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

Hello there, and welcome to a review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Elogium." It's just bursting with spoilers and intended exclusively for the enjoyment of Voyager fans. As for those of you who'd rather eat glass than watch Neelix and Kes have a serious discussion about their relationship, may I suggest something less centered around the cute and fuzzy?

How about The Easter Egg Archive?

You're not interested? It's more interesting than it sounds. No? Okay then...

INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Boy, that Chakotay sure can be nosy at times! Janeway should tell him to mind his own business...Can't sex ever just be something normal and pleasant on Star Trek?...Hmm, what do you suppose their kid would look like?...Oh, false alarm.

PLOT
Chakotay surprises a couple who are kissing in a turbo lift. They scamper off just as Paris and Kes come along carrying bowls of greens for Neelix's kitchen. Neelix takes the bowls with bad grace, jealous of Paris' attentions to Kes. Kes says he's imagining things.

Meanwhile, Janeway has hustled Paris and Chakotay up to the bridge. Seems Voyager has found an interesting energy cloud and she wants to investigate. While Paris steers them over to the Anomaly of the Week, Chakotay reports the turbo lift incident to Janeway, who says it's only natural that the crew will start to pair off. Chakotay asks if such "pairing" will include the captain, and she says no, and, besides, she's got Mark.

They get close enough to the energy cloud to see that it's actually a school of flagellating space creatures that look like the things the Enterprise found that time when they accidently killed the mother and then helped the baby get out of her.

Unfortunately, no one saw that episode of TNG on Voyager, so they edge closer to the cloud for a better look.

Down in the hydroponics bay, Kes tends her plants and eats some of her spawn beetles. This last part freaks her out.

We meet Ensign Wildman.

Neelix finds Kes in her room, where she is eating so much that he carries her to Sickbay.

Voyager gets sucked into the cloud by the creature's magnetic forces. Inside the school of space fish, Voyager's shields and impulse drive don't work. Warp drive would, but using it might also hurt the creatures.

Torres suggests setting up a sort of "scoop": a pulse which would push the creatures out of the way. Janeway tells her to set it up.

Neelix annoys the Doctor so much he finally throws the little guy out of Sickbay so that he can concentrate on finding out what's wrong with Kes.

On the bridge, Neelix complains to Janeway that he's been unfairly treated by that hologram in Sickbay, but she's only affected by the news that Kes is ill. The Doctor calls for her, and the two of them go back down to Sickbay, where they find Kes holed up behind a forcefield in the Doctor's office. Sweating and panting and generally acting odd, she's crawling around on his desk, and the Doctor says her blood pressure and fever are up. There's also some sort of strange growth on her back. He suspects she's been affected by the swarm of creatures outside, but he's not sure how, or what's wrong with her.

Janeway finally talks her way into the office, where an extremely upset Kes tells her that she's going through the "Elogium" [Hence the title!]. This is the time that Ocampa mate, though it's happening to her at a very young age. Usually Ocampa go through this at four or five years of age, and she's not quite two. The thing of it is, though, that this only happens to Ocampa once. If she's going to have a kid, it's got to be now.

While Voyager continues to zip along inside the swarm's magnetic forces, Chakotay and Janeway continue to discuss shipboard romances, and even the possibility of children. In fact, if they don't find a wormhole or some other plot device to get home, they might even need to have a whole new generation of replacement crew. This wasn't what they had in mind, Janeway says, when they originally left on their three week mission, their threeeee wee-eek mission.

Sweating and writhing in her quarters now, Kes explains to Neelix that she wants to have a child with him, but he looks uncomfortable with the whole thing and comes up with a list of excuses. Kes isn't exactly sure herself, but she's always thought she'd have a kid, and now's the time. She even shows him some yellow gunk on her hands, which she'll use to bond the two of them together for six days to ensure conception [insert Wilt Chamberlain joke here]. Since the goo has appeared on her hands, they only have 50 hours to decide if they want to mate. Neelix says that gives them plenty of time to think about it and scoots out of there.

In the mess hall, Neelix talks to Tuvok, who explains that while only those who are truly committed should have children, they are completely worth the commitment. This conversation includes some PC talk about raising children without gender bias.

On the bridge, Janeway has Torres try the pulse, and the creatures do turn away, allowing the ship to move slowly towards the edge of the cloud on thrusters. The creatures also turn blue as they move away from Voyager, and roll over on their backs (?). This is fine, but some creatures also attach themselves to the ship and create an energy drain (which is also what happens in that episode of TNG). Suddenly, a big creature comes into their path and challenges the ship by emitting a plasma stream.

Torres wants to fire back at the creature, but Janeway reminds her that they're the intruders here.

Many of the little creatures attach themselves to Big Momma outside, and the crew realizes the attachment may be sexual in nature. Chakotay wonders if Voyager's energy output, which is similar to the creature's plasma charge, is attracting the creatures like Chanel No. 5. Paris likes this idea a lot.

Neelix tells Kes he's all for having a child now, and she explains that now she needs to go through the "relessisin" (?), a ceremony where one of her parents massages her feet until her tongue swells. She would ask Janeway, if she weren't so busy, so she'll ask the Doctor.

"I'm not sure how I feel about someone massaging your feet," Neelix says, but Kes refutes him with her iron-clad logic:

"It's a ritual, someone has to do it."

So he agrees and she goes to Sickbay, looking suddenly uncertain about the whole thing. The Doctor seems to enjoy rubbing Kes' feet, but her uncertainty is growing. They have a debate about whether she should follow the demands of her biological clock.

On the bridge, Janeway figures out a way to try a small burst of impulse, which gets the ship moving but really pisses off Big Momma. The creature hits the ship, and both Tuvok and Torres suggest (though in very different styles) that they may have to fight back. Janeway says no, but then thinks perhaps the creature wants them to ram it. They give it a try, but it works about as poorly as you'd expect.

Chakotay steps up to the plate now, and suggests that they mimic the behavior of the little whimpy creatures instead. Voyager should roll over and turn blue. In a brilliant flash of insight, Janeway feeds Voyager some of Neelix's food, and the ship does just that (with a little help from Paris at the controls and Torres venting some of the ship's plasma).

The move is successful. The little creatures drop off the ship and Big Momma stops challenging Voyager. As Tuvok notes, "We seem to have lost our sex appeal." In any event, they get out of the swarm.

And it turns out that without the swarm, Kes is no longer in Elogium. She and Neelix talk about how they might have a child later, especially, Neelix says, a daughter just like her.

While Janeway worries about the whole notion of families on board, Wildman enters the ready room to announce that she's pregnant by her husband, who's still back on DS9. Janeway congratulates her, but looks worried.