“Resolutions”
Written by Jeri Taylor
Directed by Alexander Singer
Season 2, Episode 25
Production episode 141
Original air date: May 13, 1996
Stardate: 49690.1
Captain’s log. We open on a planet where Janeway and Chakotay are in two stasis pods. They’re awakened and are immediately contacted by the EMH. We soon learn that the two were bitten by insects that gave them a virus, and a month of research by the doctor has turned up bupkus.
The planet they’re on—which is presumably where the bug came from—has stuff in the atmosphere that suppresses the virus, but that’s the only place they’re safe. Tuvok beams down a shuttle filled with various bits of equipment—shelters, replicators, supplies, and also a lab so Janeway can continue to work on a cure—and then Janeway leaves him in permanent command of Voyager and orders him to continue on course for the Alpha Quadrant.
The EMH raises the notion of approaching the Vidiians, but Janeway and Chakotay both reject it, as the Vidiians have proven too hostile, and it’s not worth risking the ship to save the two of them. Janeway directly orders Tuvok not to contact the Vidiians.
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Once Voyager is at the periphery of communication range, Janeway gives a benediction to the crew that focuses on the positives (fun times they’ve had, adventures on the holodeck, and such) rather than the negatives (being stuck 70,000 light-years from home, the seven crewmembers who’ve died), and then they go off.
Janeway devotes every waking moment to studying the virus trying to find a cure. Chakotay, meanwhile, keeps himself busy with various exploration and construction projects, including putting together a bath for Janeway to use, as she loves baths. He also creates artwork for the shelter. Meanwhile, Janeway captures various insects hoping to find one of the same type that bit them.
Morale on Voyager is pretty much in the toilet. Kim, Paris, Torres, and Neelix are particularly upset about having to leave Janeway and Chakotay behind, and they’re also frustrated by Tuvok’s not being upset, having apparently forgotten that he’s Vulcan.
The crew’s performance is awful—Torres has to upbraid Ensign Swinn for a badly written report. Kim talks to the various Starfleet crew, and Torres likewise to the Maquis crew, and they all agree that the situation sucks. But Torres doesn’t see what can be done about it.
A brutal plasma storm that the tricorders don’t pick up on destroys most of Janeway’s research. She’s forced to accept that they’re going to be stuck there for a very long time. She also tries to make friends with a primate, whom she thinks may have tried to warn her about the storm.
Six weeks after they left Janeway and Chakotay behind, Kim detects a Vidiian convoy nearby. Tuvok tells Paris to avoid them. Kim wants to contact them—yes, they were ordered not to seek them out, but they’re right there. Tuvok refuses and Kim has a complete meltdown on the bridge, forcing Tuvok to relieve him of duty.
Kim gets support from Hogan and Swinn in the mess hall, as he’s expressing how they all feel. With Torres and Neelix, they come up with a proposal for Tuvok, which Kim gives to the captain that night. They can specifically approach Dr. Pel, who is actually friendly to the Voyager crew, who owes the EMH her life, and also make an offer of some of Torres’s part-Klingon DNA to help combat the Phage.
Tuvok still refuses and when Kim pushes further, Tuvok threatens to throw him in the brig. However, Kes then goes to Tuvok and makes a much more mature, dispassionate, and logical plea to him. Just because he can’t feel emotions doesn’t mean he should ignore the feelings of the people under him.
Then Tuvok goes to the bridge and orders Kim to contact the Vidiians. They speak to Pel, who immediately recognizes the virus in question and she has an antidote that she’d be happy to share. They set a rendezvous.
Chakotay talks about extending the shelter using wood from the forest—an actual log cabin. He also massages Janeway’s sore neck, which leads to A Big Moment of Awkwardness, which ends with her going to bed and saying goodnight formally.
The next day, he tells a story that he claims is from his people about a proud male warrior who is invited by a female warrior to join her tribe and to put her needs first. Unlike all the other bullshit Indigenous nonsense Chakotay has spouted over the past two seasons, this one really is bullshit, and Chakotay admits to it, just saying it was easier to say. They then hold hands and stare at each other meaningfully.
Voyager meets up with the Vidiians, but it’s an ambush. In the midst of the firefight, Pel secretly contacts the EMH. She had no idea they were going to attack, and she wants to get the antidote to Voyager. But they can’t beam it over while the shields are up. The EMH contacts the bridge to inform Tuvok, and he executes a very nifty plan whereby they drop the shields long enough for transport, Torres ejects a bottle of antimatter, which Kim detonates with a torpedo. The Vidiians are badly damaged, and Voyager heads back to the planet.
Six weeks later, as Janeway and Chakotay are admiring the garden they’ve started, they hear something from the combadges, which are in the shelter, long abandoned. It’s Tuvok, saying they’re coming to get them with a cure.
They leave the shelter for the primate and beam back. Tuvok accepts full responsibility for disobeying orders, which Janeway forgives him for. Janeway and Chakotay go right back to being captain and first officer.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is determined to find a cure, and never focuses on, well, anything else until after the storm destroys her research. She tries and fails to make friends with a primate. She also hated going camping as a kid, and generally finds roughing it to be icky.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok does quite well in command. He is initially baffled by the emotionalism of the crew, but—unlike, say, Spock in “The Galileo Seven“—it doesn’t take much for him to figure out that he needs to see to the crew’s emotional needs, even if he himself doesn’t have any.
He refers to himself as “acting captain” soon after they leave Janeway and Chakotay behind, but six weeks later, he’s referring to himself as “captain,” and the crew is addressing him as such. For some reason, he remains in his gold uniform.
Also his battle strategy against the Vidiians is superb.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH spent a month trying and failing to cure the virus, not shutting his program down at any point.
Pel calls him “Shmullus,” the nickname she gave him in “Lifesigns.”
Half and half. I suspect that early-first-season Torres would be appalled at late-second-season Torres upbraiding Swinn for writing a shitty report.
She is also surprisingly willing to donate DNA to the Vidiians, though to be fair, that dam already got a crack in it in “Lifesigns.” It’s also a sign of how much Torres wants Janeway and Chakotay back.
Forever an ensign. Kim is the most emotionally upset over the situation, being consistently insubordinate to Tuvok and having a meltdown on the bridge. But he does come up with a way to contact the Vidiians, and while he doesn’t sell it to Tuvok (that’s left to Kes, the youngest person on the ship and yet also arguably the most mature), it is his idea.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. When this episode first aired, the woman I was married to at the time said that you could put a match between Janeway and Chakotay in this episode and it would light on its own. We see them holding hands and giving each other significant looks, and then next time we see them it’s six weeks later, and you just know they were fucking like bunnies the whole time…
Do it.
“I’m not certain what it is you expect me to do, Lieutenant.”
“I guess clearly something you can’t do, which is to feel as rotten about this as we do.”
“You are correct that I am unable to experience that emotion. And frankly, I fail to see what the benefit would be.”
–Tuvok being a Vulcan, and Paris doing a spectacular job of not getting that.
Welcome aboard. Susan Diol returns as Pel, following “Lifesigns,” and Bhani Turpin plays Swinn—she was previously part of the gaggle of crew who were trying and failing to cook in the mess hall in “Tuvix.” Simon Billig is also back as Hogan.
Trivial matters: Kim’s argument to Tuvok is that Pel can help them, based on their helping her in “Lifesigns,” and that the Vidiians once kidnapped Torres to make use of her Klingon DNA in “Faces,” and they can bargain with that (especially since it was her DNA that saved Pel’s life). Tuvok counters with the ship full of Vidiians they destroyed in “Deadlock,” which would likely make the Vidiians not want to be nice to them.
The plot of this episode covers sixteen weeks, twelve of which are seen onscreen: four weeks prior to the start of the episode, during which the EMH was trying and failing to find a cure, then six weeks of Voyager heading away from the world before encountering the Vidiians, then six weeks back to fetch the captain and first officer.
For the three months that Janeway and Chakotay are in exile, the working crew complement of Voyager is down to 143. It is not made at all clear who Tuvok’s first officer is, even though he would definitely need one.
Set a course for home. “It has been an honor serving with you—live long and prosper.” For those of you who think that the notion of fans loudly and passionately discussing their favorite shows among fellow viewers, and in particular the notion of “shipping”—to wit, wishing two people would wind up in a relationship—are new to the 21st century, allow me to disabuse you of this idea.
In the mid-1990s, we may not have had the Internet as we know it today, but we did have online forums—GEnie, CompuServe, America Online, Usenet—and folks discussed their passions just as much then via their slow dial-up connections as they do now on the world wide web using their wifi.
And there was a vocal subset of Voyager fans who wanted to see Janeway and Chakotay get together. It is to Jeri Taylor’s credit that she found a way to fulfill that wish by creating a situation that allowed that possibility to play out while still being true to the dictates of Rick Berman and UPN to keep the show standalone—and also to avoid having to deal with such a difficult relationship on the ship itself.
She strands them on a planet for three months thinking they’ll be stuck there forever. I thought it was a nifty idea twenty-five years ago, and watching it again now, I realize something that didn’t really occur to me then: as I said above in the “No sex, please, we’re Starfleet” section they were totally having all the sex for those last six weeks.
Robert Beltran has said in interviews (for the Captains’ Logs: Supplemental unauthorized book back in 1996 and for TrekMovie.com in 2017) that he didn’t think much of the romance, that they just held hands and it was supposed to be thrilling, and that Janeway was more interested in the primate than in Chakotay. And I’m wondering if he was actually paying attention while they were filming. Yes, they hold hands and stare at each other, and then next time we see them it’s six weeks later, and their body language has completely changed. In prior scenes, they’re being respectful of each other’s personal space, and even though their conversations are more casual than they were on Voyager, there’s still a bit of distance. But when we jump ahead to them planting a garden and Chakotay showing her plans for the boat he wants to build, they’re all in each other’s personal space, they’re both smiling a lot more, and they’re just more relaxed around each other.
I maintain: they were fucking like bunnies for those six weeks.
Kate Mulgrew has also discussed the episode in interviews, and in one in Cinefantastique she talked about how disappointed she was that the events of “Resolutions” were never followed up on. While I don’t blame her for being disappointed, Voyager was what it was at that point. While this episode did a nice job of building on stuff from the previous encounters with the Vidiians, in general episode-to-episode continuity was avoided like the plague. (Hell, it was actively contradicted at times, from the EMH forgetting in “Tattoo” that he’d felt pain before in “Projections” and in “Lifesigns” that he’d had a romance before in “Heroes and Demons,” and everyone in “Learning Curve” forgetting that Tuvok was part of Chakotay’s Maquis cell for a time.) They were never going to pursue this long-term.
On the one hand, that’s as it should be. The deeper relationship only works when they’re removed from the captain-first officer dynamic. Once they’re back in those positions at the end of the episode, a relationship would be disastrous, and make it much more difficult for either of them to do their jobs.
On the other hand, I really like the way things developed on the planet. Initially, Janeway is completely focused on finding a cure to the exclusion of all else, and she actually criticizes Chakotay for doing so many projects designed for long-term use. This is incredibly self-centered of her for two reasons: 1) it’s perfectly reasonable to at least prepare for being there forever, and 2) Chakotay’s got to have something to do or he’ll go binky-bonkers. He’s of no use in the science stuff, but he knows how to survive in a place like the planet. It takes the storm to make Janeway realized that she needs to think of this place in terms of being home rather than a temporary post while she finds a cure.
I haven’t even gotten to my personal favorite part of the episode, which is Tuvok being incredibly brilliant as captain. True, it takes him a bit of time to come around to the notion of approaching the Vidiians, but he does come around. He remains true to his Vulcan heritage, and unlike a previous case of a person of Vulcan heritage sticking to his logic guns while surrounded by emotional assholes, Tuvok does see both sides of the equation.
And his response to the Vidiian ambush is perfect. He’d been doing battle drills because the Vidiians betraying them was eminently predictable, and he adjusts his plan on the fly when the EMH informs him that Pel still is trying to help them. Throughout, he keeps his cool, implements his battle plan meticulously (“Here is the sequence of events”), and wins the day, getting the antidote in the bargain.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido encourages folks to check out “KRAD COVID readings,” in which he has been doing readings of his various writings, mostly short stories—including the Voyager story “Letting Go” from the Distant Shores anthology. In addition, his reading of a chapter from the Star Trek: Klingon Empire novel A Burning House, originally done for KAG Kon 2020: Home Invasion last weekend, is now available on the channel as well.
I vaguely remember this as “The one where Chakotay and Janeway are stranded on an alien planet and take baths together.” While I appear to have got the details wrong, suffice to say that I’m completely on board with our rewatcher’s assessment of their bunny-like activity during the timeskip.
“It appears to be some type of primate.”
Umm, yeah, it’s a monkey.
This episode has more holes than Swiss cheese. I know this show likes to open up in media res but this was pretty absurd. How did Janeway and Chakotay get bit by a bug? Why only them? What were they doing on the planet? Why did the planet “shield” the effects? What the heck was the point of the monkey?
I’m not interested in military strategy, but I did find it amusing how perfunctory Tuvok’s plan turned out to be. Dropping shields sounds pretty dangerous, but apparently the Vidiians waited politely for them to execute the plan.
Meh, I felt this was forced.
I for one believe in the notion that shipping a potential couple is done well when the show properly establishes that those two characters might have a future together in the first place. You want this phenomenon done right? Look at X-Files. Mulder and Scully had a real partner dynamic that pretty much sold the possibility of it becoming more, right from the beginning, and the writers did a superb job of slowly setting them all up to their logical conclusion.
But Janeway and Chakotay? There was never any indication they could be anything other than Captain and First Officer, or Starfleet and Maquis. The chances of them pairing up were as likely as Sisko and Kira doing so (and that pairing wasn’t even considered on DS9’s Fascination, an episode dedicated entirely to setting up uncomfortable pairings). And it doesn’t help that Beltran doesn’t really share romantic chemistry with Mulgrew.
For two seasons, we’d never gotten any indication it could ever happen. I didn’t see it as a specific attraction between those two characters, but rather the notion that when two platonic people are forced to spend that much time together, sparks will inevitably fly. It could have just as easily been a romantic spark between Janeway and Paris, or Chakotay and Kim, for all intents and purposes. It doesn’t really matter who’s the suitor. It’s the setting that does the job (and poorly, at that; the episode literally goes from a freak storm to him rubbing her back; forced romances work even worse under a 45 minute time limit).
I do appreciate Tuvok’s command style, but I have a serious problem with Kim’s insubordination. He very much suffers from Boma syndrome (from Galileo Seven) and definitely qualifies as an emotional asshole, as Krad put it. If I were Tuvok, I’d put a black mark on Kim’s permanent file, making sure he’d never be promoted again. I like to think that Tuvok did just that, which is why Kim remained an ensign for the remainder of their stay in the Delta Quadrant.
Also, how convenient that Pel just happens to be on the very ship that Voyager encounters. Still, execution fumbling aside, I’m glad this was the final step for the Vidiians to finally overcome the Phage.
From my perspective, both actors continued to infuse their scenes together for the rest of the series with the experience they had together on this planet. I got the sense they had put their romantic/sexual relationship on hold to resume a professional command relationship — probably forever, but ready to rekindle things if circumstances changed again. Which was why it was so jarring and disappointing that the writers tried to create a romance for Chakotay with Seven of Nine.
Quoth Eduardo: “Also, how convenient that Pel just happens to be on the very ship that Voyager encounters.”
She wasn’t. Tuvok contacted the Vidiian convoy that Kim had detected earlier and then they contacted Pel, and then Pel contacted Voyager. The ship Pel was on is the one that rendezvoused with Voyager, but also brought friends for an ambush (without telling Pel).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Not only have I always liked this episode a lot, but when I got the chance to pitch for Voyager and was sent a pitch packet with the series bible, an episode guide, and a sample script, this was the script they sent me. I just checked it, and it says nothing about what Janeway and Chakotay were doing in the gap between Act Four and Act Five, just some vague talk of “acceptance” and a complete lack of formality.
I wish the show had let Janeway retain the lesson about accepting the inevitable and adjusting to a new home. I think Jeri Taylor wanted to do that, because my pitch packet also included a letter from her saying that the third season would set aside the relentless search for home and focus instead on exploring the Delta Quadrant. Indeed, season 3 avoided any “search for home” stories (except “False Profits,” which was one of the four episodes shot at the end of season 2’s production block and held back for season 3) for nearly the entire year, until inexplicably reversing course with “Scorpion” and recommitting to the quest for home as the single overriding arc of the series, and turning Janeway back into someone so obsessive about solving everything that she’d even make a deal with the Borg.
@3/Eduardo: I disagree. I sensed a romantic subtext between Janeway and Chakotay going on pretty much from the start of the series.
Second episode in a row to have two crew members merge. Wa-hey!
This episode is exactly why the romance between Chakotay and Seven didn’t work for me at all. I loved this episode, I shipped Janeway and Chakotay so hard, and I adored the way they acted together throughout the rest of the show. I would have loved to see them together, but I love the easy comradery they had, the casual way they’d link arms on their way to a formal or fun event, the comfortable way he’d call her Katherine and have the right to address her personal issues. It was a great move for them as, not a couple, but true partners.
But I wanted them together. Still do. Seven, Shmeven.
I love this episode. @krad I have to admit I hadn’t actually considered that they were really having an intimate relationship after their talk, but IM HERE FOR IT. I just assumed he basically said he will do whatever she wishes and then I erroneously assumed that what she wanted was to maintain a more professional relationship. I’d love that that isn’t the case. Any novels follow up on that? (With the exception of the relaunch novels which I know go that direction but don’t really talk about that event).
Stray thoughts I had:
1. The monkey was funny because it almost seemed like she thought maybe it could communicate with her.
2. The final scene just broke my heart when they are all back to business on the bridge.
Oh, almost forgot to mention the bathing scene. For a second there, I almost forgot what type of show I was watching. When Janeway suddenly jumped out of the bath tub, I blinked and shook my head and said, “Wait, I’m watching Star Trek right?” I can’t remember how many “sexy” scenes Janeway had, but I think those went to Seven of Nine after she shows up. But, boy, did I have a big crush on Kate Mulgrew back in the day.
I didn’t really get on the Janeway/Chakotay ship, so that was kind meh for me. And this is coming from someone who is a HUGE shipper for pairings in other SFF franchises. We all just have our things, and this isn’t one of mine, maybe because I find Chakotay super boring.
I did like the callback to the early/mid 20th century female-scientist-in-the-field aesthetic with Janeway’s wardrobe, even though those dresses aren’t really as practical as pants.
I loved this episode, but how come Janeway got to give a moving goodbye speech to the crew and Chakotay didn’t get to say anything? Even if he’s just a first officer, come on, the Maquis were his crew. And his ass is now getting stranded in the delta quadrant permanently too. He is losing everything he once knew the same way Janeway is and it may be his last goodbye to anyone they previously knew.
After the Herculean efforts she’s put into being captain and getting the crew home for the entire series, she seems pretty quick to accept that there’s no alternative but leaving them behind on the planet. Seems pretty upbeat about it too. It’s like they just quit a job at a burger place. Suddenly the extreme burden of their 70 year journey home just vanishes, because its not their job anymore. I suppose after having to make decisions like executing Tuvix anyone might be downright happy about quitting the job of captain for a while.
Tuvok’s rejection of Kim’s sophistry is laugh out loud funny. It was a pretty childish argument and it got called out as such.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Janeway and Chakotay started a romantic relationship after the hand-holding moment. I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time that a dramatic hand-hold sufficed as depicting some passionate encounter (a la Worf and Kay’lar). And they did share a look at the end that reminds me of Data and Yar and “it never happened”. But overall I think Janeway would have needed a lot more time to let go of the idea that they will ever leave. I think its good that they never followed up on what happened though, so that we can continue to believe whatever we want happened on that planet.
I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATED this episode. Hated it hated it hated it. I felt it cheapened both of them, as if a woman in position of authority working with a comparable male figure would of course totally have to fall into bed together. Yes, Kate Mulgrew and Robert Beltran were blasting nuclear grade smolderings at each other, I yes, I get that they genuinely are attracted to each other but… would Captain Janeway mentally compartmentalize the idea that they might be rescued, and having a love affair with your first officer is a terrible idea from her desire for companionship and yes, sex? I mean, she’s celibate on the ship (she can’t date any members of her crew) , so how was this any different?
Also! wasn’t there an episode on DS9 where Bashir had a relationship with an officer who needed specific climate controls in her quarters? Why, exactly, did they need to be isolated on the planet? Couldn’t they have replicated the atmospheric conditions that the virus in check in their quarters, or communally in a holodeck or something. It just felt contrived.
and also make an offer of some of Torres’s part-Klingon DNA to help combat the Phage.
Which makes me wonder: What the hell did they do with Torres’s body? The dead Klingon version of her, that is. I thought in Faces they should use it as a bargaining chip to secure release of the remaining prisoners, but they didn’t. But they should have kept it on ice precisely because it’s a great bargaining chip to use with the Vidiians at a later date. If Klingon DNA is that great, then Voyager has a Delta Quadrant monopoly (well, unless you count the Borg) and presumably even the corpse is potentially valuable. It’s a hell of a card to play, but after she dies everybody forgets she ever existed.
As it is, Tuvok has to tell them exactly where Janeway/Chakotay are to find out if they have a cure (“on a planet approximately seventy light years from here, in a system with a yellow dwarf star.”). Since the Vidiians have the cure, then obviously they could just cure them and then harvest them for organs. That was presumably the plan had they successfully raided/destroyed Voyager, I guess.
Oh, Chakotay. Not much characterization, lots of offensive fake-Indian bullshit, doesn’t seem like someone who would ever be a combat ship captain in a rebellion.
But he has one interesting quality, which is that he’s utterly comfortable following a female leader. That goes against American ideas of masculinity that TV upheld strictly. (I mean, look at TOS, but also look at every other TV show of any genre before this).
I thought it was silly to try to make a Chakotay-Seven romance happen at the very end, but it was in character for Chakotay to admire a hyper-competent woman with a commanding personality.
@15
I remember Picard being pretty comfortable with female superior officers. See the episode “Suddenly Human” for starters.
@13 I also was surprised that Chakotay wasn’t given the chance to say goodbye to his crew!
I always thought that the romance was meh, although this episode does show that Robert Beltran isn’t a complete block of wood when the script actually gave him some interesting character work to contend with.
Re-watching it, it strikes me how much this *should* have been a microcosm for the whole series. It would have been interesting to see the first 2 season full of episodes *really* struggling to get home (and not just “aim for the Alpha quadrant and hope for the best”) with each failure being a little bit more demoralizing than the last, and then around season 3 starting to see people accept more and more that getting home wasn’t going to be a realistic goal. Maybe have some people decide to stay on some of the planets they passed, or have people stop wearing their uniforms and loosen up on all the Starfleet protocol (after all, who wants to spend 70 years at work basically 24/7, especially at a job you don’t get paid for and have no real career progression in). It strikes me that the Maquis, in particular, probably shouldn’t be in a huge rush to get home and face life in a penal colony, and it would be interesting if this episode showed some of them getting infected, and choosing to stay even if there is a cure- they are colonists, after all, and the idea must have some appeal to some of them. After a season or two like that, having them presented with the option to get home, you suddenly have to contend with the reality that some people might not jump at the chance to do so, especially as they get closer, learn that the Maquis are dead, and that many family members have passed away, or moved on with their lives.
@18 after all, who wants to spend 70 years at work basically 24/7, especially at a job you don’t get paid for
Does anyone in Starfleet get paid? Isn’t part of the Utopian premise that the Federation has eliminated all material want and therefore the need for money? I’m actually genuinely wondering here because the Federation does engage in trade with other societies and I’ve never understood how the economy functions.
@19 Theoretically, no they don’t get paid. I always wonder how this works for, say, people who are stationed on DS9, or some other place where they interact with non-Federation planets that have a real economy. Do they have some sort of stipend they are given to allow them to spend money at Quark’s Bar? Or does everyone from crewmen on up work some sort of side hustle so they can actually get themselves something non-replicated every once and a while? There must be some kind of system, because in Encounter at Farpoint, Dr. Crushers asks that something be charged to her account on the Enterprise, but the TV shows, at least, never get very specific about how that works.
I think I only saw this episode once, way back when it first aired, and I have no strong impression of it, save for the cute professionally-trained monkey.
It’s enjoyable and passes the time but is possibly a bit inconsequential on final analysis. Voyager isn’t quite as bad as TNG when it comes to anchoring its ships, as the Paris/Torres romance will prove, but this one was never going to happen and the overall feeling is that Jeri Taylor wanted to write a canon Janeway/Chakotay shipper fic, as we see them removed from their normal environment and facing the prospect of building a life alone together. The result is a bittersweet end as they return to the formal world of Voyager with mixed feelings. Janeway seems to have raided Scarlett O’Hara’s wardrobe for most of her sojourn on the planet, although she at least finds a more practical outfit for humping logs.
I must admit that it had never occurred to me that there’s missing sex scenes in this episode, and I’m not entirely convinced by Keith’s interpretation, but bring your own subtext. Neither am I convinced that just because it took Voyager six weeks to get away from the planet, it took them another six weeks to get back: They could have been stopping to chart nebulas and visit planets on the way out (Anyone else want a short story collection on the untold voyages of Captain Tuvok?) and then powering back at warp nine.
Kim being a prick on the bridge while Paris tries to stop him crossing too many lines is an interesting role reversal. (In fact, after his snarking in the staff meeting, Paris is surprisingly muted in this episode.) I’ve heard it suggested that Torres’ dismissal of Kim in engineering marked the end of their potential as a couple, although I’m not sure that was ever a possibility. Interesting that Tuvok listens to Kes but not Kim. And good to see Voyager use some decent tactics in battle rather than just saying “Fire” a lot.
I’m slightly confused by the sequence of events at the end: Janeway and Chakotay get the hail saying Voyager’s on its way back, then we cut to them back in uniform preparing to beam up, then we cut to them being welcomed back to the bridge and warping out of orbit. Did someone beam down with the cure and then leave them alone to pack, or did they pop into sickbay seemingly without seeing any of the senior staff? (What’s more, despite packing everything away, they promptly beam up without it! I hope someone thought to retrieve that shuttle somewhere along the way…)
Last proper appearance of the Vidiians: After this, they’ll only be seen as hallucinations or via time travel. Somewhat surprisingly given he’s third-in-command and more junior officers have done it, I believe this is the first time we see Tuvok in command of the ship. (I must admit I’ve never thought about the lack of first officer: All the likely candidates seem to be doing their usual jobs.) There’s an extra manning tactical so Paris calls out shield status and Kim fires torpedoes.
@19/brightbetween: The idea of a moneyless/post-scarcity economy isn’t that money can’t exist, just that it isn’t essential. You can lead a perfectly healthy and comfortable life without it. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used on an optional basis, as a specialty item to be collected and traded like how hobbyists collect baseball cards or stamps or fantasy football players. It would be peripheral to the economy rather than central to it. And a stipend of it would presumably be made available to Starfleet officers for purposes of trade with cultures outside the Federation that still did have monetary economies.
Yeah, like the transporter, the economics of the future are probably best not examined too closely. The point Star Trek is trying to make, I think, is that they are no longer about the pursuit of money, things and holding power over others. A nice message. A simple message. And that’s fine. The audience doesn’t need a degree in economics to get it.
@4 From my perspective, both actors continued to infuse their scenes together for the rest of the series with the experience they had together on this planet. I got the sense they had put their romantic/sexual relationship on hold to resume a professional command relationship — probably forever, but ready to rekindle things if circumstances changed again.
This is exactly how I felt it as well. I’m watching ahead (first time watcher) and I just watched the season 3 episode “Coda” the other day. Their scenes in the shuttle in that episode have exactly that feeling on them: of people that are at the same time attracted to each other and would become more than friends and colleagues, but also comfortable with the current situation.
I like the relationship between Janeway and Chakotay, both the professional and personal part of it. I think they behave very maturely with each other and they always let their mutual respect show in their interactions. I think this episode added to this instead of cheapening it.
krad, your thesis that Captain Janeway & Commander Chakotay were rabbiting away during their length sojourn is inherently flawed; the inclusion of a primate in this particular episode is clearly an indicator that they were having WILD MONKEY SEX TIMES which is, of course, completely different. (-;
I suspect that Mr Tuvok would have had a tricky time picking out a second officer, at least on the understanding that it would be tactful to ‘balance the ticket’ with another ex-Maquis: So far as I can tell Chief Engineer Torres is the next most senior ex-guerilla, but I’m not sure that particular combination would work very well (heck, Mr Neelix would be a more logical counterbalance for Tuvok of Vulcan’s weaknesses, but he isn’t in the chain of command).
Harry Kim is probably too junior – and insubordinate – but Tom Paris might be vaguely plausible (especially given his successful work as a Double Agent): if nothing else he’s on the bridge often enough to keep abreast of current developments and he has some experience of the Maquis.
In all honesty though, I’m not sure there’s a clear frontrunner for the role of First Officer if Mr Tuvok is out of contention: it’s not impossible that Mr Vulcan had not yet made a final pick when Captain Janeway & Mr Chakotay were recovered (preferring to audition/groom candidates for the role by rotating the role of First Officer between a number of officers – a policy which would, additionally, help cross-train officers from other departments in the interests of producing a slightly larger pool of possible alternatives in the event of a future emergency).
@26, I always chalked that down as being part of the “we are short on personnel” problem that is talked about but rarely seen on Voyager. If you truly need every person at their station to keep the ship running, pulling someone to be First Officer might not be practical. While having an XO is important and very helpful, I’ve had to go without one personally, for a company of about 140 people. It was difficult, but basically I ended up doing more administrative work myself, and my platoon leaders/ platoon sergeants (I guess the equivalent here of section heads) had to step up and do a little more work, too. It wasn’t fun, but I also wasn’t about to pull up the guy in charge of the fuelers or the gal in charge of transportation just to make my life a little easier, and I suspect Tuvok did the same.
And a stipend of it would presumably be made available to Starfleet officers for purposes of trade with cultures outside the Federation that still did have monetary economies.
@23/Christopher: If that were the case, how could Kirk and Spock end up being thrown off the bus in ST4? After all, both had difficulty figuring out the meaning of ‘exact change’. Therefore, I’m guessing Starfleet Officers were using some form of credit cards rather than actual bills and coins.
@28/Eduardo: Yes, obviously. I wasn’t saying the stipend was in physical currency, which would be impractical in an interstellar economy. Money is money whether it has a physical representation or not (despite Kirk’s lines in TVH), but that’s a separate issue from whether the overall economic system requires people to have money to survive.
Also, TOS made it quite clear that there was a money-based economy in the 23rd century. Kirk talked to Spock about how much money had been invested in his training, and told crewmembers “you’ve earned your pay for the week” a couple of times. Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones pursued profit, and Carter Winston had amassed multiple fortunes and given them away to charities. It was explicitly a system of credits, presumably electronic currency, but it was unambiguously a capitalist economy. TVH was the only thing that ever suggested a lack of “money” in the 23rd century, and the only way to reconcile that with the preponderance of evidence that money did exist then is by assuming Kirk was referring only to physical currency.
I can’t recall why, but I was always under the impression that money still existed, but it was more for the finer things in life. Things that aren’t easily replicated or have value in being original, like art.
#16, Picard is not sexist, but he is the captain and series regular. His superiors make guest appearances. My point is that American television has a formula, and the formula includes a leading man. When it’s a military or cop or adventure genre, women bosses as series regulars are at best equal players in an ensemble cast, and usually do not exist. (The only such example I can think of is Detective Benson on SVU.)
—————–
Money —
Here’s my headcanon:
Money is a social construct we use to manage our economy. Today, we allow people to live in poverty, starve, face unjust disparities in life, for money. People feel moral outrage at the idea of giving poor people money that they didn’t “earn.” Greed for money shapes our human society.
Then the Vulcans come along and show us how completely insane it is to let people starve because of a social construct. We remake human society with logic.
So in the Federation, there is a basic needs economy that is free to everyone, and on top of that a money economy that can buy you extra stuff. No one ever suffers deprivation, but some people get rich.
The meanings, feelings, and values we have about money would fundamentally change in that world.
I have to admit that while I don’t usually and didn’t usually play the shipping game, I always saw J/C as a possibility and was totally gobsmacked when the writers decided to pair Chakotay with Seven of Nine.
A pairing, by the way, that I saw as seriously creepy, as in the show dynamic Seven was a surrogate daughter for Janeway.
@26 and @27: To be fair, thinking about it, it’s only TNG and Voyager that have portrayed the first officer as sitting next to the captain not doing anything except occasionally glancing at a monitor when they’re both on the bridge: Spock had his own bridge station, so did Kira or Worf (whoever’s turn it was to be first officer that week) on the Defiant, T’Pol would on Enterprise (and Tucker was apparently meant to be first officer from down in Engineering until she signed aboard). So it’s possible that, with another two hands missing, Tuvok appointed someone first officer but had them stay at their old post and possibly took on some of the XO’s duties himself. Pure speculation but Paris seems to be next in the chain of command (see “Initiations”) and if he is meant to be first officer then it may explain why he’s less combative than usual and plays peacemaker during Tuvok and Kim’s spat if he’s taking the responsibility seriously.
@23, @28 That Star Fleet officers assigned to frontier postings such as DS9 would have stipends for dealing with moneyed economies doesn’t rule out those stipends being in the form of money of account rather than hard currency, accessed electronically. We’re already there in this century. There are even indications that Bajor is at least partially a cashless economy, despite it being in recovery from the Cardassian occupation
Although I recall at least one scene in Quark’s where he’s doing his books, counting actual small gold bars, presumably strips or bars of gold-pressed latinum. Also, on Ferenginar, the constant paying for what elsewhere would be small favors using slips of the same.
The idea of Kirk & Spock being so fish-out-of-water in ST4 was just another one of many such scenes in that movie. To some extent that ignorance beggared belief and was almost inexcusable, as it wasn’t the first time the TOS crew was deliberately visiting the 20th century. You’d think they’d have done some reading up on what to expect in preparation for the Gary Seven episode (“Assignment Earth”); in fact, given that was supposed to be “historical research” they had to have done some prep. Continuity bowing to comedy …
@32/Jonellin: “A pairing, by the way, that I saw as seriously creepy, as in the show dynamic Seven was a surrogate daughter for Janeway.”
I’ve never understood the tendency to react to relationships that appear vaguely analogous to pedophilia as if they actually were pedophilia. As long as the participants in a relationship actually are consenting, unrelated adults, they’re free to do what they like. A “surrogate daughter” is not an actual daughter, and Seven was a fully independent adult.
Indeed, I gather that many fans “ship” Janeway and Seven, seeing their relationship as implicitly sexual rather than maternal. For myself, I never read either of those things into it. It was Janeway and Kes that I saw as a surrogate mother and daughter. With Seven, I didn’t see Janeway as mothering her any more than she did with the rest of the crew. I saw her more like a social worker deprogramming a surly teenager liberated from a fanatical cult. Or like Paul D’Arnot teaching Tarzan how to act like a gentleman.
If anything was ethically questionable about Chakotay and Seven, it’s that he was her superior officer. Although Seven was technically a civilian and not a formal member of the crew hierarchy, so I guess it’s less of an issue. And Starfleet has allowed such relationships in other contexts (Picard and Nella Daren, Kelvin Spock and Uhura). If anything, I’m surprised I don’t hear more criticisms about the Doctor’s unrequited love for Seven toward the end. A doctor getting sexually infatuated with his own patient has seriously creepy implications.
@33/cap-mjb: Realistically, though, being first officer should be a full-time job all by itself. The XO is the one responsible for carrying out the captain’s orders, the one who turns the plan into reality by figuring out how to get it done and assigning and supervising the personnel who do it. The XO should be the interface between the captain and the crew, the one who handles the day-to-day, minute-to-minute decisions and personnel matters so the captain is free to concentrate on the big picture. So that should be quite enough to keep any first officer busy without having to juggle a second job on top of it. Star Trek rarely shows that, though, since it’s more dynamic to have the captain be more hands-on.
Does anyone else notice how different Robert Beltran seems here than in the last 2 seasons of the show? In this episode, he is EXCELLENT! Very charismatic and he makes the character seem seductive but in a caring and respectful way. I love how the episode is written because it gives subtle hints that there is a romantic connection between the characters but it doesn’t show any specific lovemaking. The hints are so subtle than you can interpret their relationship either way.
By season 6, he seems very flat and unenthusiastic. I could never have pictured him being in an episode like this in season 6. I have heard there was significant tension and conflict between several cast and crew members and I wonder if it contributed to it. By the last 20 episodes or so, he seems like he is just dialing it in.
@31/RM: I do not watch much TV but I can think of some American shows off-hand that have a female lead character in command of a unit or an organization. “Commander in Chief” starred Geena Davis as the first female President of the United States. “Psych” is a dramedy that aired on USA in the late 2000s-early 2010s about a private detective who is a fake psychic. The chief of police is Karen Vick played by Kirsten Nelson and many episodes revolve around her and her decisions. “The 100” is about a group of criminal teenagers who are sent to a post-apocalyptic Earth to see if it is inhabitable. The leader of the group of teens is Clarke Griffin, who is an extremely ruthless and cutthroat girl who outranks many of the adults.
@LadyBelaine “I felt it cheapened both of them, as if a woman in position of authority working with a comparable male figure would of course totally have to fall into bed together.”
I agree. I’ve always liked the relationship they had on board. Not sure why people would think they would turn into bunny rabbits all of a sudden.
I wouldn’t say I hated this episode. I filed it away as just don’t want to re-watch this episode. Of course I just may have to now. Or at least part of it. I’m very curious of the animal Janeway befriended. I don’t remember that part since it’s been so long since I first watched it.
“Here is the sequence of events”
Reading the Youtube comments on that scene is a joy. Until you get to the people that don’t understand what Tuvok actually did and why it worked. People talking about, “Why don’t they just do that all the time?“
Anyway, easily one of Tuvok’s highlights.
Janeway and Chakotay seemed to have a “will they won’t they”, but it always seemed to be weakened by the lack of focus granted to Chakotay sometimes. I mean I didn’t get to watch Voyager consistently, because the UPN and WB and later CW reception in my area was always trash. Chakotay always seemed to be more about his Native American culture or his Maquis-ness than about his personality.
That said, I liked the idea that Janeway and Chakotay became close because they were basically partners in this mess, and had agreed to always have each others backs. That level of trust and dedication isn’t actually a bad basis for a relationship. But I never felt that their weirds matched, y’know?
@34
Bajor setting up a cashless economy after the occupation is imminently logical, they live in a society with ready access to networked computers, space travel, and an interstellar economy and by going cashless they don’t have to worry about manufacturing large amounts of physical currency.
Ferengi have an actual religious reverence for money, and money in its physical form at that. There are questions there too. For instance, when a Ferengi prays to the Blessed Exchequer and drops a bribe of latinum into the Latinum head they keep in their homes, who collects that money and where does it go? Latinum itself has the property of being non-replicable/unreplicatable and thus ideal as a currency, but the question has never been answered about if it’s more secure than liquidizing the assets into an account, and Ferengi do in fact have accounts as they’re the first thing the freaking FCA goes after when they screw up.
As for Star Trek IV, that was an emergency impromptu journey back to Earth and was almost completely by the seat of their pants. When they’d traveled to the past previously that was with the full resources of the Enterprise backing them, not a rinky dink Bird of Prey. They weren’t able to produce new clothes, access the historical database, and they never had a need to produce physical money, let alone actually done it. I’m sure they could’ve hacked a bank if someone had thought of it, but culturally they don’t think about money anymore so them forgetting that detail makes sense.
@36, Beltran is always great in episodes that focus on character development and relationships. I always got the impression that he was lured in by the seemingly character-driven pitch of “terrorists and starfleet officers have to work together to survive” and when that didn’t turn out to actually be what the show was about, he lost interest. He tried to get his character killed off, but the studio wouldn’t let him, so he kept requesting ridiculous amounts of money to stay, which the studio kept giving him. He pretty clearly had a low tolerance for “sit in this chair and spout technobabble,” and it’s hard to blame him. But in episodes like this one, Nemesis, The Fight, and even Year of Hell, he clearly is putting effort into his character and it really pays off.
@19 – In Encounter at Farpoint, Crusher buys some fabric and says
“I’ll take the entire bolt. Send it to our starship when it arrives. Charge to Doctor Crusher.”
So there’s some sort of accounting system in place. You can’t just beam down, “buy” everything and just charge it to the Federation. So Crusher probab;y gets “paid” more than O’Brien does. And Keiko probably gets some sort of account as well, even though she’s not Starfleet.
@29 – Or, the Federation changed it’s economy sometime between the last TOS mention of credits and TVH.
@31 – Most recently we see Picard living on a huge estate with a big house and servants while Raffi is living in the 24th century equivalent of a mobile home in the middle of the desert.
@39 – One of the dumbest things DS9 ever did was in the episode Progress. We hear all the time about reclamation projects and new faming areas and hydro dams, so what does Bajor do? Destroys the entire ecosystem of a habitable moon in order to produce one mother of a power plant.
They’ve got access to fusion power, matter/antimatter generators, replicators and all sorts of other high tech. And ecological destruction is something that strikes them as a good idea?
@41
Yeah, unless Raffi was somehow being forced to live in a trailer in the desert by the authorities, it didn’t make much sense from what we know about Earth society.
Maybe it would’ve had more impact to see her living in a mansion with a loving family, only to find out it’s a holographic fantasy. “Computer, end program.” And we see her in the middle of the desert with some holo-projectors. Cue sad music.
@42: Well, what’s a little thing like maintaining the continuity of the setting and the optimistic appeal of the franchise in the face of performative wokeness? How was a self-important junkie going to tell one the Federation’s greatest heroes to check his privilege in a post-scarcity system where everyone is privileged?
Seriously, Raffi can go jump off a bridge. One of the worst characters Trek has ever produced.
The thing with Raffi in the desert was very strange. Not necessarily that Raffi would choose to live there- my sister remarked with some jealousy on the appeal of living in a small home, full of plants, in the middle of the desert- but that she apparently felt that she was being forced to, in contrast to Picard’s life in a French vineyard. Since money presumably shouldn’t be a problem given all we know about the Federation economy, I had to conclude that the issue was that she wanted privacy, and the only land available to her that didn’t come with more neighbors than she found tolerable was in the relatively inhospitable desert- which more or less fits with her personality, I suppose.
The reason Raffi lived in the desert was because she’d made herself a social outcast with her conspiracy theories and screwed-up behavior. Even a society without money would still have a reputation economy. If you behaved in a way that alienated too many people, it’d be hard to maintain the social capital necessary to be fully accepted.
Besides, she’s not living in some remote place. Her dwelling was explicitly named in the onscreen caption as Vasquez Rocks, which in our day is a state park and a popular tourist destination. So it’s a pretty damn public place to be “isolated” in. The fact that she gets away with living there argues against the idea that she’s some indigent vagabond.
@45 I think we’re more or less in agreement there- life as a recluse is probably more comfortable in the desert than it would be in an San Francisco, although given the tech level, it seems like it should be perfectly possible to live in the middle of the city without ever speaking to anyone or venturing outside your apartment. (I mean, you can pretty well do that now, and replicators are only going to make it easier).
Raffi, though, certainly seems to feel herself hard done by, and ties that specifically to her housing situation compared to Picard’s. Part of that’s probably just general lashing out at him, but it does seem to suggest there are a limited number of French vineyards available, since it’s not as though Picard is jostling cheek-to-cheek with any neighbors.
I do wonder how land distribution works on Earth- apparently there’s enough of a demand for land that there’s a project to raise a new continent in the Atlantic back in TNG’s “Family,” but I don’t recall ever getting the impression that it was overcrowded. Presumably a lot of folks who want more land than is available light out for other planets.
Beyond the economics, I’m fine with Raffi being a social outcast. I just wish they hadn’t done it in such a cliched 20th/21st century fashion – the loner living in a trailer, drinking, smoking weed, complaining about the rich man in his fancy estate, etc. They could’ve put some futuristic spin on it, beyond coming up with a cool new name for a drug. It all seemed very now. Like, hit you over the head now.
It’s like if Reginald Barclay had been addicted to sitting in his room playing Nintendo instead of playing on the holodeck. And even when TNG did address video game addiction, it was a do-hickey that zaps yours eyes and turns you into a conspiratorial zombie who will overthrow the Federation or something. See, future!
I was under the impression that in addition to Raffi having burned a lot of bridges she was living out there as a matter of extreme privacy. She was convinced (rightly) that the Mars attack was a massive conspiracy, and she didn’t know who to trust. Isolation in that instance was logical.
@48/Mr. D: As I mentioned, though, if they wanted to convey the idea that she was living as a recluse seeking extreme privacy, then they shouldn’t have explicitly captioned the setting as Vasquez Rocks, a regularly visited public park that’s literally right across the road from the town of Agua Dulce, CA and only a half-hour drive from beautiful downtown Burbank. It seems they let their desire for an inside joke override the needs of the story.
@36, 40: I think the quality of Beltran’s performances on this series tended to be dictated by the particular episode he was featured in and how well it was written. For instance, I thought he came alive in the two-parters “Scorpion” and “Equinox” when he would have passionate debates with Janeway or in “Maneuvers” when he had cracking interplay with Seska and while being interrogated. But something like “Twisted” and it seems like he’s sleepwalking. His displeasure with the direction Voyager is well known since he was so vocal about it. And part of what lured him to the show was because he was excited to work with Genevieve Bujold. But that’s not to say he didn’t enjoy working alongside Kate Mulgrew.
@49
On that note, is it possible to live in a public park?
@52- In our world? It depends on how difficult local governments are trying to make it for homeless people to live in an area. But public parks can cover a wide variety of areas, from small grassy patches or playgrounds in the middle of a city to Yellowstone National Park’s 3,000+ miles. While some National Parks Service Parks provide housing for employees or visitors, and some parks have concessionaires that provide lodging to visitors as well as their own staffs, I have to think that most would frown upon your building a private home there.
That being said, Vasquez Rocks Natural Area and Nature Center is administered by the LA County Department of Parks and Recreations. Given that in the Star Trek timeline, Earth has been through at least one devastating global conflict and formed a global government, it’s possible that the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation has not enjoyed an uninterrupted existence and that the legal status of the areas under their jurisdiction may have shifted.
@52/Benjamin: In which case Raffi wouldn’t be living in a park, she’d just be living on the outskirts of the town of Agua Dulce. Either way, she’s nowhere near living in isolation in the wilderness.
I think a lot of current protected parklands and reserves are no longer protected in the Trek future, given that Starfleet’s facilities in the Bay Area occupy much of the Presidio and the Marin Headlands. Presumably so much of the world has been restored to its natural state by then that giving up a few nature areas doesn’t matter. And maybe the historic buildings in the Presidio were destroyed in WWIII.
@53 Christopher- Well, isolation through distance wouldn’t be much more than an illusion anywhere on Earth, given the ease of transportation. No other houses immediately in sight is probably about the best you’re going to get, unless you can find one of those mineral formations that blocks transporter signals.
Although now I’m amused by the thought of grumpy anti-social Raffi frequently having to deal with visitors coming to admire the striking rock formations, as used in many popular holo-novels.
@54/Benjamin: Ahh, they have rock formations exactly like that on half the planets in the galaxy, so these ones would be no big deal. ;)
<insert laughing emoji here>
Hehehe, I like you guys.
Frankly, looking at how Picard dropped in on her, there’s really no place that can be entirely private by being someplace remote. He took a shuttle taxi from France.
On a travel note, does anyone know what those Transporter Gates at Starfleet Headquarters were called?
@58, um transporter…gates? It’s as good a name as any. We still call walkie-talkies walkie-talkies.
Well, put me down as a Janeway/Chakotay shipper. There was always the slightest, ever-so-subtle chemistry between Janeway and Chakotay, right from the moment Captain Janeway asks Maquis leader Chakotay if he agrees with her proposed next move in looking for Kim and Torres in “Caretaker.”
In 25 years it never dawned on me, but yes! Janeway and Chakotay were definitely getting it on (or getting it in, as I believe the kids say now) during those six weeks after the “ancient tale” and the holding hands. They were super comfortable around each other after that, and it was adorable. Thanks for giving us shippers what you could, Jeri Taylor.
I’d love to read that Captain Tuvok anthology. Tuvok is superb as captain; he listens thoroughly to every proposal even while rejecting them, and I love that he does eventually come around. What I don’t love is Kim having a meltdown on the bridge. Um, Harry, my dude, you’re a senior officer. You’re supposed to be setting an example for the crew. Ask Captain Tuvok to speak with him in the ready room, or the briefing room, and voice your concerns there. Once again, it falls to Kes to speak maturely and reasonably. When I watched this episode in first run, I was like yeah, Harry’s right, what’s wrong with everybody? But I was a dumbass teenager then; Harry should have known better.
This penultimate episode of the season is a strong one, overall.
@58: I call them Jeff Goldblum Machines. Seriously, it’s just an open portal anyone can walk through without restriction; how many hideous abominations against nature have been created every time a passing insect flies through at the same time as the person being transported?
@59, Gahh. I hadn’t considered that. Starfleet may want to rethink those and stick with good old-fashioned air tram.
@59/Devin: Transporters don’t accidentally mix patterns unless something goes very wrong with them due to exceptional circumstances (see “Tuvix”). Indeed, 24th-century transporters routinely filter out any harmful germs someone may have picked up.
After all, the machine in The Fly (both versions) was just a prototype, so naturally it didn’t have all the, err, bugs worked out. The transporter tech in Picard is more than two and a half centuries beyond that stage.
You have to assume that, at some point in the ~two centuries since First Contact, someone on Vulcan has published “How to Deal with Humans and Their Emotional Nonsense” as a self-help guide for Starfleet cadets, diplomats, tourists, and so on.
@62, Well, since the Vulcans seemed to be the only species in the quadrant who were truly logical (if you asked them) I’d imagine that they would have a whole set of books like the old Time-Life Books series of the 1960s-70s. Sent every other month each volume would show how to make friends and gain influence with a particular, overly emotional, Alpha Quadrant species.
@63/remremulo: That’s something I’ve often wondered about. If Surak’s philosophy of logic and emotional control was really so successful at saving the Vulcans from self-destruction, how come we’ve never seen any other Trek civilization adopt a similar philosophy? I mean, there are a ton of “warrior races,” various devious capitalist races, at least three hedonistic free-love pleasure-planet races, etc., so why is there only one stoic and logical race? Come on, in all the vast galaxy, there must be somebody out there who actually agrees with the Vulcans.
@64- Well there’s an twist on the Drake equation for you.
If N, the number of intelligent species we can expect to encounter=R∗ *fp *ne *fl *fi *fc * L (L probably needs to be redefined somewhat in a setting where faster than light travel and communications get involved, but that’s another discussion) and we know that N is a fairly high number, since the galaxy is just lousy with intelligent species, we might call Nv or the number of philosophically Vulcan-like civilizations, as something like Nv=N*fv * Lv where fv is the fraction of civilizations that develop Vulcan-like characteristics and Lv is the length for which a civilization with Vulcan-like characteristics continues to exist with those characteristics, than for Nv to equal one suggests that either fv, Lv or both must be quite low. It would seem that either almost no civilizations develop Vulcan logical traditions, or almost all those that do either abandon them are or destroyed in relatively short order.
Or, I suppose, perhaps they ascend into Star Trek’s Mysterious Energy Beings, but having strongly constructed codes of ethics and logic, they actually don’t interfere with other races, rather than simply gravely declaring their adherence to principles of non-interference before tittering behind their hands and turning the unlucky crew of a nearby spaceship into a collection of perfectly safe penguins.
@65/Benjamin: One of the flaws in the Drake Equation is that it treats every civilization as an isolated instance, and that applies here too. I’m not just talking about cultures that coincidentally, independently develop along parallel lines to the Vulcans. The Vulcans themselves have been a major interstellar power for centuries, and in their pre-Federation days, they were pretty cultural-imperialist in their relations with other species. So you’d think there’d be at least some society out there that learned about Surak’s philosophies and what they’d done for Vulcan and actually decided to adopt Surak’s teachings for themselves.
@64- For me one of the more interesting character interactions in the later seasons of Voyager were the conversations between Tuvok and Seven of Nine discussing the differences between philosophical logic and mechanical logic (though they didn’t put it in those terms). There weren’t many but there should have been more, one of the plot threads that the producers could have developed but didn’t.
@CLB: intriguing thought! I remember when I discovered TOS as a kid I was almost immediately enamored of Spock, which seems like a pretty common reaction, so it’s strange not to see any Vulcan fans roaming around the 23rd and 24th centuries.
OTOH, most Vulcans we’ve seen on the various shows have not been very much like Spock, or more precisely like Nimoy’s performance of Spock. I believe everyone agrees that, whatever Spock or other Vulcans may have claimed about pure emotionlessness, it was clear that Vulcans did have emotions which they thoroughly controlled; but I’ve been thinking for a while that there’s a further, and generally neglected, nuance to Nimoy’s performance that distinguishes Spock from other Vulcans we’ve seen. Most actors who’ve played Vulcans, it seems to me, have interpreted their characters’ emotional control as, in essence, repression. Conversely, Nimoy—and I’m not sure if this was (or needs to have been) a conscious choice on his part—often played Spock not as repressed but as someone who drew pleasure and enjoyment from staying calm.
Once I saw the distinction it was difficult not to attribute to it the popularity of Spock among fankind. With all due respect to Russ and Blalock (and with the caveat that I missed substantial runs of “Voyager” and “Enterprise”), I don’t think any other Vulcan actor ever consistently negotiated this distinction: Tuvok and T’Pol often seem annoyed, maybe even uptight, not really calm. Most single-episode Vulcans landed firmly in “uptight” territory. (I confess to outright disliking most single-episode performances of Vulcans, which seem to me to consist almost entirely of certain vocal inflections plus folding the hands behind the back. It was the attempt to reason out this dislike that led me to the distinction in Nimoy’s performance in the first place.)
To work my way back to the point: I don’t think characters in the shows see Vulcans the way we see Spock. Even Dr McCoy doesn’t seem to see Spock much of the time: he sees just a typical Vulcan, which is to say a repressed killjoy with a stick in his derriere. Why would anyone want to be a Vulcan or like a Vulcan if all you see around are the McCoy version of Vulcans?
@60: Enjoy your nightmare fuel! :)
@61: Well, considering that Federation tech frequently breaks down when someone so much as sneezes on it, and that Memory Alpha has an entire page devoted to transporter accidents… yeah, I’d stick with the old-fashioned transporter pads operated by dedicated personnel.
@64: From a Doylist perspective, hot-blooded warrior species might offer more storytelling opportunities that a “logical” species might. Also, any such species the writers create would quickly find themselves being compared to the Vulcans, and feel like a cheap knock-off as a result. Andraste knows there are far too many knock-off Klingons present in Trek already without subjecting everyone’s favourite species to that.
@66 – Why would a culture that encounters a “cultural-imperialist” group like the Vulcans want to emulate them? WOuldn’t they tend to want to throw off the effects of such an encounter? Or, they could become “cultural-imperialists” of their own without the logic.
Holding up imperialism as something that is to be admired and emulated seems to be the anthesis of what the Federation stands for. Shouldn’t the Federation therefore be trying to undo the damage that the Vulcans did, even though it was before the formation of the Federation and the establishment of the Prime Directive? We have seen such a situation before in A Piece of the Action. And leaving a single book behind pales in comparison to full on Imperialism.
I finally got around to watching this one again 24 years later after its first-run and I guess 41 year-old me has a better appreciation for it then 17 year-old me because I really enjoyed it this time (I just have no strong memory of it previously aside from a couple of moments). If ever there was a couple to be shipped it would be Janeway and Chakotay. Now this was a completely believable romance even though it’s compressed into 45 minutes, though of course built upon their previous two-year backstory. Loved the scene where the two “bonded” over Chakotay’s bullshit story and him basically pledging his undying fealty to her. Janeway finally gives in to the attraction and you see her emotional availability in that scene. I also totally believe they were making babies from that point on. I also believe Janeway had totally given herself over to remaining forever on that planet and being content there so that when she was surveying the scene of her encampment one last time before being aboard Voyager that she was actually disappointed to be going back. Or at least there was a sadness to it. And then sort of a sadness again in the last scene where they’re both back to complete business on the bridge. Wonderful performances by both Beltran and Mulgrew.
Another thing I really loved in this episode is near the end right after Janeway “accuses” Tuvok to his face of perhaps having acted emotionally in disobeying orders: as soon as she says that she turns away from him into the foreground and even though Tuvok is in the background and going out of focus you can still see him turn his head to her and make out the exasperated face he makes in response to Janeway’s “insult.” Absolutely hilarious!
And lastly, the monkey was adorable. I was disappointed to see it didn’t get an acting credit.
I meant to type you finally see Janeway’s emotional “vulnerability” in that scene.
I was never a fan of this episode because most of it was rather predictable. The thing I liked the most was the Viideans being the source for the cure, but even then their betrayal was a foregone conclusion.
I have to admit that looking back on Resolutions, I didn’t think too deeply on the hand-holding. I took it as a symbol of them moving beyond Captain and First Officer, but the idea that they were doing the horizontal polka all the time after that was not what I thought was happening.
Ultimately it’s another example of the “reset button plot” with some interesting questions that aren’t too deeply followed up on. And thank god Chakotay’s story was his own BS and not another of Jackie “Lowwater” Marks’s nonsense.
@73/Thierfhal: I agree that there’s nothing seen on screen post-hand holding to indicate mating going on, but before that there’s the strong implication of sexual tension with the shoulder massage and then a restless Chakotay glancing over in the direction of Janeway in bed who also can’t get fall asleep. We’re left to fill in the lines about what happens in the months after their deep conversation. But theyre the only two people on the planet, definitely already like and respect each other, understand they could be there for a very long time if not for the rest of their lives, and there’s no longer the professional/command structure to keep them from crossing over into the deeply personal. Plus, they get horny and there’s not much else to do there in terms of entertainment. It’s a wonder Janeway didn’t end up pregnant but no way the writers/creators/network would go there!
@74/Gareth: Actually, I meant to add something to my comment and I forgot. I was going to emphasize that my original perception of the post-handholding didn’t bring my mind any further. I’d largely forgotten the plot details of this episode until I read Krad’s review this morning. Now when I look back on it, I definitely agree with the belief that they were going the distance.
@74/garreth: “It’s a wonder Janeway didn’t end up pregnant”
Not really. We know from DS9: “The Dogs of War” that 24th-century contraceptives are in the form of monthly injections taken by both men and women. Now, J & C were on the planet longer than a month, but presumably they would’ve been provided with a supply of the drugs (or more likely a pharmaceutical synthesizer that could make them along with any other needed medication) and would be covered as long as they didn’t forget their shots.
It’s a pretty good episode. Howver, they should have remembered that Tuvok DOES feel emotions, even if he handles them differently.
@18 – wildfyrewarning: The Maquis should be aching to get back home and keep fighting the Cardassian.
@26 – ED: Tuvok would have probably strangled Neelix (for real, this time) after a couple of days of having him as a first officer.
@39 – Mr. D: “They weren’t able to produce new clothes”
Good thing all their clothes already looked like 1980s clothes.
Paris was “Voyager”‘s third officer, which made him Tuvok’s acting first officer. That he did it from the conn rather than the first officer’s chair, is irrelevant. Kim would be acting second officer, as the next senior bridge officer, then Torres as acting third officer, as the last senior officer.
So… how is destroying a canister of antimatter with a torpedo somehow different from just… detonating a torpedo?
Do they ever actually say in any of the shows that photon torpedoes are antimatter warheads? Because lots of episodic content seems to disabuse that notion, regardless of what the technical manuals say.
@79/swiftbow: “So… how is destroying a canister of antimatter with a torpedo somehow different from just… detonating a torpedo?”
Bigger yield, I suppose. More antimatter (though there’d have to be more matter too for it to balance out).
“Do they ever actually say in any of the shows that photon torpedoes are antimatter warheads?”
Yes, on occasion. Examples I can find include TNG: “Samaritan Snare” and “The Loss,” Generations, VGR: “Dreadnought” and “Good Shepherd,” and ENT: “Hatchery.”
“Because lots of episodic content seems to disabuse that notion, regardless of what the technical manuals say.”
True — the portrayal is very inconsistent. All too often, they’re treated as little more than glowing cannonballs.
Still, the yield of an antimatter explosion would depend on just how much you used, and how tightly the reaction was contained. If anything, a matter-antimatter explosion would tend to fizzle out quickly, since the sheer heat of the initial annihilation reaction would blast the remaining particles and antiparticles away from each other before they could react. You’d need some way to keep the reactants packed tightly together until they were exhausted and the energy could be released all at once. So blowing up an antimatter canister with a torpedo probably wouldn’t be that much bigger an explosion than just the torpedo after all.
Janeway and Chakotay were both infected by a burrowing insect indigenous to the planet, Krad and I think Chakotay tells Janeway that story later that night. I also didn’t know it was a bottle filled with antimatter and why does Kim have to fire the torpedo to detonate it when he isn’t even a tactical officer? I don’t understand why Chakotay wasn’t allowed to say some final parting words to the crew as well. They must have felt it would have had more impact if it came from Janeway.
It’s ironic that Kes is more mature than Kim (and perhaps most of the crew) considering her age. I’ve often wondered what Janeway and Chakotay got up to in the six weeks it took Voyager to get back to the planet. Tuvok later tells Kes he is not immune to the pain of losing Janeway as a friend, which contradicts what he told Paris in the Observation Lounge.
3: The Think Tank solved their pandemic. I just wish they could do the same for ours. 8: Did you mean camaraderie? 13: That was Melora, and the Doctor couldn’t explain what was shielding Janeway and Chakotay from the virus so it’s doubtful he could replicate it. 15: The fact that Chakotay says his story was made up makes this one of the better uses of Chakotay’s fake heritage. 22: How they administered the cure is a good question. 26: Tuvok doesn’t seem to have a first or second officer which is a bit peculiar. 35: More creepy is Kes’s relationship with Neelix. It’s no wonder they decided to break them up.
45: Doesn’t Vasquez Rocks get used quite a bit in Trek, e.g. Arena, Initiations, etc? 58: Data reprimanded Worf in Gambit because his conduct as first officer was bordering on insubordination. Kim definitely crossed that line, both on the Bridge and in Tuvok’s quarters. 74: It would be funny trying to watch them backpedal if Janeway ever became pregnant, like Lister in Red Dwarf, which was one big use of the reset button.
My biggest take away from this one was I could quite happily watch entire series about Captain Tuvok. Also for once Voyager ending a episode with the complete status quo restored works perfectly with the return of the professional relationship of Janeway and Chakotay when returning to the formal tone they use to address each other after seeing their personal relationship develop on the surface.
At least Chakotay is a step up from salamander Paris.