First 'Nightingale' Reviews

I felt a deep connection with the Icheb-B'Elanna story. Yes, I was once a teenager. Like most young men will do when faced with the attention of an attractive, older woman, he comes to the false conclusion that she is interested in him on a romantic level. I totally believe the B story. The situation is humorous and heartwarming at the same time.

Unlike most young men, Icheb loves to overanalyze everything. He even resorts to using a tricorder to scan B'Elanna, to see how her body responds while around him. This is the sort of stuff that has endeared this character to me. The scene where Icheb believes he is letting B'Elanna down was priceless. With no wish to tear apart Tom and B'Elanna's marriage, he does the honorable thing by stepping back. She plays along. Ah, the joys of watching young love enacted on the small screen.

In contrast to Icheb's story, the ending of Harry's story was a hackneyed mess. I nearly expected to see a pretty bow materialize on the front of my tee-vee screen. Allow me to clarify. 1, Harry is shaky in a battle with the Annari. 2, He learns that he is in command of a prototype ship full of engineers, not doctors. Again, why didn't he scan the ship? 3, The crew decides to mutiny. 4, Seven, spouting the usual platitudes about duty and honor, manages to convince Harry to fight for these people. And 5, He is given a second chance and ends up saving the day. Can anyone say, "Formulaic"?

Still, the crisis of the Nightingale manages a very effective and even exciting resolution, certainly a more effective and exciting resolution than Voyager's usual response to a crisis. In true Captain style, Kim is prepared to go down with his ship, but unlike Janeway he actually has a Plan B and manages to outsmart the enemy without gloating about it all the while and even borrowing part of Kirk's tactic for escaping Khan in Wrath of Khan to do it. Kim's final scene with Neelix is an effective way of closing off this chapter of Kim's character development and the use of soup ordering as defining command style is the kind of clever characterization Voyager desperately needs more of.

Nightingale's B story is a pretty silly and cliched bit about Itcheb imagining that Lt. Torres is attracted to him. Still Manu Intraymi once again manages to do a decent job with mediocre material, a very valuable quality for an actor on a show like Voyager. For better or worse, it's managed to contribute to Treknology the idea that love can be detected with a tricorder, courtesy of the Doc. Still it's a shame that the producers have decided to devote as much screen time to Itcheb getting crossed signals from Torres and Paris, as they did to Tuvok going through Pon Farr.

The two alien species never get a chance to be fleshed out in any way but there was clearly no time in the episode for that. A little more time could also have been used to flesh out the credibility of Kim's return to take command of the Nightingale's bridge. The aliens seem to accept him back all too easily. A scene featuring Kim confronting the alien scientist and coming to terms with the fact that he dislikes the mission but can't turn back now and will fulfill it regardless, would have enhanced the episode. Indeed having him learn those lessons of command from the alien scientist, instead of Seven to begin with might have taken Nightingale to a whole new level and would have turned the alien scientist from a faceless minor character, into someone more vital and memorable.

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