Natural Law

DVD, Voyager S7 (Natural Law)

I can't recall the last time Chakotay and Seven were on a mission together, so the main attraction of this story is this novelty pairing, though there's little else to recommend it as it's a fairly standard, uneventful time-filler for the most part. The natives are okay, the settings are a nice mixture of studio greens and location shoot (I'm guessing), but the Chakotay/Seven thing was wasted as a lot of the episode the two are apart and not working together or learning about each other. Also there's no follow-on from Seven's holographic romance with the Commander from 'Human Error' which seems like an oversight. The moral side of the story regarding a pre-warp civilization is important, but really this is only good-looking episode with the two officers in a bright, sunny, lush and natural setting, the weight of the issue not coming through sufficiently - it all looks very nice, but that's about the best that can be said.

There are some very good effects, but the space shots are so rare and offer only brief glimpses, that the Delta Flyer's weaving through space or the short skirmish with Voyager at the end is hardly enough. For a series that only had a limited few episodes before the end you'd expect more from the writers to make the most of every opportunity, and shows that it was perhaps the right time to be concluding the series. It doesn't really do anything new and the sub-plot of Tom being tested as a pilot after a minor local infraction never went anywhere except as an amusing aside.

Chell, the Bolian crewmember has been mentioned more this season than the rest of the series, with another reference here (but no appearance), but there are few things of note like that in this episode. How did Chakotay get the gash in his leg when beaming off the shuttle? They beam comfortably onto the planet, yet he has a neat slice out of his trouser-leg. The most unsatisfactory part of the episode however, is the final scene in which Seven wonders if the Ledosians will duplicate Voyager's technology and turn off the barrier again, disrupting the simple Ventu way of life. There's a bit of a mixed message there because Chakotay just fobs her off with 'at least we're back on Voyager'! That's not very heroic, is it? Surely as representatives of Starfleet they should have considered spending the rest of their days with the Ventu rather than giving the Ledosians the chance of getting through the shield. That would have been a worthy sacrifice, and Janeway would still have found a way to get them out.

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