This Week's Episode: "Memorial"
Mission Image Archive for 'Memorial'
Summary:After completing a two week survey mission of fifteen planets, Chakotay, Tom, Harry and Neelix return to Voyager only to begin showing signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Upon further investigation, the away team begins to recall distinct memories of a war that they had fought in, which resulted in the deaths of many innocent colonists. When Voyager begins to retrace the steps of the away team's mission in order to determine the cause of the sudden memories, the entire ship begins to experience the same memories.
Rating: 9
Best Scene: The sweeping shots of the the Obelisk were beautiful.
Worst Scene: None really stick out.
Best acting award goes to: Well, they actually gave Chakotay something to do this week, so I suppose I better hand out to Robert Beltran. Hard to say when he'll win it again :)
Best Line: Toss up between: "...it's too bad we had to cut the lecture short because of the warp core breach, and then the Borg attacked and we were all assimilated..." or "...maybe this was a bad idea." -- B'Elanna Torres reflecting on whether it was such a good idea to build a television set for Tom.
Impressions: This episode was a far step up from last week's mess that was "Virtuoso". "Memorial", penned by executive producer Brannon Braga, pangs many simularities to previous episodes that go on a morality trip to say that war/combat is wrong. Some episodes which come to mind are Voyager's "Remember" (not really war, but a holocaust) and DS9's "The Siege of....". I certainly think that "Memorial" was far more successful at conveying a key message: the atrocities of the past must not be forgotten but remembered, in such a fashion that they never happen again. Perhaps an Obelisk should be raised on Earth to ensure that the dark points in human evolution, such as the holocaust (which some people are claiming never happened...) should never be forgotten, nor recreated. "Memorial" succeeds since I didn't find it overly preachy. Whereas, in 'The Siege of...", the viewer is subjected to neverending slow motion shots of battle, culminating with Nog losing his leg. That episode was preachy, and basically holds up a sign to the viewer throughout the episode to spell out how wrong the Dominion War was. Although "Memorial" does spell out that war and combat are wrong, it never gets to the point where I felt as a viewer that they were rubbing my nose in it.
This episode is certainly far from fast paced. However, this doesn't hurt the episode. One of Voyager's key problems in my eyes is the problem of maintaining a fluidity from scene to scene to scene. This show had direction, and knew where it was going. Thus, there was no rush to get there. The episode flows nicely from each scene, and the episode did not have an abrupt ending, which is nice. Even though the episode is not fast paced, it never loses its steam and remains interesting and involving, to the point that the episode is over before you know it.
The acting this week was right on par. Robert Beltran delivers a convincing performance, as does Robert McNeill and Kate Mulgrew. I particularly liked Mulgrew's flashback scenes to the planet. Ethan Phillips was mediocre, as I found he went over the top a little bit too often. However, his powerful and effective dialogue about guilt with Seven of Nine was perhaps the highlight of the show. Garrett Wang was unimpressive, was again. He isn't convincing, and has no depth in this episode (but does he ever??). Oh, couldn't they have axed Ensign Eager instead of Kes?? Grr.... The rest of the cast (Tuvok, Torres and Seven) play backseat to the other characters, but they perform well to accompany a fine tuned episode.
The special effects of the obelisk were beautiful! They were amazingly subtle, that it made the shot that much more impressive. I have to say, these were certainly the highlights of the episode for me. Kudos to the special effects department for such fine work.
The musical score was particularly sobre and different this week, which accompanied well the dark overture of the entire episode.
To the direction, I found it impressive. The shots of the battle on the planet aren't overly excessive, but are very effective. And don't get me started on the beautiful pass shots of the Obelisk. They were fantastic (I already said that).
The writing was very good, and actually used the Voyager cast intelligently. Did Janeway make the right decision? Was it flawed? I think she did make the right decision, and it is certainly in character for the Janeway that we've known for the past six years. It makes sense for her to leave it going, but the one thing I have to disagree on is Chakotay's behavior. He, of all people, should be in favour of letting the Memorial remain active. Yes, he was somewhat traumatized by the overpowering memories, but Chakotay's background and heritage would make me believe that he would be in favour of letting the Memorial remain on. And past episodes, like "Nemesis", would certainly make his actions and objection look a little out of character. I particularly liked the writing of Seven of Nine this week, where the writers continue the thread of Seven's guilt of assimilating so many innocent people: we've seen this before, like in "Dark Frontier" and "Dragon's Teeth". Although some do not like Seven of Nine, I will agree with others who have said that Seven is definately the only character on Voyager who is written intelligently and consistantly.
So, with all the positive aspects of this episode, why only a 9 out of 10? Well, I just feel that we've seen this storyline several other times (and we have) and it is a little tired. But, don't get me wrong, "Memorial" is certainly the most successful of all of them. I thoroughly enjoyed it (loved the opening scene with the TV...how true was that scene??!) and is definately one of the high points of the so far, so good season six of Voyager.
