“Demon”
Written by André Bormanis and Kenneth Biller
Directed by Anson Williams
Season 4, Episode 24
Production episode 192
Original air date: May 6, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Because they’re low on deuterium, Voyager has gone into “gray mode,” which requires that nonessential systems be shut down and power cut off to several decks. This also requires barracks-style sleeping arrangements, though Neelix decides, along with a few other people, to bunk down in sickbay instead.
On the bridge, Janeway orders Chakotay and Tuvok to brainstorm energy conservation methods and Kim to work on an alternative fuel source. (Why she waited until now to request this is left as an exercise for the viewer.) Paris helpfully suggests a bicycle hooked up to the engines, and volunteers Kim to pedal the first shift.
Astrometrics is still active against orders, but when Chakotay goes to tell Seven to shut it down, she reveals that she’s found a source of deuterium.
That’s the good news; the bad news is, it’s a Class-Y planet, colloquially called a “demon” planet, with an atmosphere so toxic and hostile a ship can’t even safely get into orbit. However, they’re out of options, so they set a course, adjusting the shields to defend against the thermionic discharges.
Buy the Book
A History of What Comes Next
The first attempt to beam up deuterium doesn’t work, as the containment unit fails to hold in the toxic atmosphere, exposing the transporter room, Seven, and Ensign Nozawa to it. They escape and seal off the transporter room, and eventually are able to vent the bad atmosphere, but they’re back to square one.
Kim suggests modifying a shuttle and EVA suits to work in the atmosphere. Janeway agrees and Kim volunteers Paris to accompany him as revenge for the bicycle line.
The landing is a rough one, but then they find a pool of liquid that has a ton of deuterium in it, and is also much cooler than the rest of the planet. However, Kim falls into it. Paris is able to pull him out, but then both their suits fail.
The EMH is not happy about turning his sickbay into a barracks, but the only alternative Chakotay gives him is to shut himself off, which will preserve power in any case.
After Kim and Paris have been dark for ages, Janeway decides a rescue is in order, but isn’t willing to risk another shuttle, so they land the ship. Chakotay and Seven then go out, and find Kim and Paris in an underground cavern where communications won’t reach—and they’re also out of their suits and breathing normally! They’ve also been collecting samples of the silver liquid.
Confused, the four of them return to Voyager but as soon as they’re on board, Paris and Kim stop being able to breathe. The EMH, having kicked out Neelix and the rest because of the medical emergency, puts the pair inside a force field filled with the demon planet’s atmosphere. Their blood is filled with the silver liquid, and it “bioformed” them into people who can survive in a Class-Y environment—but not in Class-M anymore.
Janeway sends Chakotay and Seven back out to investigate further, and Kim volunteers to go with them, while Paris stays behind to be tested by the EMH.
Kim is happy to be back on the planet, as it now feels like home to him. In their travels, they find two unconscious humans: Kim and Paris, still in their EVA suits.
Meanwhile, Janeway and Torres have been examining the samples and at one point, Torres accidentally touches the stuff, and it reforms to mimic the finger that touched it.
The silver liquid forms around Voyager’s landing struts, trapping them on the surface. Janeway orders the away team beamed back and is surprised when Chakotay says “five to beam up,” and even more surprised when it’s only four who do beam up, as the Class-Y-breathing Kim runs away.
Voyager can’t take off. Tuvok converts the weapons to fire nadion pulses, which might damage the silver liquid. The EMH revives Paris and Kim, who are still normal. Janeway realizes that the silver liquid has mimetic qualities, and the Kim and Paris they originally brought back were duplicates.
When Tuvok fires the nadion pulses, it hurts the duplicate Paris. They beam the duplicate Kim back, and we soon learn that the silver liquid does mimic other life forms, but this is the first time they’ve done it with a sentient one—it’s their first time as sentient beings, and they don’t want to give it up.
Janeway makes an offer: the crew will allow themselves to be duplicated so they can have a community, and the silver liquid will let them go. The alternative is to fire their way out with the nadion pulses. They pick door #1, and Voyager is able to take off, leaving more than a hundred duplicates of themselves behind on the planet.
At no point does anyone mention whether or not they got more deuterium…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Despite running on the annihilation of matter and antimatter, Voyager apparently also needs deuterium to function properly. While deuterium has been part of the engine systems going back to second-season TNG, this is the first time it’s been established as being so critical that a lack of it forces them to go into “gray mode,” which is powering down to bare minimum of power. Gray mode also means no warp drive.
Also Class-Y planets are so uninhabitable and dangerous that it’s risky for ships to enter orbit. Despite this, a low-powered Voyager is able to land, and people wander around in EVA suits without a problem. Oh, and this highly corrosive atmosphere can also be re-created in sickbay without ill effects on the equipment therein.
And we get the latest made-up radiation, thermionic radiation, which I assume was pioneered by the guys from Galaxy Quest…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is initially conservative about what she’s willing to risk to get the deuterium, but that goes away right quick, to the point where she negotiates with the silver liquid at the muzzle of a gun.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok insists that Neelix not take his blanket, his pillow, or his book with him to the emergency barracks. It’s not clear why he won’t let him do any of these things, since they don’t take up a lot of space, nor require power.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix’s response is to bunk down in sickbay, along with some other crewmembers.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH’s response to these interlopers is to stay up all night singing. This lasts until Neelix decides to lead a singalong.
Forever an ensign. Kim suggests taking a shuttle down and tells Paris that he’s sick of being thought as the green fresh-out-of-the-Academy ensign, since he’s now been at this for four years and actually has accumulated some experience points…
Half and half. Torres is eager to go with Chakotay to rescue Kim and Paris, but Chakotay says she’s needed on the ship, plus she shouldn’t be the one searching for her beau as she can’t be dispassionate on that subject.
Resistance is futile. Torres, however, is the one who suggests Chakotay take Seven, as she’s got the dispassion Chakotay says is needed in spades.
Do it.
“Need I remind you, Ensign, that there is no environment less hospitable to humanoid life than a Class Y?”
“Actually, Tuvok, no, you needn’t remind me. What’s the alternative? Resume course? Creep along at quarter-impulse hoping we find fuel before we end up dead in the water? We’ve got deuterium within arm’s reach, we can’t let the opportunity slip away without at least trying.”
—Tuvok being pedantic and Kim giving as good as he gets.
Welcome aboard. The only guest in this one is recurring regular Alexander Enberg as Vorik.
Trivial matters: The duplicates of Voyager’s crew will be seen again next season in “Course: Oblivion.” Voyager will again have to go into gray mode in “Counterpoint.”
When Kim is listing all the stuff he’s been through since signing on to Voyager, he specifically mentions the events of the “Scorpion” two-parter, “Favorite Son,” “Hunters,” and “Emanations.”
It was established in “Unforgettable” that Voyager was searching for deuterium.
This is Roxann Dawson’s first episode back from her pregnancy, and the first time she’s been seen from the neck down while in uniform in a very long time. (She was seen in full pregnant form while in World War II costume in “The Killing Game” two-parter.) She is still wearing the nifty jacket with the tool pocket, however.
The transporter chief played by John Tampoya, who has been seen in several episodes in that position, and also as the one Torres walked in on in his underwear in “Twisted,” is given the name Nozawa.
Set a course for home. “Now that we’re down, we won’t be going up again soon.” Let’s see, what’s good about this episode? The Kim-Paris banter is superb, and it’s nice to see the writers finally remember that Kim isn’t a newbie anymore, and he’s been through some shit.
It’s also nice to see Chakotay be the one to land the ship, as the show sometimes forgets that he’s an ace pilot, too.
And there the compliments end, as holy cow, this episode is horrible.
We start with the premise. It would be fine if they made something up. One of the things I loved about the original series is that they created fictional devices and substances that were based on real things, but expanded or amended in some way: dilithium being the obvious one, plus things like quadrotriticale and tricorder.
But no, they had to go with deuterium, which is a real thing. What’s worse, it’s a real thing that is an isotope of hydrogen, which is the single most common element in the entire universe. Yes, folks, we’re back to the idiocy of “Caretaker” where people were having trouble finding water, even though water is, y’know, everywhere. So is deuterium, so the notion that they’d be short on it is patently absurd.
I mean, they could’ve made it something like, I dunno, polydeuterium or quadrodeuterium or mega-deuterium or some damn thing to make it rarer and, y’know, fictional.
The notion of a “demon” planet is a good one, and it’s nice to have them not be on a Class-M planet that either looks like a soundstage or southern California, but after being told that a Class-Y planet is so dangerous you shouldn’t even go into orbit around it, they sure as hell spend a lot of time there. The atmosphere is so corrosive that Kim’s idea of going down in a shuttle is deemed incredibly dangerous—but then the EMH reproduces it in sickbay with no ill effects. Just in general, the “demon” planet pretty much stops being even a concern, as half the crew wanders around in it.
Oh, and if the ship is stuck at one-quarter impulse until they find a source of deuterium, they’d better be pretty close to a planet, because without warp drive, they’re stuck inside whatever solar system they came out of warp in, and limited to those planets. Period.
Because they apparently didn’t have enough story for an hour, we also get the nonsense with the EMH and Neelix when the latter bunks down in sickbay, which looks like it’s going for an Odd Couple vibe and it fails in every possible way. Bog-obvious, unfunny filler to mark time in an episode that doesn’t have enough story for an hour. Hell, it doesn’t have enough story for ten minutes.
And then in the end, the crew just blithely agrees to create duplicates of themselves. Which happens off camera and with no consequences in this episode. (Normally that would mean no consequences ever, but we will, thankfully, get a followup next season.)
The worst part? The rotten cherry on top of this shit sundae? The story is credited to André Bormanis, the show’s science consultant. I get that TV writers don’t always pay attention to their consultants, but this one has his byline on it, for crying out loud. It is, to say the least, not a good look for Bormanis or Voyager.
Just an awful, awful episode, dumb from the ground up and dumb from the roof on down the other side.
Warp factor rating: 1
Keith R.A. DeCandido is very glad that it’s not 2020 anymore and is hoping for a much better 2021.
Honestly, I think they would have been better off completely eliminating the “must find common things!” plot and just make it a bottle show. The stuff with Neelix was annoying, but I actually like the idea of them running low on power and being forced to abandon parts of the ship. It ties back into the idea that was the whole premise of the show to being with- that they are stuck out here without backup and are going to have to rough it sometimes. There’s some interesting character possibilities in that premise, but instead all we get is Neelix being super annoying again. It would have been neat to see them actually have to scrimp and sacrifice in a way bigger than “we have to eat weird alien food sometimes!”
The ending is just baffling. I guess Janeway learned nothing from Prototype- that giving life and the ability to reproduce to sentient beings is the province of gods and evolution, not starship Captains. They’ve blasted their way out of situations before when people demand things from them, and I would argue “we need the DNA (or whatever) of your people to create A NEW CLONE CIVILIZATION” is a bigger ask than “we want a replicator.” Seriously, what the heck?
Funnily enough—until KRAD pointed out the absurdity—during the entire review I read “deuterium” as “dilithium”, because it was so obviously meant to be something rare that they couldn’t easily find…
Once again Seven disobeys orders and gets away with it. Yeah, she found the deuterium, but that just sends the message that you can ignore orders and hope that there won’t be any consequences.
Related, in a way: When Tuvok tells Neelix he can’t take his stuff to sleep with, it’s Tuvok who ends up carrying the blankets back to Neelix’s quarters. He should have ordered Neelix to do it.
Worse, deuterium can even be found in ice, meaning they are somehow in a region where there aren’t even comets or icy moons.
In Andre Bormanis’s defense, he wrote this episode with dilithium as the substance they were out of, but the showrunners changed it to deuterium (a gaseous substance in Earthlike conditions) because they liked the joke of the ship “running out of gas.” So one of the stupidest ideas in Trek history happened because the showrunners prioritized a bad pun over credibility.
There is so much wrong with using deuterium here, even aside from its relative abundance. I mean, the scarcity isn’t really that huge an issue. Deuterium makes up only a small percentage of any mass of hydrogen or water, and it can be difficult and time-consuming to separate out, so if there were a way to find a pure source of it, that would be very useful. (This is how I rationalized the “deuterium mine” planet in Enterprise: “Marauders” when it came up in one of my Rise of the Federation novels.) But there’s no way you’d find deuterium on a super-hot planet like the Demon World. Hydrogen is the lightest element, so it’s the gas that has the easiest time escaping from a planet’s gravity well, and on a really hot planet, it would outgas even faster. So a planet that hot, with only Earthlike gravity, would’ve run completely out of hydrogen in any form millions of years ago, unless it were extremely young.
Now, most of the stupidities of this episode could’ve been fixed just by sticking with dilithium as Bormanis intended. But not all of them. The other utterly stupid thing here is that Kim and Paris collapse because their spacesuits are corroding — because the incredibly toxic, corrosive atmosphere is eating away physically at the suit seals and about to penetrate their suits — and yet they’re found hours later completely intact, just unconscious. There is absolutely no explanation given for this. They should’ve been hideously dissolved corpses by that point, and the only reason they’re not is plot armor. It’s an incredibly insulting story cheat. At least the deuterium idiocy is consistent within the episode, even if it isn’t consistent with real-world science or sense. Kim and Paris’s inexplicable survival requires the episode to directly contradict itself, to set up an impossible deathtrap and then resolve it by just ignoring that it ever happened. That is awful, awful writing.
Christopher: Right, and throughout the episode, the supposedly hugely deadly atmosphere is portrayed as no big deal. I mean, the EMH re-creates the atmosphere in sickbay, and based on how they described it, it should destroy everything inside the force field….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I often read these reviews and think, “Gee, why did I quit my StarTrek chronological order rewatch at the middle of Voyager, having subjected myself to all of TOS, TAS, TNG, and DS9?” I clearly missed some amazing episodes.
Thank you for reminding me why I had trouble getting past this point.
Reading the comments, the dilithium idea would have been quite nice, especially given that it could tie into current DIS. Shame that the episode just wasn’t good enough to support that plot.
@7 I’m a bit behind this rewatch in my chronological rewatch, I’m wondering if I’ll hit the same wall you did when I reach the end of DS9.
On the other hand, the “Year of Hell” two-parter straddled NYE, which amused me to no end.
John Tampoya has played no fewer than twelve Star Trek characters, in TNG and Voyager. But even though Tampoya is predominantly a Filipino name, they give him the name Kashimuro Nozawa, which is obviously supposed to be Japanese. Nozawa is definitely a Japanese name, but Kashimuro is definitely not – the closest is the surname Kashimura.
@9 I believe Tampoya was also Garrett Wang’s stand-in for most of the run of Voyager. Wang mentions him several times over on “The Delta Flyers,” including some pretty funny stories (such as the lead-up to him being shirtless in “Twisted”).
“Now you know why they call it Demon-class.”
I didn’t find this as bad as its reputation suggests, but then it couldn’t be really. It does have its problems though. I found the blokey banter between Paris and Kim got a bit wearing after a while. When I first watched this episode, I managed to be completely unspoilered about the fact that the Paris and Kim that Chakotay and Seven found were duplicates, which made it an effective twist. It’s a rather desperate one though: The chances of Paris and Kim still being alive when they find the duplicates are slim, so you’d expect there to be no chance of them being alive when they were actually found. But they’re on the main titles, so we get a throwaway explanation about back-up life support systems and then move on.
The subplot with the Doctor and Neelix is actually quite good from a character point of view. Neelix twice outmanoeuvres the Doctor, and when the Doctor finally gets to clear him out, the gracious and unquestioning way Neelix accepts it, and the fact he offers the Doctor somewhere to stay any time he needs it, leaves him feeling bad.
Janeway is rather ruthless in opening fire on the deuterium pool knowing it’s hurting the duplicate Paris and Kim, even if the ship is in danger. Ultimately though, Voyager’s crew turn out to be a lot more open to the idea of their DNA being used to populate a planet than Riker was back in “Up the Long Ladder”! (But if you’re pleased by the positive resolution…might be an idea to skip “Course: Oblivion”.)
Vorik makes his second and final appearance of the season, although he’ll be back in Season 5. (I must admit, I’d completely forgotten he was in “Day of Honour” as well!)
I have watched this episode precisely once, and while I loved the “I was pretty green” exchange between Paris and Kim, the rest was so vile I’ve never bothered to watch it since. I always skip this and “Threshold” when I’m doing a rewatch.
@11/cap-mjb: “Ultimately though, Voyager’s crew turn out to be a lot more open to the idea of their DNA being used to populate a planet than Riker was back in “Up the Long Ladder”!”
The difference is consent. Riker and Pulaski had their DNA stolen from them and were not given a choice. Here, the crew had a choice. Yes, it was a deal to get out of captivity, but the Blood was just following its instincts, and it released the ship in exchange merely for the promise that the crew would consider donating their DNA. They were given the option to say no, while Riker and Pulaski were not. That was what Riker and Pulaski objected to — not the concept itself, but the fact that it was forced on them, that they were violated rather than invited. It shouldn’t be hard to understand that.
“Demon” is an episode with exactly two good ideas that are both misused and then literally forgotten about halfway through. Voyager low on fuel type-x is something that should have happened a lot more often, and I always appreciate when they reference it here and there. And the demon class planet was made to sound pretty gnarly and interesting as a setting.
Both utterly wasted unfortunately. Anyone who knows what deuterium is would know that it’s the worst possible choice for a scarce fuel source. And the planet itself, after being built up as a literal hellscape, turns out to be a place with some steam and a red sky. Gallivanting around a place worse than the surface of Venus, and completely contradicting their own dialogue by landing the ship there, kind of kills the atmosphere.
And like the deuterium thing there was a very simple fix to this. Just drop the idea of such a dangerous planet (which was used to about 1% its potential anyway) and just make it a planet with no oxygen in the atmosphere. Say it’s all nitrogen and carbon dioxide, so that way you don’t have to handwave the corrosive air and it would make a lick of sense why Harry and Tom were found alive hours after passing out. A backup emergency life support stasis thing can’t save you from sulfuric acid eating away your flesh, but it could believably save you from hypoxia for a while. The script just created dumb problems for itself that were easily avoidable, and the problems the script makes for our characters are avoided without even an explanation. So stupid.
The only reason I don’t get mad at the existence of this episode is that without it we wouldn’t have “Course: Oblivion” and that one makes “Demon” all worth it.
@13
You might want to cut that last sentence. It comes across as rude and condescending.
@14, Yea if there were ever an episode to show a redshirt dying gruesomely to prove that the situation is serious, this would have been it (where is Guy when you need him?!). That would have ratcheted up the tension and made the planet seem truly inhospitable. Instead it doesn’t seem worse than any other planet that doesn’t have a breathable atmosphere. As you pointed out, there are planets *inside our own solar system* that have worse conditions than this one, so what makes it so special?.
@14/erictheread: “Voyager low on fuel type-x is something that should have happened a lot more often, and I always appreciate when they reference it here and there.”
Not really. Warp and fusion engines are powered by deuterium, which is highly abundant despite what this episode claimed and is routinely gathered by the Bussard collectors on the fronts of the nacelles. According to the TNG Tech Manual, starships have onboard devices that can convert matter into antimatter; it’s slow and inefficient, but as long as they have power — which can be gathered from any star in the universe using solar cells — they should have the means to replenish their antimatter. And dilithium can be recrystallized. So “low on fuel” episodes should be completely obsolete in the 24th century.
“Anyone who knows what deuterium is would know that it’s the worst possible choice for a scarce fuel source.”
Unfortunately, science literacy in our society is not what it should be. IIRC, I once read a Trek comic — one of Malibu’s DS9 comics, I think — whose writer confused deuterium with deutronium, the imaginary fuel source used by the Jupiter 2 in Lost in Space.
I’ve heard of thermionic valves for audio equipment (apparently very good retro audio equipment) but not thermionic radiation. I wonder if it was supposed to be some other kind of radiation but a show runner had a cool stereo and there was some pun about music/sound that we didn’t get.
Amazing how they couldn’t get close enough to any star and harvest solar power so that the Replicators (which turn energy into matter) could produce any amount of deuterium as needed.
I’m not troubled by the use of deuterium itself as the matter component of the matter-antimatter reaction. That’s been in both canon and non canon Trek works for decades (going back at least as far as the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology that came out shortly after ST:TMP. Also, a hot planet with a toxic atmosphere could still in theory have deuterium. Venus would be an analogy. There are levels higher in it’s atmosphere where sulfuric acid exists. Corrosives in the atmosphere of a Demon Class Planet most likely have Hydrogen isotopes as a component.
What might have been more interesting would have been Boron as the scarce material needed. Assume that reasonably conventional fusion is the power source for non Warp Drive needs. By the mid 24th century, the Federation should have mastered Proton-Boron 11 fusion. Deuterium fuses at a lower temperature, but produces neutrons which at least with current technology is problematic from several angles. Proron- Boron 11 is essentially aneutronic and the product is usually charged particles which are easier to convert to usable power. Boron is a far scarecer element, and you can’t just collect it from gas clouds. No Boron, No Impulse engines, so even if you have Warp Drive, you can’t easily stop for supplies.
I actually enjoyed this one a little bit and don’t find it nearly as unwatchable as some of the other low-rated episodes. I enjoy the Kim/Paris banter, Kim’s character moments, and the Neelix/Doctor scenes for the reasons 11/cap-mjb mentions. Thinking that Paris and Kim have been bioformed only to discover they’ve been replaced by duplicates and that Voyager’s accidentally created sentient life is a neat little plot.
But everyone is right that it doesn’t make any sense when you think about it, and Kim and Paris somehow surviving for hours is utter nonsense. I initially misremembered that they’d been suspended in the liquid for hours and that’s how they survived, but no, they survived with no explanation given. I also happened to watch this right before watching DS9’s “A Man Alone,” so it was back-to-back ridiculous endings of creating clones and acting like it’s no big deal.
Also, it’s lovely when sci-fi uses real scientific principles that can educate and pique the curiosity of viewers, but the flip side of that is when they use real science (like deuterium) and some viewers (like me) will write it off as technobabble because it’s in a sci-fi show. Suffice to say, the deuterium plot didn’t bother me while I was watching it, but I feel a little silly now that I’ve read this review.
@20/Charles: Replicators don’t turn energy into matter. That would be incredibly inefficient. Since E=mc^2 and c^2 is huge, you’d need over 7 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, nearly twice the entire United States’s annual energy consumption, to synthesize a single 10-ounce sandwich. No, replicators just rearrange an existing matter stock into new configurations. You need the raw materials first. But asteroid mining should be able to provide all the raw elements they’d ever need.
Besides, if you get close to a star to collect solar power, you can just as easily collect deuterium directly from its stellar wind.
“I’m not troubled by the use of deuterium itself as the matter component…”
Nobody is troubled by that. What we’re troubled by is the episode’s absurd claim that deuterium would be hard to find. As I said, it’s freely available from every star in the universe, or can be extracted from every comet or ice moon or water world in the universe.
Your suggestion about boron is interesting, but its scarcity is the exact reason why starships shouldn’t use it as a power source. The ideal power source for a starship is one that can be replenished easily, which is one reason why the premise of this episode is so absurd.
I was not familiar with the properties of deuterium (or its abundance) when watching this episode so I was not bothered by it. I usually just let the technobabble pass through my ears, because it is clear that it’s just a vehicle for the story. But I agree they could’ve easily fixed that and it would have been nice.
Interesting fact, I binge-watched all Voyager seasons in a few months time and when I got to Course: Oblivion I couldn’t remember this episode at all. I thought they referred to an accident that happened off-screen. So this is an indication how forgettable is this one (at least for me).
@Keith, since you mentioned Galaxy Quest, would you consider doing a re-watch article for this one as well? Many consider it a Star Trek movie by spirit if not name and it would be nice to read your review about it.
@24/salix_caprea: While Star Trek is a large part of what Galaxy Quest is riffing on, it’s by no means the only thing. As I’ve noted on many occasions, the in-universe Galaxy Quest TV series bears uncanny resemblances to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, especially its starship-based second season (which was itself something of a Trek knockoff, admittedly). Both shows premiered in 1979, and GQ and Buck season 2 both feature a macho action lead played by a prima donna actor, his alien sidekick who’s the last survivor of a dead warrior race and has a skullcap-based makeup, and an eye-candy female lead with a vaguely defined shipboard role. Plus the child prodigy Laredo in the GQ series is reminiscent of Gary Coleman’s boy-genius character from Buck season 1.
The boy genius character can also be seen as a riff on Lost in Space and Galactica 1980, and the cheesy wirework effects are a nod to LiS and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. There are also some resonances with Space: 1999 (Alexander Dane, a proud English actor embarrassed by his association with a sci-fi show, is reminiscent of S99’s Barry Morse, and S99 also had a character whose main job was to repeat the computer’s reports, although he was reading off a printout), along with more generic TV/movie tropes like countdowns stopping at the last second, gratuitous deathtrap corridors, and casting Western actors as fake Asians (Tech Sergeant Chen). The in-universe GQ was guilty of a lot of things that Star Trek never did.
So it’s weird to me when people talk about GQ as if it were “a Star Trek movie.” It’s a parody of classic SFTV in general, which includes but is by no means limited to ST.
@25/ChristopherLBennett I guess StarTrek is simply the most famous representative of classic SFTV. I’m not sure if it’s a generational thing (I haven’t been born when these series premiered), or a national thing (non-US viewer, so the series never ran on TV here) but I haven’t seen any of the other series you mentioned. I have only heard of Buck Rogers and Lost in Space, but I have never seen these (I saw the 1998 Lost in Space movie which I guess is a remake). So probably the people who say GalaxyQuest is a Star Trek movie are like me and also haven’t seen many of the other series. Besides, as far as I know the creators of the movie were also great ST fans and directly mentioned it as inspiration.
@26/salix: Fair point. I grew up with ’70s and ’80s SFTV and can see all the things being referenced.
And yes, of course it goes without saying that Star Trek was a primary inspiration for GQ. I just wish it were better understood that it isn’t the exclusive inspiration by any means. The parallels to Buck Rogers in particular are so strong that I can’t believe it’s accidental.
@27 – The gentle ribbing of minutia-obsessed fans is definitely a riff on Trekkies though, right?
@13/CLB: You’re at best focusing on the wrong part of the episode and at worst misremembering it there. Riker did have a choice. The crew were initially asked to donate DNA and Riker refused pointblank without giving it any thought (“No way, not me”), being utterly repulsed by the idea: “One William Riker is unique, perhaps even special. But a hundred of him, a thousand of him, diminishes me in ways I can’t even imagine.” Yes, his refusal is then ignored and his DNA then stolen, and you could argue that that justifies him prioritising the destruction of his stolen tissue over the potential extinction of a planet’s population. But I find it a more interesting contrast than you apparently do that Picard believes (apparently correctly) that his crew will refuse to allow a planet to be populated with copies of themselves and Janeway believes (apparently correctly) that her crew will agree.
@25: I find there’s a bit of Leonard Nimoy in Danes as well, or perhaps more accurately the Nimoy of the 1970s, a one-time character actor typecast as an alien and expected to dress up in the make-up and spout the catchphrases. It’s notable that the film ends with the actors embracing their legacy and taking part in a revival of the series, which is a bigger parallel with Star Trek than almost any other short-lived science-fiction show.
@29/cap-mjb: “Riker did have a choice… Yes, his refusal is then ignored and his DNA then stolen.”
You’re contradicting yourself. He wasn’t given a choice because his refusal was ignored. The pretense of giving him and Pulaski a choice was false, because the Mariposans ignored their choice and stole what they wanted anyway. Not only that, but they attacked Riker and Pulaski, knocked them unconscious, and performed nonconsensual surgery on them to take what they wanted. That is not having a choice.
Consent only exists if the option to say no is genuine. Recall the discussion of Drusilla in “Bread and Circuses.” The fact that she seemed to want it did not constitute consent, because she was a slave and thus she would have been punished for saying no, just as Riker and Pulaski were punished for saying no by being violently assaulted and forced to submit anyway. (And why do you keep ignoring Pulaski?) If you’re only allowed to make one choice without being forced or punished, then you have no choice, and any pretense of choice is a lie.
In this situation, it was the other way around — the Silver Blood initially held the crew captive, but then agreed to let them go in exchange for merely letting them consider donating their DNA. At the time they actually made that choice, they were already free, so in that case they did have a genuine option to refuse. They didn’t say no and get forced to submit.
“But I find it a more interesting contrast than you apparently do that Picard believes (apparently correctly) that his crew will refuse to allow a planet to be populated with copies of themselves and Janeway believes (apparently correctly) that her crew will agree.”
I don’t think it’s quite the same situation. The Mariposans were humans who’d chosen to give up natural human procreation in favor of an inferior, ultimately unviable substitute. TNG-era humans frown on artificial changes to human nature, especially if they’re harmful as this would be. The Silver Blood was a new life form that sought the opportunity to gain sapience and evolve as a species. And it only made one copy of each person, not hundreds.
But the other reason it’s not the same is the question of consent, which outweighs any other considerations. No matter how benevolent an idea may be in theory, if it’s done by force, then that takes it completely off the table as a valid option.
As for Galaxy Quest and Dane, yes, of course the Spock/Nimoy parallel is screamingly obvious. All the Trek homages in the movie are self-evident and therefore don’t need to be mentioned. I call attention to the other homages that exist simultaneously with the Trek ones, not to deny the Trek ones, but because the other homages are less obvious and thus need to have attention called to them.
@30: I do understand what you’re saying. It’s just I think you’re jumping ahead because you know how the story goes and ignoring the fact that Riker didn’t. At the time Riker refused and expressed his objection to the concept, and Picard echoed it for the entire crew, they didn’t know that the Mariposans’ response would be to ignore their choice and take their DNA without consent. So that didn’t inform the decision they made and the views they expressed. It’s that initial reaction which I find to be significantly (and interestingly) different from the views expressed here.
(And of course, Riker did go on to discover he had a duplicate in “Second Chances” and really didn’t like it…)
@29 Yea, it is odd that none (that we see, but the implication seems to be it was pretty much a consensus) of the Enterprise crew is willing to be cloned (before the decision to do so is taken away from 2 of them), but everyone on Voyager is (and it’s worth noting Harry and Tom didn’t get a choice of being cloned or not either). After watching the TNG episode I was left with the distinct impression that cloning- like transhumanism- is something that the Federation frowns on in general, and I was surprised the whole crew of Voyager was so nonchalant about creating duplicates of the whole crew- complete with their memories and (apparently) their desire to wear a Starfleet uniform and fly around a pretty powerful starship, and leave them in the Delta Quadrant. “Course: Oblivion” showed them to be a benign, if misguided and tragic, people, but there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t turn out to be the scourge of the quadrant and trash the Federation and Starfleet’s reputation in the process- or even cause danger for the real Voyager crew. Like so many of the decisions on Voyager, it comes across as an oddly rushed and poorly-thought-out solution, and I wish we had got to see at least *some* of the crew going through the decision making process instead of it being crammed into the last 5 minutes of the episode.
@31/cap-mjb: “It’s that initial reaction which I find to be significantly (and interestingly) different from the views expressed here.”
Okay, I get it now. But as I said, the two situations are quite different. The former would’ve been helping a human population perpetuate a failed, inferior alternative to natural procreation, while the latter was giving a newborn intelligence a leg up to achieve its potential for the first time.
@32 Wildfyrewarning- on cloning:
Of course- if humans just clone themselves instead of following the natural path of teleologic evolution, how can they achieve their destiny by becoming the Glorious Newt Race?
This episode. I don’t naturally hate it as much as many do, primarily because I love the concept of the Silver Blood species. A naturally occurring mimetic polyalloy. A whole civilization of T-1000s. Made more memorable by the forthcoming Course: Oblivion (an episode that always makes me sad). And a civilization of T-1000s that want to grow as a civilization and a people. I rather liked them. There was sooo much they could’ve done with them. What happens if they sample more than one person?
The danger in the episode is also fascinating and not in a good way. It’s too dangerous to be in orbit, and extremely risky to send down a shuttle, but it’s fine to land the ship on the planet that can’t tolerate just being near the planet?
Lastly it’s aggravating to have the premise of the episode crippled by the producers wanting to throw in a lame joke. Though considering that theta matrix re-compositing of Dilithium Crystals is a thing in the 24th century even dilithium running out is a stretch. A mistake also made in Relics when Scotty was saying the crystals were deteriorating and Geordi told them they could be recrystallized in the chamber. A freaking technology that Scotty and Spock pioneered in Star Trek IV. “Montgomery SCOTT was able to BUILD THIS IN THE PAST!!! ON A BIRD OF PREY!!!”
The producers wanted to make a pun, but how many people would get it? I have to imagine that the majority of the viewing audience don’t even know most of the occasional real science used in this show.
@36/Austin: It’s sad to me that we expect Americans to be so staggeringly illiterate about science that they wouldn’t even know something simple like what deuterium is. I mean, it’s not like it’s some arcane, esoteric thing. It’s just hydrogen. This is high school chemistry, for pity’s sake. Knowing what deuterium means is about on a par with knowing what the capital of California is. Granted, there are plenty of Americans who don’t even know that, but they should.
@37 – Condescension aside, it’s not remotely close to the same thing as knowing the state capital of California (one of the most popular states widely recognized worldwide). Who the heck retains information from high school chemistry? I have a master’s degree and a CPA, and I had no clue what deuterium was. Why? Because science holds very little interest for me in my personal life. There’s only so much information you can retain without renewing it. Unless science is a career or a hobby, I doubt people are bothering to brush up on their periodic table in their adult life. So, forgive me if I don’t know what “something simple” like deuterium is.
@38/Austin: I feel that you’re the one being condescending by expecting people to be incapable of grasping simple science. I think you’re expecting far too little of them. I believe everyone has the potential to understand this stuff. Just because you don’t believe yourself capable of it doesn’t entitle you to have low expectations of everyone else.
Saying “you can do better” is not condescension. It’s confidence. It’s encouragement. Condescension is believing people can’t do better, and I have never believed that and never will. I wouldn’t hold people to high standards if I didn’t believe they were capable of rising to them.
Sure this episode is dumb and illogical and scientifically illiterate but it still keeps you engrossed for 40+ minutes.
I’m not a fan of the corny Paris/Kim banter. They have their moments I guess (like in “The Chute”) but I’d take the best friends pairing of O’Brien/Bashir over them any day. And Neelix was at his most insufferable again that I would have liked to see him forced out the airlock and onto the Demon planet sans EV suit.
I think there was intentional ambiguity about whether Harry fell into the silver pool or it reached out and grabbed him. After all, he said he wasn’t even aware he fell in and you’d have to believe he’d be very careful not to make such a rookie mistake. I think the silver blood reached out to him and pulled him in.
I don’t buy that everyone on board Voyager would agree to be cloned. There’s got to be at least a few objectors. And Naomi Wildman isn’t even old enough to give her consent. Of course, we’re not even privileged to see what should be a very important debate and discussion amongst the crew about this very issue.
I did very much enjoy “Course: Oblivion,” the sequel to this show although there are definitely issues in logic I have with that episode as well but I’ll save those thoughts for that rewatch.
It’s one thing to put some of the science plausibility aside for the sake of dramatic storytelling. I could get behind that. But it’s another when the choice is made in service of a lame joke. And the joke doesn’t stop at the Deuterium aspect either. The episode has at least a couple of mean jabs at the male actors, made by the writers. Both Kim and Paris get called out for being a bit out of shape (it clearly got to McNeill, because he’s in much better shape by season 5).
And also, how in the world they don’t spontaneously combust? Would skin hold at that temperature? Besides that, the story is just boring, it drags out for 45 minutes, and it recycles the worst clichés of the first two seasons. Late-season fatigue always brings out the old patterns.
Demon is mostly a disaster, but at least it has some nice VFX of Voyager stuck on that place, plus it does set up a much, much, much, much, much, much better sequel.
I found Paris and Kim’s banter superbly obnoxious rather than merely superb, and the antagonism between Kim and Paris and Tuvok irritates me. Would that Garrett Wang had left in season four rather than Jennifer Lien
I just realized a follow-up comment I submitted never posted so I’ll try again…my point was regarding how the real Kim initially fell into the pool of silver blood and him not having a memory about it. It seems unlikely that he would be so careless to follow into a pooled substance of unknown properties. So my theory is that the silver blood reached out to him and pulled him in.
Wow, what a drag! The deuterium stuff is just bad. I would hope that by 24th century we had learned how to produce one isotope of a substance from another (if they can use proton beams, and antiproton beams, and whatnot, they can definitely manipulate subatomic particles). Also, why not use alternative sources of energy? I mean, sure, warp engines would probably need more energy than, say, solar energy could produce, but at least they won’t lose freaking life support! One thing also striked me as odd – in the beginning, didn’t they give a bullshit technobabble reason for why holodecks could still work? That they utilised a different type of power source? Does that need deuterium (ugh!) too?
The parts with Neelix were just torture. Why the hell would Tuvok not let him take the book-pillow-blanket to wherever he was sleeping? They didn’t take up that much space, and frankly, it is so inappropriate to dictate what a person deems necessary items (unless it’s detrimental in some way). In fact, extra bedding is one of the important items if you’re going to set up camp someplace, so it’s just weird. Also, the thing with them running out of beds is so…odd. I’m not American, so maybe it’s a cultural difference, but you don’t always need a bed to sleep! Sleep in the corridors for God’s sake! Pile that bedding high (see, Tuvok, this is why we don’t take away people’s blankets!) and sleep right there is the goddamned corridors. If you want to keep the bio-beds free for patients, tell people to sleep on the floors! It’s a pretty big room, I could easily have fitted about 10 people in there, and that is after leaving enough space around the bio-beds for the Doctor to work. Speaking of, the EMH really comes off terrible here. We are in an emergency situation and he’s unwilling to adjust because of routine?! And did we need all those lights and monitors running when there’s absolutely no-one in there? Shut those lights off! I know I’m sounding very ‘Worf in Let He Who Is Without Sin’ here, but Starfleet really needs to stop being so wasteful and toughen up a little if they’re going to claim to be in an ‘Emergency Situation’. Else, just don’t raise the stakes that high!
Kim seemed like a completely different person here, even before we meet his duplicate, what with his sudden increase in self-awareness. His and Paris’ dynamic also went some change. Their banter sounds a bit more contemporary, and definitely more chummy, but I’m not sure that I like it. I’m also not a fan of the ‘bicycle’ and ‘out of shape’ gag. I’ve just read ‘The Fifty-Year Mission’ so even though I don’t know if the allegations in there are true, the tone and humour just doesn’t sit right with me, especially since this dynamic between them is so abruptly introduced.
Just a reminder of our commenting guidelines: if you’d like to take part in the conversation, please avoid taking a dismissive tone toward the author or other commenters, don’t make your comments personal, and be civil and respectful toward others.
Chakotay does mention that they have enough deuterium to get the main systems back online after collecting 20% of the silver blood, which does bring up all sorts of uncomfortable issues once they know what it really is. Is thermionic another name for heatwaves? Why did Janeway send Chakotay alone to a dangerous class-Y planet?
When Kim says he’s returned from the dead, is he referring to Emanations, Deadlock, or both? I never found Torres’ smock nifty, it was just another lame attempt to hide Roxanne Dawson’s pregnancy. Instead of deuterium, I wish Voyager had been searching for unobtanium instead. “A much better 2021” – was this written before the pandemic, Krad?
1: Janeway refused to help the Pralor robots to procreate, so it’s strange that she’s willing to help the silver blood in the same way. 5: Voyager the ship, or VGR the series is running out of gas? 6: Do you think the idea of bio-forming is scientifically plausible? 10: Might have been funnier if Torres had run into a shirtless Harry Kim instead.
14: They have to do episodes from time to time where Voyager has some sort of shortage to remind us of how far from home they truly are. 24-28: I didn’t know there was a Galaxy Quest tv series. Did it work as well as the film? And I wouldn’t mind Krad’s thoughts on the movie, too. 29: Tim Allen and Alan Rickman were definitely Shatner and Nimoy.
30: Everyone ignores Dr Pulaski. 32: One suspects the crew of Voyager allowed themselves to be duplicated because their own survival was at stake. I wish the crew had known what became of their duplicates in Course: Oblivion but as usual, they live in ignorance of their actions. 35: Unlike the T-1000, the silver blood can’t take on more than one form.
40: We never saw a duplicate Naomi so maybe she was excluded. Although ironically, her and Harry were already duplicates from the events of Deadlock. Would a duplicate of a duplicate be like the one we saw in Multiplicity? 41: Definitely they were being shamed into losing some weight, especially a noticeably beefier McNeill.
I think the first seventeen minutes of the episode are pretty enjoyable, since I am fully capable of pretending that by “deuterium” they mean some sort of exotic substance that you can only find in extreme environments rather than, well, deuterium. However, as soon as Janeway decides that the best way to go after Harry and Tom is to land the ship in its vulnerable condition, putting all of the 140+ lives under her command at stake in the hopes of rescuing 2, I start rolling my eyes, and I don’t stop rolling them until the credits roll.
It would have been more interesting if Paris and Kim had died, and they were forced to live on as these duplicates as the show continued (reliance on the planet’s atmosphere be damned). It would have been interesting and unsettling, philosophically at least. Are you still you if you have all the memories you had before?
Really the only thing going for this episode is the visual of them in suits on the red planet — because it truly felt otherworldly. There should have been much more of this on Star Trek. I know, it’s an expense thing, but locations were rarely weird or atmospheric enough on Trek (at least until recent years because, yay, computers and giant screens). And uniforms are fine and all on a starship, but on an away mission they are just kind of silly, like church clothes at a sleep-away camp. Have something with a little protection, emergency PPE, and pockets for rations.