Counterpoint

DVD, Voyager S5 (Counterpoint)

Brilliant manoeuvring from Captain Janeway, able to outfox a fox. I knew the story well enough to recall the broad strokes, but I couldn't work out how Voyager was going to get away with harbouring the dreaded telepaths, and I also noticed a rather glaring mistake: yes, the Brenari get away by using two Shuttlecraft, and they aren't kept in transporter suspension, but what about the Starfleet crew? Tuvok is even seen at his station on the Bridge when the Devore make final contact. I suppose he may not be seen from the angle of the Viewscreen, but it seemed as if he shouldn't even have been there. But that's only a minor issue compared with: what happened to him? He wasn't off with the Brenari as they headed through the Wormhole and were away, they weren't coming back. So where was Tuvok hiding? And Vorik of course, who sadly gets not a single line of dialogue, his role limited to a very Vulcan nod when the Transporter brings him out of stasis. A shame to have him in the episode and not use him at all. There could have been a subplot around the telepaths, sharing experiences, going into more Devore encounters they'd had, that sort of thing, which could have given them a bigger role - Randy Oglesby, whom I'd forgotten appeared in 'Voyager,' better known for 'Enterprise' and the recurring Xindi character of Degra, but whom also had been in both 'TNG' and 'DS9,' does a fine job of appearing sympathetic with the little he's given, and of course Neelix' time with the Brenari children fitted his character and also added sympathy, but I did feel the race wasn't fleshed out.

It's much more about the masterful, though dangerous, game Janeway plays with Kashyk (possibly a 'Star Wars' reference, as Kashyykk was Chewbacca's homeworld, give or take a 'k' or 'y'). My main memory of this episode is that it was Kate Mulgrew's favourite, for obvious reasons since she gets to be the hero and use all her feminine wiles to trick the enemy. I don't know if it's always remained her top-rated episode since it was revealed on Star Trek Night, a BBC event in 2001 to mark the 35th Anniversary in which each of the then four main Captains chose their favourite episode of their respective series' which were then broadcast and could be voted for by viewers as the best. Or was it that one of the four would be broadcast by viewer selection? Either way, I think this was the one that won, probably because it was the most recent. It is a strong performance from Janeway, though I do wonder who was involved in the plot and how much was true or not. Initially I thought it was entirely fabrication on Janeway's part, expecting Kashyk to be a mole from the start - as he said himself, trust has to be earned and though he gave them the valuable data on the refractive shielding which meant they could detect Devore ships, it was all a little too good to be true compared to the little she knew of him in his Inspector guise. She's not the sort to give trust too easily, and it all makes sense, the only thing is we're denied the 'behind the scenes' story for the episode, we only get what passes between the Captain and her guest. Otherwise we'd be seeing scenes of Chakotay or Tuvok advising her or discussing how much to trust the defector and then we couldn't have had the triumphant twist at the end where Kashyk reveals his true face and smugly believes he's won only to find he underestimated her.

At least he was a good sport enough to know he'd been beaten at his own game, fair and square, and though he was a judgemental man, part of a strict and discriminatory system, he wasn't going to react in bitterness and rage at being bested - I think he quite enjoyed the contest and it made complete sense that the justification for letting Voyager go was so that knowledge of his failure, of all his crew's failures to capture these refugees, could remain hushed up, as none of them would want it known and so affect their own careers. Perhaps there was even the slight crack of regret that he couldn't go with Janeway though it could never be more than wishful thinking and would never have worked out for either of them. That's the sign of a good villain when you can see a streak of sympathy within all the lies, threat and bluster. Much like Gul Dukat he enjoyed the finer pleasures of life, hence his insistence of piping classical music through the ship on each inspection. He appreciated beauty, he was a cultured man, even if he could come across as a bit of a Nazi Kapitan - I could easily imagine J. Paul Boehmer in the role as this suave, sophisticated faux defector who does all in his power to win Janeway's trust and believes he's succeeded, though the actor they cast was certainly good. He seems more gentlemanly next to what I assume is his First Officer, Prax, much more brutish, uncaring about pleasure, only in doing his job as a soldier, there for maximum contrast with his boss.

One thing Kashyk said early on stood out to me: when he's describing the Federation or Janeway's people, he describes violence and beauty, side by side, but also science and faith, all intermingled. That's an interesting take since usually Trek was keen to distance itself from faith and belief and be fully science-based in the usual mistaken attitude the two are contradictory opposites. You do notice in what was then 'modern' Trek a gradual moving away from the Roddenberry insistence that faiths had been done away with, even on 'TNG' which he began, but ever more so as we got to 'DS9' with its central focus on the theme, but also 'Voyager' when it came to including characters such as Tuvok, whose Vulcan heritage was well explored, and Chakotay, similarly. Of course Kashyk may well have been talking generally of human history since that was part of the conversation, so perhaps in this instance it's not much to add to that evidence of a direction away from 'science only,' but it did stand out to me. Another line that stood out was Janeway's description of her position when it comes to the Prime Directive: she says she goes with her instincts when it comes to that, which does say a lot about her, and her style of captaincy, especially in these years she's been out of contact with Starfleet. At the same time it does mean she comes across as unstable in her actions because you can point to major moments in the series, such as 'Prime Factors' where she refused to trade for a technology that would have got them home, but that's what makes things interesting when you never know quite what she'll do on each occasion!

The Devore (perhaps meant to sound close to 'devour'), and Brenari were fine in terms of their look and depiction, but it was Torat, this eccentric scientist they track down who was the best design with his full prosthetic head and the addition of an expanding nose that puffs out when he's annoyed. Perhaps he is a bit of a stereotype, being a man whose pompous view of himself and his work can easily be manipulated, but it served to show Janeway and Kashyk working together, and it was fun, as well as looking good. The way he looks round as his Viewscreen is hacked by Harry reminded me of when they first met Neelix - very different reactions, clearly, but just this idea of a roaming camera that finds the occupant of a ship in the middle of something, in this case piloting, was different. Torat's point about wondering why people feel the need to align themselves with monolithic organisations like an Imperium or a Federation was also unique as we don't often have the basic situation of Trek questioned, it's usually just accepted or well known, so it was interesting to hear a different point of view even though it wasn't expanded upon. The other issue that isn't expanded upon is the idea of the intrusive possibility of telepathy. We've had many episodes of Trek that explore this ability so it's not like they really needed to go deeper on that, it was enough to reference Vulcans and Betazoids (especially for a sad reminder of Suder's fate against the Kazon), and it's one of those things that reminds you of the overarching world that Trek is taking place in, that it has its established rules and races, which is always pleasing to feel connected to. Chakotay does call out the ability when he says maybe they should just read Kashyk's thoughts, an easy way out, but it's covered by the fact Devore have tough mental training.

Saying that, they throw out the fact that Suder was only one of two Betazoids on the crew, as there's a 'Jarot' which we hadn't heard of before. Now that I think of it, I'm sure we saw a female Vulcan later in the series, inconsistencies brought about by the extreme inability for things to change, or for that change not to be noticeable. Other Treks could easily justify why a character from a known race was here in one episode and not in another, or not here at first, but there later, but the USS Voyager had no opportunity for picking up Starfleet crew or Alpha Quadrant races so they really needed to be tight on who was aboard and who wasn't, but it was that style they had of keeping as many potential story options open that could occasionally get them in trouble with their own continuity. The slackness of the series in that regard could be seen on a number of occasions unfortunately, and here again we see another example when two Shuttlecraft are given up just like that! At least we were privileged to see the ship's aft Shuttlebay which I don't think had ever been seen before judging by the fact it was created in CGI: Kashyk's one-man craft leaves, flying through the forcefield after his parting with Janeway. It doesn't look quite real, partly from the limitations of CGI at the time, but also the fact that the picture is locked off so the camera only shows one view of the exit, but it was a fun spot anyway. There's also 'Grey Mode' introduced to describe Voyager's operations on low power to avoid detection, much like in submarine films - that, coupled with mention of a Mutara-class nebula suggested 'Star Trek II' submarine warfare, or at the very least a reuse of the familiar purple-pink hues of the effects from that film which had already been used (such as in 'Flashback'), so it was slightly disappointing there was none of that and we don't even see the beautiful old effects.

It's not the episode to provoke a lot of discussion and speculation because, while it is a great twist, Janeway getting one over on an enemy who thought he had her measure, we are quite restricted in plot terms. We don't know how much the crew or senior staff knew of Janeway's plans, and in fact she even says her offer to Kashyk for him to come with them was genuine, so even she may not have known how much she trusted him - all that stuff when they're working on extrapolating the Wormhole (which, though it was lovely to see another example of that phenomenon, was nowhere near the beauty of the Bajoran example seen in 'DS9'), could have been a blind and the real work was being done by her crew. But was it? Or was it that they changed the records afterwards to fool him? I could have done with a reference to Scotty who was responsible for making suspension in a Transporter buffer possible, and how he ended up in the 24th Century, though it wasn't necessarily needed to divert attention from this story, and then again if they'd reminded us that he'd done it successfully for almost a century it makes our crew look less accomplished that they couldn't do it for even a few days or hours before cell degradation started to set in. Of course the circumstances could have been different in that situation and I like the fact that despite Voyager being the cutting edge vessel of that time there are still limits to its technology or expertise, something modern Trek doesn't seem to care about, not realising that limitations create drama (and so we have to have magical ships that spin around and can leap anywhere in the Galaxy!).

I'm surprised to learn that 'Counterpoint' was actually Alexander Enberg's penultimate appearance as Vorik, only the second time he'd appeared this season, and he wouldn't be back until right near the end of Season 7! I imagine this was something to do with the fact Jeri Taylor's influence on the series had ended and he was mainly cast in the role for being her son, I think, but he was a likeable character and a great example of a Vulcan so I'm disappointed he was one of the many recurring characters to be pretty much shot down, one of those elements of the series that was in deep shade when compared with the superior 'DS9,' when 'Voyager' could have done with (and did in the early seasons!), a community of the crew more than any other series. J. Patrick McCormack, who played Prax, was a face I recognised from 'DS9' as he played Rear Admiral Bennett in a great episode a couple of years before this ('Doctor Bashir, I Presume'), which also featured this series' Robert Picardo in dual roles! He was also a Commander in 'Star Trek Nemesis,' apparently, but I don't remember that. And this marked the aforementioned Randy Oglesby's only appearance on 'Voyager.'

I realised I didn't like this episode as much as I once did, part of that must be because I don't find as much to analyse and examine, but also we don't get much of the other main characters, it's very much Janeway's story and must be so in order to set up the twist. But I suppose twist-based storytelling has become such a problem in Trek (and other things, too), that it leaves a bad taste when the style of the story has to wrap itself around the need to preserve surprises from the viewers. Not to say I didn't like the twist, because it's the best part of the episode, and as a one-off trick I like it a lot. But I could have done with more characters, like Neelix - it's nice to see him with a group of children as he's very good with them and it suited his style very much. It's also a foreshadowing of when he'd take the Borg children under his wing in the following season and the only missing element in the scene was a role for Naomi Wildman as I imagine she's be there to help the children. And obviously I'm going to miss those scenes with Tuvok and Chakotay where they discuss the situation with their Captain - it just seemed like the crew were almost background characters, there to perform technical tasks like Torres in Engineering, and as much as I enjoyed the sense of high-class opponents sparring, and a higher class of style with the classical music, I wasn't as drawn to it, though my impression has always fluctuated with this one. If I'd starred in it, it'd probably be my favourite, too!

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