Unforgettable

DVD, Star Trek: Voyager S4 (Unforgettable)

Forgettable - one of the easiest single word reviews I could write, because that's exactly what this is. It may sound harsh, but it isn't only 'Discovery' I call out if it errs, and for 'Voyager,' no matter how much I like it, there can be no exception. The trouble stems from it being all about a guest character that we're asked to care about even though we know she's not going to be around beyond this story. Not to say it's impossible to pull off an amazingly complex and compelling character in the space of one forty-five minute episode, because it it's been done enough times on Trek to prove that it can work. I don't know the statistics on how many episodes focused on a guest character worked as opposed to how many didn't, but the general rule is that an outside character should only be brought in to make a difference to one of the people we come back to the series to see week to week and the very nature of this particular story meant that it couldn't. Chakotay isn't going to be sitting absentmindedly picking at a bowl of ice cream in memory of his lost love because the gimmick is that this woman we've never met, supposedly aboard Voyager but a month ago, is of a race with natural pheromones, and technical wizardry, to ensure they always wipe all memory and record of themselves: an isolationist species that don't want contact with the outside galaxy. From one perspective it's a clever idea because we are in exactly the same boat as Chakotay and everyone else in that she means nothing to us and we're expecting some twist, whether it's a plot to take over the ship or a devious means to some other advantage only Voyager can provide.

We see Kellin as blankly as Chakotay does, so that end of the story works. The twist is that there is no twist, and as twists go it's not very twisty. It's the old saying about the story potential for Trek being infinite, yet within that infinity of possible combinations of plot and character how many are going to be good or great? This is one that is plain old average, and not even Trek average, but average as in the majority of most TV that's out there, which is a low insult. Not that it has no value or watchability at all, but very little. It hinges on how attached we come to Kellin, this woman that we're in the same boat with Chakotay about - if you remove the possibility of a twist because she's telling the truth, a unique proposition, granted, then there isn't much to take from it. We don't learn anything about Voyager's First Officer, that's the real crime, it's nothing to do with whether the trope of a mysterious woman wreathed in mystery coming to the ship works, or not, because it's been done in virtually (and probably), every Trek series, some better than others - I think of Sisko's mystery woman in 'Second Sight,' or Odo's in 'A Simple Investigation.' You could say Rajiin in the episode of that name was the 'Enterprise' variety, and no doubt there are many others ('Transfigurations' on 'TNG' swaps the gender mix). You have to like or be drawn to the mystery character, and you have to feel for our regular character's position, something that the episode achieves mildly at the end when the situation reverses and Chakotay is the one trying to convince Kellin of the something they shared (though there's no rhyme or reason why he was unable to persuade her in the same way she was him - maybe that's saying something itself?).

The episode doesn't go anywhere, it has a number of scenes with Chakotay and/or someone else, Kellin, Kim (I can't think of anyone else beginning with 'K'), making a speech about, or discussing, love, but does it ever go anywhere? It's all very loose and concerns feelings and emotions, yet isn't written very deeply or to shine a light on some 'universal human truth,' making it the very definition of an average episode, the kind that goes nowhere, does nothing. It's not really a flaw that a tragic ending is inevitable because sometimes the inevitability of tragedy that we see coming along can have that sweet sorrow, so the resolution can't be blamed. No, it keeps coming back to the fact that nothing really happens and it's like the ultimate filler, with the ultimate reset to cap it all - the biggest reset this side of time travel, and at least you usually get some poignancy with that like in 'Time and Again' where the adventure we saw play out doesn't happen, or the disintegrated copy of the Voyager crew is sadly unable to reach the real Voyager before it's too late and our crew never know what happened. I just wish it hadn't been one of the few Chakotay episodes that had to be the low point of the season - you'd think from the odds that Seven of Nine would get the clunker since she had so many, but it may be she was easier to write for. It may also be that this was actually a script written for another sci-fi series and adapted to fit 'Voyager,' and the writers may have been desperate for something to fill a slot at this late juncture of the season and taken it on thinking it would turn out well, that's how it feels to me.

Saying that, there are other Trek ideas in there that had been explored before - I think of Aldea from 'TNG' Season 1's 'When The Bough Breaks,' a similar planetary culture that hid itself from outsiders. I thought of Data's manufactured daughter, Lal, with the end of 'The Offspring' (well, not quite the end), where she says she will feel emotions for both of them - I thought Chakotay was going to say something along those lines. It didn't even do something obvious (to a Trekker, anyway), like that to add something, and if Chakotay had been renowned for being put through the ringer, this would have been one of the 'torture Chakotay' episodes like 'DS9' with its 'torture O'Brien' seasonal offerings. But it was a one-off like many a 'Voyager,' trapped as they were on an almost endless journey home, meeting new species on a regular basis and having less time to explore existing cultures that made 'DS9,' and less so 'TNG,' so attractive. The race, the Ramurans, had potential, but any angle like that beyond the touchy-feely thing was largely ignored, and there was some clearly ethical ground to break with these people: why would they need the 'tracers,' these members of their race sent out like bounty hunters to track down escapees from their world, unless their world was less than perfect? Out of the three Ramurans we meet, two of them wanted out and had their memories altered so they would come back!

How is that acceptable to Janeway? She's told there's a stowaway aboard and just allowed Kellin to basically brainwash her quarry and take him back! Shouldn't she be asking if he wants to go back? He might be returning to a slave's life on an evil planet, but there's no exploration of the culture of this secretive race, or the ethical questions they pose with their ability to cloud memory and alter records. I didn't get any sense of horror or fascination about the race, it was more asking is this trick or true? Their vital signs don't register, they apparently have ships that can fire while cloaked (that's how Voyager first gets caught up in it as two ships are invisibly firing at each other!), and another downside is that they look very Ocampan in design - one of the weaker aliens this season, it must be said, because obviously they were trying to keep Kellin as human-looking as possible so we could more easily believe Chakotay falling for her. And while they apparently allowed Kellin to do what she would with her prisoner on the first visit, they also allow the tracer that comes for her to go on his way eventually. He's put a virus in the computer to wipe out all record of his people and I didn't see any opposition or concern about this. It was all brushed under the carpet and Janeway just accepts it as if to be rid of the whole sorry mess! What about ship's logs? I can buy that these aliens could wipe out all reference to themselves, but that would mean unexplainable gaps in records and logs which would surely force Voyager's crew to investigate, much like in 'Clues' on 'TNG' where there's a gap and they don't know why (or was it 'Conundrum,' I always get those two mixed up!).

There's certainly much potential to be played with when it comes to memory and the ability to alter it, and this episode would have been a lot better if it had kept away from romance, traditionally Trek's area of failure, and stuck with the hard science fiction concepts. As a character, the tracer himself, Curneth, was more interesting than Kellin, what with his gadgets and his strange assurance in what he was doing as right. There are questions such as whether the natural pheromones block their own species, too, as a society with no collective or individual long term memory would be of great worth as a concept to explore. The closest we get to that is the end with Chakotay writing out his recollections pen to paper as the only effective means of being sure to keep it from vanishing. That in itself is very interesting as it could be seen as a comment (certainly nowadays), on our heavily digital society where people's words, photos and records have all become intangible 1s and 0s, no longer inhabiting the physical world and open to viruses or malicious attack. That small moment opened my mind to wondering more than the entire episode and I found myself thinking I'd almost rather watch an episode of 'Discovery' than this, which tells me how dull it really was!

I really feel sorry for Andrew Robinson, the actor most famous for playing Garak on 'DS9,' having directed this episode. It was his third and final directing assignment in Trek and it wasn't fair - he'd been fortunate with the first, it being a Worf and Dax story, 'Looking For Par-Mach In All The Wrong Places,' and 'Blood Fever' on 'Voyager' had plenty to get your teeth into, but it was the writing that failed on this one - perhaps he got pulled into the underwhelming nature of it all, too, as early on there were flashes of a unique style in the POV from the biobed looking up at Janeway, the Doctor and Chakotay, and then the episode just dragged everybody down (not saying the actors weren't fine, because they were, but there just wasn't anything lasting and tangible for Chakotay to take from it). Sad that Robinson never got another chance, though I don't know if it was due to his falling out with the experience through this one (unlikely, since he claimed at the time that he really enjoyed making it, according to Memory Alpha), or the Producers not being happy with the end result, which is also something I don't know.

Now what was I writing about?

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