Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series) Dark Frontier (1999) User Reviews

Great, but needed more Borg

[Ar_Pharazon_the_golden · 8/10 · 9 June 2019]

The flashback sequences which show what happened to 7 of 9's parents form a great story on their own, and even do something that Star Trek usually snubs: fix continuity errors. How these people had ended up in the Delta Quadrant was a bit of a plot hole, but now we get an answer.

The Borg Queen is also a great addition, but honestly, my one complaint is we needed more of her, and more Borg lore. It was a good chance to learn how the Borg became Borg in the first place and it is wasted.

Other than that, the episode is great, as the Borg always make a great adversary.

Of course, there are some problems: for one, the Queen tells 7 she is the only drone to have regained individuality and that makes her unique - horse-faeces, one may point out, as the Voyager crew had discovered a whole colony of former drones who only occasionally formed their own collective (arguably the Borg were unaware of this, but it weakens the argument for the viewer). Secondly, there is so little reason for the Borg to be obsessed with destroying humans. They have already assimilated so many that whatever they had to offer to the Collective has been offered already, and by all accounts they are hardly worth such obsession - why not the Vulcans, or the Klingons? They also resisted the Borg and frankly, I doubt the Borg hold grudges and maintain vendettas out of spite. I also don't like how the Voyager seems to now win a decade or two every episode, but I suppose they have to get back somehow.

Anyway, these are complaints formed by overthinking the episode - which should be a clue that it is quite memorable.

Seven returns to the Borg

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 8 March 2010]

This first episode of a two part story sees Voyager come into contact with the Borg once again, the only difference to previous encounters is that this time Voyager's crew are actively looking for Borg vessels in the hope of acquiring trans-warp technology which could drastically shorten their journey home. In order to prepare for the raid on a Borg sphere Seven studies her parents journals to learn what they did that enabled them to study the Borg for quite a while before being assimilated. After studying the journals she starts to have nightmares where she is contacted by the Borg. When their find a disabled sphere they beam aboard and manage to steal the technology but Captain Janeway is surprised when Seven announces that she will stay on board and rejoin the collective. Once the rest of the crew have beamed back to Voyager the sphere enters transwarp and goes to an area of space full of Borg vessels where Seven is taken to the Borg Queen.

This was a pretty good opening part to the story leaving the viewer unsure whether it is the last we will see of Seven or even if she will turn against Voyager. It was also nice to see a bit more of Seven's back story.

Captain Janeway...what ARE you thinking?!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 26 February 2015]

For Captain Janeway, this is an odd two-parter because her character acts very odd compared to the usual Janeway. First, she announces she's tired of dealing with the Borg from a defensive posture after Voyager blows up a Borg ship. The plan? She wants to send a team aboard a damaged Borg ship and steal its warp core. But here is where Janeway gets REALLY weird--she insists that Seven get in touch with her childhood and practically forces her to read through her idiot* father's old logs. Not surprisingly, this really messes with Seven's brain. Later, when they do attack, Seven unexpectedly rejoins the Collective--perhaps due, in part, to her PTSD and reading Daddy's log. Sure, there's a bit more to it than that...but you do wonder how much Janeway's orders led to this.

This is an exciting episode. However apart from Janeway, you learn that Seven's father is extra-stupid and practically does everything he can to destroy his family! Still, the show is full of action and high on the cool factor.

Rescue

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 6 September 2018]

After realizing that Seven was being manipulated into her desertion by the Borg, Janeway decides that she will attempt a rescue. Except for the maudlin scenes of Seven's childhood and her rather clueless parents (brilliant scientists though they are), this is quite exciting. At times it's hard to see what the Borg have to gain, but they are intrigued by the one member of their species that has left the collective and become and individual. Of course, it's all about going to Earth and taking over the population, turning all earth people into drones. Seven vacillates between her humanness and her Borgness. She is, indeed, conflicted. It's an exciting conclusion and, of course, this being a TV series, we make assumptions about the conclusion.

The family that hunts Borg together get Assimilated together

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 12 October 2013]

And that would be The Hansens. Magnus and Erin Hansen had gone Borg- Hunting (Long before Q introduced Picard to The Borg) and had been sucked into the Delta Quadrant via a Transwarp Conduit.

Janeway has it up her nose to steal a Transwarp Coil from some unsuspecting Borg Ship, so she finds a small Borg ship that is not as much threat as a full Cube. But when Harry transports the Photon Torpedo too close to the Plasma Generator, the Borg Octagon becomes Mince-Meat.

The Doc finds a great Drone Arm with Medical Attachments, lucky him, but the Prize Janeway was seeking, the Transwarp Coil, was damaged beyond repair by even 7-of-69.

But the Octagon had Data Modules that contain some tactical information and ship movements so she inaugurates "Operation Fort Knox" so that she can swipe a coil from a damaged Sphere which is limping back to The Collective at low warp.

Janeway elicits Seven's help to plan this debacle, orders Seven to read her parent's mail that they stole from the decayed remains of "The Raven" - The Hansen's partially assimilated and wrecked ship that they found when Seven was compelled to find it earlier. I don't know when they had time to set up a full Core Data Transfer, in "Star Trek: Next Generation" Geordi had to set up a Link and suck the Data up each time they did it, which was a time consuming process.

We have to suspend disbelief (again) and surmise that while Seven and Tuvok were on the Raven being bombarded with Photon Torpedoes, Tom Paris was able to connect to The Raven's computer Core and suck up all the Data and Logs. Or maybe Voyager did it, in the few seconds they had before having to Haul Arse out of that sector before being chased by the paranoid aliens who lived there.

Nevertheless, Voyager now has the Hansen's Full Logs of all of their endeavors while peeping at The Borg. And Seven has to go through all of this stuff to find advantages they can use to get into a Borg Vessel.

The Vignettes of Life on The Raven are your typical 24th Century Family gone Borg-Hunting. Each time Seven delves into it, she finds a gadget or two her Dad made to spy on Borg without being absorbed.

But somehow The Beta-Borg Queen Suzanna Thompson has found Seven and Blackmails her with Voyager's Safety if she does not come back to The Collective.

So Seven has to whine her way back on the Away Team because Janeway was suspicious and had changed her mind abut Seven going.

This is the first time we get to see the Borg Unicomplex in all of it's Glory. I presumed this was all CGI, but I have seen Dan Curry's Model of the Unicomplex, a huge City in Space with millions of Borg. Sort of looks like Dan's House in Beverly Crusher's Hills.

At first I thought Suzanna was just replacing Alice Krige as the Main Queen, but now it is apparent that there is an Hierarchy of Queens, Suzanna being in control of the Unicomplex while Alice was in charge of the Transwarp Hub we see later in the series.

The Away Team manages to get their sweaty hands on a Transwarp Coil, but the Mission does not quite go as planned...

Good Except for Tiresome Flashbacks

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 6 September 2018]

The first half sets the scene for the final confrontation. Janeway decides to take advantage of a Borg mishap to steal a warp core from them. In order to do so, she needs to put everyone in danger. Seven begs to go with the away team. This leads to dire consequences and a return to her roots. She meets a Borg queen who knows her and claims to need her to bring about the destruction of earth.

Good but talky.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 26 February 2015]

When the previous episode ended, Seven walks away from an incursion mission onto a Borg ship. In other words, she rejoins the Collective! Soon you see the Borg Queen do her mega-cool entrance and she talks to Seven--informing her that her time on Voyager was all part of the Borg's master plan (yeah, right--you just don't want to admit you screwed up, Queenie!).

Aboard Voyager, they make a discovery--that the Borg were beaming messages to Seven and perhaps she wasn't responsible for her recent actions. Naturally, the Captain wants to do on a rescue mission-- but they have to locate Seven first.

What is the Queen's/Borg's plan? There obviously is more to the plan that we've seen so far.

I generally enjoyed this episode. After all, it involves the Borg. However, I was surprised just how talky it all was when the Queen began talking and talking and talking to Seven--and it did seem to go on way too long and didn't make a lot of sense.

Decent Seven and Borg episode

[snoozejonc · 7/10 · 4 October 2023]

Voyager encounters the Borg and Janeway hatches a plan to move closer to home.

This is an enjoyable feature length episode with great production values and good character moments. However, some aspects feel like a retread of the movie First Contact and there are some action movie clichès.

If you like Borg episodes and are a fan of characters like Seven and Janeway I think this is a good one. The plot contains some holes and a few inconsistencies in relation to previous episodes, but for me this does not reduce the overall entertainment.

Importantly the writers put Seven in a position where she has to show the values she acquired since joining Voyager and how much she has developed as a character. This works well with Janeway's equally important and prominent role in what happens.

Visually it is one of the strongest episodes in the Star Trek franchise and you can see a lot of resource has gone into making the Borg scenes a spectacular as possible. This gives a fairly epic feel to what is a pretty simple character story.

Janeway: intergalactic thief

[thevacinstaller · 5/10 · 27 January 2023]

I am not a starfleet officer but if I was, I would present the other side of the argument when Janeway presented the idea to break and enter a borg space probe for technology. "Captain, the borg are all connected and they will track us down and assimilate us --- they have this transwarp technology and if they know where we are they can appear within like 2 minutes...." I thought for the briefest of seconds that my man Chakotay was going to be the guy to do this but he just smiled and went along with this extremely dangerous idea. Well, it turns out I am the jerk ---- it all worked out and they ended up 20,000 light years closer to earth.

I am sad to report that not long after this episode the borg infected all of earth with nano probes in our atmosphere and half the population was turned to borg and assimilated the rest of the population. Sad times for earth. Wait, that didn't happen at all. Was the borg queen just messing with seven of nine? She talked about needing to understand human resistance? OK, let me get this straight ---- they have assimilated 10,000 + civilization and WE are special because we fight harder to survive then all previous species? Really? The other 10,000 just lay down and die?

The other problem with this episode is that there is no suspense in it for me. It is clear that SO9 is on board with the Janeway crew throughout this episode and there is no tension at all whether she is going to be loyal or not.

There is also some problematic writing ----- the borg let SO9 regain her humanity so that they could better understand how to assimilate all of earth? What?!

What about the line, "You are the only human to have been assimilated and regain her humanity...." Um, writers ---- Captain Picard? Hue? Brannon Braga and Menosky wrote this and they are clearly extremely talented and thoughtful writers ---- How did that get missed? Was it a typo? After airing Brannon is having a cigarette and realizes, "Oh damn, I forgot the "one of the".

I didn't like this one.

Nothing like Best of Both Worlds

[brdavid-429-96270 · 6/10 · 9 October 2021]

This episodes appears to be taking a lot of cues from Best of Both Worlds and trying to make that one episode that will stand out, thinking the series needs a boost to be relevant. Dark Frontier is nothing more than a façade. It's a plot device that follows a McGuffin then reveals a fan favorite villain only to move towards a resolution that isn't very thrilling, unlike Best of Both Worlds.

Janeway, after an encounter with a Borg vessel wants a transwarp conduit and finds the potential device on a limping borg sphere. They plan a heist but all is complicated by a "voice" that tells Seven to stay on the borg sphere or Voyager will be destroyed. The plan goes well, Seven stays behind and all is revealed it was the Borg queen who wants her individuality. An escape plan is hatched and it all succeeds.

What makes this episode fail is where Best of Both World succeeds. In Best of Both Worlds, Riker is faced with the decision to either move forward or stay where he is, threatening any further advancement. Riker is comfortable with the safety net he has a 2nd in command and with being on the Enterprise. However a hotshot commander with her eye on Enterprise's command position begins to show Riker where he needs to focus his attention. Riker has gotten, slower, more safe, doesn't take the risks that are necessary to get noticed and suddenly starts to realize that he might not have a future outside the Enterprise. However that all changes when Picard is kidnapped by the Borg and he is forced into being a captain and into shaping himself without Picard there to help. For the first time Riker is without the net. Worse, the entire crew has to battle against time to save Earth and we have no idea how they are going to accomplish it. The whole episode is thrilling down to the last second when it is revealed how the Enterprise crew wins. And how they win is not through recently found technology, but through their own humanity and understanding of other species. It was a brilliant episode.

Dark Frontiers verges onto something with the B story of the Hanson's with flashbacks of Seven's time as a child. Her parents came across the Borg and studied them as one would study apes or wild animals. They tagged them, watched them act in their nature. It was a rather interesting part of the episode that I got drawn into, yet nothing of that B story really helps the A story. They use the notes as a means to help them in their heist and rescue plan, but it never seems to link itself to the Hanson story well. Therefore we have two separate episodes where the Hanson story could have stood alone and I think would have worked well.

An overrated episode that fails on thrills, but does succeed with delivering some rather unique viewpoints, especially Seven witnessing "assimilation". That might be the first time I was ever uncomfortable watching the series. I rather commend the series writers for going there. Too bad the rest of the episode never bothered to move further into unexplored territory.

We Are The Bored

[Bolesroor · 2/10 · 4 March 2016]

Voyager takes a break from its wondrous, inspiring adventures to tell a two-part tale that plays like a sobering slap to the face: Janeway decides to exploit Seven of Nine's Borg past to steal a transwarp coil, and in the process the Borg reveal plans to get Seven to rejoin the collective and assist them in conquering Earth.

When I think Star Trek Voyager I think of fun! And balloons! And cute little puppy dogs! At least the nightmarish series isn't drowning in a swamp of compromised morality, blurry objectives, questionable character choices and wildly-swinging story lines. That would be bad.

This episode is terrible, stretching a bad idea over two hours, almost single-handedly killing the character and reputation of Janeway while forcing Seven to suffer alone yet again in choosing between humans and the Borg. Oh, and there's a Holodeck fake-out too. You can never get enough of those.

To pad out the two episode arc we are treated to multiple pointless flashbacks and forced to hear "You will be assimilated" and "Resistance is futile" about nine times each. I often wonder what this series would be like if any of the writers seemed to LIKE any of the characters... what it would be like if episodes were even-keeled with recurring, season-spanning story lines... instead our crew is punished and dehumanized yet again while all previous lessons are forgotten in favor of this week's mission.

Why would Janeway risk the ship and her crew member/friend Seven for a transwarp coil only to later risk the ship in order to save the evidently expendable Seven? Even after its revealed that Seven may not want to be saved?

Kate Mulgrew is wonderful as the Captain but the writers did her no justice by making her morality and priorities change with the breeze. Will this be the last time Seven's loyalty is questioned and she is forced to experience the cold fear and terror of reintegrating herself to life as a human? Let's hope so. I don't think she could endure any more of this.

That makes Two of us.

GRADE: D

just throw canon out the window

[morn1960 · 4/10 · 29 April 2015]

possible spoilers. Voyager had a habit of just ignoring canon to do whatever they wanted. In this episode we see 7's parents hunting the Borg years before the federation were aware they existed but having been granted permission by the federation. Janeway is her usual questionable self, any male captain would have stood before a tribunal upon return to earth for the decisions they made but her they promoted. More and more you have to wonder if anyone writing voyager bothered to review federation and trek history. i don't why i do this to myself every few years, I think to remind myself just how terrible voyager really was.

unbelievable

[KaiserBasileus · 1/10 · 11 July 2023]

Regardless of any other virtues, i just binged to this point and i don't believe the Borg would act that way in any of the various decisions made, i don't believe Seven would act that way in the first place, and i don't believe Janeway either. The characters' decisions don't match their profiles. It's the same arbitrary morality that makes sucky shows suck, mixed with arbitrary characterisation. This isn't the universe i've become familiar with. And i've seen all previous shows.

Arbitrary character requirements are irrelevant.

Arbitrary character requirements are inefficient.

Arbitrary character requirements are stupid.