‘LEARNING CURVE’ (VOY)
Please feel free to comment on my review.
‘Learning Curve’ is the finale to Season 1 of ‘Voyager’. I’m not sure if this was intended to be the finale, considering that more episodes were made for Season 1 and they ended up being in Season 2.
I think that ‘The 37’s’, the first episode of Season 2 of ‘Voyager’, was meant to be the finale to Season 1. That would make sense, considering how all the Voyager crew decided to stay on at the end of that.
But no, ‘Learning Curve’ is the finale to Season 1 and is actually the fifteenth episode in ‘Voyager’. Season 1 is a shorter season compared to the other seasons of ‘Voyager’, which have 26 episodes. 🙂
Season 1 of ‘Voyager’ is even shorter than Season 1 of ‘DS9’. Whilst Season 1 of ‘Voyager’ has 15 episodes, Season 1 of ‘DS9’ has 19. It’s very intriguing the first two seasons of those shows are short.
Anyway, in ‘Learning Curve’, Tuvok comes across a crewman, Armand Schultz as Kenneth Dalby, who becomes insubordinate to him after replacing a faulty bio-neural gel pack aboard the Voyager ship.
Dalby was once a Maquis. Tuvok discusses the situation with Janeway. She understands his frustration; but argues the Maquis have never been trained on Starfleet procedures and principles. 😦
Soon, a class is organised to teach some Starfleet protocols to several Maquis crewmembers. Tuvok is the person to teach the class, since he was a former Starfleet Academy instructor back on Earth. 🙂
There are four class members, including Dalby himself, a Bajoran male – Kenny Morris as Gerron, a human female – Catherine MacNeal as Mariah Henley, and a Bolian male – Derek McGrath as Chell.
I’ve checked up on Chell and apparently, he returns to be in the Season 7 episode ‘Repression’. He also becomes one of the Hazard Team in ‘Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force’ and ‘Star Trek: Elite Force II’.
Incidentally, those are video games. Derek McGarth voiced Chell in ‘Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force’ but strangely enough not for ‘Star Trek: Elite Force II’. I knew the name Chell was familiar in this story.
Tuvok’s attempts to teach the class are unsuccessful at first, especially when the trainees walk out of their first lesson, despite Tuvok’s orders to stay. Dalby tells Chakotay their side on what happened. 😐
He also makes it clear he wants to do things the Maquis way. This leads to Chakotay punching Dalby, saying that if he wants to do things the Maquis way, so will he in using violence to enforce discipline.
With that point made, the students return to Tuvok’s training sessions. But Tuvok finds it a struggle to train the four students, becoming frustrated that they’re unwilling to adapt to Starfleet protocols.
He shares this with Neelix whilst in the mess hall. Neelix soon suggests that perhaps Tuvok is the one who is being inflexible in his strict adherence to procedure and perhaps he should ‘bend the rules’. 🙂
Tuvok attempts to get to know Dalby socially when they’re in the holodeck playing pool. This doesn’t work out very well, especially when Dalby shares his grim past, which lead him to become a Maquis.
Whilst all this is going on, it’s discovered that the bioneural circuitry which runs many of Voyager’s crucial systems has become infected with a disease. It’s coming from some cheese that Neelix made.
Examining the cheese in sick bay, the Doctor discovers the only way to kill the disease from the cheese is to heat up the bioneural gel packs. It can be done by running the ship’s warp core…at 80%.
The Voyager crew do this, but it causes many power conduits to be blown out. The crew also suffer heat exhaustion. Thankfully, the disease is soon gone and Voyager’s warp core is restored to normal.
Meanwhile, Tuvok’s class during that time turns out for the better, especially when he bends the rules by saving a crewmember’s life – Gerron. Tuvok gains a lot of respect from Dalby by this stage. 🙂
Incidentally, B’Elanna Torres says, “Get the cheese to sickbay” in the episode. This happens to be a summary by fans on what they think of ‘Voyager’ so far. Doesn’t sound like high praise reading that.
Despite that, ‘Learning Curve’ is a decent episode to finish Season 1 of ‘Voyager’ on. It’s interesting how Tuvok copes in training four Maquis members to learn Starfleet protocols and ‘bends the rules’.
On Disc 5 of the ‘Star Trek: Voyager – Season 1’ DVD, there are the documentaries ‘Braving the Unknown: Season One’, ‘Voyager Time Capsule: Kathryn Janeway’, ‘The First Captain: Bujold’, ‘Cast Reflections: Season One’, ‘On Location with the Kazons’, ‘Red Alert: Visual Effects Season One’, ‘Launching Voyager on the Web’, ‘Real Science with André Bormanis’ and ‘Star Trek: The Experience’. There’s also a photo gallery on Season 1 and some ‘Lost Transmissions from the Delta Quadrant’.
On Disc 6 of the ‘Star Trek: Voyager – Season 1’ DVD, there are two bonus episodes from ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’, including ‘Arena’ and ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’. There’s also a ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ DVD trailer and a ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ DVD trailer.
‘Learning Curve’ (VOY) rating – 8/10
‘Star Trek: Voyager – Season 1’ DVD rating – 8/10
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