Voyager Re-Watch: The Raven

Today's StarTrek.com spam email informed me that it was National Coffee Day and that I should celebrate like Captain Janeway. Oh, I already was:

I was actually up a little earlier than usual and I hope this extra waking hour in my day means I'll get more done for the blog. After all, I'm lagging behind. There are about 100 still to go and only 93 days left in the year. I really hate all the time I missed this spring. Oh well. This only means you'll get a more focused, intense reading experience (I can only hope) from here on out!

So I re-watched The Raven. This is one of those episodes that, pretty much every time I watch it, it immediately thereafter vacates my brain. Where does it go? Why won't it stick in there?

Re-watching it I actually thought, this is a pretty good episode, why do I always forget about it? But now here it is, two days later, and I can barely remember it. I think a lot of it is The Raven's fairly quiet, personal nature. The whole thing revolves around Seven experiencing upsetting flashbacks to the time she was taken by the collective. Eventually, she follows a homing signal to her family's crashed ship (The Raven) where she has a bit of a freak out and Tuvok helps her through it before they escape an attack from some grumpy aliens.

Boop.

There's plenty to love here. The grumpy aliens I mentioned are an interesting addition all by themselves. Usually Voyager runs into either goodies or baddies in the Delta Quadrant and not a whole lot in between. These folks, while open to Voyager traversing their space, are xenophobic and unwavering in their attitudes about territory and cultural pollution. Janeway plays ball with them right up until they get between her and Seven and then... I don't know... sports analogy something something--anyway Janeway gets some nice badass time and Jeri Ryan gets to have a bit of a stretch as she tears through the wreckage of her character's girlhood home.

All of this is tied together with a raven-themed flashback device. Seven sees DaVinci's flying contraption, sees a vision of a raven, sees her memory of the Borg etc etc. While the device isn't bad at all, it does seem a bit unnecessary. Sort of like it muddies the waters? I don't know. I'll think about it again the next time I'm re-watching these--if I can remember.