It starts off as a great premise - the various crew members, curiosity piqued, participate in a holonovel originally designed as a training exercise in which Chakotay stages a Maquis mutiny.
Not only is it interesting to see the various scenarios play out like a super fancy video game, we get a real, grounded version of the holodeck instead of the magical cure-all it's normally used as.
When the popularity of the novel spreads to the crew, wet blanket Tuvok wants to shut it down until Voyager's own Bart Simpson - Tom Paris - convinces him otherwise. From there, the episode seems like it's going to take another interesting turn in which Paris and Tuvok debate how to approach writing the rest of their holonovel. Thinly veiled, but it's always nice when the writers get to have a voice on the show of their own. So Tuvok opens up the re-write file and then...
Voyager.
So many interesting episodes up to this point on the show have been ruined by quick fixes, deus ex machina, or the Doctor completely fabricating science that never existed before just to end the episode. This one had so much potential until the insufferable Seska takes control of the holodeck and the whole ship.
Wait, isn't she dead? Yep, for a year now. But hell hath no fury like a Cardassian woman posing as a Bajoran woman scorned, as Seska planned a little bit of revenge on her ex-boyfriend Chakotay and his new friends. Eventually.
What was interesting prior to the "stakes" is that there were no stakes in this episode. Just fictional characters in a fictional setting having very real conversations about temptation, ship gossip, creative approaches and what equates to cabin fever.
Disappointing, as the stakes aren't really stakes - you know Paris and Tuvok aren't going to die, so what's the point? We've seen this story literally hundreds of times on various Star Trek series, but so rarely have we seen our characters just being people for a whole episode. Maybe it's unfair to judge the show by 2013 standards instead of those of 1997, but it just hurts to see them get so close to something great before deciding to take the easy way out.
Probably a 7/10, but bringing back the intolerable Seska long after her death knocks it down a point.
