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 2x25 "Resolutions"

**

Fans of Voyager wanted Janeway and Chakotay to get together.  Maybe that's part of the thing that helped tank interest in the series, because that's a romance that resolutely never happened, even more certainly thank Picard and Crusher.

"Resolutions" is the closest the series ever came to explaining why.  Contaminated and left to fend for themselves on an alien planet and likely to remain there the rest of their lives, Janeway and Chakotay get a close-up look at everything that stood in their way, and why their relationship quickly evolved to the state it remained in from the very beginning.  Simply put, they work well together, and they each have necessary skills the other needs to survive, but they mean nothing more to each other than that ability to survive.

At first, neither knows what to make of the situation.  Both of them thinks they know what needs to be done, and so they get at it, quite separately.  Then they begin to notice how they can provide additional comforts to one another, and that it's not so bad being close to each other.  They develop a kinship and a bond and mutual contentment, but the name of the episode is "Resolutions," and resolve is the necessary ingredient that makes the whole thing work.  If they weren't stuck in this situation, they'd be exactly the same on the ship.  Chakotay had more passion with Seska, at many points during this very season.

For that reason, because it's exactly the same relationship they always have and they don't really address what all the fans wanted to badly, Janeway and Chakotay don't really reveal anything different in "Resolutions," so in many regards it doesn't really stand out.  I could make the argument that it's essential for all the things and reasons I've already outlined, that it explains everything about them without having to come out and say it, but I guess you don't have to worry about it if you don't want to.  The writers already made that call, several times over.  In fact, they avoid their problems more than they try to solve them, that's what really happens here.  Every time there's a big decision to be made any other time, they butt heads.  Without having to say so, Chakotay is really saying he's fine with this and he'll make good and try and help Janeway make good, too, because the roles are really reversed, and he's too polite to say so.  But the funny thing is, even in the dominant position, he's submissive, because he doesn't like a big fuss anymore, especially when it isn't necessary.  So it looks like the episode says less about him than it does Janeway.  It's like the opposite of "Tattoo."

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Simon Billig

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x24 "Tuvix"

****

For some reason Voyager had a knack for getting a lot of its best concepts out of the way early on, and "Tuvix" is another example of that.  Simply put, this is the episode where Neelix and Tuvok are merged into one body thanks to a transporter accident.

Like some of those old original series adventures where Kirk was seemingly subject to just about every conceivable transporter accident (except for creating a permanent clone of himself, which instead happened to his Next Generation surrogate Will Riker), one of Star Trek's signature elements takes center stage, with its own brand of ethical dilemma, something the franchise is known for but rarely actually gets credit for, and all anyone cares about is whether Tuvix should be allowed to continue his own life rather than split back to his component personalities.

The real trouble is that combined, Neelix and Tuvok seem to be better than they ever were apart.  Hell, they've even made peace with themselves!  It's Janeway who makes the decision, ultimately, to undo the accident, and it's another in a series of controversial moves on her part that's liable to make those who already hate her think that she and Voyager as a whole is one vast mistake that only serves to bastardize the franchise.

But as I've said, ethical dilemmas are old hat for Star Trek.  Most of them involved weird alien cultures, originally, and rarely involved personal consequences for main characters, but that's the way it was done in that TV era.  If Voyager hadn't done an episode like this, not only would it be impossible to respect it at the time, but there'd be no defending it now.  But "Tuvix" exists, and it doesn't pull any of its punches, either on a first or fourteenth viewing.  It defines the show's legacy as much as any episode, and it's an early example that the series wasn't afraid either of its own potential or of what anyone would think about it in relation to the decades of interest fans had already invested in other characters.  So many fans still try to claim that Voyager played it safe.  "Tuvix" makes a joke out of that, and the contention that something like BattleStar Galactica, just because it was grim and gritty, war more daring.  It's more daring to challenge characters in multiple ways, rather than the same one, repeatedly, folks.  "Tuvix" does that in a single episode.  That's the strength of the Star Trek formula, which some fans would have you believe as being a dirty word.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Tom Wright
Simon Billig

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x21 "Deadlock"

*

"Deadlock" has that rare distinction of being a fairly generic episode that slips in a fairly huge impact on the series.

It's another of those crisis episodes with spacial paradoxes that leave everyone scrambling to survive.  There're plenty of episodes like that.  You can watch it to enjoy how it does that.  And while you do that, you can see Naomi Wildman born.  And then die.  And then come back because there's another one on the other ship.  Harry Kim does, too, and is replaced by his doppelganger.

Hey, it happened to Miles O'Brien, too.

Otherwise, move along.

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Simon Billig
Nancy Hower

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x20 "Investigations"

***

The Kazon arc of the season has one of its essential elements play out this episode, in a number of intriguing ways.

For several episodes, we've known that Jonas has been conversing with the Kazon, feeding them information.  He's a traitor, and he plays into Seska's hands.  But he doesn't get away with it scott free.  Tom Paris makes a big show of becoming disgruntled and actually leaves the ship this episode, another minor recurring arc coming to fruition this episode.  Anyone watching the series from the beginning might assume that he's finally falling back on the character traits that defined him in "Caretaker."

Then we have Neelix of all people trying to figure out how the Tom Paris he's come to know has reached this point, and in the process uncovering Jonas' treachery.  The whole affair is like a status marker.  Some fans were still complaining (and still do) that the Maquis as a storytelling device were a lost opportunity, and yet they gave us Seska, Jonas, and Suder, all characters who would never have existed in any other Starfleet crew, doing things no other Starfleet officer would have ever done, and each of them brought their drama into the second season of the series, and forced the rest of the crew to reveal their greatest strengths.  Earlier in the season Chakotay benefited from it, and now in "Investigations" Paris and Neelix do.

Paris struggled hard to prove he wasn't just the callow outcast he first appeared to be, just as Neelix tried and continued to try well after this that his outsider status had unexpected benefits.  Neelix was never going to be a character who exposed the human condition like Spock or Data, because he was, for the most part, extremely happy to be himself.  But every now and again, he saw something just differently enough to question things that needed to be questioned, and caught the crew in their complacency.  That's how he figured out what was really going on.  That's why he made such a good match for Tuvok.  Because they really weren't so different.

"Investigations" is one of the most important episodes of the season, and yet it's long stood as one of the most forgotten.  Hopefully that's something that can change, too.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Raphael Sbarge
Martha Hackett
Simon Billig

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x16 "Meld"

****

"Meld" is the definitive Tuvok episode, and it's a rival of "Amok Time" as a definitive Vulcan episode.  In fact, it's Tuvok's "Amok Time.

"Amok Time," as any Star Trek fan ought to know, is the original series episode where Spock is suffering from the Vulcan blood fever, pon farr, and begins acting irrationally until he's allowed to go home and mate.  Except it doesn't prove that easy.  He's got a challenger to his intended bride, and has to fight for it.  And it's not even that easy!  He ends up having to fight Kirk, and actually "kill" him.

"Meld" is like that, but thoroughly Tuvok instead of thoroughly Spock.  "Amok Time" happened because Spock served in Starfleet.  "Meld" happens because Tuvok is lost in the Delta Quadrant.  Tuvok was Voyager's tactical officer, but also served as the local sheriff, and as such when a murderer is discovered among the crew, it falls to him to discover the culprit.  Like an episode of Law & Order: SVU, this does not actually solve the problem, because Lon Suder cannot control himself.  So Tuvok offers to control Suder for him.  He does this by melding with him and taking on his murderous impulses, like Picard agreeing to assume Sarek's emotions, and it doesn't quite work out as planned.

Tuvok has Vulcan control, but not enough.  "Meld" is about the limits of self-restraint, of responsibility, and accountability.  It's about Suder as much as it about Tuvok, but mostly, it's Tuvok's finest hour.  It's another episode that challenges the perceptions of those who claimed it was unnecessary and fruitless to pursue Voyager as conceived, perhaps one of the best examples as to how the series lived up to its potential, in many and unexpected ways.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Brad Dourif
Simon Billig

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.