Voyager Reviews, Season 3 Continued

Fair Trade

A Very Special Voyager episode, in which Neelix learns some hard lessons about the dangers of drug dealing and the importance of telling the truth. And me without a space sick bag....

Obviously, I didn't care much for this outing. It's not that I object to a Neelix episode on principle -- I don't hate Neelix, and I've nothing against focusing on him. It's just that this episode was deeply uninteresting, following a trite, pedestrian plot, casting Neelix in the role of an approval-craving teenager, and not following through on any of the implications of the questions the episode raised -- such as, what is Neelix' role going to be now? What consequences should his irresponsible actions have? Etc.

The problems in the episode start early, with a staggeringly uninteresting teaser. The first several minutes are consumed by Neelix wandering around the ship, badgering various crewmembers with requests to let him tag along while they do their job. This is probably almost as annoying to the viewer as it is to the characters involved. Then Neelix is summoned to the bridge, to be asked a question about the big cloud appearing on the viewscreen. Again, instead of telling the Voyager crew ahead of time what was coming up ahead, Neelix has chosen to only answer questions when threats arise, a bizarre quality in a guide previously seen in "The Swarm". (But, let's face it, this isn't so much a failure on Neelix's part as it is incredibly lazy writing.) Neelix is asked what the thing is up ahead, and he responds, "it's a region of space known as the Nechrid Expanse" -- cue the swelling music, fade to credits. This response has exactly the same dramatic impact as the line "This is a region known as New Jersey" would have had -- ie, none. We've never heard of the "Nechrid Expanse" before, the name tells us nothing -- what's the point of this exchange? Why fade out on that? If the function of the teaser is to make you interested in the episode, or clue you in as to the plot, this one fails completely. If the point is to dare you to watch despite the total lack of any potential source of interest, it succeeds in spades. The last teaser that springs to mind as being this daringly boring was TNG's "Sub Rosa".

There is a trading post on the outskirts of the Expanse at which Janeway stops to pick up some supplies. In actuality, this raises some interesting questions -- what sorts of supplies does the Voyager need that it can't replicate? One is a rare element needed for engineering, but beyond that, it's not clear why they can't just zap up anything they need. (unless they are still low on replicator power, but that surely can't be as the Holodeck uses replicator technology, so they wouldn't be wasting all that replicator power on bikinis, would they? Best not to ask, I suppose.) At any rate, on this station, Neelix runs into an old friend, Wix. Wix and Neelix compare notes on how their lives are going, and it seems that Neelix' is far better than Wix. Or is it? We learn that there is at least some significance to the Nechrid Expanse -- Neelix' knowledge of the Delta Quadrant stops when the expanse begins. This explains his search for more duties -- he knows he'll soon be out of the tour guide business (though it's still an open question as to whether or not he was ever much use in that capacity). Wix presents Neelix with a proposition -- he will be able to get a map of the Expanse, if Neelix helps him with a deal for some "medical supplies".

Predictably, the plot begins to thicken. Well, I say "predictably", and for the viewer, it is -- yet Neelix is taken completely by surprise by the events which follow, leading us too ask some troubling questions about his insight. In any event, the "medical supply" deal turns out to be a drug deal, and things go badly, leading to some phaser fire, and the death of one of the buyers. But as there were no sensors in that part of the station, the murder remains a mystery -- one the station commander means to solve. At this point, Neelix is weaving an ever deeper web of lies to keep his activities, and those of Wix, a secret.

It's also at this point, tho, that a hole in the plot seems to have developed. Janeway & co. seem want to know the whereabouts of every member of the crew during the time of the murder. Yet, strangely, no one says, "Mr. Neelix -- you had the shuttle during that time. What were you doing?" There are two possibilities: Neelix stole the shuttle, and thus no one knows he had it; (seems unlikely, since he would have to get through security, open the bay doors without detection, etc. -- but hey, a couple of Ferengi did it...) or, secondly, Janeway & Co. know Neelix was away from the ship during this time, but choose not to follow up on that. In which case, they're not very bright. You would also think that the Voyager sensors would have recorded the shuttle's presence near the station, and the transporter activity. But they didn't. (perhaps there was some technobabble explanation offered for this, but I don't recall it.) But, Neelix isn't pressed, and thus remains outside of suspicion -- but soon he is under pressure from Wix and some very bad men to steal some warp plasma -- something he very much wants not to do.

In any event, Tom and Chakotay are arrested for suspicion of murder (they were seen talking to the dealer before he was killed). At this point, there's a lot of pressure, obviously, for Neelix to tell the truth, but still he resists -- partly for himself, partly for his friend. Eventually, he comes up with a plan, with which he hopes to free Tom & Chakotay, but not get himself and Wix locked up either. So, he and Wix confess to the station commander, but agree to help him catch some big-time drug runners -- in exchange for their freedom.

So, Neelix and Wix set up a meeting with the Very Bad Men to give them the warp plasma (actually, not from the Voyager), and thus set them up for arrest. Things get tense during the arrest, and Neelix vents some of the plasma, daring the Very Bad Men to fire, and thus blow them all up -- he just doesn't care, claims Neelix. The problem is, I just don't believe that. It's not that there was anything lacking in Phillips' performance -- that was fine. I just didn't buy the character's death wish in that situation. After all, he was doing the deal to weasel out of jail time -- is that the action of a suicidal man? I just didn't buy Neelix' character -- the consummate survivor & adaptor -- suddenly deciding he wanted to get blown it bits, rather than tell Mommy - - er, Capt. Janeway -- that he wrecked the car -- er, killed a drug dealer. But, he wasn't bluffing, and the plasma does blow up -- but Neelix, Wix, and the good guys aren't hurt.

There's another problem with this whole set up -- on a cop show or a law show, this whole thing would get laughed off the screen. These Very Bad Men are supposed to be drug dealers -- but at the arrest, there's no evidence of that whatsoever. The only crime being committed at the time of the sting is buying some warp plasma -- and I obviously don't know if that violates any law in the future, but it's sure not obvious to me why it should. But these guys are being offered up, without any supporting evidence, to free Tom & Chakotay -- who did nothing wrong -- and Neelix and Wix, who were involved in drug dealing & murder. Well, I guess that's frontier justice -- but it's surprising that Janeway would accept it.

Janeway's reaction, in her final confrontation with Neelix, really is quite astounding. First, in terms of his crimes -- Neelix used Federation property to take place in an illegal drug deal, and was an accomplice to a killing. That's pretty serious stuff. (He also may have stolen a shuttle, I'm still not clear on that.) What is his punishment for this? He has to clean the gutters for a couple weeks. Yes, he has to do some extra chores. And, of course, receive a brief, stern lecture from Janeway. Doesn't that seem like an awfully light sentence for some pretty serious offenses? I realize that Neelix didn't intentionally take place in drug dealing and murder, and I'm not saying he ought to be jailed for life, or anything -- but some extra chores for a couple of weeks just seems bizarrely lenient.

Then there's the question of Neelix' role on the ship. This is a question I had wondered about for a while, and I'm certainly glad the writers have addressed it -- what is Neelix' function once he doesn't know what's coming up? Unfortunately, the episode doesn't really address this. Neelix admits that there's no real need for a cook or a morale officer, and that Janeway doesn't really need an ambassador. Given that, why should he be allowed to stay? I'll even accept Janeway's response, but it just doesn't seem plausible to me that there would be no discussion about it at all. Surely Chakotay or Tuvok or somebody would suggest that they can now safely jettison Neelix on to the next inhabitable planet. My point is, there ought to have been some serious discussion about Neelix' new role -- instead, Neelix blubbered about his feelings of uselessness and Janeway told him to stop it, he's part of the crew. That's awfully nice, but it doesn't really address the question, does it?

So, in summary: An After School Special with a 2 million dollar budget. Neelix acts like a fool, leading to someone's death, and essentially gets away with it. Some good questions about Neelix' role are asked, but not answered. But, at least we have some tangible evidence that the Voyager is actually getting somewhere in space.

Back to top

Alter Ego

Now, in fairness, I should state two things up front: I hate -- hate, hate, HATE -- Holodeck episodes. With virtually no exception, I think they're awful, their basic gimmick is awful, and they ought to be banned -- or burned. The only holodeck episode that really had a believable, reasonable premise was "Our Man Bashir" -- other than that one, they drive me to distraction. I also think that Joe Menosky, who wrote "Alter Ego", is responsible for much of the very worst Trek ever produced. Therefore, I didn't go into this episode in a very positive mood -- nor did I leave in one.

Now, you might argue, in the end, this isn't really a Holodeck episode -- Marayna turns out to be an alien manipulating the holodeck program, not a malfunction of the computer itself. True enough, and that's enough to prevent me from hating the episode completely. But still, there are scenes which drive me nuts in which people discuss what a reasonable possibility it is that the holodeck accidentally created a sentient being. I know, there's precedent for it in TNG -- but I always thought that was a load of dingo's kidneys, too, and I'm not buying it here either. And we have Belanna replying that Janeways' suggestion -- that somehow, the nebula they are in might have caused the holodeck to create life -- is "certainly possible". Possible HOW, exactly? That kind of writing, as I've said, drives me to distraction. It reminded me strongly of the scene in Menosky's TNG episode "Emergence" where the senior crew sit around and discuss how, gee, yeah, the Enterprise really IS kind of like a living organism, isn't it? No, it isn't. Let's move on.

Well, that turned into a bit of a rant, didn't it? Well, as a whole, this episode doesn't really deserve a rant -- it's not screamingly bad. It's just not very good, either. There's just nothing in this story that really grabs me at all -- the story elements are all recycled, and this iteration adds nothing of particular interest.

The story begins with Harry seeking Tuvok's help in getting over his infatuation with a holodeck character. (This raises the disturbing possibility that Harry's character will develop along the lines of Geordi or Riker, two other characters who had nasty habits of falling for computer simulations.) This also raises a question for me... I have the feeling that I must have missed an episode somewhere in which Harry decided to move on and forget his girlfriend back home. Early on in the series, he made a point of saying that he was going to remain faithful to his Earth-bound lover. Lately, Harry has been getting mighty chummy with women without even a mention of his long-lost girlfriend. So either I missed a crucial episode, or the writers are getting sloppy again. At any rate, Harry seeks out Tuvok's help, and they go to the holodeck together to meet the object of Harry's affection. Before Tuvok can get to know her, he and Harry are summoned to the bridge, as the Voyager has run into a highly unusual nebula.

Later, there is a party on the holodeck, which Janeway has asked (not quite ordered) Tuvok to attend. Harry means to skip the party, on Tuvok's advice, to avoid Marayna. Tom, however, talks him into going. But at the party, Marayna has sought out Tuvok, and has obviously been studying up on him -- she has a game of Vulcan chess going, and invites Tuvok to join. She also engages Tuvok in conversation. At this point, Tuvok ought to suspect something is amiss -- having been in the holodeck before, having encountered the people in this program before, he ought to notice that there is something fundamentally different about this character, and investigate. He does not, however, and becomes intrigued by her. Not, however, as intrigued as she is with him. Harry, meanwhile, has seen Tuvok with Marayna and has gotten jealous.

The story soon veers into "Fatal Attraction" territory, as Marayna steals the Doc's portable holo-emitter and hides out in Tuvok's quarters. Tuvok rebuffs her, and Marayna soon takes over the ship, just like Moriarty did in "Elementary, Dear Data." I guess if you're going to re-do an idea like this, maybe it's more honest if you admit it, as was done here. (I still don't buy that episode -- but enough of that) This leads to a big fight scene in the Polynesian-themed holodeck-- a nicely strange concept -- and the discovery that the computer is receiving transmissions from a nearby ship. Tuvok finally manages to board the ship, where he encounters Marayna in her true form.

Now we learn why Marayna has done all she has done -- well, sort of. What we find out is that she acted like she was obsessed with Tuvok because, well, she was lonely and became obsessed by Tuvok. As revelations go, this is mighty pedestrian. The "solution" is as trite as its possible to be -- "if you really loved me, you wouldn't do this." And so she lets the ship go. (This from a woman who moments before tried to throttle Belanna and is presently threatening to blow up the Voyager.)

The basic problem, here, I think, is that this episode simply doesn't know who it's about. In the beginning, it seems like it will be about Harry -- but he gets dumped pretty quickly, and for most of the episode, the only thing we learn about him is that he's real jealous. There's no development beyond that -- we never even get to find out why he fell in love with Marayna in the first place, since we only see her with Tuvok (and, frankly, she's not particularly interesting in any event). In the middle part of the episode, it seems to be about Tuvok, and there are new bits of Vulcan lore thrown in, etc. But in the end, everything that happens is really driven by Marayna's character - - the problem is, we never really get to know her. Her character really isn't fundamentally any more deeply written than Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction, or the characters in all the derivatives of that movie -- she's just slightly less psycho. (or at least is easily talked out of her psychosis) Thus, what we have at the end of the episode is several half-finished character arcs.

The one sort of resolution that the story tries for is having Tuvok seek out Harry at the end. This lamely wraps up Harry's character arc -- he forgives Tuvok for whatever it is Tuvok is supposed to have done wrong. And, in theory, it finishes Tuvok's arc. The problem is, this scene serves as an answer to a question which is fundamentally wrongheaded. The question is Marayna's to Tuvok, "will you always be alone"? Well, we already know the answer to that -- no. Despite what he says, we have seen that Tuvok and Janeway are, in fact, friends. Moreover, Tuvok has a wife and children back on Vulcan, and he will live long enough to see them again, even if it takes 70 years to get back home. The truth is, Tuvok is simply a healthier person than Marayna gives him credit for. I suppose that what they are striving for is to show that Tuvok will be less stand-offish than he had been before -- but that doesn't really follow from the story that precedes it.

I really don't have a lot more to say about this episode, apart from the fact that I still really don't like that awful Baywatch Holodeck set.

So, in summary: left-over story bits from a bunch of old episodes and movies, thrown together in an only very slightly new way. The character arcs don't really hang together, and the plot is really quite pedestrian. Not an episode that proclaims its awfulness like, say, "False Profits", but rather one which is mediocre and uninspired to its core.

Back to top

Coda

Now this is one strange episode.

It's not strange in the sense of challenging the viewer with all kinds of weird, never-before seen stuff. Pretty much every story element is borrowed or stolen from old TNG episodes.

It's strange in that the various elements that make up the story don't fit together at all, in the end. There's absolutely no connection between what happens in the first 25 minutes and what happens in the rest of the show -- and no explanation presented to explain how they might fit together. It's hard to figure out how this episode was ever greenlighted -- it's just that disjointed.

What's even stranger, though, is that it's not really all that terrible. Sure, it doesn't even pretend to make any sense, but it's still better than many episodes this season -- for whatever that's worth.

The story begins with yet another ill-fated shuttle mission, just as so many TNG and Voyager stories do. Janeway and Chakotay are aboard, and, unsurprisingly, the shuttle veers out of control as it descends through a planet's atmosphere, and crashes -- killing Janeway. (btw, the Voyager seems to have returned to the pre-TNG logic concerning away missions -- both Captain and First Officer leaving the ship on a shuttle? Riker would be appalled. Heck, in this situation, even Kirk would have told Spock to stay home. Ah well.) Chakotay revives Janeway, and they discover that they didn't just crash -- they were downed by Vidians. Some Vidians show up, and kill Janeway again -- and back are Janeway and Chakotay on the shuttle, at the beginning. Janeway then gets killed a few different ways, always ending up back where she began.

Now, in theory, this ought to be a neat, intriguing, etc. etc. beginning to an episode. Except, of course, that we've seen it before, in "Cause and Effect." So, it's not actually interesting at all. Sure, it's fun seeing characters die grisly deaths, but without a story for it all to move along, it all seems a bit pointless.

Eventually, Janeway finds herself looking down at her own body, as Chakotay tries and fails to resuscitate her after the shuttle crash. Even the Doc back on Voyager can't bring her back, and so Janeway watches herself die. She tries to contact Kes, and convince her that she is alive, and almost succeeds. The crew take Kes seriously enough to try to find any evidence of psychic Janeway residue, but fail.

I'd just like to take a brief time out here to say that there was another bad-science scene here that drove me nuts, much like the "maybe the cloud made the Holodeck come to life" discussion a couple weeks ago. This time, the crew toss around ideas like "maybe Janeway's personality slipped into a subspace rift and is trapped somewhere", and everyone agrees that could happen, easy. If even one person said "that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard", I'd be much happier -- but everyone seems to think these way-far-out ideas are perfectly run-of-the-mill. For me, it's not even so much a question of whether or not her personality actually did slip into another dimension -- maybe I could be sold on that -- it's just that this ought to strike people as a pretty damn odd thing to happen.

Anyway, as the crew are scanning for various widgets and whatsits, Janeway's father shows up, walking out of a cloud of light. He explains to her that she's dead (this also ought to look familiar to TNG watchers), and that she ought to get used to it. He says that she's a ghost, and is only hanging around because she can't let go. A la Tom and Huck, Janeway visits her own funeral, and listens as people make speeches about her. The speeches, actually, are fine, as is the whole scene -- nothing really wrong with it. It would make sense if that's about how it would go if she really had died.

Janeway's dad then starts pressing hard to get her to accept that she's dead and step into the light. Janeway isn't ready to go yet, and thinks that she could be a pretty useful ghost. Dad won't have any of that, and keeps insisting that she follow him into the light. Janeway suspects that something is up, and then has flashes of being on the ground as the Doc tries to revive her. She realizes that "dad" is some sort of alien crawling around in her psyche, and tells him to get lost. (perhaps this brain alien is related to the brain bug Tuvok had in "Flashback" -- second cousins, perhaps?) Janeway wakes up, and back on the Voyager, goes on a picnic with Chakotay.

See? It's just a damned strange episode. All the time-loop stuff isn't only superfluous, but it doesn't even fit in any way with the brain alien plot. The alien wanted Janeway to agree to walk with him into the light -- so why did he provide her with a number of visions in which she died instantly? How did those advance his agenda? Or was he just doing it for kicks? Even the writers don't seem to have remembered what they wrote in the first half -- in her confrontation with the alien, Janeway says "no, this (vision) wasn't like the others -- I was seeing out of my own eyes, not looking down at my body" (or something like that). Well, except, that's exactly what all the other visions were like -- she thought she was actually there. The only time she looked at her body from the outside was in the vision she was in at the time she said this. So, in fact, her flashes to lying on the floor were exactly like all the other ones, just not like what she was presently experiencing. Ah well.

That's really about all I have to say about the episode itself. The plot makes no sense whatsoever, but I suppose no one involved much cared. It seems that the only design behind this episode was to find a way to work in some of the backstory about Janeway that Jeri Taylor has worked out, and to show how much Chakotay cares about Janeway. Well, I suppose, mission accomplished, but surely there's a way to do that and tell a real story at the same time. Still, for whatever reason, this episode isn't completely awful, and didn't make me want to throw a brick through my TV like, say, "Threshold." I think that's because I realized early on that the story about the time loop, etc. wasn't going to go anywhere, so I stopped worrying about it.

This brings me to a more serious criticism of this episode, and, in fact, of Voyager in general (a criticism I've made before, and will probably make again). And that is, it encourages the viewer to turn off your brain and, in fact, punishes you if you try to think. Take this episode, for instance. Let's say you tried really hard to figure out what was going on for the first half hour or so. So, you would try to figure out how they entered a time loop, or what clues there were in recurring imagery, etc. But, of course, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you did that, because the story has nothing to do with time loops, or even Janeway's first four or five deaths. Oh, sure, later on, you could guess that her dad wasn't really her dad, but that doesn't take much figuring.

But, as I've said, I didn't even try to figure out the plot ahead of time -- in fact, I kept telling myself not to, knowing ahead of time that it would do no good. After a few seasons of Voyager, I've learned my lesson. Trucks floating in space for 400 years start right up, event horizons have holes, individuals can evolve into newts, 2 Ferengi can outwit an entire security department, viruses can make themselves REAL big and grow tentacles, and starships quickly can be repaired of any damage, even without a starbase. Trying to apply logic to an episode, even trying to extrapolate from past episodes, is fruitless -- whatever the writers feel like making happen will happen. This series almost demands that its viewers be passive viewers, that they simply sit back and let the pretty pictures go by, then forget it ever happened. Now, I would find this to be a problem in any series. But in a Star Trek series, it's really a tragedy.

At its best, Trek challenges the viewer to think, to reason, to be creative. For example, if you were watching "The Devil in the Dark" for the first time, and you were trying to figure out why the Horta was behaving the way it did, you'd be happy at the end of the episode -- it is all explained in a logical, consistent way. Ditto, pretty much, the ravioli monsters in "Operation -- Annihilate!!" Or take, for example, "Yesterday's Enterprise", where the audience is left, for a little while, to guess at what's going on -- and the answer presented is perfectly logical. Or think of "The Visitor" -- as it turns out, it wasn't just sloppy coincidence that Ben kept on appearing in front of Jake, the two were linked together, and Jake's final solution perfectly fits both the scientific story and the character arc. That's what good science fiction ought to do -- get you thinking, get you trying to figure out what's going to happen later, get you to try to make connections, etc. For an extreme example, take Babylon 5 -- if you try to figure out everyone's motivations, what's going to happen, etc., you are richly rewarded -- everyone's actions for the entire run of the series are part of one large story, which maintains a remarkable degree of internal consistency. When something doesn't seem to make sense, it almost always turns out to be a clue, a hint that something is going on that you are not yet aware of. That challenges you to keep alert, to pay attention, to try to piece different bits together. At this point, on Voyager, when something doesn't make sense, I've simply come to expect that it just isn't ever going to make any sense. It won't do me any good to worry about it. Now, at some point, I may be wrong -- at some point, Voyager might tell some stories that are complicated, where hints are intentionally dropped, etc. The question is, will anyone still be watching for them? I doubt it.

So, to sum up this episode: if you ignore the fact the first and second halves of the story have nothing to do with eachother, it's fine, but certainly not exceptional, and gets back into the old Voyager habit of stealing blatantly from well-worn Trek material. Certainly good acting by all in more-emotional than usual scenes, and a bit of Janeway's history gets worked in.

Back to top

Blood Fever

In this outing, Voyager actually tries to deal with some of the implications of being trapped in the Delta Quadrant, far away from home, and remembers that there are some Vulcans on board. Thus, a Vulcan crewmember -- Vorrick (Vorick? Taurik? The debate rages.) -- undergoes pon farr, setting off a long series of events. The problem is, the writers got almost everything about pon farr completely wrong in terms of how it would effect the plot. (I should note that while I try to be restrained in my critiques, this week I am going to be a bit more... forthright than usual.)

Now, the writers were right about some of the basics of pon farr -- it does come over Vulcans every seven years of their adult life, and it does compel them to get back home and mate, and if they can't get back, Vulcans may die. So far so good. However, some bright light in the Voyager writing camp decided to ignore the "Vulcan" part in all that, and decided all of this could happen to anyone. Thus, when Vorrick tries to mate with Belanna, she "catches" the "blood fever" from him, and starts going into pon farr herself. This is, to be blunt, stupid. It was well established in "Amok Time" that pon farr has to do with Vulcan physiology and Vulcan psychology. as Spock put it, "it is the price we pay" for living the rest of their lives shut off from their emotions. In return for lives of complete mental control, Vulcans experience these times of complete loss of mental control. To put it crudely, the rest of us are horny and violent all the time -- Vulcans squeeze it all into a couple of days every seven years. So, they've got a lot to make up for. There is nothing to indicate that this could in any way be "transferred" to non-Vulcans, even by a partial mind-meld. After all, non- Vulcans lack the necessary pre-condition which allows this to occur -- lives of total emotional self-control (and Belanna even less so than most). There is a (reasonably) logical premise to explain why this process happens to Vulcans; no such premise exists for it happening to anyone else. Therefore, the premise of the entire story is, I believe, utter nonsense, so the rest barely even matters.

The writers try to justify this preposterous premise with a line about how Vulcans sometimes mate with non-Vulcans -- as if this means that those non-Vulcans must experience pon farr. Hockey pucks. This is a logical fallacy. There is no reason why both individuals should have to be undergoing pon farr in order for mating to take place (much less for children to be born, which requires only the will for it to occur and a turkey baster [and some genetic assistance, in the case of inter-species conception]). Further, we have seen a mating between two individuals, only one of whom was experiencing pon farr -- in STIII: TSfS. In that story, the rapidly-aging Spock underwent pon farr when only Saavik was around, and she led him through it -- although she, quite clearly, was still in control of her emotions. It may also be worth noting that we saw how the mating process was initiated, and it didn't involve squeezing anyone's head like a melon -- it was the ritual Vulcan finger-rubbing deal. So, again, to my mind, the entire "Belanna goes through pon farr" story is a fetid load of dingo's kidneys.

The writers also missed a crucial point in the resolution of the story with the koon-ut-kal-if-fee. Tuvok argues that this is a logical resolution to the problem, as a little fight is preferable to certain death from a chemical imbalance. True enough, but the challenge option of the koon-ut-kal-if-fee calls for a fight to the death. (thus setting up one of the finest moments in Star Trek history back up in sickbay in "Amok Time", when Spock finds out Kirk isn't really dead). Thus, what Tuvok seems to be saying here -- actually, he doesn't seem to be saying it, but what he logically must be saying -- is that having one crewmember kill the other is preferable to both dying. That, at the very least, is debatable, and other options may yet exist (Tom, for one), and thus opting for the "let's let them kill eachother option" doesn't seem particularly plausible. At the very least, some mention of this potential drawback to the fight option needed to be made. But, I suppose, it allowed Voyager to fulfill it's mission of trying to be more action-oriented. Still, when a koon-ut-kal-if-fee fight has already been done as excitingly and emotionally as the one in "Amok Time", trying to do another one, only without the ceremony, weapons, setting, or emotional impact, seems awfully pointless.

One of the story elements the writers seem to have been most interested in is Tom's "dilemma" about whether or not to "cure" Belanna. The problem is, it shouldn't be as much of a dilemma as the writers want it to be. Especially once Tom and Belanna are trapped by the cave-in, it's pretty clear. If Tom and Belanna don't mate, she will die. What's the question? I understand the moral ambiguities, and that Belanna didn't really mean everything she said about how she really liked Tom, yadda yadda yadda. But if she didn't mate, she was going to die. Did Tom really believe that somehow he would be doing her a favor by letting her die? After all, this situation is not analogous to a situation if, for example, Belanna came on to Tom when she was drunk. In this situation, Belanna is making the quite correct calculation that if she doesn't sleep with Tom, she will die -- thus, she does whatever she can to make it happen. It seems to me that the only reason this appears as a dilemma in the script is because it's not just Vulcans who have, in the good Doctor's words, a rather Victorian view of sex.

This viewpoint has been evident for a while in Voyager -- for example, in the almost asexual depiction of Neelix and Kes' relationship (never mind whether or not we know if they've ever kissed, much less slept together -- does anyone know if they are still even having a relationship?), and in other elements of the show as well. This rather prudish perspective seems to combat a rather childish, prurient impulse as well, giving us the much despised (at least by me) Baywatch Holodeck set. In this story, those two inclinations collide head-on. Thus, we have quips like Tom's explanation that Belanna seemed to enjoy biting him "in a Klingon way", the Doc's discussion of Klingon mating habits, and long, loving shots of Belanna in a tight, revealing top, eventually straddling Tom -- while at the same time, constructing a central dilemma of the show about whether it would be better to have sex with Belanna or let her die. Thus, the show comes of as being both ridiculously prudish and voyeuristic; childishly Victorian.

A couple other things that don't make sense to me. Clearly, the actor who plays Vorrick also played the Vulcan officer in "Lower Decks". However, there seems to be a great deal of confusion as to whether or not this is, in fact, the same character. (Stemming, in part, from confusion about whether his name in Voyager is Vorrick or Taurik.) If he is not the same character, then why? I can understand about Locarno/Paris -- they wanted Paris' backstory to be a little different. Fine. But since we never really knew much of anything about that other Vulcan, what purpose does it serve to confuse people who actually watched TNG through it's seventh-season death throes by bringing back the same actor, as the same kind of alien, and call him a different name? That's just annoying. Also, when Belanna and Vorrick were discussing their backgrounds, Belanna said "you're Vulcan, and I'm half Klingon." She's also half human, and should have said so. To leave off the "and half human" means an assumption that everyone is human, unless otherwise specified. The writers shouldn't be thinking that way, and the characters certainly wouldn't.

Now, as for what did make sense about the story. For the most part, Vorrick's actions make sense. That is, they seem consistent with what we know about pon farr from previous stories. His reaction to his "problem" becoming public are also appropriate and well-handled, as was Tuvok's distaste at having to get involved. (though, 100 years after Spock's experience on the Enterprise, it strains credulity to think that there's still almost no knowledge of this outside Vulcan.) The behavior of the aliens, who we saw, sadly, only briefly, also made a great deal of sense -- after a Borg attack, it seems quite reasonable that a society would head underground and try to hide itself from detection completely. That was actually a really nice idea. A shame it got so little airtime, and the nonsense about Klingon pon farr got so much.

The discovery that it was the Borg who destroyed the colony would have had tremendous emotional impact, if not for a few problems. First, the ruins were treated so casually through the rest of the episode -- no one really seemed to take any interest in them. Secondly, as I said, the aliens got terribly little screen time, so there wasn't much reason to think about them a whole lot. Third, and most obviously, UPN's idiotic idea to show the trailer for next week's shows during the second-to last commercial break of the present show. This has been a problem before -- in "Future's End, Part One" we saw how the episode would end 10 minutes before it actually did because of the stupid trailer for the next week's show. Just last week in "Coda", just in case anyone was actually worried that Janeway might end up dead, we saw the trailer for this week's show, showing a quite lively Janeway. And here, in "Blood Fever", before we can be surprised by the presence of the Borg, we are shown the Borg in a preview for next week. Now, granted, most of the blame for this sheer idiocy must fall on UPN's shoulders, for it is certainly the marketing weasels who came up with this brain storm. However, by this point, the writers should know about the inappropriate placing of the trailers, and should try to find some way to cope with it. Thus, it would make sense to find some way to introduce the "surprise" about the Borg before the ad for next week, showing the Borg.

So, to sum up..... I didn't much care for this. The writers went back to Trek lore for a story, but proved, once again, that they don't actually have any respect for it -- or even much understanding of it. Thus, the story is one that I simply don't buy, and even if I did, I think it is still handled badly. The discovery of the Borg is potentially interesting, but the surprise here was blown. Not a good outing. Maybe next week's encounter with the Borg will be good -- but it gets ever harder to keep mustering up enthusiasm week after week. (Plus, after all, after "Best of Both Worlds, I", even TNG never came up with another decent Borg story.)

Back to top

Unity

After a thoroughly disappointing outing last week, Voyager comes back with a Borg episode that, while not great, is certainly at least quite good. It's also certainly better than "Descent", a truly dismal pair of episodes, and may be better than "I, Borg", it's thematic predecessor. (Perhaps I should note, though, that I didn't like "I, Borg" much either.) At any rate, "Unity" tells an interesting story, and doesn't do much damage to the Borg as a concept.

However, before the episode does anything well, it does something really, really badly. This quite interesting episode has a trailer which is stunning in it's tedium. I mentioned before that "Fair Trade"'s teaser was staggeringly boring; the teaser here is almost that bad. What's even more astounding, though, is that it would be so easy to make a really interesting teaser. Inexplicably, the teaser here ends when Chakotay and the redshirt (ok, so they wear gold now, but they'll always be redshirts to me) beam down to a planet -- in response to a distress call -- and meet gasp! -- some people! Swell the music and fade. Somebody please explain to me what's interesting about that. After we get back from the commercial break, there's a firefight, the redshirt is killed, and Chakotay knocked out. This, it would seem to me, is the obvious (and proper) place to end the teaser. The episode proper would then begin with Chakotay waking up. Now that'd be interesting. As it is, if you hadn't seen the ad for the show, and thus didn't know the Borg would be involved, why would you watch the show, given the teaser? (An alternative would be to use Janeway's discovery of the Borg cube as the teaser, then backtrack to Chakotay after the commercial break. That'd also pique viewers' interest.)

One other lousy thing about the opening of the show: yet another show opening up with Voyager crewmembers aboard a shuttlecraft? Haven't we had an awful lot of those? And given that such missions always end in disaster, why on Earth does Janeway continue using them? And, yet again, a shuttle is destroyed. How many shuttles does that make? I've lost count long ago. Apparently, these things are easily replicated. (Which is rather surprising, given that the elements needed to make warp drives are apparently quite rare. Funny, that.) And, yet another crewman down. I hope someone on the production staff is keeping tabs; at some point, the ship is going to start running low on cannon fodder.

But, on to the rest of the show, wherein lies the good stuff. Chakotay finds himself on a planet where individuals from a number of species -- including many Alpha-Quadrant species -- live together. Unfortunately, they do not live together peacefully -- it is a planet ravaged by constant warfare (shades of [the superior] "Battle Lines" from DS9). However, the group Chakotay finds himself with -- which includes a human, Riley -- have formed a cooperative, and they work together in harmony. They do, however, have to fend off the other groups on the planet -- and Riley hopes that the Voyager can help them do this. Something doesn't seem quite right about all this, neither to Chakotay nor to us, the viewers. Soon, Chakotay discovers why this is -- all the inhabitants of the planet, including Riley, are ex-Borg -- or perhaps more accurately, semi-Borg, as they still have implants. (Chakotay's "stealthy" walk through the camp, btw, was entirely unconvincing -- he looked like a hedgehog trying to hide in the middle of an open lawn -- "you can't see me, you can't see me, you can't see me...")

Meanwhile, back on the Voyager, Janeway and company have run across a defunct Borg cube. (And, for the first time since "Fair Trade", they refer to the fact that they are in the Nechrid Expanse! For whatever that's worth.) An away team discovers that the ship is completely powered down -- and is also full of apparently dead Borg. One body is beamed aboard the Voyager, where the Doc examines it, briefly, and accidentally, reactivating it. Perhaps they're not all dead -- they're mostly dead. (This does raise some questions, though -- why have the Borg left this dead cube here? They were always very fastidious in the past about picking up any dead Borg or bits of technology.)

Back on the planet, Chakotay is not well -- he got knocked in the noggin during the firefight, and seems to have one of those pesky cerebral hemorrhages. The only cure the semi-Borg can offer is to let Chakotay take part in a neural link with their collective -- apparently, this also has curative powers. Understandably, Chakotay finds the idea abhorrent -- he doesn't want to become Borgified. However, the semi-Borg convince him that he need not have any permanent implant, and that he will die without treatment. Chakotay agrees, and links up with the semi-Borg. The link cures him, and also connects him with the other members' minds, and he catches bits of their memories, feelings, etc. It's a well-realized scene, with lots of interweaving imagery. After he wakes up, Chakotay finds that he is well, and still has a residual capacity to feel someone else's feelings. He and Riley take advantage of this, and do some intensive research into eachother's sensations. (Kind of makes you think, doesn't it? Feeling both your own sensations and your partners? Talk about sensory overload....) It's a potentially Rikerish moment, but Chakotay carries it off without any of Riker's sliminess.

Back on Voyager, they notice that they haven't heard from Chakotay in a while, and when they discover the probe his shuttle launched, they go to investigate. Apparently, Chakotay's shuttle mission took him several days, at warp speed, away from the Voyager. Does that really seem like a good idea, given that they're in a region of space that neither they nor anyone they know know anything about? Especially since they found that Borg corpse last week? Perhaps Janeway isn't really that fond of Chakotay after all....

When Janeway does arrive, Chakotay relays a rather startling request from the semi-Borg on the planet. They want to re- activate one of the neural generators (or something) on the Borg cube, so as to include the entire planet into their collective. It is their hope that this will enable them to restore peace to the planet, but not completely wipe out the individuality they've been able to reassert. Janeway (wisely) decides that this is just far too dangerous to do, and is uncertain about the kind of collectivity it would create in any event. Chakotay (getting right back on the horse that threw him) is responsible for flying a shuttle back to Voyager when he starts getting thought transmissions from the semi-Borg collective below. Suddenly, he zaps Belanna and commandeers the shuttle, zipping on over to the Borg cube. (I'm a little confused by some of the spatial relations here -- it seemed to take Voyager a lot longer to get to the planet from the Borg cube than it took for Chakotay to get to the cube from the planet. Perhaps I missed something....)

On the Borg cube, Chakotay follows the Cooperative's mental orders to find the correct junction box to start up the generator. Back on the planet, the collective is under attack from other alien groups. On the Borg cube, Chakotay has to try to evade search parties from the Voyager in order to start up the Borg cube. In the end, he is discovered and shot just before he starts up the cube, but shoots Tuvok and is able to start up the Borg generators, waking up all the Borg on the ship, before he collapses. All the Voyager crew are beamed back to Voyager, which starts heading away from the Borg cube, but the cube then explodes, destroyed by the semi-Borg collective, who no longer need it. They have assimilated the rest of the ex-Borg on the planet, ending hostilities -- but it's unclear just what kind of Cooperative they have formed. The voice of the Cooperative sounds distressingly like the Borg of old....

The number of plotholes really expands geometrically once Chakotay got on that second shuttle. Why is Chakotay piloting this shuttle? Why wasn't he just beamed aboard? What happened to the original pilot? It just seems a waste of personnel to have two of the bridge crew pilot a shuttle up from the planet. Just how did the Borg force Chakotay to follow their commands? He no longer had any Borg implant. The Doc gives an explanation, but it's unconvincing. On the cube, Chakotay has an awfully easy time evading the search parties. This is odd, given that they could search for human life signs with their tricorders -- or, better yet, they could simply beam Chakotay away at any time -- he is wearing his combadge throughout. Tuvok is running the risk of turning out to be as inept a security officer as Worf was on the Enterprise. And, from earlier in the story, there is the bizarre implausibility of Riley having been assimilated at Wolf 359 -- as numerous commentators on usenet have pointed out, it's unclear at best why, then, she isn't space dust.

But, there are still some interesting issues raised by the story. The idea of ex-Borg trying to forge a life for themselves is an interesting one, even though it has been explored before -- but there is a new twist in this story, and that's good enough for me. The question of just how much collectivity is good for you is a very interesting one, and this story, thankfully, avoids a pat, easy resolution. I wish we could have had one more scene on the planet at the end, to get some sense of what kind of collective had been created -- and to see how different they are from other Borg we've seen. At any rate, the story also raises some good questions about whether you can use such terrible power for good -- or does it corrupt... I liked the fact that Riley was trying to create a little model of the Federation on the war-torn planet, and that she & the others were willing to stick it out there. (It does strain credulity that none of the members of the cooperative wanted to join the Voyager crew -- much like all of the Voyager crew turning down life in those gorgeous [though never seen] cities in "The 37's".)

What about the Borg, now, as an enemy for Trek in general? As I said, I don't think this episode did any further damage to the Borg. But that's largely because so much damage has already been done. When we first met the Borg, they were scary as hell -- an unfeeling, undifferentiated, inhuman killing machine -- unstoppable, and without any remorse. Pretty cool! Pretty much the ultimate enemy. "I, Borg" effectively ruined that, turning the Borg into a bunch of pretty nice guys, who you'd probably quite like if you got to know them personally. That's an exaggeration, but it still made them a whole lot less menacing and faceless. In "Descent", the Borg were less scary than ever; individuals who were duped into following Lore because he made them feel good about themselves. The Borg as a Tony Robbins seminar. In "First Contact", the Borg were mean and nasty again - - but not undifferentiated. Now, there was a "Borg Queen" -- so, all the Borg are exactly alike, except for the most important one who is unique. And dead. Huh? Whatever. So, the recovering Borg we meet here certainly don't dilute the Borg concept any more (that job had already been done), and they expand on the ideas of "I, Borg" without being quite so boring. (And, of course, Geordie isn't involved in any way -- a big bonus in my book.)

However, the fact is, the Borg aren't all that scary anymore. There's still the problem that there not that faceless & inhuman anymore. Also, we've now seen 3 Borg cubes destroyed, by my count. Granted, Starfleet only managed to blow up one of these (in "First Contact") -- but still, it's hard to think of the Borg as nigh-invulnerable when we keep on seeing them soundly defeated. Further, there's a number of questions about the Borg which have not been answered. Just how many Borg did Hugh's individuality affect? If the Borg Queen was so important, are all the Borg defeated now? Are there any more Borg out there like Lore's Borg? Each Borg story manages not to answer the questions posed by the previous ones. However, this episode points out a potentially critical role for the Borg in Voyager's future: Obviously, the Borg can travel across great distances VERY quickly. They can get to the Alpha Quadrant in months, or perhaps a few years. There would seem to be some technology here that Voyager should be interested in (never mind for now that Janeway didn't explore this possibility when she had the chance.) And, of course, we know that the Borg merely pirate technology from others -- so perhaps there is another race out there with really fast engines that the Voyager could track down. Something to think about....

Summing up... This is a fairly well-contained episode, which manages to tell a Borg story without the necessity of a full- fledged battle with them. There are some interesting ideas raised about the Borg and Borg survivors, and about the price of peace in general. There are also numerous plotholes, so it's nowhere near a perfect episode. Also, a number of blunders in the first few minutes get the story off on the wrong foot. Still, this is well above Voyager's average, up there with the best they have done.

Back to top

Darkling

A thoroughly pointless little episode which accidentally points out some of the failures of the Voyager creative team.

In the beginning of the episode, it seems like it will mostly concern itself with Kes, her relationship with Zahir, and coming to terms with her life and what she wants to do with it. If that had actually been what the episode was about, it probably could have been good. At any rate, Kes is beginning to strike up a relationship with this guy, and this gets rather an unfavorable reaction from some of the crew -- especially Tuvok and the Doctor. Kes says everyone should stop treating her like a child; she recently turned three, and is an adult, and ought to be treated that way. There's a whole mess of problems with this set up, so let's take a look-see.

First off: Kes says she is "an adult now" and people ought to treat her as such. Fair enough. Does that mean, then, that previously, she was not an adult? If this is the case, what the hell was she doing in a relationship with Neelix? Shouldn't he be booted off the ship as a pedophile? Perhaps she means "adult" in the sense of now being closer in age to 30 rather than, say, 18; that would make Neelix less of a pervert, but the implication still seems to be that she wasn't previously mature enough for a relationship, and this doesn't reflect well on anybody. Remember, Neelix and Kes had been an item since before they joined Voyager. Voyager has been in the Delta Quadrant for at least a year and a half, possibly more than 2 years. If each year is like 10 to Kes, and she is just an adult now.... why was she in a relationship with Neelix 20 years ago?

But there's an even bigger, more fundamental problem with this whole set up, if that's possible. And that is the break-up between Kes and Neelix. Now, first of all, as far as I can recall, Kes actually broke up with Neelix when her body was being possessed by a dead dictator in "Warlord," and as such, I wasn't sure it was binding. Apparently, it is. That's not the big problem (though it sure doesn't help). The problem is, Kes and Neelix, as characters, behave no differently now than they ever did. Apparently, they have broken up, but this has had absolutely no impact on them whatsoever -- they are not happier or sadder now than they ever were; there is no more or less tension between them than there ever was; there is no difference whatsoever in how they interact with the rest of the crew. I think the problem is that the writers completely failed in their representation of the relationship between the two when it was ongoing -- apart from Neelix occasionally & annoyingly calling Kes "sweetie", there simply wasn't much to the relationship. Thus, now that it's over, there is no perceptible difference -- because it had never been defined in the first place. For good or ill, the Dax and Worf we see now are not exactly the same as the Dax and Worf we saw before they became involved -- the same cannot be said of Neelix and Kes. This, it seems to me, is a clear example of pretty darn bad writing -- or a failure of vision -- in clearly mapping out what the relationship meant to these characters. The main difference between before & after the breakup seems to be that Kes now has swankier clothes. This does not character development make. (Nice though the new duds may be.)

There is, of course, another problem with Kes' story line: it disappears completely about 20 minutes into the episode, never to be heard from again. Even Kes' quite interesting & reasonable quandary about whether to leave the ship or not is resolved with in a cowardly & under-written reset-button scene in which Kes basically simply says, "I'm staying." Such drama! Such tension! (And, by the way, where was Neelix during all of this? You'd think he'd have something to say about his "sweetie" dating someone and thinking about leaving the ship. Guess not.)

There is another failure of creative imagination about this resolution: the creative powers-that-be -- in this case, Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, but it seems to apply to everyone -- still don't seem to understand the storytelling possibilities of the situation they have put Voyager in. Basically, the style of storytelling is more or less completely unchanged from TNG days - - thus, damage to the ship in one show is forgotten in the next; the crew is always happy to be on board and never thinks of leaving; guest characters come and go in the space of one episode, and no one ever joins the crew. None of that need apply here. Voyager is far, far from home and from Starfleet -- damage ought to matter, some crewmembers should want to leave, more permanent or semi-permanent guests could be picked up. After all, they took Neelix and Kes aboard -- why should they be the last?

Why do I mention this now? Because of Zahir. The writers felt the need to completely wrap up this story in one episode, and thus forced Kes' decision at the end. A potentially more interesting solution would be to have Zahir join the crew for a while -- he knows this region of space, he could help the ship through it, and the possibilities of Kes' relationship with him could be explored at greater length, and could be given greater resonance. Instead, the writers behave as if this were the Enterprise, and send off Zahir as if he were one of Riker's conquests. Voyager is in a unique situation, and it requires a different approach to storytelling. Until the Voyager writers realize that, the show will continue to be a TNG-style show without familiar aliens -- and a show shouldn't be defined by what it lacks, but by what it has. Voyager still isn't.

So, what does the episode spend all of it's time on, if not the ever-underutilized Kes? Sadly, a silly techno-plot about the Doctor messing with his program. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I hate, hate, HATE HATE Holodeck episodes! This one is slightly more bearable than most, as it doesn't involve the Holodeck malfunctioning, trapping the crew in it -- but it's still a holo-program gone wrong plot, and I don't care for it. When the Doctor tries to incorporate the personality traits of great people throughout history, the "subroutines interact" in dangerous ways, giving rise to a "dark doctor" who tries to kill Zahir and later kidnaps Kes. Why? Because he's a combination of the "dark streaks" of all the characters he incorporated. Ugh. That gag was silly when it was used in Dr. Who (in the "Trial of a Timelord" season, the Valeyard was revealed to be an incarnation of the Doctor between the 11th and 12th which was an amalgamation of all his evil sides), and it's silly here. Also, you'd think they'd include a safety factor in the Doc's programming to make sure he can't harm anyone, just like the Holodeck does. Anyway, I don't have a whole lot more to say about this terribly long plot -- it's a really silly Holodeck plot which lets Robert Picardo grimace and walk with a slouch. (By the way, when the Doc shimmered when his subroutines were out of whack, was anyone else reminded of "Innerspace", when Robert Picardo [as Martin Short as the Cowboy] was transformed back into Martin Short? Hey! Now *that* would have been interesting! The Doc transforms into Martin Short...)

A few other random thoughts and nits... after Zahir is tossed off the cliff by the Evil Doc, there is not one scene between Zahir and Kes... Janeway tells Chakotay that she is "downloading the coordinates" into Tuvok's tricorder -- technically, she is uploading them... Tuvok detects "residual hologram traces" or something at the crime scene -- what are those? What are the residual traces of light? Perhaps it's a distinctive pattern of residual heat, but given that Tuvok was at the crime scene almost a day later, this seems to be stretching things... Apparently, there is a drug for everything -- when the Doc has Belanna on the table, he gives her a shot to paralyze her muscles -- then gives her another shot to free up only those muscles needed for speech -- that's one damn smart drug. I don't buy it for a second.

So, in sum: a pretty dismal episode. A potentially interesting Kes story is quickly dumped in favor of a tedious and implausible HoloDoc-gone-wrong story. More Kes and less technobabble would have been much, much better. Another Braga/Menosky mess.

Next week: Voyager bravely and shamelessly rips off the recent NBC miniseries "Asteroid", in what we are, I suppose, not to see as a desperate bid for ratings. Yum!

Back to top

Rise

Another in a string of deeply uninspired Voyager outings, this time focusing in on Neelix and Tuvok. The asteroid element of the plot turns out to have been a mere marketing ploy, and all the action takes place on an elevator. The wafer-thin plot then gets wrapped up by several implausibilities and turns out to have lead nowhere.

This episode is one of those that makes you wonder why they chose to tell this story, and what went wrong in doing so. My first thought was that this episode was produced due to the need to do a "bottle" show -- stick a couple people in a room and let 'em rip, done when the series needs to save some money. But there were far too many SFX shots for that to have been the case here.... What we do have, though, is lots of conversation between Neelix and Tuvok -- and there's just no way that can be construed as a good thing.

Now, unlike many people, I never hated Neelix. Sure, he wasn't my favorite character, but I thought he might have his place in the crew. Maybe it's just because I always watched "Benson" when I was growing up. Anyway, over the past half season or so, the Voyager writers have done a good job of convincing me to really hate Neelix. He's needy, annoying, irritating, and often incompetent. For some reason, the Voyager writers seem to think these are endearing qualities. They are not. They are merely grating. This episode makes the further mistake of not only trying to show us that these qualities are good, but trying to prove that Neelix is right and Tuvok is wrong. Not gonna happen.

Before I get back to the main story, two points about the beginning of the show. The episode starts out with two of Voyager's most frequent mistakes -- the Lame Teaser and the Needless Destruction of Yet Another Shuttlecraft. Perhaps these are actually elements in the "Writing for Voyager Style Guide." In any event, the teaser falls completely flat. Now, it's not as bad as, say, the trailer for "Unity" -- but it also just doesn't go anywhere. Sure, there are some explosions and all, but the teaser doesn't really tell you anything about the episode -- nor is it interesting. As to the shuttle, I just couldn't believe they were crashing ANOTHER shuttle -- this is moving even beyond self-parody. It's tempting to say that the writers must not ever watch the show, and thus don't realize that they crash a shuttle nearly every week, but this episode was written by Brannon Braga, who helps to oversee the whole series -- so that explanation won't fly. After reading some interviews with him, though, it's entirely possible he keeps on blowing up shuttlecrafts just to annoy people who would complain about it. Well, if that's his intention, I guess he's succeeded. But whatever the reason, these repetitive shuttle disasters certainly undermine any dramatic credibility the series might have.

Anyway, the story kicks into gear when Tuvok and Neelix are stranded on the surface with the Ambassador's assistant and a few other aliens, unable to contact the Voyager due to interference. Neelix suggests they use the tether to get above the atmospheric level of interference, and contact Voyager from there. (It should be pointed out that Neelix never does check the comm system components on the roof, being too caught up in his own head to follow orders -- so they will never know if they could have just called for help.) Taking Neelix' word (always a bad move, apparently) that he knows how to operate a tether, Tuvok agrees to the plan. The scientist then tries to take off on the elevator without everyone, and soon everyone is in the elevator, shooting up into the sky, without adequate preparation.

A lot of the conversation in the episode revolves around Neelix and Tuvok discussing their differences. None of this works for me, though. Neelix describes what Tuvok thinks of him -- basically, that Neelix is a useless idiot. The problem is, Tuvok is right. Neelix' irritating over-enthusiasm does always get him and everyone else in trouble. He is a whiner and sometimes a coward. He doesn't add anything of particular value to the crew. He's an overgrown eight year old on a permanent bad-hair day. And by lying about his knowledge of tethers, he endangered the entire mission, and everyone's lives. So why on earth should we sympathize with him? Neelix's discussion with Tuvok about instincts was annoying for those reasons and some others -- notably, that such ground has already been well covered, both on TOS and TNG. Kirk and Spock had similar discussions, as did Spock and McCoy, which were, by definition, miles more interesting than those here -- and were more credible, as neither of the discussants was an idiot. Geordie and Data also had this same conversation (nearly word-for-word repeated in this episode by Neelix and Tuvok). Now, that conversation was also annoying and tedious -- but it was also fairly recent. Given all the TNG staffers behind Voyager, they ought to realize when they are repeating themselves.

In any event, Neelix forces Tuvok to go check the roof for clues, since the scientist gasped "roof!" just before he died. On the roof, Tuvok finds a data pad. Then, the Ambassador's assistant goes up to the roof to toss Tuvok off and take the data pad. A few problems here: it makes sense that Tuvok can breath outside the elevator -- Vulcan has a very thin atmosphere. What is the other guy's excuse? He should have passed out in seconds -- heck, he was already passing out in the much thicker atmosphere of the elevator. Secondly, why would the guy take the pad back into the elevator? Why not just toss it into infinity, given all the damage it could do? Silliness. (Also, there didn't appear to be any sort of airlock involved with that hatch on the roof -- therefore, opening that hatch should have caused the same sort of windstorm that opening the front door caused.)

Back inside, all three remaining aliens conveniently crowd around the control panel, allowing Neelix the time to open the door and let Tuvok back in. Then, after a fight, Tuvok knocks the bad guy out of the elevator. One thing about this -- all the elevator- related special effects were relatively bad, but the shot of the guy falling out of the elevator was just abysmally fake -- really, really bad work, which is surprising. Anyway, Tuvok convinces an ever-whining Neelix to get the elevator moving (what all three aliens couldn't figure out was, move the "up" lever!), and they continue up.

Back on Voyager, the crew has discovered that the asteroids aren't real asteroids -- they are fakes. Someone is attacking the planet. They then discover the alien ship leading the invasion. Strangely, after communicating with the captain of the alien ship, Janeway doesn't turn around and ask the ambassador some questions -- like, say, who are these guys? Do they have a legitimate claim to the planet? Can we beat them? -- but instead orders battle stations. Again, good for the action portion of the show, but lousy captaining. A firefight soon begins.

During the fight, Neelix and Tuvok get clear of the interference, and are able to make contact with Voyager. Here the bad writing starts to really get thick. The Voyager apparently beams up the elevator occupants -- in the middle of a battle -- with their shields raised. Of course, a Starship cannot beam anyone up with shields raised -- and yet, here, this seems to happen. This is not good. Further, the data pad happens to contain critical information about the attacking ship -- including its shield harmonics. Thus, Voyager is able to disable their weapons and shoo them away.

This last bit -- the lucky discovery of exactly the bit of information needed to beat the enemy ship -- is such sloppy writing, it can only be explained through a gratuitous plot- catch-up scene in the mess hall. The scientist guy, it seems, found out about the presence of these invading aliens, and, from the surface of the colony, was able to "gather information" about their weaponry -- including those handy shield harmonics. How exactly did he find out all this on a sparsely populated, isolated colony which had never heard of these bad guys before? Who knows. It doesn't seem to make a lick if sense, but that's becoming a theme.

Then, just in case we hadn't gotten the message of the show, we are treated to yet another conversation between Neelix and Tuvok, in which Tuvok says he is giving Neelix a commendation for bravery etc. (apparently forgetting the whole endangering everyone by lying thing), and Neelix gets to crow about how his instincts were right after all. One problem with that last part though -- it's not true. Tuvok said that they ought to look on the roof once they were safe; Neelix insisted it be done right away. Had they beamed the elevator to Voyager and looked at the roof then, they still would have found the pad -- and Tuvok never would have been tossed off the roof. How, exactly, was Neelix right? It's insulting enough to try to convince us that Neelix has better instincts than Tuvok, and even worse to try to convince us of this when the facts don't even back it up.

I also think that Braga demonstrated in this episode the fact that he doesn't really understand Vulcans. At one point, Tuvok says that they will need all the luck they can get. Vulcans don't believe in luck, and I find it very hard to believe that Tuvok would say such a thing. Soon after, Tuvok demonstrates to one of his companions his strength by crushing the guy's hand. A Vulcan would not do this. Vulcans believe in peace above all, and would never resort to torture, and certainly not simply to prove a point. A Klingon might crush a guy's hand, a Vulcan would not. This is not mere nit-pickery; Vulcans and Klingons represent different philosophical views on life. To ignore these differences is to ignore the point of the entire franchise.

One thing that unfortunately gets lost in all that's bad about the episode is the tether. Skyhooks are a good, solid sci-fi idea which have made memorable appearances in various books (a skyhook makes a most vivid appearance in Red Mars, for instance.) But this idea is really left mostly unexplored, and all the technobable about it is annoying and not entirely convincing. (referring to operating the thing as "piloting" or "flying" doesn't help.)

Anyway, this is a thoroughly pointless little episode, with the asteroid aspect only thrown in to try to coast on the ratings of the recent NBC miniseries. The Neelix/Tuvok banter is trite, forced, and uninteresting, and the plot beyond that is nonexistent. Ridiculous coincidences and plot holes at the end just drive the final nail in the coffin of the episode.

Next week -- a rerun, but at least a rerun of the best episode of the season.

Back to top

Favorite Son

"It's scientifically plausible." -- the Doc.

"In a f@$&%*g pig's eye!!" -- the rest of the universe

As the third season of Voyager staggers onwards towards its inevitable conclusion, it this week drops on our laps "Favorite Son", an episode so bereft of interest that it could be swept away by the breeze on Mars.

The plot, such as it is, can be summarized quickly: Harry starts knowing things he never knew before, then he starts getting spots. An alien race -- the Taresians -- come along and explain to Harry that he's really not human -- he's a Taresian, dropped off in an Earth woman's womb, and it's only now that his Taresian DNA is making itself known. Happily for Harry, 90% of Taresians are female, and so various women start hurling themselves at him, as if he were a hand grenade and they were brave soldiers in a WWII film. Harry starts to think this might be a groovy place to hang for a while, but then he has a dream that disturbs him, so when two Taresian women snake into his bed at night, he cons them into playing "first I'll tie you up, the I'll run away!", and finds a male in his wedding bed. The man is a desiccated husk. Harry puts two and two together, and figures he's in trouble. He makes an escape back to the Voyager, and it's OK, he's really human after all. There's also some other race in there trying to blow Voyager up, but they don't really add whole lot to the plot.

So, what are the main problems with the episode? First, there is the science, which is even god-awfuler than usual. Then there's the plot, which seems stolen from some 1950's MST-bait sci fi movie, and which has only slightly fewer holes than the Albert Hall in the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". The acting also isn't much to write home about. But other than that....

I'll start out with the science. Or should I say, "science." Most of the "science" in the episode revolves around a theme which has been unfortunately common in TNG and Voyager -- that of the magical, all-encompassing power of DNA. For these writers, there is nothing that DNA can't do, and do instantly. Of course, that's got nothing to do with reality, but that's not stopped the writers yet. In this episode, Harry starts undergoing some physical changes due to his Taresian DNA being activated. This is, of course, nonsense, but it doesn't go beyond the same kind of inanity we've seen in past TNG/Vger episodes (ie, "Genesis", "Threshold", "Rascals", etc.) "Favorite Son" ups the stakes, though, in having the "activated" DNA contain knowledge -- extremely detailed, specific knowledge. Harry knows about a specific sector of space, he knows about the bad-guy aliens, he even knows the Taresian language, all because of these DNA fragments. This is, of course, nonsense. The Doc explains this by saying that we all have certain knowledge -- instincts, like, hold your breath when underwater -- which is hard-wired into us; therefore, ANY knowledge can be hardwired into us. This is, of course, a logical fallacy. There's a huge difference in basic behavioral instincts being genetically hardwired and being able to hard-wire specific knowledge, like words, directions, images, etc. -- and it's not simply a difference in the amount of information you're trying to hard-wire, but a difference kind. I mean, it's just implausible in so many ways.... I could probably go on at great length trying to explain why this is so ridiculous, but I'd be spending more time on the science of the episode than the writers did, so I'll pass, thanks.

One more point about Harry's transformation... Early on, the Doc checks out Harry's DNA and compares it with Taresians, and he says, yes, by golly, he's got Taresian genetic bits, which must have disguised themselves as particularly nondescript shrubberies before. Later in the episode, the Doc says, hey, wait, I went back and checked, and Harry never had these fragments before! What? Apparently, when the Doc first said that these fragments had always been there but had been disguised, he was just guessing, just making it up. He had no idea. This makes no sense whatsoever -- not even for a millisecond. I mean, when he first examined Harry, it was perfectly obvious (given the writers' interpretation of DNA) that Harry had some funky DNA acting up in him. It seems to me that there would be two questions to ask: is it Taresian, and was it always there. For some reason, the Doc decided only one of those mattered -- even though the question of whether or not the DAN had always been there is essential to the question of Harry's origin. Why would the Doc be so stupid, so negligent in his duties, so just plain dumb? Because if he wasn't, Harry would never have gone down to the planet, and then there is no story. So, the Doc acts like a moron, even though a wise crew would immediately disconnect him for their own safety.

Another bit of scientific nonsense is the Taresian method for mating. They need men for their genetic material -- and not just a little of it. They need to take pretty much all the guy's DNA, all at once, destroying every cell in the guy's body at once. Why? Every cell in his body has the same genetic structure, some cells just make more use out of specific sections. All you need is one cell, you have the entire genetic code. Given the Taresians' level of technology -- they can create viruses to implant immensely sophisticated genes into many alien races -- they could clone all the cells they need from just one cell. More importantly, there's no need for males at all. Again, if they are that good at genetics, they can make a genetic cocktail of genes from two women, and create an embryo that way. Or, they could just genetically engineer up some male Taresians, wait for them to grow up, and breed away. Basically, the Taresians have a TON of options, and stealing men away by implanting them with genetic memories to make them think they are Taresians and them having a menage-a-four with him on his wedding night but then sucking out all his cells would rank about 10 millionth on the list.

So, what about the plot, if we strip away all the pseudo- scientific claptrap? It's still pretty bad. What you basically have is the old "women lure men with the promise of really wild sex, but really just want to mate with the guy and kill him" story -- a sad, pathetic, black-widow, vagina dentata, male paranoid fantasy about the evils of women. Sure, it dates back a long way, but is there any reason to keep on telling this story? Even more depressing is the fact that it was written by a woman, Lisa Klink. It is so well understood that this is a silly, cliche male fear that even mainstream critics pounded "Species" for building its plot around this idea. This is hardly forward- thinking, original storytelling. A line is thrown in about the Sirens, but that seems like a desperate attempt to convince the audience that the plot isn't a lame, stale, outdated cliche, but a "classic theme." Hooey.

Another problem is that the plot is essentially set up as a mystery -- "is Harry really an alien?" The problem is that, given Vger's track history, there's no real reason to think that this will be resolved in an interesting way, so one tends to avoid getting too involved in the story. Of course, this actually pays off, since it isn't interestingly resolved -- so you come out ahead if you didn't care much -- but still, that can't really be counted as a "plus" for the episode.

This episode also demonstrates Voyager's deeply conflicted attitude toward sex. There's a lot of time spent setting up just how many women Harry will get to sleep with if he stays -- everyone gets three wives. (By the way, a technical point here. If I heard correctly, the planet was supposed to be 90% female. That's a 9:1 ratio of females to males. How do they get out of that a 3:1 ratio in marriage? I mean, if you're going for polygyny, why not go all the way? Why not 9 wives? Just wondering....) We also get an extended dream sequence of Harry in bed, kissing two women. So, the producers get to hang out the titillating notion of group sex. But -- it was in a dream! So it's ok! It didn't really happen! Plus, they had their clothes on anyway! Then, Harry wakes up -- and there are the two women again! But instead of sleeping with them, Harry pretends to play a bondage game with them, and ties one up -- then clubs the other like a seal. Real nice, Harry. So, again, the producers seem to want the audience to get all excited about the possibility of kinky sex, but since this is a "family" show, none of it happens. Heck, on this show, not even non-kinky sex in a committed relationship happens. Of course, lets's face it, if you're hinting at group sex and bondage, you're no longer a "family" show anyway -- but there you go. So, again, Voyager comes across as being simultaneously prurient and prudish. "oooh, look at these three people in bed, pretending to be vaguely interested in eachother... of course, that would be wrong! Stop it! Wanna watch some more? go ahead... Bad! Bad!" Please....

Also, combining these last two points, let's see how women are presented in this episode: they are evil, lying seductresses; they pull a black widow mate-and-kill deal; they try to kill Harry; a woman gets tied up; a woman gets clubbed; Belanna gets blown up. If the women of Voyager keep on getting "strong roles" like this from Jeri Taylor and Lisa Klink, they are all going to be dead by the end of the season.

A couple other points: what was the deal with that other alien race? Their hatred of the Taresians was never explained -- presumably, it had something to do with the Taresians' looking for men, but it certainly wasn't well developed. Also, I can't believe they did it again!!!!! When Voyager beamed Harry up, they were under attack from the alien ship, and had their shields up! You can't beam someone up with shields raised! It's a crucial limitation of Trek technology, but apparently inconvenient for the Vger writers. Of course, it's probably a bit silly to complain too much about that when in the same episode the Doc argues that you can learn Spanish by getting a shot with the properly programmed DNA.... And has anyone noticed that essentially every race in the Delta quadrant is evil? Odd, that....

Good things about this episode? Well, Belanna had some particularly good banter with Harry in sick bay -- that was a nice surprise. And I guess the bits of Harry's dreams about his mother were interesting. Other than that....

So, wrapping up: I've seen that on the S.O.S, this has been ranked as the worst episode of the season so far. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it certainly isn't good. A really tired plot is treated sloppily and buried under really awful science. Spend the hour looking at comet Hale-Bopp instead -- it's real science, and real interesting.

Back to top

Back to reviews main page

Back to main page

1