The Fight

 DVD, Voyager S5 (The Fight)

In the bllllluuuuuuue corner we have the scourge of the Alpha Quadrant, the Maquis Mauler, Commander Chakoooooo-tay. And in the red corner we have the damage-dealer of the Delta Quadrant, Kiiiiiiiiiiid Chaos! Get ready for the fight of your lives as these two battle for the ult-iiiii-mate priiiiiiiize! Finally Chakotay gets an episode worthy of him - not since Season 4's 'Unforgettable' had he starred in a vehicle for himself, and that was, as has been said before, quite forgettable! At last he stars and gets something juicy. Somehow boxing fits his personality like hand in boxing glove (I assume Robert Beltran liked the sport since he's supposed to be the origin of the idea for his character's hobby). It's strange, because obviously he often seems like a pacifist, someone who would prefer to fight and run away, to live to fight another day, discretion the better part of valour, but that's not to say he wasn't valorous or willing to go into combat if there was no other option (the mark of a good Starfleet officer), and yet I don't believe we'd ever heard about his interest in boxing before. Indeed, he even tells the Captain at the end that he likes to box to unwind, implying his pastime wasn't well known to his crew-mates. I'm sure he wasn't hiding it, but he's quite a restrained, private man who doesn't need to put himself in the spotlight with others. And though on the face of it, it might seem strange someone of his gentle demeanour would enjoy a violent bloodsport known for how much damage you must do to bring your opponent down, it's also about discipline, and as Boothby says, defeating yourself, and Chakotay's always been a big chunky lad so you can imagine he didn't get like that through being inactive or sitting around on vision quests all day!

Ah, Boothby. And ah, Ray Walston. Leaving aside the boxing angle, which this episode really isn't about, but I'll get to that, the thing that always intrigued me about this episode was how they managed to bring back an existing character out of the blue: and what a choice! 'Voyager' had difficulty in crossing over guest stars from other Treks, much in the same way as 'Enterprise' - the latter's problem was being set at least a hundred years before most of the characters we knew, the former's that they were very far away. Not that it had entirely stopped them, Riker being a big name guest back in Season 2 (not forgetting Quark and Morn in the pilot), ironically one of the few who also appeared on 'Enterprise' since you can't keep William T. down. There was Captain Sulu, Rand and the Klingon, Kang in Season 3, and recently the Borg Queen (though not the original), and who else this very season? Why, only Groundskeeper Boothby himself! Okay, so it wasn't actually him, but a Species 8472 recreation within a facsimile of Starfleet Academy in 'In The Flesh,' oddly another episode Chakotay had more exposure in, though it couldn't be called his episode like this one. Walston must have got on so well with everyone, probably charmed them all, that they wanted to bring him back soon, and since we learn Chakotay has a boxing simulation why not have it be headed by Boothby? It was a fine way to bring back a character you'd never have thought would return after 'TNG' ended, but it shows the respect and love for Walston that they made the effort twice this year. I'd love to know how it all came about and if this was his final acting role, I know he died in 2001, during the series' seventh season, so he might well have reappeared if he'd been able.

The episode isn't about Boothby, in the same way it isn't about boxing, and while both of those things are fascinating to see in Trek, the heart of the matter is the mind over matter, or the matter over mind: specifically the fear of losing it, something that haunts us to this day and has only become a larger spectre for many. It's really Chakotay's personal fear that he'll end up like his Grandfather, since he has the 'crazy gene.' In many ways for him it was an irrational fear since he had the gene suppressed before birth (interesting that this was allowed since we know Trek's views on genetic alteration have always been strictly anti, as reiterated in 'DS9' with the reaction to Bashir's genetic modification, but perhaps they allowed the suppression of dangerous genes as a matter of course, and only 'enhancement' was banned?), and it was only because his Grandfather refused his medication (a rare example of superstitious belief affecting someone in the Trek world negatively as usually they don't like to show any belief system to be against a person's wellbeing, though it's countered by the fact this genetic defect becomes useful in the situation Chakotay faces), which he clearly didn't need, and even if he did, he wouldn't have refused. I don't think it's that he believes he'll end up confused like his Grandfather naturally, rather that this experience with the aliens puts him through the wringer and opens up the possibility of the cognitive disorder he so fears, and the episode becomes about that taste of hallucination and bewilderment, and confronting that which you fear head-on.

In that respect it gets back to the Trek tradition of being inspirational in the way we see someone overcome an issue for their own sake, but also to save their ship. We'd just had an episode in 'Course: Oblivion' where the ship had gone all shimmery and was in grave danger of coming apart, and here we are with a similar thing happening (though of course last time it wasn't the real Voyager). I'm not quite sure on the timeline of this episode because I've always watched it after that previous episode, but the production number is 108, putting it directly after 'Bride of Chaotica!' and before 'Bliss,' as listed in 'The Star Trek Encyclopedia,' so I assume production order was different than aired, perhaps to accommodate Walston? At least they were stuck in Chaotic Space and not Chaotica Space as that would have made it a very different episode... As it is, it's a semi-Holodeck story as part of it does take place there, and that becomes the backdrop. One thing I noted was the quality and inventiveness of the directing: you have little shots like a corridor scene beginning with a reflection of Janeway and Chakotay in a wall panel, or the introduction of the Holodeck program panning from the lockers round to view the ring. The scenes I loved most, however, were both the aliens' recreation of the ring with its moody lighting, a single ceiling lamp swinging above and creating great shadows everywhere, with the misshapen ring, and the soft focus 'dream' sequences where Chakotay uses a punchbag on the Bridge and we glance across through the open door of first the Briefing Room for a character to speak up while the others ignore it, then the Ready Room, and another corner of the Bridge.

It emphasised the otherworldliness of Chakotay's experiences because you never see shots like that normally, looking through open doors into other rooms from a distance, making it a unique vision of familiar surroundings. Much of those sequences reminded me of the creepiness whenever the Prophets would be in contact with someone in 'DS9,' specifically you get that same effect of multiple cuts of characters in situations we'd already seen, like the aliens were using very recent memories of Chakotay in order to form coherent communication, and I've always loved that strangeness, though in this case it was much quicker and snappier. Like 'Course: Oblivion' this was another example of the nature of reality, one man going through the uncertainty this time, reaching out with his mind to try and grasp what's going on. I thought it was a bit naive of the Doctor to be so positive towards the aliens, telling Chakotay to trust them at first, when there was no real evidence to suggest they should. He later changes his tune and shares the opposite view when Janeway is saying the same thing, since they don't know what the aliens' intentions are, so he's not very consistent, but she uses logic to show that their best option is to trust since they're already in grave danger so what would the aliens have to gain (of course there's always the possibility they might be leading Voyager to its doom to feast upon them, as happened to the Captain herself in 'Coda,' and especially more recently in 'Bliss,' so perhaps they should have been a bit more reticent!), and her encouragement for Chakotay to go through with it is also sound logic: keeping his sanity will do him no good if they're all marooned in Chaotic Space! It's not the first time in Trek aliens have made oblique contact (I think of Deanna in 'Night Terrors'), or would be the last time aliens had dealings with the Holodeck (next season's 'Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,' though those aliens were belligerent rather than benevolent).

Talking of logic, I did enjoy the little aside when Paris is able to persuade Tuvok to change his mind: they're already in danger so speeding up a bit makes logical sense. Tuvok isn't in the episode a lot, but he has that great moment when Chakotay, seeing boxing gloves in a hallucination on the Bridge shakes off the Security Officer's hand and then takes a swing at him, boxing him, only for the Vulcan to easily dodge and nerve pinch his Commander! It's one of those effortless little scenes which show how cool Vulcans are, despite their reserved demeanour and generally contained physicality. The boxing gloves threw up an interesting question for me when we first see them in Chakotay's Quarters, but not for long because when he looks back they're not there so we realise they're a hallucination. Until then my brain was ticking over on whether he'd be able to spare Replicator rations for something like that, especially when you consider Harry Kim back in the day had to save up quite a lot before he was able to replicate his clarinet. I justified it by assuming they were well stocked with food and had oodles of energy at this specific juncture, but as I said, it proved not to be real anyway. The same thing happened when Chakotay related the story of his Grandfather's condition and I wondered why he wouldn't have had the gene suppressed, since you'd think such advances would have happened long before then, but we quickly discover he had his problems because of refusing medication, so even though he hadn't suppressed the gene he could have been treated.

Another similarity with 'Course: Oblivion' is that we see an alien ship, even hear the voice of one of its crew, but don't see them. This time they're all dead, not having the gene which the aliens who live in that region of space were able to use to contact Chakotay - their ship reminded me of the Romulan Drone Ship in 'Enterprise,' though obviously this predated that design by years. I assume this was also a CGI creation since it's seen only briefly and not focused on, and by this time CGI had become common in Trek as the capability for greater complexity and detail had increased. A good point about the alien ship was that it is said to have superior sensors to Voyager's own, and yet they weren't able to escape the ravages of Chaotic Space, which shows that simply having the best tools doesn't prove an advantage unless you have other qualities to go with it, in the Voyager crew's case, their curiosity and deliberate and methodical exploration of a problem. Add Seven's report about only one Borg Cube ever escaping from such phenomena, and the odds don't look good for our intrepid crew, which of course only makes Chakotay's sacrifice to put himself on the line, risking his deepest fear, that much more heroic. The Doctor has a rousing semi-speech as he grapples with Chakotay losing his nerve in the face of what he risks, talking about the fear of the unknown, and that's the key theme of the episode: dealing with yourself and your own natural impulse not to get hurt, conquering fear, not the external forces you may be dealing with, but the internal ones, and that makes for a powerful message.

This was a story ripe for one of those 'One Day Earlier' captions so beloved by far too many TV dramas, and which I've come to find a lazy tool applied in an attempt to pique casual viewer interest. Here, we do go back to before Chakotay was afflicted, but the amount of time that's passed is of no real consequence. I suppose it wouldn't be Trek without some kind of moral viewpoint on something as divisive as the sport of boxing, and the Doctor does get off his message from a medical point of view, saying it shouldn't even be in the Holodeck database, which is a bit extreme (he also gets to play a version similar to his creator, Dr. Zimmerman, when he wears a white medical coat and is quite obnoxious in Chakotay's dream). Surely with the safeties on, the boxing wouldn't do any actual harm, you wouldn't feel the effect of a punch, though that does bring up the question of incremental degrees of violence or feedback: in this case you'd think some push back would be required, otherwise you wouldn't be experiencing the force of actual boxing, but then if you did it could be potentially detrimental to the body, so it can't always be as simple as safeties on or off, you'd need varying degrees of contact for something like this. Either that or Chakotay just turns off the safeties every time. His opponent, Kid Chaos, the one he was fighting on the Holodeck, as opposed to the Ghost of Christmas Future whom he takes on under the same guise in the vision, was apparently a Terellian. But was he a Terellian or was he a Terrellian, or even a Tarellian, that is the question? (According to Memory Alpha he's 'Terrellian'). And on the subject of spelling, did Boothby deliberately say 'Maquis of Queensbury' rules rather than 'Marquis' or do Americans pronounce it the same way? If not, I liked the Maquis reference.

I do like a good Chakotay episode, he was an underrated character who deserved a lot better than he was given, but at least in this season he still had worthwhile stories centred around his character. I like the spare, empty design of the places in which many of the scenes occur, whether that be the bare, rocky area Chakotay meets his Grandfather in a vision, or the boxing scenes, they force the focus upon the drama and what it's all about rather than concentrating on extraneous prettying up and overly detailed sets. Almost makes me think of the surreal, abstract setting of 'Spectre of The Gun,' though not as extreme. It reminds you that Trek is about content: story and character, not ephemeral effects, though of course the imagery of Voyager as it travels through this rippling region was excellent. It was wonderful to give Ray Walston one last appearance in Trek, a fitting tribute to his long career and the important place his character had in the lore, dating from 'TNG,' but it was almost as good to meet Chakotay's Grandfather, albeit a vision of him, just as we met a vision of his Father back in 'Basics.' Even better, he was played by Ned Romero who not only played a similar Indian character in 'TNG' ('Journey's End'), looking much the same, but dates all the way back to 'TOS' when he played Krell the Klingon in 'A Private Little War,' one of very few actors to have been in both original and 90s Trek, my favourite trivia for the episode! I always love seeing a family member of the characters we know, it fills out their backstory a little more and gives us another way to relate to them. I never liked the vision quest stuff, but I have the feeling this may have been the last time Chakotay performed one on the series. He'd be shortchanged in the last couple of seasons, as I remember them, but this episode is one that has grown on me to the point I number it among the classics, yet one more reason Season 5 stands tall, like the champion Chakotay after a hard-fought round, his opponent down for the count.

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