dreadnought still in full multiple-personality mode, Kim manages to contact Torres, but she pleads with Janeway not to take her out. She's just about to use her hand phaser to break through the magnetic constrictor and blow up the missile, even though Dreadnought, restored by some computerized thorazine, has expressed doubts that Torres will manage to break through the barrier before she passes out.

Pant pant, Torres says.

Janeway orders Kim and Paris off the ship. Paris reluctantly gets out of the conn chair and looks at her with gratitude. "That's for everything." She nods and he leaves with Kim, but Tuvok, sighting some of that "You need a back-up" logic that actually means "I want to die at your side," asks for permission to remain behind, and Janeway gives it.

Pant pant. Torres burns through the casing and refuses to be swayed by Dreadnought's threats and pleas. Pant pant.

With three minutes to go, Janeway gets ready to fly the ship into Dreadnought's path.

Pant pant.

Janeway contacts Torres one last time, lets her stay on the missile, and launches the last of the escape pods.

Two minutes, and Dreadnought's containment field is down to 20% integrity. Things start collapsing (and glowing) and Janeway beams her out of there before veering the ship out of the way. She also remembers to turn off the self-destruct.

Will someone please unplug that thing?

The Doctor, whom Janeway had forgotten about, contacts the captain and says he took the liberty of transporting Torres to Sickbay. She's a little singed, but she's going to be okay.

Voyager retrieves those escape pods and, hopefully, goes off to party hearty on Rikosa.