Macrocosm

DVD, Voyager S3 (Macrocosm)

Every dog has its day. Equally, every Captain has their chance to don a vest and prove their action hero credentials. By the way, I'm not calling Janeway a dog, it's just firmly in my mind at the moment after watching the previous episode and seeing the Female Q call her one. The point is that Starfleet Captain's are heroes and they have to be given the chance to do something heroic and, preferably, show off their manly strength so that we realise they are strong in body, not just in mind. Thanks to women's equality, Janeway had to go through this ritual and so was born 'Macrocosm,' an episode that isn't about the stuff between the ears, unless it's splattering over a conduit in the bowels of the ship or having a knife shoved in at an acute angle. The Captain gets to strip down and tool up with such delights as the moulded black backpack, far more more desirable and stylish than a handbag, the new 'Star Trek: First Contact' phaser rifle (must have been a long time in the offing back home and Voyager just happened to have downloaded the specs before they left), and every Captain's friend, the Rambo hunting knife. At least it was a little more subtle than 'Crocodile' Dundee's machete.

I used to consider this one of my all-time favorites from the series, but now I consider it 'merely' a strong episode. Not to say it doesn't measure up, because it does exactly what it says on the coffee tin: Janeway versus invading floaty parasites. It's action with an edge of horror (would we expect less from Brannon Braga?), without deeper moralistic concerns. There's no quandary about killing the bugs, they're just a virus. Thinking it about it now I suppose it does seem a little unthinking for the macrovirus to be exterminated, but it wasn't a sentient lifeform so there's no need. But was it sentient, they never had time to check? No, I'm pretty sure it was just acting on instinct. Also it was down to Janeway and the Doc to save the crew so it was a 'them or us' situation and the macrovirus wasn't cuddly enough for us to care.

Thrown into the mix is one of the more bizarre humanoid alien species ever encountered: the Tak Tak. Talking to them is like doing the Hokey-Cokey, and was a fun indictment of Janeway's usual body language. Surprisingly Neelix comes to the fore to rescue her from herself and shows a talent for diplomacy he hasn't always displayed, leading to a half-joking proposal from the Captain that he might become Voyager's official Ambassador (to add to his roles of Morale Officer, Chef, Guide and TV presenter), right on cue just before he was about to lose one of those contributory positions. Not to mention losing his best-known role as Kes' 'beau' and proving that he, at least, wasn't in the writer's minds to be diminished, as Kes seemed to be. The situation between the two was still not touched on, though in similar vein the Wildmans were recalled again and Neelix' close friendship with the Ensign and her baby daughter, which would go on to shape his character in seasons to come came back at the right time. As for the Tak Tak consul, he was played by Albie Selznick in a role not far from the similarly physical Juggler of 'Coming of Age' in 'TNG'. Only the Tamarians have been as divergent from traditional communication as the Tak Tak, and despite the somewhat bizarre gestures, there was a reality to the performance that this really was how a race behaved. Unless this particular one was an eccentric and thought it a good joke to pretend that's how his race communicated - but no, they met others and that was where Janeway's faux pas came in.

The creatures are built up well, a creeping menace (phantom menace?), of which all we see are the manhole-sized gap punched through the Transporter pad, slimy goop left behind, the indistinct shadow on the wall, buzzing drone sound and Neelix being carried off. This makes their first appearance all the cleverer when we assume there's some big, bad flying thing hovering over to Janeway on the bridge, until she slaps her arm and it turns out to be a tiny version. It's fortunate they didn't go with one possible storyline I was thinking about - that it could be the crew turning into these things, metamorphosing into the enemy. If that had been the case it would have been bye-bye Ensign Fly when she squashed the bug. The fully CGI creatures were a coup at the time, a small revolution that would spawn Species 8472 as the series became more confident in computer-led alien design. Not that things went much further than 8472 if you think about it - there weren't legions of non-humanoid races crawling out of the ductwork in subsequent seasons, probably because human actors were still easier to cover in prosthetics. Unfortunately this also led to more CG environments and ships so the quality matte paintings and models were stripped gradually away.

As a design, the macrovirus looked pretty good, and although the interactions with them seem pretty basic now, you can use your imagination to see them as squidgy things that wriggled around in the Doctor or Janeway's grasp and so weren't moving exactly in tandem with them. They pulled off the tentacle (and so did Janeway: with a knife), and it made a change to see a Starfleet officer use conventional weaponry to defeat an adversary. They should have issued those as standard anti-Borg devices, guaranteed to down the cybernetic shamblers. As for the phaser rifle, I thought the new 'Voyager' ones looked good, and they hadn't been used for long, and now we're moving to the sleeker, slimmer, more power-hungry version! I was surprised to see it fire a beam rather than a burst, but there must be multiple functions, even more than a hand phaser. It was the lighted nozzle that really added something, especially suited to a horror atmosphere in the way it lit the face from below. The production values of 'Voyager' were up to the task of taking on props made for the film series, otherwise it would have looked out of place - already this season they'd been using the iPod Nano Tricorder variation!

The episode takes off once Janeway's on her own. Neelix serves the story well to provide unease when Janeway remains determined and confident, but it takes all her Starfleet training to succeed, though how could it have been any other way - she's like the Mother of the ship and crew, and she wasn't going to let them down until she'd died trying. The music added to the mood, as it always should do, but also recreated the buzz of the virus in violins, adding tension and uncertainty about whether we were hearing the bugs or about to. The lighting noticeably gets darker as Janeway goes further in. At first the corridors are practically normal, then in the Jefferies tubes which are lit much more sparingly, and once Janeway's alone she's practically in shadow, illuminated mainly by her rifle. It's all in the same vein as 'Empok Nor,' though the enemy being less personal and non-sentient means there isn't the same ugly intelligence to chill us. But Braga pulls off another of his famous homages to the horror genre - they seemed to like showing close-ups of the macrovirus emerging from people's necks (and made me think of the 'Conspiracy' aliens). There's even a moment recreated from 'First Contact' when the creatures batter against sickbay's door!

Which brings us to the other main contributor of the episode: the Doctor. He proves himself a valuable asset for Janeway, one of the earliest team-ups between them, and it's easy to see how she came to rely so much on him in future seasons. Like his Away Mission to the Holodeck in Season 1, he can go places and deal with things that other crewmembers can't. In this case it's his first official planetary Away Mission, and he's just as thrilled by it as he was on Earth. Having the Doctor recount what happened in flashback made a nice change to the usual Trek style and gave developments an even more ominous tone as we return to the ship before the outbreak of the virus - a visual comparison to show bad things have become. The Doc's personality really shifted from what it had been in the early episodes, going from a business-like, irritable, almost grumpy and callous bedside manner, to someone that's opened up to new experiences, become fascinated by the extraneous details, and is richer and much pleasanter for it. It's thanks to the mobile emitter, which has turned him into a new man, though I suppose his recent memory loss and reacquisition of his life's experienced may have played a role.

Importantly, for the first time we get a sense of the danger inherent in downloading one's person into a mobile gadget. The first time he wore it he thoughtlessly walked into gunfire, never considering the damage it could do to the emitter, but here Chakotay reminds him to be careful because his program could be lost if anything happens to it, an essential jeopardy that needed explanation (though leaning on it under the table in the Mess Hall may not have helped). It also indicates his program is completely disconnected from the main computer, as does his query about how to get from A to B on the ship: if he was connected directly to the computer he could have the schematics in his head whenever he wanted them - which brings up the question of why he didn't download all those details into the emitter beforehand. T'would be useful! Shame Voyager doesn't have those little flashing lights to help people get around like the Enterprise did (though Voyager is considerably smaller). But how does he have access to the database of medical personnel that makes him so advanced, if he's not online with the computer? I agree with his question about who designed the ship, though, as it would have been fascinating to have some details on its design and construction.

The story comes together well, as does the action, with good use of the resort program that has featured in every episode since it was created, so far. It also provided a suitable climax to the story and one that used the facts that had been gathered. The smaller items that came up added to the whole: Neelix' one lung comes up in conversation (another example of the great bond between him and Kes - she donated it to him); B'Elanna and Tom arguing was further setup for the way their characters were going; Neelix has continued his friendly shipwide broadcasts; and Janeway, after taking part in such hefty actions, relaxes with a much more civilised activity - painting, although she admitted it was her sister who was the artist in 'Sacred Ground'. Maybe the experience encouraged her to experiment? Even the minor aliens, the miner aliens, looked good in that Tosk-like scaly, reptilian design. The view of the miner's shadow as he staggers towards the Doctor was vaguely horrific, adding to the ambience of the episode - a successful entry in the genre, a departure for the series and for Janeway, from her usual scientific, analytical approach, and an exciting ride. I didn't even mind that Environmental Controls looked like the Enterprise-E's sickbay or that the bomb had a digital countdown in the 20th Century style - retro cool?

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