Prey

How asnine. Janeway tells Chakotay to fire upon Alpha Hirogen if the latter "steps out of line" yet she disagrees with Seven, choosing a soft approach with Species 8472.

As other reviews here clearly demonstrate by their insistence on taking sides and declaring absolutes, this was an episode fraught with difficult and complex decisions. On one hand, we have the Starfleet ideals (which, some people seem to be forgetting, aren't atypical of any Star Trek series, and captains like Picard and Sisko have made very similar decisions. Granted, Kirk might not be a great example of that, but TOS was less fraught with these sorts of situations, especially when Kirk could just punch and sex his way through the galaxy instead.) On the other hand, the practicalities of being alone out in space (which occurs for most Starfleet vessels, actually, not just Voyager...how many times does the crew of a given ship on a given series depend on being rescued by Starfleet rather than getting themselves out of the predicament du jour?)

I'm not going to bother taking a side here. I'm neither a Starfleet, nor a hapless extra just waiting for the command decisions that will get me killed, not a Twitter god with legions of fans anxiously awaiting my opinion on an issue brought up in some sci-fi episode from 20 years ago. I can go on about how ideals aren't ideals if you throw them away at every dangerous turn, or about how sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and do the safest thing, but I won't because reading the other reviews on the topic here has bored me to death with their declamations and certainties and barely-suppressed rage for some reason. Instead, I just want to take a moment to point out that 7 of 9 at the end of the episode sounded *exactly* like an angry teenager lashing out at her parents and trying to gain the moral high ground after doing something the parents disapproved of. Which is fair -- 7 has only been fully human for a very short time. And Captain Janeway did exactly what a parent should do in that situation -- refuse to argue the point because there's no way the teenager won't continue to feel like she (or he) is being picked on and treated unfairly, no matter how specious the argument might be. Regardless of how you feel about the rest of the episode and the decisions made, Janeway made the right call there.

Incidentally, Tony Todd should be in every episode of every Star Trek. We had a vicious, nigh-impervious alien species that wants to wipe out all other species on Voyager, and Candyman was still the scariest being on board.

The episode takes the Hunters, the Hirogen, to the extreme. They're hunting the Borg hunters, Species 8472, now. It's exactly as cool as it sounds. I love it. But I'm after a different feeling here. The episode should trigger a feeling that's not obvious, but possible to achieve from this point: Disillusion-Rejection-Oblivion. The Hunter species, the Hirogen, feel so real because they are based on real-history's Prussians in North-Eastern Europe. Their country is now extinct. Put yourself in the shoes of a bystander, watching the Hirogen. Say, like the Prussians, they just lost their empire. Nothing to call home, anymore. And still, the Hirogen keep chasing insanely stupid goals: Hunting other species. And no other species tells them how stupid that is! The Hirogen consider everyone else prey! They never get any feedback. And you (Captain Janeway) won't tell them, either. In fact, you can't. The Hirogen openly admit, they oppose anything you're going to do. 'Hello, enemy.' As a result, you'll watch them, too, in a state of Disillusion-Rejection-Oblivion.

Once again Voyager encounters the Hirogen, this time the Hirogen aren't trying to hunt them, in fact their ship has been disabled, one of them is dead and the other severely wounded. They take the wounded Hirogen aboard little knowing that its prey is still around, it isn't until something breaks in from outside the ship that they realise they have something more dangerous than one wounded Hirogen to worry about; his prey was Species 8472, the one species that even the Borg are scared of. When the Hirogen wakes up he demands to be released to continue his hunt but Janeway is having none of it, even when further Hirogen ships attack Voyager she refuses to let them hunt the Species 8472. It turns out their prey is wounded and just wants to return home and Janeway decides to help. This decision leads to a serious disagreement with Seven of Nine... perhaps Seven is becoming a little more free thinking than the captain intended.

This was a decent episode which nicely illustrated the contradictions in having a chain of command while also expecting free thought, something Seven has difficulties with as she wasn't raised in such a system.

Have to agree with some of the other reviews. This one is just nuts. Janeway is so busy trying to be "compassionate" that she puts her crew and ship at risk pretty much constantly. To the point of being clearly unfit for command.