19:06
"The Killing GAME"? You think this is a game? Killin' is my business, ladies - and bus-iness is goooood! This is a review of the two-part Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Killing Game." If you have not seen this episode, and you don't want to know which side wins World War II, be warned: spoilers beyond this point! Voyager is taken over by a band of ruthless aliens obsessed with hunting prey - will the crew be able to break free of the World War II holodeck simulation they've been forced into and fend off this dire threat?. Yes. Will it take as long as the actual World War II?
My watch says no, but my subjective experience while watching it is saying something else. We open on Captain Janeway, made up to look like a Klingon, fighting with this guy, a Hirogen named Karr. Karr stabs Janeway to win the fight, then takes her to sickbay, where this Hirogen doctor patches her up and assures Karr that her neural interface, which makes her believe she is whoever she is programmed to be, is functioning just like it's supposed to. Karr tells the doctor to have Janeway sent to Holodeck one, where he is about to start a new simulation based on World War II that he thinks is gonna be super fun.
Now we're in the World War II holodeck program, in a French cafe, and Seven of Nine is a singer, Janeway is the proprietor of the establishment, and Tuvok is the bartender. They all think they are their characters in this simulation, thanks to those neural interfaces. Two Hirogen - Karr and his second-in-command Turanj - walk in dressed as Nazi officers. Janeway walks over to Tuvok like "Let's make nice with the new Nazi commandant. Send him over a bottle of wine." Tuvok's like, "The '29?" Janeway says, "Nnh, I hate to waste good wine. Give him the Chateau Picard."
Seven finishes her song and Turanj demands that she sing some more. When she refuses, he threatens to adorn the bulkhead of his ship with her bones. Karr steps in like "Ixnay on the ipshay, dude, you're ruining it! Stay in character! We're not Hirogen on a spaceship, we're Nazis in a Cafe!" Karr tells everyone else to get lost, and he and Janeway have a quick chat. He mentions the local resistance to the Nazi occupation, and Janeway's like "Resistance? What's that? I've never heard of it. I'm certainly not a part of it, much less the leader of it - where are you even getting this? It's ridiculous!"
After the Nazis leave, Janeway, Seven and Tuvok talk about how they're in the resistance, and Seven wants to start killing Nazis, but Janeway wants to keep laying low, gathering intelligence and passing it secretly to the Americans. Seven leaves, and Janeway and Tuvok discuss the possibility that Seven is trying to get the resistance to turn violent because she's actually a Nazi infiltrator. Janeway's like, "We'll watch her and if we have to we'll, ya know, kill her or whatever." In following scenes we meet a couple more members of Janeway's resistance group - Neelix, the town baker, who delivers coded messages to Janeway from the Allies, and B'Elanna, who operates the radio and who is also great with child thanks to her
relationship with one of the local Nazis. The latest message from the Allies asks for the resistance's help in disabling the Nazi's communications. To do that, they'd have to blow up the radio transmitter at Nazi headquarters. But they don't know where it is. So, B'Elanna goes there the next day to pay a visit to her fascist baby daddy, and while she's there she makes note of the dude sitting in the corner working the radio. Mission accomplished! Later, Turanj and one of the other Hirogen are walking down the street when they see Neelix passing by on his bicycle. Turanj is like "I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick of this simulation. I wanna start killing people for real like now. Hey,
there's Neelix, let's kill him." And they draw their guns and start shooting. Seven of Nine happens to be nearby, and she pulls her own gun and starts shooting back, but eventually the Hirogen shoot them both and take them to sickbay. The Doctor is in sickbay, and he's not happy with all the injuries the Hirogen have been inflicting on the crew since they arrived and took over the ship. Karr walks in and learns that it was Turanj who shot Neelix and Seven, then he tells the Doctor to patch them up again and send Neelix into the other holodeck that's running the Klingon simulation, but send Seven back to the World War II program.
On the bridge of Voyager, we see that Harry has been forced to work for the Hirogen, and Karr is having him expand the holodecks beyond their original locations into other parts of the ship, so he can have even bigger and more involved simulations, I guess. Harry's like "That's not a good idea," but Karr says "Just fucking do what I tell you. Jesus." In the corridor a bit later, Harry arranges a secret meeting with the Doctor, who can be transferred out of sickbay thanks to the Hirogen having holo-emitters installed all over Voyager. Together, they hatch a plan to
reprogram one of Seven of Nine's Borg implants to turn off her neural interface, so once she's back inside the holodeck she'll remember who she is. Then, she can help them to disable everyone else's neural interfaces so they'll all remember who they are and can fight back against the Hirogen. Meanwhile, Karr has a talk with Turanj and he's like, "Man, you've gotta stop trying to merc the prey like that. Your lust for the kill has blinded you to what I'm trying to do here. I don't want our people to just go on wandering through the galaxy hunting other species for the sake of
it - I want us to have a culture, an identity. If we can figure out how to duplicate the technology of these holodecks on other Hirogen ships, then we can hunt endless prey whenever we want, but we can also start building an actual future for our civilization!" Turanj isn't terribly enthusiastic about what Karr is proposing, but he seems willing to go along with it. The Doctor explains the plan to Seven in sickbay before she's sent back into the World War II program. Once her neural interface turns off, she's a little awkward because she doesn't know anything about World War II,
and her attempts to fake it only increase Tuvok's suspicion that she's an enemy spy. Nonetheless, Janeway still brings her along on their mission to plant a bomb in the Nazi headquarters. Meanwhile, the American troops, led by Chakotay and Paris, are getting ready to move into the French town. Janeway and Seven sneak into the Nazi headquarters. Janeway knocks out the radio operator, and while she listens in on some incoming Nazi intelligence, Seven opens an access panel to the holodeck controls and starts working on her part of the plan to turn off all the neural interfaces. Janeway catches her in the act and thinks she's
sending a secret message to the Nazis. Janeway is just about to shoot Seven when Harry and the Doctor complete their parts of the plan on the outside, and Janeway's interface is deactivated. She comes to her senses and asks Seven what the hell is going on. Because the Doctor got caught by a Hirogen, he was only able to deactivate Janeway's interface, not everyone else's. Janeway and Seven escape the Nazi Headquarters building just before an Allied artillery strike destroys it. The explosion is so massive that it blows a hole in the holodeck simulation, revealing the actual decks of Voyager beyond where the holodeck has been expanded to. The Americans get into town just before this,
and Chakotay's like "It's a secret Nazi compound hidden behind the headquarters building! Let's move in!" And as the Americans begin approaching the breach in the simulation, we get our "To Be Continued" title, but lucky you, you don't have to wait another week to find out what I think of the whole thing, because we're diving straight into part two right now! As part two begins, the corridors of Voyager are being invaded by holographic troops. Harry can't shut it down because the holodeck controls are offline. He can shut down all the holodecks by triggering a power surge, but that would damage them,
and Karr doesn't want that - he's all about the holodecks. Turanj is like "Can we at least start killing people now?" But Karr doesn't want that, either - the Voyager crew needs to survive so they can make repairs to the ship. Karr tells Turanj to find Janeway and bring her here. Janeway and Seven sneak back into the French cafe using an access tunnel, and they find Chakotay and Paris along with Tuvok and B'Elanna. Paris and B'Elanna's characters had a romance before the war, and this is the first time they've seen each other in years. Janeway and Chakotay sneak out of
this holodeck and into the other one, where Neelix is getting drunk with some Klingons. While they're doing that, G.I. Tom Paris catches Harry Kim in the hallway. Harry insists he's an American, and Tom says "Oh yeah? Prove it - if Betty Grable came around that corner, what part of her would you be objectifying the most?" Harry's like, "Um. her legs?" Tom puts his gun down and says "That obvious lucky guess just saved your life!" Janeway and Chakotay find Neelix in the other holodeck, then the Doctor shows up and they talk about how to disable the neural interfaces on the rest of the crew. The Doctor says that control
for the interfaces is routed through a computer terminal in sickbay. Janeway's like, "Sweet, we'll blow it up." Janeway and Chakotay take off, leaving the Doctor there with Klingon Neelix. So they blow up the control panel in sickbay, but in the process Janeway gets shot in the leg by one of the Hirogen. But, now the neural interfaces are all disabled and the Voyager crewmembers who were in the World War II simulation remember who they are now. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Neelix convince the Klingons in their holodeck to go over to the World War
II holodeck and help to fight the Nazis. Meanwhile, Janeway has been captured and brought to the ready room to speak with Karr. "Your holodeck technology would be the salvation of my people," Karr tells her. "We could do our hunting in simulations instead of roaming the galaxy constantly for prey. We could build a proper society." Janeway says "If all you want is our holodeck, why have you been torturing my people by hunting us over and over in simulations all this time?" Karr's like, "To explore your culture, your behavior, and your history - since when is learning such a crime? You know what I
learned about you? You're a resilient species. You're capable of change. You've survived brutal episodes in your own history, like that World War II." Janeway says "Let's make a deal - call a ceasefire and give me my ship back, and I'll give you what you need to build your own holodecks." "You'd make that kind of a deal with me after what I've done to you?" "Dude, I've made deals with the Borg - I do not give a shit." Karr agrees and calls the ceasefire, but his second-in-command Turanj has been radicalized by one of the holographic Nazis - B'Elanna's baby daddy - who tells him,
"Hey, man, we're the master race! No one can deny our destiny! We have to stay and fight!" And Turanj is like, "You're right, make-pretend person!" Turanj surprises Janeway and Karr while they're working on a way to shut down the holodecks. Turanj shoots and kills Karr, then tells Janeway to run - she's his prey, and he wants to make it sporting. So, Janeway, still selling that gunshot wound from earlier, limps off as fast as she can. And, yada, Janeway outsmarts Turanj and ends up killing him, shooting him and knocking him off the edge of a corridor down onto the street of the simulated
French town. Harry overloads the holodecks and all the holographic characters disappear, and Chakotay's like "Yay, we win, let's go!" and they all leave. Later, Janeway informs us through a Captain's log the surviving Hirogen have agreed to a truce and will be leaving Voyager. Before they go, Janeway gives the new Hirogen leader a hologram lunchbox and says "Here, I promised your dead former leader that I'd give you what you need to make your own holodecks." The Hirogen is like "Nah, I don't want it. I'm not really a gamer,
I was only doing it because my boss was so into it." Janeway insists - "Take it as a trophy. Hang it on your wall, or use it to create a new future for your people, whatever you want." The Hirogen takes it, and then he and the rest of the Hirogen leave Voyager, and that's the end. One of the most frequent comments I get on these episode reviews, especially when it's a review of an episode that didn't really work for me, is "This should have been a two-parter." I often disagree, and find that to be a glib, lazy critique - when something isn't working, the solution is very rarely to make more of it.
This time, I'm going to risk sounding glib and lazy myself while making the opposite of that critique for "The Killing Game": this should have been a one-parter! There are some neat ideas here. The concept of doing a World War II episode is solid, generally speaking, as is the idea that the crew is being forced to act out the parts of characters in the simulation. The villains, the Hirogen, expanding the holodeck beyond its normal confines and into the corridors of the ship is also a cool idea, and allows for the visual of the simulation having a huge hole torn in it that reveals
multiple decks of the ship on the other side - that's a really cool image, I like that. Unfortunately, the episode plays like the creators decided ahead of time that this was going to be a two-parter and then wrote the script in order to fill that amount of time, instead of writing a story that actually needs that amount of time to be told properly. The first half is good enough - not great, but good enough that if they had wrapped up the story there, had Janeway and Seven free the rest of the crew from the neural interfaces and take back the
ship, I'd probably be giving it a more positive review right now - mixed, but leaning positive. We jump right into the action - the Hirogen have already taken over the ship and pressed the crew into service as their prey, there's almost no time wasted with exposition, we're just supposed to watch and figure out what's going on as the episode proceeds, and that works pretty well. The two Hirogen characters that we're supposed to give a shit about - Karr, the leader, and Turanj, the dubious second-in-command - are well drawn and interesting. And the World War II scenes at least
look good, even if nothing all that compelling is happening in them. The wardrobe in particular is fantastic - everyone looks great in their vintage 1940s era costumes. Janeway cuts an especially striking figure in her white suit, and Seven looks suitably glamorous as the club's star attraction. But instead of a resolution, at the end of the hour we're left to dangle, and once part two begins, it's clear that there's really not much of importance left to do here, so the second half is filled with dull procedure. The characters undertake a
series of missions to accomplish various goals that will contribute to defeating the Hirogen, and it's all very dry, very task oriented, and not very interesting. This episode has the same problem as the previous episode I reviewed, "Heroes and Demons." In that episode, I felt like the decision to set most of it in a simulation of Beowulf felt arbitrary; this time, it feels like the decision to set the episode in a simulation of World War II feels arbitrary. The creators obviously wanted to do a World War II episode, so they did one,
but the story fails to say anything of note - or anything at all - about the war other than generic observations from Karr like "This war was one of your most difficult eras, but you survived." There's an obvious parallel between the Nazis and the Hirogen - just as the Nazis are occupying the French town in the holodeck program, the Hirogen are occupying Voyager. But does that parallel mean anything? Does it go anywhere? Do the writers use it to say anything? Nah, not really. It's just a thing. Karr repeatedly insists that he uses the hunt to learn about his prey, but is there any
indication that he learns anything important about humans other than "they're resilient"? He seems interested in the World War II simulation at the start of the episode, but does it affect him in any way? Doesn't seem to. He's a thoughtful guy, concerned about the future of his people - does playing the part of a Nazi, a cruel occupier, a leader in an army of murderers, affect him, or give him pause, or change him? Nope! Throughout the episode he's way more interested in the holodeck as a technology than in the specific content of the simulation he's running.
Several members of the Voyager crew are cast as members of the French resistance in the simulation. Several members of the Voyager crew are former members of the Maquis, a 24th century resistance movement named after a World War II era French resistance group. Does that ever come up? Nope! The episode tries to manufacture a more overt thematic connection between the Hirogen and the Nazis by having Turanj be persuaded by the Nazi captain's big speech about how they should ignore Karr's ceasefire order and continue fighting to remain faithful to who they are, but it's awfully thin soup, and far too little, far too late. At least the performances are good. The Voyager regulars all seem to be having fun with their
changes of costume and temporary changes of character. As Karr, Danny Goldring manages to sell me on his character's belief that the holodeck could mean the salvation of the Hirogen, even though I know intellectually that it's a contrivance to explain why Karr makes so many bad decisions when the Voyager crew begins to fight back. Goldring puts across Karr's earnest conviction that his people are lost and need to change, and that's important because if you don't buy that, then almost nothing else in the episode makes any sense.
Mark Deakins is good as Turanj, the guy who wants to quit playing games and get back to the real killin'. And J. Paul Boehmer is good as the Nazi captain - the character is nothing special, just a generic Nazi officer type, but Boehmer understands the assignment and plays him with the right combination of delusion, cruelty, and theatricality. The Hirogen are among the more fascinating original aliens created by the producers of Voyager. Their reptilian character design is convincingly intimidating, and their single-minded
obsession with hunting our heroes as prey makes it easy to grasp who they are while also leaving room for individuals to display more complexity - like Karr. Unfortunately, despite Karr's stated concerns about the future of his species and the ultimately self-destructive nature of their nomadic hunt-centered existence, this episode doesn't seem all that interested in the Hirogen as anything other than plot necessitated bad guys. Oh well. At least they look cool. "The Killing Game" was written by Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky. Braga was a co-executive producer of the series at this time who wrote or co-wrote dozens
of episodes across multiple Star Trek series and would go on to co-create the series Star Trek: Enterprise with Rick Berman, and Menosky was also a prolific Star Trek writer who, as I've mentioned before, is the guy who started the practice of sneaking the number 47 into episodes. Braga and Menosky were frequently a writing team on Voyager, co-writing episodes such as "Future's End," "Year of Hell," "Dark Frontier," "Equinox," "Unimatrix Zero" - two-parters that should have been one-parters were their specialty! Part one of "The Killing Game" was directed by David Livingston, part two by Victor Lobl. In addition to episodes of TNG, DS9, and Enterprise, Livingston directed twenty-eight
episodes of Voyager, including the aforementioned "Future's End" and "Equinox." Lobl directed one other Voyager episode, "The Omega Directive," but also directed several episodes of Deep Space Nine, including "For the Uniform" and "In the Pale Moonlight." Here, both directors do a good job with the period setting, bringing the French town convincingly to life, and staging a fairly plausible World War II movie, albeit one scaled for television. It looks great, it has some good performances, and it's built on concepts that are at least compelling in theory. But, it's bogged down in dry procedure, mostly indifferent to the deeper themes related to its simulated time and place,
and despite all the action and supposed drama, ultimately it's kind of a bore. For once, I can't fault the creators of Voyager for having too little ambition. The problem here is, they've got it in all the wrong places. I wish they'd been less interested in the scale and the length of their story, and more interested in its characters and what it all means. As it stands, far too much of "The Killing Game" plays like we're just killing time. Those are my thoughts on "The Killing Game." What do you think of this episode? Please share your
thoughts with me in the comments. If you'd like to support this channel - and I sure wish you would, if you can afford it - you can do so by becoming a patron at patreon.com/steveshives, becoming a channel member by clicking the join button, or by making a one-time gift by clicking the thanks button, or via PayPal or Venmo - links are in the description! Please join me next time as I wrap up this batch of holodeck episodes with a look at one more episode of Star Trek: Voyager, this one from season six: "Fair Haven." See you next time for that. Thanks for watching, and take care everybody!
