In part one of this retrospective I looked at the premise of Star Trek: Voyager and its persistence in working against that in its first season. It was unlucky, coming as the third live-action sequel, but its lofty mission was derailed by the perceived confines of the Star Trek series. Now it’s time to look at the cast of Voyager, considering some of its strengths and mulling over the best and worst episodes before thinking long and hard about the worst season finale in Star Trek history.
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| Help! They've beamed out my lungs! |
Novelty Characters
I completed part one of this retrospective considering how Voyager had simplified the Star Trek message. An unfortunate an inevitable implication of
this was that Voyager stuck
religiously with the character of the week format. As with other Star Trek series, that immediately put a lot of strain on characters
who were difficult to warm to. Novelty
characters Neelix and Kes were hit the hardest.
Within three stories Kes’ nascent psychic abilities had emerged in the
episode was (surely) wryly titled Time
and Again. Within five stores Neelix
had his lungs transported out.
Neelix! Sadly that episode wasn’t
called They’ve Beamed out my Lungs!
but that’s right - we were supposed to care about the Talaxian Morale officer’s
fatal condition just five episodes in.
Both actors tried with their difficult and often blandly obvious
characters. Special mention should go to
Jennifer Lien’s wonderfully level voice - but a nine year lifespan and
insatiable swotting does not a likeable character make. Fuse in the sudden telepathy - then ignored
for several shows - and the comparisons with another counsellor are
unflattering.
The show had strengths from the off though, don’t get me
wrong. Many of those weak points are
shared with other Star Trek series. The show
was kept together by Kate Mulgrew’s sturdy performance and Robert Picardo’s
brilliance.
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| Picardo: A bargin at five times the size |
Cast off
So, the crew of Voyager.
Mulgrew really is great. She has
that a distinctive voice and eye acting that fuses Picard and Sisko. A good thing too, considering how central she
is to the show. Often the camera often
just hangs around her, and unsurprisingly so.
Picardo plays a classic sci-fi trope but produces moments of great
comedy that Ethan Phillips in his irritating role can only hope for. The Doctor is instinctively funny from the
off even if the concept doesn’t actually make much sense. Elsewhere in the crew, Robert Duncan McNeill
isn’t bad despite being given little to do except brat on about his piloting
skills. The result is a slightly more
developed clone of The Next Generation season one La
Forge. Kim isn’t too bad either... Just
a dull Star Trek trope that would be
shown up far more in Enterprise when the same blandness was shared across
several characters. Combine the two
however, and their early exchanges relationships are excruciating.
The direction, budget and design were more
sophisticated on Voyager than on
earlier Trek series and that shone some
unfortunate spotlights. Robert Beltran puts
in some great moments, but has a bit of a rough ride as a more spiritual Riker
clone. It would be a few years before Beltran started to publically express his
boredom with the show, but he seems a little distracted. With every sweeping camera shot that keeps Kate
Mulgrew’s nuanced performance in focus, his red decked form is slumping despondently
in the background blur. That’s a bit of a shame.
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| Full Klingon Torres: Mid sulk |
Then there was Tuvok, good old reliable Tuvok. There’s a reason that Spock was half human,
why Romulans are great villains: full Vulcans are dull. Following Worf and
ahead of Reed’s gung ho weapons lust in Enterprise,
he really falls flat. The position of
confidant to the Captain is an interesting one, but worth so much less when the
Maquis dynamic isn’t properly followed explored. Tim Russ can’t be faulted for his performance
which offers a slightly different Vulcan and even a hint of exasperated
disapproval - if such a thing were possible.
It’s not a terrible thing that he has garnered more Vulcan screen time
than anybody else.
It’s clear that all characters would have benefited from
full serial arcs rather than the jumping between standard single episodes featuring
the lesser characters – just as season three of Enterprise
did.
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| Seska: Not keeping up with Cardassians |
That said, Voyager was a show was seeded more than many other Star Trek series. Seska is interesting for one, creeping into
the show in much the same way as O’Brien in The Next Generation. Her reveal is a nice distraction late in the
season, but draws another unfortunate comparison with Deep Space Nine. While true to
Cardassians’ stereotypical treachery, it’s a bit of a step back from Deep Space Nine’s subtly. Just a few episodes later we see Tuvok
attempting to discipline Maquis (yes, all four of them)... And Seska’s name doesn’t even come up. Chakotay’s inner-turmoil is a nice touch but it
can only go so far as a metaphor for Maquis integration. I can also see that Torres’ promotion scrap
as a microcosm for the paperwork surrounding other Marquis crew members’
positioning (if I look really hard) but it’s all rather, to use a word, Basics. Thinking about it, the fact there were so
many Maquis on one ship in the Badlands seems very out of character.
The Best and the
Worst
The first series has more than its fair share of generic Star Trek episodes, but there are
glimmers. An episode like Emanations really does go when no one
has gone before; a believable, other quadrant conundrum. The two appearances by
the Vidiians show that there are some good aliens on the horizon. By Faces,
they’re injecting some good old fashioned body horror into proceedings (poor
old Durst, he’d only had one line before)
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| Ex Post Facto: Hercule Tuvok takes the floor |
So, the best and worst:
A nadir has to be Ex Post Facto,
where an interesting approach to a Star Trek Ex Post Facto’s a poor
attempt at making a Voyager version
of a Deep Space Nine ‘Give O’Brien Hell’
episode. Aside from the monochrome
flashbacks we also see Tuvok as Poirot – he even gathers the suspects in a room
at the end! In retrospect a Vulcan is not the most charismatic of detectives,
but there any strengths firmly end ... We’re
just weeks into a new quadrant and the Baneans are only the second civilisation
that the Voyager crew meets. Having
initially sent off two scouts, Janeway then diverts the ship to free her man –
Voyager's adherence to the Second Directive (the needs of the few) falls flat
as soon as Paris and Chakotay make-up in Caretaker
Part II. There’s a cordial meeting with the alien race,
with not a hint of translation issues. They even shake hands as standard and they let Tuvok into their prison
facility with a phaser! It’s incredibly
sloppy but exposes where the creators’ interests lay. They were willing to forgo consistency to
pursue an idea. The episode collapses as if they
completely forgot what they were making. Yes, it’s even worse than Neelix losing his lungs. Evoking a noir crime thriller at the
beginning,
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| Eye of the Needle: Never trust a Vulcan Captain... |
On the flip side, one highlight is Eye of the Needle. I’d been looking forward to it actually - I
remembered its interesting temporal element and of course, it features a
Romulan! It is a neat, if slight 44
minutes. It’s mainly let down by the delivery
of its denouement. Laugh a minute Tuvok chooses
a rather un-dramatic (and illogical) time to check the Ship logs and tell the
crew that the Romulan died some years previously. “I thought I’d wait until the Romulan had gone
before I ruined your day’” effectively. That said, it’s not a clean-cut story
and although it’s narratively undermined, it’s the kind of science fiction that
Voyager should strive for.
Special mention should also to the great holodeck romp Heroes and Demons. Mainly because it’s a Picardo-centric episode
and had the courage to draw parallels with one of the earliest works of the English
language. Brave.
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| No! Not Piller-filler... |
Language and Legacy
It’s difficult to consider Voyager without thinking about its
script and language. That’s one thing
that Voyager didn’t simplify. Its use of technobabble is truly atrocious. It really does feel like it was deliberately
ramped up because that’s what viewers wanted.
I presume that the same would have happened in DS9 had they spent more time phasing anti-time and less time
talking politics. In Voyager, it’s off-putting and in Janeway’s
case it diminishes her hands-on nature as a scientist. It was a trick that The Next Generation never resorted to – or was it?
On that revered show, the cast called it ‘Piller-filler’ in reference to
executive Producer Michael Piller.
The late Michael Piller is not just regarded as a legend of Star Trek. The first episode of Best of Both Worlds
remains one of the greatest pieces of television ever made. But with Star
Trek: Voyager, something went a little awry. Was it him or co-creators Rick Berman or Jeri
Taylor..? Was the many producers including Braga and Biller? It’s not just that the The Next Generation crew had split – for instance Klingon
specialist Ronald Moore had jumped to Deep Space Nine and time fetishist Brannon Braga had been left to Voyager for the majority; split like Maquis and Starfleet. Everyone involved has produced great film and
television at points, but here the premise, the crew construction, the approach
to the conceit... While it must have looked good on paper, it wilfully bucked
growing TV trends.
If anything Voyager was a show that looked back to the 1980s and not forward to the 21st century. There should have been the courage to commit to the innate drama of the series and not find a middle-ground by including at least ten stories that would look extremely average in any Alpha Quadrant set show. Voyager would have been far better off finding a different solution to its pitch than the 75,000 light year trek.
If anything Voyager was a show that looked back to the 1980s and not forward to the 21st century. There should have been the courage to commit to the innate drama of the series and not find a middle-ground by including at least ten stories that would look extremely average in any Alpha Quadrant set show. Voyager would have been far better off finding a different solution to its pitch than the 75,000 light year trek.
A Simple Quest
As it is, Voyager took on one of simplest tales – the
quest. It’s The Odyssey, exactly The
Odyssey. It’s the search for the Grail.
It’s the powerful, instinctively human quest story that has been told for millennia,
the kind that Joseph Campbell’s eyes would widen at. This was Star Trek’s only prolonged stab at something
that monumental. And they kind of missed.
Sure, Enterprise’s stab at the Prometheus myth would later
similarly flounder in its first season, but Voyager always niggles the
most. As I look on to Voyager’s following
six seasons, I find one fact hard to avoid. In the final episode of an admittedly shortened season one (16 episodes), just when
you expect a cliff-hanger in true Star Trek style... The antagonist turns out to be actual cheese.
"Get the cheese to sickbay"?
How did they let that one through?
Sadly, at the end of the first season it looked as though Voyager, unlike the villainous cheese, may take a long time to mature.
(NB - the actual season finale was supposed to have been The 37's but the last four episodes produced for season one were shipped to the beginning of season two. A shame as the ending of The 37's makes a hell of a lot more sense as a season closer than Learning Curve - Clive)
You can also read Part One of this article right now by following this link
(NB - the actual season finale was supposed to have been The 37's but the last four episodes produced for season one were shipped to the beginning of season two. A shame as the ending of The 37's makes a hell of a lot more sense as a season closer than Learning Curve - Clive)
You can also read Part One of this article right now by following this link
