Win, Lose, and Draw
"The Killing Game Part Two" Plot Summary:
Janeway and Seven go to the astrometrics lab to figure out how many Hirogen control the ship, and how they can escape. On the Bridge, Harry tells the Alpha Hirogen that he must blow out the hologrids to end the simulation, but the leader refuses to give up the technology. When his underling suggests that they must kill the now-cognizant Janeway, the leader reminds him that they need the prey to rebuild the holodeck.
While Paris and Torres - that is, Bobby and Brigitte - rekindle their old romance despite the fact that she's pregnant with a Nazi's child, Chakotay and Tuvok hypothesize that the Germans are building a super-weapon in the holographic bunker. Janeway and Seven crawl through a Jeffries tube and are almost shot by the others, but Chakotay recognizes her as the leader of the Resistance and insists on following her into the bunker to disable the Nazi technology which she says it connects to. Janeway tells Tuvok that he should trust Seven and warns Chakotay that an Allied air strike could set off explosions that will destroy the entire valley.
In Sickbay, a Hirogen turns the Doctor off and tells his people to leave wounded prey where they fall. Janeway sneaks herself and Chakotay into the holodeck where the Klingon scenario is playing out, with Neelix now in the role of the chief warrior, so that she can summon the Doctor. She plans to use holographic weapons to attack the real sickbay, which should work since the safeties are off, and shut down everyone's implants. Chakotay tells her admiringly that the girls he knows aren't as "gung ho" as she is, and says that he'd do anything to get his people home. Janeway says she knows how he feels.
Seven uses Borg technology to work on a weapon, telling a suspicious Tuvok that it's secret German technology. The Hirogen leader refuses to give his own people stronger weapons and says he can't turn the safety protocols back on to protect them, since they're offline. Harry encounters Tom in a corridor, but Tom doesn't recognize him and quizzes him on American movies to make sure he's on the right side. Meanwhile, in Sickbay, Janeway trips a Hirogen safety protocol on her own computer system and is shot, but not before she sets the charge which makes everyone remember who they are. Unfortunately, at that precise moment, Nazis enter the bar and take Paris, Torres, Tuvok, and Seven hostage.
Janeway enters her ready room, now covered with Hirogen trophies, and learns of the leader's desire to use holotechnology to save his people. She agrees to trade the technology for her ship and crew back, and they agree to a ceasefire. But the Hirogen on the holodeck, who have been listening to Nazi ideology and doubts about the commandant's fitness, refuse to obey. The Doctor realizes the fighting has increased all over the ship, and insists that Neelix lead the Klingons into battle in the World War II scenario.
The rebellious Hirogen S.S. officer kills the Alpha Hirogen just as he and Janeway begin the process of overloading the holo-emitters. The new leader orders Janeway to start running, and pursues her as she searches for a weapon. She finds a device which disrupts holographic matter and makes his weapon vanish, then turns her own on him and shoots him. While the Klingons hold off the Nazis, Harry has time to overload the holo-emitters, which cause all the artificial Nazis to disappear. After several days of fighting in the corridors with the Hirogen, Janeway negotiates a ceasefire and gives the battered new leader an optronic data core - so that they can create a holographic emitter or claim a trophy, whichever they decide is more important.
Analysis:
For once, a conclusion to a two-parter that lived up to the original! This episode was a blast, the most enjoyable thing Voyager has done since "Caretaker," though there were some huge anti-Trek moments which made me wonder whether the Prime Directive even exists in the Delta Quadrant at this point. Internally, it was fairly consistent and made great use of the cast - Ethan Phillips' turn as a Klingon warrior stood out in particular, but I liked seeing Harry get a chance to play hero (for once Seven DIDN'T save the ship), and Janeway made a very strong showing both as a fighter and as a negotiator. If the writing staff can keep the sense of humor displayed in this episode, it could go a long way toward redeeming the series.
Things that cracked me up: Neelix, drunk, with a bat'leth. Paris calling Torres' boyfriend a pig (if anyone can remember all the way back to "The Cloud," Torres called one of Paris' holograms a pig and added that Paris was one, too). Chakotay getting a crush on Janeway even though he doesn't know who she is. Tom giving Harry a 20th century movie quiz, something Harry did to keep B'Elanna focused in "Scorpion." Tuvok wondering whether Aryan poster girl Seven could be a Nazi spy. Seven warning the Hirogen that sooner or later, the Borg will assimilate them, so she doesn't have to sing for them. Klingons creaming Nazis.
Things that annoyed me: Torres being able to feel the baby kicking after her neural implant ceased to function - if the Hirogen could manipulate holographic technology to that degree, then not only wouldn't they have needed Voyager's, they could have saved Neelix when the Vidiians stole his lungs in a way that not even the Doc could manage. The Master Race speech the Nazi made, which was bombastic and heavy-handed even for a Nazi, and which went on way too long - I don't think a guy that obsessed would have spared Torres just because she was pregnant with a half-German child. I also did NOT like Chakotay joking that the babes back home weren't as fiesty as Janeway - that's a false attitude about women in the '40s propagated in the '50s to get the wives to quit work and stay home, when in actuality women were doing a lot of the work of running this country while the boys were away; I can't believe it would be programmed into a 24th-century World War II scenario.