“Displaced”

"And after overpowering a Nyrian who has a fully-charged phaser, why don't Tom and B'Elanna pick up the phaser instead of simply walking away from it?"

As long as we're pointing out these odd bits of incompetent script, what happened to Chakotay in the final act? He completely disappeared from the episode after they discovered the portal out of the biosphere. Wouldn't it have been helpful to have him watching Janeway and Tuvok's backs while they were hacking into the Nyrian's computers?

Shoudn't the crew be more fascinated about a race of 'aliens' that look exactly like humans?

Can't get over the extraordinarily bad acting on the part of the female ensign assigned to security on the bridge. Awful awful awful, but so funny to watch, especially when she gets shot and slowy crumples to the floor while the other ensign tries to catch her. Funny stuff.

"Displaced," unfortunately, exemplifies the heart of what much of Voyager as a series has become: A plot-based show that tells nothing about the lone starship's true difficulties or identity, but rather a relatively brain-dead series of events that has no lasting effect or consequences.

Which is why, much as I like the characters and many of the episodes, in the end... it wasn't a well written show.

I found it entertaining. I liked the Bellana/Tom interaction. I get the impression the plot was built around Bellana/Tom dialogue more than anything else.

Tom was rather nonchalant at -20, presumably degrees C but I suppose it could be some other measurement scheme. (Although I believe Trek uniforms are supposed to have some kind of heating/cooling mechanism built in, I recall a TOS episode where the landing party were ordered to adjust their suit temperatures and they were simply wearing the standard stuff.)

I expect that Robert Beltran having a big chunk of running about on Voyager precluded fitting him into the other scenes.

I rather liked the conceit of Nyrian philosphy of prosecuting war without hurting the adversary, it's an amusing angle on the militarist, high handed moralising of the "peaceful" Federation. (Why don't Voyager do some of the beaming an adversary into a brig rather than shooting at them?)

Given the limitations of 50 minutes of TV, it worked well enough for me.

Part of the problem was that it's hard to perceive as threatening a group of people, some of them older men, running around in KKK uniforms of various hues. I imagine that looking nonthreatening was part of the Nyrians' desire to maintain the initial fiction that they were innocent victims of this mass-teleportation mishigoss, but once that was over, it was difficult to perceive them as intimidating bad guys.

The Nyrians should have appeared on Jay Leno's "Stupid Criminals" segment. Is the Voyager really more valuable to them than all the energy they will need to provide life support to 150 for the rest of their lives? It seems to me that they could have used all their resources to build their own starships, it would be a lot more efficient. And it always makes me laugh when Janeway says "They can't last long at -20°C we've got to get them out!" It's such a Southern California notion. The worst thing that could happen to a human at that temperature is getting frost bite after 30 minutes.

I gotta say though, the first Act was interesting - it's really too bad that in the second Act the original premise is sabotaged and turned into another Stupid Bad Guys Take Over the Ship scenario.

Ms Klink wrote mostly winners in her Trek career :

Resistance
Hippocratic Oath
Innocence
Remember
Blood Fever
The Omega Directive

but "Favourite Son" and this make her look like a total bore of a writer. I suppose her two-faced-ness is not nearly as egregious as Braga's, but it's a bit frustrating watching this bore of an episode. It's not bad enough to ruin the momentum which carries us to the next season (and includes enough character details, most especially with Paris and Torres, to justify its existence), but it's hardly worth repeated viewings.

2.5 stars is as high as I would go.

It was amusing when Janeway was viewing all the various names of the environments on the display panels...in English.

So nice of the Nyrians to translate their displays into English just in case the prisoners escaped and wanted to read them.

I disagree with the nutshell. I found the episode to be not horrible, but awfully uncompelling. I did like the inherent insidiousness behind the Nyrians' takeover of Voyager. And as always, even though it's at best a mediocre episode, it's worth watching for various character interactions. At times that was the only thing keeping me compelled to tune in each week and why I am now re-watching them, one by one, via Netflix. I like these characters. Even Neelix.

@Elliott, those are all indeed classics (except "Blood Fever"), but Lisa Klink wrote the teleplay on most of them. She's only given story writer credit on 2 episodes. Not that there's anything wrong with that. She's obviously a good writer when collaborating with others, but she's relatively weak as a writer of original stories.

@Jay, the panels in English thing was what bugged me the most about this episode, too.

Another thing that drove me nuts about this episode is Tuvok's line, "we will have to bypass their security measures," or something to that effect. Oh, OK. How convenient. If I ever decide to rob Fort Knox I'll be sure to do that. Because it's so easy.

Too bad they didn't hook up with even more prisoners --
it would give them a chance to reuse costumes, not to mention brush up Voyager's image in the Delta quadrant. And avoid the dismissive wrap-up in the captain's log, something I always hated about TNG.

@ Jay & Justin

You probably missed the part where Tuvok says to Janeway: "If the Nyrians downloaded Voyager's cultural database, you may be able to tap into the translation algorithm."

So, this explains the english language on the panels - they simply translated it by putting it through the translation matrix of their own database that had been previously downloaded into the Nyrian computer system.

@ stargazer...

I'll listen for that line if its in there, but that assumes I'll watch this episode again...

When Janeway was beamed out by the Nyrians, Neelix sounded, asking something like "captain, are you there?".

But hadn't Janeway's combage been teleported as well along with her?

In my collection this comes after "Worst Case".

Because of this, I see this episode as the last so-so one for a while, thanks to Scorpion 1 & 2, etc.

@xaaos
When Tuvok & Janeway finally find the trans-locator device on the habitat station they discover that it has a maximum range of 10 000 light years. He says that explains why the crew was transported one by one - because the trans-locator was at its maximum range.
I don't believe the com badge range is that far so even though Janeway still had the com badge it would have been useless.

I think the aliens removed the crew's com badges when they got to the habitat to prevent the serarated crew groups from communicating with each other.

Well, I think you're being a bit too hard on Voyager here. Were there many things that were a bit silly? Sure.

But overall I found it enjoyable, with a nice "mystery" in the beginning, then interesting ideas. Maybe I'm less severe than you because I've watched it for the first time in 2013, and therefore many things about this show are so 90s that it's impossible for me to take it seriously enough to have expectations that high.

In the first minutes, when they found out that Kes was not aboard, the first thing I thought was the following. Will it be too hard in the 24th century to program the ship's central computer to detect and inform when people leave the ship without previous authorization or without informing the ship? That is something that has always bothered me in diferente Trek shows.

But in Voyager it gets even worse. It is impressive how often the security measures of Voyager show to be simply absent. How easy is for anyone to steal a shutlecraft, to beam up or down without authorization, and so on. Blah.

I was also bothered by Torres turning The Doctor's voice out. This is really na unethical behaviour if they now consider The Doc a being, right?

And what about Trek shows once again showing the crew easily operating computers used by a totally diferent species that they have just met?


Sure, finding out that they were within a ship was nice. But a good surprised for 2 seconds. In the end, a weak episode, meaningless, silly, with all sort of those distracting problems. I will forget this in 15 minutes. And I will not regret that.

A few nice moments of dialogue and the closing scene are highlights in what is otherwise an inoffensive, pedestrian, and, frankly, boring episode. Both the Nyrians and the wayward crew are made to look inept more often than not.

Watchable, but ultimately forgettable.

2 stars.

Jammer: "Why Chakotay doesn't arm the ship's auto-destruct sequence is beyond me, but I guess if the ship was blown up there wouldn't be a series, now would there?"

...or there would be a ship to return all the rescued crew members back to...

This is a slightly above average episode for me. Pretty interesting the first time around but doesn't do well with age.

The whole "warm" thing was kind of a blah thing to me and too obvious and poorly acted in the end.

I thought Voyager should have stolen the technology and used it as a holo-deck substitute :-)

More Tom/B'elanna chemistry shown here.

2.5 stars from me.

"...or there would be a ship to return all the rescued crew members back to..."

That's the writer's problem, not Chakotay's. The aliens could have found a way to deactivate it. But he should have tried.

The reason Chakotay didn't arm the self destruct is because he can't. The computer only accepts Janeway's "Janeway Pie 110" code and voice authorization for auto-destruct. The computer wouldn't have recognized Chakotay's authority to do that. Only the captain can.

Alien race get the better of Voyager and are thwarted by the resourceful crew. Again. The premise is decent enough but we get too much running around in corridors and messing with computer screens for it to be especially compelling.

There are some decent Tom/B'Elanna moments but it's time to move that relationship forward now too. 2 stars.

I'm currently binging and reading these as I go. I'm getting a little tired of the whole "only Voyager is brave/smart/determined/clever enough to escape entrapment" plot.

We just had the one where Kim the ONLY ONE smart enough to figure out that the planet of 90% women was a trap. Shocking! It's pretty snotty to assume only humans are cunning and sharp minded enough to solve problems. And conversely that all other races would fall for an obvious trap.

With "Displaced" every other species accepted their new prison. No one likes to be imprisoned even in idyllic conditions. If this epsiode had been done properly it would have never happened at all because there would have already been a prisoner rebellion years ago.

This one just seemed like filler to me. Why is it you can find one portal after years of searching but not others? You just settle for the one portal? Why does it take a reasonably intelligent species years to try to figure out how to escape but Voyager crew accomplishes this in one day? And how does a group in a closed environment contract a plague?
Just lazy.

This was another entertaining illogical episode. One person gets replaced is confusing. Ten people get replaced I'm throwing aliens in the brig and there will be some major interrogation.
Paris and the half Klingon shoot the last shot out of their makeshift phaser. They have no way of knowing if they will run into any other guards yet they leave a working rifle with the guard they just killed. That's just stupid. (**)

This is one of the dumbest alien plots I've ever heard of. They are lucky they tried this on a Federation ship. Can you imagine trying this on a Klingon, Cardasian, Kazon etc ship? They'd kill and or torture the introducers as they appeared.

Further why keep all these prisoners!? If they didn't want to kill they could have just sent them away to some distant planet. Also why would such and advanced race need to steal ships? Just stupid all around.

It's hard to believe the aliens could so easily learn so much about Voyager before taking it over. They had basically no problem operating the entire ship. And it left the impression that there were barely more than 150 Nyrians - obviously production economics, but still...

Many good points here. Two in particular bothered me even in the midst of all the others. Commenter Akkadian raised the first when he asked "...why would such and advanced race need to steal ships?" To that I must add "Where were all those other stolen ships and their Nyrian crews in the end?" It seemed that the Voyager and the Nyrians aboard was is all that was left of the Nyrian conquests. Curious.

I also agree with mephyve: My jaw dropped when Tom and B'Elanna used up their makeshift phaser, then left working weapons on the guards.

These are the kinds of holes that seems so unnecessary, and yet seem so prevalent in this series. Half a year or so ago, my wife and I started rewatching every episode of TNG, DS9, and now Voyager, for the first time since they aired.

TNG had the advantage of newness as it struggled to rediscover and reinvent the Star Trek idea, so we were on board as it went through its growing pains. We understood its difficulties as it clawed its way up to become (what I consider) the best all-round sci-fi TV series ever.

DS9 was a huge surprise. I had seen far fewer episodes than I realized, and this time found it a more worthy continuation of the franchise. It hit the ground running with stellar production values and writing, complete with engaging characters and more true sci-fi themes than I expected... all with relatively few holes in the story lines. It took the greatest strengths of TNG and built on them with sophistication and maturity.

Now, we're up to this episode of Voyager, and I'm bothered by glaring holes and questions of judgement in the stories. (I seem to remember episodes in which some poor alien characters or species were just abandoned to their awful fates. Was it to those organ harvesters?)

Sometime during Voyager season two, I commented to my wife that everything seemed more lightweight than in previous series. The term "rinky-dink" came to mind. We're going to keep watching with hope that this one grows. It's just a shame how many good ideas have been squandered up to this point. During the initial television airings, I seem to remember ST fatigue setting in. Will 7of9 help?

In true Star Trek fashion, despite my logical critiques, I feel emotionally compelled to see this through. C'mon now Voyager, grow!

Don't get your hopes up, Skyglo. There are occasional good individual episodes, but the series as a whole never grows comparably to Next Gen or DS9.

Hello Everyone!

Yes, yes, yes. I must do it. Even though it has been mentioned before...

Two of the bad guys are disabled in the cold environment, and as Paris and Torres leave, I'm nearly yelling "Pick up the weapons!" at the teevee. After going on about how their makeshift weapon had about one shot left in it, that they used, the actors or the director should have realized they needed to go get the guns. But they just headed off-stage. That was actually painful to watch.
-------

JANEWAY: How many are there?
TUVOK: Captain, there's data here for ninety four different environments.

I'm thinking not all of those environments were being used for the thousands of prisoners, so let's say half or so since some might have been empty (for new arrivals). Even that conservative estimate nets us 47 or more different spacefaring races that are probably going to be happy to get their people back, and they have Voyager to thank for it! Well, they might want to help them with provisions, weapons, navigation, gosh the list might just go on and on. Voyager's reputation in the Delta Quadrant repaired! Reams of data on new species! Instead we see Voyager buggering out and scampering off, with no mention of it. They didn't even show one other race making calls to their home world. At least we could have seen the fellow who pointed and said "They went that way".

-Captain's log, stardate 50929.6. The Nyrians have surrendered Voyager, and my crew is safely back on board. The former prisoners on the habitat vessel have contacted their native worlds, and are waiting to be taken home.

This was said as we see Voyager heading away. Now, I cannot believe these are the only Nyrians in the area. What if some of them head to the prison station, in their stolen ships, while the prisoners are waiting to be repatriated? Voyager was their only defense if that happened. And for a ship that stops by every random anomaly or planet with space races on them, sometimes for days or weeks, they just missed out on first contact with 47+ different species. That made my head hurt.

Not to mention the nifty long-range transporter that they'd take apart and integrate, never to be mentioned again.

Have a great day Everyone... RT

In true Star Trek fashion, all the other species on this ship are trapped there for years and years until the Federation swoops in to save the day and escape in less than a half hour.

This episode felt like it started with the idea of the crew displacement then had to find a way to explain it. The whole premise, while interesting at first glance, just made no sense. Why not just transport the entire crew at once? Why do they need to be replaced rather than just removing them? Why nine minutes and twenty seconds between displacements?

1.5 stars for a neat idea that couldn't find a way to make any sense.

The initial idea here -- the slow replacement of one population by another as a form of conquest -- is an intriguing one with some Earth-historical parallels, and there's a kind of pleasant mystery to those opening scenes. I also like that the Nyrians see themselves as benign conquerors and provide hospitable environments for their subjugated populations. This is one of those moments where I could see a TOS or TNG ep having the Nyrians pontificate about how they read human (or Klingon, etc.) history and they are much less bloody than conquistadors of old. But after the cool premise and mildly interesting set-up the episode just sort of stalls. It's not really credible given the set-up that the crew would be able to retake Voyager at all, really, and the routine plotting that's involved is neither believable nor interesting. Of note is Janeway's willingness to threaten torture/execution (hard to read putting the Nyrians in the freezing cold otherwise) to get her ship back, but even that happens so quickly that it's hard to know what to make of it. The episode is still worthwhile for the Tom/B'Elanna interactions, which manage to make an interesting bit out of a small tiff which they reasonably don't let ruin their duties but doesn't really get resolved until Tom supports B'Elanna through the snow; there's a kind of general picture in these episodes of Tom being the one to support B'Elanna rather than the reverse, so it'll be interesting to see how/whether they develop into a more equal partnership. I think the idea, though, is that Tom has some similar issues to B'Elanna, but which are less severe, giving him the insight into her that he needs. Anyway I guess it's not bad (Tom/B'Elanna, first act or two) but it's very forgettable. 2 stars.

Too bad that after a few good episodes we get this crapfest.

Why would the Nyrians have doors between the habitats? Why does that guy with the door detector not find the door out of his habitat, or out of the habitat with Voyager in it? Why do they need to modify the Doc's vision to find the door out? Just use the door finder gadget the guy has. And when they find the door, they just push a button and it opens. Why wouldn't the Nyrians have it locked? Oh yeah, because it was so well hidden. Alrighty then.

And I guess you can alter the docs program by pushing a couple buttons on his holo-emitter. And it has a mute button. Whatever.

Tuvok builds working phasers out of a capacitor and a showerhead or something. Ok then. Good thing he could make one with a stun setting at least. Dumb.

They wait until over 100 people have vanished off the ship to start locking out systems and putting up forcefields. Yep. Makes sense.

Then there are 12(!) crew left on Voyager and Chakotay says 'Chakotay to all hands. Security alert. The Nyrians may be trying to take control of the ship.' Gee do you think?

Since the Nyrians have transporters (I mean translocators, sorry), why not just transport (translocate, sorry) everyone back into the habitat, like they did in the first place, instead of chasing them all over the station? Stupid.

And what, these are all the Nyrians in the quadrant? They wouldn't have called for help? They can transport (translocate, sorry) up to 10 light years, so they could get reinforcements quite easily. And why wouldn't Janeway stay for awhile and study the translocator? That's almost 150 million times as far as they can transport now. But so what? Who needs that? Or stay and ask some of the thousands of people for help getting home, or for a scouting report, or something, anything. So stupid.

I was also facepalming, like everyone else, when no one picked up a weapon from a disabled Nyrian. Ultra stupid.

Terrible episode.

1/2 star.

*shrugs*

I liked this episode quite a bit. The ideas involved are what makes it interesting. A group of people stealing ships and putting the occupants in aquariums, basically. Kind of what we do with zoos. If you think of it like that, it explains Janeway’s disgust.

Just ignore the tidbits here and there that don’t make sense - like say, Tom and B’Elanna not picking up the weapons. So many folks above couldn’t let that idea go. Great episode for their relationship. And I anticipated the outcome of Voyager the whole way through. I don’t dwell on some of the tech stuff that doesn’t make sense. Unique episode and I enjoyed imagining what this alien spaceship might look like.

Better than the dinosaur episode that came before it. Seriously, who could imagine the dino people building their ships with those clunky claws and giant nails? That’s more the idea that I can’t unsee while watching space shows.

Ingenious method for taking over a ship, the ep was off to a good and clever start, but didn't really stay that way.

The Tom and B'Ellana stuff was good, though.

Ok, I am writing this before I read any comments above:

I really liked this episode-the premise seems fresh and unique to me. Sadly, a few things make no sense!

First, I would think that if Tom and B'lanna's jury-rigged phaser is fizzing out, they would have grabbed the guns of the bad guys after they stunned them!

Also, there was no indication that Klingons freeze faster than humans before. *The Klingon guard at Roara Pente (the prison colony in Star Trek VI)* seemed fine.

Also, the bad guys should have been A LOT more incapacitated than they were if they need 45 degree C temperatures! (It was said that once) I think of the Buck Rogers episode with the lizard people in human suit. At freezing (0 C), they went into a coma!

I don't mind technobabble like most of you, but the way they instantly fixed things here was absurd! *(EG-The power going out of the phaser, and B'lanna holds it for a second, and squeezes another shot out of it! Madness!)

I also have to say that the Ensign who was on the bridge with Chacoktay was CUTE! Very pretty girl! A welcome change as I don't find many people on the Star Trek shows attractive

I did like seeing the romantic tension between Tom and B'lanna. They should just get the captain to marry them already!

Oh, there are 2 more things:

I guess the budget didn't allow for it, but I expected to see aliens that looked like the Wampa Ice Creature (from the Empire Strikes Back) in the habitat with the cold weather. There was NO ONE THERE!

Also, even with the threat of being frozen, the bad guys gave up too easily! They kidnapped 90 or so different species-I know Voyager was going to let them go after they rescued the habitat's inhabitants, but I would think that at least 1 of those 90 species (probably most of them) would be out for blood for what they've done! I think they would have been too afraid of that-they should have at least tried to bargain with Janeway saying she and the Federation people could go, but don't free the other 89 species. *(Unless they hand picked the most docile species to kidnap, like the cowardly alien that visited Voyager's crew. But if that was the case, they should have said that-even a passing reference)

Ok, that's all of my thoughts-now I'll read the above and see if anything else strikes me

@Jason

I know what you mean about her slowly crumbling to the floor-that was a little fake, but the cuteness of the character makes up for bad acting! Hehe! (Sorry)

@ John Pate & Nic

I agree! -20C isn't a killing frost! But again, it depends where you are from. We're used to it here, but places like Africa, South America, Florida etc aren't

@ navamske

"KKK uniforms"? I think that's a stretch

@ Jay

I think you missed it when they said they are using the downloaded cultural whoists from Voyager to translate

@ Stargazer

You beat me to it! (Explaining to Jay that he missed the explanation)

@ Markus

They explained that they can't transport more than one person at a time if the place they are being transported to is light years away. I guess 9 minutes and change is the time it takes to reboot the transport system

3 stars

Fun hour although aliens capturing voyager is getting a little old. But overall an entertaining jeopardy show. The idea of swapping places as a means of commandeering voyager was great I thought. Action was good.

Absolutely nothing special here, standard VOY fighting their way out of captivity + a few clever lines and the Paris/Torres relationship continues to have its ups and downs. This one is very much by the numbers and I agree with Jammer's review - turning one's brain off is probably the best way to enjoy it.

The idea of Voyager being taken over is executed with a different twist, but it's not worth thinking about - the whole transporter switching thing. There's the silliness of the Nyrians not liking cold and then that is used by Janeway to get them to acquiesce. Of course Janeway and Tuvok figure out the alien ship's computer system and liberate all the captive aliens -- it's all pretty standard stuff.

One thing I did like are the personalities of the characters coming out in a handful of interactions. Liked Chakotay admiring / being surprised at Tuvok's Vulcan improvisation abilities -- good little convo there. Also liked Doc's amusing commentary on the Paris/Torres bickering after which Torres turns off his voice. Torres questioning Harry about if she's hostile was a nice little scene too. And I liked Doc complaining about being a tricorder!

But again, it's the treacherous random aliens of the week with nothing of substance in the episode other than the few character interactions. Janeway is her usual determined self but that's nothing new. There was a bit wth Chakotay as last man aboard the ship trying to evade the aliens but that wasn't at all enthralling -- just felt like throwing Beltran a bone.

2 stars for "Displaced" -- basic ship takeover / escape captivity stuff here with some chases, a bit of phaser fights. Really the best part of VOY is the characters and their various inter-relationships -- really hard to give a crap about the random aliens they come across, as most of them are never to be seen again.

I watch this episode to help me fall asleep... Nyrian hats are awesome.

There's just so little to even engage with here, the Nyrians have no philosophy or even a clear goal and it all ends in the most predictable way. What's weird about the "we have about 30 seconds to wrap this up" Captain's log is that everyone apparently forgot that the Nyrians not only snatched all those people up but also replaced them, which would surely take a lot more than just letting the prisoners go to resolve. But oh well, I guess it is more important to make room for more boring action scenes.

I didn't mind this episode. The only bit I hated was leaving the guns on the floor. Why didn't they pick up the guns? This really pissed me off. I'm a pretty easy going viewer which explains why I'm not as critical of Voyager as others but leaving the guns was such a stupid error that made no sense at all.

Didnt anyone else think the multi biosphere ship was a really neat and original sci-fi concept? As well as the concepts of microwave portals connecting the environments and a tenaslocator that works like an aritifical wormhole also being neat sci-fi ideas? Wasn't this enough for everyone to make it a really solid sci-fi episode? And the Nyrians maybe wanted to escape their world but had no other means..What do you guys think of my opinion..the only flaws i can see are Tom and abelanna leaving the phaser and maybe the phaser shootouts on the ship being too boring..

I just finished watching it for the first time. This episode like many I've seen in the Voyager series thus far have had somewhat interesting premises but ultimately let down by really mediocre to just plain bad writing, compounded by ham-fisted interpersonal relationships just to give some depth to the crew. The bizarre developments of some of the stronger characters that had potential are also a let down *cough* Kes *cough*. I skipped DS9 after finishing a 3rd viewing of the TNG series because I wasn't in the mood for the dark tone it was setting up (quite jarring coming from The Enterprise), but the writing in Voyager is really testing my patience. It's unfortunate that almost 4 seasons in and they have yet to establish their own identity for the show.

I thought this was a better Voyager episode. The one thing that bugged me was how the phasers were used and how inept Voyager's intruder defence system was.

For starters, phasers have a wide beam setting...why do we almost never see this? Also phasers can fire in continuous beam...you don't have to "reload" before you can shoot again. As long as there is no chance of friendly fire, most phases would be set to wide and continuous settings...and there wouldn't be all these ridiculous misses. Heck you wouldn't even need to aim...the key would be getting off a shot very quickly.

Also, shouldn't a intruder defense system be able to identify friend from foe automatically (the com badge) and selectively stun the bad guys without the need for an old fashioned point and shoot fire fight? Shouldn't a Federation intruder defence system have a simple drone with a phase set to stun on on it that could help defend the ship like "Arsenal of Freedom"? Why didn't Chakotay flood many of the key decks with gas? None of that made sense.

I'm back to my usual enjoying-a-Voyager episode, then reading all the reasons (that I can't argue against too much) I shouldn't have liked it!

Sometimes this crowd is a bummer! LOL. But the points are well-taken.

That said, I still enjoyed it and found some of premises interesting. I just posted in "Before and After" that it kicked off six good episodes in a row. I still believe it.

But this one was probably the weakest of six. But it was still enjoyable time spent in the never-ending coronavirus era.

The EMH would have figured out Covid-19 in 19 minutes.

I was thinking that this was a pretty decent episode but I got really annoyed near the end when Tom and B'Elanna neglected to pick up the Nyrians weapons in the ice cave. That was such a stupid oversight.

I was so stoked I thought the alien prisoner was a voth from the previous episode but no. He even looks like one so disappointing

"Displaced" has several interesting elements...so I will forgive two frozen people for not picking up the cold metallic ray guns!!

Here's what I think was interesting:

(1)The often frustrating crew disappearances reminded me of what happens on the ship Demeter in Stoker's novel Dracula, as a mysterious force overtakes the crew one at a time. However, here supernatural suspense is replaced by a rather fast-paced, almost chaotic descent into absurdity as 40 then 14 then 2 crew remain....

(2) Chakotay's last ditch efforts in the face of overwhelming odds had a noble quality which I enjoyed watching.

(3) The Nyrians come in at first looking bewildered and helpless and are treated with kindness by our Good Samaritan Voyager crew. Chakotay later entering the cargo bay where the Nyrians had been cared for and finding it empty was priceless. It was all a ruse. The discarded pillows and blankets were a nice touch.

(4) It was easy to see the wasted attempt at kindness shown toward the Nyrians as a take on the suspicions many people have regarding foreign aid, or succour to refugees coming in...the show actually adopts negative positions on pity, and on unquestioning trust overall, so is actually far from meaningless. There's a lot one can discuss here.

It held my interest and was often rather fun; it had many good situations (e.g., Paris and B'Elanna evolving) and I liked the Atavachron world menu with a thoughtful reference to Tano-Tuva, the 'center of Asia', a country which physicist Richard Feinman became obsessed with) and succeeds, I think, despite a few throw away Trek devices like the reptilian dude who stumbles in from next door, and the embarrassed 'would be geniuses' caught in the snow, so 3 stars overall seems fair.

At first this episode seems like some kind of allegory about cultural displacement, or even immigration - one recalls a season 1 episode of DS9 in which the station is inundated by an alien diaspora - but the writers seem to quickly lose interest in their cool premise. By the 30 minute mark, this episode seems to degenerate into dull action set pieces.

Some have complained that the aliens were "old guys in silly hats" and so "not threatening". I agree, but I wonder if their age was intended to be the point? Usually older generations are inexorably replaced by the young, perhaps the writers intended a reversal of this.

Regardless, the "conquest" seen in this episode doesn't make much sense. The energy used maintaining biomes and hijacking ships is surely more than simply building more ships and traveling to another planet. And why not beam everyone off of Voyager first, and then move your alien replacements in afterwards? Isn't this safer?

According to Memory Alpha, the director of this episode regrets not altering the motivations of the aliens; he wished they were simply capturing people to fatten them up and eat them. It's a silly idea, but I think that would have worked better. The "beam out" premise is great, and married to a similarly broad motive (get in our bellies!), the episode may have worked in a Twilight Zone sort of way.

I feel like 90% of Voyager plots are essentially just "scumbag aliens do scumbag thing."

It's enough to make you into a human supremacist.

Totally mediocre. Watchable, but not great.

Shame they didn't take along some of that Nyrian translocation technology with a range of a few lightyears, the ability to bypass shields and transport onto vessels at warp

Of the many flaws of this episode, one that I didn’t see anyone point out above was how the Voyager crew could possibly believe the Nyrians’ cover story that the translocations were being caused by a natural phenomenon like a wormhole. There’s a scene where they discuss the theory that one end of the wormhole could be opening intermittently on Voyager. But if a bridge is opening and closing randomly between the colony and Voyager, then why does it only ever transport people? You’d think that a random portal would result in leaves and sand and chunks of buildings and trees and other inanimate objects randomly appearing on the ship as well. Instead, this “natural phenomenon” only ever transports people, and always switches two people around. Given that, it was absurd that the crew never figured out that these translocations were the results of deliberate and hostile intent, until the Nyrians actually started the takeover. Such a glaring flaw so early on made this nearly unwatchable. Granted, Janeway was suspicious from the beginning, but only suspicious, and only enough to take precautions to restrict the newcomers’ mobility and access. She should’ve clued in to what was up and treated this like a full-scale invasion from the get go.

This episode would have been stronger if they’d better explained the nyrian’s motivation for keeping their alien captives alive. Other than one throwaway line about how “we’re not monsters” or whatever, there’s no explanation as to why the nyrians don’t just space the voyager crew one by one during their takeover. That leaves the plot a little too weird for my taste.

Fun 4 star episode even though the plot was stupid, but what always gets me is how easily and effortlessly a total alien race can take over the ship. They not only learn all the controls within hours but can REPAIR it as well almost instantly, even as the trained Voyager crew goes around sabatoging key systems. This is a common absurdity with many Voyager episodes. Not to mention the language barriers, does the Universal Translators make people hallucinate the alien language as well on tbe display panels? The ship once again has no basic security features, like I don't know, fingerprint/DNA activated consoles to prevent alien tampering, automatic forcefields that trigger when invaders beam on board,decks that seal off and release anesthetic gas..etc.
I also don't want to get into physics technobabble too much, but it's not just the 10 light year transporting distance that's absurd, it's most star trek transporter distances that are absurd to begin with. Assuming transporting is just using an energy beam and not through subspace (which seems even more absurd), it can't exceed the speed of light and since transporting always seems to take seconds, the range shouldnt be more than half a million miles, at most. This idea that star fleet can beam people interplanetary distances is absurd.
One thing that I find more lazy than the plots though, is the console display graphics. There are even easier ways they could have made it look realistic than the unlabeled, numberless, buttons on every display screen throughout the ship. No computer screen looks like that. Enterprise did a similar shitty job with this, but still better than Voyager. You would think times they actually zoom into one of these screens they'd make it look more advanced just for that scene, but nope. We have chakotay hitting the same button over and over with a string of random numbers appearing next to it each time, and from this he is able to discern where they are on the ship and that the doctors program is being deleted. This wouldn't even make sense on a borg ship, let alone a human one.

Imagine spending 4 years at starfleet academy to learn how to operate a starship that's apparently so easy to operate that invading aliens can learn everything about it AND repair it in 5 minutes. The alien takeovers are too absurdly easy.

Wow-I was going to comment on exactly the same things I said 5 years ago! I don't even remember this episode, but my impressions this time were exactly the same (right down to the guest ensign being the cutest girl I've seen on the show since the girl from the Young Riders guest starring awhile back)

This benign invasion kind of reminds me of Action Comics #554 with these wimpy looking aliens invading planets by removing all the superheroes and making everyone docile

We actually enjoyed this one, 2.5 stars for mindless turn off your brain and don't think about it fun....

The one moment that did break that was Paris and Torres walking away from TWO fully functional phasers. Almost like they read the script and knew they wouldn't be needed, lol.