One

DVD, Star Trek: Voyager S4 (One)

'One' and 'Doctor's Orders.' Compare and contrast. I saw the one first and 'One' second, having missed it on original transmission and only getting to it in the late 2000s when I was first re-watching the series on DVD, so I never had any past connection to it, and instead, the 'Enterprise' episode had taken that spot as one of the good, creepy solitary stories, so this one felt like a slightly lesser version. The production values and subtlety of the later episode makes me prefer it, and because I had it in mind that they reused the twist as well, I wasn't as impressed that the 'Voyager' version didn't have such a poetic realisation: I thought the Doctor was going to be revealed as just another figment of Seven's imagination, but he was there, another reason why Phlox' predicament was a more deftly realised idea. It also helped that that episode jumped right in without preamble, while it takes some time before the Voyager crew submit themselves to stasis and leave Seven alone, but for the EMH. It also reserves the creepiness until deep into the episode, whereas Phlox' nervousness becomes apparent quite early, if I recall correctly. It's fascinating to examine the two different character types the similar stories feature and play with, because Seven and Dr. Phlox are very different Trek archetypes: Seven is confident in her abilities to serve the crew in this manner, indeed, you feel at first that this is an ideal situation for her where she can run everything as efficiently as she wishes, without meddling crewmembers or superiors in rank causing complication.

Seven is free to pursue, effectively, her own command style, with the exception of the Doctor's overall authority. I got the sense she felt she was proving her approach to life on Voyager was the superior one, so it's really a comedown for her pride when things don't go according to plan. For Phlox, he was not entirely happy about the situation, doesn't have a desire to take over the command functions of his ship and do things the way he thinks they should be done - he's mostly quite satisfied with his Captain's style and prefers to concern himself with the medical wellbeing of the crew, and the anthropological interest they give him. So when things go wrong for him, it's quite a different experience, he's on the verge of panic, and it's more about holding himself together, but it isn't a question of him losing face, it's more about his own self-belief and worry that his crew's confidence in him is misplaced. Seven never has that concern. One reason 'One' doesn't work quite as well (and we're talking fractions here, it's still a perfectly good episode), is because it's in the position, and seems designed, to be the culmination of her character's arc for the season: there have been numerous ups and downs, she's gained the trust of Captain and crew, only to promptly lose it again, and it hasn't been smooth sailing. To go through all that and still have Janeway's faith in both her ability and will to get them through this deadly nebula, is inspiring and very Trekky, but I didn't feel it was played up enough for the purposes that arc deserved.

Finally being forced to trust this ex-Borg drone with their lives for an extended period of time should have had a greater impression of gravity, but the only dissent, and it isn't really dissent, more like a questioning of this being the best option, is when Chakotay asks his Captain for reassurance. He's once again being a good First Officer as he's been allowed to be many times this season, so I appreciated his query, but I felt there should have been more discussion over Seven - perhaps Tuvok could also have raised doubts, only for Harry to jump on him and show support for Seven. Maybe Torres and Paris could have had a conversation where they expressed either uncertainty or support, and while we were at it, we could have had a nice scene with Neelix where he gives Seven a little Talaxian advice. You'd think with the amount of time given over to coming to the decision of going through the nebula with Seven and the Doc running things, we could have explored how the other characters felt in more detail. My other issue, if it can be called that, is how much of what happens is genuine. Because I was expecting the Doctor to be revealed as not actually there for most of the story, I wasn't sure how much to take of the strange malfunctions Seven has to deal with: were the gel packs really failing due to them being organic material? In that case, what is it about Seven that stopped her from being affected? It seemed to be her Borg nanoprobes, but that doesn't really explain why this protects her organic majority.

Some of the things that happened, didn't, but which ones? Why would the Doctor's mobile holoemitter fail, what was it about the nebula that would affect it? Was the computer really experiencing failures in the way it seemed? If a lot of these things had happened in a normal episode I'd have been questioning them severely, because it's a bit much for the ship to suddenly develop so many dire faults, but because I'm not sure of the veracity of what happened, it's difficult to know whether to complain or not. I felt the irritation between Seven and the Doctor was another part of the story that failed to play itself up into a meaningful contribution, as at first I thought this was just her rationale for keeping away from him as much as possible, another clue that he's not really there. I think also I wanted the alien intruder to have some real connection to Seven (I suppose he was closest to the T'Pol twist in 'Doctor's Orders'), some person she'd personally assimilated in her time as a Borg that had come back to haunt her, and only at the end when she's returned to full sanity would she recall that this figment was once a real person whom she'd had difficulty assimilating. So it's not as much the story that was at fault as my requirements asking for more development. Once we get to the tough time at the end it makes up for any lack earlier in the episode as she puts everything into trying to keep the stasis tubes powered up for the last few minutes, heroically, or more precisely, dutifully, sacrificing her own life support power to do it!

Seven is shown to be a moral person - early in the season she would have saved herself rather than the people she saw as keeping her captive, but she's learned so much and come so far as to want to prove to Janeway that her task is top priority. Once she found her niche in Astrometrics her attitude changed: she had her own space and role to fulfil, which satisfied her. It's strange to think that she actually did better when she was left alone to be one, rather than clamouring for the comfort of voices and bustle. Perhaps she was better adjusted to being alone than the episode makes out, though this pushed her into new territory of isolation. I would have thought the Doctor would have been happy to have so much time for he and his pupil to explore social graces, as we see at the beginning of the episode, but that's not an avenue they explore across this month of travel. It's just another missing element that makes me wish they'd bulked up the episode a little more. But it's the penultimate episode of the season, and that can sometimes be a lesser story - this time it was a bottle episode, which is by no means a lesser sub-genre, but it does rely on the interactions of the characters, or in this case, the trial of a single character. Seven certainly proved herself worthy of the trust placed in her, all but sacrificing herself for the crew - which raises the point of how the crew came round: were the pods designed to wake them automatically when the nebula was cleared, as otherwise how would they know it was time to come out? I know they had the ability to open them from the inside, as Paris does in his sleep, but could it be that the pods ran out of power and they were forced awake, except it was okay because they'd cleared the danger area?

What I saw as another missed opportunity, and one 'Enterprise' couldn't capitalise on, was the Holodeck recreation of Voyager. Early on, Seven is having another lesson in conversation from the Doctor, but it would have been much more sinister later if we weren't sure if and when she was in the simulation. It never seems like a good idea to recreate the ship and members of the crew within the Holodeck, partly because of ethical issues over whether you can recreate a person without their permission (I can't imagine B'Elanna agreeing to her template being used for an aid to Seven's social skills!), but also for the bizarreness of getting confused over reality. There's no reason for them to get confused ordinarily because it's like us switching on a TV, they know where they are and what they're doing when they enter a Holodeck, but with Seven's faculties failing it would only add to the horror. Instead they ignore this potential story tool and opt for hallucinations of the crew, badly burnt by the radiation and bantering between themselves about the likelihood of Seven failing, and vocalising all the worries and concerns that Seven must have hanging in her mind. The horror in 'Doctor's Orders' was sparingly used, mainly the visual of a zombified Hoshi, and the creepiness worked better, but in this one, going against the trend (Trek tends to get more horrific as time passes), 'One' is the episode which has more graphic nastiness: the crewman dead of extreme radiation burns to the face is lingered on for a second or two, as are the bodies in flames. This actually makes the episode less tense than if they'd flitted a short glimpse and cut to Seven's reaction.

Saying that, an atmosphere is still successfully created with the casually insulting crew, the age-old cries for help and a person just around the next bend in the darkened corridors, as well as the confrontation with a Borg drone. But the alien was the best source of tension because that's the most uncomfortable thing for Seven: to have a rogue element running around the ship upsetting her ordered regime. The fact that he was so assured and casual is another part of Seven's discomfort with the social. Even then, until he actually goes on the run as a disruption to her, you never feel as if she's in any danger because of her enhanced strength and senses, so she'd be a physical match for an attack from that quarter, it's the psychological that is problematic for her. Hallucinating a collective of the Voyager crew's voices begging for help is the utmost proof that she feels obligated to them and letting them down is a grave fear. Even so, the whirlpool of hallucination and confusion can't clear up all the holes: a big one for me was why some of the crew couldn't remain awake, or have shifts in EV suits - if a stasis pod could protect them, why not these? And in the first place you'd think the ship's sensors would be honed enough to detect anything so harmful it would cause instant burns and incapacitate the crew, with only Tuvok's Vulcan endurance able to reach the conn and turn the ship around (I liked that his face showed green burns from his Vulcan blood), his only real contribution.

There's also the delicate nature of the Doctor's program coming up again, that he might be irretrievable if his emitter goes offline when he's out of Sickbay. I could buy that as something Seven imagined, but for the real tech it was hard to swallow. While I'm looking at the negatives I should also point to the Cargo Bay CGI set extension which didn't look quite right, especially as we get an upper level where more of the pods are stored that we'd never seen before. But even with all this uncertainty and possible plot holes there's a lot to enjoy, such as little technical details of Seven activating her personal log by tapping her combadge, or when the computer she's talking to later in the episode becomes faulty until she instructs it to bypass the affected gel packs and then it speaks normally again, instantly, showing how advanced it is. And even Harry Kim getting in a mention of Parrises Squares, a game he's dabbled in. Janeway's assertion that Starfleet crews have been in stasis much longer than a month set my speculation meter going wildly as it makes you wonder what ship and crew did that (aside from Khan and company's three hundred year travel), and whether we'll ever see it now that Trek is back (though probably not as I can't see them doing stasis and that kind of thing in modern Trek). The most important thing Janeway asserts is her belief in Seven's redemption, despite the insolent attitude she'd had to contend with, and that, combined with the lonely horns and emotive violins of the soundtrack in the episode, is the most inspiring part of it. Seven hadn't reached the end of her journey by a long way, but this episode demonstrates how far she'd come across the season, and far from being one, she was now one of many.

***