“Time and Again”
Written by David Kemper and Michael Piller
Directed by Les Landau
Season 1, Episode 3
Production episode 104
Original air date: January 30, 1995
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Paris goes off duty, turning things over to the second-shift conn officer, and then inveigles Kim to go on a date with the Delaney sisters down in Stellar Cartography. Kim has a girlfriend back home, and he wants to stay faithful. Paris tells him he’s being a moron. He also lied to the Delaney sisters about something he did at the Academy, to Kim’s horror. Paris asks how they’re going to check, and I dunno, maybe use the library computer on their super-spiffy-keen spaceship?
A planet suffers a massive calamity near where Voyager is located. Neelix is unfamiliar with the world, and they head there to find that there was a major catastrophe, a release of polaric ion energy that atomized all life on the planet, leaving only nonorganic items.
Janeway, Tuvok, Torres, and Paris beam down to check the place out. Paris finds a stopped timepiece that indicates when the disaster takes place, if they can figure out what the numbers mean, anyhow.
On the ship, Kes wakes up from a seeming nightmare—she felt the people on the planet die telepathically. Neelix is skeptical, but he takes her to sickbay. However, the EMH doesn’t know how to diagnose her, as there are no medical records on file for Ocampa.
Paris has a flash of the square they’re standing in, only it’s daylight and there are people around. After a minute, he’s back with everyone else, but then both Janeway and Paris wind up in the square, seemingly in the past.
Buy the Book
Network Effect
Torres determines that the polaric energy explosion sent out a subspace shockwave, some of which went back in time, opening subspace fissures into the past. Paris and Janeway fell through one such.
Paris finds the same timepiece he saw in the present, and bluffs his way into finding out how to read it. As best as he can determine, they’re a day in the past.
A little kid sees them appear out of nowhere and causes a fuss, but a local law-enforcement officer sends the kid on his way and apologizes to Janeway and Paris, who bluff their way through the conversation, later trading their uniforms for local clothes (which are apparently all yellows, reds, and oranges).
Paris wants to tell these people that they’re all going to die in a day, but Janeway refuses, because of the Prime Directive, thus showing that Voyager‘s writers have the same criminal misunderstanding of the PD that TNG’s writers did.
Janeway activates a subspace beacon, hoping that Torres and Kim will be able to trace it. Back in the present, Tuvok says that Janeway would probably activate a subspace beacon, and Kim and Torres try to find it.
The planet is powered by polaric energy, which is incredibly dangerous, and it turns out that there’s a very widespread movement to switch to a safer energy source, but the corporations that make a ton of money off polaric energy don’t want to change. (That doesn’t sound at all familiar……..)
Janeway and Paris get caught up in a demonstration against polaric energy that turns into a riot, and both of them are hurt. The protestors bring them back to their headquarters, where they’re interrogated by Makull, the leader of the protestors. Makull doesn’t trust them, concerned that they’re spies. The kid shows up, and winds up being taken prisoner, too. Paris apologizes for threatening to eat him.
Kes asks Chakotay to beam down for one of the attempts to locate Janeway and Paris, and at one point she hears Janeway telepathically across time through a fissure. They also locate two combadges, which are shattered—the evidence now suggests that the two of them were killed in the calamity.
At one point, they try to contact Janeway and Chakotay’s voice comes through on the combadges. Makull thinks they’re spy devices and removes them, leaving them behind.
Janeway and Paris are brought to a power plant, as Makull has moved up his planned sabotage a week. Janeway is convinced that whatever Makull is doing is going to result in the planet being destroyed, and she realizes that the toothpaste is out of the tube with regard to the Prime Directive, as their very presence changed things. So she tells the truth that they’re from a starship from the future, which is, unsurprisingly, not believed, as it’s ridiculous.
Kes is convinced that Janeway is at ground zero of the calamity, even though Tuvok is sure that she wouldn’t be. However, they’re running out of time, and Tuvok has nothing better to suggest, so they try to pierce the fissure at the power plant.
When they’re brought to the power plant, Janeway doesn’t go along with the plan, tells law-enforcement that they’re hostages, which gets two cops killed and Paris shot. Makull and his gang go in, Janeway following. She tries to stop their sabotage—but then a subspace field opens, and Janeway belatedly realizes that Voyager’s rescue attempt is what caused the catastrophe. She convinced Makull to let her have her phaser, and she uses it to collapse Torres’s subspace beam, which causes time to reset…
Paris is back at ops, trying to convince Kim to date the Delaney sisters. Kes comes to the bridge to ask about a nearby planet. Tuvok scans it and says that it’s a pre-warp society, full of sentient life. Kes is grateful; everyone else is confused.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Polaric energy is powerful, but unstable. It’s dangerous enough to engender protests and, oh yeah, destroy all life on a planet. This is also the only time it’s ever mentioned.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is a firm believer in the Prime Directive, having had lessons in it drilled into her by Paris’s father when she was under his command. (This is, sadly, the shitty version of the PD.)
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok uses his knowledge of Janeway to predict what she’ll do and winds up being hilariously wrong.
Half and half. Torres does all the technobabble, figuring out ways to retrieve Janeway and Paris.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH doesn’t find out until now that Neelix and Kes came on board after they went to the Delta Quadrant, which is why there are no medical records for either of them. He also isn’t informed when Janeway and Paris go missing. He is generally quite cranky about how he’s not being provided with information.
Forever an ensign. Kim has a girlfriend back in the Alpha Quadrant, and he hopes she’ll wait for him, an absurdly naïve attitude to have given how far from home they are. Paris sensibly tries to get him to go on a date. (We will meet Kim’s girlfriend in “Non-Sequitur.”)
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix is convinced that Kes is imagining her telepathy, which is a depressingly patriarchal and patronizing attitude toward her.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. We get the first mention of the Delaney sisters, who will be mentioned repeatedly on the show, finally seen in “Thirty Days” (played by twins Heidi and Alissa Krämer).
Do it.
“We’re from Kalto Province.”
“Yeah, well, I just talked to the transport attendant. He told me four people came today from Kalto. Two of them were a lot older than you, and they had a child with them.”
“Well, the attendant was wrong. That was us.”
“So where’s the child?”
“We ate him. Because we are demons and we eat children and I haven’t had my supper yet.”
–Janeway trying to convince a kid that they’re legit, and Paris taking the nuclear option.
Welcome aboard. The various natives of the Planet of Orange are played by Nicolas Surovy, Joel Polis, and Brady Bluhm.
Trivial matters: Many writers of Voyager fanfic who were shipping Paris and Kim decided that “the Delaney sisters” was just their code for going off and having wild sex together, and that the sisters didn’t actually exist.
David Kemper (who also wrote or cowrote the TNG episodes “Peak Performance” and “The Enemy“) would later go on to be an executive producer on Farscape, and that show had a third-season episode with a very similar structure, “…Different Destinations,” but that one had a much less happy ending. While the basic structure of our heroes being the ones responsible for screwing up time was intact, the Farscape episode has the protagonists making things worse and not fixing it, while the Voyager episode resets everything.
The outdoor scenes were shot at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which was also used for the Edo’s planet in TNG‘s “Justice,” and for both Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Headquarters in several episodes of TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Set a course for home. “You have a lovely brain.” I like the twist in this one that it turns out that the attempt to rescue Janeway and Paris is what caused the planet to be destroyed in the first place—but then they blow it by having it fixed with literally no consequences. This was a real opportunity to do some meaty, in-depth storytelling, and they utterly ruined it by hitting the resettiest of reset buttons. Only Kes has the faintest idea what happened, and what could’ve been a hard lesson for the crew about consequences—and perhaps an actual colloquy on the Prime Directive, since this world is a classic case of why the PD exists—is instead an utterly inconsequential episode because nobody remembers what happened.
Instead, we get the same appalling version of the PD that we got in “Who Watches the Watchers?” (though at least Janeway figures out what Picard didn’t figure out in that TNG episode, to wit, that the damage had already been done and his continuing to not interfere was only going to make things worse) and “Homeward” (in which our heroes became out-and-out murderers).
On its own, the episode is still good, mostly because the time travel is actually fun and head-twisty in a good way, with effect preceding cause. In the context of the early part of the show, it’s a bit more problematic, partly because we just did temporal mechanics last episode, and partly because it’s yet another focus on Paris.
One of the comments on “Caretaker” (by Eduardo Jencarelli) pointed out that Voyager is the only Star Trek pilot that doesn’t focus on the main character, and it’s a valid point. “The Cage” is about Pike, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” is about Kirk, both “Encounter at Farpoint” and especially “Remembrance” are about Picard, “Emissary” is very much about Sisko, “Broken Bow” is about Archer, “The Vulcan Hello”/”The Battle at the Binary Stars” is about Burnham.
But the first Trek show with a female lead has as its POV character in the pilot, not the captain, but the dudebro white guy with the franchise creator’s first name as his middle name whose redemption is apparently so important that two of the first three episodes have to be devoted to it.
Having said that, the line about eating the kid was hilarious…
Still, I would much rather have paired Janeway up with Tuvok (let him pull a Spock and have to wear a hat!) or Chakotay (so they can develop their captain/first officer rapport) or Torres (so they can keep being nerdy together, which is fabulous). The situation on the planet is a nice parallel to the “no nukes” movement of the 1970s, one of Trek‘s more subtle bits of social commentary.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written three works of Voyager fiction, most of which don’t actually take place in the Delta Quadrant: the Mirror Universe short novel The Mirror-Scaled Serpent (in Obsidian Alliances, in which Kes and Neelix go through the Caretaker’s array and wind up in the Alpha Quadrant), the novella “The Third Artifact” in The Brave and the Bold Book 2 (which tells the story of how and why Tuvok infiltrated the Maquis), and the short story “Letting Go” in the anthology Distant Shores (which focuses on the families of the crew left behind, primarily Janeway’s boyfriend Mark Johnson).
I vaguely remembered this episode and was enjoying it through recap until it turns out the reset button was pushed. The ending would have been better if they could have saved the day without making it so the episode never happened. Not that I have any idea what kind of temporal physics would have let that happen. Though there’s broken time travel happening anyway.
I’m going to have to remember about the “Delany sisters” excuse for non-Voyager related shipping.
I guess almost all high tech species realize that Polaric energy is too dangerous to use or blow themselves to snot before getting FTL tech.
That’s true about the annoying focus on Paris, but at least we see Janeway go after Makull on her own later, and the showdown is all about her. I quite enjoyed those scenes.
I liked the bright, colourful clothing on the planet, especially when contrasted with the dark and bluish scenes after the catastrophe.
The social commentary seems even more timely now than it did in 1995.
Having just watched episodes of TNG as background for Picard, I noticed a difference in the costumes that—at least for the purposes of this review series—has not received comment.
In Voyager, the female Starfleet costumes have shoulder pads, just like only the males ones did in TNG. I see this as a subtle “equalizer,” and it provides an impression of more weight of authority for the female characters. (Also, I’m so glad not to have to watch Riker pull at his top to straighten it every. single. time. he stood up.)
Meanwhile, I HATE the reset button idea. Always have, always will. It’s a trick played by an author on the readers or by a screenwriter on the viewers. And it’s especially egregious when only one person is left knowing what happened.
Running this right after the last episode might have been a mistake. At core, they’re both bootstrap paradoxes. The meat of the stories is different, but the bones are very similar.
I know the show gets better, but thus far I keep finding myself bored and more listening to the show while doing other things. Maybe it’s a product of knowing more or less what’s coming, maybe it’s just a lower tolerance for weak storytelling as I’ve grown older. Sure, none of the post-TOS shows got off to great starts and what we’ve had so far is better than TNG’s first few episodes, but I don’t know how long I would have stuck with this show in an environment where there is a lot more SFF storytelling in the visual media.
I recall finding this an okay episode, but it was kind of a rare instance in the TNG era of a planet whose humanoid aliens looked exactly human, with no extra latex bits on their noses or ears or foreheads — a necessary contrivance given that Janeway and Paris got there by accident and had to blend in. I think I wasn’t fond of that at the time, because I liked to think that maybe the humanlike aliens were localized to our part of the galaxy, which was why they were more common in TOS than TNG or DS9.
I may have had some issue with the temporal logic, but if so, I don’t remember what it was. I did have an issue with the timing of the Polaric Test Ban Treaty in the Alpha Quadrant. It was said to be a 2268 treaty prompted by the destruction of a Romulan colony — but 2268 was less than two years after the Federation and Romulans came back into contact in “Balance of Terror,” so that’s cutting it way close. But then, I figure that underlines just how dangerous the tech was, that two such intractable enemies would make a ban on it one of the first things they agreed to after renewed contact.
“Polaric energy is powerful, but unstable. It’s dangerous enough to engender protests and, oh yeah, destroy all life on a planet. This is also the only time it’s ever mentioned.”
I prefer to believe it’s the second time. It always seemed implausible that “Spock’s Brain” treated “ion power” as some incredibly advanced power source that the Federation hadn’t mastered, when ion rockets are used on space probes and satellites today and provide only very gentle acceleration. But if it was actually polaric ion power all along, that would explain why Scotty was so impressed that the Sigma Draconians had mastered such an unstable power source.
Is “Encounter at Farpoint” really “about Picard” more than the rest of the ensemble? Sure, he’s a central presence who makes a lot of speeches and decisions, but do we really explore him that much as a character in “Farpoint,” compared to the other leads? If anything, I’d say there’s at least as much development for Riker, who’s new to the crew and thus has to establish new relationships with Picard and Data and sort through his renewed relationship with Troi. Picard doesn’t really learn anything new or go through any sort of epiphany in the course of the story, so I wouldn’t say his character drives the story in the same way Pike or Sisko did in their pilots. It’s more of an ensemble piece.
I was heretofore unaware there was Paris/Kim fanfic, but I suppose no pairing should surprise me.
“Captain, we believe their society has divided into two tribes: those who prefer Lifesavers and those who prefer Starbursts.”
I confess I’m not up on the whole temporal logic thing here. I have the same problem with this as I do with the original Terminator movie. How can the disaster on the planet be Our Heroes fault for trying to open the rift if they were never sent there in the first place because the disaster never happened without them. My head hurts thinking about it and if the explanation is too involved, please no one should bother with trying to educate me. I am probably hopeless.
The clothing on the planet reminded me of the 1970s era Houston Astros uniforms. In the worst kind of way. Lol.
Overall, I think I like this more than most. One of my criteria for rating an episode is: did I want to see what happens next? In this case, yes. I thought the story flowed nicely, with the exception of Kes’s crying scene, which I found a bit cringey.
Good point about Tuvok. I think his entire purpose for the episode was to make wrong assumptions about what Janeway would do.
Just curious – does anyone remember any other time that family members were assigned to a starship together, or did the Delaney sisters get special treatment because they were identical twins?
Is this the beginning of poor Kim’s singularly fraught love life?
Is this the beginning of poor Kim’s singularly fraught love life?
@9: Crusher and Wes? There are children on Federation starships, so one would think this happens all the time. Perhaps you referring to siblings only? In that case I don’t know
@5/Christopher: I see Farpoint as being about both Picard and Riker. Riker being the focal point for the Farpoint plot itself, and also as the man who meets his new crew, while Picard stands as mankind’s lawyer in his dealings with Q, as well as the Crusher thread. It’s not as character centric as Emissary and Broken Bow would be for Sisko and Archer, but it’s still more about him than Caretaker is about Janeway.
Thus we get Time and Again. Three episodes in and we’re already getting planets in the Delta Quadrant with people who look exactly like humans. I know it’s a TV show, and that Voyager blew 20 million dollars on Caretaker’s budget, but it still feels like a lazy way to do a story. At least a paint job or some forehead ridges would remedy the situation.
It’s lazy, plot-driven time travel shenaningans story with a lot of forced artificial conflict thanks to a meddling kid (at least Scooby Doo made that gag funny). Thankfully, Paris can come up with some fun comebacks when put against the wall. Meanwhile, the technobabble keeps at a steady pace.
And I think it’s a little early to be doing prime directive tales. We barely know these characters as it is. At least TNG waited until Justice to do so. Which also begs the question of: Should those directives still apply 70.000 light-years away? The Delta Quadrant is a complete different animal from the Alpha Quadrant. Time and Again could have easily been made as a TNG episode, substituting characters for the most part. One would think Piller could come up with a more novel approach.
And thanks to the reset button ending, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is they got an episode out of the season order. Already, it feels like Voyager is going through the motions without any desire to bring anything new to the table.
@krad: Thanks for the mention. I didn’t bring up Discovery in my previous comment because I haven’t actually seen it. Still focused on Enterprise and the Xindi arc.
Just one thing that caught my attention:
thus showing that Voyager‘s writers have the same criminal misunderstanding of the PD that TNG’s writers did.
Oher than Kenneth Biller, at this point Voyager had pretty much the same writers as TNG. It’s actually surprising they didn’t try to bring extra new creative blood at this point.
@9/andreatheartisan: Well, there were plenty of family members on the Enterprise in TNG, e.g. spouses and children. Beverly and Wesley Crusher were both officers on the Enterprise at the same time, and Worf and Dax served together on DS9 after their marriage. (I don’t count either of the two times Worf and Kurn served together, since when Kurn was temporarily assigned to the Enterprise it was while his sibling relationship to Worf was secret, and when he was DS9 security he was working for the Bajoran Militia rather than Starfleet.)
@13/Eduardo: “Which also begs the question of: Should those directives still apply 70.000 light-years away?”
Why shouldn’t it? The whole point of the Prime Directive is to respect other cultures’ freedom of choice. It’s not about your own situation or interests; it’s entirely and specifically about recognizing that the universe doesn’t revolve around you and your point of view. So yes, it absolutely would apply anywhere and everywhere.
(Although Keith is right that it’s grossly missing the point of the PD to think it’s about letting civilizations die when you could help them. Under normal circumstances, you’re not supposed to impose your help because you might do more harm than good in your ignorance of their culture, so you should trust their ability to decide things for themselves. But if their very existence is at stake, then obviously the way to respect their freedom of choice is to let them know the danger so that they can have a say in the outcome.)
“Oher than Kenneth Biller, at this point Voyager had pretty much the same writers as TNG.”
Not exactly. When TNG ended, its final writing staff basically split in two, with Jeri Taylor, Joe Menosky, and Brannon Braga going to VGR while Ron Moore and Rene Echevarria moved to DS9.
Christopher said, “It always seemed implausible that “Spock’s Brain” treated “ion power” as some incredibly advanced power source that the Federation hadn’t mastered, when ion rockets are used on space probes and satellites today and provide only very gentle acceleration.”
Many years ago, when I was a librarian for a satellite communications company, the spacecraft engineers heard about ion propulsion as an alternative to hydrazine thrusters for stationkeeping in orbit (we operated satellites, didn’t build them). So I got to do some searching for technical papers on ion propulsion — specifically, Xenon Ion Propulsion Systems (XIPS) — thinking about Star Trek the whole time. But yeah, stationkeeping is a pretty long way from an incredibly fast, incredibly powerful drive system that leaves warp drive in the dust.
Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, Voyager. I should try doing a rewatch some day; I’ve only seen most Voyager episodes once.
@15/Christopher: I was commenting from the hypothetical assumption that the Delta Quadrant would be so alien and so different that any notions of Federation values would quickly fail to resonate due to how incompatible they’d be, including the PD (Alliances did flirt with that idea). But that’s still purely hypothetical. What we got here was a carbon copy of TNG PD episodes, so for all intents and purposes the old rules still apply.
As for the writers, there was also Michael Piller himself, and obviously Berman running the show. What I meant to say is, it failed to bring new people (other than Biller; it would take several seasons for VOY to finally hire actual new people full-time). That’s what I meant by ‘same writers’. And there was also Shankar, who would pen Heroes and Demons.
@8/fullyfunctional: I had a different issue with the temporal logic. Why could Janeway prevent the catastrophe? It had happened; if it hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t be there. But I was relieved that the planet was saved, so I let it pass.
@13/Eduardo: As Christopher pointed out in comment #5, the people had to look like humans to allow Janeway and Paris to remain undetected.
Why is it too early to do Prime Directive tales? Why is it a problem that we barely know the characters? We learn something about the characters here – we learn that Janeway is principled, but also smart and flexible enough to realise that the damage is already done, and act accordingly.
@17/Eduardo: How can a place be so different that moral guidelines no longer apply? (Leaving aside the fact that the PD is a lousy moral guideline.)
@18/JanaJansen: I find that these types of stories tend to be excessively plot-oriented, where characters function like cogs in a machine. I’m of the mind that these stories work better once you get a better sense of who these people really are. Parallax did some groundwork establishing them, but ideally we should have gotten at least a few more such shows before diving in something like Time and Again. That’s just me, however.
Regarding Janeway, I’d argue we learn nothing here that we didn’t already know from the pilot, except possibly for the principled part (the flexibility part was evident during Caretaker’s final act).
As for using moral guidelines in the Delta Quadrant, again I’m coming from hypothesis. When Voyager was first announced, I expected something truly different. Societies so unlike anything Starfleet had encountered, they’d need to rethink their approach towards establishing contact. Possibly even situations where they’d be forced to abandon those ideals and do unspeakble things just to survive. In the long run, we didn’t get that.
It’s not that the PD is necessarily outdated, but rather it sheds light on the fact that the show failed to explore just how dire Voyager situation truly was. A lone ship stranded on the other side of the galaxy shouldn’t plausibly make it home sticking to the old guidelines.
JFWheeler: you made me snarf my coffee….
fullyfunctional: I want to make a joke about banging on trash cans, but I can’t make it come together. Anyhow yes, they do look like 1970s Astros uniforms…. *laughs*
Eduardo: I see no problem with doing a PD story. I do see a problem with doing it badly. And it’s frustrating because this could’ve been a good one.
Jana: The Prime Directive as originally conceived is a fantastic and necessary moral guideline. The PD as idiotically misconstrued by mid-period TNG writers and subsequently ossified by their successors is not.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@17/Eduardo: “I was commenting from the hypothetical assumption that the Delta Quadrant would be so alien and so different that any notions of Federation values would quickly fail to resonate due to how incompatible they’d be, including the PD (Alliances did flirt with that idea).”
The alienness of other cultures is the whole reason the PD is needed in the first place, because you can’t assume your own solutions would work for them.
And why should they be any more alien there than closer to home? By definition, cultures protected by the Prime Directive haven’t had any contact with aliens at all, whether five light-years away or 50,000. So there’s no reason why they’d be any more alien in the Delta Quadrant than in the Alpha.
The only reason why the PD would apply less in Voyager‘s situation is that it’s alone. All else being equal, cultures aren’t automatically “contaminated” or damaged by outside ideas. As long as they control the interaction, they’re free to reinterpret or disregard any ideas that don’t fit their worldview or their needs. (E.g. Europe gained a lot of advanced knowledge from the East, e.g. stirrups, gunpowder, the compass, the lateen sail, decimal notation, and the printing press, but was not damaged by the knowledge, instead using it very much to its own advantage.) The damage comes when there’s a power imbalance, when a powerful state assumes it’s entitled to boss other cultures around or compel them to change “for their own good.” The PD is needed to remind Starfleet officers that just because they have a big, powerful, advanced civilization backing them up, that doesn’t make them smarter or righter than less powerful cultures, and it’s basically just the general principle of respecting the right of way of the smaller entity. But Voyager is all alone with no Federation to back it up, so it’s not in a position to impose its will on the local civilizations, so there’s less reason for avoiding interaction.
Even so, a single Starfleet vessel has the firepower to lay waste to an entire planet and the technology to dominate a pre-warp culture if its crew wanted to, so there’s still good reason for the PD in interactions with pre-contact societies, as long as it’s the sane “avoid the temptation to play god” PD and not the crazy “let them definitely die rather than potentially hurt them” version.
@19/Eduardo: If they hadn’t stuck to their ideals, they wouldn’t have been stranded in the first place.
I admit that I never expected Voyager to be different. I knew that the captain would be a woman (about time!) and that it would take place on the other side of the Galaxy (new aliens!). I didn’t even know about the Maquis. I pretty much got what I expected.
@20/krad: Oh yes, absolutely. I meant the TNG-and-successors version of the PD.
As has been noted repeatedly here in previous comments, I hated the ‘reset button’ ending too, which kind of negates everything that we’ve just seen. Not to mention also erasing any potential character growth that would have come from this encounter (save for Kes). I’d rather have had a different ending than the one used here. Maybe (at a minimum) have had Kes retain at least somewhat of a memory of what happened and why, and then be able to share them with the captain….or just anything else rather than the, “HA! Just kidding!”, cop-out ending.
This episode features one of my Pet Peeves from ST shows. After the Captain and Paris (Helm Officer) go missing, we next see the remainder of the bridge crew then beam down to the planet: 1st Officer Chakotay, Security Officer Tuvok (who serves as the ship’s Executive Officer as well), Operations Officer Kim and Chief Engineer Torres. They’ve even brought along Kes who insisted on coming along. I know that this is done to give everyone something to do that factors into the episode….but for all that Chakotay does on the mission, couldn’t he have done what he did (via communicators) while sitting in the Captain’s chair on the bridge – where he belong’s in the Captain’s absence!?!? Barely a few moments earlier in the show we saw him firmly tell Kes, who has asked to join the away team, about the dangers present on the surface and how he can’t authorize such a request!
In fact, I think the writers missed another opportunity to have a confrontational tête-à-tête between Chakotay & Tuvok, with the latter reminding his 1st Officer of his true place during the Captain’s absence. Chakotay then could have ordered Tuvok to stay behind, creating a bit more tension between the two to sort out in future episodes. Although none of that would eventually matter as the ‘reset button’ is struck at the end, literally eradicating everything that has happened to them and the others in the show. We get just a hint of the still present animosity between the two when they are discussing what actions Janeway might be making…but it’s barely touched upon. The writers do, however, add a bit of good flair for our enjoyment by having Tuvok’s prediction of Janeway’s behavior be (mostly) well off the mark.
I’ve probably seen this episode upwards of 5 times by now, but this was the first time that it registered with me that the security guard at the mall/city center where Janeway & Paris suddenly materialize, doesn’t seem to notice that both of them are carrying sidearms. Even though phasers and tricorders are undoubtedly unfamiliar to him, you’d think he would be suspicious of the unusual looking devices he’s never seen before in any case. We do see, as the episode progresses, that the locals do have firearms (used at the gates of the power plant) and we see them use sidearms a bit later on as well. But none of the locals seem to be walking around openly carrying weapons, other than the armed guards at the power plant gates. So I wondered why that security guard they had an encounter with earlier wasn’t in the least suspicious of them, because the phaser is shaped similarly to a sidearm. And, also, they tell him they’re from out-of-town and the security guard notes that they are dressed in a fashion he hasn’t seen before…it seems to me that at least a few bells & whistles should have sounded off to him. A convenient plot contrivance I guess.
Big ideas with disappointing follow-through is the first three seasons in a nutshell.
One of the things that I always found so amusing about early seasons of Voyager is that the producers made sure that on-duty Janeway had this imperiously Victorian schoolmistress bun-hairstyle (female authority figure, dontcha know), but when Janeway is lounging in her stateroom reading her Bronte, or when she has to go in civies, her magnificent mane is let loose.
(until they finally gave her chin-length bob in later seasons)
@9/andreatheartisan: I always figured that the Delaney sisters had other siblings so Starfleet could honor their request to have assignments on the same ship.
@9/andreatheartisan and @26/Ducky: I don’t remember at all myself, but is it ever intentionally mentioned during the show that the Delaney sisters are both Starfleet graduates? Probably….but it would have been an interesting element to the crew to have had one of them have been a member of Chakotay’s Maquis crew. Another potential storyline opportunity dropped by the writing staff.
If the PD is in place to protect cultures from their own mistakes, the Starfleet should have a presence over every planet that’s covered by the PD in order to prevent, wars, invasions, slavery, etc.
What if a civilization is found to have built a dam upstream from a large city that’s in an area with tectonic activity? If there’s an earthquake, the dam will collapse and kill everyone in the city. Is it Starfleet’s responsibility to act as the galactic building inspector? Where do you draw the line?
What if they fight a war using biological weapons? Starfleet shows up, destroys the remaining weapons and inoculates everyone to the plague. Once the Federation Mary Worth’s away, the cycle repeats because the inhabitants figure that the result won’t be too bad because the Federation will show up again to mitigate the worst of the problem.
If the PD existed when the asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs, we wouldn’t be here. Do you limit it to natural disasters, preferring to leave people to learn from their own mistakes? Or do you treat them like children, not letting them wander into traffic because you know the dangers and they don’t?
The people in this episode were aware of the dangers that existed and were working on correcting the problem on their own. Should Starfleet monitor all planets that might develop a dangerous technology and secretly thwart any such developments? What about fossil fuels? They have a detrimental effect on the environment as we are seeing for ourselves. How many people have died or are threatened by global warming? It it up to us to learn from our own mistakes or is it the job of aliens from the other side of the galaxy to save us from our own mistakes?
I have always wondered whether “the Delaney sisters” were some kind of shout-out to the women who wrote Having Our Say, which was published in 1993 and was still enjoying the cultural limelight into the late 90s… anyone know?
I remember this episode not one bit, but, like @16/Steve, I have seen most of the series only one time, back in the day.
@28. kkozoriz: Iain M Banks’ Inversions is one of the best non-ST Prime Directive novels I’ve ever read, with two Culture agents having a proxy battle about interference/non-interference on a world with a medieval type civilization.
I’ve watched ahead a few episodes and am considering giving up and just reading the rewatch articles. My attention wanders quite a bit, finding myself bored and picking up a book to read while leaving the show on in the background. These early episodes deserve the middling rating. I would award them Salieri statuettes. When do we get to the Mozarts? It’s nothing like the relaunch of BSG say (maybe an unfair comparison), where the tension was high and the stories were mostly captivating.
There are moments of interest though. Like a couple episodes from now where we witness Paris’ holosuite recreation of a French bar stocked full of stereotypes, one of whom taught him how to be a man, as French proprietresses of French bars are wont to do. It’s worth watching the whole cringey thing just to hear B’Elanna call Paris a pig.
One detail from this episode: the leader of the protesters/saboteurs telling Janeway, ‘I shot the guards, but their blood is on your hands!” Stupid lazy cliche. Every time a character kills someone, but denies responsibility, blaming it on someone who didn’t have power in that situation, the writer has gone lame, walking on crutches. Has anyone in the history of the world ever reasoned like this?
@Benny: ““Captain, we believe their society has divided into two tribes: those who prefer Lifesavers and those who prefer Starbursts.”
I loved this comment, but you forgot about the Spumoni Faction.
@30
Haha, of course! I stand corrected.
This is maybe the only episode of Star Trek where only the shirts stick in my memory. Enough said, I suppose.
@28/kkozoriz: And that’s why that approach to the PD is as dumb as “never interfere with other cultures as well”. The best approach to the Prime Directive is the 23rd century one where it’s about preserving the right of other cultures to self-determination; to avoid interference because imperialism is bad. Not about because cultural contact is BAD and CONTAMINATIVE and not because we need to be paternalistic over everyone else and protect them from themselves, but because other civilizations deserve to be able to chart their own course. Save them from something beyond their power to prevent that would wipe them out, but treat them as equals irrespective of whatever level of technological development they might happen to have. Respect them rather than exploiting them or ignoring them.
Basically, don’t be isolationist, and don’t be imperialistic.
@29 I actually wondered if the sisters were named for actor Dana Delany (despite the different spelling of the last name)and her sister, Corey. (The former’s name once was mentioned in a version of the title song of “Animaniacs.”)
As just about everyone has said: The ending of this episode is horrible and literally erases anything good that came before it. That’s a shame because, despite an incredibly bland guest cast, there are a few things to enjoy here. Jennifer Lien’s acting her socks off as always and maybe other people are sick of him but, after an episode where he seemed to get turned into the butt of everyone’s jokes, I was glad to see Paris back centre stage and proving a decent foil to Janeway: It’s a nice character moment when he suddenly remembers Akita won’t be around next week and subtly expresses his sympathy.
But that ending seems to begging out for the audience to sit through an overly long repeat of a conversation they saw 40 minutes earlier and anti-climactic wrap-up going “That’s it?!”As has been said, I guess the problem is that no-one learns anything and, in a sense, neither do we. Maybe if Kes had actually remembered properly what happened and shared it, rather than passing it off as a bad dream. Maybe if we’d got a proper look at what life on the planet was like now beyond “We’re not dead yet.” Instead, we get the crew cheerily and slightly smugly flying off unaware of the disaster they nearly caused. We see some more of the tension between Chakotay and Tuvok as they clash over what to do next (ironically, they’re both right and both wrong: Janeway was all for letting the disaster happen until she decided they’d caused it), but it’s never resolved because they get erased from history before they can find out what happened. Even the scene of the Doctor finding out there are new crewmembers who haven’t had any medical files becomes pointless when you realise he’s going to have to learn it again some time. The polaric energy system is presented as an accident waiting to happen, while it’s hard to see the eco-terrorists as the force for good when they murder security guards and try to murder a young boy. Chances are they’re going to kill themselves soon either way. But hey, it won’t be Voyager’s fault so…that’s okay?
The general feeling is that this was a waste of time, the end of which always leaves me quoting the end of Red Dwarf’s “White Hole”.
Comments on here have left me trying really hard to think of an example of family members serving together in Starfleet…There seem to be a lot in tie-in fiction but possibly not so much on screen. Or else instances where people are serving together but not strictly in the same service, like Rom and Nog.
32. Idran – I have to laugh when someone says “TNG got the PD wrong”. The PD has NEVER been presented in any way that makes sense.
Gene Roddenberry himself wrote in The Omega Glory “A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”
And yet, in the first season, we had A Taste of Armageddon where Kirk ordered Scott to kill EVERYONE on the planet where they had been taken into lawful custody for violating Eminian laws. The Enterprise wasn’t in danger as they had shown that they could move out of range of the Eminian weapons.
In Bread and Circuses, Merik was said to be violating the PD even though he wasn’t Starfleet but Merchant Marine. And yet, in Angel One, we’re told that the PD doesn’t apply to civilians. On a similar note, Janeway acts to remove the Ferengi from a planet in the Delta Quadrant even though they are not only not Starfleet, they’re not even part of the Federation.
The Yonadans have their culture disrupted by Kirk even though their situation is totally of their own making. Stop Yonanda from running into Daran V by all means. But deciding that you don’t like the way they’re running things and taking it into your own hands to change it should not be part of the deal.
The Horizon leaves a book behind on Iotia and they natives decide to base their culture on it of their own free will. Suddenly, Kirk decides that rahter than having multiple gangsters running things, he’ll turn it into a dictatorship, pick the guy in change and back it up with the Federation taking a big cut of their planetary economy in order to firce Federation values on people that didn’t ask for it.
The idea that TNG somehow got the PD “wrong” is ignoring everything about the PD that came before it.
I guess I’m the only one who liked the ending. Of course I’ve always enjoyed movies with either ambiguous or unresolved endings, and I like the fact that no one here really learns anything. It just is what it is. The disaster was averted. Does it really matter if no one realizes it? WE know, and that actually enhances it for me – like I know a secret the characters don’t know.
Of course, this concept was executed much better in TNG s Clues where Data and the crew end up conspiring with themselves to eradicate the Paxans from their memory. Well, for everyone except Data, who certainly does remember.
@28/kkozoriz: “If the PD existed when the asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs, we wouldn’t be here.”
Only if there had been sapient dinosaurs. In which case, fine with me. That’s just “If you’re parents hadn’t met, you’d never have existed” on a planetary scale. I don’t think that I’m more special than other people, or species. Do you?
“How many people have died or are threatened by global warming? It it up to us to learn from our own mistakes or is it the job of aliens from the other side of the galaxy to save us from our own mistakes?”
Imagining for a moment that there were aliens from the other side of the galaxy who could save us: Not their job, no. But if they offered help, I’d take it. Because even if we manage to contain global warming, and that’s a big if, it looks as if coral reefs will be gone. I like autonomy. But I also like coral reefs. And for a hypothetical African peasant threatened or killed by global warming, it isn’t even a question of autonomy. They don’t get a say in what happens to them in either case. I think they would want to live. Most people do.
@35/kkozoriz: Well, your examples show that the PD used to be different in the 23rd century, don’t they?
I like the PD stories in TOS. Taken as a whole, they show that there’s a fine line between helping and meddling, and that you can go wrong in either direction. That’s a good thing to keep in mind.
@36/fullyfunctional: Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the ending. When I watched the episode yesterday, I was primarily relieved that the disaster was averted – I wasn’t at all sure that they would manage. I didn’t mind that the crew doesn’t remember anything. As you say, we know, and that’s enough. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that nothing on the planet changes. They still employ a dangerous technology. The eco-terrorists still aren’t nice people. If you think about it, it’s unsettling.
Well, I’ve thought about it, and I like that it’s unsettling. Because it’s a mirror image of our own situation, so it’s appropropriate that it isn’t easily resolved. I might have liked a final shot of a riot on the planet, though. To remind the audience that everything isn’t fine.
@30: “It’s your fault I did this” is an [i]incredibly[/i] common piece of thinking, often as part of, but by no means exclusive to, abusive situations.
@foamy: maybe I’m fortunate, but I’ve never thought that way, nor witnessed anyone say that. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
But when it comes to extreme violence in dramatic writing, it’s still an unrealistic thing to say. When you see the bad guy pull the trigger, or use whatever murder implement you wish, then pass the blame, it’s just stagey and artificial, never convincing on an emotional level.
@39: I don’t think we’re necessarily meant to agree with it or think he has a point. He’s an unpleasant person who thinks he’s the hero of the piece, so if people die, then that’s because someone “made” him do it, it’s not down to him. Janeway, unlike him, actually is a good person (this episode/season), so even though her finger wasn’t on the trigger, she’s going to feel guilty and wonder if she could have saved them if she’d done something different. It’s not logical, and it’s easy to dismiss the claim on that grounds, but I think there’s an emotional realism to it on both sides.
37. JanaJansen – You mean like the Voth from Voyager’s Distant Origin?
“Imagining for a moment that there were aliens from the other side of the galaxy who could save us: Not their job, no.”
Exactly. And if they did show up and save us, most likely we’d simply continue on as we are doing, expecting that they’d save us from ourselves once again. People are like that. We’ve got a very significant percentage of the population that either deny climate change or, if the do, don’t want to do anything about it because it’ll cost money.
“Well, your examples show that the PD used to be different in the 23rd century, don’t they?”
Not just in the 24th century. Even in the 23rd. Read my post again and compare A Taste of Armageddon (Ignore demands to stay away, refuse to follow local law, threaten genocide when they attempt to enforce said law) and The Omega Glory – “A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”.
The PD has been nothing but a plot device to tell a certain story. As a matter of fact, you can tell when they’re about to break the PD because they start talking about how important it is. Claiming that it’s changed so much in the 24th century is ignoring how wildly it was used in the 23rd.
The thing that should be kept in mind about the Prime Directive is that, like any rule, it must have exceptions. It’s not supposed to be a license to avoid thinking or making moral choices, like the cowardly, legalistic way the E-D crew used it in “Homeward.” It’s supposed to make a captain and crew consider the consequences of their choices seriously before they decide whether the situation is exceptional enough to warrant intervention — or rather, whether the situation is one where intervention is genuinely essential to save the locals rather than one that the locals can be trusted to solve in their own way. Even early TNG got this right, as when Picard said in “Justice” that “There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute.” (Although that was a prime case of early-installment weirdness, a story about the Prime Directive but one in which the crew didn’t hesitate to make first contact with a pre-warp civilization and tell them about space and other worlds.)
As for time-travel endings that erase the whole preceding story, those can be useful in cases so extreme that the series couldn’t continue without them, e.g. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” or “Cause and Effect.” The reset button is a license to break your toys, break the rules, tell the cataclysmic stories you can’t tell otherwise. The problem here was that it was used on a fairly routine story — one that destroyed an entire civilization, sure, but didn’t have much effect on the characters we know and follow.
If they wanted to do a time-warp reset, they should’ve done it in a story where the tensions between Starfleet and Maquis erupt into open conflict and the battle destroys the ship, or something. But then somebody would have to remember it in order to prevent it from happening again.
@30. Everyone reasons like that. It is always easier to see the justifications for your own actions than someone else’s. Especially if they are an adversary. But that is a terribly cliched way to express such reasoning. I’m sure it was a powerful line when it was first written, but that was a long time before this episode was written. Now it just sounds ridiculous.
@25.LadyBelaine: I remain deeply confused as to why the show forsook The Bun of Steel for a hairstyle as charming but feckless as the bob that replaced it; perhaps it’s a racial memory of the Memsahibs who kept the British Empire running while their gentlemen all too often did their best to run it into the ground, but The Bun definitely strikes me as a force multiplier when it comes to a Captain’s Authority!
…
I may be a trifle old-fashioned in that respect.
@44/ED: The shorter hairstyle was Kate Mulgrew’s natural one. I think she eventually got tired of wearing the long wig and convinced the producers to drop it. (Much like Avery Brooks eventually got permission to grow back his Hawk goatee and shave his head.)
There’s a telling continuity error early in season 2 — Janeway suddenly has short hair in “Parturition,” apparently as a test run for Janeway without the wig, but by the following week in “Persistence of Vision,” her hair is magically long again, years’ worth of growth between consecutive episodes. Kes would later go through a similar, but more permanent change in “Before and After,” when they finally dropped the short blond wig and Kes suddenly had Jennifer Lien’s long, wavy strawberry-blond hair instead (which I think was partly because she was having a reaction to the prosthetic makeup for her ears; the long hair covered the ears so the makeup could be skipped). But since Ocampa’s life cycles are so accelerated, I figure her hair would naturally grow pretty quickly anyway.
Kate Mulgrew with her Bun of Steel always made me think of Katherine Hepburn, which isn’t a bad thing if you want to project strength. But I liked the bob, too.
Actually Brooks shaving his head and growing the goatee happened once they were no longer making Spenser: For Hire TV movies, for which Brooks still was appearing as Hawk. Once those movies stopped being made (due mainly to Robert Urich’s cancer diagnosis), Sisko started looking like Hawk since there was no chance of confusion.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@47/krad: Was there really much chance of confusing a present-day detective-show character with a 24th-century Starfleet commander? Seems an odd reason.
@45: People often don’t remember because she only appears briefly at the end, but Janeway has the short hair in “Non-Sequitur” as well (which is a good case for treating the originally intended running order as canon instead of the original broadcast one, but that’s a discussion for another time). Given that Seven of Nine goes from completely bald to full head of hair in the course of an episode and the Doctor says he stimulated her hair follicles, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume he could do the same for Janeway.
Christopher: it is an odd reason, and it would never happen with a white actor, but that’s Hollywood……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought Janeway’s bob was meant as an indicator of battle damage. If it’s coming undone in the turbulence, things are getting really bad.
@51/gareth: You mean Janeway’s bun, right? A bob is a short, jaw-level haircut, so there’s nothing to come undone.
To those kind people who commented on my Delaney sisters comment (just catching up now) – I was also thinking of how the royal family avoid travelling overseas with the sovereign and her heirs on the same plane, ‘just in case’. Could having all, or most, a family’s children serving on the one starship cause a ‘Saving Private Ryan’ scenario? (In this case, I’m not thinking of the ‘family’ ships.)
A bob coming apart would be an even worse sign, so yes, I meant the bun.
@13/Eduardo Jencarelli – I agree with you that already three episodes in and we get the planet of humans with brightly colored shirts, and this after the Kazon in the premiere who seemed like bad knockoffs of the Klingons. Part of what initially made me so excited about Star Trek: Voyager was that what I was imagining the Delta Quadrant was would be something completely different and wondrous compared to anything we’d seen depicted on Star Trek before, but alas, very quickly that notion would be dispelled. And yes, I realize that in large part that is due to budget.
Just based on my memory of watching this episode when it initially aired and maybe even a rerun of it, and this review, I don’t think I can muster the strength to rewatch it. Unfortunately, I think the first two seasons are going to be generally mediocre.
@41/kkozoriz: “You mean like the Voth from Voyager’s Distant Origin?”
Yep. :)
Looking forward to that one too.
“And if they did show up and save us, most likely we’d simply continue on as we are doing, expecting that they’d save us from ourselves once again. People are like that. We’ve got a very significant percentage of the population that either deny climate change or, if the do, don’t want to do anything about it because it’ll cost money.”
And we have an equally significant percentage of the population who want something done. Hence Fridays for Future, Scientists for Future and all that. I think we’re learning, just not fast enough. It’s a race against time, and if someone could step in and buy us more time, I’d be all for it.
If no one saves us, and we manage to survive, and perhaps even keep some amount of wealth and peace and democracy, who’s to guarantee that future generations won’t make the same mistakes all over again? You get the same problem either way. This isn’t comparable to allowing a child to touch a hotplate and get burned so that it’ll learn. It’s too serious for that.
“Not just in the 24th century. Even in the 23rd. Read my post again and compare A Taste of Armageddon (Ignore demands to stay away, refuse to follow local law, threaten genocide when they attempt to enforce said law) and The Omega Glory – “A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”.”
Is it a contradiction, though? The initial violation in “A Taste of Armageddon” was done by a different character. Kirk is only guilty of not refusing to follow orders. After that he may have reasoned that the damage was already done, and thus he was allowed to save his ship and crew. He usually wants to save his crew, if possible. In “Wolf in the Fold”, he tries to balance following local law and still saving Scotty by diplomatic means; in “A Taste of Armageddon”, that approach isn’t possible.
“The PD has been nothing but a plot device to tell a certain story.”
It has been that, too. But it makes sense to me as a guideline. If it doesn’t make sense to you, I guess we just have different outlooks on life.
“As a matter of fact, you can tell when they’re about to break the PD because they start talking about how important it is.”
Not always. Counterexamples: “The Omega Glory” and “Bread and Circuses”.
“Claiming that it’s changed so much in the 24th century is ignoring how wildly it was used in the 23rd.”
They never advocate to let a sapient species become extinct in the 23rd century. Never. That is a major change.
@46/JFWheeler: I need to watch more Katherine Hepburn.
@47/krad: I liked Sisko best with hair and beard. I wish they had compromised on his looks :)
@55/GarretH: I’ve asked myself if I would prefer a space exploration show (Star Trek or otherwise) with truly alien aliens, which would be easy to do with modern CGI, and I’m not sure. On the one hand, it would be different and wondrous, as you say. On the other hand, I’m very much in love with Star Trek’s original concept of using aliens to hold a mirror up to us, and that works much better when they look like us.
For me, rewatching this episode has been a pleasant surprise. I had completely forgotten about it, and I like the colourful costumes (guess I’m the only one), and I like the environmental theme even more. That’s exactly the kind of story I want Star Trek to tell. It isn’t an outstanding episode, but it’s solid bread-and-butter Star Trek. I’ve missed this so much in recent decades.
@57
Hepburn is generally excellent. If I may, I would suggest starting with Adam’s Rib, a fun little courtroom comedy/drama starring Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Also an interesting historical piece showing where feminism was in 1949.
Cheers!
@58/JFWheeler: Thanks for the recommendation!
@57/Jana: “I’ve asked myself if I would prefer a space exploration show (Star Trek or otherwise) with truly alien aliens, which would be easy to do with modern CGI, and I’m not sure.”
Contrary to popular belief, photorealistic CGI is anything but easy. It takes great skill and a lot of time and money to make it look realistic rather than like something out of a video game. That’s why filmmakers are rediscovering the virtues of prosthetic makeup. On Discovery, for instance, the more exotic alien crewmembers like Linus the Saurian and these guys are done with prosthetics/animatronics, though I think Linus’s eyeblinks are digitally added. That’s the best way to go, to mix FX techniques and use the right tool for the right job. That’s the way it was always done before CGI, but once CGI came along, the industry became fixated on the new toy and tried to use it for everything. But it should just be one tool in the kit, because there’s a lot that practical FX can still do better — as the recent The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance proved magnificently.
“On the other hand, I’m very much in love with Star Trek’s original concept of using aliens to hold a mirror up to us, and that works much better when they look like us.”
I’m not sure I agree with that. There’s a reason that Aesop wrote his fables about talking animals rather than people, and why we respond so well to anthropomorphic cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. When we look at humans, a lot of us project our preconceptions and prejudices on them, and sometimes that means many readers or viewers will have trouble identifying with a certain character. But it’s easy to love and accept animals uncategorically, because we don’t judge them the way we judge other humans. Also, making the characters nonhuman is more abstract, more of a blank slate, so it can paradoxically be easier to project ourselves onto them. Or else the superficial nonhumanity of the characters allows slipping allegorical statements past the defenses of people who might not want to be preached to about themselves.
Maybe it’s just me, but I often find myself connecting the most strongly with the least human characters in a story, particularly when they’re AIs, for some reason. Maybe it’s because I’ve always felt like an outsider and identified with characters who were the odd ones out. A lot of fans are drawn to SF/fantasy because they identify with characters who are outside the norm.
@57/JanaJansen – Yes, I agree that for Star Trek, that often the aliens work best when they are used as some kind of mirror to us; and that due to the realities of television budgets and one hour or less format for telling stories, that the aliens will be depicted usually as humanoid and speaking English. But the appearance of the aliens here in this episode is exactly like humans which I felt was lazy. I mean, paint their skin silver or give them furry uni-brows or just anything! :o)
And I’m know this is a pleasant Trek tale based on my memory of it, but my apathy in rewatching it is because of the giant reset button at the end and nothing of profound consequence happens with our main characters. Ironically my favorite episode of all time, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, is a giant reset button too, except those 40 some odd minutes are huge spectacle and of which has major personal importance to our beloved characters.
@61/GarretH: “But the appearance of the aliens here in this episode is exactly like humans which I felt was lazy.”
No, it was motivated by the needs of the plot. Janeway and Paris arrived by accident, with no chance to don prosthetic disguises first, but they had to be able to blend in and pass for natives. Most of the other aliens we see in VGR do have a more nonhuman appearance, but in the case of this particular story, they had to look human.
@60/Christopher: “A lot of fans are drawn to SF/fantasy because they identify with characters who are outside the norm.”
I’ve heard this before, and I’ve been wondering if it was true for me as well. I did have an outsider childhood. But I was still almost always drawn to human characters, and often to characters who fit into their respective societies. I guess I didn’t want to identify with characters outside the norm, I wanted a changed norm. SF was great for imagining changed norms.
SF provides for many needs. :)
@61/GarretH: “[…] nothing of profound consequence happens with our main characters.”
That may even be one of the things I like about the episode. They just had a life-changing event two weeks ago. It’s nice to see them simply do stuff and go on with their lives for a change.
56. JanaJansen – “They never advocate to let a sapient species become extinct in the 23rd century. Never. That is a major change.”
Perhaps it’s a change that was made following the events of The Paradise Syndrome. The Federation might have decided that it was a choice that was too big to be left up to individual captains.
I’m not saying I agree with it, just wondering if that was the seed to the tightening of the PD in TNG.
“”Science fiction writers have spent their whole lives conjuring up wild and way-out scenarios that might underlie the workings of the universe. We here at IDU have codified their work and turned it into a methodology, a way of thinking that allows you, the student, to overturn any scientific consensus and replace it with your own explanations, for your own purposes.”
That’s from an amusing very short story by Paul Di Filippo: Stefnal thinking 101
My general worldview is that of a humanist. So I’m in complete agreement with @Jana that aliens created by humans for human consumption should offer a mirror to human experience. Even the very weird ones. If it’s good SF, there’s always a key to unlock the reflection.
The converse of that position is designing aliens that are in a hermetically sealed bubble, impervious to any critique, because “they are alien; they are different”. To me these are useless exercises in imagination. Sure you can create such beings, but they are hollow if they don’t offer some insight into who we as viewers/consumers of content are. Bad SF sometimes just plays with itself, in an enclosed environment with no cracks where the light can get in. (Even great critics, like John Clute, can produce such dreck.)
@65/Sunspear: Oh, I absolutely agree that SF aliens should reflect their human audience’s experiences and feelings. I just don’t agree that a human audience needs characters to look human in order to identify with them. I think that in some ways it’s easier for us to feel sympathy toward, or project ourselves onto, beings that look nothing like us. Look how much we anthropomorphize our cats or dogs. Or how much people love R2-D2 and Yoda.
@CLB: Agree with that. And Baby Yoda is universal.
I’ve always been a little dubious of episodes involving time travel. For one thing, while my educated layman’s knowledge of physics will kind of allow me to wrap my head around things like faster-than-light warp travel (the best explanation for which I’ve read came from Robert Heinlein’s Starman Jones), the whole notion of travelling backwards in time always seemed to push the series away from science fiction and into fantasy.
But for some reason, this is the sort of episode where it seemed to work for me. It’s probably because it’s very much not an episode that sends the crew back into more familiar times but instead presents them with a special kind of problem to solve, with the impending destruction of the planet hanging over the heads of Janeway and Paris.
I’ll admit to being a bit annoyed at having so much attention focused on Paris in these opening episodes, which I chalk up to a desire to appeal to what the producers thought was their target audience (Kim being who they are but Paris being who they would like to be, I suppose). I’m also not so sure who else would have been a better companion for Janeway. Perhaps Kim? Tuvok plays an important role as a bit of a foil for Kes. In retrospect, matching those two up a bit more could have led to an interesting dynamic. (I also love the look he shoots at Neelix when he admits to being “considerably less than familiar” with the star system).
This episode provided Chakotay his first opportunity to take charge of the ship in Janeway’s absence. I actually would have liked to have seen more made of having a Maquis in the captain’s chair with another Maquis (Torres) playing a leading role in the rescue effort. But it’s a sign of how quickly that subplot is falling away that it’s not remarked upon at all; instead everything operates as a smoothly running Starfleet machine.
I do understand how frustrating it is to have the crew forget its experiences once the disaster is averted. I’m not really sure how it could have been otherwise though. Perhaps Kes could have had played a bigger role in explaining what had happened. Here, the writers seem to have decided that she was going to play a similar role to that of Guinan in Yesterday’s Enterprise, which I’m not sure is necessarily the best use of her character. Also, did anyone notice that it wasn’t the bridge lurch that woke Kes up but psychic shock of the death of everything on the planet?
@68/corydon: As a matter of fact, the physics behind faster-than-light travel and time travel are essentially the same; relativistically speaking, any FTL drive would potentially be a time machine. The laws of physics do theoretically allow matter or information to travel back in time, since time is not an absolute in physics. What they do not allow, however, is the usual fictional trope of time travelers “rewriting” the past or present, a la Back to the Future or this episode, since that creates mathematical and logical contradictions that can’t be resolved, and thus is physically meaningless. The only allowable options are a single fixed timeline that the time travel was part of all along (e.g. “Assigment: Earth” or The Final Countdown) or the creation of an alternate history that coexists alongside the intact original (e.g. Kelvin Star Trek or Avengers: Endgame).
Still, I see your point, since fiction about warp/FTL drive rarely leads to any such paradoxes, while fiction about time travel tends to embrace them. The “rewrite” model is physically nonsensical but dramatically preferable because it creates higher stakes and more interesting dilemmas, so fiction goes to that well more often. But FTL is usually just a plot convenience for getting the characters to the story. (The one franchise I can think of that routinely uses time travel in the same way, just for getting to the story rather than driving the story, is Doctor Who, although in recent years it’s embraced the “timey-wimey stuff” more often.)
It would have been great if they’d found out something important–say, they had an ongoing story where someone in the crew was a killer or threat to the rest of them–and they found out in this episode and just barely managed to stop whatever bad thing was going to happen. Then, reset. The audience knows but the crew (except maybe Kres) wouldn’t.
Although, for that to work, it would need to be after we’re more invested in the characters, I think.
@70/Ellyne: Also, that would’ve required TV writing fashions to be further along in their embrace of serialized plotting, and it wouldn’t be until season 2 that VGR would experiment with that with the Michael Jonas arc. And then they’d back away from it and stick to episodic writing even while most of TV was moving toward stronger continuity and serialization.
@@.-@ – DemetriosX: DS9’s first season is much better than most people remember it. “Move Along Home” just contaminates the rest of the episodes.
I remember not minding the ending of this episode so much when I first saw it, probably on the day it originally aired (possibly later considering our VCR was… okay at recording at the proper programmed time). That was before I realized this would be the voyages of the USS Reset Button, however.
I’m actually quite interested in keeping up with this Rewatch, to see just how many episodes really did reset that smash button (#SomethingElseYT); I’m pretty sure it’s not even a twentieth of the total episodes, but it just felt like it was excessively used in this series, for some reason.
I’m also with CLB on how time travel has to work, so much so that that was one of my favorite bits about Endgame, though the ending makes my brain hurt in figuring out how it could possibly work (the writers seemed to think that you CAN manage a stable time loop in a many-universes-theory multiverse, whereas the directors said alt-timeline all the way, but then Steve would’ve been on the platform, not just sitting on that bench/log thing… I am both over- and under-thinking here, I’m sure). Any concept about time travel that makes it possible, kind of HAS to allow for splitting universes. (As much as I love Doctor Who, the fact that they keep on hitting a random brick wall over ‘fixed points in time’ is kind of very ludicrous. Either you can change nothing, or you can change whatever.)
@73/wizardofwoz77: It always puzzles me when people insist that you can’t have consistent time loops and parallel histories under the same laws of time travel. That’s not how physics works. The outcome of a given physical process depends on the specific conditions in which it happens — for instance, striking a match will have a very different result underwater than in air, and letting go of a hammer will have a very different result in an orbiting spaceship than on Earth’s surface.
There’s really no reason the laws of time travel would forbid having both consistent loops and parallel timelines. They’re both valid options, because they both result in a mathematically consistent outcome where every event still happens and nothing is “erased.”
But we’ve seen numerous instances where a timeline has been erased. City on the Edge of Forever. Yesterday’s Enterprise. First Contact.
And then our intrepid heroes somehow manage to un-erase it.
@73/wizardofwoz77: “I’m pretty sure it’s not even a twentieth of the total episodes, but it just felt like it was excessively used in this series, for some reason.”
They way I remember the complaints about “Voyager’s reset button” when she show was new, they weren’t restricted to episodes like this one, they were about the fact that the episodes always returned to the same status quo instead of telling an ongoing story. It puzzled me back then because this was how Star Trek had always been. Why were people suddenly complaining? In retrospect, I think that people’s expectations had begun to change because of shows like Babylon 5 and DS9.
Since then, I’ve learned from experience that serialised TV just isn’t for me, and I’m increasingly grateful that Voyager delivered some classic Star Trek instead.
@76/Jana: “It puzzled me back then because this was how Star Trek had always been. Why were people suddenly complaining? In retrospect, I think that people’s expectations had begun to change because of shows like Babylon 5 and DS9.”
Exactly. The problem with Voyager was that it was a throwback that wasn’t embracing continuity and change to the extent that DS9 had already done. More to the point, it was that Voyager‘s specific situation demanded greater continuity than something like TNG. In TNG, any damage the ship suffered could be repaired by a stopover at a starbase, any lost supplies or personnel could be replenished, and any serious conflicts within the crew (if TNG had allowed them more) could’ve been resolved by transferring people off. So it was easy to justify things staying pretty much the same over time. For a ship stranded alone far from home, things should have been very different. The problem was that they weren’t.
@77/Christopher: One person’s bug is another person’s feature.
@78/Jana: Again, it’s not about whether serialization or episodic storytelling is intrinsically better, because of course that’s a ridiculous and meaningless generalization. The point is that Voyager was a premise that practically demanded some degree of continuity and ongoing consequences, but that backed away from its own potential and setup in a way that felt like a broken promise (e.g. setting up a Starfleet-Maquis tension and then virtually ignoring it). If they’d wanted to do a strictly episodic show, fine, but then they should’ve come up with a premise that lent itself better to that format.
@79/Christopher: Hmm, I found the premise quite suitable. They’re in a new part of the galaxy, so there’s new aliens, new discoveries to be made, etc. They’re all alone, so small problems can become real obstacles, which lends itself fine to small, standalone stories. As for the Starfleet-Maquis tension, the writers do that every time – DS9 starts out with tension between Starfleet/Sisko and Bajor/Kira, Enterprise has Humans/Archer vs. Vulcans/T’Pol. For some reason, they always think they need conflict between the characters, and then they always realise that they don’t.
@74 Yeah, I think you’re right, I just felt like it would take only the slightest use of prior knowledge about the future and all of a sudden Steve’s got to warp back with the suit because he’s made another branch. Come to think of it, Endgame seems to imply that it’s easy to cut the branches, so maybe their concept of time is one that makes it a bit harder to create a branch in the first place. (STILL annoyed that Karen Gillan was in that scene and nobody mentioned Doctor Who, but I digress, that’s my thing.)
@73 – wizardofwoz77: When mentionig “Endgame” in a VOY rewatch, please be clear which “Endgame” you are talking about. I was wondering who “Steve” was supposed to be in VOY, took me a while to realize you were talking about Avengers: Endgame. :)
@80 – JanaJansen: DS9 and ENT writers didn’t just “realize” that they didn’t need conflict. They allowed the conflicts to play out naturally over the course of the first seasons of each show, and it came a time when the characters had resolved those conflicts. VOY just ignored its own setup right away.
@82/MaGnUs: That’s not how I remember it, but perhaps it got better in my memory. Anyway, all the more reason to praise Voyager ;)
I’m not going to tell you what to like and what not to like, but a product that sets up a specific expectation, and then utterly fails to deliver, is not a good thing. I enjoy certain characters and parts of VOY, but I can still recognize it’s a failure in many senses.
@84/MaGnUs: That’s why I said I’m glad that I didn’t know how it was advertised. I could enjoy it without preconceptions.
Anyway, it’s a problem that will go away by itself. Future generations, if they’ll watch it at all, will watch it for what it is, not for what it claimed to be in advance.
It’s not how it was advertised, it’s how it’s setup in the pilot and first couple of episodes. Plain as daylight.
@86/MaGnUs: Okay, I misunderstood. Well, what can I say? I watched it right from the start and didn’t find anything wrong with it. Guess I expect people to get along, and making peace fast is kinda traditional in Star Trek.
@87/Jana: People can get along but still come into conflict. What gave the Maquis potential is that they weren’t really wrong; they had a valid point of view that was just different from Starfleet’s. When people have basic differences in their worldviews or priorities, then even if they mean well and like each other, they can still find themselves disagreeing about the right course of action in a given situation, and that can lead to interesting drama and debate. The problem was that the Maquis were set up to provide an alternative point of view but too often just fell into line as Starfleet officers.
@88/Christopher: I would have liked that. Debates are cool. But perhaps the points of view just weren’t different enough. They all wanted to get home. They were all idealists in their own way, willing to help others. Unlike Neelix or Kes, all the Maquis in the main cast were ex-Starfleet. With the political conflict that had separated them half a galaxy away, what would a Maquis point of view look like?
@89/Jana: “With the political conflict that had separated them half a galaxy away, what would a Maquis point of view look like?”
Maybe more willingness to intervene and help the underdogs and the oppressed, rather than adhering to the Prime Directive. I took that route with B’Elanna in my alternate-history VGR novel Places of Exile.
Like Chris says, conflict is not a bad thing if handled correctly. I wouldn’t have wanted them to hate each other for the whole show. But exploring interpersonal and philosophical differences would have been great. If everybody gets along from the get-go like carebears or little ponies, then it’s no fun.
I guess some people prefer TOS, where McCoy threw racial slurs at Spock every episode, behaving like the most unprofessional person ever, and women were routinely reduced to “wanting a good husband” or being a glorified telephonist (barring very occasional exceptions).
Jana: That, then, raises the question of why they even bothered to have a mixed Starfleet and Maquis crew in the first place. Why introduce that particular story element if it’s barely even going to be part of the texture of the show? (This is something I will be talking about, um, a lot on Thursday in the “Learning Curve” rewatch.)
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
@90/Christopher: Good point.
@91/MaGnUs: Barring lots of “exceptions”. I got a ton of role models out of TOS when I was a kid, and I’ve read many accounts by other women who say the same thing. But you already know all that :)
@92/krad: To make a hothead like B’Elanna Torres chief engineer!
More serious answer: It seems to me that setting up a conflict between characters and then resolving it pretty fast is a recurring element in 80s/90s Star Trek. Pulaski and Data. Ro Laren and the crew (of course, in that case that was the plot of the episode). Sisko and Kira. Perhaps they always wanted to recapture the Spock-McCoy dynamic MaGnUs mentioned above (albeit disapprovingly), and then found that they didn’t need it, or perhaps they didn’t want to start from a point of universal harmony because that made writing for early TNG so difficult, or perhaps this is simply what TV writers do. I really don’t know.
Oh God, “Learning Curve”. I hated that episode. I always hate it when Starfleet looks exactly like the contemporary US military (as shown in films and on TV. Of course I don’t know what it really looks like.)
The color scheme of the clothing Janeway & Paris are wearing in the top photo always reminded me of the uniforms of 1970s fast food workers–like Burger King.
“Would you like fries with that?”
“Do it.” :)
I have seen Voyager several times over the years, but for some reason, with this episode I was like Gandalf at the crossroads in Moria: “I have no memory of this place.” This is in spite of the fact that everyone on the planet wore t-shirts inspired by the sides of 70s conversion vans. You’d think I’d remember that.
The end of the episode, therefore, is perfect — no one remembers except Kes, and she’ll be gone from the show soon enough.
@95/Big Data: Kes’s departure will be almost exactly 3 seasons after this episode, which I’d hardly call “soon.”
I don’t have much to say about this episode in particular (although I also LOVED the kid for dinner line), but I did want to say something about Paris, even though he’s far from my favorite character. I never really paid a lot of attention to him, but I think you have hit on something KRAD in your assessment of how much the episodes focus on him. I have to wonder if he is some weird tribute to Gene Roddenberry, since he shares his womanizing traits (Roddenberry cheated on two wives and was dating both Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett at the same time), his name, and perhaps most importantly, his backstory. I was surprised to learn the Roddenberry himself was a pilot who was responsible for not one, but two incidents of pilot error that resulted in people’s deaths. It explains a lot, since that always seemed like a weird explanation for why Paris is an outcast, given that he is supposed to be the best pilot out there. It may also explain why the role of pilot suddenly became so important — in TNG plenty of redshirt ensigns were the pilot.
I am 61, and I grew up in an era when any flirty male attention was considered a compliment (definitely by men but I think also by most women). The people who wrote Paris’ character probably genuinely meant for him to be a charming rogue, a la Han Solo. If he comes across as a creep, I think it is due to welcome changes in our culture. Did the people around Gene Roddenberry think he was a creep? Probably not, even though in real life he apparently acted rather similarly to Paris. How much blame we should apportion to people who were not ahead of their time is an interesting and worthwhile debate.
Speaking of which, I think it is safe to say that Harry is just as much a stereotype as Chakotay — the perfect, virtually sexless Asian man, good at math, technology, and music. The animal spirit crap is certainly a ridiculous stereotype, but it also would not be completely unlikely that over hundreds of years, as small groups of people representing different cultures fled to a safe haven, that their separate cultures would become mixed. In fact, it seems to me more likely that there would be many changes than that we would see (for example) Hopi culture remain static over hundreds of years. As we have seen, in the future, every member of an alien culture shares the same clothes, ideas, and aptitudes, so having one “Native American” culture is at least consistent!
Could it have been because B’lanna created a paradox by setting off the explosion earlier than the first time? After that we jump back to the Voyager just arriving at the planet, and everything is normal. But considering how in TNG there can be multiple timelines, it suggests that, in the time line we were viewing, Janeway and Paris are killed in the explosion. It seems inconsistent to just jump away and go backwards in time to Voyager before the explosion.