Hope and Fear

DVD, Star Trek: Voyager S4 (Hope and Fear)

Too good to be true. Hope wants to believe that this alien with a skill for decoding languages can decipher the scrambled message from Starfleet that was the last part of the data stream earlier in the season. Fear wonders if she can fit in on Earth. Hope wants to trust this convenient new starship that has been delivered to aid them. Fear wants to leave the ship and run away from the trip to Earth. It's like a tennis match (or 'Velocity' match, though I'd have liked to see the pair playing on a real tennis court, especially as Janeway is supposed to have been a bit of a pro at it!), between Janeway and Seven, and few episode titles can be more perfect a description of what a story boils down to: the desire to get home and the anxiety over that home. The two sides are neatly wrapped in a tight little package, literally, during the course of the episode, as Arturis is able to capture both of them in his diabolical revenge scheme (shouldn't there be some kind of emergency Transporter hierarchy so that the most senior figures are beamed out first, rather than letting the Captain be last in line?). When we come in at the start, Seven of Nine has reverted back to her combative stance, arguing constantly with the Captain, perhaps her experiences with the crew having made her more arrogant, maybe her fear of fitting in on this ship having been overcome and now she knows how things work familiarity is breeding contempt? She's become comfortable so she's become complacent, not looking at what has happened over the course of the months she's been aboard, and so taking freedom and purpose for granted.

This has to be the explanation, because while the episode could have explained this reversion in behaviour by her worries over assimilation into Earth culture, away from the micro culture of a starship, it occurs before the prospect of going to a home she doesn't remember, to people she doesn't know is an immediate possibility, and not a welcome one. The unknown is so disconcerting to her that she'd rather jump ship and be left behind to fend for herself in the Delta Quadrant - she doesn't even discount returning to the Borg Collective as a place of familiarity and order. But the events of this episode reinforce the decision to stay with the crew, with what have become her friends, as unbelievable as that seemed in the beginning. She even smiles at one point when Harry says he'll miss having her around, something incredibly rare for her. B'Elanna jokes they'll be in the same boat of being outcasts together when Seven starts to put her fears into words by suggesting it won't be a happy reunion for the former members of the Maquis. Tellingly, B'Elanna responds in true Starfleet fashion, saying she'd rather go back and face the music, the very opposite of what Seven wants to do, than remain lost in the Delta Quadrant. These scenes are very well written and the episode as a whole is beautifully structured to bring Seven from restlessness in her position on Voyager, to a channeling of that into extreme discomfort with the idea of returning to Earth, almost leading into action to desert (though there is never an opportunity, I sensed she was ready to fly if the chance arose), and finally back around to acceptance and belonging.

Sometimes we take for granted the settled life we have, becoming disillusioned with the familiar, while fearful of the future and the unknowns of change in the offing, but as Seven discovers, in times of stress and danger, we can come to a realisation that we're in a good place - not a perfect one, but not one where we really wish to go backward to the comforting embrace of the past which we have come from: when faced with the immediate threat of being forcibly returned to the Collective by Arturis, Seven sees the advantages of her new life and sobers up. Life is not perfect, but it is better than that she had under the yoke of the Borg. With them, a possibility she'd had at the back of her mind as a possible option all along this season, she can bury her newfound identity, put her head in the sand and throw off all personal responsibilities to herself or others, but remaining free, while a scary prospect, means she can continue to explore who she is as a human, find her purpose and live the way she was designed to. For all these reasons the episode is a fulfilling one in terms of character, and an inspiring tale that ends with a warning: to throw everything out for the sake of revenge only leads to destruction, the wages of sin is death, the living death of assimilation by the Borg for Arturis, the manipulator who engineered the whole ruse to repay Janeway for her inadvertent removal of his hope.

Hope wasn't all on her side: his people had successfully fended off the Borg somehow, whether it was their abilities to see patterns and decode data and language, or the use of technology, they had succeeded, and with the appearance of Species 8472 (we were so close to hearing what their actual name was, or at least the name Arturis' race gave them as he agrees that 8472 was the designation given them in 'your colourful language'), that hope for Borg annihilation was needed at a time when his race's defences were failing. It was then extinguished by Janeway's alliance with the Borg against 8472 and he bitterly blames the Captain for his people's assimilation, so much so that he wants to go out in a blaze of hatred, spitting his 'last breath at thee' to quote Khan, by bringing his captives along into Borg space where he will share their fate. Janeway, ever the Starfleet Captain, tries to make him see that there is still hope. She doesn't criticise his logic or point out that 8472 would have been a far worse threat to the galaxy, their plans for destruction much more final than any assimilation plot. No, she apologises for not knowing and tries to remind him of everything he is. When Seven is facing a kind of identity crisis by considering giving it up to avoid the pain of fitting in to a new society, Arturis is ignoring his own identity as if it were worthless. As Janeway says, he represents so much knowledge and experience from his race - if anything he's even more essential an individual than when his race was thriving. Like the scattered Vulcans of the Kelvin Timeline, or the El-Aurians of our own, there's only a remnant of a few thousand left, so throwing away an important member of this small group is unthinkable.

There was no way Arturis was going to let go of his hatred and savage need for revenge, but even so Janeway begs him to give it up and come with her, just as he spits that last breath of contact with another, sympathetic being, by trying to shoot her as she's beamed away. He doesn't even get his revenge, only self-destruction at the hands of his enemy. It's a terribly sad image of this one, lone alien, consumed by hatred, yet resigned as he sits in the centre seat, listening to the age-old spiel of the Borg. He could be said to be a mirror of Seven, someone who chose to cast off her fear when confronted by reality, given the chance to realise where her place is. Though the spectre of returning to Earth has been put off, it's something she will have to face eventually, but better to do so in the company of people she trusts than to run away. Janeway had groomed her for most of the season to take her place among the ranks of humanity again, tried to restore what was stolen from her by the Borg, and had marginal success, but the story isn't over. I love the exchanges between them through this episode, like a recap of their experiences over the season, and like never before this is a Mother preparing her daughter for the real world, going through the growing pains together despite the spitefulness and anger directed at her. Seven was truly a fascinating character like we've not seen in Trek since, nor has there been a better Captain than Janeway since this time. I noted that it wasn't the emotional way the characters were reacting that made it satisfying, it was the emotional undercurrent they bring to the audience - 'Discovery' takes the opposite approach, making the characters very emotional, and so you feel nothing towards them.

In the softest moment in the episode, Janeway is almost literally grooming Seven, in the positive meaning of that word: she uses a microfilament (out of those good old versatile combadges, useful in all situations!), to adjust her Borg implants as a way through the forcefield, and they talk intimately together as she does. Seven really has come a long way, and her testing of Janeway has also added something new to the Captain, who never had any children. Like Kirk she's been practically married to her ship, her children the crew - some almost literally childlike in the form of the young and inexperienced Harry Kim, the older, cockier, but still in need of guidance, Tom Paris, and now the adolescent ball of confusion that is Seven, not to mention learning with Kes or the Doctor as those fledglings discovered themselves. But Seven has proven the biggest challenge at a time when the series needed to deepen and be more than travelling from one planet to the next, or avoiding the Kazon and Vidiians. Seven provides the backbone to the series, and became an essential component even across her first season. Few episodes have nothing to do with her, and many examine her in detail. I've always said she was added at the detriment of the other characters (Neelix is the one to be short-shrifted this time, though he does throw in an intriguing comment about trying to communicate with a xenon-based life form!), but at the same time she was the most compelling, which is astonishing when you think that adding a character isn't necessarily the best thing to do to an established series.

It worked on 'DS9' because they were using the components of 'TNG,' so Worf was just one more thing added to the mix. Unlike Seven he didn't become the backbone of his series, though he was integral. I can't imagine that making Shran a permanent addition to 'Enterprise' would have dramatically altered the balance, either, or that he's have been given the lion's share of stories if Season 5 had come to be. Pulaski was so 'good' she only lasted one season, and Ezri, while throwing a last-minute spanner in the works to shake things up a little, was also not the main focus of her season on 'DS9.' Seven was the only radical addition to a cast, really, and they played with her very effectively. Yes, I do wish Chakotay had been front and centre as he was in a number of episodes this season. And I wish Janeway's unique friendship and understanding with Tuvok hadn't faded into the background - they do share a scene here that hearkens back to that 'special relationship' when she discusses how convenient all that has happened is, but for a Security Chief he wasn't as integral as he had been, some of his uniqueness absorbed by Seven: superior strength, ability, mind, and the lack of emotion meant that Seven was the best female Vulcan ever to grace a Trek series, without actually being Vulcan.

Seven's place and future were just one more added interest to the question of getting home that had been raised in earnest this season, like never before. Early in the series they were all acting very positively, having faith they'd find a wormhole or alien technology to get them home, and occasionally getting their hopes up by finding just that, only for it to be flung back in their faces again. The faith and the hope continued, but other concerns took over for the most part, the fear of other races - not fear in the sense of cowardice, but in wise respect of enemy forces and the need for survival that turned their quest for home into more of a need to survive, as well as a desire to take advantage of being the first ship in the quadrant to explore and learn for Starfleet's sake, as well as their own innate nature of curiosity. But home was always on their minds, and with direct contact through the Hirogen array and the puzzle of an incomplete coded message, this urge towards home had become greater in the second half of this season. In that respect this episode works well, playing on those hopes in a credible way: Arturis (whose dome is even greater than the Klingon heads of 'DSC'!), is like Hoshi Sato, with his natural skill for language of all kinds - he even throws out a Klingon phrase, though sadly without subtitles! Speaking Klingon gets a couple of mentions: Janeway struggles with basic Klingon and Torres only knows a few phrases herself, having always been hateful of that side of her.

Arturis was well played by Ray Wise (previously Liko in 'Who Watches The Watchers?' on 'TNG'), but wasn't a 'best guest actor' that you remember forever. He's quite a restrained figure, even at his most emotive. Admiral Hayes, however, I always think of being Romulan since Jack Shearer, who played him, is best remembered by me as Ruwon in 'Visionary,' though he had other roles in both 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' including reprising Hayes in 'Life Line,' a role he originated, fantastically, in film 'First Contact'! Love that continuity! The surprise with Arturis is that his beef is not with the Borg. It's very specifically Janeway and her crew he blames for the Borg's emancipation from 8472's ferocious power. He even displays a philosophical attitude to the Collective likening it to a storm, and not feeling anger toward such a force of nature, you just avoid it. At first I thought he was just covering his true feelings, but later he still claims he doesn't blame them for being what they are. It was a good use of the Borg as motivator for a story without them featuring (beyond audio on Arturis' ship at the end), something the series would increasingly do since there was so much of Seven's story to mine. With the revelation next season that the Borg Queen had her hand in whatever happened to Seven, it makes me wonder if Janeway and Seven would have been assimilated even if they hadn't escaped from the 'USS Dauntless'? I can't remember exactly what the Queen's plot was - to get hold of Voyager or to implant a drone into Starfleet, but it does colour whatever we see of the Borg before that (a very clever retcon). The Borg would now know where Voyager is, but if you take into account the Queen's interest this isn't a problem, just makes it easier for her to keep track, I suppose.

The Dauntless was a nice looking ship, like a continuation of the Voyager design aesthetic, coupled with a Stealth fighter jet. Yet another connection with 'DSC' is the new way to travel, a faster, more efficient technology. No, not spores, but quantum slipstream drive technology. Transwarp even gets a mention as the slipstream is compared to the Borg conduits their ships travel through. I was trying to work out why this particular method of extreme propulsion didn't seem too outlandish to buy when the spore drive and its mycelial network (which basically threw in a whole new dimension to the universe while it was at it!), or the almost mythical transwarp (in 'Star Trek III'), did throw up red flags. I think it's perhaps the fact that although it gets used, even a modified version on Voyager eventually carries them three hundred light years along (so three years off the journey?), it can't be sustained. Voyager's structural integrity isn't designed to take the stresses of that speed (whatever the warp equivalent is, we don't know), so there's nothing to suggest Starfleet couldn't come up with it for ships at a later date (will 'Star Trek: Picard' address things like this? If it doesn't, it won't be fully doing its job), but for now it has to be abandoned, as spore drive will have to be eventually. It's also alien technology, and Arturis' people (sadly we never got their name), were obviously highly advanced to be able to fend off the Borg so long. The only downside is that with his assimilation and that of the Dauntless, they now have that technology, though they probably had it already by assimilating his people - perhaps that was the origin of the Borg transwarp corridors?

As well as the easy, scalpel-like removal of this technology that made life far too easy for Voyager's crew, excising it for the good of the drama (though there would have been plenty of dramatic potential if they'd come shooting out right into the Dominion War, not to mention the music to face for so many of the characters that B'Elanna mentioned, something we were gravely shortchanged on by the series finale!), something else that helps to garner approval is the adherence to established canon with the designation of the Dauntless as NX-01A. Sure, I could have done without the 'A,' I'm not sure what purpose it served, maybe Arturis slipped up on that one, but NX-01 has even greater meaning post-'Enterprise,' and also continues that tradition of naming experimental vessels with the 'NX' prefix (something that happened for the first time this season with the USS Prometheus in 'Message in a Bottle'). It's surprising what a little thing like that can add to the authenticity of Trek as a continuing history (and one more reason I don't understand by the USS Discovery didn't have that, or at least its sister ship, the USS Glenn). Arturis did an amazing job, he was like some crazed Trek fan that had remodelled his own house only to trap other fans inside it, and though it was sparse, there were enough touches to give it that Starfleet feel, though I'm not sure the wraparound touchscreen consoles were ergonomically designed (another sign this was an alien's interpretation of Starfleet?), with buttons sloping below where the wrist would be to operate the others!

The only real downside was Engineering with that zappy ball thing in the middle - it all looked relatively cheap compared to the glory of the pillar Warp Core in Voyager's own Engineering. Miniaturisation seems to always be the direction of travel with technology, so I give them that, but maybe it could have looked a little better than it did, though again, any flaws we can put down to Arturis and his interpretation. I will say there was some nice shooting of the set by Director Winrich Kolbe (who also directed the pilot, 'Caretaker,' among many other Treks), where he has Seven, Torres and Kim each framed from low down in the engine core so we see their small heads cluttered all around by the closeup of the machinery as we cut to each one. There were some other nice shots that stood out in the episode, too: that of the Voyager splitting off from the Dauntless' slipstream (makes me think of the Stargate wormholes in 'SG-1' and 'Atlantis'), was one, and there's a moment on the Bridge of Voyager where Janeway stands close to camera with Arturis on one shoulder out of focus behind her, and Seven on the other, like the angel and devil on each side. The intercutting montage of Janeway and Seven's logs was another effective scene and I really loved the closing 'shot' (in more ways than one!), of the episode where Seven and Janeway are playing Velocity on the Holodeck and as the spinning disc flies towards camera, Seven blasts it as it hits camera! I love a great final shot (like that of 'Affliction' from 'Enterprise' I watched recently).

The shooting game on the Holodeck takes us right back to 'TNG' where we saw Picard and Riker doing some target practice, and later, Picard and Guinan - it's obviously something Starfleet officers like to do, though I'm surprised Janeway didn't have holographic cushions to bounce off on the walls. Maybe she likes to play rough and keep tough? The importance of those scenes is twofold: for one it takes the episode full circle as we see Seven's attitude change, but also Janeway's - she didn't want one more game in the earlier scene, but she gets Seven to go for one more in the latter. It also shows how far Seven has come, that she can be persuaded to play games with her Captain, a form of socialising, though couched in the suitable terms of competitiveness. She's become more human, and the episode ends on a high of positivity where she admits to belonging, yet with promise of much more to explore for her character. Her place on Voyager has also come a long way from distrust and incarceration: when Arturis tries to throw suspicion on Seven in a last-ditch effort not to reveal his plan (perhaps working from out of date knowledge about how trusted Seven was), Janeway doesn't even blink. There have been plenty of times when Seven has lied or acted against the ship, but although she claims not to share human values in this episode, she has demonstrated them time and time again: the Voyager crew have rubbed off on her, like the DS9 crew did on Quark, though they both had to have that inherent seed of promise within them that was watered by Starfleet. Janeway's intuition about Seven is right (and it made me laugh when she says it's only intuition if I'm right!), as it is about Arturis, despite the hope.

It's strange to have a season finale that doesn't end on a cliffhanger as so many in the 'modern' era (80s onwards), have done. This ends in similar manner to the first season of 'TNG' where there was the potential for more story if they chose to take it up (the Romulans announcing that their period of isolation is over), but nothing immediately to continue on at the start of the following season. The advantage to this approach is that you can do whatever you want with the season opener, but the downside is that it lacks the impression of a large scale event. 'DSC' did something similar with the end of Season 1 where we see the Enterprise-1701 hanging in space - it's not directly a cliffhanger except you want to go aboard her and meet Captain Pike, but it could go anywhere. There are also big cliffhangers that were done in an understated way: I think of the Season Four finale to 'DS9' where the crew are watching a speech by Gowron, head of the Klingon Empire, and Odo says he's a Changeling. It's not an action spectacular, but it has far-reaching ramifications you just can't wait to see. That's not the case with this episode - the only crumb of a cliffhanger is in Seven's wish to continue working on the slipstream drive to perhaps iron out the problems with it, but it's far from being an immediate scenario you wish to see conclude. Later season-enders all went big on the cliffhanger, and this episode was not the last finale to end with the prospect of Borg assimilation…

Revisiting Season Four has been a real pleasure, especially now I've been exposed to the uncomfortable style of Trek that the new wave of productions has chosen to follow. Though 'Voyager' could be at fault for dipping into the more fantastical approach from time to time (I think of the Doctor's 29th Century holoemitter, or the ablative shields from the future that clunk over the surface of the ship in 'Endgame', or even throwing in vastly superior technology like in this episode), it generally stayed relevant and grounded in Trek. With the addition of Seven of Nine they were able to inject some new blood and much new potential to unlock, and while the series never reached full potential, I think each season was a step up from the previous, culminating in Season 5 when I believe it was at its best and so look forward to reviewing that pinnacle season of the second best Trek series ever made. In this era of Trek that feels like it's strayed too far from the almost indefinable something that makes Trek so great, 'Voyager' is a relief to remind me that there was terrific Trek once, and who knows, maybe there will be again.

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