“In the Flesh”
Written by Nick Sagan
Directed by David Livingston
Season 5, Episode 4
Production episode 198
Original air date: November 4, 1998
Stardate: 52136.4
Captain’s log. We open at what appears to be Starfleet Headquarters, though everyone is back in the old uniforms. Admiral Bullock is giving out assignments, and Chakotay is taking holographic images.
Chakotay encounters Boothby, who walks him toward Logistical Support. Chakotay claims to be an officer named Jason Hayek who just transferred to HQ from the Intrepid, which was patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone.
Later, Chakotay goes to the Quantum Café, where he chats up a Commander Valerie Archer. While they talk, Ensign O’Halloran’s body starts to morph and change. He’s taken away, and Archer asks if Chakotay has ever “reverted.” He says he hasn’t, and Archer says that O’Halloran will be taken out of training if it happens to him again. Archer also talks about how weird things like sleeping and inhaling oxygen are.
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Chakotay makes a date to take a tour of HQ with Archer later, then goes off with Tuvok. As they approach the prearranged transporter coordinates, and once they’re out of Archer’s hearing, Chakotay says he’s gained some valuable information. Before they can beam out, Ensign David Gentry stops them and says they’re in a restricted area. Tuvok drops him with a Vulcan nerve pinch, and Paris beams the three of them back to the Delta Flyer, which then leaves orbit around, not a planet, but rather a space station.
Gentry wakes up in sickbay, and provides his name, rank, and serial number, even though Janeway knows full well that he isn’t really human and isn’t really from Earth. When the EMH tries to get a cellular sample, Gentry backs off and tries to call Bullock, to no avail. He finally commits suicide rather than say anything. The EMH is able to get him to revert to his true form, and he turns out to be a member of Species 8472.
Based on Chakotay’s images and Seven’s astrometric scans, 8472 has created a big-ass holodeck that has meticulously re-created Starfleet Command and Starfleet Academy. 8472 said when they first met back in “Scorpion” that they intended to purge all life from the galaxy, so they have to assume that the training that Archer referred to is for an invasion of Earth.
Janeway orders Tuvok to continue scanning the station for weaknesses and for Seven and the EMH to create more nanoprobes to be used in their weapons systems. Chakotay, meanwhile, will have his date with Archer. Before that, however, Janeway has the EMH scan Chakotay and Tuvok, to make sure they aren’t also 8472s in disguises, then he does the same for the rest of the crew, to make sure that they didn’t get their information on Starfleet’s facilities from an imposter on board.
Seven and the EMH create more nanoprobes, which Seven has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of. She also expresses concern that 8472 may have developed a defense against them some time in the last year.
Paris and Kim fly Chakotay back to the station on the Delta Flyer. Chakotay meets Archer at the Quantum Café to see her sitting with Boothby. After Boothby excuses himself, they go off to dance, and later wind up back at her quarters, where Archer says she has to give herself an isomorphic injection to keep her human form. Chakotay takes advantage of her being out of the room to download stuff off her computer terminal.
Chakotay excuses himself after confirming that 8472 thinks humans are a massive threat, though Archer insists on concluding the human dating ritual properly, with a kiss goodnight.
After he leaves, Archer contacts Boothby and makes it clear that Chakotay’s cover is seriously blown. Boothby changes the simulation from night time to day time and sends various Starfleet personnel to capture Chakotay.
On Voyager, Janeway and Seven discuss the possibility of diplomacy, with Seven continuing to insist that it isn’t possible with 8472. But Janeway doesn’t feel right about going straight into battle.
Tuvok informs her that they’ve lost contact with Chakotay. Janeway goes to red alert and has Voyager head to the station.
Boothby and Archer interrogate Chakotay, who insists that the Federation is not planning to make war on 8472. Boothby is skeptical of this claim, more so when Bullock comes in and informs them that Voyager is headed toward them, weapons hot. Chakotay insists that Janeway isn’t there to fight, but to retrieve him.
There are some exchanges of weapons fire, and then Boothby contacts Voyager, demanding they depart. Janeway refuses to go without her first officer. Janeway hasn’t fired her nanoprobe-enhanced weapons, and she doesn’t want to unless she has to.
Boothby agrees to beam aboard with Chakotay and talk. They meet in the conference room. Janeway insists that not only is the Federation not planning an invasion of fluidic space, Voyager is the only part of the Federation that’s even ever heard of 8472. Voyager isn’t a scout for an invasion force that has allied with the Borg, as Boothby accuses them of being. They’re a lone ship stranded far from home, who engaged in an alliance of convenience with the Borg because they didn’t know that the Borg were the aggressors in their war. The alliance with the Borg is long done. And for now at least, 8472 is only interested in learning more about humans in case they’re a threat.
Bullock doesn’t trust them, but Archer does—she’s spent enough time as a human, and with Chakotay, that she thinks they’re sincere. Janeway then orders Seven to disarm the nanoprobe weapons, as a gesture of good faith.
Boothby is willing to show Voyager’s crew around the simulation and also convince their fellow 8472s to not go through with any kind of military action against the Federation in exchange for getting to see the specs of the nanoprobe weapons.
Eventually, Voyager goes on their way. Boothby promises to speak on their behalf, and also gives Janeway a simulated rose. Chakotay and Archer exchange another kiss.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Seven has improved her nanoprobes to make them better, faster, stronger.
There’s coffee in that nebula! When Janeway was a cadet, Boothby used to bring her fresh roses for her quarters.
Forever an ensign. Kim expresses serious concerns about Chakotay’s date with Archer, given that his own first encounter with 8472 led to his being infected with a brutal virus, and he was only saved from a painful, awful death by Seven’s nanoprobes.
Resistance is futile. Seven is quite sure that diplomacy will never work with 8472. Meanwhile, 8472 is convinced that Seven is a Borg delegate on Voyager and that they’re still working together. They’re both wrong, as diplomacy does work, and Seven, of course, really is independent of the Collective now.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH points out to Seven that diplomacy did work with the Borg, up to a point, at least, so it might work with 8472.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Archer and Chakotay suck face on two separate occasions, though they only really mean it the second time, as both of them were full of shit the first time they smooched.
Do it.
“There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves.”
–George Bernard Shaw in Back to Methuselah, quoted by Chakotay.
Welcome aboard. The great Ray Walston reprises his role as Boothby after a fashion by playing the 8472 disguised as him. He played the real Boothby in TNG’s “The First Duty,” and will return to play an image of Boothby in “The Fight.”
Tucker Smallwood plays the 8472 disguised as Admiral Bullock. He’ll return on Enterprise in the recurring role of the Xindi-Primate councillor in that show’s third season.
And we’ve got two Robert Knepper moments! I totally forgot that former Gremlins star Zach Galligan and future Battlestar Galactica star Kate Vernon were both in this as the 8472s disguised as, respectively, Ensign David Gentry and Commander Valerie Archer.
Trivial matters: Boothby is the only 8472 who is disguised as a character we know has a real-world analogue. He was established as the groundskeeper at Starfleet Academy in TNG’s “Samaritan Snare” (and described by Picard as the wisest person he’d ever known), and mentioned in TNG’s “Final Mission” and “The Game” before finally being seen in TNG’s “The First Duty.”
Voyager’s alliance with the Borg against 8472 occurred in the “Scorpion” two-parter.
8472’s simulation of Starfleet HQ has everyone wearing the TNG-era uniforms that pre-date First Contact and DS9’s “Rapture.” They also show some Ferengi in Starfleet uniforms, which is odd, as the first Ferengi in Starfleet was Nog, who by this point in the timeline had gotten a field promotion from cadet to ensign.
Writer Nick Sagan, the son of the great astronomer Carl Sagan, had written two episodes of TNG prior to this (“Attached” and “Bloodlines“), and was brought in as story editor for the fifth season of Voyager. This is the first of five episodes he’s involved in the writing of this season, after which he would leave the show to work for SPACE.com.
Sagan’s original pitch was that Voyager would learn that 8472 had been spying on Earth for millennia, and they were the root of a lot of mythology about demons and monsters. In addition, Sagan was inspired by the Soviet Union’s “sleeper villages” where KGB agents practiced living life like Americans in order to better infiltrate the U.S. (Paris cites those villages in the episode.)
According to an interview on Trek Today, Sagan chose the surname Archer for Kate Vernon’s character as a combined tribute to the characters of David Bowman from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ellie Arroway from Sagan’s father’s Contact. (Bow + Arrow = Archer.) The surname would later be used for the lead character played by Scott Bakula on Enterprise.
The Starfleet Headquarters exterior scenes were filmed at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which has been the outdoor location used for both Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Headquarters in numerous episodes of TNG, DS9, and Enterprise.
Tucker Smallwood was suffering from Bell’s Palsy during the filming of the episode, which explains why Bullock looked so stern the entire time—it was the only expression he could do on both sides of his face.
This is the first mention of Directive 010, dictating that diplomacy should be attempted before any military solution is engaged. This is the first time this has been spelled out as a directive, though it has been a hallmark of Starfleet since the very beginning of the original series. The directive will be mentioned by Cadet Sidhu in the Short Treks episode “Ask Not.”
Janeway and Chakotay discuss Admiral Nimembeh; in Pathways by Jeri Taylor, there was a Commander Nimembeh who was a mentor to Chakotay and also a teacher to Kim.
This is the final appearance of 8472 onscreen. They will also appear in several Trek games, including Elite Force, Star Trek Online, and Armada II.
Voyager is an Intrepid-class ship, so Chakotay saying he transferred from the Intrepid is a minor in-joke.
The EMH says, after scanning Tuvok and Chakotay to make sure they aren’t 8472 in disguise, “two down, 125 to go!” This implies that the crew complement is now 128—the 127 he needs to scan, plus the EMH himself. They left the Ocampa homeworld with 155 people, based on dialogue in “The 37’s,” and the two who departed (Seska, Kes) have been replaced (Seven, Naomi Wildman). There are nineteen established deaths, which would bring the ship’s complement down to 136, but it’s unknown how many died during the hostilities between Voyager and the Hirogen in “The Killing Game, Part II“—this episode now indicates that eight people died in that conflict.
Set a course for home. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to date an alien.” This is one of those episodes that I enjoy in the moment but which drives me crazy once it’s over and I think about it for more than a second and a half.
It’s always a joy to see Ray Walston, of course. After three years of buildup, TNG absolutely nailed it by casting the great Walston in the role, and one of the reasons why this episode works at all is because of Walston’s sardonic charm.
Also every scene between Robert Beltran and Kate Vernon sparkles. As ever, Beltran can bring it when given decent material, and he and Vernon also have an easy chemistry that is fun to watch.
And the solution is so very Star Trek. Directive 010 is there for good reason, after all, and it’s the heart of what Trek has always been all about: compassion over violence, mercy over cruelty, talking over shooting. The day isn’t won because Voyager has nanoprobe weapons, it’s won because people sit down across from each other at a table and talk in good faith.
But man, does the episode not actually make any sense. Where did 8472 learn so much about Starfleet? If they got it from the Borg, why aren’t the uniforms up to date? (The Borg’s latest intelligence on the Alpha Quadrant would come from the events of First Contact.) If they got it from Voyager, why don’t they realize that Voyager is trapped tens of thousands of light-years from home, with only one brief direct contact with the Alpha Quadrant? It’s detailed enough to have the complete works of George Bernard Shaw on Archer’s shelf and to re-create entire locations and food and drink and such, but not enough to tell them that Voyager’s been missing from home for four years?
And holy crap, this does more than even “Hope and Fear” did to make Janeway’s decision in the “Scorpion” two-parter to ally with the Borg incredibly awful. Not only weren’t 8472 the aggressors, they aren’t even the warlike species everyone assumed them to be, based on the ones who invaded our galaxy after the Borg tried to penetrate fluidic space. Sure, they said they wanted to exterminate all life in the galaxy, but they were also pissed off at the cyborgs who came and invaded them from another realm. And as with “Hope and Fear,” I wish there had been some manner of regret or recrimination or something. Allying with the Borg has not proven to be particularly efficacious, and may well have done more harm than good. Certainly, Arturis would say so…
This episode’s heart is in the right place; if only its brain had taken up residence there as well.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido wrote a short story for the forthcoming charity anthology Turning the Tied, which features stories about existing characters in the public domain by some of the best tie-in writers in the business, including fellow Trek scribes Greg Cox, Robert Greenberger, Jeff Mariotte, David McIntee, Robert Vardeman, Aaron Rosenberg, Scott Pearson, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Derek Tyler Attico, and Rigel Ailur. Keith’s story is about Ayesha, the title character in She by H. Rider Haggard. You can preorder the book now from Amazon.
Another Trivial Matters entry: I featured Species 8472 and “Boothby” heavily in Places of Exile in Star Trek: Myriad Universes — Infinity’s Prism. The story takes place in an alternate timeline, but since 8472 hail from another universe entirely, I had the “Boothby” in PoE be the same one who was aboard Voyager in this episode (making PoE the only Myriad Universes installment in which the characters become aware of the Prime Universe). I had “Boothby” dub his species the Groundskeepers, as an homage to the real Boothby’s role.
As you can guess from the above, I quite liked this episode and welcomed the chance to follow up on it. It’s quite a revisionist take on 8472, but a very Trekkish one, so I approve, even if it does make them somewhat less alien.
I don’t recall if Places of Exile answers any of the logic questions Keith raised. I always figured 8472 spied on Earth directly, but only from a distance, which was why they were still preparing for direct infiltration. So they were able to get the broad strokes, but not details about things like Voyager‘s mission and status.
In addition to appearing in the Star Trek Online game (which I’ve never played), Species 8472 and their ability to disguise themselves as other species play a prominent role in the Star Trek Online tie-in novel “The Needs of the Many” by Michael A. Martin (and “Jake Sisko”). I have read that novel and while it’s got some interesting flourishes, it’s an alternate timeline that I’d rather not have the main Star Trek universe follow.
I really agree with your assessment. When I saw this was the next episode, I considered skipping it because I remembered the premise as being completely inane. Then I was really enjoying myself while actually watching it. It makes no sense, but I like the idea that Voyager essentially had a very poor first contact with 8472 and now they’re trying to repair it.
I wish they had given 8472 an actual name as a species here though. I like “Species 8472” in the context of Scorpion, but it’s getting on my nerves a bit now. Voyager had a chance to talk to 8472 and didn’t ask if they have a name for their species?
Yes, a very true “Star Trek” kind of tale but as Krad mentions, doesn’t hold up very well to scrutiny. How did Voyager so randomly come upon this one lone Species 8472 space station after the ship was propelled 10,000 light years by Kes and all of its other twists and turns in its voyage home. Space is surely a small little neighborhood indeed. And why does the Federation = Earth/humans. Last I checked, the organization is a union of many member worlds/species. Okay, I can understand how the simulation takes place on Earth because that’s where Federation headquarters exists, but why is Species 8472 so focused on humans as the particularly threatening race?
I had never seen Zach Galligan in anything other than the Gremlin movies so when I saw him here I had a “that guy!” moment. And I never realized Kate Vernon was the same actress that later showed up in her prominent role on BSG.
It would have been pretty funny to have at the end Chakotay kiss the Species 8472 “lady” in her natural form, you know, accepting her for who she truly is appearances and all.
.”Single malt. Aged 200 years.” Boothby really must be an alien if he’s crowing about a whiskey aged 200 years. Whiskey has a diminishing return for aging in the cask and it doesn’t age at all in the bottle. You really don’t see whiskeys aged past 25 years. 40 is probably the most I’ve seen.
@3/Fry08: “Voyager had a chance to talk to 8472 and didn’t ask if they have a name for their species?”
They have no mouths, no phonetic speech. Whatever they call themselves, it wouldn’t be pronounceable to us. That’s why I called them the Groundskeepers in Places of Exile (as an approximate analogy for their role in the ecosystem of fluidic space), and why Star Trek Online calls them the Undine after a mythical water elemental.
Although Star Trek has ignored that logic before. “They call themselves the Horta.” How? They only make stony grating sounds.
“If they got it from the Borg, why aren’t the uniforms up to date? (The Borg’s latest intelligence on the Alpha Quadrant would come from the events of First Contact.) “
This is also a bit of an anomaly the characters should have picked up on, because the Doctor saw the new uniforms while on the Prometheus and Admiral Hayes was wearing one in his message to Voyager. The present day Borg in FC never actually saw the uniforms– the “resistance sucks, get assimilated” speech is delivered over audio and there’s no visual contact as far as we know. The Borg saw them once they were in the past, but those drones never got to deliver an update. So the Borg with their outdated warbrode info remain the best guess. And presumably at some point the Borg picked up a copy of the magical Starfleet database that every ship seems to have access to, but it was before Voyager vanished, hence 8472’s access to George Bernard Shaw but lack of awareness of Voyager’s current status. You’d think Janeway would ask about this, though, given her own curiosity on the subject. Least 8472 could do is spill the beans when they’re getting the schematics to the only weapons that work on them.
@5
“Single malt. Aged 200 years.” Boothby really must be an alien if he’s crowing about a whiskey aged 200 years. Whiskey has a diminishing return for aging in the cask and it doesn’t age at all in the bottle. You really don’t see whiskeys aged past 25 years. 40 is probably the most I’ve seen.”
And presumably it’s not really “aged” 200 years in the first place but just something else that’s part of the simulation. I kind of like this “not quite right” touch though, they don’t really know what they’re doing. The alternate timeline where they actually try to go through with this insane plan is kind of farcical. First, they all show up in the wrong uniforms and have to explain themselves. Secondly, Starfleet has records of everybody who works for them, so they can’t just show up claiming to be Lieutenant Smith and count on nobody realizing that there is no Lieutenant Smith. Therefore the plan really has to be to replace currently existing Starfleet officers, which means evading detection when pretending to be someone else, when the entire fleet is already on high alert for changelings. Good luck with that.
@6 – It looked like they had mouths and phonetic speech to me! Besides, the magical UT should be able to translate their name into approximate English.
Anybody else wonder where the extra mass came from when the dead alien reverted back to Species 8472. Or where it went when they transformed into humans for that matter…
Youngish Ellen Tigh!
@8/Austin: “It looked like they had mouths and phonetic speech to me!”
Come on — I obviously meant in their true, native form, since the question is what their name for themselves is.
“Besides, the magical UT should be able to translate their name into approximate English.”
Which is what “Groundskeepers” basically was in Places of Exile, so obviously I’m familiar with that principle. I’m just saying that there’s no reason to expect them to have an “alien” name like Horta or Klingon or the like — the only realistic possibilities are an English translation of their concept for themselves, like Groundskeeper, or a nickname based on another culture’s concepts, like Undine or Species 8472. My point is that there’s no way to get a more “native” name for them than we’ve already gotten.
Speaking of Kate Vernon, Battlestar Galactica and Ellen Tigh… Any chance we can look forward to a BSG rewatch somewhere in the future?
Just thought I’d ask… Maybe plant a seed somewhere…
One thing that struck me was if 8472 was going to invade the Alpha Quadrant, I would think they had a way to get there… and more quickly than it’s taking Voyager. So why wouldn’t they exchange that information? Gets Voyager out of their space and definitely not in a position for them to invade.
If the AQ is “close enough”, in 8472’s estimation, to invade and be a serious threat… then they had to have had a plan.
It was also fun to see Chakotay with a brunette for once!
This was an extremely Star Trek episode. I’m not sure I agree with it entirely. The concept of the Undine a species that was the only one in their dimension who were highly xenophobic and wanted to sterilize our galaxy was compelling as a villain, substantially alien and couldn’t be bargained with. A species that represented an unstoppable force that couldn’t be bargained with to the Borg. A near force of nature of such danger that the Federation has to ally with the Borg just so everyone can survive. A “devil you know” deal. Making it a big misunderstanding between 8472 and Voyager….I don’t know, it never sat right with me. I like the turn that they turned from thinking the Borg were the threat to thinking The Federation was the threat, that’s a nice little bit of unintended consequences, but it kind of weakens the mystique of 8472.
But despite that, it’s a very enjoyable well performed episode.
I think the saddest thing about this episode however is that we didn’t actually learn very much about Species 8472 themselves. It addressed the conflict with them, but we still didn’t get any glimpses of their culture.
@12/TA: Fluidic space is a whole other universe, so distance probably doesn’t correspond to anything in our universe. The interdimensional vortices or whatever that they use to cross between universes could probably open pretty much anywhere in our space. However, Voyager would have to travel through fluidic space to get home that way — and Species 8472 is extremely defensive about invasion/”contamination” of their space. They only just managed to convince them that they didn’t want to invade their universe after all, so suddenly saying “Oh, by the way, can you invite us into your universe to get us home?” would not be a good way to preserve that very tenuous trust.
This is one I actually like less on rewatch than I did on first watch. Everything KRAD says about where they got this knowledge from makes perfect sense- I would have much preferred to see them go more in the direction of “Living Witness,” with them having gotten some details very obviously wrong, instead everything seems to be a more-or-less accurate replication of Starfleet Academy and human(oid) culture writ large. It also really, REALLY puts Janeway in a bad light, as it shows that her gamble with the Borg was exactly as stupid and reckless and nearly everyone else thought it was, and she seems to have ZERO response to that. I know Voyager was bad at continuity, but this is an episode that is all about continuity, so they really have no excuse not to address just how very wrong she was way back in Scorpion. I love the message that you should exhaust all diplomatic options first- but it rings a bit hollow when god knows how many systems in the Delta Quadrant are decimated by the Borg because Janeway decided to make a halfcocked decision and doesn’t really seem to regret it or think she did anything wrong.
“‘Your galaxy will be purged.’ Sound familiar?”
In 1997, The Completely Useless Star Trek Encyclopedia (a book with a very niche audience of which I happened to be one of the few) commented on the fact that every Star Trek villain ends up friends with the Federation sooner or later and concluded “Who needs to see Janeway fretting about that nasty, Borg-beating new alien race anyway, when in a few years’ time she’ll be lying in bed next to one of them and a few long-dead red-shirts won’t matter a jot.” That’s pretty much what we get here.
Some people would say that’s the point of Star Trek: That aliens are no different from us, that our enemies are as afraid of us as we are of them, that anything can be overcome if people sit down and talk about it. And that’s a good philosophy to live by. But this is frickin’ Species 8472, the people who can blow up Borg cubes and planets without any effort, who were pretty much unkillable when the Hirogen tried to take them on, and they’re scared of Voyager? Arguably, “Prey” did a better job of making 8472 sympathetic by presenting us with a wounded one who just wanted to go home. This one literally makes them human and handwaves away their attempt to destroy all life in the galaxy as “self-defence”, with the unfortunate effect of suggesting that things could have been solved back in “Scorpion” if Janeway had simply rung them up and said “Let’s be friends and can we nip through your corridor across Borg space?” One of the most alien and unknowable species in Star Trek history gets turned into three actors without make-up acting like regular people.
(Frankly, it’s significant that Star Trek Online retconned this lot as one small faction of 8472 and had the rest of them attack the Federation anyway.)
Chakotay is obviously really starved of female company: Let’s face it, the poor guy can’t even remember his last romantic encounter (“Unforgettable”). Actually, he seems to have forgotten quite a bit. It’s plausible that Tuvok, who went to Starfleet Academy a lot more than 54 years ago, wouldn’t know Boothby, but why does Chakotay act as though he doesn’t know him? (Especially when “The Fight” establishes they knew each other quite well!) He claims to have resigned from Starfleet in 2368, which was two years before the Demilitarised Zone was established and the Maquis formed. Janeway seems to have caught it too, claiming to have had no contact with Starfleet in four years and that no-one on Earth knows about Species 8472, even though the Doctor was debriefed by Starfleet in “Message in a Bottle”, after their first encounter.
Some sources claim Valerie Archer, Bullock et al are real people impersonated by 8472: Okay, we know Boothby’s real, but if everyone there’s a real person then Starfleet must have had an influx of Ferengi recruits. First appearance of Seven’s two-tone blue catsuit. (Apparently, until she was handed that, Jeri Ryan was under the impression that the suit was somehow Seven’s skin.) Continuing the attempt to make Seven seem as important in-universe as she was becoming out, she’s present for the negotiations with 8472 even though the presence of an ex-Borg was only going to be provocative. Torres only appears in the senior staff meeting with one line. Neelix doesn’t fare much better, only appearing briefly in the closing sequence.
QuesoGuapo: The Star Trek Online post-Nemesis timeline (which, like the novels’ post-Nemesis timeline and the comics’ post-Nemesis timeline, has been superseded by Picard) was specifically designed for game play, not for storytelling. While the needs of both do sometimes overlap, they don’t entirely…………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@16/cap-mjb: “(Frankly, it’s significant that Star Trek Online retconned this lot as one small faction of 8472 and had the rest of them attack the Federation anyway.)”
I don’t find that significant, just predictable. STO is a fighting game, so their worldbuilding and storytelling choices favor conflict. They do that with many Trek species, so there’s no specific significance to them doing it here too.
It’s not that hard to believe that a species whose first contact with our universe was with the Borg would see us as an intractable threat and would respond accordingly. And it’s not uncommon for a nation under attack to have its policy dominated by its hawks and hardliners in response. After Pearl Harbor or 9/11, any talk of peacemaking and diplomacy became quite unpopular. So yeah, it’s a retcon, but it’s not that unbelievable a retcon.
I definitely feel as Krad does on this one. I like it while I’m watching it, but reading a review highlights all the ways it doesn’t work. Like, inside the maze it’s a fun time but once you see it from above it looks like a kid’s placemat at a cheap restaurant.
I’m just now realizing that I think there’s an oversight, of sorts, on the crew count. If “The 37s” establishes that Voyager left the Ocampa homeworld with 155 people on board, then at that point in the continuity the Doctor wasn’t counted as a person. He was a holographic replacement for the medical staff but no one considered him sentient yet. So really, Voyager has essentially added 3 new crewmembers in Seven, Naomi, and the Doctor. If there are 128 on board now, with the Doc now counting as a legitimate member of the crew, then that says to me that 30 people have died for a total attrition of 27, rather than 29 deaths/discorporate ascensions.
“Some sources claim Valerie Archer, Bullock et al are real people impersonated by 8472: Okay, we know Boothby’s real, but if everyone there’s a real person then Starfleet must have had an influx of Ferengi recruits. “
This isn’t spelled out in the episode itself, but it’s the only logical explanation. Here in the real world, as of World War 2, it was still vaguely possible to infiltrate an enemy army using a stolen uniform and a convincing story. This concept was already obsolete as of Korea/Vietnam, and completely hopeless today– anybody claiming to be an American soldier would have to show their Common Access Card and if they claimed they lost it the gate guards would look them up, at which point they would quickly discover no “Valerie Archer” actually works for the US Military. Obviously this is even more impossible with the Star Trek level of tech– 8472 can’t just insert a “commander” that doesn’t exist and hope nobody notices. So the plan had to be to replace (and probably exterminate) people that, to the best of 8472’s ability to determine, were real and still alive.
Oh, her. Le grille-pain fatal.
@20: I could think up quite a few logical explanations. To reiterate the point that you ignored, are you really saying those Ferengi extras are real Starfleet officers? You can only get out of a computer what someone else puts in it. No system is foolproof and any sufficiently advanced species could come up with fake ID records. Or use their telepathic abilities to convince the person doing the checks that they’ve passed.
Re the crew complement, I forgot to say earlier that there’s at least two future episodes that retroactively establish crewmembers who were killed before this point…
erictheread: The 155 I listed counts the EMH. Janeway said that there were 152 people on board in “The 37’s.” She would not have counted the EMH at that point, as he was still tethered to sickbay and not really considered part of the crew yet. By this time, Seska had left and Durst had died, which means there were 154 when they left the Ocampa homeworld, plus the EMH. So my count is accurate, so there, nyah nyah. :)
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad
Bah, I thought I had you! Well, that explains why they pay you to do this and not me. I knew I should have looked up the dialogue myself…
@10/ChristopherLBennett:
That’s an interesting thought. Both “Human” and “Terran” essentially mean the same thing: the people of earth. Not Earth the planet, but earth the substance: the term human comes from the same ancient root as the word humus, and terra is Latin for ground or land. If an alien species were describing us, would they use our term for it (Human/Terran) or whatever in their language meant “people of the ground”? (My doctorate isn’t in xenoanthropology, but I’d wager that as ground-based species developed language, a lot of them would describe themselves as “people of the ground.”)
@26- My assumption is that for species with relatively compatible vocal structures, convention in Star Trek at least, is not to translate- thus the Ferengi pronounce Hoo-Mon with a bit of an accent.
On the other hand, there do seem to quite a few species whose names correlate with human mythology…
@25/James: “If an alien species were describing us, would they use our term for it (Human/Terran) or whatever in their language meant “people of the ground”?”
That depends on whether their primary contact with humanity is with speakers of English or other European languages. If they made contact with a Chinese- or Hindi-speaking human civilization, say, then they might translate our name as “thinking being.”
@25 – Which kinda goes to the point I was trying to make earlier. Species 8472 appeared human and spoke as humans. Surely they could come up with an approximate species name for themselves using the etymology of human languages, such as your example of how we came to be called humans.
@28/Austin: Which, again, is basically what I had them do in Places of Exile. And again, my point is that such a translated approximation of their name-concept is the best you could hope for, that it wouldn’t be some made-up “alien” sound like the Krogguma or Dingricitans or whatever.
@29 – Groundskeepers it is then! Just downloaded Myriad Universes #1 to my kindle.
“@20: I could think up quite a few logical explanations. To reiterate the point that you ignored, are you really saying those Ferengi extras are real Starfleet officers? You can only get out of a computer what someone else puts in it. No system is foolproof and any sufficiently advanced species could come up with fake ID records. Or use their telepathic abilities to convince the person doing the checks that they’ve passed.”
I would posit the Ferengi extras are most likely real Starfleet recruits. It’s not the craziest idea– once the precedent is set, other Ferengi might think about joining up with Starfleet too. There is a war on, and some Ferengi presumably see it as a worthwhile effort to protect the quadrant from the Dominion, or just want an opportunity outside the Ferengi Alliance. Joining Starfleet would be one way to do that.
And, sure, you can make any plan work if you posit that the enemy has the Jedi Mind Trick and magic computer hacking. I’m willing to posit that 8472 can make a convincing uniform, fake combadge, and whatever other kit a Starfleet officer would have. But they’ve never been shown to be superhackers, and even if they could insert arbitrary data into the Starfleet database, creating an entire fake history for a fake officer would be incredibly difficult– you have to say they did SOMETHING, and of course nobody is going to remember serving with them. And this is a fleet that’s already aware of the possibility of changelings and checking twice for any sort of these shenanigans.
Since we know for a fact that they can and did replicate a facsimile of an actual person, as they did with Boothby, I still think the simplest explanation is the most likely: Rather than go through the insanely difficult task of inserting fake people, they’re trying to do the much easier (but still hard!) task of replacing real ones with duplicates. As always, of course, anything’s possible.
Austin: I loudly recommend all three Myriad Universes books, and not just because I wrote one of the nine short novels in question. They’re some really powerful looks at roads not taken.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@32 – Definitely going to get them. Not sure how I missed these.
Maybe in the simulation they mostly don’t play as the identities of existing real humans (or Ferengi) but they might do when they get to the Alpha Quadrant – but apparently you can’t pass as a Starfleet Academy graduate if you don’t know Boothby. Maybe they have other plans for the Ferengi… probably to infiltrate Quark’s bar, which seems to be the business office for the whole Alpha Quadrant as well as the wormhole traffic.
I assume that the Voyagers do not at any time in or before this story believe that the real Academy has been teleported to the Delta Quadrant, with or without the staff and students being aware of it. They know it is a fake and somebody is up to no good. Some comments here seemed to incline otherwise. Q could and would do it, as I always say, so let’s forget that Q exists for the time being.
You do get extremely old whisky, but if it’s transferred from cask to bottle after 12 years then it remains “12 year old” after that, officially forever but there must be limits. So if it’s good then it was good at that point in time, and if you keep it longer, it’s because it’s really good and you are saving it for a special occasion… I don’t know if 200 year old bottles are around, I don’t have one, but after all Star Trek is in the future so my dish soap would be vintage by then. The Memory Alpha web site says Trelane passed out brandy to Captain Kirk’s crew and it wasn’t much better.
Yes Ray Walston was great but am I the only one who was excited to see Tucker Smallwood. Tucker has had many great roles but I first noticed him on Space: Above and Beyond. Him and James Morrison had a memorable episode featuring the Space Marines fighting an alien Red Barron.
@35
I remember that! Chiggy von Richtofen, right?
@31: Such a tactic isn’t exactly unprecedented: Sisko and co infiltrated the Klingon ceremony in “Apocalypse Rising” with fake identities, and MacDuff managed to convince everyone he was first officer of the Enterprise in “Conundrum”, although those were just for short-term ploys. Still, it’s arguably easier to claim that you’re an officer who’s been out on the fringes of Federation territory for the last few years than to pretend to be the same person that everyone met yesterday. If a new admiral turns up and seems to have the right credentials, and presumably passes that blood test that Starfleet still think is reliable, then they’re perhaps not going to ring round looking for someone to vouch for them. Perhaps Boothby is too well-known a figure for them to come up with a substitute! But as you say, anything’s possible.
@34: “I assume that the Voyagers do not at any time in or before this story believe that the real Academy has been teleported to the Delta Quadrant, with or without the staff and students being aware of it.”
At the start of the episode, only Chakotay and Tuvok know the simulation exists: They tell Paris and Kim what they found when they beam back. By then, Chakotay’s had that conversation with Archer in which it was clear they weren’t real Starfleet officers and seen one start to revert to his natural form. So if they did consider that as a possibility, I guess they dismissed it pretty quickly!
Quoth Robert Carnegie: “I assume that the Voyagers do not at any time in or before this story believe that the real Academy has been teleported to the Delta Quadrant.”
Before the story, all they knew was that they picked up a Starfleet signal, and Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris, and Kim buggered off in the Delta Flyer to investigate. Chakotay and Tuvok then did recon, which is when they learned what it was.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Are we getting the next episode article today?
I was late getting my piece on “Once Upon a Time” in. It’ll either go up Tuesday or we’ll just bag it for the start of the week and have it on Thursday.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Okay, “Once Upon a Time” is scheduled for 1pm today. Sorry about that, folks!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, tardy
In the Flesh is classic Trek. Characters making a real effort to make amends and forge a better relationship with other beings. It’s also a nice step up from Sagan’s last effort, TNG’s subpar Bloodlines.
I like it that the episode ends on a good note, and that they defuse tensions between them and Species 8472. Plus, it’s great to have Boothby (or at least this version of the character) for a full hour. Spending time on the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant is always a great use of location shooting. It was great back on TNG’s Justice, and it remains so, over a decade later. And it gives a nice romantic plot between Chakotay and Archer.
It still has its flaws, though. As evidenced by the sheer size of the recap, the episode spends way too much time early on with this cloak and dagger narrative approach. While it’s a somewhat novel approach, it also drags the rest of the episode down a notch. I think they could have addressed the meat of the story earlier on. And it almost feels like we’ve missed a step of this story. I would have liked to see more of how Species 8472 got to learn about the Federation.
Also, nice job bringing up Kate Vernon into the discussion. I watched this before Moore’s Battlestar Galactica remake. I would never have realized she was also Valerie Archer if you hadn’t brought it up, since I only took notice of her as an actress after enduring enough nauseating scenes of Ellen Tigh (which is a credit to her performance; I despised the character).
I am sure I read somewhere that 8472 were dropped as a recurring enemy because the CGI to make them realistic was too costly to be used on an ongoing basis?
My favorite cameo by the Gremlins dude is in Warlock: The Armageddon, where he’s the guy who the Warlock kills and steals his suit.
The inconsistencies in this episode don’t bother me too much because it’s such a creative way of personalizing Species 8472 that couldn’t quite be done with their CGI forms. The one inconsistency that does bug me though, is Archer’s Vulcan hand salute. This is the first and only time that I’m aware of that the salute has been made with the thumb tucked in. I suppose it’s possible that it was done intentionally as a result of Species 8472’s incomplete data about Federation cultures. Something tells me the Borg don’t have a file on the proper way to do the Vulcan hand salute. Although I guess they could and this was a mistake that was missed by the production team along with some of the other aforementioned inconsistencies.
I just got here in my belated rewatch, and I wanted to remark how much I appreciated that Janeway gets everyone all fired up and fully armed, ensures they “take a good look”, just so she can take it all down as a step toward peace. I choose to believe she was setting that up from the start (though also prepared to fight if it came to it).
She is so gung ho for so much of the episode, it was frustrating me, but I think she was hoping it would work out this way. At some level.
Also, I loved the line about the shuttle not having been reinforced properly for Harry’s level of pacing.
But yeah they should have gotten more things about Earth slightly wrong.
And here I am trying to figure out the UX of the holloimager. It looks like there’s a waxing moon during full daylight. And also why it doesn’t seem to produce holographic images. It has two sensors, so you’d think that’s to render a three-dimensional view. Perhaps it does for future hollodeck projections. I’m sure there are already multiple articles and tech sheets written on this. So I should probably shut up and search memory alpha.
I’m with those folks who think that once 8472 got to the alpha quadrant, they would do further reconnaissance, extract DNA from actual people, and then choose their forms — having already practiced the ability to maintain human forms in general.
I dug the alien kiss because I had to think how fascinating that would be, psychosexually. You’re turned on, but you know that’s not what you’re kissin’.
I don’t drink anymore, and I’ve never had blood wine, but a Klingon martini sounds terrible. Seems the gin would be overpowered, tho maybe just a rinse. Still. Bad idea. Maybe it’s another alien invention.
As to the Ferenghi. I thought it was cool that we saw another one in Star Fleet uniform. And I can see why, as a contingency, 8742 would want someone to practice as a Ferenghi in case the need should arise.
Also, since I don’t want to go back to work, is this the third time an alien species has tried to infiltrate Star Fleet through possession or replacement? And it’ll happen again in Picard.
Ok. Back to work.