DVD, Voyager S5 (Infinite Regress)
An episode of two halves, both high quality, the first a showcase for the vast talent of Jeri Ryan as Seven is taken over by various assimilated personalities, the second, Janeway coming up against aliens who had lost eleven billion to the Borg in the four years since first contact. The Captain does look rather naive that any race who lost so much, so recently, would look kindly on a Borg, even one rescued from the Collective - I'd completely forgotten what happened in the episode other than Seven portraying various characters, and I thought the aliens had a good look that was quite different from the usual Trek style, yet still fitting within it. Their plan is to infect the Collective with this tech-attacking virus which has broken down the 'heart of a Borg Cube,' the Borg Vinculum, something that had been considered before ('I, Borg' on 'TNG'), and would be again (the story behind Icheb later in this series). The idea of giving the Borg poison to suck up makes a lot of sense, though unethical from a Starfleet point of view as they can't go round committing genocide, especially when they know it's possible to retrieve individuals even after longterm assimilation. I wasn't sure exactly what the effect was supposed to be from this virus, and it would seem unlikely the Borg would actually be affected in any permanent meaningful way (they always find a method of adapting), but it was a bold plan, and would have worked had not Voyager come bumbling into range of the stricken Vinculum. You could say Voyager is responsible for preventing a serious blow being dealt to the terrors of the Delta Quadrant - a case of the needs of the one outweighing the needs of the many?
Now that I think about it I wish that side of the story had been played up more: that saving Seven could come at a significant cost, but there is a lot less clarity and focus on that issue, it's more about dealing with this race, Species 6339, who are doing their best to fight the Borg, but react in a hostile way to anyone who gets in the way of their objective. It is understandable, but at the same time they don't really give Janeway time to discuss the issue and get to know her and her crew, because they could have ended up working together, but 6339 were on a tight time limit, expecting another Borg ship to show up any moment, so if their plan was to succeed then it needed to be put into practice, and as we know, Janeway takes her responsibility to her crew very seriously and isn't going to back down if pushed around. That's part of the fascinating complexity that was introduced to Voyager's situation by accepting in a Borg drone as they did. Janeway even mentions to Chakotay he may have been right about it being a bad idea, but he vindicates her decision by admitting he's changed his mind seeing Seven integrate so well in the space of a year. It's these kind of little side conversations that make the episode sparkle, beyond the obvious tour de force performance(s) from Ryan.
She really shone from first frame to last (helped by her shiny new blue suit, which debuted in 'In The Flesh'), immediately exhibiting complete changes in physicality, tone of voice, body language, every facet screaming this woman can ACT! Funnily enough, it called to mind Brent Spiner's Data in the 'TNG' episode 'Masks' - no, Voyager isn't being taken over by some Aztec curse or whatever was going on there (does anyone really know!?), but Spiner was given the chance to exhibit different characters and like Ryan, grasped it fully to demonstrate his range. This episode is even better because it has so much more forcefulness to it, 'Masks' being more of a curio than a classic. 'Infinite Regress,' I would suggest, is third in a row of classics this season. It may have taken a few episodes to really get going, but I start to see why I've had the season in mind as possibly the best of the series. It still has a long way to go, but more seeds are planted here, particularly in the Naomi Wildman story as the likeable little girl has her first scene of what would become an enduring friendship (on this series, at least - we don't know where she and Seven are in the time of 'Picard,' Terry Matalas mentioned he wanted an episode with her in Season 3 but couldn't for time, sadly), but the less said about that aberrant version of the character, the better!). Kadis-kot also makes its debut as the game the pair liked to play, and Seven resolves to assist the child in her ambition to become 'Captain's Assistant,' in spite of her initial statement that such a position does not exist on this ship!
It's a real joy to see new things spring up, even at this late stage of the series, and Seven's further integration and gratitude to her crew provides a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. What's more, this story provides the series yet another unique approach to featuring the familiar races of the Alpha Quadrant at a time when there was only 'DS9' in its final season to do that - in this time of new Trek overload (there are four seasons, each from a different Trek series, all coming out on DVD in the next few months!), with so much reference to Trek's past and its famous races, it's easy to forget that 'Voyager' was quite removed from the familiarity of what had been established before, so they needed to be clever to work any of those elements in. Obviously the Borg had been very much integrated into the series as a potential threat at any point, but here we get Vulcan, Klingon (I thought she was mispronouncing P'Tak, or Pahtk, the general Klingon insult, but it was actually a different word, probably more offensive), Ferengi, and even other human characters (from the USS Melbourne, the ship Riker was offered before it was mashed by the Borg), showing up delightfully - and when Tuvok goes full Vulcan and offers to treat Seven with a mind meld, we even see many of these examples (odd that there were no Ferengi in the mental landscape portrayed as Seven's mind - maybe the makeup was deemed too elaborate for these relatively short sequences?). The change shown in Seven is pronounced with incredible contrast, my favourite being her turn rampaging through the ship while Tuvok and other Security track her down, only to find a little girl curled up in the corner, frightened and questioning, then back to the violent warrior Tuvok must stun as he marches her to Sickbay.
It was surprising the Doctor was so dismissive of the mind meld as a medical tool, calling it Vulcan mumbo-jumbo - I can believe Dr. Zimmerman having that view as he was generally quite strong in his opinions, but the Doc is also programmed with many other Starfleet physicians so you'd think there would be some Vulcan ones, too, and we've already had evidence of the meld working in a number of cases going right back to 'TOS' (Those Old Scientists!). At the same time the Doctor has had problems with Tuvok in the past (notably in 'Meld'), so perhaps it isn't quite as unheralded as all that... I loved that he got to do it and I was also impressed with the direction in the episode - early on you got some good shots such as the camera following Seven, then whirling around her and moving out of the Cargo Bay, the shots of her personalities in reflective surfaces (like 'Quantum Leap,' and in the same way we must be seeing what she is because obviously she doesn't really look like an old Klingon warrior or a little girl - again, the Ferengi doesn't get to appear...), but it was in the scenes depicting her chaotic, disintegrating mind that it was most impressive, a nightmarish Borg vessel full of shouting, screaming crying examples of the various races she'd assimilated (including a reuse of the old 'TNG'-era uniform). Perhaps the most touching was a Mother, whom I assume wasn't a Starfleet officer, though had been aboard a ship at Wolf 359 and was searching for her son who was in Starfleet. It's a reminder that real people suffered, died, or worse in that attack.
There is one slight flaw, however, as if these are supposed to be people Seven personally assimilated then she couldn't have been at Wolf 359 as there was only one Borg vessel there and that was destroyed. Unless they aren't specific to Seven's experience, which would make sense as they'd simply be transferred through subspace to the Collective. Not that it really makes a difference either way, but I have to mention any examples of story logic not lining up, such as why they didn't simply blast the Vinculum to pieces and shut it down that way? It had survived the destruction of a Borg Cube, so it must be particularly hardy, like a black box in an aircraft maybe? The thought of them just blasting stuff to pieces shows I've been watching too much modern Trek recently, though in that case I wouldn't be pointing out one or two minor inconsistencies, I'd be wasting all my time on the many logic and lore issues, that's the difference! And this episode has the heart that's missing from the modern versions. That line where Seven says her courage is insufficient, standing close to camera like she thinks she's alone, yet having Janeway close behind her like a reassuring angel, was another beautiful scene and also reminded me of Data and Picard, this time from 'Generations' when he wants to turn off his emotions, but can't - it had the same attitude of staying strong and continuing on even when you're not feeling it, a reminder that feelings are part of us, not the driving force, and overcoming yourself is a big part of winning through, an inspirational ending if ever there was one.
Other points of interests that stood out during the watching of it was that Ferengi are designated Species 180 by the Borg, when you'd think, considering they originated in the Delta Quadrant and Ferengi the Alpha, they'd be a much higher number (the 'Star Trek Encyclopedia' doesn't even note that number which is odd as usually they're good at including a little background about mistakes - another slight to the race!). I assume the designation comes from the order in which the Borg encountered a species, so either there was some incursion into Ferengi space a lot longer ago than we ever realised, or the Ferengi themselves delved too deep into distant space and were assimilated for their troubles - the Borg don't take bribes... Mind you, as 'Enterprise' showed, they can show up when you least expect them, and what was one of the other major races encountered by the NX-01? Yes, it was the Borg. It's all connected... Something else I really appreciated was the fact that Starfleet don't watch and record everything that occurs on their vessels, that their attitude isn't towards tracking everything and everyone as our culture seems to be sleepwalking towards today. Why do I say this? Because Neelix didn't know who had raided his Galley, and if they had cameras everywhere they could just check the security footage (something that comes up in 'DS9,' too, from time to time when Odo wants more stringent controls and is always beaten back, forced to work in the strict confines of Starfleet's values of privacy - unless in specific instances such as setting up a camera to catch the Klingons messing with the Replicator in 'Visionary'). On 'TOS' footage from the Bridge was used as evidence in 'Court Martial,' and it would make sense to record Bridge operations, at least some of the time, but otherwise the freedom and privacy wins out most of the time, which is reassuring.
****
Thursday, 24 November 2022
Friday, 11 November 2022
Timeless
DVD, Voyager S5 (Timeless)
You could say this is a timeless episode, but you could also call it timely... I know, I know, this is no time to be joking about time, we don't have the time (to fit with the Cochrane reference), but this does sit quite comfortably on the podium of Trek mashup, featuring almost bookends that could be deemed references to 'Generations' (smashing a champagne bottle across the Warp Core; crashing the ship into a planet), while also recycling the solution to 'Cause and Effect,' and creepily foreshadowing a number of things about 'Picard'! Let's start there: a bitter character angry at the way life has treated them, yet intent on doing something to redress the balance... an eyeball extraction (sort of), to remove a piece of Borg technology... a Borg vessel in the Beta Quadrant... that future combadge... LeVar Burton back as Geordi La Forge... The biggest connection to one of the current Trek series' is of course the date - we're almost at that point in 'Picard,' nine years behind them, but closer to that time than to 'Voyager' (2390 to 2399, as opposed to 2375). I can't imagine this episode was in their minds when they were creating Jean-Luc's comeback tour, but perhaps it just seeped into the Trek culture enough to be subconscious? All those parallels are quite striking, especially the idea of a character being an embittered, much more casual version of themselves (Kim's always slapping people on the arm in a natural gesture of camaraderie that you can't imagine the younger, more buttoned-down version pulling off - the Doctor's quite taken aback, though it's fun at the end when he says goodbye to this future Kim, he repays the compliment, which I'll bet was Robert Picardo's idea!).
The difference is, Kim hasn't been twisted into a terrible version of himself that ruins the character (as Seven was, complete with a back-peddling towards the larger, more recognisable for brand awareness, facial implants, when on the series she'd developed enough to be minimising them by the end of the series), he's actually a dedicated man haunted by the guilt that he caused the crash which killed his entire crew bar Chakotay who was on the Flyer with him. You could say he's misguided in that he wants to change the timeline, an idea reused for Admiral Janeway in series finale 'Endgame,' except in direct opposition of the Admiral he does what he does to prevent Voyager from trying to get back 'early' because if they do they won't get back at all! Much of the episode does consist of Harry worriedly tapping on LCARS, brow creased, or trying to persuade everyone it's a viable option to do what they do. He always was someone who missed home, with his closeness to his parents and a girlfriend (whom we saw in another alternate reality in 'Non Sequitur'), so it would make sense that he'd be the cheerleader of this whole concept like no one else. At the same time you'd think someone else would be more qualified to do what he does, charting the front of the slipstream, or whatever technical description they had for putting him there, or would have foreseen what would happen - surely Tuvok, with his Vulcan cool, or Torres, with her Engineer's brain, would be better suited to the job. I would have said Tom, but he was the one transferring Harry's data to Voyager's Helm.
This was the prestigious one hundredth episode of the series, and unlike 'DS9,' which perhaps took reaching such a milestone more as a matter of course, without pushing the boat out on a 'special' episode (not to say 'The Ship' isn't a special episode, it's great, but it doesn't shout out that this is an important juncture in the life of the series, either), they were more celebratory, perhaps realising that seven years wasn't necessarily a given, or perhaps it was simply they were on network TV instead of syndication, and the higher-ups wanted something to mark the occasion? Whatever the reason I find it quite nice that they chose to mould it around Harry Kim, a character that didn't always have as much care given to him in later seasons (in common with Chakotay, Tuvok and Neelix), though in keeping with Season 5 all the players were still being looked after, and this episode is proof of that. I believe in the change such an event would have on his life that he would become obsessed with righting his own wrong, and with Chakotay being an outcast in Federation society due to his affiliation with the Maquis (though we don't really know if that's the case in this instance), I can see him being quick to assist. I don't recall if the Maquis crew knew about their official pardon at this time - obviously there was a certain amount of news that reached them through the Hirogen array in Season 4, such as the devastating revelation all the remaining Maquis had been wiped out, so you'd think Starfleet would have set their minds at rest regarding their position. Yet Chakotay seems quite heavy-hearted about the prospect of returning home when Janeway discusses it with him.
It's nice to see them socialising together over dinner, and it could be that this is exactly what Chakotay fears to lose: that special bond they'd all developed, especially between he and the Captain. They'd become a family going through so many tough situations together and a return would inevitably be the breaking up of that crew and family. Oddly, I don't think his concerns were ever fully vocalised or addressed, one area where the episode let us down, as that would have been an ideal issue to explore. I wish Chakotay had gone full white hair for his future version, because he doesn't look that different with a few streaks than he did in recent seasons until they removed all traces of ageing this season, I think. He looked more distinguished with the white and in fifteen years' time I would imagine him to have gone all white. Which is alright! I don't know if this was something Robert Beltran was unhappy about, or one of the dictates of the studio, but they failed in that regard, especially when you consider humans are supposed to be above such things by the 24th Century, the reason used to explain why Picard is bald when he could easily have a full head of hair, or Geordi has the VISOR or cybernetic eyes when he could have ordinary ones, good as new. Still, at least we got aged Chakotay here, not to mention... aged Geordi!
At the time, La Forge's appearance was one of the most exciting things about the episode, despite the fact it's such a slight part with only one or two scenes on a viewscreen and some voice work over the comm. But, but, but: it's Geordi! In 2390! He's Captain of the Galaxy-class USS Challenger! And he's wearing the future combadge seen in 'All Good Things...' and 'The Visitor'! And he's still wearing the purple/grey shouldered uniform of the 'TNG' films and 'DS9'! Oh. That was one area that was altered in 'Picard' where we see this king of Starfleet uniforms didn't last much beyond 'Nemesis,' sadly. I always liked to think, despite time travel stories having the possibility of future changes, that what we saw would play out there or thereabouts in most aspects, and so I was pleased to see that that uniform would survive for at least fifteen years to come, as it should, before being replaced by the 'full colour' tops of the early-25th Century variation. But 'Picard' unfortunately chose to go its own way and chuck out these established facts, which in some ways is fair enough since, as I said, it's a possible future so they weren't tied down (and at least they used the same combadge!), yet ever since that first image of the 'DSC' uniforms that was released in the buildup to that series' first season, my heart sank to see they weren't obeying the laws of canon in such details, and as it would turn out that would be merely the tip of the iceberg!
But they can't take the old Trek away from us (unless they go back in and alter it like they did with 'TOS' and 'TNG' to update for HD, unable to keep from tinkering a little), and it was still lovely to see a possible future for Geordi. I hope when he returns in 'Picard' Season 3 (I don't think he appears in 2, though still haven't got my DVD copy yet...), that his command of the Challenger is mentioned to confirm the events of 'Timeless' were true to some degree. Of course LeVar Burton was available because during the latter Trek spinoffs he'd become a regular Director on them, with episodes of 'DS9,' 'Voyager' and 'Enterprise,' and so another link with 'Picard' is that he reprised his role as actor from his role as Director, just like Jonathan Frakes, who'd directed right from the first season of the new regime and thus was also asked to return as Riker - he even had that small cameo in the 'Picard' Season 1 finale where he only appears via viewscreen to add to the symmetry! And having a Galaxy-class starship appear in this episode also meant that one appeared in every good modern Trek... and 'Picard' (sorry, had to get that one in!). One thing that differs significantly between that later series and this, is how much more restrained 'Voyager' is in comparison. There were times when I could have imagined characters swearing if it'd been 'Picard,' and then of course we come to the infamous eyeball extraction scene that caused a bit of a kerfuffle. In 'Picard' we have to see it in gory detail, but in this the Doctor performs a much more invasive and horrific mutilation on a much-loved character, Seven, but we don't see it, only the section of skull he's removed and is quite disconcertingly detached from as he holds it - I found that more unsettling and grisly in some ways because of the implication of him cutting up her head to remove it, and that was done without the need for graphic horror, much more effective in tone here.
Another link to 'Picard' was how the Borg temporal maguffin was taken from the wreck of a Borg ship in the Beta Quadrant. The idea that there could be abandoned Borg vessels that could be found at that time in history is surprisingly close to what 'Picard' would do with a Borg Cube hanging in Romulan space, so I loved the parallels there - and at the time they wrote this episode they didn't even know they were going to effectively destroy the Borg at the end of the series, rendering them basically inert and setting up the likelihood of abandoned vessels wherever they might be! It's not that I like 'Picard,' I find it to be the antithesis of Trek, a bad version that steals away beloved characters and twists them as it has twisted the previously utopian Federation world. But despite all my problems with it, it is fun to discover connections that I had no idea existed within the little we knew of that future time - one thing that completely goes against what they did with Seven in the later series is that there she's a hard-drinking tough nut, whom we're either supposed to think is cool, because drinking is 'cool,' and only 'tough' people can hold their liquor, or we're supposed to pity her, but I think it's more the former. In 'Timeless' we discover she absolutely can't hold her liquor, and even a little synthehol in the blood stream sends her slightly off her head. It was funny because she's such a controlled person, as I've noted before, the closest to a female Vulcan we'd yet had (and more Vulcan than T'Pol, I'd argue), and if you occasionally show a Vulcan losing it then that's either amusing or frightening in itself. I'm not sure quite how it works when it's supposed to be synthehol, although we do know that it gives you a feeling of intoxication without the after-effects, and the ability to snap out of it any moment you decide. Still, you'd think Seven, with all her study of her human culture, would have come across it before, though it's possible she never tried it until that moment.
One thing I really liked about the story was the way the time travel mechanics worked - Kim knew that if he was successful, and Voyager was saved, he and everything he knew would cease to exist. The idea of a sacrosanct timeline that must be protected is one I much prefer to the more modern concept of timelines branching off into infinite varieties where every decision creates a different one. In that view nothing really matters, it's all just a jumble of actions and reactions, impersonal, and making us far from unique individuals, but merely a version of ourselves, which goes into philosophy and belief and sort of rips into it, removing value in our reality. Since it's all made up rubbish anyway, and for the sake of drama, having one timeline that matters to us is the only way, one reason I don't really care so much about the Kelvin Timeline or Mirror Universe, other than as a mirror on our real characters. And that made the drama so much more intense as Kim knows what he did hasn't made a difference, and has mere seconds to rectify the mistake before the Flyer goes up, and just at the last moment he realises he's succeeded, just as the explosion rips through the small ship - you could question how he could possibly know because the timeline should have changed instantly that he did what was necessary, but again, it's dramatic licence - we need to know old Harry knows to get the full impact.
Talking of impacts, this episode is probably best known for having one of the most memorable set-piece spectacles of the series - in Season 4 Janeway rammed her ship into the Krenim vessel to reset the timeline, and this time she crashes it into an ice planet. Technically it was Paris that actually crashed, but she gave the order! And it is quite a sight, though I actually thought the episode began with the crash as the most teasing teaser you could imagine. Just like 'Cause and Effect' when the old USS Bozeman suddenly appears in front of the Enterprise, there's a collision and she explodes in fiery glory, hit the titles! In fact, 'Timeless' has quite a slow build as we pull back to reveal Voyager trapped under the ice. The set dressing was superb, you really believe those familiar Voyager locations are frozen solid, though I'm not sure how the layer of snow got in there! Old Kim and old Chakotay tramp round (in the silver cold weather gear Odo and Quark used in 'The Ascent' - shows Starfleet designs can last a long time!), in this frosty tomb of their old comrades, perfectly preserved. I only wish we could have seen the crash from the perspective of some of those crew-members inside - so we'd see the guy who was in the Jefferies Tube and died alone, or people at their stations thrown to the floor - just another minor improvement I thought of for the episode. It was still an impressive sequence for a TV budget of the time, and even though they did steal the solution from 'Cause and Effect' (sending a message through time only Seven can hear to avert a crash, just like sending a message through time only Data can hear to avert a crash), it was still a good use of established lore.
More than mere visual excitement (and Burton gave us some great direction, from the slow-motion celebration, to the intercutting between timelines), the ending had a real punch to it. For a moment I thought we were getting one of those poignant, lonely realisations the characters will never know who saved them, just as in 'Time and Again' where there's that warmth of a happy ending that they'd never know could have been so horrifically different, or the heartbreaking disintegration of the copies of the crew later this season in 'Course: Oblivion,' completely unknown, so poetic and tragic. Instead we have something equally as warm, as they know Harry saved them in the future and he gets to hear a short message from himself. It's a beautiful ending that doesn't negate all that happened - it wasn't 'all a dream,' real people with real lives had to sacrifice to keep the status quo, and they know it. What's more, while the Quantum Slipstream drive could have got them home if it'd worked, what it did achieve was knocking ten years off their journey, which is more good news. It does make you wonder why they couldn't simply use the drive in short bursts as they did there, but perhaps the problem was cumulative and they'd reached the limit of how it could be used before it would have sent them spinning out of control. Janeway's statement that they'd waited long enough to get home was a reminder that they have been lost for a long time, and though, as we saw in the previous episode, they have their own community and are a unit in themselves, they still aim to reach their goal, pushing on to the end. And that's the kind of inspiration Trek used to be able to achieve on a regular basis, and which it lost. Will it, like Voyager, ever be found, ever return to its 'home' and be what it should be? Only someone like Harry, fifteen years in our future could know.
****
You could say this is a timeless episode, but you could also call it timely... I know, I know, this is no time to be joking about time, we don't have the time (to fit with the Cochrane reference), but this does sit quite comfortably on the podium of Trek mashup, featuring almost bookends that could be deemed references to 'Generations' (smashing a champagne bottle across the Warp Core; crashing the ship into a planet), while also recycling the solution to 'Cause and Effect,' and creepily foreshadowing a number of things about 'Picard'! Let's start there: a bitter character angry at the way life has treated them, yet intent on doing something to redress the balance... an eyeball extraction (sort of), to remove a piece of Borg technology... a Borg vessel in the Beta Quadrant... that future combadge... LeVar Burton back as Geordi La Forge... The biggest connection to one of the current Trek series' is of course the date - we're almost at that point in 'Picard,' nine years behind them, but closer to that time than to 'Voyager' (2390 to 2399, as opposed to 2375). I can't imagine this episode was in their minds when they were creating Jean-Luc's comeback tour, but perhaps it just seeped into the Trek culture enough to be subconscious? All those parallels are quite striking, especially the idea of a character being an embittered, much more casual version of themselves (Kim's always slapping people on the arm in a natural gesture of camaraderie that you can't imagine the younger, more buttoned-down version pulling off - the Doctor's quite taken aback, though it's fun at the end when he says goodbye to this future Kim, he repays the compliment, which I'll bet was Robert Picardo's idea!).
The difference is, Kim hasn't been twisted into a terrible version of himself that ruins the character (as Seven was, complete with a back-peddling towards the larger, more recognisable for brand awareness, facial implants, when on the series she'd developed enough to be minimising them by the end of the series), he's actually a dedicated man haunted by the guilt that he caused the crash which killed his entire crew bar Chakotay who was on the Flyer with him. You could say he's misguided in that he wants to change the timeline, an idea reused for Admiral Janeway in series finale 'Endgame,' except in direct opposition of the Admiral he does what he does to prevent Voyager from trying to get back 'early' because if they do they won't get back at all! Much of the episode does consist of Harry worriedly tapping on LCARS, brow creased, or trying to persuade everyone it's a viable option to do what they do. He always was someone who missed home, with his closeness to his parents and a girlfriend (whom we saw in another alternate reality in 'Non Sequitur'), so it would make sense that he'd be the cheerleader of this whole concept like no one else. At the same time you'd think someone else would be more qualified to do what he does, charting the front of the slipstream, or whatever technical description they had for putting him there, or would have foreseen what would happen - surely Tuvok, with his Vulcan cool, or Torres, with her Engineer's brain, would be better suited to the job. I would have said Tom, but he was the one transferring Harry's data to Voyager's Helm.
This was the prestigious one hundredth episode of the series, and unlike 'DS9,' which perhaps took reaching such a milestone more as a matter of course, without pushing the boat out on a 'special' episode (not to say 'The Ship' isn't a special episode, it's great, but it doesn't shout out that this is an important juncture in the life of the series, either), they were more celebratory, perhaps realising that seven years wasn't necessarily a given, or perhaps it was simply they were on network TV instead of syndication, and the higher-ups wanted something to mark the occasion? Whatever the reason I find it quite nice that they chose to mould it around Harry Kim, a character that didn't always have as much care given to him in later seasons (in common with Chakotay, Tuvok and Neelix), though in keeping with Season 5 all the players were still being looked after, and this episode is proof of that. I believe in the change such an event would have on his life that he would become obsessed with righting his own wrong, and with Chakotay being an outcast in Federation society due to his affiliation with the Maquis (though we don't really know if that's the case in this instance), I can see him being quick to assist. I don't recall if the Maquis crew knew about their official pardon at this time - obviously there was a certain amount of news that reached them through the Hirogen array in Season 4, such as the devastating revelation all the remaining Maquis had been wiped out, so you'd think Starfleet would have set their minds at rest regarding their position. Yet Chakotay seems quite heavy-hearted about the prospect of returning home when Janeway discusses it with him.
It's nice to see them socialising together over dinner, and it could be that this is exactly what Chakotay fears to lose: that special bond they'd all developed, especially between he and the Captain. They'd become a family going through so many tough situations together and a return would inevitably be the breaking up of that crew and family. Oddly, I don't think his concerns were ever fully vocalised or addressed, one area where the episode let us down, as that would have been an ideal issue to explore. I wish Chakotay had gone full white hair for his future version, because he doesn't look that different with a few streaks than he did in recent seasons until they removed all traces of ageing this season, I think. He looked more distinguished with the white and in fifteen years' time I would imagine him to have gone all white. Which is alright! I don't know if this was something Robert Beltran was unhappy about, or one of the dictates of the studio, but they failed in that regard, especially when you consider humans are supposed to be above such things by the 24th Century, the reason used to explain why Picard is bald when he could easily have a full head of hair, or Geordi has the VISOR or cybernetic eyes when he could have ordinary ones, good as new. Still, at least we got aged Chakotay here, not to mention... aged Geordi!
At the time, La Forge's appearance was one of the most exciting things about the episode, despite the fact it's such a slight part with only one or two scenes on a viewscreen and some voice work over the comm. But, but, but: it's Geordi! In 2390! He's Captain of the Galaxy-class USS Challenger! And he's wearing the future combadge seen in 'All Good Things...' and 'The Visitor'! And he's still wearing the purple/grey shouldered uniform of the 'TNG' films and 'DS9'! Oh. That was one area that was altered in 'Picard' where we see this king of Starfleet uniforms didn't last much beyond 'Nemesis,' sadly. I always liked to think, despite time travel stories having the possibility of future changes, that what we saw would play out there or thereabouts in most aspects, and so I was pleased to see that that uniform would survive for at least fifteen years to come, as it should, before being replaced by the 'full colour' tops of the early-25th Century variation. But 'Picard' unfortunately chose to go its own way and chuck out these established facts, which in some ways is fair enough since, as I said, it's a possible future so they weren't tied down (and at least they used the same combadge!), yet ever since that first image of the 'DSC' uniforms that was released in the buildup to that series' first season, my heart sank to see they weren't obeying the laws of canon in such details, and as it would turn out that would be merely the tip of the iceberg!
But they can't take the old Trek away from us (unless they go back in and alter it like they did with 'TOS' and 'TNG' to update for HD, unable to keep from tinkering a little), and it was still lovely to see a possible future for Geordi. I hope when he returns in 'Picard' Season 3 (I don't think he appears in 2, though still haven't got my DVD copy yet...), that his command of the Challenger is mentioned to confirm the events of 'Timeless' were true to some degree. Of course LeVar Burton was available because during the latter Trek spinoffs he'd become a regular Director on them, with episodes of 'DS9,' 'Voyager' and 'Enterprise,' and so another link with 'Picard' is that he reprised his role as actor from his role as Director, just like Jonathan Frakes, who'd directed right from the first season of the new regime and thus was also asked to return as Riker - he even had that small cameo in the 'Picard' Season 1 finale where he only appears via viewscreen to add to the symmetry! And having a Galaxy-class starship appear in this episode also meant that one appeared in every good modern Trek... and 'Picard' (sorry, had to get that one in!). One thing that differs significantly between that later series and this, is how much more restrained 'Voyager' is in comparison. There were times when I could have imagined characters swearing if it'd been 'Picard,' and then of course we come to the infamous eyeball extraction scene that caused a bit of a kerfuffle. In 'Picard' we have to see it in gory detail, but in this the Doctor performs a much more invasive and horrific mutilation on a much-loved character, Seven, but we don't see it, only the section of skull he's removed and is quite disconcertingly detached from as he holds it - I found that more unsettling and grisly in some ways because of the implication of him cutting up her head to remove it, and that was done without the need for graphic horror, much more effective in tone here.
Another link to 'Picard' was how the Borg temporal maguffin was taken from the wreck of a Borg ship in the Beta Quadrant. The idea that there could be abandoned Borg vessels that could be found at that time in history is surprisingly close to what 'Picard' would do with a Borg Cube hanging in Romulan space, so I loved the parallels there - and at the time they wrote this episode they didn't even know they were going to effectively destroy the Borg at the end of the series, rendering them basically inert and setting up the likelihood of abandoned vessels wherever they might be! It's not that I like 'Picard,' I find it to be the antithesis of Trek, a bad version that steals away beloved characters and twists them as it has twisted the previously utopian Federation world. But despite all my problems with it, it is fun to discover connections that I had no idea existed within the little we knew of that future time - one thing that completely goes against what they did with Seven in the later series is that there she's a hard-drinking tough nut, whom we're either supposed to think is cool, because drinking is 'cool,' and only 'tough' people can hold their liquor, or we're supposed to pity her, but I think it's more the former. In 'Timeless' we discover she absolutely can't hold her liquor, and even a little synthehol in the blood stream sends her slightly off her head. It was funny because she's such a controlled person, as I've noted before, the closest to a female Vulcan we'd yet had (and more Vulcan than T'Pol, I'd argue), and if you occasionally show a Vulcan losing it then that's either amusing or frightening in itself. I'm not sure quite how it works when it's supposed to be synthehol, although we do know that it gives you a feeling of intoxication without the after-effects, and the ability to snap out of it any moment you decide. Still, you'd think Seven, with all her study of her human culture, would have come across it before, though it's possible she never tried it until that moment.
One thing I really liked about the story was the way the time travel mechanics worked - Kim knew that if he was successful, and Voyager was saved, he and everything he knew would cease to exist. The idea of a sacrosanct timeline that must be protected is one I much prefer to the more modern concept of timelines branching off into infinite varieties where every decision creates a different one. In that view nothing really matters, it's all just a jumble of actions and reactions, impersonal, and making us far from unique individuals, but merely a version of ourselves, which goes into philosophy and belief and sort of rips into it, removing value in our reality. Since it's all made up rubbish anyway, and for the sake of drama, having one timeline that matters to us is the only way, one reason I don't really care so much about the Kelvin Timeline or Mirror Universe, other than as a mirror on our real characters. And that made the drama so much more intense as Kim knows what he did hasn't made a difference, and has mere seconds to rectify the mistake before the Flyer goes up, and just at the last moment he realises he's succeeded, just as the explosion rips through the small ship - you could question how he could possibly know because the timeline should have changed instantly that he did what was necessary, but again, it's dramatic licence - we need to know old Harry knows to get the full impact.
Talking of impacts, this episode is probably best known for having one of the most memorable set-piece spectacles of the series - in Season 4 Janeway rammed her ship into the Krenim vessel to reset the timeline, and this time she crashes it into an ice planet. Technically it was Paris that actually crashed, but she gave the order! And it is quite a sight, though I actually thought the episode began with the crash as the most teasing teaser you could imagine. Just like 'Cause and Effect' when the old USS Bozeman suddenly appears in front of the Enterprise, there's a collision and she explodes in fiery glory, hit the titles! In fact, 'Timeless' has quite a slow build as we pull back to reveal Voyager trapped under the ice. The set dressing was superb, you really believe those familiar Voyager locations are frozen solid, though I'm not sure how the layer of snow got in there! Old Kim and old Chakotay tramp round (in the silver cold weather gear Odo and Quark used in 'The Ascent' - shows Starfleet designs can last a long time!), in this frosty tomb of their old comrades, perfectly preserved. I only wish we could have seen the crash from the perspective of some of those crew-members inside - so we'd see the guy who was in the Jefferies Tube and died alone, or people at their stations thrown to the floor - just another minor improvement I thought of for the episode. It was still an impressive sequence for a TV budget of the time, and even though they did steal the solution from 'Cause and Effect' (sending a message through time only Seven can hear to avert a crash, just like sending a message through time only Data can hear to avert a crash), it was still a good use of established lore.
More than mere visual excitement (and Burton gave us some great direction, from the slow-motion celebration, to the intercutting between timelines), the ending had a real punch to it. For a moment I thought we were getting one of those poignant, lonely realisations the characters will never know who saved them, just as in 'Time and Again' where there's that warmth of a happy ending that they'd never know could have been so horrifically different, or the heartbreaking disintegration of the copies of the crew later this season in 'Course: Oblivion,' completely unknown, so poetic and tragic. Instead we have something equally as warm, as they know Harry saved them in the future and he gets to hear a short message from himself. It's a beautiful ending that doesn't negate all that happened - it wasn't 'all a dream,' real people with real lives had to sacrifice to keep the status quo, and they know it. What's more, while the Quantum Slipstream drive could have got them home if it'd worked, what it did achieve was knocking ten years off their journey, which is more good news. It does make you wonder why they couldn't simply use the drive in short bursts as they did there, but perhaps the problem was cumulative and they'd reached the limit of how it could be used before it would have sent them spinning out of control. Janeway's statement that they'd waited long enough to get home was a reminder that they have been lost for a long time, and though, as we saw in the previous episode, they have their own community and are a unit in themselves, they still aim to reach their goal, pushing on to the end. And that's the kind of inspiration Trek used to be able to achieve on a regular basis, and which it lost. Will it, like Voyager, ever be found, ever return to its 'home' and be what it should be? Only someone like Harry, fifteen years in our future could know.
****
Whispers
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Whispers)
Shameless in its attempt to recreate a horror film, or perhaps relishing in its chosen genre, bloodless, but with lots of shocks, this isn't one of the most 'Stargate' feeling of episodes. For one thing where's all the cast?! We have Sheppard starring, McKay shows up for bookend scenes, and other than that, that's it. We do get Dr. Beckett, on Atlantis for some reason before he goes back to the home galaxy again, so he's a semi-main cast member, but where were Teyla, Ronon, Keller, Wolsey? I don't know why they chose to stick Sheppard and Beckett with a guest cast team of feminist soldier-gals rather than the usual gang. Okay, it wasn't really feminist, other than the team leader (Major something? It's telling none of the soldiers' names stuck in my mind, unlike Alison, who was at least some way towards being a character), saying she was allowed to choose the best and that's how she ended up with her team. Except they weren't really the best since one of them got killed! I'm guessing the reason for the unknowns was to put us in a more unsettled state, just as the episode begins with unknown villagers coming across something one dark night in the woods, since we don't know if any of them will survive, as is the case in most horror, people slowly being picked off one by one. Actually I felt the same uncertainty for Beckett since he is a clone - I could imagine them discovering yet another clone of Carson who they'd then take back with them... again!
If we had had people like Ronon then the threat wouldn't have seemed quite so worrying since we know the warriors on the team will always pull through. Putting Carson, who's always been a bit of a worry-wort, with a girl gang of blasé, overconfident soldier types, only emphasised the situation. Of course if McKay had been along such an attitude would have gone even more extreme, perhaps too much into the comedic vein when they were aiming more for subtle creepiness as they led up to the jump scares. Carson has something of a quiet desperation compared with Rodney's loud exasperation at dangerous situations, so I can see why they switched out the cast like they did. But the new characters aren't the most endearing, we don't really get to know them, and they seem more like tropes than people: the fighter who only lives for battle, constantly overconfident. Then you've got all those horror tropes of shambling zombie-like foes, creepy mist (which somehow has technology-defeating properties - the excuse for why they can't use their torches or radios), people being dragged from behind into darkness or fog. And the biggest one of all: people failing to adhere to common sense and instead heading out into the danger and darkness when they should have stayed together inside!
Why did Alison go out, she didn't need to? And how did the villager know what would open all those pods, he seemed like a simple, backwards sort of guy! It was lovely to see Nicole DeBoer, most famous to Trekkers for her single season stint as Ezri Dax in 'DS9,' following in the footsteps of several other Trek faces to appear on the series (and the franchise in general). With McKay left behind she's used to give Carson a bit of closeness as he gets giggly over this likeminded soul, much to their babysitter soldier's disgust. I kept waiting for something to happen to her, especially when Sheppard found her alone outside - I was expecting her to have somehow become one of the 'infected' and burst out in monster mode, like when she chose to hang back at the end. But nothing happened, so maybe she'll come back. Maybe Beckett will, we just don't know as his role isn't very clear now, other than the fact he can pop in to Atlantis any time. Which is nice, but I'm not sure what his purpose is any more.
'DS9' also did an episode called 'Whispers,' but it was a lot better. Rather than straight up visual horror it was more about paranoia, which is scarier. They certainly succeeded here with an oppressive atmosphere and all the creeping around was well shot, with the abandoned equipment of the village looming out of the mist, the low lighting and the camera being cranked up high. Trouble is, it really seemed like they were trying to do something that the series isn't, and other than the stylishness of the shooting, there didn't seem to be much point. It was also very militaristic, which isn't one of the things I find most interesting about the series (I'm always much more on the scientists' side, discovering things and getting them out of jams). It's not that I disliked the girl group, they just weren't there to be developed as people, no one really learned anything, it was just a series of actions, without even the sense of buildup and release that the longer form of a film can do. When they find the other lab with yet more open pods that would have been the cue for a film to take it to the next level, but they quickly get attacked, blast them, and then we're back on Atlantis again, Carson packing like déjà vu (I imagine they'd have filmed the bookend scenes together, too, as that would be sensible). As a result, as much as I found it somewhat gripping in places, there wasn't anything else to, shall we say, grip onto. And talking of grips, I never believe in humanoid shapes crawling up or down walls and ceilings because the surface wouldn't hold the weight and the human body isn't designed to move in that manner. Even taking into account it's supposed to be unnatural, it doesn't quite come across as real to me, especially at speed! Also, when I saw the gas mask I immediately expected a Genii connection, but no. Fairly entertaining, then, especially on a dark afternoon, but nothing else.
**
Shameless in its attempt to recreate a horror film, or perhaps relishing in its chosen genre, bloodless, but with lots of shocks, this isn't one of the most 'Stargate' feeling of episodes. For one thing where's all the cast?! We have Sheppard starring, McKay shows up for bookend scenes, and other than that, that's it. We do get Dr. Beckett, on Atlantis for some reason before he goes back to the home galaxy again, so he's a semi-main cast member, but where were Teyla, Ronon, Keller, Wolsey? I don't know why they chose to stick Sheppard and Beckett with a guest cast team of feminist soldier-gals rather than the usual gang. Okay, it wasn't really feminist, other than the team leader (Major something? It's telling none of the soldiers' names stuck in my mind, unlike Alison, who was at least some way towards being a character), saying she was allowed to choose the best and that's how she ended up with her team. Except they weren't really the best since one of them got killed! I'm guessing the reason for the unknowns was to put us in a more unsettled state, just as the episode begins with unknown villagers coming across something one dark night in the woods, since we don't know if any of them will survive, as is the case in most horror, people slowly being picked off one by one. Actually I felt the same uncertainty for Beckett since he is a clone - I could imagine them discovering yet another clone of Carson who they'd then take back with them... again!
If we had had people like Ronon then the threat wouldn't have seemed quite so worrying since we know the warriors on the team will always pull through. Putting Carson, who's always been a bit of a worry-wort, with a girl gang of blasé, overconfident soldier types, only emphasised the situation. Of course if McKay had been along such an attitude would have gone even more extreme, perhaps too much into the comedic vein when they were aiming more for subtle creepiness as they led up to the jump scares. Carson has something of a quiet desperation compared with Rodney's loud exasperation at dangerous situations, so I can see why they switched out the cast like they did. But the new characters aren't the most endearing, we don't really get to know them, and they seem more like tropes than people: the fighter who only lives for battle, constantly overconfident. Then you've got all those horror tropes of shambling zombie-like foes, creepy mist (which somehow has technology-defeating properties - the excuse for why they can't use their torches or radios), people being dragged from behind into darkness or fog. And the biggest one of all: people failing to adhere to common sense and instead heading out into the danger and darkness when they should have stayed together inside!
Why did Alison go out, she didn't need to? And how did the villager know what would open all those pods, he seemed like a simple, backwards sort of guy! It was lovely to see Nicole DeBoer, most famous to Trekkers for her single season stint as Ezri Dax in 'DS9,' following in the footsteps of several other Trek faces to appear on the series (and the franchise in general). With McKay left behind she's used to give Carson a bit of closeness as he gets giggly over this likeminded soul, much to their babysitter soldier's disgust. I kept waiting for something to happen to her, especially when Sheppard found her alone outside - I was expecting her to have somehow become one of the 'infected' and burst out in monster mode, like when she chose to hang back at the end. But nothing happened, so maybe she'll come back. Maybe Beckett will, we just don't know as his role isn't very clear now, other than the fact he can pop in to Atlantis any time. Which is nice, but I'm not sure what his purpose is any more.
'DS9' also did an episode called 'Whispers,' but it was a lot better. Rather than straight up visual horror it was more about paranoia, which is scarier. They certainly succeeded here with an oppressive atmosphere and all the creeping around was well shot, with the abandoned equipment of the village looming out of the mist, the low lighting and the camera being cranked up high. Trouble is, it really seemed like they were trying to do something that the series isn't, and other than the stylishness of the shooting, there didn't seem to be much point. It was also very militaristic, which isn't one of the things I find most interesting about the series (I'm always much more on the scientists' side, discovering things and getting them out of jams). It's not that I disliked the girl group, they just weren't there to be developed as people, no one really learned anything, it was just a series of actions, without even the sense of buildup and release that the longer form of a film can do. When they find the other lab with yet more open pods that would have been the cue for a film to take it to the next level, but they quickly get attacked, blast them, and then we're back on Atlantis again, Carson packing like déjà vu (I imagine they'd have filmed the bookend scenes together, too, as that would be sensible). As a result, as much as I found it somewhat gripping in places, there wasn't anything else to, shall we say, grip onto. And talking of grips, I never believe in humanoid shapes crawling up or down walls and ceilings because the surface wouldn't hold the weight and the human body isn't designed to move in that manner. Even taking into account it's supposed to be unnatural, it doesn't quite come across as real to me, especially at speed! Also, when I saw the gas mask I immediately expected a Genii connection, but no. Fairly entertaining, then, especially on a dark afternoon, but nothing else.
**
Friday, 4 November 2022
Once Upon A Time
DVD, Voyager S5 (Once Upon A Time)
A Challenge For Neelix. That's what it's all about and that's what it could have been called, but it's also about the thorny issue of what to tell children, and whether they're ready for the truth, as well as being a very personal reminder for Neelix about his tragic past. I sometimes come to episodes I've rated highly in the past with some trepidation, worried they won't hold up, whether modern Trek has so lessened my sense of wonder and attachment to that universe that I won't be as susceptible to its charms, especially when they're episodes I haven't watched in years. I'm glad to say this was every bit as strong a story as I'd previously thought, though I had very little specific memory, other than knowing it was about Naomi Wildman in the Holodeck, and it stands as the best episode of the season so far, what a relief! In an age when Trek references are thrown around with gay abandon, having all the emotional resonance of a damp log (in keeping with the Flotter theme), this shows how to really use backstory and characters' pasts in a way that pulls you in and invests the experience with great feelings of sympathy and care. That's down to the episode's choice to tell some of it from a child's point of view, something Naomi brought uniquely to this particular series. I could quibble over things like it not going far enough, and maybe they should have been really experimental and had the story completely from her perspective, but then we wouldn't have been able to explore the feelings of loss and grief that Neelix is forced to confront in this situation.
It is very much a Neelix story - the purpose of guest or recurring characters should be to bring something new out of our main cast, and as much fun as it is playing with new people, that is the reason for having main characters, we're seeing the series through their eyes and the more we learn about them, their inner, as well as outer selves, the more we are drawn in. It shows powerfully how accomplished Neelix was in dealing with children, that he is such a sweet-natured man, a quality that would endear him to little ones. Some people will snidely bring up how he was romantically entangled with what was essentially a very young child in the days when Kes was aboard, but in her lifespan, being two was basically in her twenties, so though in terms of time she was a baby to us, in her short span of expected life, plus physically and emotionally, in every way she was an adult. Still, among the best qualities of Neelix' attraction to her was also a deep-seated need to help the vulnerable, and looking back we can see that comes from the loss of his own family in the war between the Talaxians and the Haakonians, resulting in the terrible genocidal attack with the Metreon Cascade, something explored so effectively in Season 1's 'Jetrel.' The series largely ignored Neelix' tragic past ever since, other than confronting his loss again in the previous season's 'Mortal Coil' (where the image of Alixia originates), and in a series where he was one of the characters to become a little lost in the shuffle later on, it's a real joy to have him and his past so central to the story here.
Children had been part of the Trek universe, or I should say the Starfleet day-to-day, ever since the beginning of 'TNG,' though of course as early as 'Charlie X' on 'TOS' they'd dealt with young people, and continued that theme in the films with the cadets. But specifically children had been an incorporation of 'TNG' in the logic that families assigned to voyages of multiple years and little expectation of returning to Earth (or Ktaria VII, or wherever the crew called home), wouldn't want to be parted and were required for good mental wellbeing and morale. There are all kinds of arguments both ways whether it was too dangerous or foolhardy to take your whole family with you, kiddies and all, but the fact is that's what Roddenberry added to this era of his Trek saga. That continued with 'DS9,' though Jake and Nog were older children, and when Voyager was assigned to track down the Maquis ship containing Tuvok, they were only a small science vessel on a short mission, so there was no question of families there. In the event only one crew-member had such a strong wrench from their family, and that was Ensign Samantha Wildman, a recurring character mostly appearing in Season 2, separated from her husband on DS9 (a real shame they never introduced his character as a link for 'DS9' with its sister series, but they didn't seem to like much overlap between each other, sadly), and most importantly of all, pregnant with what would become Naomi.
In those early episodes the pregnancy and the baby became an important symbol of life carrying on regardless of circumstances. There was no talk of abortions or of making it easier on the Mother, or the fact it was so dangerous to introduce such a small life form onto a ship travelling into the unknown, and wouldn't it be better to end such a life before it could suffer. That's the attitude that might have been a part of the story now, as life has become so devalued and dehumanised. Quite the opposite, as Wildman's baby represented all their futures and in fact it was only strange that there weren't more born (with, as far as I can recall, only B'Elanna's last-minute birth of Miral in the closing moments of the series), especially when it was recognised they could potentially require replacements if this was indeed to be a generational ship that would take decades to return to Federation space. Once the baby had served its dramatic function, however, not to mention Samantha, there wasn't much call to bring them into the story again, and sadly they didn't return until 'Mortal Coil' when we see Neelix in his Godfather role for the first time. In real terms Naomi should only be about three or four by now, but in 'Once Upon A Time' she's more like an eight year old, for obvious reasons of practicality in a TV series: a three year old wouldn't have been able to act in the way Scarlett Pomers did, and the little mite they used before (Brooke Stephens), didn't have the same focus in the story, so to achieve what they wanted, they needed to recast.
Pomers was delightful - not precocious or annoying. Yes, she does come across a little like she's doing what she's told, but for a child actor she did very well and had the charm and grace required to pull it off. It wasn't the first time Trek had done such a thing, either, as young Alexander Rozhenko, aka Worf's son, had also had a sudden growth spurt from birth to appearances in the series. Fortunately in both cases alien DNA came to the rescue as they could easily say that Klingon or Ktarian children grow far quicker than human examples, and that was good enough! What makes this episode special is that 'Voyager' hadn't been shown from such a different perspective before, it had always been much more adult due to the position the crew were in of being completely alone, and a desire by the makers that this crew weren't going to be sitting around morosely feeling sorry about missing their families and instead embracing their circumstances and the joy of exploring strange new worlds that had never been seen by humans before, something Harry Kim reminds Neelix when he wishes Naomi hadn't had to be born on Voyager. And coming from Harry, who was so close to his parents and so young when he started, it's like a confirmation of those Starfleet values, and there is something of the self-sacrifice idea that comfort and security may need to be given up if Starfleet's knowledge is to be expanded, so it's all very true to the Trek ethos.
I felt there might be somewhat of a parallel with the contemporary times the series was made in when Neelix tells Naomi he had a real forest behind where he lived and he and his sisters used to go off and explore every day as opposed to her Holodeck one - this could have been meant as a comment on the rise of computer games back then and children beginning to spend so much time in fantasy worlds (or even watching Trek!), rather than playing out in the physical one, as the only forest Naomi has is the artificial one. But that isn't what the story is about, even if we see that that's exactly where Naomi runs in a crisis to escape her real world problems. But she's a lot more grown-up than most children her age, and like Neelix, she has a sweet nature, quick to respond in sympathy when he tells her about losing his own family instead of holding a grudge for the fact he lied to her. Children do tend to be more resilient, probably because they simply don't know any better, and Naomi above all has been through a lot in her short life when you think of the number of attacks and takeovers that have occurred. Actually, it does make you wonder how the Wildmans coped with things like the Borg or when the Hirogen took over the ship... That's the main reason we haven't heard much about them since the early seasons because it is difficult to work the plight of a child in every time, and how she might be traumatised by events that are daily life for a Starfleet officer, so it's probably best not to think about that too much!
One episode that sprang to mind was 'Cost of Living,' the one with Lwaxana Troi and Alexander playing in the Holodeck, but only really for the superficial connections of an adult and a child in a wacky holoprogram world with quirky characters. I quite liked that one (Lwaxana's always good for a laugh), but this episode is far superior. One thing I appreciated was the early setting up of Naomi's career path and social standing in the Voyager community. If she wasn't careful she could easily have been a spoilt brat with all these adults around to make a fuss of the only child aboard (though that would change eventually). The special friendship she would have with Seven of Nine in particular (unsurprisingly when you consider they have more in common than first impressions since Seven is practically a child herself being assimilated for much of her life), but also the Doctor and Janeway, and becoming the 'Captain's Assistant' were set up nicely here - as you'd expect from a child she's afraid of 'the Borg lady' and believes she could be assimilated into her collective. Of course she's a young child so she doesn't mean everything she says, and Neelix is quick to smooth over any silliness or concerns, but it was a terrific scene where Seven approaches and they have a little interaction, one moment where Pomers excels as you completely accept that Naomi would be frightened of someone so different - there were probably plenty of adults on the crew who were initially concerned about her, too, it's only natural! Terribly ironic that eventually Naomi would indeed become part of Seven's 'collective' as both pupil and friend, which adds even more joy to going back to this scene.
Naomi must have a privileged position on the ship as I'm sure if it had been the Enterprise or other Starfleet locations with children as standard, they wouldn't have access to either the Bridge or Holodeck, but because she's a special case, uniquely the only child aboard, she can (just about), reach the controls for the Holodeck (and is apparently intelligent enough to encode them so Neelix couldn't change the program to take out her friends Flotter and Trevis, and presumably to prevent him shutting the program down - another real world parallel to today when young children can be more technologically savvy than adults!), and there's no block from the computer when she heads to the Bridge. Either she's never attempted it before and they didn't see any reason to make sure the computer would refuse access to her, or they didn't even think of it. Either way, the important thing is she stumbles onto the news that the shuttle her Mother was on has crashed, the worst possible way to learn such crushing tidings. It reminded me of a story told by one Trek character about how they stumbled into an operating theatre and witnessed things a child shouldn't have - was it Bashir, I can't remember? No, it was Harry as he's reminded of it in 'The Thaw,' but it's a real shock, and the worst is that Neelix hadn't told her the truth. That was a truly fascinating part of the story, an inexperienced adult (in that he's never had children himself), has to make the decision about how much or what, to tell of a child in his care's parent.
It was a tough call and I think he was right to protect her, but it's also an organic process that is changing all the time: how much they know, how much might be speculated on. It came to the point where Neelix should have broken it gently that her Mother had crashed and they knew no more than that, and Janeway was insistent that he tell her. That was also a fascinating consideration: how much is Janeway responsible, and therefore has the decision, over this child's position. Because in a sense it isn't for authority to decide how children should be raised, other than basic standards of care and health, but it should have been up to Neelix to decide what was right in the absence of Samantha. And yet at the same time Janeway is the ultimate authority of this ecosystem and so she is responsible in that respect. What I loved is that she didn't do what I was, for some reason, expecting, and bark at Neelix (her bark's worse than her bite - actually it's probably the other way around for her!), ordering him to tell the child. Instead she pulls him into her Ready Room for a personal chat. And it's not the kind of personal chat her crew must sometimes dread where she talks very quietly, but with steel in her voice. It was a different kind of chat where she genuinely tries to help with empathy and care, sitting Neelix down and having the discernment to realise what's going on with him, especially after he's blown up in her face, she doesn't respond with equal ire, but listens and pays attention, reacting in the right way. It was beautiful to see, and when you think last season it was mostly confrontations with Seven in there, maybe that's the experience I was expecting!
The success of the episode is in it's skipping between the adult and child's worlds, seen most deftly in the screen conversation with Samantha - at first she's very reassuring and comforting to her daughter, then when she's talking to Neelix she switches to a more realistic attitude. Even the few scenes based on the Flyer were well done, whether it be Paris recording a goodbye to B'Elanna, or Tuvok reassuring the Ensign that no matter what happens to them Naomi will be in good hands on Voyager. It's so touching when we're recalled to the fact that he's been away from his children for four years and yet still has faith that they are 'prospering,' talking about his daughter: "I conveyed my values to her before leaving and I have confidence in the integrity of those around her." His Vulcanness is very reassuring (something so lacking in modern Trek), and so true to the race, as is his equable acceptance of their situation, the writers cleverly turning it around when Paris says he prefers 'live long and prosper' out of those Vulcan sayings! It's a comfortable knowledge and understanding of the Trek world and its races, as well as the specifics of each character's position at this point in their lives and history - Tuvok prefers to write his farewells rather than put himself through the emotional and public display of recording a personal message onscreen. I'm not sure they should have moved Samantha, though, if she has internal bleeding couldn't they have got the computer to record from a different camera?
If I'm nitpicking I'd also point to the idea of triangulating the distress call - to do that they'd surely need more than one point of connection, and I don't think they had shuttles out looking then, did they? Maybe they had multiple probes in different locations? Leaving aside the evolutionary propaganda the Doctor teaches poor Naomi, since that's just the usual Trek worldview unfortunately, there's really very little to find fault with - perhaps certain parts of 'The Adventures of Flotter' holoprogram were a little too extreme for young children: the Ogre of Fire burns up the forest in its entirety, leaving blackened remains? And the Holodeck characters don't seem entirely family friendly unless you consider Flotter's suggestion of drowning Neelix for interfering, or even more explicitly, Trevis' of hanging him from one of his branches, acceptable! Okay, so maybe Trevis didn't literally mean a hanging, maybe he just meant hanging him up out of harm's way so he couldn't interfere, but it did seem excessive in an amusing way (makes me think of the awful Holodeck character 'Badgey' in 'Lower Decks,' which I most certainly did not like!), and it was certainly a new dimension for scary bedtimes stories!
What I did love, however unlikely, was the legacy of this Flotter program - apparently most people in Starfleet have enjoyed it in their childhood (although, not sure that fits in for some since the Holodeck was new when it was on the Enterprise-D, everyone was impressed then, like it was brand new, and yet Janeway played it as a child...). You wouldn't think one specific holoprogram would be around so long for multiple generations to enjoy, and maybe they should have played with that as an internal joke about Trek being a long-running franchise (but this isn't 'Lower Decks,' they tended not to break the fourth wall like that). It must have been Samantha's own program since Flotter remembers her as a child, which made a nice sense of continuity that you could revisit childhood programs and they'd still know you. Although that means Samantha hasn't played the program with her own daughter, which you'd think she would have done... I'm just surprised they never sold Flotter dolls as part of the Trek merchandising empire! Or those Phaser drills. Have we ever seen that before? You'd think they'd simply use hand Phasers, but perhaps the nature of the rock meant it would require a long exposure to the beam and these were designed for a longer, slower release of energy, specifically targeted that a human arm wouldn't be able to keep up as precisely or for as long.
Not every single character is used excellently, Chakotay doesn't get much, Torres barely appears, despite being the usual go-to in an emergency, nor do we see her worry over Tom, but then it wasn't their episode and that side of the story could have been a whole episode in itself. The series has more variety when it focuses on certain characters in different episodes, one reason this era of Trek works so incredibly well. They keep saying how in modern Trek each series has its own tone and style, but in this era they were able to play with whatever style they wanted from week to week because they weren't forced down a specific route by complete serialisation. It's not that I really want to bash modern Trek, it's largely an uninteresting thing to me now, but I do like to call attention to what made Trek great, and this episode has those qualities in abundance: a personal story, emotional storytelling without the characters becoming overly emotional - other than Neelix' outburst at the Captain it all plays out on his face, all that he's going through internally, and you can read it there, you don't need to see him blubbering on someone's shoulder. Likewise, the trapped shuttle crew are stoic and ready to accept death if that's what they must do. It helped they had a Vulcan with them, and if Neelix had been the one there his feelings might have got the better of him, but he's taken a lot of example from his Starfleet brethren over the years and they remain professional and able to deal with whatever happens, and that's what makes it inspiring: seeing Neelix go through these difficult times and come out the other side.
It helped that it was a happy ending, perhaps for more 'drama' they could have killed off Samantha (she'd only appear in one more episode anyway, sadly, and in fact her daughter would go on to appear more than she did in total!), and that would have been a very modern way to handle it, but instead we have both the anguish and the joy, wrapped up in one big present of an episode. I could add to my list of minor complaints that it was a shame they just reused the set of the forest in the Holodeck as Neelix's nightmare when he's trying to escape the Metreon Cascade, but it can be justified by the fact he'd recently been in the Holodeck so it was highly plausible that it would be incorporated into the dream. There aren't really any serious complaints, this definitely stands as a high point in the series, one of the great Neelix episodes which would tend to be thin on the ground in the latter half of the series. It's not merely the character stuff that works, it's everything: the design of Flotter, Trevis, and their idyllic fairytale Forest of Forever land full of bright colours (even when the Ogre's destroyed the place the sky is this beautiful sunset awash with colour), is simply beautiful and provides the necessary contrast with so much of the episode taking place in the dark, whether it be the Bridge shrouded in darkness or the night time views of Naomi's Quarters. A real pleasure, and an episode I'd recommend even to those that have no interest in Trek, as it's a great family story that has resonance outside of whatever other interests the series brings.
****
A Challenge For Neelix. That's what it's all about and that's what it could have been called, but it's also about the thorny issue of what to tell children, and whether they're ready for the truth, as well as being a very personal reminder for Neelix about his tragic past. I sometimes come to episodes I've rated highly in the past with some trepidation, worried they won't hold up, whether modern Trek has so lessened my sense of wonder and attachment to that universe that I won't be as susceptible to its charms, especially when they're episodes I haven't watched in years. I'm glad to say this was every bit as strong a story as I'd previously thought, though I had very little specific memory, other than knowing it was about Naomi Wildman in the Holodeck, and it stands as the best episode of the season so far, what a relief! In an age when Trek references are thrown around with gay abandon, having all the emotional resonance of a damp log (in keeping with the Flotter theme), this shows how to really use backstory and characters' pasts in a way that pulls you in and invests the experience with great feelings of sympathy and care. That's down to the episode's choice to tell some of it from a child's point of view, something Naomi brought uniquely to this particular series. I could quibble over things like it not going far enough, and maybe they should have been really experimental and had the story completely from her perspective, but then we wouldn't have been able to explore the feelings of loss and grief that Neelix is forced to confront in this situation.
It is very much a Neelix story - the purpose of guest or recurring characters should be to bring something new out of our main cast, and as much fun as it is playing with new people, that is the reason for having main characters, we're seeing the series through their eyes and the more we learn about them, their inner, as well as outer selves, the more we are drawn in. It shows powerfully how accomplished Neelix was in dealing with children, that he is such a sweet-natured man, a quality that would endear him to little ones. Some people will snidely bring up how he was romantically entangled with what was essentially a very young child in the days when Kes was aboard, but in her lifespan, being two was basically in her twenties, so though in terms of time she was a baby to us, in her short span of expected life, plus physically and emotionally, in every way she was an adult. Still, among the best qualities of Neelix' attraction to her was also a deep-seated need to help the vulnerable, and looking back we can see that comes from the loss of his own family in the war between the Talaxians and the Haakonians, resulting in the terrible genocidal attack with the Metreon Cascade, something explored so effectively in Season 1's 'Jetrel.' The series largely ignored Neelix' tragic past ever since, other than confronting his loss again in the previous season's 'Mortal Coil' (where the image of Alixia originates), and in a series where he was one of the characters to become a little lost in the shuffle later on, it's a real joy to have him and his past so central to the story here.
Children had been part of the Trek universe, or I should say the Starfleet day-to-day, ever since the beginning of 'TNG,' though of course as early as 'Charlie X' on 'TOS' they'd dealt with young people, and continued that theme in the films with the cadets. But specifically children had been an incorporation of 'TNG' in the logic that families assigned to voyages of multiple years and little expectation of returning to Earth (or Ktaria VII, or wherever the crew called home), wouldn't want to be parted and were required for good mental wellbeing and morale. There are all kinds of arguments both ways whether it was too dangerous or foolhardy to take your whole family with you, kiddies and all, but the fact is that's what Roddenberry added to this era of his Trek saga. That continued with 'DS9,' though Jake and Nog were older children, and when Voyager was assigned to track down the Maquis ship containing Tuvok, they were only a small science vessel on a short mission, so there was no question of families there. In the event only one crew-member had such a strong wrench from their family, and that was Ensign Samantha Wildman, a recurring character mostly appearing in Season 2, separated from her husband on DS9 (a real shame they never introduced his character as a link for 'DS9' with its sister series, but they didn't seem to like much overlap between each other, sadly), and most importantly of all, pregnant with what would become Naomi.
In those early episodes the pregnancy and the baby became an important symbol of life carrying on regardless of circumstances. There was no talk of abortions or of making it easier on the Mother, or the fact it was so dangerous to introduce such a small life form onto a ship travelling into the unknown, and wouldn't it be better to end such a life before it could suffer. That's the attitude that might have been a part of the story now, as life has become so devalued and dehumanised. Quite the opposite, as Wildman's baby represented all their futures and in fact it was only strange that there weren't more born (with, as far as I can recall, only B'Elanna's last-minute birth of Miral in the closing moments of the series), especially when it was recognised they could potentially require replacements if this was indeed to be a generational ship that would take decades to return to Federation space. Once the baby had served its dramatic function, however, not to mention Samantha, there wasn't much call to bring them into the story again, and sadly they didn't return until 'Mortal Coil' when we see Neelix in his Godfather role for the first time. In real terms Naomi should only be about three or four by now, but in 'Once Upon A Time' she's more like an eight year old, for obvious reasons of practicality in a TV series: a three year old wouldn't have been able to act in the way Scarlett Pomers did, and the little mite they used before (Brooke Stephens), didn't have the same focus in the story, so to achieve what they wanted, they needed to recast.
Pomers was delightful - not precocious or annoying. Yes, she does come across a little like she's doing what she's told, but for a child actor she did very well and had the charm and grace required to pull it off. It wasn't the first time Trek had done such a thing, either, as young Alexander Rozhenko, aka Worf's son, had also had a sudden growth spurt from birth to appearances in the series. Fortunately in both cases alien DNA came to the rescue as they could easily say that Klingon or Ktarian children grow far quicker than human examples, and that was good enough! What makes this episode special is that 'Voyager' hadn't been shown from such a different perspective before, it had always been much more adult due to the position the crew were in of being completely alone, and a desire by the makers that this crew weren't going to be sitting around morosely feeling sorry about missing their families and instead embracing their circumstances and the joy of exploring strange new worlds that had never been seen by humans before, something Harry Kim reminds Neelix when he wishes Naomi hadn't had to be born on Voyager. And coming from Harry, who was so close to his parents and so young when he started, it's like a confirmation of those Starfleet values, and there is something of the self-sacrifice idea that comfort and security may need to be given up if Starfleet's knowledge is to be expanded, so it's all very true to the Trek ethos.
I felt there might be somewhat of a parallel with the contemporary times the series was made in when Neelix tells Naomi he had a real forest behind where he lived and he and his sisters used to go off and explore every day as opposed to her Holodeck one - this could have been meant as a comment on the rise of computer games back then and children beginning to spend so much time in fantasy worlds (or even watching Trek!), rather than playing out in the physical one, as the only forest Naomi has is the artificial one. But that isn't what the story is about, even if we see that that's exactly where Naomi runs in a crisis to escape her real world problems. But she's a lot more grown-up than most children her age, and like Neelix, she has a sweet nature, quick to respond in sympathy when he tells her about losing his own family instead of holding a grudge for the fact he lied to her. Children do tend to be more resilient, probably because they simply don't know any better, and Naomi above all has been through a lot in her short life when you think of the number of attacks and takeovers that have occurred. Actually, it does make you wonder how the Wildmans coped with things like the Borg or when the Hirogen took over the ship... That's the main reason we haven't heard much about them since the early seasons because it is difficult to work the plight of a child in every time, and how she might be traumatised by events that are daily life for a Starfleet officer, so it's probably best not to think about that too much!
One episode that sprang to mind was 'Cost of Living,' the one with Lwaxana Troi and Alexander playing in the Holodeck, but only really for the superficial connections of an adult and a child in a wacky holoprogram world with quirky characters. I quite liked that one (Lwaxana's always good for a laugh), but this episode is far superior. One thing I appreciated was the early setting up of Naomi's career path and social standing in the Voyager community. If she wasn't careful she could easily have been a spoilt brat with all these adults around to make a fuss of the only child aboard (though that would change eventually). The special friendship she would have with Seven of Nine in particular (unsurprisingly when you consider they have more in common than first impressions since Seven is practically a child herself being assimilated for much of her life), but also the Doctor and Janeway, and becoming the 'Captain's Assistant' were set up nicely here - as you'd expect from a child she's afraid of 'the Borg lady' and believes she could be assimilated into her collective. Of course she's a young child so she doesn't mean everything she says, and Neelix is quick to smooth over any silliness or concerns, but it was a terrific scene where Seven approaches and they have a little interaction, one moment where Pomers excels as you completely accept that Naomi would be frightened of someone so different - there were probably plenty of adults on the crew who were initially concerned about her, too, it's only natural! Terribly ironic that eventually Naomi would indeed become part of Seven's 'collective' as both pupil and friend, which adds even more joy to going back to this scene.
Naomi must have a privileged position on the ship as I'm sure if it had been the Enterprise or other Starfleet locations with children as standard, they wouldn't have access to either the Bridge or Holodeck, but because she's a special case, uniquely the only child aboard, she can (just about), reach the controls for the Holodeck (and is apparently intelligent enough to encode them so Neelix couldn't change the program to take out her friends Flotter and Trevis, and presumably to prevent him shutting the program down - another real world parallel to today when young children can be more technologically savvy than adults!), and there's no block from the computer when she heads to the Bridge. Either she's never attempted it before and they didn't see any reason to make sure the computer would refuse access to her, or they didn't even think of it. Either way, the important thing is she stumbles onto the news that the shuttle her Mother was on has crashed, the worst possible way to learn such crushing tidings. It reminded me of a story told by one Trek character about how they stumbled into an operating theatre and witnessed things a child shouldn't have - was it Bashir, I can't remember? No, it was Harry as he's reminded of it in 'The Thaw,' but it's a real shock, and the worst is that Neelix hadn't told her the truth. That was a truly fascinating part of the story, an inexperienced adult (in that he's never had children himself), has to make the decision about how much or what, to tell of a child in his care's parent.
It was a tough call and I think he was right to protect her, but it's also an organic process that is changing all the time: how much they know, how much might be speculated on. It came to the point where Neelix should have broken it gently that her Mother had crashed and they knew no more than that, and Janeway was insistent that he tell her. That was also a fascinating consideration: how much is Janeway responsible, and therefore has the decision, over this child's position. Because in a sense it isn't for authority to decide how children should be raised, other than basic standards of care and health, but it should have been up to Neelix to decide what was right in the absence of Samantha. And yet at the same time Janeway is the ultimate authority of this ecosystem and so she is responsible in that respect. What I loved is that she didn't do what I was, for some reason, expecting, and bark at Neelix (her bark's worse than her bite - actually it's probably the other way around for her!), ordering him to tell the child. Instead she pulls him into her Ready Room for a personal chat. And it's not the kind of personal chat her crew must sometimes dread where she talks very quietly, but with steel in her voice. It was a different kind of chat where she genuinely tries to help with empathy and care, sitting Neelix down and having the discernment to realise what's going on with him, especially after he's blown up in her face, she doesn't respond with equal ire, but listens and pays attention, reacting in the right way. It was beautiful to see, and when you think last season it was mostly confrontations with Seven in there, maybe that's the experience I was expecting!
The success of the episode is in it's skipping between the adult and child's worlds, seen most deftly in the screen conversation with Samantha - at first she's very reassuring and comforting to her daughter, then when she's talking to Neelix she switches to a more realistic attitude. Even the few scenes based on the Flyer were well done, whether it be Paris recording a goodbye to B'Elanna, or Tuvok reassuring the Ensign that no matter what happens to them Naomi will be in good hands on Voyager. It's so touching when we're recalled to the fact that he's been away from his children for four years and yet still has faith that they are 'prospering,' talking about his daughter: "I conveyed my values to her before leaving and I have confidence in the integrity of those around her." His Vulcanness is very reassuring (something so lacking in modern Trek), and so true to the race, as is his equable acceptance of their situation, the writers cleverly turning it around when Paris says he prefers 'live long and prosper' out of those Vulcan sayings! It's a comfortable knowledge and understanding of the Trek world and its races, as well as the specifics of each character's position at this point in their lives and history - Tuvok prefers to write his farewells rather than put himself through the emotional and public display of recording a personal message onscreen. I'm not sure they should have moved Samantha, though, if she has internal bleeding couldn't they have got the computer to record from a different camera?
If I'm nitpicking I'd also point to the idea of triangulating the distress call - to do that they'd surely need more than one point of connection, and I don't think they had shuttles out looking then, did they? Maybe they had multiple probes in different locations? Leaving aside the evolutionary propaganda the Doctor teaches poor Naomi, since that's just the usual Trek worldview unfortunately, there's really very little to find fault with - perhaps certain parts of 'The Adventures of Flotter' holoprogram were a little too extreme for young children: the Ogre of Fire burns up the forest in its entirety, leaving blackened remains? And the Holodeck characters don't seem entirely family friendly unless you consider Flotter's suggestion of drowning Neelix for interfering, or even more explicitly, Trevis' of hanging him from one of his branches, acceptable! Okay, so maybe Trevis didn't literally mean a hanging, maybe he just meant hanging him up out of harm's way so he couldn't interfere, but it did seem excessive in an amusing way (makes me think of the awful Holodeck character 'Badgey' in 'Lower Decks,' which I most certainly did not like!), and it was certainly a new dimension for scary bedtimes stories!
What I did love, however unlikely, was the legacy of this Flotter program - apparently most people in Starfleet have enjoyed it in their childhood (although, not sure that fits in for some since the Holodeck was new when it was on the Enterprise-D, everyone was impressed then, like it was brand new, and yet Janeway played it as a child...). You wouldn't think one specific holoprogram would be around so long for multiple generations to enjoy, and maybe they should have played with that as an internal joke about Trek being a long-running franchise (but this isn't 'Lower Decks,' they tended not to break the fourth wall like that). It must have been Samantha's own program since Flotter remembers her as a child, which made a nice sense of continuity that you could revisit childhood programs and they'd still know you. Although that means Samantha hasn't played the program with her own daughter, which you'd think she would have done... I'm just surprised they never sold Flotter dolls as part of the Trek merchandising empire! Or those Phaser drills. Have we ever seen that before? You'd think they'd simply use hand Phasers, but perhaps the nature of the rock meant it would require a long exposure to the beam and these were designed for a longer, slower release of energy, specifically targeted that a human arm wouldn't be able to keep up as precisely or for as long.
Not every single character is used excellently, Chakotay doesn't get much, Torres barely appears, despite being the usual go-to in an emergency, nor do we see her worry over Tom, but then it wasn't their episode and that side of the story could have been a whole episode in itself. The series has more variety when it focuses on certain characters in different episodes, one reason this era of Trek works so incredibly well. They keep saying how in modern Trek each series has its own tone and style, but in this era they were able to play with whatever style they wanted from week to week because they weren't forced down a specific route by complete serialisation. It's not that I really want to bash modern Trek, it's largely an uninteresting thing to me now, but I do like to call attention to what made Trek great, and this episode has those qualities in abundance: a personal story, emotional storytelling without the characters becoming overly emotional - other than Neelix' outburst at the Captain it all plays out on his face, all that he's going through internally, and you can read it there, you don't need to see him blubbering on someone's shoulder. Likewise, the trapped shuttle crew are stoic and ready to accept death if that's what they must do. It helped they had a Vulcan with them, and if Neelix had been the one there his feelings might have got the better of him, but he's taken a lot of example from his Starfleet brethren over the years and they remain professional and able to deal with whatever happens, and that's what makes it inspiring: seeing Neelix go through these difficult times and come out the other side.
It helped that it was a happy ending, perhaps for more 'drama' they could have killed off Samantha (she'd only appear in one more episode anyway, sadly, and in fact her daughter would go on to appear more than she did in total!), and that would have been a very modern way to handle it, but instead we have both the anguish and the joy, wrapped up in one big present of an episode. I could add to my list of minor complaints that it was a shame they just reused the set of the forest in the Holodeck as Neelix's nightmare when he's trying to escape the Metreon Cascade, but it can be justified by the fact he'd recently been in the Holodeck so it was highly plausible that it would be incorporated into the dream. There aren't really any serious complaints, this definitely stands as a high point in the series, one of the great Neelix episodes which would tend to be thin on the ground in the latter half of the series. It's not merely the character stuff that works, it's everything: the design of Flotter, Trevis, and their idyllic fairytale Forest of Forever land full of bright colours (even when the Ogre's destroyed the place the sky is this beautiful sunset awash with colour), is simply beautiful and provides the necessary contrast with so much of the episode taking place in the dark, whether it be the Bridge shrouded in darkness or the night time views of Naomi's Quarters. A real pleasure, and an episode I'd recommend even to those that have no interest in Trek, as it's a great family story that has resonance outside of whatever other interests the series brings.
****
Stargate: Continuum
DVD, Stargate: Continuum (2008) film
This is it, folks. The final mission of SG-1, all back together, plus others, versus the might of the old System Lords. Sort of. Critiquing this second and final film in the 'SG-1' straight-to-DVD spinoff series feels almost impolite since it is the cap on ten years and one other film (not including the original theatrical release that started it all), and is the true successor to the 'Stargate' lore - while 'Ark of Truth' was more of a feature-length conclusion to Season 10, this definitely succeeded in tying all of the series together, going back into its past to provide something of what was missing in the previous film. At the same time I can understand why it wasn't successful enough to warrant further DVD releases. I have no idea what the plan was, whether they only ever expected to make two films or whether they were hoping it would be popular with the mainstream, but judging from the fact there were no more (despite the fact another spinoff series would be shortly forthcoming at that time, while the first spinoff was drawing to a close), suggests it wasn't viable as a business model to continue 'SG-1' adventures. What I would say is that it was an improvement over 'Truth': it's one more mission, there aren't any plots that need tying up, other than the fact Baal is still at large, and they could really go to town. In consequence it does come across as having those missing elements I noticed from 'Truth,' namely less focus on action and more on character and ideas.
Time travel and alternate dimensions - that's classic sci-fi. Bringing everyone back (well, almost - Bra'tac was still an absence felt), that's what you should spend your budget on. But, and I admit I'm being pedantic here, or greedy, or contrary, I found myself wishing we could have one more mission that was more conventional in the sense that we got all four of the team, plus O'Neill, working together, being together, perhaps even reminiscing, reminding us why we love them. In the same way people complained about the multiple endings in 'The Lord of The Rings' and I loved it, I wanted that. I wanted to see them all sat round at the end, maybe hanging out at Jack's fishing pond as we've seen before. Even the sight of the lockers' names lined up together would have been a more appropriate last shot than the photo of Mitchell with his Grandfather (?), which made the final impression more about the latecomer of the last two seasons than the original team. But it is being churlish and nit-picky, I did like seeing these characters again. And yet... I wasn't entirely sure what the timeline was - I think it's supposed to be in parallel with 'Atlantis' Season 5 and yet no mention of Carter having recently returned from being boss there or indication of what their lives are now. Maybe I wasn't listening carefully enough, but I didn't catch what they're all doing at the beginning, though it does make sense they'd be rounded up to see Baal's extraction/execution.
Did Mitchell hang around in the past for ten years since I thought Carter said they could only get as close as 1929, and the Achilles, the ship carrying the Stargate from Africa to America was boarded and sunk by Baal in 1939? If so, then he'd have something in common with Teal'c, who also spent many years waiting for time to catch up in the final episode of the series. But there's only so much time, even in a feature-length production. My big nitpick was how the 'gate could have been activated in the first place when it's in a crate in the hull of a ship with no means of power? I understood Baal, and later the alternate Teal'c, were able to power up a 'gate with that handy portable DHD (smacked a bit of magic tech, though...), but that wasn't there when Baal first used it to get through! And I felt Christopher Judge should really have gone back to his bald look since he was effectively playing the bad guy again as First Prime. He didn't strictly need to for the story to work because it is an alternate timeline, but at the same time it would have placed the character more squarely in that mould. I hope it wasn't simply a vanity issue, like Judge didn't want to have the shaved head look because he'd moved on from it? These are minor things indeed in the face of having Daniel, Sam, Teal'c, Jack, Cam, Vala, Landry, Hammond, all those baddies (hey, Yu! and Camulus, Nirrti, Cronus, Apophis), to compliment Baal, not to mention President Hayes, and even minor roles like Major Davis, Siler, Walter...
It really delved into the series' history when a lot of that (other than Baal as the last surviving System Lord), had been left behind in the final few seasons as it tried to reinvent itself to some degree. That's what made it a more enjoyable film, but also that they did something interesting. But I wanted Jack along for the ride when we mostly get alternate Jack, and then he's gone. I was starting to feel the real horror and isolation and sadness of Carter, Jackson and Mitchell being held prisoner in their own country, yet in another timeline. Forbidden from contacting each other they're given new lives that they live for a year. You really start to feel for their existence, as lonely and separate as could be in this completely other world that is yet still torturously close to what they left behind, and they can't even talk to each other, just try to live a new life. For me, that was the most fascinating part of the film and one I wished had been explored more. I so wanted Daniel to meet this world's version of himself, the only one of the three to be alive, but when he does call him, he's rejected as a crank or a mocker, this Daniel has been so long on the fringe of society he doesn't even believe anyone would sympathise with his ideas. We don't even hear the conversation and yet you can tell from our Jackson's side how it's playing out. Mitchell is still feeling the tug of a past that no longer exists and Carter is trying to keep on going, but there wasn't enough of that for my liking.
Sure, we've seen similar tales where they've been in other realities, or had to persuade other versions of themselves to help them escape or reset the timeline or whatever, but with an episode being half the length of the time you have in one of these they could have spent more on that. But the needs of a production that has to hit certain points means even with more space there's still too little time to fully explore ideas. While I'm stating dissatisfaction I can also point out the lower standards from the series in terms of more gore and swearing, as if that brings more to the table. It doesn't. There's also another big gaffe I should point out regarding alternate Teal'c: he comes to trust the trio far too easily. Daniel 'gives him their word' that the Jaffa will be free again if Teal'c helps them. Why would he trust them? He's been working for Apophis and now Baal, there was no good reason for him to believe what they said and to come around to their point of view so easily. But it uses the series' lore very well, not just in bringing back so many faces, but also in remembering where and how many Stargates are on Earth, the Ancients' chair that fended off the weapon on our Earth, even little details like transporting the 'gate to America, which fills in a little more history, or Daniel mentioning Jack's son's death (not the best idea in this case, especially when they knew this was an alternate timeline so things weren't necessarily going to be as they knew them to be), prompting his anger when they needed an ally.
I think more than anything that's what I was missing in this particular adventure: more of the camaraderie. I wanted to see alternate Jack, Landry and Hammond trust these people that know a version of them so well, and come to support them. I know that may sound a little hypocritical when I've just been complaining about how Teal'c was too quick to assist them, but he was on the baddies' side and these were fellow humans so it would have made more sense. I would have loved it to be some kind of crossover with the Atlantis team, too, if that were possible, because obviously the humans at least would still be on Earth, so Sheppard and McKay could have joined in. But again, it's pure greed just wanting more of the things you like, and to be fair we'd get cameos from a few characters from both 'SG-1' and 'Atlantis' in 'Universe,' but perhaps a third film, if it'd happened might have been a massive crossover. And you have to be true to your story - it doesn't make something better just to chuck people in for the sake of it, and that's why I was quite impressed with how many people they did get back in their roles, long gone from the series itself (like the System Lords all lined up like that, or Apophis, back from the 'dead' yet again).
I must admit, I did wonder if both Teal'c and Jackson would make it out alive, despite the fact that there was time travel involved, mainly because Teal'c wouldn't show up again (unless he comes back one last time in 'Atlantis' which I don't know for sure yet, but seems unlikely since they gave him a good, round sendoff there), and I have the impression Daniel's only in some training videos on 'Universe.' But once Carter got killed on Baal's time travel platform I realised things were safe and of course there was no need for any of them to die since they were repairing the timeline! Which does have the advantage of making the story 'all a dream,' when perhaps more grounding would have been preferred as the final ever story proper. When viewed on its own I can't imagine it would make a great deal of sense for someone who'd never seen any 'Stargate' before, but if you know the characters it was good enough to stand as a reasonable adventure. It didn't have enough inherent qualities that I'd be quick to fling it on again, unlike some episodes, but I would easily concede it has the superiority over its immediate predecessor. So there was progress made, and perhaps if it had gone to more films they might have kept improving, but as it is it remains a nice ending to the series, without being an ending, and more like another episode, though one that didn't have as much power as 'Unending,' the series finale, which, while not being a masterpiece, was a fine, fine story and use of the characters. I miss there being a title sequence, but you can't do the one from the series without it seeming a bit cheap, but something more than the names coming up would have been preferable. If this is the last of 'SG-1' (and you never know in today's nostalgia-obsessed world), it could have been a lot worse, and I'm glad I had this little extra time with those people I'd spent so much time with over the last twenty years.
**
This is it, folks. The final mission of SG-1, all back together, plus others, versus the might of the old System Lords. Sort of. Critiquing this second and final film in the 'SG-1' straight-to-DVD spinoff series feels almost impolite since it is the cap on ten years and one other film (not including the original theatrical release that started it all), and is the true successor to the 'Stargate' lore - while 'Ark of Truth' was more of a feature-length conclusion to Season 10, this definitely succeeded in tying all of the series together, going back into its past to provide something of what was missing in the previous film. At the same time I can understand why it wasn't successful enough to warrant further DVD releases. I have no idea what the plan was, whether they only ever expected to make two films or whether they were hoping it would be popular with the mainstream, but judging from the fact there were no more (despite the fact another spinoff series would be shortly forthcoming at that time, while the first spinoff was drawing to a close), suggests it wasn't viable as a business model to continue 'SG-1' adventures. What I would say is that it was an improvement over 'Truth': it's one more mission, there aren't any plots that need tying up, other than the fact Baal is still at large, and they could really go to town. In consequence it does come across as having those missing elements I noticed from 'Truth,' namely less focus on action and more on character and ideas.
Time travel and alternate dimensions - that's classic sci-fi. Bringing everyone back (well, almost - Bra'tac was still an absence felt), that's what you should spend your budget on. But, and I admit I'm being pedantic here, or greedy, or contrary, I found myself wishing we could have one more mission that was more conventional in the sense that we got all four of the team, plus O'Neill, working together, being together, perhaps even reminiscing, reminding us why we love them. In the same way people complained about the multiple endings in 'The Lord of The Rings' and I loved it, I wanted that. I wanted to see them all sat round at the end, maybe hanging out at Jack's fishing pond as we've seen before. Even the sight of the lockers' names lined up together would have been a more appropriate last shot than the photo of Mitchell with his Grandfather (?), which made the final impression more about the latecomer of the last two seasons than the original team. But it is being churlish and nit-picky, I did like seeing these characters again. And yet... I wasn't entirely sure what the timeline was - I think it's supposed to be in parallel with 'Atlantis' Season 5 and yet no mention of Carter having recently returned from being boss there or indication of what their lives are now. Maybe I wasn't listening carefully enough, but I didn't catch what they're all doing at the beginning, though it does make sense they'd be rounded up to see Baal's extraction/execution.
Did Mitchell hang around in the past for ten years since I thought Carter said they could only get as close as 1929, and the Achilles, the ship carrying the Stargate from Africa to America was boarded and sunk by Baal in 1939? If so, then he'd have something in common with Teal'c, who also spent many years waiting for time to catch up in the final episode of the series. But there's only so much time, even in a feature-length production. My big nitpick was how the 'gate could have been activated in the first place when it's in a crate in the hull of a ship with no means of power? I understood Baal, and later the alternate Teal'c, were able to power up a 'gate with that handy portable DHD (smacked a bit of magic tech, though...), but that wasn't there when Baal first used it to get through! And I felt Christopher Judge should really have gone back to his bald look since he was effectively playing the bad guy again as First Prime. He didn't strictly need to for the story to work because it is an alternate timeline, but at the same time it would have placed the character more squarely in that mould. I hope it wasn't simply a vanity issue, like Judge didn't want to have the shaved head look because he'd moved on from it? These are minor things indeed in the face of having Daniel, Sam, Teal'c, Jack, Cam, Vala, Landry, Hammond, all those baddies (hey, Yu! and Camulus, Nirrti, Cronus, Apophis), to compliment Baal, not to mention President Hayes, and even minor roles like Major Davis, Siler, Walter...
It really delved into the series' history when a lot of that (other than Baal as the last surviving System Lord), had been left behind in the final few seasons as it tried to reinvent itself to some degree. That's what made it a more enjoyable film, but also that they did something interesting. But I wanted Jack along for the ride when we mostly get alternate Jack, and then he's gone. I was starting to feel the real horror and isolation and sadness of Carter, Jackson and Mitchell being held prisoner in their own country, yet in another timeline. Forbidden from contacting each other they're given new lives that they live for a year. You really start to feel for their existence, as lonely and separate as could be in this completely other world that is yet still torturously close to what they left behind, and they can't even talk to each other, just try to live a new life. For me, that was the most fascinating part of the film and one I wished had been explored more. I so wanted Daniel to meet this world's version of himself, the only one of the three to be alive, but when he does call him, he's rejected as a crank or a mocker, this Daniel has been so long on the fringe of society he doesn't even believe anyone would sympathise with his ideas. We don't even hear the conversation and yet you can tell from our Jackson's side how it's playing out. Mitchell is still feeling the tug of a past that no longer exists and Carter is trying to keep on going, but there wasn't enough of that for my liking.
Sure, we've seen similar tales where they've been in other realities, or had to persuade other versions of themselves to help them escape or reset the timeline or whatever, but with an episode being half the length of the time you have in one of these they could have spent more on that. But the needs of a production that has to hit certain points means even with more space there's still too little time to fully explore ideas. While I'm stating dissatisfaction I can also point out the lower standards from the series in terms of more gore and swearing, as if that brings more to the table. It doesn't. There's also another big gaffe I should point out regarding alternate Teal'c: he comes to trust the trio far too easily. Daniel 'gives him their word' that the Jaffa will be free again if Teal'c helps them. Why would he trust them? He's been working for Apophis and now Baal, there was no good reason for him to believe what they said and to come around to their point of view so easily. But it uses the series' lore very well, not just in bringing back so many faces, but also in remembering where and how many Stargates are on Earth, the Ancients' chair that fended off the weapon on our Earth, even little details like transporting the 'gate to America, which fills in a little more history, or Daniel mentioning Jack's son's death (not the best idea in this case, especially when they knew this was an alternate timeline so things weren't necessarily going to be as they knew them to be), prompting his anger when they needed an ally.
I think more than anything that's what I was missing in this particular adventure: more of the camaraderie. I wanted to see alternate Jack, Landry and Hammond trust these people that know a version of them so well, and come to support them. I know that may sound a little hypocritical when I've just been complaining about how Teal'c was too quick to assist them, but he was on the baddies' side and these were fellow humans so it would have made more sense. I would have loved it to be some kind of crossover with the Atlantis team, too, if that were possible, because obviously the humans at least would still be on Earth, so Sheppard and McKay could have joined in. But again, it's pure greed just wanting more of the things you like, and to be fair we'd get cameos from a few characters from both 'SG-1' and 'Atlantis' in 'Universe,' but perhaps a third film, if it'd happened might have been a massive crossover. And you have to be true to your story - it doesn't make something better just to chuck people in for the sake of it, and that's why I was quite impressed with how many people they did get back in their roles, long gone from the series itself (like the System Lords all lined up like that, or Apophis, back from the 'dead' yet again).
I must admit, I did wonder if both Teal'c and Jackson would make it out alive, despite the fact that there was time travel involved, mainly because Teal'c wouldn't show up again (unless he comes back one last time in 'Atlantis' which I don't know for sure yet, but seems unlikely since they gave him a good, round sendoff there), and I have the impression Daniel's only in some training videos on 'Universe.' But once Carter got killed on Baal's time travel platform I realised things were safe and of course there was no need for any of them to die since they were repairing the timeline! Which does have the advantage of making the story 'all a dream,' when perhaps more grounding would have been preferred as the final ever story proper. When viewed on its own I can't imagine it would make a great deal of sense for someone who'd never seen any 'Stargate' before, but if you know the characters it was good enough to stand as a reasonable adventure. It didn't have enough inherent qualities that I'd be quick to fling it on again, unlike some episodes, but I would easily concede it has the superiority over its immediate predecessor. So there was progress made, and perhaps if it had gone to more films they might have kept improving, but as it is it remains a nice ending to the series, without being an ending, and more like another episode, though one that didn't have as much power as 'Unending,' the series finale, which, while not being a masterpiece, was a fine, fine story and use of the characters. I miss there being a title sequence, but you can't do the one from the series without it seeming a bit cheap, but something more than the names coming up would have been preferable. If this is the last of 'SG-1' (and you never know in today's nostalgia-obsessed world), it could have been a lot worse, and I'm glad I had this little extra time with those people I'd spent so much time with over the last twenty years.
**
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