This is a very common criticism, and I get the point to a degree in terms of the larger Voyager plot season-to-season, but I don't buy it in regards to the episodes themselves. While the timeline resets, it doesn't reset what viewers saw, any more than "well that episode took place in an alternate universe so it doesn't really matter." We get to see the crew tested and where that leaves them, and even if that is erased it still impacts our understanding of the characters.
I mean if you think about it it's really no different from an episode like "Tapestry", only that Q makes the string-pulling apparent whereas only the audience is aware of the resets.
I also really appreciate that the episode doesn't shy away from the fact that Anorax might still be flirting with the doom of his race, he just maybe won't get around to it as soon because his wife is there.
It resets in as much as it as no real consequences on the characters - they don't learn anything about themselves, develop any further, or change in any fundamental way because of the experience that befell them.
But that's Voyager's problem isn't it? Even when something does matter, like the two parter Equinox, it's basically disregarded soon after and all but forgotten about.
(Is Janeway as bad as Ransom? The show doesn't want us to think so, but the next episode everyone all but forgets the Equinox accident. Starfleet doesn't even mention it when they have their dumb Reginald Barclay episodes).
Come to think of it, probably the only two parter episodes that had any impact on the show is the first Borg cliffhanger because of Seven of Nine and the one where they go back to 1996 because they get the mobile emitter.
I'd actually argue the reverse - being able to use it quickly would mean a user could potentially catch their opponent's weapon and take it away from them, while its wide, balanced arc means its not actually difficult to use in terms of defense. Plus if anything, a design like the batleth could work against shields... as in the kind used in medieval warfare, because its curved shape could allow one to go around a person's defense.
Part of the problem is that we see the batleth in isolation in a sci-fi series, where a physical weapon is always going to be slightly odd. We don't know who or what it was designed to fight, to the best of my knowledge; its a bit confusing to see spear and pikemen for example, without remembering they're chiefly meant to be posted in large army units to create a wall of death, especially for an oncoming cavalry charge.
It's strange because no one else seems to have hand to hand weapons. Vulcans have those American Gladiator staff things, but they only use them in their sex games. I guess the Jemhadar had knives? I can't remember at the moment.
Maybe if they encounter Klingons in Discovery, the fighting won't look so stagey.
