An ensign who died three years earlier on board Voyager returns to the ship altered into a new, alien look and hoping to fit back in.

There are lots of ways to make this story good and exciting. There are any number of twists that could be used to keep the viewer guessing. And what do we get: a Harry Kim love story.

This wouldn't be so bad, but Harry is one of the dullest characters on board and he has no chemistry at all with the actress playing Ensign Ballard. She shows an interest in his music, his life in general, yet still the viewer keeps needing to shout 'Why? He's so tedious!' It's clearly an attempt to bring a familiar character into the action and make the viewer more involved, but all it does is proves how out of it all Ballard really is. There's even an 'eye of the beholder' comment dying to be made that never appears and that could have been an interesting extra piece of information.

As all this is going on, the recently-arrived Borg children are learning about fun with Seven of Nine as their teacher, with typically predictable results. It's meant to be quite sweet; instead it's nauseating. Turning Seven into a mom seems an unusual and unwise development in her character, and it shows the lack of strength of the main cast that a group of regular guest stars get most of the limelight. It's only really the eldest Borg child who makes an impression in this story, but maybe the others will become important somehow later in the season. When used purely as 'a random child', Naomi Wildman quickly becomes annoying too. The writers need to hurriedly realize what they've got here and start to make better use of the resources available on the series rather than churning out the same warmed-over rubbish.

***

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