YMMV / Star Trek: Voyager S2 E26, S3 E1: "Basics"

• Bellisario's Maxim: The Doctor finds himself transported into empty space and staring at the ship from outside of it. This is a funny gag, but it doesn't make any sense, since the Doctor's body is just a projection from holographic emitters within sick bay. He wouldn't have any way to see the ship from his new perspective because there are no sensors floating in space looking back at the ship.
• Squick: Tierna peeling off his big toenail. Eugh.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • No one missed the Kazon, let's face it, but Seska was effective as someone rebelling against the Starfeet/Maquis alliance and her death was considered anticlimactic.
  • Lon Suder gave a bit of a darker edge to the crew and could've been an effective 'wild card' sort of character, but it was not to be. He was a literal sociopath that the crew was stuck with because they couldn't just drop him off at a Federation penal colony. He was a Betazed with a mind strong enough to cause Tuvok problems. Further, he was aware of his mental illness and was working hard to improve himself. With Dourif's skilled acting, you really feel sympathy for him, essentially an axe murderer. He was quite a compelling character. However, he did have an excellent final story where he was able to save Voyager and thus redeem himself.
  • Even the baby having its paternity determined to be from Culluh instead of Chakotay falls into this - it would have introduced something that would have given Chakotay more to do in future seasons, and addressed the very real likelihood of Voyager becoming a generational ship in the course of its journey back to the Alpha Quadrant.
  • Likewise, Hogan is killed off in the course of the teaser of Part 2, which effectively put an end to almost any efforts to build up the non-credits cast as regular recurring cast (in the same way as characters like Rom, Nog, Morn, Martok, et cetera, over on Deep Space Nine). Though Wildman appeared in a few more episodes (and her still-unnamed in this episode daughter in quite a few more), the only real recurring Voyager crewman after this point was Vorik, introduced in season three, and had only one more appearance in four seasons than Hogan had overall.

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