The Disease

 DVD, Voyager S5 (The Disease)

Harry Kim breaks the rules. Harry's misadventures with the opposite sex had become something of a running joke, much like Chief O'Brien being tortured in some way every season on 'DS9,' to the extent that Paris usually gives us a rundown of previous escapades: a hologram (not actually accurate, she was a lonely alien who broke into the Holodeck remotely), an ex-Borg (Seven herself), the wrong twin (recently, with the famed Delaney sisters). That's not even a comprehensive list as he's got into trouble in this area before, most notably 'Favourite Son' in which he was chosen by life-sapping vampire alien women and only just escaped. In comparison Derran Tal is actually quite ordinary, perhaps that's why, like a teenager, Harry is so convinced he's 'in love' to the extent that he disobeys protocol, that's one level, then disobeys the Captain's direct orders to end it (that's two levels), and finally gets to level three of hot water when he storms out of the Briefing Room onto the Bridge chasing the Captain so she has to order him into her Ready Room. Harry has certainly changed, he's lost his inhibitions and is reacting quite childishly, even more because he thinks he's being all grown up and mature because he hotheadedly has to defend himself instead of accepting his Captain's judgement, realising he's in the wrong and taking his medicine.

In a way it's quite a shock to see someone of Harry's straight arrow reputation and spotless record, go so far off the rails. He claims he hasn't been affected by the alien transfer or whatever it was that made him 'luminesce,' perhaps an indirect reference to 'Fortunate Son' when he was under some alien effect, but I'd like to think that it did play a part, despite his protestations to the contrary, because the alternative is that he simply chose to be a bad boy. I blame Tom, myself. If he hadn't been so disobedient in 'Thirty Days' perhaps it wouldn't have got into Harry's mind to do the same thing: no doubt in his mind it's the same situation, a valid reason for going against authority because it feels right. You could say this episode is an example of the template for modern Trek, which is all about feelings, often overriding reason or rules, and young Harry is the poster boy for such indulgences. While I can cite Tom's influence, in general he's settled down in the last season or two, especially regarding his romantic side, so perhaps Kim's just a slow learner, or maybe he has to make mistakes for himself before he can see things aren't going to end well. On the one hand he blabbers about 'true feelings,' while on the other he admits to Tal that he knew it couldn't last since they'd only have a couple of weeks. Of course Trek is operating in a much looser moral ground, reflecting society in that it's 'okay' to be promiscuous, as long as it 'feels right,' so I was never going to agree with the central premise - not unless Harry was dedicated enough to commit for life to this woman, but that, unfortunately doesn't even ever come into the conversation.

Clearly the episode isn't exactly presenting a very positive moral message, but while it inadvertently does portray some moral effects of such behaviour in that Harry has to suffer the physical and career ramifications, the message-sending only seems to get worse - basically, Janeway goes easy on him and says it might have made him a man, but I don't think it's anything to do with him realising his mistakes, owning up to them, or anything along those lines, it's all about him standing up for what he believes in. I will say I did warm to how Janeway deals with him in some ways, because while she's evidently furious at his second indiscretion, she doesn't have a shouting match on the Bridge in front of everyone, and when he's had his say in the Ready Room and she's called out to the Bridge again, she could have reinforced her private orders to send him to Sickbay, but instead she allows him the dignity of returning to his station in the crisis, showing she still has trust in him, and while this is a very serious matter, it's separate from his personal expertise and he can still contribute in a crunch. Still, it's a shame she can bring up how she treated him differently as a newly fledged Ensign on his first ship, and yet goes along with his view of things in the end, or at least there's room for manoeuvre. There's a general air of people not thinking Harry's actions are so terrible, from Chakotay espousing a generous, indulgent response to his infraction, Tom actively covering for him when Tuvok's tracking the illicit communication between Harry and Tal, and even Seven coming to the Mess Hall at the end to provide her equivalent of a blessing or an acceptance.

So it's a confused episode all told, coming from a confused worldview, so it shouldn't be that surprising. We've seen plenty of examples of main characters in Trek behaving in this way before, and would do again, but Harry was almost the epitome of the squeaky clean Ensign who follows protocol at all times and is all about Doing The Right Thing. Indeed, I could imagine he and Boimler of 'Lower Decks' getting along like a house on fire (they need to bring Kim onto that series, even though he'd be a fair bit older than Brad by that time). People often point out that Harry ended his seven year stint on Voyager at the same rank as he began it, but perhaps it was because of this incident that showed he hadn't really matured enough to take on greater responsibility because he could still act the goat on occasion. I'm sure they didn't set out to keep him an Ensign for moral reasons or anything like that, but perhaps it worked out for the best even though in reality it was probably an oversight on the part of the writers. He gets a formal reprimand on his record, which is a big thing to him, much like myself in my school days: I did everything I could not to get an after-school detention because it was just a symbol of badness, and while in later years I've come to see that it wouldn't have made any real difference if I had had that, I'm also somewhat pleased with my record of not getting one, though that's straying into pride territory so I'm not saying it was really a great achievement. Discipline needs to be maintained and punishment is one of the key methods to achieve that.

I'm not sure Harry could have received anything more than a reprimand, after all no one got killed, and while it was a personal matter that escalated into a situation with community-wide ramifications, it wasn't at the level of Paris' actions in 'Thirty Days' or Suder's murder in 'Meld.' The former got thirty days in the Brig, the latter was set to be locked in his Quarters for the rest of the journey. A reprimand was probably adequate, a black mark on a spotless record, a permanent reminder of Harry's actions, but I'm not convinced he really learned anything from the experience or wouldn't have done the same thing again if he encountered the situation later. Hopefully he'd think more carefully, but I'm not convinced, especially as it became more about a political issue, a section of the population of this Varro generation ship wishing to leave, tired of tradition and their place in that society. That was actually the more interesting angle of the episode, although it was problematic that Harry's actions became less of a focus. It could easily have turned into Tal actually using Harry to get her, basically terrorist, actions to succeed, though that was never part of the story, she just happened to be the one responsible, or one of them that had created these silicon-based lifeforms that were attacking the mothership. It was an extreme reaction and I do see the general flow of the episode is towards young people wanting to go their own way rather than follow the staid, 'boring old traditions' of their elders, which isn't exactly a very reassuring message (again), but at least it's more subtle and less overtly siding with a view, which was something Trek used to be much better at, while in today's polarised world there's often no nuance, it's One View and that's the only right one.

The leader, or whom I assume was the leader of the Varro, certainly didn't come across well, a suspicious, almost xenophobic man - I don't recall his name which suggests it wasn't mentioned much, if at all, and I didn't catch what his position was, whether he was overall leader or merely the leader of their science division or engineering, or whatever. Either way he's not a very balanced character, entirely unsympathetic to the extent he's shown to be far worse than the dissidents in his society, since they 'only' wanted to perform acts which would get them their freedom, while this guy almost chose to destroy Voyager as part of a quick way to clear away the attack of the silicon creatures (I immediately thought of tiny Horta!), and though it would have been a side effect that he'd allow the explosion to take out Voyager, even after they helped the generation ship to get back on its feet, he didn't seem to care, and it was only because Tal was there to urge him not to do it that he relented, thus putting her in a more noble, heroic light than she deserved in the story. Voyager had stumbled upon a divided society and usually they aren't allowed to interfere with such things, even though the Varro apparently had somewhat superior technology. I think more should have been made of their similarities, but in reality it only comes across in Janeway's opening dialogue with the leader, talking about how her ship could end up like them in its long journey home.

There was a subplot about the dissidents that began quite interestingly with Neelix acting as an investigator as he was way back when in his arc about uncovering the Maquis spy, and then again when he's part of Security in the alternate future of 'Year of Hell,' so I enjoyed them picking up those threads again and only wish that had been a more integral part of the story instead of him so quickly handing off the investigation to Tuvok, as natural and realistic as that was - my mind was actually running on the stowaway stealing rations and hiding in the Jefferies Tubes being Naomi Wildman, maybe as some kind of fun little lair, even though her name didn't come up in the guest credits at the start. That could have been fun, but it turned out to be one of the dissidents (played by Christopher Liam Moore who'd already portrayed Veer, the main Voth scientist's assistant in 'Distant Origin'), a very untrusting person who is so desperate to escape the ordered society that has kept that community together for four hundred years, he hides on Voyager. There were a few things in the episode that made me wonder how security conscious the ship is: how did he get aboard? They may have mentioned it and it passed me by, but that was a big question. Then there were the secret communications between Kim and Tal which you'd think would be picked up instantly as usually comms are monitored, or you'd think they would be. Then there was Kim's deviation from his flight plan to fix something on the outside of the ship - somehow he can beam Tal out of her Quarters and travel off to see a nebula without attracting suspicion. Actually that last one wasn't true because Tuvok pursues on the Delta Flyer, so at last we see something that tells us Tuvok is active in his job as Security Officer!

Usually Tuvok is reliable, perhaps we can put it all down to some effect the larger Varro vessel had on Voyager's sensors, or we can fudge it and say so many systems were tied into assisting the larger ship there wasn't much computer power for keeping tabs on things as well as they normally would. Otherwise it would be quite lax of our crew! Another oddity was when Janeway discusses the handbook on personal relationships, stating it's three centimetres thick. That suggests Starfleet actually has a printed, bound copy on paper rather than the usual PADDs, unless she's talking about how many PADDs together store all the data, which wouldn't be out of character for Trek! You often see a character using multiple PADDs at the same time to the extent it can sometimes look quite strange to us who are used to maybe one screen at a time, although it does make a certain amount of sense when you think they are generally quite small screens and the ability to have various documents at the same time to refer to does sound like a good way to go if you can afford it, and of course they can replicate as many PADDs as they want! We also have a rare example of ships being in different orientation to each other as Voyager is latched onto the Varro ship at an angle, so we see a quite atypical view of it - it occurred so rarely only 'DSC' and its initial approach to ships meeting on different planes, is an example I can bring to mind, though fortunately they eventually went away from that, as realistic as it was, it didn't suit Trek aesthetics.

The story was a little too pat and easy to resolve, aside from Harry choosing to suffer through the pain of separation from this alien bonding which it's stated the Varro take very seriously, implying that our Starfleet heroes don't take such things very seriously, despite there being rules of protocol, moral rules and simply rules of good sense provided as guidance for such situations. It's another subtle suggestion that it's okay to be loose and marriage isn't really important unless you want it to be, though at the same time that's tempered by clear dissatisfaction on the part of Janeway for Harry's actions, though that could be just as much, if not more, about him not obeying orders as it was about what he actually did. I did like that she says that as an Ensign he hasn't earned the right to question his Captain's orders, this is exactly the kind of serious approach to the protocols and rules of Starfleet that have been on the slide ever since Trek came back with 'DSC.' It's a great reminder of the values of Trek, about not just doing whatever you feel at the time, but adhering to a governance of yourself based on general and specific rules that have been hammered out over the centuries. I was surprised Janeway didn't dish out a full dressing down, even on the second occasion when her authority has been thwarted. Maybe it's that thing of Harry being a special case to her so she isn't going to rip him a new one like she's done with Tuvok, Chakotay, Paris, B'Elanna, Seven... He's the young one so maybe she has a more nurturing approach, even when he is in the doghouse. It was still on the borders of those previous times she's blown her top or been icily severe, so it's not like he got off without any remonstrance at all.

Kim tries to make an impassioned speech, but unfortunately he just comes off as immature and in the end I had to take issue with the 'lesson learned and becoming a man' attitude that he and Janeway discussed. The story is better than its confused morals (or immorals!), because you do care how the crew reacts to Harry (and the visuals were especially accomplished), and while he does simply end up looking supremely foolish there should be a place for rehabilitation, it's just unfortunate that the only remorse he shows is towards the result of his actions, in other words that Voyager became embroiled in a big political issue and rather than making a new friend and learning from the Varro, they don't exactly part having dispelled any xenophobic impressions - rather, the leader is shown to be correct for having reservations about dealing with outsiders since it did lead to a portion of his society breaking off. If Voyager could have played mediator, as they have before, it might have been a better, more inspiring story. Swapping a 'perfect officer' for a better man may also be a good, positive result on the face of it, but it just muddies the issue, really. Even the leaving of these dissidents was too easy because the ship is made of modules, so although it's troubling that Voyager helped in splitting a society (or facilitating, or speeding it up), there isn't even a hard lesson. If it had been 'DS9' the people wouldn't have had it so easy, it wouldn't have ended so neatly (as in episodes like 'Sanctuary').

I would have to regard it as probably the weakest of the season, and it's interesting to note that Harry Kim starred in one of the highlights of the season with 'Timeless,' yet also one of the lowlights! It seems he can't be consistent... He drops in a mention of being Captain of the Academy's Velocity team and that rang a bell - it was the fast-paced game Janeway and Seven play on the Holodeck at the end of Season 4. Shame they didn't get Harry involved! Maybe he should challenge Seven to a match - she was quite nicely integrated into the episode in a small way. For one thing, I don't think we'd ever seen her completely blue outfit before, so that was new. She talks about the Borg finding love in over six thousand species, which is strange since we know they've discovered at least 8472 so far (and that was over a year ago), so understanding of love isn't a universal constant in alien races? I'm not sure Harry knows what love is, either, but that's not his fault, it's the faulty of the society that he was brought up in. Sadly, part of Trek's ideals are to believe this is fine, so of course there are going to be times when biology gets the upper hand, and that's even with a guy who was about as disciplined as it gets, so it is a bit of an indictment of this 'utopia,' not that the writers would have seen it that way, of course...

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