Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Faces

*** (3 stars out of 5)
Oh, that B'Elanna Torres. She's just going through a phage!

Paris, Torres and Ensign Durst have been captured by Vidiians. As Garrett "Harry Kim" Wong said at a convention just before this episode came out: "Guess which Ensign doesn't make it?"

The icky, drippy Vidiian Chief Surgeon Sulon extracted Torres' Klingon DNA. This guy's fallen out of the psychiatry and hit every branch on the way down. He's grown himself a fully Klingon (and phage-resistant) version of her, and tossed the now human version into slave-slash-involuntary-organ-donor jail.

This makes perfect sense. No part of this raises any questions. For example, it's reasonable to assume that both would have Torres' complete memory with only slight emotional variation. And reasonable that removing a little DNA would magically turn Torres human. The same thing happens every time she donates blood: her forehead swelling goes down for days! Oh, and a genetronic machine capable of the instant cloning of an entire working set of organs is so commonplace that it could have no other application to the needs of people always desperate for new organs.

The holographic Doctor monster-ates Chakotay for sneaking into the compound. The first officer uses what seems like the weakest bluff in the universe: "I just had a new face grafted". AND IT WORKS! The Vidiian guard does not immediately ask the follow-up question 'What's your name?' because the answer would surely be 'Grafty... McFace...ton...son.'

Escaped from her slab late one night, the Klingon beheld an eerie sight. She rescues the Human. They get to play 'The Enemy Within' for awhile by firelight over rats and s'mores.

"Faces" is cheesy gibberish but well-performed and has its profoundly creepy bits. Janeway disappoints  by not following through on her earlier threat to fight any Vidiians who came NEAR her people. Too bad for Durst, and Skinny Talaxian Dude, and every other meat popsicle left behind when the rescue comes. Voyager only helps those who help themselves!

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