“Nemesis”
Written by Kenneth Biller
Directed by Alexander Singer
Season 4, Episode 4
Production episode 171
Original air date: September 24, 1997
Stardate: 51082.4
Captain’s log. Chakotay is running through the jungle, and is captured by the Vori. We learn in short order that his shuttlecraft was shot down, and he did an emergency beam-out. Unfortunately, he landed in the middle of a war.
The Vori soldiers—they’re called defenders—explain that they’re at war with the Kradin. It was likely the Kradin that shot down his shuttle, as the nemesis, as they’re called, wants air superiority. The Fourth Contingent—the group of defenders who found him—don’t have any communications capability, as the Kradin suppress that. This is also why Chakotay’s combadge isn’t functioning. Chakotay wants to try to see if he can salvage anything from his shuttle, but the Vori convince him to wait until daybreak.
Over the course of the night, Chakotay hears all kinds of boasts about how many Kradin the various Vori defenders intend to kill. When one of the younger recruits, Rafin, doesn’t answer with sufficient specificity, he’s given a stern talking-to.
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The next morning, Chakotay heads off. He says he can go it alone, but one of the defenders goes with him, as Chakotay doesn’t know the terrain and isn’t armed. Sure enough, they’re ambushed by the Kradin, and Chakotay’s escort is killed. However, the Vori ambush right back and drive them off. Before the ambush, Chakotay found tiny pieces of his shuttle, making him realize that he isn’t salvaging anything from it.
Chakotay observes the funeral, which includes turning the body over to face the ground. One of the reasons why the Vori hate the Kradin is that they leave the dead bodies face up, which the Vori consider sacreligious.
They give Chakotay the dead man’s clothes and weapon. At this point, he needs to accompany them to the Seventh Contingent, who have communications gear that can penetrate the Kradin jamming. He stands out like a sore thumb in his uniform, and he needs to know how to fire their weapon to defend himself.
Rafin shows Chakotay how to shoot their weapons, and Chakotay says that he takes no joy in killing. He also says that he has gone into battle, and has always been scared beforehand, just as Rafin is. Rafin is actually grateful for the pep talk.
They head out, and discover a defender from the Seventh dead, his body secured in a face-up position. Attempts to contact the rest of the Seventh fail. One defender goes off to check out the base. He returns soon thereafter with news that the Seventh has been massacred.
They’re ambushed by the Kradin. Rafin is killed, and Chakotay turns him facedown before he joins in the fighting. Most of the rest of the Fourth are killed, and Chakotay is wounded, but the Kradin are at least driven off. Chakotay stumbles into a nearby village, where he’s greeted as a hero just by virtue of the uniform he’s wearing.
Then he collapses.
Voyager is in orbit of the planet, having tracked the crashed shuttlecraft. Unfortunately, there’s a ton of radiation on the surface—it’s that same radiation that caused Chakotay to go into low orbit of the planet in the first place—and they can’t detect Chakotay’s life signs, nor can they transport down. Neelix has been in touch with Ambassador Treen on the surface, who is concerned about Chakotay’s well being, as the enemy they fight is brutal and vicious.
On the surface, Chakotay awakens and is cared for by the villagers. There’s a supply station a long walk away, and Chakotay plans to head there at daybreak to try to contact Voyager. A young girl named Karya talks to Chakotay and tells him about her brother, who joined the defenders—he’s with the Seventh. Chakotay doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the Seventh was massacred, but does agree to take a letter with him to the supply station that might be passed on to the Seventh by one of the defenders there.
Voyager locates the shuttle wreckage in enemy territory, but there’s no biosigns on the wreckage, so Chakotay may still be alive. Ambassador Treen is willing to loan a small commando team to locate Chakotay, and Tuvok will accompany them.
The next morning, Chakotay sets off to the supply station. But he sees Kradin airships land in the village. He runs back, but is captured and brutally interrogated. When he realizes that Karya’s grandfather is to be put to death, because he’s too old to be good slave labor, he tries to stop it. So does Karya, and she too is condemned to death. Chakotay is placed out in the woods, his body facing upward, left to die.
However, another of the Fourth survived, and he frees Chakotay. He’s with another contingent now, and they’re planning an assault. Chakotay declines the offer to be escorted to the supply station to contact Voyager—he wants to fight the Kradin.
Tuvok meets with Ambassador Treen—who is Kradin. And he uses the exact same vicious terminology to describe the Vori that the Vori used when discussing the Kradin with Chakotay.
In the midst of the battle against the Kradin, in which Chakotay is mowing down opponents right and left, one Kradin walks up to him and calls him “Commander Chakotay”—and also identifies himself as Tuvok. It really is Tuvok, but Chakotay sees and hears only a Kradin.
Slowly, however, Tuvok is able to get through to Chakotay, explaining that he was captured and brainwashed by the Vori to become one of their soldiers. Eventually, the voice changes to that of Tuvok, and so too does the face. Tuvok then leads Chakotay around the corner to the same village he went to before—with Karya and her grandfather, both alive and well, and greeting him the exact same way they did before.
Chakotay is brought back to Voyager, where he’s examined by the EMH. He was drugged and conditioned, and everything up until that last battle where Tuvok found him was a simulation designed to make him a good Vori defender.
Treen comes to sickbay to express his gratitude for Chakotay being rescued, but Chakotay can’t help but look upon any Kradin with disgust.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The planet where the Kradin-Vori war is happening is full of omicron radiation, a made-up radiation that has been used on several Trek episodes and seems to have different effects each time. In this particular instance, it blocks sensors and transporters.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway admits to Chakotay at the end that she has no idea one way or the other if the Kradin are as nasty as the Vori say they are. Voyager stays out of the war as much as possible, they just want to get the first officer back.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok is able to calmly and rationally talk Chakotay down from his Vori-induced ledge.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Apparently, Neelix is still serving as the ship’s unofficial ambassador, as Janeway half-joked in “Macrocosm,” as he was the one who made first contact with the Kradin.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH explains that Chakotay was hit with a combination of propaganda, false images, psychotropic drugs, and more.
Do it.
“From the condition of your hypothalamus, I’d say they had you so mixed up they could have convinced you your own mother was a turnip.”
–The EMH diagnosing Chakotay after he was brainwashed.
Welcome aboard. Michael Mahonen, Matt E. Levin, and Nathan Anderson play the Vori defenders that Chakotay takes up with in the simulation, though Mahonen’s character is also real. Peter Vogt plays the image of the Kradin commandant, while Booth Colman and Meghan Murphy play the images of the villagers who take in Chakotay and then are killed. Terrence Evans plays Ambassador Treen.
Anderson will return to play a MACO in two Enterprise third-season episodes. Vogt previously played a Romulan in TNG’s “Tin Man” and a Bajoran in DS9’s “A Man Alone.” Evans previously played two different Bajorans in the DS9 episodes “Progress” and “Cardassians.”
Trivial matters: This is the only episode of the show following her introduction in which Jeri Ryan does not appear as Seven of Nine. This episode was filmed third and likely originally intended to air before “Day of Honor,” which opened with Seven wanting to be let out of the cargo bay.
A Kradin will be seen fighting in the arena in “Tsunkatse.”
For the third episode in a row, Voyager loses a shuttlecraft. They’re now down seven shuttlecraft, the others being toasted in “Initiations,” “Non Sequitur,” “Parturition,” “Unity,” “The Gift,” and “Day of Honor.”
Set a course for home. “Now you fathom why we name them beasts and not men?” This is a superlative meditation on propaganda, one that does what Star Trek does best: use science fiction to comment on the human condition. Propaganda has always been a powerful tool of manipulation by people in power, particularly when its used in terms of riling up people against an enemy, whether that enemy is real or perceived. It gives people a focus for their animus that is other than the people in power themselves.
It’s also very effective, and we see it being expertly used on Chakotay here. Yes, Chakotay is an anthropologist at heart, and an explorer, but it wasn’t that long ago that he was fighting a guerrilla war against the Cardassians. The journey from a person of peace to a soldier in a war is one he’s already made, and the Vori’s expert manipulations—mostly by way of giving him people to care about and then seeing them killed in nasty ways by the Kradin—make it easy for him to go down that road again.
This may be Kenneth Biller’s best script, as he absolutely nails the brainwashing, especially since we don’t realize it’s brainwashing until the episode’s most of the way through. You get caught up in it, especially since the Vori all look human and the Kradin look like a mix of the Nausicaans (from TNG’s “Tapestry“) and the Klingon demon Fek’lhr (from TNG’s “Devil’s Due“), so it’s easy to think of the Kradin as bad guys.
As an added bonus, Biller does something that we really should see more often: just because the words are translated, it doesn’t mean that the syntax is going to be a perfect match. All the words that the Vori use make sense, but they use synonyms that are less common to the audience: to glimpse for to see, fathom for understand, trunks for trees, clash for war, the soonafter for the near future, the wayafter for the afterlife, nullify for kill, and so on. This has the extra effect of showing Chakotay’s indoctrination, as he speaks more and more like the Vori as the episode goes on.
Robert Beltran is spectacular, as you’re caught up in Chakotay’s slow descent into madness. Credit also to Alexander Singer, who is not the most lively among Trek’s directorial stable, but who does fine work here.
There are two very real flaws, though both of them combined aren’t enough to ding the rating for this episode more than a single warp factor, as it’s that good, but I think these flaws need to be mentioned.
One is the exact same problem TNG’s “The Mind’s Eye” had: this is something that should affect Chakotay long term, and it’ll never be seen or referenced ever again, just as La Forge’s brainwashing into an assassin by the Romulans has never been referenced again.
The other is that twice we see Paris stepping forward and shoving his jaw out and saying that he should’ve gone with Chakotay and that he should be on the rescue mission. There is absolutely, positively no reason for this except to reinforce the notion that the white guy needs to be the square-jawed hero who dives in where angels fear to tread. Why doesn’t Kim step forward and volunteer for the rescue mission? Why isn’t Torres—who has a longer-standing relationship with Chakotay than anyone else on board—lamenting that she didn’t go with him? No, it’s gotta be the white dude. Paris has nothing else to do in the episode otherwise, but he’s hardly alone in that—Torres and Kim are barely in it, Seven isn’t in it at all, and Neelix and the EMH really only have one scene of note each. But they just have to push Paris unconvincingly and unnecessarily forward…
Still, these are minor dings on an otherwise great episode.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest novel is To Hell and Regroup, a collaboration with David Sherman. The third book in David’s “18th Race” trilogy of military science fiction novels, this concludes the alien-invasion tale begun in Issue in Doubt and continued in In All Directions. The book is on sale now in trade paperback and eBook form from eSpec Books.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand just as this went up, this also was announced:
https://www.tor.com/2020/10/08/kate-mulgrew-returns-to-role-of-captain-janeway-in-star-trek-prodigy/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I absolutely ADORE this episode. It is exactly the sort of story that Chakotay shines in, and one of the few were the writers seem to understand what motivated him (or any of the Maquis on Voyager) to join up. Like Kira over on DS9, we get to see how easy it is for Chakotay to fall back in on what he knows best- fighting a clearly defined “bad guy” by joining up with a group of (what appear to be) underdogs fighting for their freedom. This is one of only a handful of episodes where I actually buy that he really is a former terrorist- and not a mere foot soldier, but a leader among them. I love that he doesn’t lose any of the things that made him able to be a Starfleet officer- his desire to protect the weak, his sense of justice, his belief that better things are possible- are all still visible even as he is being brain washed. Beltran plays the whole thing wonderfully, and I wish they had given him chances like this more often. His character had such interesting possibilities to explore, and it really is a shame that this and a couple others are the only chance we get to explore it, and most of the time he is just there to relay technobabble.
Amongst many of my fellow queer Trekkies there is a headcanon that Chakotay and Paris used to have a thing back in the day, and that both their hostility toward each other at the beginning of the series and the several times (like here) where Paris *refuses* to leave Chakotay behind or insists he go with him are because of that, if you are looking for a non-white savior-y explanation. ;)
I have absolutely no memory of this episode and I wonder if I’ve ever seen it. I was just starting college that fall but I for sure saw the prior 3 episodes and I’m pretty sure every other 4th season episode as well. I guess I’ll have to do a first watch!
My recollection is that I respected what was attempted here but was lukewarm on the execution. Particularly the language thing — I appreciated the idea of giving the Vori their own jargon, but the word choices themselves were fairly cumbersome, so it didn’t work as well as it could have.
Also, it bugged me that the Vori were yet another species that looked entirely human, something the Berman-era shows often fell back on when they needed to show a species in large numbers and didn’t have the budget to hire extra makeup staffers for the extras. But it occurred to me that since we only ever saw them through Chakotay’s brainwashed POV, we don’t necessarily know what the Vori actually looked like. They could’ve brainwashed him to think they looked human so he’d identify with them more easily.
This is “the” episode for me, the one that hooked me on Voyager back in the day. It was one of the first that I ever saw, and I was initially invested in it because of Michael Mahonen’s character–I had a long-standing crush on Gus Pike, Mahonen’s character on Road to Avonlea (right up there with Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe, he was), and so was automatically going to be interested in anything he was acting in.
But it was Robert Beltran who really drew me in, and Chakotay was cemented as my favorite character on the show for the rest of its run. The way in which his best qualities, his kindness, compassion, protectiveness, and empathy, were twisted so that they entrapped him in this manipulation was heart-rending, as was his line at the end: “I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start.” It put me in mind of Lloyd Alexander’s “Kestrel,” (second in the Westmark trilogy) and how well he depicted Theo’s sliding descent into hatred and the madness of war. As a teenager, both stories did a lot to shape my worldview and give me extreme caution in who and what I let influence me.
A riveting episode, one that’s stayed with me for a long time.
This episode was really good. I didn’t remember it at all until the re-watch, and it’s one that I probably didn’t appreciate the first time I saw it, but the themes of propaganda and racial hatred sure feel relevant in 2020. I’m surprised they didn’t include Seven, as her Borg knowledge of various species could have been useful, but I don’t think her omission hurt the episode either.
Regarding the Paris comments, my general opinion on this (and other occasions) is simply that as the best pilot onboard, his skills could have helped with preventing a shuttle crash or could help with a potential escape. He’s also overly-confident, in a way that lends him to sticking his neck out, which is something that Kim, for example, routinely avoids. I’m not saying that having this be the white dude is right or wrong, just that it’s in-character. I also happen to like Paris’s character, so I’m a bit biased in that defense.
This episode was a frustrating watch for me, as there were a lot of aspects I thought were brilliant and a couple of (to my mind) flaws that bugged me a lot more than they bugged KRAD. On the brilliant side was Chakotay’s arc and Beltran’s tremendous work. Chakotay’s slow shift from deliberately standing apart to consciously siding with the Vori is a totally convincing sequence of small steps that each seem logical at the time. The script and performance totally sold me on the process, while I was also having alarm bells go off that things were probably not as Chakotay thought. Really effective. But that leads me to the flaws …
Most importantly, I thought the theme of the episode was weakened by having the Vori revealed as manipulators (and arguably as the “bad guys” of the episode) and Chakotay as the victim of drugs, holograms, etc. I really felt the rug pulled out from under me at that point. There are and have been many many wars in Earth’s history in which both sides alleged atrocities by the enemy against soldiers and civilians, with varying degrees of justification and exaggeration on both sides, with foot soldiers who totally believed in their own cause, and in which either side could produce a rational, cleaned-up face to outsiders (as Ambassador Treen does here). I had totally accepted Chakotay’s arc as developing sympathy with one side in a conflict that wasn’t nearly as one-sided as he experienced — I didn’t think it was necessary to play the “it was all a dream/hologram/alternate reality” card to make it work. To me, it diluted the true horror of what was happening on the planet by converting it into a conflict with good guys and bad guys. The script nods to this with Janeway’s comment about not knowing what the Kradin are actually like, and I thought the script should have run with that line of thinking in the earlier action … leaving it that we don’t know what’s true or false about how the Vori OR the Kradin see things, why the Kradin are doing what we see them doing, or anything much at all, but an intelligent and well-meaning character like Chakotay could *still* be pulled into taking sides. I realize I’m describing a rather different episode than the “meditation on propaganda” (good term!) that the writers were going for, but to me it would have packed a bigger punch without the reveal that Chakotay was being deliberately deceived in some sort of convoluted recruitment plot.
I also didn’t like the language thing as much as KRAD did, largely because I had trouble accepting a system as tremendously sophisticated as the universal translator being able to quickly and accurately decode an alien language 95% of the way, and then not take the easy last 5% of turning “fathom” into “understand”. If the Vori are, for whatever reason, speaking an archaic form of the language among themselves, this translation makes sense; but if they’re speaking in contemporary and colloquial terms with each other, the UT should recognize that and render contemporary and colloquial English (which we know it’s good at) in translation. Threshold of disbelief varies for everybody so YMMV, but I didn’t find that as effective as KRAD did.
All the brilliant things about the episode KRAD identified I agree with however, which is why I find the (to my mind) unnecessary choice to invoke a deliberate brainwashing scheme so frustrating.
S
@7/Silvertip: The recap said Chakotay’s combadge wasn’t working, so that implies his translator wasn’t either, and thus he must’ve been relying on the Vori’s translators instead. If they didn’t work as well as Starfleet translators, that might account for the imperfections.
@8 CLB Ah, I didn’t catch that. Yes, that would make far more sense.
S
I’m with garreth @3: I was pretty sure I’d seen every single episode of the show but I have absolutely no memory of this one. Huh.
Also, I understand that it’s krad’s Warp Factor Rating and it’s the least important part of the review, but is it really fair to ding this episode for the fact that later episodes don’t follow up on it? I guess you can make the argument “I don’t appreciate the character-changing stuff as much because I know they won’t follow up on it”, but it’s still a little odd to me.
Boy, there was some bad acting in this one. Also, take a shot every time someone says “Nemesis.” Particularly if they draw out the “s” at the end.
The Kradin look like the Predator aliens to me.
Paris is gung-ho and wants to be on the rescue mission? Sounds like he was written like… Tom Paris.
The closing line is a classic Trek line that needs to be quoted more often. Especially now.
If we’re looking for problems with this episode and continuity, why was Chakotay by himself? It’s not too long until Janeway tells Seven that it’s not her custom to send an away team of one, and Tuvok confirms that it’s not Starfleet protocol either.
If they wanted Chakotay alone among strangers, they should at least have killed off a token Redshirt to explain it, like they killed off Kaplan in “Unity” for exactly that reason. Then follow up with a Lower Decks episode where no-one wants to get sent on an away mission alone with Chakotay because it’s basically a death sentence.
These episodes are frustrating because they show that Beltran can act, he just doesn’t always trouble to. Yes, he is often given little to do, but there are actors who manage to turn sow’s ears into silk purses by sheer force of will, and he isn’t one of them.
“Janeway admits to Chakotay at the end that she has no idea one way or the other if the Kradin are as nasty as the Vori say they are. “
A minor bit, but that was one of my favorite parts. Making the Kradin into the “good guys” would have been a tad facile. Even worse, it would have, in a mirror-image fashion, merely affirmed the binaristic world-view that the ep was critiquing.
You say war, I say clash: Count me as one of the ones who really liked the subtly different vocabulary. It made things simultaneously familiar and strange.
@16/Jane: As I said, I like the idea of the different vocabulary, just not the execution. I often find it very engaging and potent when a story creates a distinct jargon; for instance, I liked the youth jargon in Doctor Who: “Paradise Towers,” and of course there’s the most excellent and triumphant non-heinousness of Bill & Ted-speak. But the specific word choices here were just clumsy to my ear.
The combadge doesn’t appear to need access to a transmitter/receiver as we’ve seen numerous time in the past. It’s entirely possible his UT was working just fine. Just compare it to the wand type seen on TOS and ass 100 years of miniaturization.
The “radiation” was probably just blocking transmission and reception.
I wonder if the Vori were actually human or just simulated that way for Chakotay’s benefit. But then the last fight was supposed to be real, but was that guy taken away still a simulation? Confusing. If they are human, I guess it’s not weird to come across alien humans in the Delta Quadrant?
@15: I believe I’ve read that Robert Beltran at some point in the series’ run was actively trying to get himself fired (and apparently was unsuccessful) because he was unsatisfied with the writing and what he was given to do and so that lack of engagement probably manifested in his acting. But yes, when he applies himself he can act quite well. He was a special guest recently on Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill’s Voyager podcast reviewing the episode “Initiations” since that one focused on Chakotay, and Beltran had fond memories of that one and working with Aron Eisenberg.
Unimportant trivia note: this is the second Star Trek episode whose title would later be used in a Star Trek TNG feature film, the first instance being “First Contact.” But I think the TNG feature film titles were generally bland and could have been more creatively named instead of recycling previous episode titles.
@19, I’m confused on that point too. Since the Vori village is right around the corner I would guess Tuvok and his commandos have penetrated the facility where Chakotay is being held and Tuvok has written himself into the running scenario. Or not.
As for who’s good and who’s bad. Well, the Kradin give their help to Voyager while the Vori immediately turn Chakotay into cannon fodder. Every Vori we see is a delusion. No telling what they’re really like.
@17:. “But the specific word choices here were just clumsy to my ear.”
I thought that the choices were a mixed-bag. “Clash” for “war” and “defender” for “soldier” were good, but “nemesis” for “enemy” was a bit off. Adversary or foe would have been better.
@21:”As for who’s good and who’s bad. “
Maybe both sides are a mixture of good and bad? To use the obvious example, was Britain the “good” side in WWI? Was Germany? Was there even a “good” side? As I said upthread, the point of the ep is that binaristic thinking (good/bad, right/wrong, etc) can be dangerous.
@23, That’s the solution I lean towards. Sounds like both sides have thoroughly demonized the other. Very like WWI.
I think I’d always assumed the jargon used in this episode was the kind of slang used by military in war–like the way American GIs referred to the enemy as “Charlie” in Vietnam.
I had a problem with this episode, but for the life of me I don’t know what it is. I just know the last time I watched it, I kept thinking that somehow it wasn’t as effective as it should have been, and I have no idea why. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with it. I just know my investment in it wasn’t there, and I don’t know what the problem is.
I do like the suggestion that the Vori may not actually look human. I noticed during the “simulation,” the Kradin are depicted with scary red eyes and deep, harsh-sounding voices, but when we see the ambassador, he has neither of those traits; so it does seem possible that if they changed the appearance of the Kradin to make them more monstrous, then the appearance of the Vori we see was also manipulated in some way, to make them seem more appealing.
My only quibble with this episode is mainly in its placement in terms of air date. Since Revulsion takes place only a few days after Day of Honor, Nemesis would have played better had it aired after both shows. At least you can assume Chakotay’s lingering hate would have been dealt with offscreen, not unlike O’Brien and LaForge’s own woes. But Revulsion airing after this and establishing a time frame with Day of Honor really clashes with this one.
Otherwise, this is a near perfect episode. And it’s the kind of episode that would never work on either TNG or Enterprise (it might work on DS9, given some of their characters). Chakotay is uniquely positioned as the former Maquis as well as a victim of Cardassian oppression. I’ve been reading the novel Pathways written by Taylor, and the Chakotay chapter makes it clear just how oppressive it was. Like Neelix, Chakotay’s been defined by losing his home and his loved ones. Despite his humanist worldview and upbringing, he’d still easily fall into a pattern of directed hate.
I kinda realized in advance the whole scenario had to be a cleverly made setup to indoctrinate Chakotay (the fact that I first saw this episode not long after Captain Marvel opened in theaters certainly was a factor – that film sold the Kree as the good guys before turning the tables). But the average viewer would be caught unawares. That final twist is well earned. An episode with no easy answers, and no easy solution.
It’s kinda sad that this would end up being one of the last times they’ve used Chakotay (and Beltran) in an effective manner before phasing him out more and more.
@26/Eduardo: In production order, “Nemesis” precedes “Day of Honor.” The broadcast order was flipped for some reason — perhaps because they didn’t want to wait to show Seven’s first major episode in her de-Borged form. But I’ve always assumed the episodes took place in production order. Indeed, the Voyager Companion lists them in that order.
“You need my help to nullify the nemesis.”
My first viewing of this episode was ruined by a terrible review which not only gave away the big twist, it didn’t even acknowledge it was a twist. It presented the plot of the episode as “Chakotay meets up with one side in a war, the rest of the crew meet up with the other side, both sides claim they’re innocent victims and the others are monsters.” So I watched it with that in mind, and it wasn’t until Treen and his people beamed aboard Voyager to the accompaniment of ominous music and an ad break cliffhanger that I realised “Ohhh, we were meant to think they were in touch with the same side as Chakotay. Right.”
I may or may not have noticed that it’s halfway through the episode before any of the other regulars appear, before which we’re being introduced to the war the same way Chakotay is: Trying to keep an open mind (it’s an interesting moment when Chakotay tries to take a Kraden prisoner only for the Vori to kill him anyway) but finding our feelings towards the Kraden hardening as we see more and more evidence of their evil nature. The decisions Chakotay makes seem perfectly reasonable to him and us, until the rug is pulled out from under us.
Even then, the situation isn’t clear-cut. The Vori pressgang Chakotay and the Kraden return him to Voyager, but even Janeway admits that they’re not sure how much of either side’s claims about the other are true. What are we to make of Brone? Unlike the other Vori we meet, he’s clearly a real person. He’s presumably aware that the scenario he guides Chakotay through isn’t real, yet there’s also a good chance he’s undergone the same indoctrination process himself. The real villains, as often happens in wars, could well be miles away from the fighting.
Paris is indeed noticably gung-ho about rescuing Chakotay. We’ve seen this sort of attitude from him before (“Resistance” springs to mind) and I think seeing him apply it to Chakotay underlines how Season 3 removed the last of the tension from their relationship. (It will, however, suddenly be back a few times this season.) I really don’t see the need to constantly reference his skin colour in a pejorative manner when he’s simply acting the way the character has been established as being. One guide book queried Neelix’s apparent knowledge of a war 9,500+ light years away from his home space, but a closer examination of the scene shows that he’s just relaying the information he got from Treen.
It’s not clear if Chakotay’s shuttle is recovered, but given the reference to wreckage, if they do it’s probably in bits. (So that’s potentially three shuttles lost in as many episodes: It’s like Season 2 all over again.) As has been said, it’s the only episode not to feature Seven after her introduction and was recorded third for the season and probably intended to be broadcast that way: “Day of Honour” and “Revulsion” feel like they should be consecutive episodes, carrying on the Paris/Torres thread. On balance though, the switch is probably for the best. DS9 made a misstep in my opinion by following up Worf’s joining the crew in “The Way of the Warrior” with “The Visitor” in which he only gets a token cameo (swapping it with “Hippocratic Oath” might have helped). Following Seven joining the crew in “The Gift” with an episode where she isn’t seen or mentioned would be even more jarring.
This is, in my opinion, by far the best “Chakotay” episode on Voyager, though I’ve always thought that the Kradin looked a bit too much like the Yautja from the Predator franchise.
@28/cap-mjb: “I really don’t see the need to constantly reference his skin colour in a pejorative manner when he’s simply acting the way the character has been established as being.”
Keith is referring to the persistent tendency in Hollywood to center white male characters by default even when they aren’t interesting enough to deserve it, or at the expense of female or nonwhite characters who should logically be more prominent. He’s saying that Voyager had a habit of doing the same with Paris, that despite casting a female lead and a Latino/indigenous second lead, they still tended to push Paris to the center of attention beyond what his character merited. This has been discussed repeatedly over the course of the rewatch — I’m surprised you don’t remember the background.
This reminds me a little bit of that SG1 episode ‘The Other Side’ with Rene Auberjonois playing what turned out to be the leader of a bunch of space nazis!
@30/CLB: “This has been discussed repeatedly over the course of the rewatch — I’m surprised you don’t remember the background.”
Oh, I remember. And I’ve found it bordering on offensive each time, and often extremely myopic as here. I could understand the argument a bit more if the episode had had Paris go and rescue Chakotay single-handed ahead of several more likely candidates, but Keith’s comments here seem to be blithely ignoring the fact that the episode portrays Paris’ comments in a negative light, as he constantly pushes himself forward only to get put in his place when it’s pointed out the black Vulcan is more up to the job than him. I don’t see why those lines would be okay if given to the Asian male or the half-Klingon woman with a Hispanic surname, but giving them to Paris somehow means the show has a white supremacist agenda. It seems to me that the show shares this thing around quite a bit: There are plenty of episodes where the hotheaded lines are given to Kim or Torres while Paris has a few token lines or none at all, yet when an episode uses Paris in that role, somehow it’s deserving of a “It’s because he’s white” put-down.
I for one don’t have the feeling the show artificially centered on Paris more than he deserved. Yes, he had more development than Kim and Chakotay, but he had less than Janeway, Seven, Kes and the Doctor. And I think his backstory made this development natural, he simply had more space to grow than good boy Harry. If Paris was Asian and Kim was white, I guess someone would say that they made the white guy too good and perfect and the Asian guy was written as “problematic”. So even if I understand the background, I kind of agree with @28 that dismissing him as the “white guy” is no better than dismissing Seven as “the chick” would be.
Back on topic, I love this episode: the story, the message and that the action centered on Chakotay. I really like his character, and actually I see the understated way the actor is usually portraying him as part of the character: he doesn’t like being the center of attention, he’s more quiet and observant. And this episode really gave him much to do which I appreciated.
@32/cap-mjb: “There are plenty of episodes where the hotheaded lines are given to Kim or Torres while Paris has a few token lines or none at all, yet when an episode uses Paris in that role, somehow it’s deserving of a “It’s because he’s white” put-down.”
That’s missing the point. It’s nothing so petty as a “putdown” of a single individual. It’s an acknowledgment of a larger cultural bias that this is one example of.
I know where Keith’s coming from, because I’ve seen plenty of shows and movies that are even worse about this. They center the white male lead by default, and because they just assume he deserves to be the central character by default, they don’t bother to give him a personality interesting enough to warrant our attention. FOX’s The Gifted did this, for one example. The father character in the central family was the primary character even though he was much less interesting than most of the characters around him, and in the series finale, they even “nerfed” their most powerful female mutant, Polaris, making her inexplicably weak in the climactic action so that the white guy could be the one to save the day. There’s also Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which centers on Kyle Chandler’s obnoxious, bossy, unappealing male lead even though the story would’ve worked better if his character had been omitted from the film entirely.
Again, the problem is not that a character has light skin. Don’t dwell so much on the superficial level. The problem is that the creators are blinded by the cultural bias that a light-skinned male character deserves to be centered automatically, and thus they often don’t put in the work to make those characters worthy of that focus. Keith’s opinion is that that bias influenced the writing of Tom Paris. I’m not sure I entirely agree, but at least I understand what he’s saying.
More to the point, this is not about anything so shallow and infantile as “putdowns.” It’s not about being mean-spirited for its own sake. The criticism is not the end in itself; it’s about diagnosing a problem so that it can be addressed and solved. Recognizing unconscious biases in ourselves and in society is the first step in overcoming them.
@34/CLB: The problem is it seems to me that these rewatches have an “unconscious bias” against Paris because of a perceived “favouring the white guy” problem, and sometimes seem to pick and choose evidence to fit a preconceived opinion. This rewatch devotes a lengthy paragraph to complaining about the fact that “the white dude” (Keith’s words, not mine) has more lines than Kim, Torres, Neelix and the Doctor this week. This seems to be very much a case of altering the facts to fit the view, or at least focusing on the facts that fit the view. It ignores the fact that Janeway, Chakotay and Tuvok are all more prominent than Paris: They could have given Chakotay or Tuvok’s role to Paris with very few rewrites, but instead choose to focus on other characters and give Paris two scenes. It ignores the fact that this was in production after “The Gift”, in which Paris was probably the regular with the least to do. Sometimes Keith’s comments on Paris’ role in an episode make me stop and think: His observation that “Heroes and Demons” has Paris making the decisions and Janeway giving the technobabble explanation was an interesting perspective. But here it frankly comes across as someone having an axe to grind and not letting the facts get in the way.
@35/cap-mjb: I think you’re missing some of Keith’s point. He’s saying that Paris’s role in the story would’ve made more sense with a different character, particularly Torres, who’s closer to Chakotay and has a more logical reason to be so driven to help him.
I have read the rewatches of TNG and DS9 while I was watching these series last year, and after reading all 2 and a half rewatches closely together, my persional observation is that in every series there is a character that Keith dislikes and often comments negatively when the show is focusing on that character. It was Riker in TNG, Bashir in DS9 and Paris here. Now, this is my personal observation and everyone is entitled to have favourite and least favourite characters, but when I read all the things about the “white dude” it seems to me more like an excuse why Keith was not happy with Paris’s role in the story. I guess that if Alexander Siddig were white, the same complaints would’ve been present in DS9 rewatch.
It’s not that centering everything around the white male does not happen in many shows and does not deserve our attention, but I personally think it does not really happen with Paris that often (or at all).
@36/CLB: If Keith had said that, then I wouldn’t have a problem. It’s the fact he takes it a step further and makes it about Paris’ skin colour that I found off-putting.
@38/cap: I keep telling you, it’s not “about his skin color.” It’s about systemic bias. You insist on treating the most superficial level of the issue as if it’s the only level, and thus you completely miss the point — perhaps intentionally.
In the interest of keeping the conversation on track, I think it’s best to agree to disagree and move on, here, now that both sides have had their say, since this particular discussion is starting to go around in circles.
It gave me big-time Nadsat vibes (as in Clockwork Orange). Just a little more centered in real words.
Re-watching this ep reminded me of some comments from the great British scientist Freeman Dyson on the British Terror Bombing campaign in WWII:
“For a week after I arrived at the ORS, the attacks on Hamburg continued. The second, on July 27, raised a firestorm that devastated the central part of the city and killed about 40,000 people. We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded. “
“While the attacks on oil plants were helping to win the War, Sir Arthur continued to order major attacks on cities, including the attack on Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945. The Dresden attack became famous because it caused a firestorm and killed a large number of civilians, many of them refugees fleeing from the Russian armies that were overrunning Pomerania and Silesia. It caused some people in Britain to question the morality of continuing the wholesale slaughter of civilian populations when the War was almost over. Some of us were sickened by Sir Arthur’s unrelenting ferocity. But our feelings of revulsion after the Dresden attack were not widely shared. The British public at that time still had bitter memories of World War I, when German armies brought untold misery and destruction to other people’s countries, but German civilians never suffered the horrors of war in their own homes. The British mostly supported Sir Arthur’s ruthless bombing of cities, not because they believed that it was militarily necessary, but because they felt it was teaching German civilians a good lesson. “
“I remember arguing about the morality of city bombing with the wife of a senior air force officer, after we heard the results of the Dresden attack. She was a well-educated and intelligent woman who worked part-time for the ORS. I asked her whether she really believed that it was right to kill German women and babies in large numbers at that late stage of the War. She answered, “Oh yes. It is good to kill the babies especially. I am not thinking of this war but of the next one, 20 years from now. The next time the Germans start a war and we have to fight them, those babies will be the soldiers.” After fighting Germans for ten years, four in the first war and six in the second, we had become almost as bloody-minded as Sir Arthur.”
@21 We know the Vori imprisoned a senior officer of Voyagers crew, who had done nothing to them, drugged him, lied to him and kept him in a VR hallucination intended to brainwash him into fighting for them. I feel this gives us some clue as to what they are really like.
@44/ad: The point is that we don’t know if the Kradin are just as bad, or if the Vori were driven to such extremes in response to the Kradin’s aggression. See the comment just above yours about the British reaction to the Germans. War tends to bring out the worst in both sides.
@49 We know that the Vori lied to manipulate Chakotay into thinking they were the good guys. So either they do not have an honest case that they are the good guys, in which case they are bad guys, or they do have an honest case, but preferred to kidnap Chakotay and lie to him rather than make it. In which case they are bad guys, People who lie when the truth would serve are not good guys.
We don’t know if the Kradin are a bad lot, but we know the Vori are. Because if they were not, they would not be kidnapping and brainwashing complete strangers.
@46/ad: Most realistic conflicts are not as cartoonishly simplistic as “good guys vs. bad guys.” In many conflicts, both sides are bad guys. Or both sides act like bad guys because they’re fighting for their lives and don’t feel they have the luxury of morality, or because they’ve been fighting for so long that they have nothing left but base survival and hatred. There are no pure, noble heroes in war, only varying degrees of monsters.
Yes, these Vori who are fighting in the war are doing evil things. But it would be racist and lazy to blame that on their entire species. We don’t know what their civilians are like. We don’t know if they approve of what their warriors are doing. We don’t know if the group that captured Chakotay are typical of the Vori military, or if they’re more like Section 31, a corrupt division within it. And even if they have the full support of their government and their society, we don’t know if that’s intrinsic to their society or if it’s a response to being invaded and persecuted by the Kradin.
Think of the Maquis. Think of the Bajoran resistance. Think of “In the Pale Moonlight.” One side doing evil things in war does not prove that the other side are the good guys. It just proves that war corrupts everyone involved in it.
@46/ad: Most realistic conflicts are not as cartoonishly simplistic as “good guys vs. bad guys.” In many conflicts, both sides are bad guys. Or both sides act like bad guys because they’re fighting for their lives and don’t feel they have the luxury of morality, or because they’ve been fighting for so long that they have nothing left but base survival and hatred. There are no pure, noble heroes in war, only varying degrees of monsters.
Yes, these Vori who are fighting in the war are doing evil things. But it would be racist and lazy to blame that on their entire species. We don’t know what their civilians are like. We don’t know if they approve of what their warriors are doing. We don’t know if the group that captured Chakotay are typical of the Vori military, or if they’re more like Section 31, a corrupt division within it. And even if they have the full support of their government and their society, we don’t know if that’s intrinsic to their society or if it’s a response to being invaded and persecuted by the Kradin.
Think of the Maquis. Think of the Bajoran resistance. Think of “In the Pale Moonlight.” One side doing evil things in war does not prove that the other side are the good guys. It just proves that war corrupts everyone involved in it.
Do you think the war is meant to be similar to that between the Lilliputians and Blefuscu, who were killing each other over which end of their eggs they cut open? Chakotay is told one of the things the Vori are particularly angered about is that they believe when one dies they should be turned face down, but the Kradin believe in turning their dead face up. That suggests this is a pointless and petty war.
@48/Lisa Conner: The Vori claimed that the Kradin tied down Vori bodies to lie face up, though. If that’s true and not just propaganda, then it’s not just a difference in opinion, it’s a deliberate assault on their religion and would qualify as a hate crime. However arbitrary the difference between faiths’ practices may seem, deliberately preventing followers of a religion from being true to their beliefs is not arbitrary or meaningless, as it’s a targeted assault on their identity and values. Imagine if an enemy in a war refused to allow Catholics to administer last rites for their dying soldiers. The ritual may seem unimportant to outsiders, but to believers, it’s vital to the fate of their eternal souls.
@47. None of them are. And in most cases both sides could give you an honest argument about why they are right and justified. And probably neither would lie to you if they did not have to, because that is just making trouble for themselves if the lie comes out.
Well, the Vori did lie. So probably they had to lie in order to argue that their side is right and justified. In which case their side is not, by any plausible honest argument, right and justified. In general, people do not lie to complete strangers because the truth is on their side. It can happen. But that is not the way to bet.
@50/ad: It’s not about whether their side is “right and justified.” I’ve never claimed they were, so it’s a total non sequitur. I’ve said repeatedly now that in most wars, both sides do awful things. The point is that just because one side does awful things in a war, that does NOT mean they must be the ones who started it, or that they must be innately, racially evil, or that their enemies are pure and saintly. What it means is that war is evil and it turns everyone involved in it evil, no matter how decent their society may have been before the war, and no matter whether they were the aggressors or defenders to start with.
@50: So, what you’re saying is…the Vori know they’re not right and justified? In which case, why are they fighting? Even the most twisted ideology makes sense to its adherents, otherwise they wouldn’t follow it. The Vori must believe in what they’re fighting for.
Therefore…it’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the Vori (or at least the ordinary soldiers and people) actually do believe that the Kradin attack, enslave and murder civilians, and desecrate the dead. It may even be true. But it would take too long to convince every new recruit that their cause is just and worth fighting for, so they give them a crash course and show them what the Kradin are like before sending them off to fight. Duplicitous, yes, but they may take the viewpoint that if it’s true, what difference does it make? Many people in war think the end justifies the means and calling them “the bad guys” when the whole point of the episode is we don’t really know what the war is about and who’s doing what to who seems rather simplistic.
#49
However, if said death rites were the sole reason to keep a deadly conflict going, then it would very much be as absurd as anything encountered by Gulliver.
@50 I think this ignores the possibility that the Kradin might have done the exact same thing if Chakotay hand landed in their area of influence. It is entirely possible that this is a propaganda move for them, where they get to appear to be completely reasonable to outside forces without risking anything major themselves (after all, if the rescue fails, all they’ve lost is a couple people). It is exactly the kind of thing that people trying to establish themselves as the legitimate governance of a place would do. We know the Vori aren’t trustworthy, but I think it is a mistake to automatically assume that because they are “bad” guys, whoever is fighting them must be the “good” guys. Indeed, I think reducing them to “good” and “bad” defeats the whole purpose of the episode. Chakotay isn’t fighting the Kradin because they are objectively “bad” guys; he is fighting them because he has developed a relationship with the Vori that makes him willing to be a part of their struggle and believe what they believe. If he had landed in Kradin territory, and he had been treated the same way, he likely would have fought for them; again, not because the Vori are “bad”, but because he had been recruited to a cause. When he says at the end that hate is harder to unlearn than it is to learn, he is 100% correct. Hate doesn’t require knowing all the facts, or even being based on some tally of who has done more evil than good. It is something you can be *taught*, and once you are, it is extremely hard to undo.
Imagine being an alien who landed on earth during WW2. You would see Nazi Germany, with it’s intense racism, ethno-nationalism, and imperialism and easily conclude that they were “bad”. And if you were an alien who landed in America during WW2, you would see…. intense racism (complete with second class citizens, widely denied voting rights, and concentration camps), ethno-nationalism, and imperialism. From your purely alien perspective, it might be possible for you to draw the conclusion that both sides were composed of complete jerks. Of course, there is more to it than that, but you are an alien dropping by the place- not an earth historian or political expert. If your friend had landed in Nazi territory, you might ask the Americans for help getting him back, and even be grateful that they did, without thinking “Gee, what a bunch of swell guys these Americans are, what with their concentration camps, fire bombing of civilians, and history of genocide.”
@50
I think that we are supposed to understand the Vori system as an SF- commentary on wartime propaganda and how it engenders a simplistic us-vs- them mindset. Propaganda, after all, is a kind of brainwashing, and it works best when the person being propagandized is unware that they are viewing propaganda. The Vori have taken this unethical practice to an even more unethical extreme.
Going on past conflicts (WWI, WWII, etc), the Vori were probably feeding their subjects a mixture of truths, partial truths, and lies.
@53/Drago: “However, if said death rites were the sole reason to keep a deadly conflict going, then it would very much be as absurd as anything encountered by Gulliver.”
As I said, that would be true if it were just a matter of a difference of opinion that they fought over. But I’m talking about something else, something specific beyond that — the practice of deliberately desecrating the enemy’s dead, denying them the rites that their people believe would save their souls. When it comes to that, it doesn’t matter in the least whether the difference in beliefs seems superficial or arbitrary to outsiders. What matters is that it’s an intentional assault on the enemy’s belief system and identity, and that is a brutal tactic of psychological warfare no matter what the specific differences are. From their point of view, you’re damning their dead for all eternity.
I mean, insofar as there are any rules of “civilized” warfare, one that usually gets respected is to show some consideration for the other side’s dead, to allow the enemy to recover their dead and give them decent burial and recognition and offer some comfort to their families. Under the Geneva Convention, desecrating the enemy’s dead is a war crime. So no, this isn’t just some Swiftian satire of an absurd disagreement. What’s at issue here isn’t the difference in belief, it’s the way that difference is weaponized.
I guess the only way the Kradin’s attitude towards Vori funeral rites could be considered even remotely justified is if it’s not just a case of them not sharing the Vori’s beliefs or deliberately insulting them, but that they have the opposite beliefs, ie the Kradin believe in order for a soul to pass on the body has to be placed face up, so from their perspective they’re saving the Vori dead from their heretical practices. (This is, of course, pure speculation: The episode tells us nothing about the beliefs of either the real or simulated Kradin.)
This episode gets a +1 bonus for being a clear Chakotay story. He got so few of them, and several of the ones he did get were terrible, so this episode being a good Chakotay show makes it a rare breed. This one proves that Robert Beltran can definitely act when he cares about what he’s doing, he just rarely got the chance to do anything that mattered. I don’t doubt that before the end of Voyager he was just phoning it in.
I’m with the folks who were a bit put off by the language quirks the Vori used. Good idea, one that sci fi far too often doesn’t bother to use, but it’s tough to do well and some of it was very clunky here. It kind of made the Vori sound like naive, dorky kids who had no idea what they were doing. Although, I suppose that would actually work in their favor as far as presenting a sympathetic face to Chakotay.
@58/cap-mjb: “I guess the only way the Kradin’s attitude towards Vori funeral rites could be considered even remotely justified is if it’s not just a case of them not sharing the Vori’s beliefs or deliberately insulting them, but that they have the opposite beliefs, ie the Kradin believe in order for a soul to pass on the body has to be placed face up, so from their perspective they’re saving the Vori dead from their heretical practices.”
Even if that’s so, it’s still an act of religious persecution and bigotry, forcing their own beliefs on a people that don’t share them. Saying “My beliefs are truer than yours and I have the right to make you follow them” is an insult whether you intend it that way or not. And the fact that you think it’s benevolent doesn’t make it any less harmful to the other person or culture.
@59 I thought the language was helpful for the story, because it helps show Chakotay becoming integrated with the Vori, as he starts to use more and more of their style of talking, himself. It’s a little awkward to our ears, sure, but frankly no more so than you sometimes come across on earth in different cultures that speak the same language (the English you hear on the streets in say, California, can be massively different from what you would hear on the streets of Dublin).
#56
No, it’s still fairly absurd. Fighting over the dead, thus resulting in even more death. I find that darkly funny. Forget Swift, that’s Monty Python.
This episode always reminded me of a successful fusion of the TNG episodes “Frame of Mind” and “The High Ground”. It takes a more linear mindbending but because it’s so complete the twist hits home. And rather than saying nothing on terrorism it delivers a crystal clear message on the insidious and very complete nature of manufactured hate. Something we’d better not ignore in the here and now.
Going through the conversation here I’m not sure the Vori were practicing deception necessarily at all, at least not in their own mind. That simulation could very well have been true events, or at least their interpretation of them. In their way it may seem more honest than just telling someone. “You have seen the events for yourself, would you tolerate the Kradin to live?” And I wonder if the Vori look human at all. The fact that Tuvok started out looking Kradin to Chakotay almost seems to highlight that the brainwashing is complete enough that whoever went through it would see a familiar face. If Worf had been there he would’ve been surrounded by Klingons or someone similar.
@63/Drago What’s that saying, “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity?” Don’t look at it as “funerary rights” it’s religion plain and simple. If anything this episode is about a crusade. Religious War by which all things are authorized in the name of the deity.
In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, Tor.com isn’t running any new content today, so no Voyager Rewatch. We’ll be back Thursday with “Revulsion,” and this week there’ll also be an overview of the first season of Lower Decks and a review of the third-season premiere of Discovery.
In the meantime, if you want a day-appropriate Voyager fix, read my take on “Tattoo,” which focused on Chakotay and was a disaster on pretty much every level……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So I’ve been a longtime lurker on krad’s rewatches, and I generally enjoy reading then and the lively discussions in the comments. For this episode, I wanted to mention that I don’t see Paris’s jumping into action to try to rescue Chakotay as an issue of race at all.
Krad suggests that B’elanna should be the most likely to try to push her way into the rescue mission, but I think that her not doing that follows the growth of her character. Had this episode happened in seasons 1 or 2, I’d agree. But this season was when she really started moving away from hot-headed former Maquis B’elanna and became Starfleet Chief Engineer Torres. Granted, some of that character development may have been foisted into her due to the addition of 7 of 9 being the new outsider character to fight the system. But doesn’t Torres have a conversation with 7 later on this season where she gives her the same dressing-down that Janeway gave her back in season 1? A conversation she ended with “if I can adjust to life on this ship, you can too”.
Meanwhile, Paris is consistently shown as the impatient, act first/plan later character. 30 days, Year of Hell, Extreme Risk, and Gravity all come in the next few seasons, and ask have that character trait/flaw front and center. Towards the end of the series, he does start to calm those tendencies a bit, but he’s usually the first one to want to jump into action without thinking.
That’s just my 2¢. I don’t want to restart the argument that was happening earlier in the thread, I just wanted to offer a different viewpoint.
This may be Kenneth Biller’s best script
Really? No one else was bothered (which is to say irritated nearly to the point of rage-quitting) by the “close your glimpses” nonsense? No one else was painfully reminded of “Miri”? If the performances were good, I was blinded to it by my eye-rolling over all the nullifying and whatever their painfully annoying version of “soon” was – and especially the “glimpses”. Which was not only used for “sees” but also “eyes”, until I hoped they’d all die. I hated this episode more than any in a long time.
One of my favourite episodes of Voyager back in the day and watching it now it’s really stood the test of time. I’d argue it’s even more relevant today as we see the likes of the far right and far left and extremist factions around the world groom followers online with powerful indoctrination techniques to demonise other people. Easily Robert Beltran’s best episode too
Re: the Paris issue
When I watched the episode I took the “I should have gone with him” to mean that Paris was supposed to accompany Chakotay on the scouting mission but wasn’t able to for some reason. This reading of the episode somewhat helps I think. It is easy to see that Paris, as ‘the best pilot (they) have’, would be a part of the mission to find the source of some weird readings. That would explain why he felt guilty that his commanding officer was caught in a situatuon where he shouldn’t have to be alone and so volunteers for the rescue operation. Of course, this was all executed rather clumsily (and may just be extrapolation on my part) but it is par course for Voyager at this point.
It’s interesting to note that even as a non-white person, I don’t mind Paris as much as other people do. I feel that he rounds up the ensemble quite nicely with a sarcastic, irreverent and yet charming sense of humour. His dynamics with Kim, the Doctor, and Tuvok in particular are great. Could the role (or the associated duties, character traits and character dynamics) have been better given to a person of colour or woman? Maybe, but I like the combination we ended up with.
However, I guess Krad’s main criticism is levelled at the emphasis and screentime his character gets/got (and some questionable camera angles) and that’s valid. I’m not sure if this episode is the best showcase of that tendency though. Here it kind of makes sense unlike in ‘Caretaker’.
Speaking of, the first few episodes of ST: Enterprise were tough watching for me for a related reason: I really couldn’t tell Archer, Trip and Reed apart, from each other or from the rest of the white men in the crew. The directing and new (at that point, for me) uniforms also didn’t make it easy to pinpoint the focus character in a scene. This culminated in me watching through most of a teaser which had an interaction between two lower decks characters (the one with the first away mission and “where no dog has gone before”) before realising that the guy wasn’t one of our male leads. There are many arguments to be made for diversity in TV but “make your characters diverse so that people can tell them apart” seems like a good one.
Mani: People tended to forget this (including the writers), but Chakotay’s at least as good a pilot as Paris.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve often wondered where Jeri Ryan had got to during Nemesis and the erratic scheduling may be the reason – Seven is still largely confined to the Cargo Bay at this stage. How could a Kradin be in Tsunkatse when that episode took place thousands of light years away? The Vori dialect may be the most interesting ST language since the Tamarians’ in Darmok.
Yep Krad, Chakotay’s indoctrination really should have been brought up again, especially in his future dealings with Seven who have something else in common now aside from Borg interference and yep again, Paris is annoyingly self-righteous. Tuvok is a far better choice to join this rescue mission what with being Voyager’s security chief. The only reason Paris wants to go is pure ego.
6: For any Seven haters (and there are quite a few of those), they would probably hold Nemesis up as an example of how necessary Seven is to the success of this show. You’re right that Paris would have come in useful getting the shuttle down in one piece but after that, a security officer would be far better equipped to survive.
7: It’s interesting that the episode uses the Kradin’s fearsome physical appearance to initially paint the Kradin as the bad guys whereas the more human-looking Vori are the true bad guys. 9: I prefer to think it was the Vori’s own language, slightly different from ours to be sufficiently alien.
12: This is the true Star Trek: Nemesis. 13: Predator is an influence on some ST aliens, like the Kradin; the Nausicaans; the Hirogen; the invisible alien from Darmok, etc. 14: Redshirts (or Yellowshirts now) are the most disposable crew members – they’re a way to illustrate the episode’s resident menace without having to sacrifice one of the show’s major players. The reason why there wasn’t one this time is a mystery.
16: I like that the episode comes down on neither the side of the Kradin or the Vori since both are accused of the same atrocities, like the Ennis or the Nol-Ennis in Battle Lines. 17: Did Bill & Ted popularise Valley speak? 19: I think he was the one real Vori that Chakotay met in the simulation. He may even have been the one supervising his indoctrination.
21: Why would Tuvok write himself into the simulation as one of the sworn enemies of the Vori? He’s just asking to get “nullified”. 22: Nemesis? Enemy? Why quibble…? 28: Paris was equally gung ho in Prototype but it made sense for him to lead that away mission because they needed someone with exceptional piloting skills. In Nemesis, he just wants to be the hero of the story. Worf was a late addition to S4 which is why from The Visitor to Starship Down, he wasn’t given an episode to star in because they had yet to be written. Michael Dorn had to wait until The Sword of Kahless before he finally got that chance.
33: VGR seemed to forget about Kes towards the end of her time on the show, which is doubly disappointing now that they’d broken her free of Neelix’s clutches. 47: Deja vu. 48: All wars are petty and pointless. 51: Does everyone who goes off to war eventually lose sight of their ideals? 54: “If the rescue fails, all they’ve lost is a couple of people”. How big was the commando unit the Kradin sent in with Tuvok?
73: Michael Dorn may have been cast for the 4th season of DS9 well into their production schedule but that didn’t prevent him from starring in the premiere feature length episode of the season. So really, it’s not like he was waiting all season to star in his own episode when he began the season in a position of prominence.
I really liked the alternate vocabulary. None of it felt cumbersome to me except for ‘glimpses’ for eyes and seeing.
I’ve always remembered the end line for Chakotay being simply, “If only it was as easy to stop hating.” I was surprised this time watching it to hear it continue into, “as it was to start.” Extremely minor nitpick, but for some reason it feels more powerful without the second half