Friendship One

DVD, Voyager S7 (Friendship One)

An abrupt opening and an abrupt ending, but thankfully more between than that implies. The big thing is that Starfleet gets to give Voyager a mission for the first time since their initial quest for the Maquis. How Starfleet would be able even to extrapolate the location of a probe that was sent in the 21st Century (which we're in now, can you believe it?!), a few years after Cochrane's warp flight and first contact with the Vulcans, and give detail of a search area to Voyager, is a little far-fetched, but even so there is something of a thrill in seeing a new series, 'Star Trek: Voyager' as it would have been had it taken place in the Alpha Quadrant, Admirals passing on instructions and all the usual Starfleet chatter the ship has lacked for much of its seven year odyssey. Maybe Janeway began to regret the regular contact as she can't be quite so independent now? Her command style has always been so strong and assured it must be strange to have to take orders after so long, but sadly that isn't touched upon in any way.

The other biggie for this episode is the crowd-pleaser of bringing back Joe Carey, an engineer who was most prominent in the first regular episode of the series as he and B'Elanna vied for the top spot of Chief Engineer. The recurring characters on the series have been rather badly used, not appearing for seasons at a time, the audience is supposed to retain affection for them though many were barely explored. Carey, like Ensign Wildman, Naomi, Vorik, Chell among others, was one of those that appeared once in a while to remind us he was still alive. And then 'boom!' they kill him off. The reason they must have told themselves was to give emotional weight to the predicament of the hostages on the planet, but because we haven't seen the guy in two years or so, and he has hardly two lines in the whole story, it becomes an irritation rather than a sad moment. The best that can be offered is the rather off-story final scene between Chakotay and Janeway where she muses that neither millions of deaths nor one is a reasonable payoff for exploration, thereby suggesting that all crews are wasting their time, and denigrating the many sacrifices to duty officers have made all this time. That's not what they intended, I'm sure, but that's how it came across to me. And so Joe passes on, just a few episodes before the end.

While the story logic and writing decisions weren't the best, the production side excelled at their work. Far from showing the same old cave set, they created a film-quality ice-scape, with great lighting and depth and realism. Even the cave set, reused as, well, a cave, was disguised quite differently with machinery and equipment all over the place. The aliens were reminiscent of the Vidiians, their clothing excellently expressive of their dark and hopeless lives and the sight of the scientist as he returns to a healthy complexion thanks to the Doctor and Seven is very satisfying.

The connection Paris makes with the mother and baby, the plea Neelix makes, citing his own grief-filled experiences with the Metreon Cascade, the joy as the small baby returns to life and the final planetwide seeding of the atmosphere to return it to a healthy, natural state are all wonderful moments and balance any inconsistencies and wrong turns very well. I thought Tuvok got captured too easily so it was pleasant to think about it and suspect it was a setup, which it was - the trained security officer would never be so indiscreet! With each passing episode the ship feels closer to home, and while I would have much preferred a multi-part ending, with a tying up of the series history I appreciated that this was a good, issue-driven story with much to enjoy. Even Captain Kirk got a mention, which can't be bad!

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