Vis à Vis

DVD, Star Trek: Voyager S4 (Vis à Vis)

With relatively recent events in the Trek world, what stands out most from this episode is the coaxial warp drive: a space-folding propulsion system that allows instantaneous travel across vast distances? Hmm, spore drive, anyone? It just goes to show there's nothing new under the sun. Any sun. And when you have over seven hundred episodes under your belt there aren't going to be many ideas that haven't been done before in some form or to some degree. If 'DSC' can't then claim to have the most radical tech in Trek, this episode does show a major flaw in this series' logic: the USS Voyager is trapped in the Delta Quadrant. They want to get home. They discover a 'new way to fly,' as Captain Lorca would put it, and do they do anything about it? Do they do all they can to discover whether it's possible to use this to get Voyager home? No, they seem quite blasé on the subject, and even though there is some polite interest Janeway doesn't exactly put all her resources and efforts into learning about this silver bullet, she's just happy to mosey on down to meet this Steth and grant him help to get himself up and running again. Seriously, this should be the greatest discovery since that spatial trajector from Season 1's 'Prime Factors,' yet Janeway, nor anyone else, seems intent on learning the secrets of it or seeking out Steth's people to get them to help. Sure, it's a prototype, but we have Starfleet's crackerjack Engineering minds to run against the problem!

Even there, B'Elanna, the Chief Engineer isn't involved in repairing this alien ship, Tom Paris is, a pilot lest we forget. I know he's also the medic, as the Doctor reminds him (a nice return to the older seasons when Tom was learning the role along with Kes - you'd think they'd have had several crewmembers join the medical staff by now, despite the doc's superior abilities!), but is he also an engineer? He'd later go on to build the Delta Flyer, granted, but I'm not sure how much engineering of modern day ships he's done. They return him to his love of 20th Century machinery again, so they were doing a good job picking up the character nuances and background for him, even having Chakotay refer to how he's changed his life around in the four years on Voyager. I suppose they were associating his love of piloting with a necessary application of mechanics. The lack of buzz and excitement (and it should be rocketing round the ship), about a newly discovered drive that could potentially reduce their journey exponentially, was one issue, but Tom's sudden problems with his life on Voyager was just as surprising and unexplained. I was waiting for him to admit that he was feeling claustrophobic at the moment because of him and B'Elanna, but he never actually says that. She gets upset that he's pushing her away, he's spending all this time on the Holodeck fixing an old car in a 1960s garage (which was full of great detail: the cobwebs hanging in the rafters, the way he stays true to the period by physically turning off the radio when the Doctor calls instead of instructing the computer to do so), and that's about it.

If we'd seen this impression of an aversion to commitment or feeling stifled in previous episodes, it would have worked better and this would have been the time where it came to a head, Tom's taking of his life for granted turned around by his experiences with, and as, Steth. He could have ended up in some alien prison, never to see his friends on Voyager again, let alone getting back to Earth - that's going to make you appreciate what you had and reevaluate things. I did like the way he and Steth both saw the greener grass in each other's lives, one pining for more freedom away from set duties, the other wishing he had more structure and security. It's not often we see someone in Starfleet complaining about their life, the most prominent I can think of being Kelvin land Kirk in 'Star Trek Beyond,' moping that he's bored with space travel and his duties on the Enterprise, which I never bought because Kirk wasn't that kind of man - real Kirk would have always had something to do, whether it was the close connection he had with his ship, or expanding his mind reading the classics, exercising his mind or body constantly and making the other Kirk look like a whining, precocious teen. Tom isn't that bad, I just had the impression he wasn't used to being so close to someone, especially where he couldn't escape on a small ship like Voyager. It still doesn't explain why Torres wasn't assigned to help Steth as that might have made things more interesting - perhaps Steth could have turned them against each other and caused a wedge.

I suppose the real meat of the story is in the sleight of face that the action rests on: Steth swapping bodies again to take Tom's life and strand him in his previous form to take the rap for his crimes, swapping with Janeway (they got me there - I thought it must have been Seven from when he grabbed her arm!). It's hardly the most original concept, but it is a great one and most prominently brought to mind the Season 7 episode 'Renaissance Man' which saw the Doctor hurrying round the ship impersonating various people to fulfil some mission or other, though there have been so many identity shift stories ('The Passenger' on 'DS9' is another favourite where a dying man implants his consciousness into Bashir). They did get the aspects of Tom's life correct, but that wasn't the focus, it was definitely more to the high concept side of the story, a balance that would have been better handled in 'DS9' - if you look at what that series was doing at the same time, late Season 6 when this episode came out, it's leagues above its sister series, showing the difference in quality. It's not that this is a bad episode, it's one that's just good, not remarkable, like 'Retrospect,' it doesn't stand out, but is enjoyable on its own. It does wrap up far too conveniently, the Doctor apparently having no trouble reversing the genetic changes on all concerned - would it have mattered if Steth as Janeway had died? I didn't get the impression he swapped bodies, just changed the genetics, so I don't know whether they needed the original DNA to switch back, it was yet another aspect of the story to go unexplained.

It was a tall order for an alien to somehow take on a whole other life, and you have to wonder how long Steth could keep up his integration in such a highly structured environment. One of the joys of the episode is seeing him try to keep all these people he only half knows juggled in the air, feigning forgetfulness, manipulating them with his natural conman's charm (especially the Doctor, but then he's an easy mark!), and dancing that tightrope. But Starfleet is very regimented and he didn't bargain for Seven's visual acuity and memory. I like his solution to Janeway's look of thunder, signifying she's about to give a proper talking to as we've seen on many occasions: simply choke her out! I don't know whether Kate Mulgrew had a bit of a sore throat during this episode, or whether she was acting like she'd been choked, but certainly after that violent encounter she's more croaky than usual. This would make sense except that she was playing Steth for most of those scenes… Steth's free-spirited nature quickly buckles under the shackles of Starfleet duty, and the moderate pleasures he finds, such as free and endless supplies of alcohol, and a girlfriend, soon pale into insignificance compared to the duties he has and lack of knowledge - maybe he thought he'd mostly be sitting on the Bridge piloting this beautiful new ship?

One of the complaints levelled at the series is its failure to seem in need most of the time. They played around with Replicator rations and foraging missions on alien planets, but much of the time they're not in any great need. Here is a great example: replicating golf clubs or box wrenches, which must have been a real physical item since Steth took it out of the Holodeck to extract Tom's DNA - wouldn't it have been easier to shake hands? Okay, so Janeway can access the computer and find out exactly how much a crewman has had out of the Replicator, as she does here, but there was no sign or talk of rations for 'Tom' - it could be Steth tripped an alarm by going over his Replicator limit, in which case you have to wonder what Tuvok was doing throughout this episode as he's never around to investigate or show suspicion. The only time he does anything is when Janeway summons security to the Ready Room as Steth chokes her - or was it Steth that made the call? The vocal thing doesn't seem to be very consistent. When he starts to shift back into the previous form of Daelen, he still speaks in his male voice, but every other time he speaks in whatever voice goes with the body he's in. It's also not explained why he starts shifting back into the previous form or what will happen when his countdown reaches zero. Was he just going to revert to Daelen, and in that case does it mean that Tom would have reverted back to his own face eventually? More things to speculate on, which they appeared to drop and were only there to add mystery to the alien.

That's the episode's strength: usually I'm not the one to enjoy mysteries designed to keep you confused, but I couldn't remember exactly what was going on with Steth, it's a fairly forgettable episode, but in a good way because it means the interest is piqued and you're kept running alongside the story because Tom's a likeable chap and you want to find out why he's being so different - oddly, it made me think of his purposeful change in personality during Season 2 when he was showing up for duty shifts late and becoming a bit of a rogue in order to trap the Kazon spy. Once again Chakotay shows what a good First Officer he is, talking to Tom to ascertain if something's wrong and eventually, after examining him, he's kind enough to allow the man to assist Steth as he really wants to do. It shows that at this stage these characters were still being given their dues when in the latter seasons Chakotay and some of the others were far too often left in the shadows as the writers concentrated on the characters that had most potential and were most enjoyable to write for. Although this season had so much of Seven of Nine, the rest of the cast were still very much an essential part. Tom wasn't really one of the forgotten, mainly thanks to him and B'Elanna, but it's reassuring to see that the character as built up in the previous seasons was continuing to be explored, even if it wasn't as deeply as you'd hope - strangely, he acts more Klingon than Torres when he gets angry at her in the Mess and you see she's much more restrained these days when in the early years she'd have been the aggressor.

My favourite line of the episode goes to the Doctor, "Reflect on your strengths: realise your worth," he exhorts, and even though it was a comedy moment with Steth as Tom having appealed to the doc's ego so he can get the rest of the day off, it was a nice sentiment. The Doctor isn't the most integral character to this story, but as a tangential side to Tom's troubles he does make sense and it was fun to see him remind his assistant of his Sickbay duties, dropping in on the Holodeck. You'd think there'd be protocol about not just appearing like that, but the doc would most likely have the power to override anyway, given he's the Chief Medical Officer. When Janeway summons Tom to the Bridge while he's in the Holodeck, he doesn't hit his combadge before responding by saying he's on his way, and before that he sighs loudly, so I wonder if he didn't respond, the reason he didn't hit the badge, and was actually talking to himself. Otherwise, if the channel was open the Captain would have heard the sigh and not been particularly impressed with his attitude! However he felt at the beginning of the episode the events conspire to force him to appreciate his situation - whether the same can be said for Steth (or whatever his real name was), is less certain. He had a nose (or two), for trouble, and seemed like a drifter that just couldn't settle, which makes his uncanny alien ability a curse since it stops him from having to integrate into a real life, flip-flopping the galaxy looking for hollow fun. Whether it was fear of commitment and the future that was affecting Tom, we don't know, but it's better to have a place to live than not, and though this episode could have been a Season 2 or 3 story due to its lack of real consequences, it does remind him of what he has, and after all those Hirogen episodes it was good to have something separate, even if the character side of it could have done with greater examination.

***