Hunters

DVD, Voyager S4 (Hunters)

It's been a while since I last did some 'Voyager' reviews and the time has come to complete Season 4, which I left halfway through its run. I'm not sure it's the best way to do it since you lose the momentum of the season and it's more difficult to jump right back into it (especially after almost three years - can't believe how long it's been!). But the longer it's left, the harder it is to get back into something… Fortunately, I wisely left the season at a crucial juncture in the series, when they've finally made contact with home for the first time, previously having been able to send the Emergency Medical Hologram through to the Alpha Quadrant and back, and now they've picked up a load of letters from home. Because of that it's quite a sensitive episode full of developments, but you see the difference in the time the series was made compared to now: very few people still write letters - I know, because I was one of the people that used to write a lot, enjoying the process, as well as the anticipation of receiving a reply, but the art of letter-writing has all but died out due to the instant nature of communication that exists now. Sure, you had emails even in the Nineties when this was made, and of course phone calls, but the unique use of a letter to record a considered, personal communication was still something people understood. That has been lost as so people have been conditioned to expect immediate response and interactivity, but I'm not going to go into the ills of social media and how it's affected our society, it's just that the terminology stood out to me: who would understand what a 'Dear John' letter meant in the younger generations?

It seems unlikely that by the 24th Century people would even use the word 'letter' as referring to a written message, as other forms have effectively superceded it. This makes the episode even more precious and shows that the writer was from an older generation even back then: Jeri Taylor, co-creator of the series and bastion of character development and care for each of her people in the same manner Janeway was, was still very much a part of the series, though I believe she left at the end of the season and I get the sense that her brand of Trek was lost after that as action or weird ideas and situations rose to the fore. She and Michael Piller were responsible for a lot of what made Trek feel so real, and the characters' sense of family that made you want to see them and spend time in their company week after week. When these two left the Trek fold I think it was a great loss to the franchise and we see how Trek became more simplistic and less considered as the succeeding years went on, the final seasons of 'Voyager,' and much of 'Enterprise' not living up to what had gone before. And as for 'Discovery,' with its ability to go anywhere within the galaxy (and beyond), it makes the future tech of this series look old-fashioned - they could get home in the blink of an eye if they had a spore drive from a century in their past! A lot of modern Trek makes a mockery of the careful world-building and technological consistency that was so integral into making this a real universe, so it's wonderful to get back to familiar Trek that feels right.

Not to say this episode was incapable of creating new things to add to the canon: the Hirogen show their oversized faces, throwing their weight around, or more literally Tuvok and Seven's. The size of the inside of their ship was so big and full of trophies, weapons and strange control interfaces, that my eyes couldn't at first interpret what I was seeing. Not until you see the forms of the Starfleet captives on the floor do you get a sense of scale, and if the ship was internally huge, then the Hirogen themselves were equally monstrous in size and lack of morals! My only disappointment with the Hirogen is that they chickened out later on and showed other members of the race as more similar in size to humans and other humanoids, because they would have been better to make them all giants as one of the unique aspects of the race. But they do a great job here, featuring Tiny Ron (better known as The Grand Nagus' Hupyrian manservant, Maihar'du), towering over the childlike Seven and Tuvok, and finally able to stand up as straight as he liked after years of bending over to shuffle through the cramped sets of 'DS9.' I bet he was pleased, except for the need to wear bulky armour over the prosthetic makeup under the hot studio lights, so there's always some kind of problem, I'm sure. Tiny Ron isn't the only 'DS9' connection to be enjoyed, as with the letters for the crew comes news of Alpha Quadrant events. The first connection is Chakotay mentioning the stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant, suggesting Starfleet may have found another to the Delta Quadrant, and then we hear the devastating news of their comrades, the Maquis, being massacred.

The Maquis' destruction at the hands of the Cardassians with help from their new allies, is the biggest thing to affect the crew, even if it is largely only felt by the former members of that group. But it was so good to see the series connect to the war in 'DS9,' even if only tangentially, and for those characters to experience the loss that had been so shocking. It was very important that they should be aware as we'd never get a satisfying resolve of the series where we saw them all settle into Federation life and witness the adjustments to the changes both they and the Alpha Quadrant had gone through. So seeing Chakotay and B'Elanna's reactions was as close as we were going to get to proper resolution of their characters upon returning home, and it is this that makes the episode so important. We hadn't seen the last of the Maquis influence across the series, most directly with Season 5's 'Extreme Risk' which would address Torres' buried guilt and anger at what befell her friends and comrades, and of course, 'Repression,' which was about a Bajoran Maquis member. But this episode we learn that although the organisation was wiped out, there were a few 'lucky' ones that had already been captured and were being held in Starfleet prisons, so saving their lives by not being there when the Cardassian/Dominion forces routed and annihilated the freedom fighters. We also get to hear briefly of the woman who recruited Chakotay into the Maquis, Sveta, author of his letter.

It would have been good to hear more about her, maybe even meet her in 'DS9,' but the two production teams had different agendas and were much more in competition than in sympathy. That's one of the sad things about this boom time in Trek's history: that the two series' on the air at the same time were unwilling to work together. We might have had some terrific crossovers and deeper connections, but although they did occasionally cross paths (with the 'DS9' episode 'Doctor Bashir, I Presume' where the EMH's creator, Dr. Zimmerman, pays a visit, or Mirror Tuvok's cameo in 'Through The Looking Glass'), they tended to mine 'TOS' and 'TNG' for actors, characters and plots to continue (most notably Barclay and Troi later on). One reference in this episode appeared to be deliberately included as a mistake by Neelix was when he mispronounces the Temple of Amonak on Vulcan as the Temple of Amok, recalling the Spock episode 'Amok Time.' It shows that they were willing to have a bit of fun, and the references to the wider universe were always a pleasure to see. One thing they didn't go into was how although the relay station through which they receive the letters was using a singularity as its power source, it's not a new idea: the Romulans used them in their Warbirds, so I was surprised they didn't mention this, especially considering the previous episode had been one of the biggest Romulan episodes of this series.

The relays are a bit of a puzzle. They're said to have been created one hundred thousand years ago, but it's not made clear whether from another race or by the Hirogen. This race claims the technology as their own, though being hunters you wouldn't think they'd need to be communicating all that much as they spend most of their time on the hunt. Need someone to boast about their trophies to, and compare notes with, I suppose… If they were the creators of the relay then they must have been a very different species all that time ago as the impression we get is of a violent people that care only about the thrill of the chase. Of course, as Trek invariably did, they are shown to be a broader culture than merely the type we see here, or how could they have developed ships and warp travel? I do wonder why the relay extends almost to the Alpha Quadrant, but it's best not to question something like that and just accept that this is the device that means contact is possible with Starfleet, though sadly not for long as the entire system is destroyed a little too easily for something that's lasted so long, and Voyager is once again left alone to continue the trail, a heartbreaking eventuality, but one that at least gives them hope and their families hope, as well as the reason to begin planning a way to help them which would come to fruition later.

Ensign Kim wonders if Starfleet's encrypted message had been to tell them they'd developed a whole new way of travelling through space considering how technology could have moved on since they were stranded so far away, which immediately made me think of the spore drive of 'DSC.' Whatever the latest Trek is can't fail to stick in the mind and give reason to reflect and compare, whether it was the Kelvin Timeline films or now 'DSC,' so even if they seem more to take away from Trek's coherence than add to it, at least they're a sounding board with which to appreciate old Trek again. While the modern style of direct continuation of plots wasn't something all that common in 'Voyager,' apart from arcs here and there, this episode does play an integral role in the ship's connection with Earth. For one thing it is continuing the story from the previous episode when the relay was discovered, and also to the end of the season when an apparent rescue attempt is made by Starfleet, as well as on with the Hirogen and their interest in Voyager. There are also speculations in small degree about getting home again, which had been mostly put to bed in their willingness to embrace the possibilities of being out here in the unknown, with the Doctor imagining himself the centre of attention and Seven suggesting he'd be wiped and upgraded to fit Starfleet's latest technology. It's a light scene, but a serious one because this ship is full of people that wouldn't have necessarily fitted in with Starfleet and may have questions to answer upon return, and again, something never explored because of the nature of the ending of the series.

The ending of this episode is another matter, able to conclude on an upbeat note, casting off concerns about the Hirogen or the personal sadness of the brief contact with home and no chance for more. Janeway was very much saddened by fiance Mark's moving on with his life, but unlike later when she goes into a depression, she makes an effort to understand and be thankful for what she has. There's definitely still an undercurrent of affection between her and Chakotay, but Jeri Taylor's influence being lost on the series after this season I suspect her departure played a big part on what may have been a unique situation developing with Captain and First Officer potentially the Mother and Father of the ship. It's a great character building episode for scenes like this, whether it be those two, or Paris and Torres discussing his Father, or Janeway giving Seven food for thought at the possibility of living relatives on Earth. And so it retains a hopeful impression, that now they're no longer quite as alone as they used to be, their plight is shared and their fate less ambivalent. A good way to get back into the series, really!

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