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Mike

Prime Factors

What rating would you give 'Prime Factors'?  

4 members have voted

  1. 1. What rating would you give 'Prime Factors'?

    • 5. It's great, I loved it!
      1
    • 4. It's good
      2
    • 3. It's average
      1
    • 2. It's not that good
      0
    • 1. I hated it!
      0


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Production: 110

Season: 1 Episode: 10

DVD Disc: 3

Air Date: 03.20.95

Stardate: 48642.5

 

The crew beams aboard Gath Labin, a representative from Sikaris, a planet known for its outstanding hospitality. Gath invites the weary travelers to take a break from their duties on his homeworld. Knowing shore leave would do the crew good, Janeway orders Voyager to follow Gath back to Sikaris, where residents welcome them with open arms.

 

The Sikarians love to hear stories of other places and travels from visitors, and following Gath and Janeway's lead, the groups begin mixing. Kim is soon telling the Voyager story to a young woman named Eudana, who suggests they go somewhere else to be alone. Little does he realize she means a planet more than 40,000 light years away, thanks to the Sikarians' spatial trajector — technology which can "fold" space to allow long-distance travel in an instant.

 

The Voyager crew are overjoyed, but then learn the Sikarians have their own prime directive which prevents them from sharing their technology with less advanced races. One Sikarian, Jaret Otel, offers Kim the technology in exchange for more Voyager "stories." But Janeway feels it's unethical to accept the technology from anyone other than Gath, the Sikarian leader. She decides to ask him to send Voyager as far as he can in exchange for the "stories." He refuses but invites Janeway and the crew to stay on his planet instead. The meeting ends on a sour note, and Janeway realizes they are no longer welcome.

 

After that, B'Elanna, Carey and Seska conspire to ignore Janeway's orders and take Jaret's offer — and are shocked when Tuvok shows up to make the exchange and sacrifice his career if caught. The gamble is for naught when they find the trajector is incompatible with Federation technology. Janeway finds herself reprimanding not only her new hot-headed Engineer but her old and logical friend Tuvok. The Vulcan explains he sacrificed his own career so the crew could get home without Janeway compromising her ethics, but she rejects that "logic" and asks her confidant to never let her down again.

 

Cast:

Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway

Robert Beltran as Chakotay

Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris

Ethan Phillips as Neelix

Robert Picardo as The Doctor

Tim Russ as Tuvok

Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Jennifer Lien as Kes

 

Guest Cast:

Ronald Guttman as Gath

Yvonne Suhor as Eudana

Andrew Hill Newman as Jaret

Martha Hackett as Seska

Josh Clark as Carey

 

Creative Staff:

Director: Les Landau

Teleplay By: Michael Perricone % Gregg Elliot

Story By: David R. George III & Eric A. Stillwell

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Another slap-in-the-face episode for the crew of the lost ship, Voyager. Their hope to get home gets shot down once more which must be very distressing for them. Who's the science officer on Voyager anyway? It seems that B'Elanna and The Doctor split the science between them. Anyway, this was a very enjoyable episode.

 

4

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Close as I can tell, Mr. Kim is supposed to be the science officer. But maybe I'm mistaken. Paris at helm, Tuvok at tactical, I figured that made Kim science.

 

I really enjoyed the about-face. Not often, aside from the humans of Enterprise, do we see the Federation as the society from which technology must be withheld. Even the mere request that it be used without giving it over would have been great. But it really came about well with the double-crossing and the underhandedness. Great acting from Mulgrew at the end with her chewing out to Torres and Tuvok.

 

4.

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It's not a bad episode, but the story is kind of lame. The biggest thing that I didn't like was that they were trading technology for stories?! What kind of people have huge laws against giving technology away but some would trade it for a good story? Kind of lame if you ask me. Some parts were interesting, such as the device itself that could transport people to different planets. It is an overall ok episode that has a story that just isn't believable.

 

3 1/2 out of 5

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