“Workforce” (Part 1)
Written by Kenneth Biller & Bryan Fuller
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 7, Episode 16
Production episode 262
Original air date: February 21, 2001
Stardate: 54584.3
Captain’s log. We open on Quarra in a large industrial complex, where we see Janeway reporting for her first day at a new job, monitoring the primary reactor coils. She was also late, as she boarded the wrong transport. Her new supervisor is understanding—it’s easy for newcomers to get lost—and sets her up at her work station.
She soon meets a coworker named Jaffen, who helps her fix a mistake she made that would have resulted in a core overload. Once that’s done, they start flirting like whoa until Seven interrupts, telling them that fraternizing is not permitted on the job. She introduces herself as Annika Hansen, the new efficiency monitor. Janeway insists that Jaffen was helping her with her console, as it’s her first day, which placates Hansen. Then Janeway turns down Jaffen’s request for a date, as she says she’s too busy with her new job to socialize.
Meanwhile, Paris is trying to convince Umali, the manager of a bar, to hire him as a waiter. He apparently got fired from the plant after only half a day (he didn’t get along with the new efficiency monitor), which Umali thinks is a neat trick during a labor shortage, and hardly a testimonial to the quality of his work. However, he charms his way into a job anyhow.
Later that day, after the shift in the plant is over, Jaffen is having a drink in the bar with a bunch of workers, including Tuvok. He tells a joke, and then Tuvok laughs his ass off, and then proceeds to overanalyze the joke, thus draining all the humor from it, though Tuvok is still grinning over it.
Janeway enters the bar, and Jaffen gives her shit about her saying she didn’t have time to socialize. She says she isn’t socializing, she’s eating dinner and going over manuals. Jaffen offers to go over them with her.
Hours later, Jaffen walks Janeway home, but she declines his offer of a nightcap. She also describes her homeworld of Earth as being overpopulated, polluted, and short on jobs.
The next day, an alarm goes off. Janeway insists it wasn’t her screwing up this time, but Jaffen says it’s just time for their inoculations. When it’s his turn, Tuvok demurs, saying he’s afraid of needles. When he’s told that injection is the only way to get the inoculation, Tuvok accedes, but has a brief flashback to himself and Janeway in a hospital, both covered in lesions, and wearing their Starfleet uniforms. But then it fades, and he takes his medicine.
The Delta Flyer, crewed by Chakotay, Kim, and Neelix, are returning from a very successful supply run. Voyager, however, is not at the rendezvous point. They eventually find the ship in a nebula, where the EMH—or, rather, the ECH, as the Emergency Command Hologram subroutine has been activated—is alone, trying to make repairs. Chakotay and Kim beam aboard in EVA suits—restoring life support wasn’t a priority for the ECH when he was the only one on board—and he fills them in.
Shortly after the Flyer took off, Voyager hit a subspace mine, which flooded the ship with lethal radiation. Janeway was forced to abandon ship, leaving the EMH in ECH mode behind to take care of the ship. As the ECH effected repairs, a Quarren ship locked a tractor beam on, thinking the ship to be abandoned and wishing to claim it as salvage. The ECH defends Voyager, and manages to escape into the nebula. But every time he’s tried to venture out, there’ve been Quarren ships waiting. And the Quarren ship’s weapons and tractor beam are the same type of technology as the mine they hit. The ECH is fairly certain they were set up, and he has no idea where the rest of the crew even is.
On Quarra, Tuvok sees Janeway and flashes back again to the hospital, where a doctor is treating Janeway for what he claims is “Dysphoria Syndrome.” Tuvok then approaches Janeway, saying they know each other, but Janeway says she first time she met him was at the shift briefing the previous week. Tuvok apologizes lamely and moves away.
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Jaffen approaches, and we discover that they’ve been having dinner together regularly. He’s been cooking for her, but she doesn’t much like his cooking and offers to cook for him instead. The resultant meal is burned and inedible, and she suggests they go out to eat. Instead, they stay in and smooch.
Paris sees Torres in the bar, and chats her up, though her pregnancy brings him up short. He assumes she’s married and apologizes for flirting, but she says she isn’t married and then leaves the bar.
Repairs proceed very slowly on Voyager, though at least the ships that were pursuing them seem to have given up. Kim has continued to scan for Alpha Quadrant life forms for days and finally finds them on Quarra, which is three days away.
Upon arrival, however, they are stonewalled. The people Chakotay has asked after all have been questioned and know nothing of Chakotay or Voyager. They’re all quite happy in their jobs on Quarra and the official they speak to accuses them of making up a story to try to poach workers during a labor shortage. Chakotay ends the communication and leaves orbit. Plan B is to approach Quarra in Neelix’s ship, posing as two people looking for work. The ECH also does some facial surgery on Chakotay, since he would be recognized by planetary authorities. After they are given subcutaneous transponders, they depart in Neelix’s ship.
Hansen approaches Tuvok, asking why he hasn’t reported for his last three inoculations. Tuvok, who looks quite ill, refers to Hansen as “Seven of Nine,” and briefly initiates a mind-meld with her. Hansen has flashes to her time on board Voyager. Tuvok is taken away to the infirmary, ranting and raving about how they aren’t who they think they are.
Chakotay, using the name “Amal Kotay,” and Neelix start their first day at the plant, the former unwittingly replacing Tuvok in thermionics. Chakotay sees Janeway, and starts to talk to her, but it quickly becomes clear that she has no idea who he is. He quickly changes conversational course and says it’s his first day and he’s just trying to get to know people.
Doctor Kadan treats Tuvok, saying his Dysphoria Syndrome has resurfaced. He sedates Tuvok and injects him.
Neelix is chatting with Paris (who doesn’t recognize him) in the bar. Paris talks about how great it was to be fired from the plant as he loves working in the bar. Too many rules and regulations in the plant. Neelix learns that Paris claims to have never worked on a starship, as space travel makes him queasy.
Chakotay enters, and is “introduced” to Paris. When they’re alone, it’s clear that they’ve both met several other crew members, none of whom recognized either of them, and who are all happy here with their shiny new jobs.
Janeway and Jaffen enter the bar, and she invites Chakotay to join them for dinner, but then Jaffen rescinds the invite, rather rudely. Turns out he has something important to discuss: he wants them to move in together. She says yes.
Torres—who has been chatting with a pair of expectant parents that Paris introduced her to—is about to walk home. Paris offers to walk her to the transport, but she insists she’ll be fine.
Chakotay and Neelix accost Torres on the street—she thinks she’s being mugged. Neelix and Torres beam back to Voyager, where the ECH is forced to sedate her. Two cops try to detain Chakotay and chase him. Unfortunately, the Quarren are now firing on Voyager, so they can’t beam Chakotay up. The cops corner him at a dead end…
To be continued…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway’s poor luck with preparing meals continues into her life on Quarra, as she burns the meal she cooks.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok’s telepathy allows him to resist the Quarren reprogramming to a certain degree, or at least enough the point that he deliberately avoids the “inoculations” in order to clear his head.
Half and half. Torres is a single mom on Quarra.
Forever an ensign. Kim drank something that made him incredibly ill on the away mission. Neelix had encouraged him to drink it, but not Chakotay, who Neelix says is a vegetarian, which is when Kim discovers that what he drank was meat juice.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH gets to be the ECH once again, to the point where he neglects his medical duties, as Kim’s tummy still hurts from the meat juice after several days.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix’s ship is used for the first time since “The Chute.”
Resistance is futile. Seven is made efficiency monitor, which is the best use of the ex-Borg, truly.
Do it.
“Maybe all those command subroutines are compromising your medical abilities.”
“Maybe all that sarcasm is compromising your natural charm.”
–Kim and the ECH bitching at each other.
Welcome aboard. James Read plays Jaffen, John Aniston plays the Quarren official, Tom Virtue plays the supervisor, Iona Morris plays Umali, and Michael Behrens plays the “coyote” who kidnaps the crew. Virtue previously played Baxter in “Eye of the Needle” and “Twisted,” while Morris previously was one of the children in the original series’ “Miri.”
And then we have this week’s Robert Knepper moment, as Kadan is played by none other than Ralph Malph his own self, Don Most!
Read, Aniston, Virtue, Behrens, and Most will all return for Part 2.
Trivial matters: Iona Morris is the sister of Phil Morris, and the daughter of Greg Morris. Iona and Phil both played background children in “Miri,” who were mostly played by children of actors. Phil would go on to appear in The Search for Spock, two DS9 episodes, and “One Small Step.”
Among the background aliens seen are Kraylor (“Nightingale,” “The Void”), Benkarans (“Repentance”), and Brunali (Icheb’s people, “Child’s Play”).
This the second appearance of the ECH, following “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy.”
Neelix mentions both Celes and Mulchaey, though they are not seen. Mulchaey appeared in “One,” and was mentioned several other times, while Celes appeared in “Good Shepherd” and “The Haunting of Deck Twelve.”
Set a course for home. “A sick worker is not an efficient worker.” The plot of this one isn’t exactly bursting with originality, as it’s the crew-gets-amnesia story that we’ve seen dozens of times, from TNG’s “Conundrum” to Stargate SG-1’s “Beneath the Surface,” with a hefty dose of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for good measure.
But it’s a very effective use of that storyline. The truth is revealed slowly, as when we first see Janeway we’re not sure if she’s legitimately working for this plant or if she’s on an undercover mission. But ever so slowly, we discover that something is off. With the appearance of “Annika Hansen” we know that things are bad. When we see Tuvok laughing and overexplaining a joke, we know that things are really bad.
It’s not until Act 2 that the other shoe drops, as the Delta Flyer comes across Voyager run by the ECH, and we see how things have gone to hell in a handbasket.
What’s fun about this first part is seeing the different ways that Janeway, Tuvok, Torres, and Paris are affected by the Quarren mind control. Janeway’s personality is mostly intact (and she still can’t cook, apparently), as is her scientific skill, but her passion for the latter is missing. The Janeway who geebles over new discoveries and fiddling with stuff in engineering is nowhere to be seen here.
Torres and Paris are mostly the same—Paris is a rebel without a clue and Torres is surly and hard to talk to—while Seven is both completely changed (going by her real name) and not changed at all (being a humorless efficiency nut).
But the biggest change is to Tuvok, who is still biologically Vulcan (which is handy, as his telepathy helps break through Kadan’s drugs), but who has had his Vulcan culture completely stripped from him. The single most disturbing moment in the episode is seeing Tuvok laughing hysterically (followed by his hilarious deconstruction of the joke).
On top of that, the plot back on Voyager is comedy gold, as watching the ECH fight with the computer when he’s on his own and then banter with Kim as the episode progresses is hysterical. Having said that, one of the biggest flaws in the episode is when Chakotay and Neelix go off-ship. The ECH thinks he should be in charge, since he’s programmed with over two million tactical subroutines. Kim thinks he should since it would take him half a second to delete those subroutines. This is the point where Chakotay’s duty as commanding officer is to assign one of them to take command in his absence. Instead, he says, “Work it out,” which is lunacy. Even though there’s just the two of them on board—in fact, especially since there’s just the two of them on board—there needs to be a clear chain of command. That bit was an utter failure of writing.
The acting, however, remains excellent. I must also make mention of the great performance by Don Most (which will be on display even more in Part 2). The erstwhile Ralph Malph is magnificently slimy as Kadan.
The plot moves along nicely, ending on a cliffhanger that’s a bit more of a curb-hanger, but still an effective stopping point.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be one of the guests at the inaugural Suncoast Fan Fest at the Bradenton Area Convention Center in Palmetto, Florida. Among the other guests are Voyager’s Manu Intiraymi (Icheb), as well as actors Alaina Huffman, Corin Nemec, Casper Van Dien, Travis Wester, AJ Buckley, and Eddie McClintock, as well as several voice actors. More information can be found here.
Huh, I never found this one all that interesting, honestly. There are some good moments (I always love when Tim Russ gets to break out of Vulcan Mode), but the story is hardly original (as KRAD pointed out), it’s not like this two-parter gives us any great character insight (I’ll get more into this next time, but they could have gone in a really interesting direction with Janeway and just kinda…didn’t), and the plan seems to me to be almost comic supervillain levels of nonsense (the young doctor in the next part figures it out pretty quickly and thus ruins the whole silly plan).
Kudos to them for not having them be kidnapped and forced into some kind of sweatshop like most stories would, but it seems like for the time and effort of this elaborate plan you could just… go and recruit people outside the system. None of these jobs seem to be super physically demanding, they seemingly pay decently, the planet isn’t some horrid hell-hole, and they seem to be fully capable of space travel. Nothing in the story really tells us why this shortage exists or what prevents them from finding workers (and the usual answers- disease, starvation, bad working conditions, poor pay, or lack of personal time aren’t present), which makes the story a lot less effective for me.
That said, shout-out to the behind-the-scenes guys and gals, because I thought the set and effects looked great this week and next!
“We don’t belong here!”
This is one of the coldest cold openings in Star Trek history, with us reaching the end of Act One before we get even a hint of what’s going on. The most likely explanation seems to be that Voyager’s crew are undercover for some reason, yet the audience is left waiting for the moment when Janeway’s left alone, drops the naïve worker persona and looks serious…and it never comes. Yes, Seven and Paris are there as well, but they could be undercover too, and there’s never a moment when the Voyager types are left alone/ Tuvok laughing is a jarring moment but this could still be an act…and then we get his little flashback to being captured and realise that they’re not acting.
It is interesting to see what the crew are in the dark almost. Janeway is more relaxed, while Seven is as cold and abrupt as ever even though she’s using her birth name. I didn’t realise until this rewatch that, after that jarring introduction, Tuvok basically spends the rest of the episode acting like he normally does, as if his personality’s unchanged but he tries to have a laugh with his co-workers to fit in. (One explanation for Smiling Spock from “The Cage”: That he faked emotional displays so his human crewmates would feel more comfortable.)
And yes, I was very drawn to Paris’ little subplot. It’s interesting that without his memories he seems to default to his Season 1 persona: An utter cad on the surface, but a decent and even vulnerable person underneath it all, especially with those he chooses to care about. His interaction with Torres is reminiscent of their first tender interaction in “Faces”, when he was suddenly the supportive friend she needed when she felt lost. I’d be intrigued to know exactly what memories Torres has: She doesn’t think she’s married or in a relationship, so where does she think the baby came from?
I didn’t realise until my second watching that the episode was trying to make us suspicious Jaffen, having him stop Janeway talking to Tuvok and later to Chakotay and Neelix, as if we’re meant to think that he’s a plant there to keep tabs on Janeway. (SPOILER: He’s not.) After all, by the end, the only speaking character we can comfortably be sure is part of a conspiracy is Kayden, who is rather distanced from the action.
The actual last shot is a bit arbitrary but I guess it’s the building of multiple cliffhangers that raises the tension, as we cut rapidly between different situations: Voyager is under attack, Torres is back on board but thinks the crew are kidnapping her, Janeway’s copping off with a possible bad guy, Tuvok’s being brainwashed and Chakotay is cornered.
The Emergency Command Hologram is a nice callback to “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy”, but possibly used a bit longer than is necessary: There’s a suggestion the Doctor’s additional subroutines help him run the ship, but once Chakotay’s back in command, he doesn’t really need the red uniform, nice as it is. Has Chakotay being a vegetarian actually been mentioned on screen before? James Read as Jaffen is arguably best known among telefantasy fans as the Halliwell sisters’ father in Charmed.
A bit of a contradiction with Chakotay being vegetarian – Janeway was preparing (and burnt!) a pot roast for their planned dinner together just a few episodes ago in Shattered.
This episode is always a bit better than I remember it being, but I can’t help but feeling that a mostly-irrelevant brainwashing two-parter happens in the middle of Season 7. I’ve always felt that the show should have tried to at least feel like it was trying to wrap up the plotline, and a two-parter would have given a solid opportunity to set that up. This episode, though, could have fit just as well in season 4 for example as it does here.
Nice callback with the ECH. It’s a bit out-of-nowhere – I think previously, it was just agreed that it would be “researched”? – but it’s fun and a good opportunity for it to actually make sense.
I always assumed that Chakotay- being older and less guileless than Harry- just completely made that up to avoid eating/drinking anything weird that Neelix came up with, and it was useful to him again here. (It also makes me wonder if not eating meat for moral reasons means that people in the future *will* eat replicated meat, since no animals are harmed in it’s production.)
@3: Maybe Chakotay is an ethical vegetarian rather than a health vegetarian. If so then he might be ok with eating “meat” from a replicator (or meat dishes made from replicated ingredients) since no animal was actually harmed.
(Though wildfyrewarning’s explanation is more fun.)
The bit where Chakotay tells Kim and the ECH to “Work it out” drove me nuts. I guess it’s supposed to be funny; it truly is not. To me it felt like the writers having a laugh at Garrett Wang’s expense. Unlike you, krad, I did not enjoy watching Kim and the ECH (band name?) bickering. Yeah, our whole crew has been kidnapped and brainwashed, but let’s have a pissing contest about who’s in charge. Pass.
Commander, just put one of them in charge. Logically it would be Kim, as the function of the ECH is to command the ship when no other officers are available. Kim is a senior officer, well technically anyway.
Not one of my favorite two-parters, but I don’t actively hate it. Given this is the final season of Voyager, it just would have been nice if it was relevant.
I recall this being okay but mediocre, and I definitely found the cliffhanger underwhelming. Not much I can say about it, really.
Iona Morris was the original voice of Storm in the first season of the 1990s X-Men animated series, and she returned for the character’s guest appearance in the closing “Secret Wars” arc of the ’90s Spider-Man series, though for the rest of the series she was replaced by Alison Sealy-Smith, I think because Morris didn’t want to stay in Vancouver. Morris also played the Inhumans’ Queen Medusa in the animated Fantastic Four from the same period.
I doubt anyone aboard Voyager is consuming actual meat, but in addition to Janeway’s pot roast, Chakotay and Co. were all served quail by Seven in the previous episode (“The Void”), and holographic Chakotay will be served (presumably) holographic meat by Seven in the upcoming “Human Error.”
I thought this was a decent two-parter, although numerous questions abound. Including, for example, how does Seven survive on the planet without regenerating? If Voyager were irradiated, wouldn’t that have included the escape pods the crew used to flee the radiation? And why couldn’t a society, with the technological sophistication to pull off the trickery that the Quarrens do, automate a lot of these menial jobs in the power plant, since a lot of workers are shown pushing buttons, monitoring read-outs, and turning dials. Even Homer Simpson jury-rigged a bird on a stick to push a button on a computer.
John Aniston (the Quarren ambassador), in addition to being Jennifer Aniston’s father, has played Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives seemingly forever.
@@@@@ cap-mjb – Chakotay claimed to be vegetarian in “Unity” when Riley apologised that their (ex-ish-borg) colony didn’t have any meat.
“Quarren” is also the name of those squid-headed Star Wars aliens that share a planet with the Mon Calamari, so it’s weird to see the name in Trek.
Sometimes those in charge like to claim efficiency without practicing it. One of my bosses used to have to, once a month, run around our store collecting data that was contained in daily reports (computerized) to corporate, fill out a report form and send it in to corporate on paper, even though they had everything computerized.
Of course, these are the same folks who, when my wife, who was a programmer/analyst, suggested they should automate this process told her she was ignorant because they would have to access a quarter million records with a dozen fields in each. This to a women who would test a program with 25 million records with over a hundred fields. Some people don’t know how dumb they are being.
I never liked this one. As KRAD has pointed out, it’s hardly an original story and it was slow moving and boring to boot.
What really annoyed me about it most at the time, and even moreso now, is that it was a wasted opportunity for Voyager to use its mid-season two parter to send Voyager home. I maintain that Voyager should have arrived home at about this point in the season and used the rest of the season to show us the impact that arriving home had on these characters, especially the likes of Chakotay, Paris and Neelix.
Instead we have a boring two parter that doesnt drive the series forward in any meaningful way in this, the shows final season. A shame.
I dunno, I find it impossible to get arsed about Voyager not driving the series forward when they so rarely ever drove the series forward, and when they did so, it was done hesitatingly and inconsistently. Voyager simply didn’t do continuity and progress except in the most broad sense, and then only occasionally. For better or worse, the show was what it was at this point, and to expect otherwise just seems like a recipe for disappointment.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@9/Muswell: Ah, thanks. I’d forgotten that.
The people Chakotay has asked after all have been questioned and know nothing of Chakotay or Voyager.
The line here is amazing. The alien ambassador says: ” Most of your friends have excellent positions in the Central Power Facility in the capital. Why would any of them want to travel thousands of light years to a planet on the other side of the galaxy when they have safe, comfortable lives right here?”
…. which means that in the course of explaining the problem to this ambassador, Chakotay for no reason let him know that they’re stranded and traveling thousands of light years to get home. Which coupled with the fact that he’s looking for his crew, is tantamount to telling this guy that Voyager is a weakened victim that they can take out without any fear of retaliation. Worst case scenario this guy is in on it and Chakotay has leaked intel for no reason, best case scenario this guy is completely innocent but even if so suddenly Voyager is sounding like a really good target of opportunity.
I mentioned this “loose lips sink ships” habit during season 1/2 when it was more of an issue but, holy crap, these people are crazy and will literally tell anybody who will listen that they’re isolated and alone, which is a terrible idea for many, many reasons. It’s amazing they’ve lived this long.
I thought it was a nice episode, but felt it was too stretched. I think it would have worked better as a one parter.
And yes, it was *very* similar to SG1’s Beneath the Surface, only that one had the cute Sam-Jack interaction which made the episode for me.
So, my biggest gripe with this episode, without having seen it and just based on the synopsis, is Voyager has bioscanners. They can separate their crew from the planet’s inhabitants. The crew has been kidnapped and brainwashed. Why not just beam everyone up, hit the gas, and leave the system far behind? Unless the transporters were down because of the mine, then that solves the problem and I’ll retract my gripe.
It’s not a bad episode, not really. But at the same time, it’s not one I’d recommend either. Workforce doesn’t do anything particularly wrong. The media res approach – putting us in the middle of the story – is clever; it’s always nice to see the characters acting out of their usual selves, and the ensemble is used well. But I find it to be a very dull two parter, especially coming up on the heels of Flesh and Blood, which I find to be much better executed.
Voyager conditioned viewers to expect big events when it comes to these episodes. This one tries, but fails. Even Kroeker’s competent direction can’t generate enough tension or stakes. Even though there’s plenty of plot to go through, Workforce still feels slowly paced. It’s as if Kenneth Biller and Bryan Fuller took a page out of Michael Piller’s TNG/DS9 approach for episodes like Birthright and Past Tense that were originally designed as single entries and were expanded to keep the budget in check.
@7/Christopher: I believe the reason Morris wasn’t kept as Storm was due to the show’s budget. Being American, she had to be paid residuals. Hiring Sealy-Smith, a Canadian (thus, not eligible for residuals), would remedy that issue, which is why she re-recorded the original Morris season 1 dialogue on subsequent airings.
As for the Quarren, while aliens first appeared on Return of the Jedi, I’m not sure their name came from the script or was a subsequent invention of the Expanded Universe. I first learned of the name in the mid 1990s, reading Kevin Anderson’s Jedi Academy Trilogy.
Aaron Henley: the Quarren have a planetary defensive system that includes a shield grid that blocks transporters. In Part 2, the shield grid is eventually taken out, at which point the Voyager crew does exactly as you say.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@18/Eduardo: Thanks for the Storm clarification. I knew it had something to do with the actresses’ respective nationalities.
I could have sworn Jaffen is played by the same guy that plays Mark in the first seasons. But apparently its a different person, James Read vs. Stan Ivar? Looking up Ivar he still looks just like the guy I just watched in Workforce. Oh well, guess Janeway has a type.
@21 Yea, it is also kind of funny to compare the love interests that Kirk and Picard got with the ones they cast for Janeway, looks-wise (not to mention age-wise, especially in Picard’s case). Picard got stunningly gorgeous (and nearly a quarter century his junior) Famke Janssen throwing herself at him, and Janeway gets… Stan Ivar. And I mean no offense to Stan Ivar, but I think even he would agree the he is not the gender-swapped version of Famke Janssen.
#22. Is that really a fair comparison, though? The Famke Janssen character’s entire point was that she was stunningly beautiful, and she threw herself at every male she encountered. Picard was also involved with the more average-looking (and non-engineered) Vash and Commander Darren. And Beverly Crusher from a certain point of view.
About Chakotey’s “Work it out”: I never thought it was the really unprofessional “it’s up to you”. I got surprised to see that reading here in the comments. To me he had already stated who should be in charge, then he says: ” work it out” meaning that Kim and the doctor should find a way to go by the commands given without quarelling and thus affecting their job. They should work out their problem, not that they should work out to decide who would be in charge.
But in reality the doctor sat in the command chair afterwards so he did not fulfill Chakotey’s command and the scene before really meant that the guys are left to argue about who would be the boss. More unrealistic than any technobabble, really.
@23 Jennifer Hetrick is almost 18 years younger than Stewart (and yes, I know they dated IRL), and is very pretty. Wendy Hughes is also nearly two decades younger than the man she was playing across from and certainly above average looking. Gates McFadden is much closer in age to Stewart (9 years), but you know who is even closer? Diana Muldaur- and while Dr. Crusher gets a gorgeous flowing wig and the regular uniform and sexual tension with the Captain, Dr. Pulaski gets my great-grandma’s hairdo and the “dowdy” version of the Starfleet duds and no whiff of romance outside a gag where she asks Worf to recite some poetry. Let’s not even kid ourselves by thinking that the possibility that Pulaski and Picard would have any chemistry together ever occurred to anyone working on TNG. And yea of course Kamala was engineered to appeal to people (although that didn’t mean that she had to be someone that the audience would immediately find physically attractive- she is, after all, an alien whose primary characteristic was that her personality changed to be attractive to people), but the writers chose to have us watch her be super attracted to Picard. The fact that there is an “excuse” for it doesn’t really change the casting (or makeup and costuming) choices.
It just would have been nice to see Janeway get the same kind of dashing, incredibly attractive romantic leads instead of that being reserved for the male captains. Ivar and Read certainly aren’t ugly men, but they are both, well, the kind of approaching-middle-age guys my dad used to hang out with at barbeques, and don’t exactly radiate sex appeal. She’s the captain of a Starfleet vessel! Let her fall for some ruggedly handsome, smart, charismatic guy for 2 episodes! Where is a young Harrison Ford type when you need him?!
As mentioned on a recent Star Trek discussion thread, we’ve noticed an uptick in commentary about various actresses’ bodies in different Trek threads here on the site. In some cases, the intended tone is likely meant to be positive and not leering or disrespectful, but the casual discussion of women’s bodies as objects is something we really want to avoid, especially when some of the real-life women in question have been mistreated by Star Trek writers / producers / fellow actors / fans because they played “eye candy” characters. Going forward, please consider this request–particularly if a comment about an actor’s looks/costume/body has no bearing on the actual episode, then let’s leave it out.
@25. Well, there was a Harrison Ford type for her. He sat next to her on the bridge throughout the series, and there was at least one episode where he was, basically, her love interest, or close to it. So she had that going for her.
But I withdraw my previous comment. To paraphrase the good Mr. Ford, “Silly conversation anyway.”
I liked some aspects of the episode, it was nice to see some of the crew out of their natural habitat and in new roles to see how they adjust. :) but what disturbed me – the people working at the big corporate got regular shots to keep their memory supressed it seemed. But what about Paris? i guess he got no shots at the bar. so how come his memory didn’t come back? OK, maybe this will be explained in part 2, but right now this is just super weird.
This is a mighty fine episode. Honestly, the ECH is a way better captain, tactically, than Janeaway. I’m always so frustrated by how long it takes Janeaway to open fire when they’re under attack.
While this episode certainly does borrow from other sources, I appreciate that this isn’t the pure, mechanistic drudgery of Metropolosi, where it’s clear class-based slavery. These people are actually happy, even if some of them (the crew) are only happy because their memories have been erased. Utopia at a cost is often more interesting than pure dystopia.
And Mulgrew’s performance is particularly fine to watch. To see her happy in ways she isn’t onboard Voyager creates some compelling questions.