Episode 1x04 - "Raven's Shadow, Part II"

[Serris]

Sunday, March 26th, 2017 @ 3:00 PM EST / 8:00 PM GMT

The Amarante remained in orbit of the Raven's crash site, observing the Borg debris field. Officers who were injured in the previous episode were finally returning to duty. Deveau and Quinn identified the signal emanating from the surface as identical to an anti-Borg virus encountered by Voyager in 2375. It appeared to be responsible for causing the destruction of the Borg ships.

A scan of the surface caused all of the ship's systems to lock up, each panel displaying the symbol Ω. Captain Tolendo quickly released the ship's controls and ordered the newly healthy Lieutenant Renner to back the ship a safe distance away before retreating to his ready room, leaving a bewildered and confused bridge crew to speculate as to what had just happened.

Omega, the most threatening substance in the galaxy. But was it really here? The Captain mulled over the sensor logs, noting the lack of any subspace distortions consistent with the presence of Omega. Sensor readings from the surface were also unable to identify exactly how many molecules there were. Suddenly, realization hit Tolendo, just as a transwarp conduit opened in front of the ship.

A Tactical Cube emerged, pausing to take a look at the Amarante before suddenly disengaging and charging towards the planet at high speed. As it entered orbit, it exhibited odd power fluctuations before spontaneously exploding. In that moment, Tolendo's speculations were confirmed -- the Omega readings lured the Borg to the planet, while the signal from the surface disrupted their systems and destroyed them.

And then came Species 6339, the Octanti, firing on the Amarante and damaging the starboard nacelle. Wilcox was able to disable the ship and force a dialogue, albeit not a very productive one. The Octanti demanded that the Federation cease meddling in its attempts to destroy the Borg, threatening to set a collision course to destroy the Amarante. While a tractor beam neutralized that threat, the detection of two more Octanti warp signatures entering the system forced the Captain to withdraw, the Amarante limping out of the system at low warp.

Captain Tolendo stood the ship down from red alert and contacted the B'omar Sovereignty to update them on the situation, while Bug Chef was secure in the knowledge that its natural laxatives were ensuring the continued digestive health of the crew.

[StringTheorist]

 While not a ten-out-of-ten perfect experience, I still feel this more than makes up for the difficulty faced by Part 1 of Raven's Shadow. The pacing felt much better this time around, and bug chef once again delivered in counter-balancing the more serious Borg plot. I also really enjoyed the fake-out with the Omega directive. I truly was expecting to be hunting down Omega particles until the truth was revealed. All in all, I'd give Part 2 of Raven's Shadow 4.5 Stars.

[Shoot]

I really did enjoy tonight, and thanks for the science stuff. Solid 5.

[Scott Archer]

Late: 35 minutes
Run time: 1:28:53
4/5


This has been the shortest episode yet and very much felt like the ending of part 1 and not it's own episode.
On a more 'technical' aspect, we started 35 minutes late and whilst there were some good reasons for that, it might have been worth running some parts of the story that didn't need Tolendo but due to the nature of the episode, there wasn't all that much you could have done.


As a conclusion to part 1, the story line was very very good and I'm loving all of the Voyager references you keep adding in which enhances the SRP. As String said, the Omega directive thing was a brilliant idea and well executed I thought. This would have been very close to a 5/5 episode if part 1 had worked out and the content of both episodes had been in one.