Voyager 3x1 "Basics, Part 2"

rating: ****

the story: The crew survives being marooned long enough for Paris, the Doctor, and Suder to retake the ship from Seska and the Kazon.

what it's all about: The big shift in storytelling from the second to third seasons is evident in how little Chakotay is involved in events.  This was literally the culmination of an arc that directly involved him, even as late as the first part of the story, which was also the second season finale, where Seska tries fooling him into thinking she's having his baby.  That's how the crisis began.  How it ends is almost a letdown, but it's also still one of the biggest stories the series ever attempted, and the closest the crew ever came to actually losing the ship. 

So the irony is that the dramatic heft of "Part 2" falls to Suder, the character who debuted in "Meld" and whose struggle to get control of himself while being asked to do everything that would otherwise make him lose it...basically it's the closest Voyager ever came to doing a Deep Space Nine story, focusing on a guest character at the expense of the main cast.  In "Meld" Suder at least had a strong counterpoint in Tuvok.  Here he's working alongside the Doctor, who's constantly at risk of being deactivated the invaders, which of course happens, which means Suder really is all alone this time. 

Watching the crew survive various manufactured crises on the planet is actually a huge drawback for the episode.  It's completely unnecessary, one of those times the producers wrongly assumed the first problem (being marooned) wasn't big enough (another would be Enterprise's "The Catwalk," where the crew being holed up in one of the nacelles to survive a storm wasn't somehow enough; Star Trek can really be scared of just letting human drama play out), so they piled on plot points that could just as easily have been entirely unrelated episodes, and should have. 

Anyway, aside from Suder there's of course Seska, because that's really what the story was about, finally concluding her arc.  Predictably, her Kazon lover feels no real qualms of moving on without her once everything blows up in their faces.  It's a shame we never saw him or Seska's baby again.  Would've at least given Chakotay another fantastic character moment.  But "Part 2" feels like it's deliberately moving on from prior storytelling because it is, much like Enterprise would hastily conclude its long-running Temporal Cold War arc, bowing to the pressure of apathetic (or maybe just pathetic) fan complaints about how things had been going.  Those same fans would nonsensically complain that serialization vanished from Voyager, or seriously claim it was never there.  Yeah.  Okay.

The good news is that when it counts, the episode feels epic, in ways later two-part event episodes frequently struggled to match.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Concludes one of the longest arcs in Star Trek history.
• series - So by necessity is a defining Voyager moment.
• character - Suder and Seska drive this episode.
• essential - The first big climax of the series.

notable guest-stars:
Martha Hackett (Seska)
Brad Dourif (Suder)
Anthony De Longis (Culluh)
Nancy Hower (Samantha Wildman)
Simon Billig (Hogan)

Voyager 1x11 "State of Flux"

rating: ****

the story: Seska defects from the crew, betraying Chakotay and joining the Kazon.

what it's all about: Inarguably, "State of Flux" is the most important early episode of Voyager after the pilot ("Caretaker") and once and for all settles whether the Maquis proved to be a wasted opportunity or in fact the most fruitful storytelling opportunity of the series.

You can probably guess that I throw my vote in with the latter (incredibly tiny) lot, because "Flux" begins a story that continues throughout the second season and isn't resolved until "Basics, Part 2" at the start of the third season (and then reprised at the end of that season in "Worst Case Scenario").  All that in finally deciding if the Maquis were a bunch of irredeemable bad apples (as fans inexplicably had determined them to be) or good people with at least one really bad apple (Seska) among them. 

And what a bad apple!  Not only was Seska willing to betray the crew, she betrayed Chakotay, with whom she had her closest relationship, the remaining Maquis allegiance that went beyond the new Starfleet code everyone else (including belligerent B'Elanna Torres) went along with (well, aside from the folks featured in "Learning Curve").  And she wasn't even Bajoran, as she'd appeared throughout the season to this point, but Cardassian!  What a twist! 

All of it plays like a knowing nod toward Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, in which Valeris is revealed to be a Klingon stooge, down to a trick played on Seska to get her to expose herself.  (See "Flashback" in the third season for another Undiscovered Country callback, and also Enterprise's "Judgment.")

And again, it's a huge, huge moment, both for the season and continuity of the series itself, an unprecedented one that wouldn't be duplicated until Eddington is revealed to be a member of the Maquis in Deep Space Nine (he's the only character, actually, who plays the Maquis off as the bad guys, across three series). 

Anyone still trying to figure out whether or not Chakotay was a wasted opportunity needs to watch "Flux" and the second season (particularly "Maneuvers") over again, because they spell out exactly what happened to him and feature his biggest moments, bigger than any first officer, arguably, aside from Spock, in franchise history.  How do you follow something like that up?  Especially when fans great the material with apathy?  (It wasn't the series that rejected the character, but the fans.)

criteria analysis:

• franchise - If you're one of the fans who thinks Voyager wasted the potential of the Maquis, this episode is required viewing.
• series - As stated above, after "Caretaker" this is the most important episode of the first season.
• character - Begins the epic showdown between Chakotay and Seska.
• essential - Entirely must-see.

notable guest-stars:
Martha Hackett (Seska)
Anthony De Longis (Culluh)
Josh Clark (Carey)

Voyager 2x26 "Basics, Part 1"

****

The season and the first two seasons come to their epic conclusion in "Basics, Part 1," and darned if that's not a tall order.

Having cut off most of what had been developing for the Seska-Kazon alliance earlier, our favorite Cardassian traitor instead unwittingly gets it back on track by stumbling into her own crisis, her bastard child finally being born, and she suddenly grows maternal and protective, contacting Chakotay, whom they both believe to be the father, asking for help, and of course he agrees, forcing Janeway (hey! this is the one time Chakotay really forces the action!) to enter a final confrontation with the Kazon, a situation that proves too chaotic for the ship to handle.

Seska uses the ensuing opportunity to once again align with the Kazon, who steal the ship and exile the crew to a desolate world, sort of putting everyone in the reverse of how the series pilot ended.  It's quite a dramatic event, even if you were one of the fans who never cared for the Kazon.  They were seen as the poor man's Klingons from the start, and many fans wanted to have seen the last of them after their first appearance, but they kept coming back, and eventually found a strong ally in Seska, and like it or not became a huge part of the series.

Now, many, many times hostile aliens have taken over the ship/station in Star Trek, sometimes so easily that it ends up seeming like a joke.  I confess to having sometimes thought of "Basics" as one of the more forgettable instances of this trend, but it's incredibly important in how it galvanizes the crew in unexpected ways.  For one thing, it forces the recurring Lon Suder into becoming a key character in the series in ways he's hadn't already been, and also places the Doctor into harm's way and forced to fend for himself for the first time (but that's really for the second part; it does, however, in its implication from this half of the story reveal him to be in a most unique position for Star Trek), and not to mention Tom Paris once again being the odd man out, something he routinely becomes, even after finally joining a lasting family, when he's left on his own to come up with a plan of rescue (more on that next season!).

Anyway, the stakes can seem a little silly when all you're talking about is a single ship and the only thing the good guys really lose is the ability to get home, but they still alive, right?  That may be the whole point of the series, but there were still possibilities, right?  Except you want those bad guys to finally get it, and there's no better opportunity for that to happen than when it seems like they've finally gotten everything they wanted.  How often does that happen in Star Trek?  Really, only during the Dominion War.  That's the power of keeping a story going for a while.  That's what benefits the series from keeping around unpopular villains, because they force one major character into action, and then everyone else into jeopardy, and finally everything into a place where they either move forward or truly get left behind.

Well, hey, that sounds like a winner to me.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Brad Dourif
Martha Hackett
Anthony De Longis

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x14 "Alliances"

**

"Alliances" is basically the secret origin of the Kazon.  It's the episode where we discover how they became an intergalactic band of rival gangs, opportunistic thugs trying to survive by any means necessary, up to and excluding working together, even though this is an episode where Janeway tries to work with leaders from most of the sects, along with representatives of the Trabe.

Who're the Trabe?  They're some persecuted aliens secretly manipulating Janeway in order to gain vengeance on the Kazon, even though they used to subjugate them and deserved the hard uprising that put them in that predicament in the first place.  Suffice it to say, but if there had been a lot more Trabe in Kazon episodes, fans probably would've liked them better.  But, as this is the only episode to feature them, it's an easy one to overlook.

The whole thing's really relevant because the season is about to plunge more heavily into its Kazon arc.  "Maneuvers" was a good preview, but it doesn't really explain what's to come, other than that it'll involve Seska.  "Alliances" is the beginning of the end of the Kazon in the series, and starts it off with a bang.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Raphael Sbarge
Martha Hackett
Anthony De Longis
Simon Billig

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x11 "Maneuvers"

****

"Maneuvers" is the essential episode of the first two seasons of Voyager.  And it stars Chakotay.

There are dozens of misconceptions about Voyager, one being that it made every mistake possible.  The reverse couldn't be more true.  In its first episode the series outlined everything that it was going to be, and very wisely the producers set about exploiting that first episode for two seasons, including a perennial foe the crew could butt heads with on a repeated basis, semi-savages aliens known as the Kazon whom fans mistakenly identified as unworthy of their attention.

How were they relevant?  They provided an outlet for those members of the combined crew who didn't trust it, led by Seska, the Cardassian spy planted within Chakotay's Maquis cell who posed as a Bajoran and was quickly exposed in the first season and officially defected to the Kazon, who were splintered into the very factions Janeway had successfully eliminated in her own crew.

So "Maneuvers" is the episode where Seska and Chakotay finally have their reckoning.  It's not the beginning or end of the arc that only really concludes in the third season premiere (with a wicked reverberation in the later "Worst Case Scenario"), but speaks to the power of everything that comes before and after it, not only the dramatic worth of the Kazon, but how significant a character Chakotay really was when written in that way.

For most of the series, he defers to the judgment of Captain Janeway, but on the rare occasions where he finds himself in control, he is a capable and confident individual, who nonetheless struggles to keep his emotions out of it (this instinct got him in trouble in his youth, and he's spent the rest of his life keeping it under control, like a human illustration of Vulcan history; no wonder he ends up with Seven, and it's assumed that anyone who actually paid attention would understand).  He has no control when it comes to Seska.  Hers was the betrayal he couldn't ignore.

And so "Maneuvers" happens.  This is the epic story that lies in one significant corner of the whole series.  And really, where else could Chakotay go after it?

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Martha Hackett
Anthony De Longis

Memory Alpha summary.