Throwback Thursday: Voyager’s The Haunting of Deck Twelve (Season 6, EP 25)

A haunting, in Star Trek? That’s right, so let’s find out what madness this episode of Voyager has in store for us on this edition of Throwback Thursday.

The second review in our new Throwback Thursday series is the Star Trek: Voyager episode from season 6, episode 25 the Haunting on Deck Twelve. Strange and mysterious happenings are going on in Voyager. Does that mean the ship has a g-g-g-g-ghosts!? No, they have an alien. It’s always an alien. Not unless they do Star Trek: Supernatural will we ever get the supernatural and even then it’ll more than likely just be aliens. It’s always aliens. Mulder was right.

The episode features an alien native to a nebula that Voyager accidentally destroys due to their space-fracking. Can’t even make that up if I wanted to, it’s too stupid.

Captain Janeway and the crew eventually huddle away until the nebula-alien tries to communicate with them. Janeway then brokers a deal that they’ll take the alien back to a new nebula where it can live, grow and cause civil disputes with its nebula neighbors. By the time the episode starts, the alien has essentially been hanging out on deck 12 for months while Janeway finds it a new nebula. Probably one with coffee in it.

The episode is told via a story from Neelix, aka the chairman of Starfleet’s very own Midnight Society. He’s been tasked by Seven of Nine to take care of the kids emotionally until the ship returns to full power. See, with the ship not being able to function fully, these kids (all former Borg drones) are unable to enter their regeneration cycle. So Neelix tells the kids of the alien on board, and why their bedtime was delayed. The episode is a solid affair and offers plenty in the way of “alien miscommunications”.

Those universal translators are just useless.

The best parts of the episode are when the former Borg-kids just strat trashing Naomi Wildman. All Borg are just Regina George’s waiting to go from assimilation to character assassination. While hilarious to see the kids bash on Neelix and Naomi for no real reason, their presence reminds me about how much more interesting some episodes would’ve been if the Borg kids were around for more than just a handful of episodes.

Acting: Neelixis was always a great orator, and Icheb and Mezoti were welcomed additions to the cast. Too bad Mezoti (Marley McClean) was let go from the show after just one more episode. Icheb (Manu Intiraymi) always carried his scenes beautifully. character.

Grade: 5/5

Writing: It was an entire episode where the crew of Voyager was haunted by swamp gas. This is also the only other appearance of Tal Celes, one of the characters introduced in Good Shepard. She was such an underutilized

Grade: 3/5

Design: The swamp gas looked like a less impressive version of Ghostwriter. Word.

Grade: 2/5

Special Effects: There were some great shots, like when Neelix is about to eat the worst ghost stew imaginable but mostly it was just poorly done gas effects. OOoooOOooOOoOOO Spookey.

Grade: 2/5

Enjoyability: If there was any chance of it actually being ghosts, this would be a five out of five. Yet, the framing device felt more forced than anything and it didn’t land with me. It was obviously an alien, so to pander and pretend otherwise was beneath the writers. Even the fake-fakeout at the end when Neelix claimed he was just making up the whole thing was obviously forced. Neelix doesn’t lie, especially to kids; he said so himself to start the episode.

Grade: 3/5

Overall: 15/25 (60%)

– As a huge Voyager fan, I feel like there was more here they could’ve done. Maybe hold off on this episode until Halloween time and have the kids all decked out for a 24th century Halloween celebration. Instead of it feeling spooky and fun, it felt more like a straight to DVD kid’s special with nary a freight to be found.

Other than Neelix’s cooking.