“Alliances”
Written by Jeri Taylor
Directed by Les Landau
Season 2, Episode 14
Production episode 131
Original air date: January 22, 1996
Stardate: 49337.4
Captain’s log. Voyager is getting their asses kicked by the Kazon, though they do destroy one of the ships on them. The Kazon retreat, and not a moment too soon, as propulsion is completely shot, as are all defensive systems. While there are a ton of injuries, there’s only one fatality: Engineer Kurt Bendera, who was part of Chakotay’s Maquis cell.
After the memorial service for Bendera, Crewman Hogan confronts Janeway. He’s doesn’t think it’s worth risking their lives just to deny the Kazon technological assistance, but Janeway makes it clear that she’ll destroy the ship before she’ll let any Starfleet tech fall into Kazon hands.
Chakotay then proposes a radical notion: forming an alliance with one or more of the Kazon sects.
Janeway rejects the idea initially, but she also goes to Tuvok, and he surprises her by agreeing with Chakotay, using an Earth-Vulcan hybrid flower he created as a cheesy-but-effective metaphor.
The senior staff then meets to discuss a strategy. Neelix has a Kazon who owes him a favor on the world of Sobras, and he can feel him out about who would be amenable to an alliance.
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Kim sarcastically suggests contacting Seska, but Torres jumps on that as a good idea. Chakotay disagrees, but his history with Seska is complicated. Janeway instead takes the lead on that, contacting the Kazon-Nistrim.
Culluh agrees to meet, and he and Seska rendezvous at a location chosen by the Nistrim. However, the negotiations break down almost instantly due to Culluh not taking Janeway at all seriously thanks to her sex, even going so far as to propose the laughable notion of asking Tuvok to keep Janeway under control.
Neelix seems to have even worse luck at first. He meets with his contact, Jal Tersa, at a night club on Sobras, but instead of helping Neelix, Tersa calls the cops on him, and Neelix is imprisoned.
However, he’s tossed into a cell with some Trabe, led by Mabus. Since being overthrown by the Kazon, the Trabe have become nomadic refugees, trying to find a new homeworld and continuing to be persecuted by the Kazon. Mabus admits that the Trabe brought it on themselves by building their empire on the backs of the Kazon they oppressed, but still, that was three decades ago.
Neelix arrived just in time to ride the coattails of a jailbreak, as Mabus breaks out with the help of a convoy of what appear to be Kazon ships, but which are actually Trabe ships—all of the Kazon’s technology is pilfered from the Trabe and whoever else they’ve pirated from in the years since.
At Neelix’s urging, the Trabe rendezvous with Voyager and propose an alliance. Janeway thinks it’s a good idea, since the Kazon will obviously never take Voyager seriously as an ally as long as Janeway is in charge. Tuvok points out, prophetically, that allying with the Kazon’s blood enemy could have the unintended consequence of uniting the sects against them.
Meanwhile, another crewmember, Michael Jonas, covertly contacts the Nistrim, offering cooperation and information about Voyager. This will probably be important later.
Janeway decides that the possibility for peace in this sector is worth it, and the Trabe’s help should allow them to continue away from Kazon space unmolested, while Voyager can help the Trabe find a new world somewhere else in the Delta Quadrant on their journey home.
Mabus also suggests a summit on Sobras among the Kazon majes to try to achieve peace. Seska has to convince Culluh to go along with it, and the other majes do as well—though Neelix warns that someone was seen sketching the meeting site, possibly casing it. Tersa—who sets up the meeting by way of apologizing to Neelix for getting him arrested—is also very nervous about the meeting. Neelix is concerned that one of the majes may take advantage of the opportunity to take out his competition in one shot.
The summit goes moderately smoothly at first, but then Mabus suddenly says he needs to speak to Janeway outside. Janeway balks at the notion, and then a Trabe ship shows up and starts firing on the summit. Janeway beams her people out and drives the Trabe ship off with photon torpedoes.
The majes leave, furious at Voyager for betraying them. Mabus is also furious, as they spoiled what was the best shot at peace. Neelix allows as how a massacre doesn’t really equate to peace, and Janeway says she doesn’t ally with executioners and kicks him off the ship.
Voyager continues toward the Alpha Quadrant. Tuvok plans more battle drills, and Neelix and Torres assure Janeway that they’re well stocked in food and supplies so that they don’t have to stop for a while, thankfully.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway stands by her principles, but is convinced by both Chakotay and Tuvok to give allying with the locals a try. This proves disastrous, and in the end she says she should’ve stood by her principles anyhow.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok mentions the controversial notion proposed by Spock in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country to ally with the Klingon Empire. Tuvok himself said he spoke out against the idea because of the Klingons’ history of brutal conquest—but the Federation-Klingon alliance has been a cornerstone of the Alpha Quadrant for the better part of a century.
(The punchline, of course, is that, unbeknownst to Tuvok, back home that alliance has fractured and the Klingons and Federation are at war again…)
Half and half. When Hogan bitches about Janeway to Torres, the chief engineer comes to the defense of her captain. At this point, Torres is completely on Team Janeway.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH and Kes are overworked like whoa in the opening, having to deal with a crapton of injured, though they only lose Bendera. Later, the two of them treat the Trabe prisoners, who are all suffering from malnutrition.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix apparently has a Kazon who owes him a favor, which for some reason he has never mentioned up until now. Given that he knows the Kazon better than anyone on board except maybe Kes, it’s a bit odd that he never once mentions the cultural bias against women that would keep the Kazon from taking the captain in any way seriously as an ally.
Forever an ensign. Kim is appalled by the very notion of allying with the Kazon, and is shouted down by Janeway, who echoes the alternate Picard’s words from “Yesterday’s Enterprise“: “This is a briefing, I’m not seeking your consent.” Janeway offers to discuss it with Kim at a later time, which we never actually see.
Do it.
“It goes against everything I believe, everything I trained for, everything experience has taught me.”
“Quite right.”
“Do I hear a ‘however’ coming?”
“You are perceptive, Captain.”
–Janeway going to Tuvok for advice.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Seska is pregnant, but while she told Chakotay she was pregnant with his child in “Maneuvers,” she tells Culluh that she’s carrying his child here. The truth of the baby’s father will be revealed in the “Basics” two-parter straddling the second and third seasons.
Also the night club where Neelix meets Tersa looks exactly like a strip club in the United States would now, which is a depressing failure of imagination.
Welcome aboard. Whole mess of recurring characters in this one. Back from “Maneuvers” are Anthony De Longis as Culluh, Martha Hackett as Seska, and John Gegenhuber as Maje Surat. And debuting in this episode are two Voyager crew who will continue to appear through to the top of the third season, Raphael Sbarge as Jonas and Simon Billig as Hogan.
Larry Cedar plays Tersa; he was last seen with one of the few hairdos that’s even worse than the Kazon’s in DS9‘s “Armageddon Game,” and will return with less ridiculous hair in Enterprise‘s “Marauders” as Tessic. Charles O. Lucia plays Mabus; last seen as Alkar in “Man of the People” on TNG, he’ll also return on Enterprise, in “Fortunate Son.”
Trivial matters: “Death Wish” was produced between “Prototype” and this episode, but it was held back for February sweeps due to it bringing in both Q and Riker from TNG. Given that UPN was only a year-old network at that point, and wasn’t exactly lighting the world on fire with their overall ratings, they wanted to leverage any advantage.
The Trabe were first mentioned as the Kazon’s old oppressors in “Initiations.” This is their only onscreen appearance.
We’ll see Tuvok’s opposition to a Federation-Klingon alliance up close and personal in “Flashback” in the third season.
Tuvok’s affinity for growing orchids was first mentioned in “Tattoo.”
Voyager has now lost five crew from the 154 they started with in the Delta Quadrant: Durst, Seska, and Bendera, plus two more who are unnamed, but who were killed in off-camera encounters with the Kazon.
We never do find out what happened to Neelix’s shuttlecraft that he went to Sobras in…
Set a course for home. “I won’t have a woman dictate terms to me!” This should’ve been a much stronger episode than it actually was. The potential was there, and parts of it are quite excellent, but both the pacing and the dialogue are uneven. There’s too much time talking about Starfleet ideals in the abstract without specifics, and it’s maddening, because it sounds so much like a vague abstraction, and it really isn’t.
There are very good reasons for not dealing with the Kazon as anything but antagonists, starting with the fact that they were introduced to Voyager’s crew as the people who kidnapped and tortured one of their own (Kes), and who since then have twice held their first officer prisoner. On top of that, there’s their cultural bias against women, which Seska has been forced to work around, and which undermines Janeway’s negotiating position from jump. It’s maddening that neither Neelix (the one with the most experience with the Kazon) nor Kes (who spent quite a long time as their prisoner) nor Chakotay (who observed this both times he was their prisoner) never mentioned this issue to Janeway at any point.
But just jumping into bed with the Trabe is also ridiculous, partly for reasons outlined by Tuvok. The Kazon hate the Trabe even more than they hate Voyager, and seeing their two most hated enemies together is just going to piss the Kazon off more, and that’s before Mabus’s incredibly predictable treachery on Sobras.
Having said all that, Tuvok’s best argument for an alliance is something that should’ve gotten more play: Voyager’s on their way out of the area. In fact, it’s been a year now, they should’ve left Kazon space way behind by this time. Truly, especially given the assertions at the end by Torres and Neelix that they don’t need to stop for resupply for a while, they should just book it at warp eight for a week and get the hell outta Dodge, thus solving all their problems with the locals.
Quite possibly the most embarrassing moments in the script are when the crew is talking about the Trabe. First Chakotay expresses surprise to Mabus that the Kazon still hold a grudge after thirty years. Then Chakotay says that the Trabe seem genuinely regretful about how they oppressed the Kazon. First of all, thirty years is nothing, and Chakotay should know that, given that he comes from a group of peoples who were hunted and persecuted to near-extinction for centuries, and secondly, that history of hunting and persecution included lots and lots of occasions where their conquerors insisted that they were sorry and would be nice to them now and then weren’t. Of all the people on that ship, Chakotay is the last one who should be jumping into an alliance with the Trabe and the first to understand why it’s a hilariously awful idea.
On top of that, someone in the casting department looked at Charles O. Lucia’s rhapsody in blandness in “Man of the People” and inexplicably thought it would be a good idea to use him again. He’s awful, and his spectacularly dull line readings sink the entire second half of the episode. It’s especially frustrating, because Lucia gets way more screen time than Martha Hackett, who has almost no presence in this episode beyond the one great scene where she convinces Culluh to go to the summit. Hackett’s Seska has been such a good antagonist, and her minimal use is a missed opportunity.
There are good ideas and good scenes here. Chakotay’s argument—that they need to be a bit more Maquis given that they’re alone without support—is a really good one, and one the show needed to be having more often. I liked the dissent in the ranks with Hogan and Jonas, and the start of the ongoing thread of Jonas’s betrayal, which will continue throughout the season. (This would’ve been an awesome time to bring back the characters from “Learning Curve.” Sigh.) And I really liked Tuvok’s scene with Janeway, using the events of The Undiscovered Country and the eight decades of peace between the Federation and the Klingons since then as a good touchstone for the best-case scenario of these attempts at an alliance.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido is excited to say that there’s less than a week to go in the crowdfund he’s involved in with David Sherman and regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett. We’ve got three science fiction novels, one of which is To Hell and Regroup, the third book in the “18th Race” trilogy of military science fiction novels, which Keith wrote with David Sherman. The other two are Bennett’s Arachne’s Crime and Arachne’s Exile. We’ve hit multiple stretch goals, and there are a ton of nifty bonuses. Please check it out!
An alliance with the Trabe against the Kazon should have been a two-parter, at the very least. It could have added some moral issues and given more depth to the Kazon. Instead it stands as one of the show’s many, many missed opportunities.
A modern strip club in the US is one where they only wear masks.
When Star Trek goes Godfather III. An ambush that will be repeated again in Into Darkness.
@1 Agreed. This was too serious for a single episode.
Not to mention it loses all dramatic tension when you know it won’t add up to anything. I
t’s convenient how they go from being hounded by the Kazon to just running away extra hard at the end of the episode.
I like this episode a bit more than Keith, but like so much from Voyager the lack of continuity takes away it’s staying power. The next week’s episode and more should have shown the continued difficulties of not having an ally, with Janeway having to stand by her choice when it isn’t popular.
The Kazon might’ve been more interesting if the backstory with the Trabe had been established earlier on. It could’ve made for a nicely ambiguous storyline, with the Kazon being as much sympathetic victims as villains — a damaged people who had legitimate grievances but were acting them out in harmful ways, and giving the Trabe reason to continue hating them. It could’ve been cool if Janeway had actually decided to stick around in the region long enough to fulfill the Federation’s mission and help them make peace, rather than just continue the tedious and pointless “set course back toward the home we won’t reach in our lifetimes” thing. And it would’ve been a better way to generate a continuing narrative arc than the traitor subplot that began here.
Once again, let me recommend reading the bio. We’re in the last week of our Kickstarter now, and just $31 from unlocking my second bonus story!
@6, Yeah, I see the Kazon backstory as a quintessential encapsulation of VOY in a nutshell: Ingrained, interesting potential that was ultimately wasted.
I’m curious about behind-the-scenes history . . . was there ever any kind of justification given for the costume idea with these absolutely disgusting hairstyles? I mean, yes, I realize they had to come up with something that was instantly recognizable, but was there ever any backstory for some in-world logic?
Updating Christopher’s comment #6: we’ve now hit that eighth stretch goal, so his exclusive “Arachne” story will be one of the bonus rewards if you pledge!
http://kck.st/3a7mRlv
Now just $191 to go to bring one of my collaborator’s books back into print….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
srEDIT: Nope, never.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8/srEDIT: I think I read something somewhere about the Kazon weaving things into their hair as trophies or symbols of life achievements/victories of some sort, but I can’t remember where that came from and whether it was a show-related source or just something conjectural.
Keith, I’m shocked that you didn’t comment on Star Trek finally memorializing a random crew member! I know it was plot relevant, but was still a nice touch. Of course, I just watched an episode that’s coming up where they just shrug their shoulders and move on after a crew member dies…
Austin: Fair point, I should have mentioned that in the review segment, not just the plot summary, as that was nicely done.
But even more than other Trek shows, this is one where the death of a crew member should have significance, given that they cannot possibly be replaced…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8 and @9: It’s possible that the Kazon hairstyle might have been a holdover from the initial concept — how they were supposed to serve as an allegory for 1990s-era Los Angeles and urban street gangs before the idea proved unfeasible for various production reasons.
So the final product might still have been intended to invoke urban/gang hairstyles…which, had they stuck with the original concept, would’ve made things worse. But then we are talking about the franchise gave us Lokai and Bele as allegories of racial bigotry. Subtlety isn’t always Trek‘s metier.
@13/krad: One of the best things about Star Trek: Enterprise is that it’s the one Trek show that really does treat the death of crewmembers with maturity and weight rather than as a throwaway plot device. In an early episode, a transporter accident that was scripted as fatal was changed to non-fatal with a line of dubbed dialogue, because the producers realized they didn’t want to trivialize it. And then they waited to kill a crewmember until they had an opportunity in the story to give it the weight it deserved — although that did mean the crew was implausibly free of fatalities for better than two years, with the first crew death happening partway through season 3. That fatality was treated as a very big deal even though it wasn’t an established character who died, and it served to establish how grave the stakes of the Xindi conflict had gotten. Going forward, subsequent fatalities were also acknowledged and grieved by the crew, and continued to have an impact on them going forward. It was one of the most impressive things about an often mediocre show.
@15 – Speaking of Entreprise, since Keith changed his mind about a Voyager rewatch, I wonder if he will change his mind about that show…
The “get out of Dodge” point ALWAYS bothered me about the whole concept of recurring antagonists on VOY. It’s not like they don’t know what direction Earth is in, or only have a ship limited to low warp, or anything – unless Cullah’s ship is a good order of magnitude faster than Voyager, it makes absolutely no sense for them to still be encountering him almost two years after they set out for home. Deviations to resupply/trade aside, they’re blasting through the sector in a straight line at maximum sustained warp. They should be long gone.
S
@17: Yes, the fact that Voyager would repeatedly run into the same aliens, much less the same characters(!) after supposedly going at high warp on a relatively straight course back to the Alpha Quadrant was eye-roll inducing. Unless it’s a species apart of a huge empire and incredible technology à la the Borg, or an omnipotent being like the Q, every alien encounter Voyager has should be limited to a single episode or at most, a two-parter.
Regarding this particular episode, I do like the attempts at an ongoing arc even though I don’t think it should be about the Kazon. And it’s nice we get to see a bunch of the different Kazon sects, the Trabe, the introductions of Jonas and Hogan, and the funeral for the fallen comrade. But while the story is watchable, it doesn’t really amount to much either.
I believe this is the episode where B’Elanna mentions that Seska was her best friend but aside from that remark, nothing tangential to that fact ever arises in future events and I don’t believe they ever share any future scenes together. It just seems like another missed opportunity but then that’s Voyager for you!
@17, Yeah, as I said back during “Maneuvers”, Jeri Taylor acknowledged that was a big mistake with the Kazon in hindsight. Really, the Kazon should’ve been a Big Bad for Season One and that’s it.
In fact, had VOY premiered after 1997 and after Buffy had pioneered the now familiar, modern Big Bad Seasonal storyline, I wonder if VOY might’ve ended up using that formula for itself.
It’s doubtful, though. UPN was we’ve seen was fanatic about keeping it episodic.
@17/Silvertip: I don’t find it too implausible, since the Kazon are a nomadic people and thus would presumably be widespread through the region. And Voyager was estimated to need 75 years to travel over 70,000 light years, so that’s no more than about 950 light-years per year — not much more than the distance from Earth to Mintaka, the star the Enterprise-D visited in “Who Watches the Watchers?” And that’s the optimal distance assuming everything goes well, which it didn’t, since the ship keeps having to stop or take detours.
@17, 18:
I could *see* it working. Say a Delta Quadrant antagonist and Voyager are both travelling between Points A and Z, which lays just a little ways within their range of how far they can travel without replenishing some vital resource. The DQers, being local, know that they can replenish this resource at both Point A and Point Z, and so proceed directly between the two points at a comfortable cruise.
The Voyager crew only *suspects* that they may be able to refuel at Point Z. If they commit on a direct course to point Z and are wrong, they’ll run unrecoverably short of fuel. What they really need is a point M in between, or if there’s nothing directly in their route that’ll do, several points in between where they can refuel.
Based on Neelix’s local knowledge, plus star charts obtained at Point A, they identify a likely Point M- but when they reach it, it turns out to be a bust. Now, they theoretically still have the resources to proceed to Point Z, but if they’re wrong again, they’ll be stuck. So, reluctantly, Janeway orders a return to Point A, and they set about trying to identify another midway point- and it may take them several tries to establish a route.
Now, this has two advantages, from the point of view of justifying recurring aliens/antagonists. One, it means that Voyager may well return to a given planet/star system/space station/tasty nebula several times as they try to chart a reasonably safe series of stepping stones onwards, and two, it means that even when Voyager is making significant forward progress instead of backtracking and charting a path, it’s not necessarily a great distance compared to the local powers who have an actual infrastructure set up.
To make this work best, you’d perhaps want to specify that Federation starships require some resource which is fairly uncommon, or underutilized in the Delta Quadrant- the components for Reactor Injection Fluid may be no rarer in the Delta Quadrant, but everyone here uses Reactor Flakes, so they haven’t been searching for, cataloging, mining, or refining RIF Precursors.
Then, if you want to move away from a given established area because you’ve done everything you want to with those characters/species/plots, your engineer can figure out a way to refit Voyager to use the much more common Reactor Flakes and you can be on your way with much fewer steps.
But now I’m considerably rewriting the show, and I had planned to avoid that at least until we got to the Q Civil War…
@21/Cuttlefish Benjamin: I still think it would’ve been smarter for Voyager to start out by finding some kind of secure home base, maybe making an alliance with someone local (e.g. the Talaxians), replenish their resources and ensure their survival, and then start working on finding some kind of shortcut or advanced drive or long-range communication system, using the resources of their allies. It’s not like they were in any rush, after all. They didn’t expect to get home in their lifetimes, so they wouldn’t lose anything by taking the time to set up a secure base of operations from which to pursue their long-term plans. More haste, less speed.
This would’ve also had the advantage of making it more plausible to have recurring adversaries as long as they stayed in the area. Maybe they could’ve worked with the Talaxians for a year or two, but ended up bringing down more attacks on Talaxian space by the Kazon and other enemies who wanted Voyager‘s technology, so they would’ve reluctantly decided to move on and try to find a new base of operations, regional alliance, or whatever, allowing a transition to new recurring allies and adversaries over the next season or two.
So, back to the season arc. I’ve always had a soft spot for Cullah as a villain, but watching these again, he does often come across as a dumb brute being led around by Seska. That said, he has got charisma. It may well be that he’s been told what to say by the more intelligent power behind the throne, but he’s able to hold the attention during the summit meeting well. Of course, he’s there as the red herring since we’re expecting him to be the villain of the piece, the twist being that he’s just another victim and apparent ally Mabus is the one plotting a murder attempt.
It’s a bit of a shame that we never get any real follow-up with the Trabe: I can’t imagine Mabus’ group surviving long after this after getting on the bad side of virtually every major Kazon faction. (Or every minor faction anyway.) At first, it seems to be a standard story of the former oppressors becoming the victims. But then we realise that there’s a season they were the former oppressors and they want to go back to it.
The debut of Jonas and Hogan. (And, less notably, Culluh’s aide Rettik, who I believe makes his second and final appearance in the next episode.) On first viewing, I was extremely confused that there seemed to be no follow-up to Jonas contacting the Kazon, and his cameos in the next few episodes didn’t really help clarify matters until I finally twigged it was meant to be an ongoing storyline. It’s interesting seeing the way the two Maquis engineers are portrayed here. Hogan is vocally critical of Janeway’s command decisions but he’s not actually going to mutiny. Meanwhile, Jonas listens on silently and ends up doing the things Hogan suggested. (Torres, of course, is on the opening titles so she toes the line.)
I don’t think Tersa turns Neelix in by the way. He’s not exactly being discreet and there’s an oblique reference to him having upset people at the bar on a previous visit. Tersa’s response to the guards turning up is to pretend not to know Neelix, not tell them who he is.
I read an interview with Anthony DeLongis in which he recalled that the first version of the script he was sent had Cullah and the other Kazon majes dying in the attack at the end. He went to the producers asking them to include some suggestion Culluh might have survived, only to be told they’d already changed the ending and he was still alive. I guess someone decided that it would be a bit much of a moral failing to make Voyager accessories to mass murder. (It took me a couple of viewings to realise Voyager actually fired on and drove off the Trabe ship: Up until then, I thought Janeway just shouted “Look out!”, then ran off and left them to their fate!) I’m intrigued as to how far they went with that ending, since Culluh’s notably absent from Seska’s next couple of appearances and isn’t seen again until the season finale.
Paris apparently has enough technical skill to help fix the propulsion system. It’s not clear what happens to Neelix’s shuttle: It’s apparently left behind on Sobras during his initial escape but given that he’s able to travel back and forth openly to the planet later on, it’s possible he recovered it. (If not, I hope they wiped the computer core.) My already low opinion of The Voyager Companion just took another battering: Having claimed Kes doesn’t appear in “Manoeuvres” (she does), they also claim she has no dialogue in this episode, when in fact she has a line during the attempt to revive Bandera.
@22
Oh, yeah, if we want to go that far, it makes a lot of sense- given the distances quoted, I couldn’t help but feel that Voyager had a better chance of getting home in their life spans by settling in one place and charting it thoroughly in search of wormholes, spatial anomalies, or a friendly Glowing Energy Alien. Of course, that would involve Janeway and the Starfleet crew admitting that they weren’t just passing through, they were making themselves an ongoing presence in the power balance of the region. Lot of interesting possibilities for stories there.
@22: I still think it would’ve been smarter for Voyager to start out by finding some kind of secure home base, maybe making an alliance with someone local (e.g. the Talaxians), replenish their resources and ensure their survival, and then start working on finding some kind of shortcut or advanced drive or long-range communication system, using the resources of their allies.
Yeah, that in hindsight was more feasible and would’ve been more interesting. And it’s got me wishing somebody in-story had called out what was implied here and there: That Janeway’s at-times fanatical ‘Homeward-bound’ mentality was psychological projection and coping over her guilt at stranding the crew in the DQ.
Or at least that’s one way of interpreting and reconciling Janeway’s inconsistent characterization throughout the series (and I know the String Theory trilogy gives its own take on it).
@20 CLB Still running into the species wouldn’t have been so bad. Even on Earth you could name (historical) nomadic cultures that were very widespread, if thinly populated, such that a traveler would have been in their territory for a long time. But the same individual? That requires a lot more contrivance (@21 made a heroic effort). For my money, that’s rather more groan-inducing than even all the science shortcuts, since it doesn’t work within the internal logic of the show’s premise. But as we’ve encountered throughout these rewatches, everybody has different things that blow them out of suspension of disbelief. This is just one of mine. YMMV.
S
Interesting how most of us reached the same question after this episode on why our crew doesn’t just b line it straight to earth or why they keep running into the same faces. In real life this would likely be the case but for a show that has to milk the clock, this is standard protocol.
Anyone else hoping Neelix was going to get wacked when they were dragging him underground? He’s got to be the most unlikable, main cast trek character to date.
@27: “Anyone else hoping Neelix…” Yes! But that would never happen of course. There’s a great scene in the upcoming episode “Meld” that has to do with a certain interaction between Tuvok and Neelix but sadly it turns out not to be real. If only Neelix got the boot in season 4 instead of Kes. Sigh.
@28 Ah, GarretH, you beat me to the punch! I liked that scene in “Meld” too and was upset that it wasn’t real, and I wanted Neelix booted instead of Kes. No offense to Ethan Phillips.
I would have liked this episode more if Chakotay and Tuvok had actually been more right. Don’t get me wrong, I love episodes where Starfleet principles prevail. But Voyager is in the Delta Quadrant. I would have loved to see more episodes where they actually have to use Maquis tricks and bend or even break the rules — with no negative consequences — because they’re alone and so far from home. Or maybe Janeway thinks “I wish we hadn’t had to do this,” but it was their only choice.
@26/Silvertip: I can buy it with Seska and Culluh, because they were specifically pursuing Voyager. And for all the talk of Voyager‘s superior engines, it got into a lot of battles and took a lot of damage that probably slowed it down, allowing the Nistrim ships to catch up.
Oh, forgot to point out that this is the 3rd episode in the past 4 where Voyager gets its butt kicked in battle. At this point, I have to conclude that either Janeway is not a good tactical commander (everyone has their area of weakness) or that the Delta quadrant far outstrips Voyager in weapons and/or shield technology. Or maybe even a combination of those two factors.
I just don’t like seeing Voyager getting its butt kicked all the time. I’m pro-Federation. Of course, the Federation is really just a bunch of science geeks from a culture that achieved world peace. So maybe it’s not too surprising.
@31 You know, you’re right. There are episodes such as “Thirty Days” where Voyager dominates, but not too many episodes like this. I think it is indeed a combination of those two factors. I see episodes where it’s the other crewmen who give her great tactical ideas that work. (And in spite of all that, she tries more than once to do things on her terms no matter how much others want to help or no matter how good their advice is!!)
I felt the same way about the Defiant. I was super happy seeing it dominate in episodes such as “Way of the Warrior” and “the Die is Cast,” but I hated “The Search, Part 1” because it was a big letdown for me; in an episode supposed to introduce a ship with teeth, it only managed to destroy 1 Jem-Hadar vessel.
@31/Austin: As a rule in fiction, you want the bad guys to be more powerful than the good guys so that the stakes are higher and the victory more difficult. It’s not as suspenseful if the bad guys are too weak to pose a real threat.
In Voyager‘s case, I think they usually tend to be outnumbered, plus the local ships have the advantage of nearby home bases where they can resupply and repair. Voyager has been limping from fight to fight for over a year now, with limited repair and supply capability.
@33 But there are still ways to make the good guys more powerful than the bad guys without sacrificing suspense. There are several examples of this in both DS9 and TNG. Not so many in Voyager — probably for the reasons you mentioned, but the writers could have come up with ways for Voyager to be a beast in battle without hurting the story.
Some gratuitous hypothesizing here. I’ve always wondered where the Prophet’s wormhole was in relation to Voyager. Even though I know that in the real world the Gamma Quadrant was the sole property of the DS9 team and that heading there would destroy the whole rational of the show, I couldn’t help but wonder that rather than moving in a straight diagonal line through the heart of the galaxy maybe Voyager might have traveled laterally to the Gamma Quadrant, find the wormhole and try to get to get back to the Alpha Quadrant that way.
@35/remremulo: Based on this map from Star Trek Star Charts, the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the Bajoran Wormhole is nearly 65,000 light years from the Caretaker Array and the Ocampa system. So it would’ve taken more than 90% as long to get there as it would’ve taken to get home, hardly enough of a difference to be worth it. Also, as you can see from the map, a straight diagonal through the galactic core would’ve put them in the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager‘s route was fairly close to that already. Gamma is adjacent to Delta on the far side of the galaxy from us.
And all Star Trek is the property of the same studio, then called Paramount (now called CBS). DS9 and VGR didn’t have any legal restrictions preventing them from sharing ideas. But DS9 was a syndicated show and VGR was on UPN, a young, small network with less than nationwide reach. Though VGR was syndicated in markets that didn’t have UPN affiliates, there was no guarantee that viewers in a given market would be able to see both shows, and of course a fair percentage of viewers would only be interested in one show rather than both. So it was preferable for that reason to keep their storylines fairly unconnected. I think it was also the preference of the two shows’ creative staffs to do their own separate things.
@36 CLB: My “sole property” comment was flippant/sarcastic (I know it’s hard to tell with short comments like these). I know there was no legal reason not to mix up the settings of the shows though I did read that after the end of TNG there was an informal division of the franchises narrative assets and that Voyager got Q and the Borg (other than the random, individual Romulan, Ferengi and Klingon) and DS9 got everything else.
Thanks for the galactic quadrant info. For some reason I thought the Delta Quadrant was diagonally opposite the Alpha Quadrant while the Gamma Quadrant was directly adjacent to it.
@32:
I felt the same way about the Defiant. I was super happy seeing it dominate in episodes such as “Way of the Warrior” and “the Die is Cast,” but I hated “The Search, Part 1” because it was a big letdown for me; in an episode supposed to introduce a ship with teeth, it only managed to destroy 1 Jem-Hadar vessel.
True, but in the instance of “The Search”, the ass-kicking was at least justified in-story. The Defiant as Sisko pointed out in the info-dump at the top of the episode, was a flawed prototype. Combine that with Starfleet only having had one prior firefight with Dominion forces and it was reality ensuing that it bit off more than it could chew.
Once O’Brien (off-screen) worked out the kinks in the systems and the team got more experience dealing with the Jem’Hadar, then all was fine with the ‘escort ship’ kicking ass. And even there, the Jem’Hadar still had the tactical edge of Fed shields being useless against polaron weaponry (at least up until the recovery in “The Ship”).
And after two good episodes, we’re once again back at the bottom of the barrel.
I credit the rewatch and the way it’s written for making this episode’s plot as palatable as it is. Having said that, I think a 5 is rather generous for this one. Alliances is the epitome of sloppy writing, and a prime example of Voyager’s inability to do proper story arcs.
Culluh’s hatred of women is as subtle as TOS doing aliens with black/white skin as a racial allegory. Not only it adds nothing to the episode, but you have to wonder why Seska sticks with him after all this time. There are other Kazon sects she could try for.
Janeway’s insistent defense of Starfleet ideals flies in the face of common sense after that ending with the Trabe betrayal. I know the writers tried to make an honest case of standing by your principles in her character, but the way it’s conveyed, Janeway sounds as dense as a certain couple of presidents who try to downplay a certain pandemic.
And the fact is, the Kazon should have been long gone by this point. Seska defected in State of Flux. It’s been what, 7 or 8 months since that episode? Voyager should have cleared Kazon space long ago. Even if there are Kazon ships still on their path, there is no way Culluh and Seska should have caught up to the Trabe meeting this fast, unless they’ve been shadowing Voyager’s flight path for months.
Krad even noticed a major flaw I missed: Chakotay questioning the Kazon/Trabe mistrust. It’s almost as if the scene was written for Will Riker rather than a former Maquis freedom fighter.
And then there’s the left-field revelation of Jonas feeding info to the Kazon. How does one go from questioning their captain to suddenly divulging forbidden info to the people that have murdered your colleage? With that mindset he might as well feed Maquis info to the Cardassians. There’s nothing he can gain from this other than put the ship and his friends in jeopardy.
And the way I see it, this would have played slightly better had the character been seeded a few episodes before. Introduce him in the midst of a Kazon skirmish and you might as well put a label that reads TRAITOR (glowing neon) next to his combadge. And also, why make him a Maquis? It’s cheap to design a character as Maquis = Morally Questionable. It would have been a better twist had he been pure Starfleet from the outset.
A low point in the season that will only get worse as we get to Investigations and the Basics two parter.
@39/Eduardo: It seems pretty clear that Culluh and Seska have been shadowing Voyager for months. These aren’t random encounters — they’re chasing after the ship to get its technology.
@39 – A low point as we get to…Threshold! The infamous Threshold is your real low point. I, for one, can’t wait until Thursday.
@39: For me, Threshold’s ridiculous premise is so outlandish that it falls into the Spock’s Brain category for me. That alone gives it some entertainment value, at least. So I can actually have some fun revisiting it. And we’ve already gone through Elogium and Twisted, both arguably worse episodes (Tattoo is also a contender, as is the upcoming Investigations).
@42 – Oh, I agree. I watched it the other day for the first time in years. I found it much more entertaining than I remember. Maybe it was the mindset I have now versus when I first watched it.
I’ll confess I’m rather looking forward to the Threshold review as well.
If I were especially ambitious, I could probably tie together Threshold’s take on evolution with a couple of other ‘evolution’ driven episodes to argue that evolution, as understood by Federation science, is orthogenetic rather than Darwinian, and that this explains the deep taboo in Federation society against the genetic engineering of sentient life.
(Thus, the fact that the genetic engineering experiment we do see in TNG’s Unnatural Selection takes place on a research station called Darwin, suggests a radical heterodoxy).
@42:
That alone gives it some entertainment value, at least.
Oh, absolutely. I’m looking forward to re-watching SF Debris’ hysterical review in tandem with the main re-watch.
I don’t think many of the oft-repeated criticisms of Voyager necessarily stand up, but one that should have been made more often is “how the hell does Neelix know enough to guide anyone this far out?”.
After this time they must have travelled the best part of 1000 light-years. In that volume of space there will be several million stars. Yet every other week he knows the planet or someone close by.
And I get that Culluh and Seska have been shadowing them, and even though Voyager’s quick (a far faster ship than the Enterprise-D) it isn’t impossible to imagine they’d keep up. But have representatives of multiple Kazon sects who they know out here? Preposterous.
Given Voyager’s speed they should have left behind anything familiar to anyone within a very small number of months. It would still have been possible to have Kazon be analogous to gangs and have autonomous sets spread this far, but not anyone with personnel connections to anyone.
It’s a small quadrant.
The only part of this episode that I really enjoyed was Larry Cedar, and here’s why. Larry was on Square One TV, which was a nerdy math show for kids when I was growing up in the 80s. (I LOVED that show.) On this episode, he’s in two scenes. In the first, he’s trying to solve some kind of geometry puzzle (so that one of the dancers will spend the night with him) and in the other he’s explaining why he chose the shape of the table in the conference room. Those Easter eggs, which I only noticed upon watching this episode many many years after it aired, absolutely kill me.
@39: “And also, why make him a Maquis? It’s cheap to design a character as Maquis = Morally Questionable. It would have been a better twist had he been pure Starfleet from the outset.”
That’s a really good point, actually, and one of the things that really frustrates me about the use of the Maquis in Voyager: we rarely get a chance to examine their perspective and there’s no meaningful tension between them and the Starfleet crew, they’re simply there to bulk up the crew’s numbers and offer some convenient bad apples every time the writer’s need someone to do anything even remotely morally dubious. I have a similar problem with Section 31: while the concept itself isn’t bad when used sparingly, as it was in DS9, having 31 be a massive presence that’s responsible for every bad deed the Federation has ever done cheapens their presence.
And put me in the camp that finds the continued threat of the Kazon both unrealistic and narratively frustrating. A sustained story arc with a persistent antagonist is not a bad idea in theory, but the Kazon are just such lousy villains that it becomes a pain to sit through. They’re the Kylo Ren of Star Trek: too vile to truly be sympathetic, yet too incompetent to truly be threatening. Their history with the Trabe likewise comes far too late for us to care, and comes across like the school bully trying to use his unresolved daddy issues to excuse how he tries to beat up every random kid for their lunch money.
Also, as a random aside, anyone else immediately think of First Wave when Mabus is introduced?
That scene where the attack on the meeting occurs and the Voyager crew and Mabus get beamed out in a hurry while leaving all the Kazon behind seemed awfully cruel. Why not, as a gesture toward working with the Kazon, beam them out as well? I’m watching this for the 4th or 5th time 20+ years after it came out, so maybe I’m reading way too much into this scene.
I agree that the whole issue of how the crew treated the Kazon-Trabe relationship was problematic. I think this was probably an issue with trying to do this kind of story in a single episode. There’s no freedom to do an in-depth exploration of the relationship between these two species because the plot needs to keep moving along. The Kazon could have been an interesting villain if they had been fully fleshed out. Their history with the Trabe could have made them more sympathetic and the crew, especially Janeway, could have had an increasingly morally ambiguous situation unfold as they found out more about the Kazon’s history. But no, instead we got this weird, seemingly tacked on storyline handled in a single episode. Oh well.
I’ll say one thing about Charles O. Lucia, his acting may have been wooden, but he sure does look rather grinch-like in the picture in the review. Not to judge people by appearances, but considering this is a TV show, he looks like a conniving little weasel.
@32/erikm: The Defiant was stationary and mostly powered down when the fight broke out due to their belief that the Jem’hadar couldn’t detect them at cloak as long as they were in that state. Essentially they were ambushed and also outnumbered, so I personally had no problems with the Defiant getting a good licking. Also, when they finally did fire back, they obliterated their one kill in 2 seconds flat! “it only managed to destroy 1 Jem-Hadar vessel”, you say? For me, that was a testament to how awesome the Defiant was, not to how awesome it wasn’t!..
A valid criticism of VGR’s first two seasons is the way we keep running into Culluh, Seska and the Kazon months and months after we first met them. It made it seem like Voyager wasn’t covering any new ground on it’s way back to the Alpha Quadrant. In fact, at times it seemed like the ship wasn’t getting any closer at all, and this wouldn’t be rectified until the following season.
Delta Quadrant: A Guide to Voyager liked the scene when Janeway first contacts Seska and Culluh and Culluh says Janeway’s offer is sincere when they really suspect Voyager wouldn’t be making this offer unless the crew were desperate. I also liked the way the episode misdirects us into thinking Hogan will take matters into his own hands when really it’s Jonas (Judas?).
The scene in Tuvok’s quarters could have been heavy-handed but it works because of Tim Russ and Kate Mulgrew’s great rapport.
3: I thought the climax was inspired by Godfather 1. 18: Torres told Chakotay that Seska was her best friend in Manoeuvres. 39: I doubt the other Kazon sects would be any more welcoming or respectful to Seska, because they can’t get past they’re own misogyny.
It’s always struck me as unusual that ex-Maquis like Hogan and Jonas would put they’re trust in a Cardassian. Or that Hogan can’t see that no matter how much technology they give the Kazon, they’d always be after them for more until they try to take the ship in the end (which they do). 47: It’s a huge quadrant. 50: Voyager did save the Majes by driving off the attacking ship, but convincing them that Voyager didn’t plan this attack along with the Trabe would probably be a waste of time. 51: The Grinch is my hero.
@52/David: They didn’t “keep running into” them, though; Culluh and Seska were actively following Voyager. That ameliorates it somewhat.
And it’s nothing compared to what happens in season 5, where they run into the Malon on both ends of a 10,000-light year hop, or season 7, where they suddenly run into Talaxians again as if they hadn’t moved at all since season 1.
The continued presence of the Kazon doesn’t really bug me anymore, since Voyager is going off on a lot if detours and resupply missions, particularly in the first two seasons, whereas the Kazon must have more reliable supply lines. Also, in “Jetrel”, Voyager went to Talax, which is described as being significantly out of their way (somewhere in the vicinity of Ocampa, even?).
In retrospect, what stands out to me about this episode is how reticent Janeway is about even attempting an alliance with *one* of the Kazon factions on the grounds that they don’t share Federation values. A year and a half later, she’s the one trying to cut a deal with the Borg. I’m not sure what to make of this.