YMMV / Star Trek Voyager S 2 E 14 "Alliances"

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In early streaming versions of the episode, horns and applause are given when the leaders of the Kazon are introduced. It's only in these versions.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Torres's berating Hogan for daring to question Janeway's decisions in this episode, considering that said decisions will indirectly result in Hogan's death further down the line.
  • "I'll destroy this ship before I turn any part of it over to the Kazon." In "Basics", Janeway attempted and failed to destroy Voyager because the Kazon managed to disable the self-destruct, forcing her to surrender the ship instead.
• Misaimed Fandom: Janeway's speech at the end is sometimes contrasted with Sisko's famous I Did What I Had to Do speech from DS9's "In The Pale Moonlight" as proof that Janeway is the kind of example that Star Trek captains should follow, while Sisko isn't fit to wear the uniform. Except that, as Kate Mulgrew herself frequently complained, Janeway doesn't always follow Starfleet's principles no matter how hard it gets — Sisko, whatever else can be said about him, was a lot more consistent in acknowledging that sometimes something bad had to be done for the greater good — meaning that the speech can make her sound like a hypocrite rather than displaying her strongly-held moral beliefs.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Jonas is Archie Hopper/Jiminy Cricket from Once Upon a Time, or Kaiden Alenko from Mass Effect.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Noted by The Agony Booth in their review of "Threshold". In this episode, VOY really had a chance to shake up the status quo by building a new Federation of sorts: not like the one we all know, but much more rough around the edges. Unfortunately, it was dismissed in the last five minutes and set the tone for the final years of TNG-era Star Trek.
  • After the discord between the Federation and Maquis crewmembers had seemingly died down following the exposure of Seska in the previous season, it starts stirring up again here. Unfortunately, of the three people who actively voice their displeasure at Janeway's decisions, Chakotay seems to be won over by her speech at the end, Hogan meekly backs down after being given a "The Reason You Suck" Speech by Torres, and Jonas turns out to be a clearly villainous character who actively starts trying to sell Voyager out to the Kazon.
  • The episode seemingly by accident stumbles onto an aesop that you can't come into a decades-long conflict as an outsider, and expect to quickly generate a solution to all the complicated issues involved. Unfortunately, instead of having Janeway admit that she was naive for thinking she could quickly sort out the Kazon—Trabe conflict, she uses the resulting mess as a justification for the Prime Directive's mantra of never getting involved in such a situation — and even that's only very vaguely inferred by her referencing "the principles and ideals of the Federation" in her closing speech.
• Values Resonance:
  • The utter clusterfuck that results from Janeway's attempt to negotiate a peace between the Kazon and Trabe can be applied to any number of modern-day conflicts — including the Israeli—Palestinian conflict — where some people think that a third party can come in and create a quick, easy solution to a complicated situation that's been going on for decades and generated deep-seated hatreds on both sides.
  • Janeway's terminating negotiations with Culluh after he directs a sexist insult at Seska, and then throwing him off the ship when he tries to appeal to Tuvok to take over the negotiations. Sure, Culluh's actions would have been unacceptable even by the standards of when the episode first aired, but the decades since have seen the issue of women in a position of authority who have men try to go around them and deal directly with other men (even ones who are in a subordinate position) get increasing attention, making Janeway's smack-down of Culluh resonate all the more.

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