Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series) The Killing Game, Part II (1998) User Reviews

Ending the hunt

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 4 February 2010]

At the end of part one most of the senior crew were still stuck on the holodeck believing they were fighting Nazis in occupied France, after an explosion they can see into Voyager but they assume what they see must be a secret Nazi bunker. Janeway encourages them to go into "the bunker" and destroy "Nazi equipment"... which is in fact the equipment the Hirogen are using to maintain their control over Voyager's crew. Once freed from this control their problems aren't over, they may realise they are on the holodeck but the still have to battle against the holo-Nazis and Hirogen hunters. Janeway learns of the Hirogen leaders plans to end the hunts by using Voyager's holodeck technology, unfortunately not all of the Hirogen feel the same way.

This was a good conclusion to the two part story with lots of action... seeing a Nazi officer being cut down by a Klingon warrior was priceless.

Confusing but....the Nazis Lost...I guess

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 2 September 2018]

This is one of those tech-babble episodes where the Hilogen, as supporters of holographic Nazis, continue to battle because it is their nature. Janeway and the gang fight them as Voyager is decimated. There are some interesting attacks and counter-attacks, even though I have no understanding of what they are trying to do. We know who will prevail so there's not much suspense.

I hated those hunters

[winstonsmith_84 · 7/10 · 13 March 2021]

Those hunters! They were such a bunch of meanies. Really not very nice aliens. I'm glad we move past them now. Anyways this episode (and the one before it) was standard Trek fare but with a new alien species that hunts humans and other prey. It was interesting enough to keep watching but sometimes felt a little contrived. Lots of little leaps of faith to tell this story, but all in all acceptable and enjoyable enough! As usual the actors make it all the better.

Voyager's Crew as French Maquis Resistance

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 6 October 2013]

With the Holodeck Safeties OFF, a Huge Artillery Shell blows a real hole across several decks of the ship.

Holo Characters start filing in, into all areas of the ship where there are Holo Emitters.

But Captain Chakotay, Lt. Paris, and the French Resistance Fighters Torres and Tuvok think they have blown open a huge secret Nazi bunker. As they are all still under the influence of the Hirogen Brainwash Devices, they are still acting out this fantasy.

Janeway uses Captain Chakotay to help Infiltrate this bunker and blow up the the main Brainwashing Device in Sickbay. Chakotay would have just used a few more artillery shells on it and blown a 5-Deck Hole in Voyager's Side, but Janeway shows them another way of dealing with "The Bunker".

Meanwhile Neelix in Klingon Form has to lead Klingon Warriors to Victory against a rival house, Probably in the Kletha Lowlands. Janeway makes a side-trip to their Holodeck with Chakotay and Neelix makes Chakotay drink Bloodwine.

Inside the WW-II 'Deck, Tuvok and Torres still in character and Seven are fighting off Krauts and fully armored Hirogen, and they don't see this as out of place. But when the Sick-Bay Bomb goes off, their memories come flooding back.

Janeway makes an accord with the Alpha Hirogen, but the Nazi Commander J Paul Boehmer is able to convince the Beta Hirogen that PREY need be Hunted and Killed, so he kills the Alpha with a Holodeck Rifle and makes Janeway RUN AWAY.

But Janeway finds a place on the deck where the Holo Emitters are damaged, and tricks the Beta into crossing the line where the Emitter is not working, his Rifle starts to vanish, Janeway is able to steal the Rifle and uses it to shoot him.

At the same time, Neelix has convinced all of the Holo Klingons that there is a better war to be fought on the other Holodeck, they attack the HoloNazis just before they try to assassinate Chakotay/Tuvok/Seven and Paris.

J Paul Boehmer has such a great look on his face while being gutted With a Bat'Tehl.

The Delta Hirogen cunningly agrees to accept the Holodeck Tech as a Trophy, and gives Janeway an honorable nod of respect, which she returns. This is probably my favorite part of Part II, but as Janeway finds out later, it was a mistake. Suffice it to say, that it got her out of THIS Jam.

We'll deal with giving away Starfleet Tech to the Hirogen at a later date.

This episode plays out better if watching both parts back to back as one episode, it works better that way, instead of treating each episode as separate. It's the whole conundrum and solution that makes it. Too bad for the Alpha, he was a good Hirogen.

Nazi Hirogens and WWII aboard Voyager wearing thin

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 2 June 2023]

Voyager crew fight back against the Hirogen.

The mayhem of Nazis and holodeck characters spilling out on to the other ship decks has the potential to entertain if you are interested in finding out how the situation gets resolved and status quo returned. For me though by this second part the novelty has worn off and the story reaches a bit of an anticlimax.

All the actors make the best of the material, but when a story is built on the premise of "it would be really cool to do a World War II episode with our characters" there is only so much shenanigans I can take before the silliness outstays it's welcome. Personally I think with holodeck stories the writers would have been better off just putting characters into a program and have them play it out with none of the additional ideas to raise the stakes like characters escaping or the tech going wrong.

The Hirogen add very little to this story for me, although their leader is a slightly better written character than usual.

Yawn.

[popkiller · 4/10 · 9 August 2013]

Universal must have been offering their backlot at 50% off, because that's the only thing this two-parter exists for.

The Hirogen have taken over Voyager for nearly 3 weeks and are subjecting the crew to endless Holodeck programs in order to hunt. Safely.

How did the Hirogen take over Voyager? Must not matter, because it's never explained. Who cares about mundane details like that? The important thing is that Jeri Ryan gets to show off her singing voice.

The Hirogen have been pretty much all the crew has had to deal with for the last 3 episodes, and while the previous ones have shown them to be ruthless hunters (a la Kraven The Hunter from Spider-Man), they're suddenly trying to soften their stance...by pretending to be Nazis.

It's just a big, big mess. It feels like the whole thing was pitched on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend: What if the whole ship was turned into a Holodeck...and the whole crew were in World War II France...and Neelix was a Klingon?

What if I just move on to the next episode?

You either love it or you hate it....I hated it!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 23 February 2015]

I've notice that the reviewers either loved this episode or hated it....I sure hated it! It seems that some viewers love the extensive use of the holodeck and a contrived use of Nazis (yes, Nazis) in a sci-fi show. I just thought it looked as if two things occurred at Paramount. First, they ran out of ideas for the show. This isn't surprising since all the Trek series put together consisted of 28 seasons of shows!!! Second, the studio had a back lot and a lot of German uniforms and so they decided to use them...even though the reason why you see them in the show seems dumb to some (and you can count me among them).

When two-part episode begins, the Hirogens have already taken over the ship. They've imprisoned many of the crew in holodecks and experience the hunt in various settings throughout history or on different planets. You see one briefly of a Klingon hunt but most of this nonsense is set in Occupied France during WWII--Nazis and all. It seems that one of the leader of the Hirogen thinks that the holodecks might be used for their hunting impulses.

This second portion begins after there is an uprising and some folks in the holo simulations realize it's all fake and that the Hirogen are in control. The rest just play out the silly WWII crap. Can the crew retake the ship before most of the viewers turn to another channel?!

All in all, I found the idea of the Hirogen using the holodecks not bad. But I found that the whole Nazi angle and the extensive use of the holodecks awful. In fact, I have always felt that the more that an episode uses these gimmicks the worse the show. And, these two shows are set almost exclusively in these god-awful holodecks!

Craziest episode!

[miramar5019 · 6 May 2022]

One big hole in the plot. At the end, the Voyager has been torn apart. Crew members have been killed and injured. But in the next episode, all is well aboard Voyager! No explanation of how they were able to rebuild and repair the Voyager.

Anti-climatic ending. When will intelligence provide the win instead of tech?! Wasted potential.

[wwcanoer-tech · 5/10 · 5 November 2021]

The Hirogen take over Voyager and discover this new technology called holodecks. They attach neural interfaces to the crew so the they forget who they are and act as characters and send them into the holodecks for simulated hunts but the safety protocols are turned off so the crew is repeatedly injured and repaired by the doctor.

It's an interesting premise with lots of potential and generally entertaining but the ending is so boring that it makes the episode feel useless. Why did ending the holodeck program even stop the fight? Voyager is surrounded by 3 or more Hirogen warships with Hirogen inside and outside of the holodeck. The Hirogen do not surrender. Why did they surrender here?! They needed to be truly conquered by being placed in a untenable position.

The writers seem to be slaves to the Star Trek formula. Perhaps they don't have the time to really develop an idea like this into something really good. There's a neural interface problem, so blow up the control. There's still a holodek problem, so blow up the holodeck control. Whoop de doo. How many zillion times has that been the solution to a Star Trek problem?!

Budget presumably greatly limits the number of speaking characters, which limits what they can do. There are a number of Hirogen characters but only two of any significance. The leader see the potential of using holodecks to replace the hunt but he is completely alone. We don't see him working with a team to make the holodecks a better experience for them. We only see him ask Harry Kim to expand the holodecks to explore more of human history, but is illogical because that doesn't advance his plan. We should see him striving to make this an experience that's as good as real life, even get the Voyager crew to help him.

Imagine that his warriors complain that the holographic characters are not worthy prey. So the leader asks Harry for the programs with the most cunning prey. We see fun clips of them repeatedly conquering every foe. So Harry says that he needs help to create better characters, so they get one or more crew members to design new characters, but because the crew has access to the program, they covertly turn characters who are Hirogen allies into traitors. For example, they could manipulate Belana's Nazi boyfriend so that we see a glitch to indicate his change and then he either helps Belana, tricks a Hirogen or directly kills a Hirogen. When the Hirogen realize this, they will not know who is friend or foe. The lack of control could scare some of them and energize others into loving this holodeck experience.

There could be two dissenting Hirogen, one who remains dissenting and one who grows to see the potential. When the dissenter kills the leader, the other one kills him and becomes the new leader who Janeway gives the technology to. There could even be a Hirogen civil war between those who agree and disagree with the leader. Something more interesting than playing WWII resistance fighters for two episodes.

Alternatively, the unseen crew that is separated in "jail" could covertly gain holodeck access but they don't want to simply turn off the holodecks because there's too many Hirogen in control of the ship, so they start to use the holodeck against the Hirogen in ways that are subtle enough that they do not all discover the ruse and end it. Ex. Could have doors and walls change. If a Hirogen walks into a room alone he suddenly will find that there is no more door or window, he is in a room that he cannot get out of. The resistance fighters need to lure and isolate the Hirogen one by one so that they do not become aware and fight back. They win through cunningly applied tech, not just blowing up a controller.

However, the room idea would enrage and humiliate them. Better to have them each feel beaten in battle, even if they are stunned and placed in stasis instead of killed. Later, the new leader could say to the offended Hirogen. "Did you learn more by winning or by dying?! You won't make that fatal mistake again. These holodecks will make us better warriors because we can experience more in one lifetime that we ever could wandering the galaxy."

The covert changes could be widely varied to create humor:

• The Kligons invite the Hirogen to use bat'leth. The Klingon bat'leth are razor sharp and slice the arm off a Hirogen, but when a Hirogen picks up that same bat'leh, it becomes blunt and bounces off the Klingon.

• Program the Hirogen weapons to misfire, miss-aim, or even explode in their hands but the resistance's arms to never miss, maybe even shoot phasers.

• Have the Hirogen discover beer and then turn that into a disabling drink that incapacitates them.

• There are so many many possibilities. Better to have some new unique humor than to only rely on the Doctor's quirks and Harry's mistakes.

Major missed opportunity: The Klingons. Klingons love battle and honor. Hirogens love the hunt and respect their pray but seem to have no honor. Should they respect each other for their similarities or hate each other for their differences? There should be at least one great conversation between the two, perhaps as they battle. Ex. A Hirogen slaughters a defenseless Klingon, so a Klingon objects. "You have no honor!" and the Hirogen quips back "All that matters is the win. He was weak." Then they fight even stronger.

Beyond these major changes, it's always annoying when the crew doesn't do the obvious. Inexplicable why we never see any Hirogen in the Klingon holodeck. Why did it take so long to bring Klingons to the aid of the resistance? That had me puzzled until they finally did it in a blitz where it barely mattered. They could have been working together with the crew for a long time. The Kingons holding off the Nazi soldiers while the crew does the technical solution.

The Hirogen's reason for using the crew in the holodeck was not satisfying and goes against the goal of moving to holodeck hunts. The leader says that it is so that he can learn about humans but he's not seen observing them in the holodeck. Need more thought as to why that is necessary or better. The obvious reason is that most holodeck characters are not designed to be hunters, prey or fighters. Most are simply foils for the crew to interact with in leisure or discussion.

The Hirogen leader's admiration of humans for surviving WWII was simply silly. In a war between humans, a human will win. It can provide insight into how humans persevere but no prize for the human race surviving. He could have admired them from reading Voyager's logs but saying "Your greatest battle was with the Borg, but you have no holodeck simulation of this battle! Why?!" This would enable an exploration of how we think differently. Janeway or Harry could create a Borg program for them, but one in which the Hirogens cannot win. Then there could be quips about such as "Nice to have the Borg on our side for a change."

So much potential for an interesting episode. Wasted.

The novelty wears off.

[thevacinstaller · 5/10 · 23 November 2021]

In 'fun' episodes like this I need a character or a moment to hang onto and in this episode we have the forward momentum of plot within a WW2 setting. That's just not enough for me. Maybe this one needed a guest star in the french resistance? They discover that they are a holodeck character and we get a moment to reflect upon? You know what ---- I would even settle for an American soldier holodeck character that saves the day through heroic sacrifice .... Sure, it's cliche but it's something!

I enjoyed Jeri Ryan's singing. Um. The costumes? I need more to work with here Voyager.