My Random Journey Through Trek #26

Voyager
S4 Message In A Bottle

Seven discovers an almost quadrant spanning communications network that while old seems to be still active and she has been able to detect a Starfleet vessel at the very edge of the Alpha Quadrant. A message is sent through the network but it's scrambled and returns and the decision is made to send a holographic based data packet and the Doctor is "volunteered". He appears on board the Starship and finds all but one of the crew dead, in his last breath the crewman mentions Romulans. The ship then comes under attack but is able to defeat the Federation ship and an injured Romulan comes to sickbay, the Doctor successfully bluffs the invaders and when they leave he activates the EMH and learns a little more about the "Prometheus".

It's now up to the Doctor and the EMH to retake the ship and while the new EMH is more advanced in many ways the experience our Doctor has obtained over the last few years allows them together to manipulate the Romulans and eventually take control of the ship, granted they do end up firing a torpedo at a Starfleet ship but after all he's only had one lesson on the Voyagers shuttle:)
Message In A Bottle is a fantastic episode of Voyager, Robert Picardo is given free reign to push his character to the extreme and that is easily accomplished when playing against Andy Dick as the EMH.The Prometheus itself looks very pretty and has a very slick interior but you never really get the impression it's a fighting ship, the gimmick of the multi-vector assault mode has some many obvious tactical flaws it negates any benefit you may get in a multi-ship engagement. While Federation Starships are designed by engineers with an artistic flair there comes a point when there is an over reliance on shields to protect a rather fragile superstructure. That aside Robert and Andy were a pleasure to watch interact in character and many of their lines with adlibbed or provided by the actors themselves, I guess that is the point of bringing in an actor better known for his comedy and pairing him with a class act that is Robert.

That may have been the wrong button...

This is an episode I could watch whenever, it's funny and has some great action and performances and stands alone (as most Voyager episodes do) but in the more positive way for a long running show, if you watch one episode of Voyager then this could be it:)

IMDB

Rating 9

Michael Clark from Visionary Trek joined me on Gatecast to talk about this episode for a bonus show we did since it featured Robert who guest starred on Stargate as Richard Woolsey.