“Coda”
Written by Jeri Taylor
Directed by Nancy Malone
Season 3, Episode 15
Production episode 158
Original air date: January 29, 1997
Stardate: 50518.6
Captain’s log. Neelix intercepts Janeway en route to a shuttle mission, geebling about Talent Night—and also asking that, when they do it again, Tuvok be given some important duty assignment. Janeway agrees.
Janeway and Chakotay talk about Talent Night in the shuttle, with the latter marveling at the former’s ballet performance, and both agreeing that Tuvok’s reading of Vulcan poetry was stultifying.
The shuttle crash lands on the planet they’re surveying, seemingly from an out-of-nowhere electrical storm. Janeway is badly injured, and Chakotay manages to revive her with CPR. They’re then attacked by Vidiians, whom Chakotay theorizes shot them down. The Vidiians kill them both—
—and then they’re back on the shuttle talking about Talent Night. Thinking they’re in some kind of time loop, they try to avoid being shot down by the Vidiians again. However, the ensuing firefight results in the shuttle being destroyed—
Buy the Book
The Relentless Moon
—and then they’re back on the shuttle talking about Talent Night. This time, they contact Voyager and hit the Vidiians with a tachyon burst, which seems to disrupt the time loop, as the Vidiians disappear. But when the shuttle returns home, suddenly Chakotay has forgotten about the time loop, and Janeway is now ill.
The EMH diagnoses her with the Phage. Eventually, he announces that the only course of action is to euthanize her, which he does despite her attempts to order him to stop and to shut him off. She collapses to the deck and dies—
—and then is back on the shuttle with Chakotay. This time, they see a bright light, which engulfs the shuttle, forcing them to crash. Again, Janeway is badly wounded, and again Chakotay tries to revive her, but this time he is unsuccessful. Janeway finds herself standing over her dying body, but no one can see or hear her.
A rescue shuttle arrives from Voyager, and Janeway is brought to sickbay—both her corporeal form and the insubstantial spirit form. The EMH and Kes are unsuccessful in reviving her and call her death. Janeway, however, tries to contact Kes through the latter’s telepathic abilities, but while Kes gets a vague impression of Janeway, that’s all it is. Tuvok and Kes work for three days to try to recapture that impression of Janeway, but it fails. Kim and Torres try to determine if what Kes sensed was truly Janeway’s incorporeal form, but they find nothing, and finally give up.
Janeway gets to observe her own memorial service, and then her father shows up. Admiral Janeway explains that this happened to him when he died unexpectedly fifteen years previous: his spirit tried to cling to the living world, but he eventually realized he needed to move on. He’s here to help Janeway do the same.
But Janeway doesn’t give up that easily. Even if she is dead, she wants to stay on Voyager as a “ghost,” just so she can find out how they proceed, if they make it home. But Admiral Janeway becomes insistent, to the point that Janeway is starting to doubt her “father’s” sincerity.
Then she gets a flash of herself on the planet they were surveying in the shuttle, lying prone on the ground, the EMH treating her.
Janeway is starting to think that this is all a hallucination, and confronts Admiral Janeway. It turns out that it’s an alien being that feeds off the energy of dying people. But people have to go willingly into its matrix, and Janeway refuses.
The EMH is able to revive her on the planet, removing the alien influence from her mind. She returns to the ship, grateful to have escaped.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently this alien can make someone hallucinate their own death over and over again while they’re dying and can feed on their energy, er, somehow, as they die. Sort of.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway’s father is the one who instilled in her the drive to learn and to question and to not just accept things as they are but to investigate and find out why and how things work. Her father also died fifteen years prior to this episode.
Mr. Vulcan. The hallucinatory Tuvok works very hard to try to find out if Janeway is still alive somewhere, and is very obviously shaken by her death.
Forever an ensign. The hallucinatory Kim tells a lovely story of a time when Janeway helped him through a tough time.
Half and half. The hallucinatory Torres talks about how much she did not respect Janeway at first, even after she made Torres chief engineer, but she has since come to value her greatly, as she showed Torres how to have faith in herself.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix apparently threw together a Talent Show. Kim played the clarinet, Janeway performed the ballet The Dying Swan (which she learned when she was six), and Tuvok read incredibly boring Vulcan poetry.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The first sign that this is a hallucination rather than a time loop is when the hallucinatory EMH calmly decides that he needs to euthanize Janeway, and her command codes to override this don’t work. In another of the loops, the hallucinatory EMH is quite emotional when trying to revive Janeway, snapping at Kes not to question him when he continues his extraordinary measures to revive her.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. When he sees Janeway badly injured in the shuttle crash, Chakotay’s reaction is not that of a first officer seeing his captain hurt, but of someone who sees a person he loves dying. At the end of the episode, Janeway and Chakotay head to the holodeck for a moonlit sail on Lake George with champagne. Wah-HEY!
Do it.
“The highlight of the evening was definitely Kathryn Janeway portraying The Dying Swan.”
“I learned that dance when I was six years old. I assure you, it was the hit of the Beginning Ballet class.”
“I don’t doubt it. If Neelix has another Talent Night, I hope you reprise it.”
“Oh no. Not until certain other people take their turns. The ship’s first officer, for instance.”
“Me? Get up in front of people and perform? I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Chakotay, there must be some talent you have that people would enjoy. Maybe I could stand with an apple on my head, and you could phaser it off.”
“Sounds great—if I miss, I get to be captain!”
–Chakotay and Janeway discussing Talent Night
Welcome aboard. The only guest in this one is the great Len Cariou as the image of Admiral Janeway.
Trivial matters: That Janeway’s father was a command officer in Starfleet was established way back in “Caretaker.” This episode’s writer, Jeri Taylor, also wrote a novel that filled out Janeway’s backstory, Mosaic, and many of the events from Janeway’s past relating to her father mentioned in this episode were dramatized in that novel. The novel also provided a first name for the admiral, Edward.
The real Admiral Janeway also appears in the short story “The Music Between the Notes” by Steven Barnes in the anthology The Lives of Dax.
The Talent Night that preceded the episode was dramatized in Jeffrey Lang’s short story in the Distant Shores anthology, appropriately titled “Talent Night.”
The alien returns at a time concurrent with the series finale, “Endgame,” in the short story “Da Capo al Fine” by Heather Jarman, also in Distant Shores. This time, the alien is disguised as Seska.
Janeway mentions that Klingon DNA can fight the Phage, as established in “Faces,” and also seen in “Lifesigns.” The hallucinatory Chakotay also mentions that Kes can sense unseen presences, as established in “Cathexis” (where the unseen presence was Chakotay himself).
This is the first Trek credit for director Nancy Malone, whose lengthy and impressive career included acting, producing, dancing, and directing in TV and film, and on Broadway. She’ll also direct “Message in a Bottle” in season four.
Set a course for home. “We can stand here for all eternity and I will never choose to go with you.” This episode is a massive stew made up of several other Trek episodes. We’ve got a time loop (“Cause and Effect“), we’ve got the crew thinking the captain is dead or lost and is mourning (“The Tholian Web,” “The Visitor“), we’ve got a main character believing she might be a ghost (“The Next Phase“), we’ve got events that only happen in one character’s head (“Frame of Mind,” “Projections“), and we’ve got an alien communicating to a member of the crew by pretending to be their parent (“Interface“).
The problem is that the episode can’t make up its mind which it’s going to be. The time-loop notion of the first couple of acts is abandoned when Janeway suddenly becomes a ghost, and it’s not clear what, exactly, the point of the time loop bits were, except to fool us into thinking we were doing “Cause and Effect” again. (Or Groundhog Day, or “Window of Opportunity,” or Palm Springs…)
But no, it’s another alien doing technobabble, plus it’s all a hallucination. It’s nice to see Janeway the rationalist is back, and that the idiotic just-shut-up-and-go-with-it-and-don’t-ask-questions lessons of “Sacred Ground” haven’t carried forth. Indeed, it was her father who instilled that scientist brain in her, so it makes the image of Admiral Janeway being the one to tell her to just accept her fate a particularly fatal (ahem) flaw.
Worse, though, is that making this all a creation of the alien’s attempt to get Janeway to come to his little heavenly pocket dimension—or whatever the hell it is, the episode doesn’t even try to come up with an explanation of what it is or what the alien is doing with near-dead people, exactly—cuts off all the excellent performances at the knees.
Garrett Wang and Roxann Dawson give beautiful, heartfelt eulogies. Torres’s in particular is very illuminating of the journey that Torres has gone on, from bitter, perpetually pissed-off Maquis gear-head to chief engineer of a starship, one that has far more confidence in herself—except, of course, Torres doesn’t say all that. At best, it’s something the alien pulled from Janeway’s mind, but that makes it much less meaningful as an insight into Torres’s mind.
Robert Beltran gets to actually act like a person—his banter with Kate Mulgrew in the shuttle in the beginning and in the ready room at the end is superb. Jeri Taylor also wrote “Resolutions,” and she’s still writing Janeway and Chakotay as two people who have, at the very least, a seriously deep connection, and it gives much more texture to Chakotay’s character, at least in this episode.
Len Cariou is a great choice to play Janeway’s Dad, but—just as Madge Sinclair’s guest turn as La Forge’s Mom was undercut by making her an alien disguised as Captain La Forge—making Admiral Janeway be just a disguise the alien is using takes all the zing of having Janeway meet her old man. (Taylor at least was able to flesh out the Janeway family in the novel Mosaic, which expands a lot of what was touched upon in this episode and does so in a much more interesting manner.)
And Kate Mulgrew once again elevates the material, brilliantly playing Janeway’s frustration, her anger, her curiosity, her fighting spirit, and most especially her passion. I love that she wants to stay on Voyager, not because she necessarily thinks she can “come back to life,” but even accepting that she might be dead, if she can stick around, she wants to. The captain doesn’t abandon ship, and she has to know what happens next, even if she can’t affect the action directly.
But by making the whole thing a hallucination, by having nothing in the episode after the shuttle crash ever have actually happened, it renders all the excellent acting work frustratingly inconsequential.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido is part of a new Kickstarter for three books, one of which is an anthology he’s in, Horns and Halos, featuring stories about demons and angels. (Keith’s is an urban fantasy about Islamic angels.) The other two books are The Devil’s Way by Megan Mackie and An Unceasing Hunger by Michelle D. Sonnier. Please consider supporting it!
I have to disagree about the effectiveness of the villain. That there would be some type of creature that feeds on the psychic essence of the dying is an intriguing concept, and fills in an interesting niche that other predators would not exploit. Having that creature played by Len Cariou (the real Sweeny Todd) makes it all the more delicious.
And the concept of needing someone to make the transition from life to death because one refuses to let go is a concept easily exploitable, as Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes would demonstrate over a decade later.
I see your point about the story flaws, but I rather like this one. It’s a pretty solid Janeway story that gives good insights into her, particularly her backstory. Okay, I’m not crazy about the time loop portion — I find time-loop stories tedious for their repetition — but at least it didn’t last very long. I guess I like it because of how it turned out — it pretended to be a life-after-death story, which I was prepared to hate, but it ended up giving it all a rational (by Trek standards) explanation after all.
As for what the alien wanted, I got the sense that it was a spider in a web — it fed on the neural energy of the consciousnesses it drew into its matrix.
I totally disagree with the review of this episode. This was one of the strongest episodes of the series. It examines life and death in a really great way and in a way that is very Star Trek. Taking a bit of theology and science and mashing them together.
Everything about this episode works. So much emotion, great performances and gives a really nice twist in the story – starts off in one place and ends in another.
What is it with Jeri Taylor and ghost stories? Not only this reminds me of TNG’s Interface, with LaForge chasing after an apparition that took the form of his mother, but also of TNG’s Sub Rosa, an episode revolving around Crusher’s infatuation with a ghost of her dead grandmother’s lover. It also has shades of Voyager’s own Persistence of Vision, where Janeway faces a vision of Mark (also a Taylor-penned episode).
I actually enjoy the Groundhog Day-esque opening. I wish they had stuck with that concept. Which is why I think the rest of the episode falters signficantly. The urgency of the early scenes is lost as the story shifts to this Janeway looks at the crew mourning her loss series of scenes (which The Next Phase did better with Ro Laren, by having her rediscover Bajoran spirituality).
It isn’t helped by the atrocious slow pacing of the story. Coda feels like a 90 minute episode rather than a 45 minute entry. Not that the scenes with Janeway’s “father” are bad. They’re good enough, and the actors sell every minute of it. But the pacing just kills it.
Plus, it’s obvious the whole thing is a ruse right from the minute the EMH talks about euthanasia. By letting the audience in on halfway through act 2, there’s nothing much left to do but wait until the story resolves itself. It becomes a tiresome waiting game with overly long scenes of Janeway’s “father” convincing her to let go of living.
If there’s a case to be made for franchise fatigue, I would point to this episode. Had Coda been made as an early TNG episode, it would have felt novel and interesting. But it came in 1997, by which point Berman-era Trek was nearing a full decade with hundreds of episodes. It feels stale and outdated, and the pacing feels like that of a 1989 episode. To quote Insurrection’s Ru’afo, the episode is old.
On the plus side, this was one of the better uses of Chakotay in a supporting role. And it feels consistent with Janeway’s characterization.
The emotion in this episode is great, but like Keith says, it’s cut off at the knees by none of it being real. Garrett Wang’s acting actually didn’t bother me this time! His eulogy was effective. But, again, these weren’t real moments. If the alien pulled these thoughts from Janeway’s mind, it seems kind of self-serving for Torres to give the speech she did. Almost like Janeway patting herself on the back. Despite all of that, it was one of the more entertaining Voyager episodes.
I like this episode but it always bugs me that Admiral Janeway is wearing the wrong commbadge!
I agree with Krad in that this is an average episode: it’s certainly watchable enough but all of the “meaningful stuff” is rendered toothless because it was imaginary the whole time and then the energy-sucking aliens also feel pretty nebulous. This was indeed a mash-up of a bunch of previous Trek stories and also reminded me a bit of the movie Ghost where you have the protagonist as a ghost stuck in limbo because he can’t yet let go of his corporeal existence.
I do rather enjoy Mulgrew’s delivery of the line “Go back to hell, coward!” stated to pseudo-dad in the over-top dramatic fashion that only she could pull off!
@6/Gonz: Yes! That should be the earliest tip-off to Janeway that Ghost Dad is not who he appears to be.
Austin@5: self-serving for Torres to give the speech she did. Almost like Janeway patting herself on the back
Maybe. But I saw it more as being an expression of what Janeway apparently hoped that Torres would feel/say about her, her hopes that she has been a good captain and that her crew have truly benefited from her efforts to give them the agency they need to live up to their new responsibilities in this situation.
I love reading these rewatches but this has been bugging me for a while so I gotta ask, how am I supposed to be reading “Wah-HEY!” ? Is this a reference? How is this pronounced? I get how it’s used but I’ve never seen this type of reaction before. It’s driving me crazy!!
Aside from that, great review as always!
@10 Maviellas I always think of Wah-HEY ala Blackadder https://youtu.be/HcnxsDOxcOA
I always read Wah-HEY with a Krusty the Klown voice in mind, though I believe his catchphrase is Hey-HEY.
I always thought of “wah-hey” like “Hey now!” from the SNL parody of Ed McMahon on the Tonight Show.
I agree on actually kind of liking this one. Sure, if you really start analyzing it then the plot has some holes, but it moves along at a good clip, has some interesting character moments (both that really happened and that Janeway hallucinates, which honestly gives you a kind of interesting look into Janeway’s mind), and I always thought the monster and his little hell portal was sufficiently creepy. I like that Janeway never gives in to the alien pretending to be her dad, partially out of her desire to stay on Voyager, and partly because the logical part of her knows that it isn’t him. The alien was sufficiently new and weird, and seemed like the sort of thing they should have been finding more of in the Delta quadrant.
I always loved this little exchange, in part because it is genuinely funny, in part because it shows how close Janeway and Chakotay really are, and in part because it’s item #34534958394085 in the proof that Robert Beltran actually could be charming and act when he was given something other than inane technobabble to say.
Gonz is correct that “Wah-HEY!” is a Britishism that I first encountered in Blackadder II, as have seen elsewhere from British writers. Just follow it with, “Sounds a bit rude, doesn’t it?” and you’ll be fine. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5/Austin: “If the alien pulled these thoughts from Janeway’s mind, it seems kind of self-serving for Torres to give the speech she did. Almost like Janeway patting herself on the back.”
I wouldn’t say that. The way I interpret it is, the entity was trying to fool Janeway into thinking she was dead and being willing to let go, so it made the illusory Voyager crew give her a fulfilling and cathartic sendoff so she could move on. It wanted her to think the crew had already gained enough from her and would go on being strong and confident without her, drawing on what she’d given them, so that she wouldn’t feel she still had unfinished business.
Supine, not prone?
maheshkb, I thought the same thing! But the OED defines prone as “lying flat, especially face downwards” (italics mine) so I figured krad could slide. ;)
Decent enough episode but felt a bit done before, and I was also worried about the self serving nature of the eulogies in hindsight once you knew they were grabbed from Janeway’s head, although maybe that serves to humanise her a bit.
Best thing I’ve learned from the review – that krad’s use of Wah-HEY is a British-ism. I’m so lacking in my own self awareness that it never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be ‘got’ by everyone!
Part of the great British tradition of bawdy, double entendre comedy, all the way from the ‘Carry On’ films (leave any sense of political correctness at home) through to Blackadder and beyond.
“I cheated death. That’s worth a celebration.”
An episode of two halves…neither of which actually happens! The first half involves Janeway dying in a variety of interesting ways, the second half involves her haunting a ship mourning her. There’s some chilling moments, especially the Doctor stoically poisoning a terminally ill Janeway. And Chakotay’s reaction to Janeway’s apparent demise again underlines the bond between them. The episode constantly wrong-foots us as to what the reality is, but once you know the twist, it does feel a bit like 40 minutes of padding before Janeway gets to go badass on a devil alien. At least she’s allowed some agency because otherwise the ending feels a bit like a retread of “Flashback” from earlier in the season, with the Doctor suddenly announcing it’s all down to an alien parasite in Janeway’s mind.
I must admit, despite him getting a Special Guest Star billing, I’m unfamiliar with Len Cariou outside of the context of this episode, but he does a decent job in moving “Admiral Janeway” from comforting and paternal to increasingly threatening. Paris stepping in when Kim gets teary at the memorial is probably going to send the slash fans wild…
First appearance of the Vidiians since “Resolutions”, although they’re only hallucinations. I’m struggling to remember exactly when Admiral Janeway appears but it’s a lot earlier than the recap suggests, while the crew are still searching for Captain Kathy.
@20/cap-mjb: Admiral Janeway first appears in engineering as Torres and Kim try to search for Captain Janeway’s supposedly disembodied consciousness in subspace as the Captain “hovers” over her officers optimistically.
I’m also unfamiliar with Len Cariou’s other work outside of this episode however I know I’ve seen him in other things that I just can’t recall. He strikes me as a competent character actor that’s probably appeared as politicians and military officers on other series.
Up to this point, I’d been reading the wah-hey in hte style of Blackadder (or Austin Powers, for that matter!) but it’s suddenly struck me that reading it in the style of Leslie Philips makes it much, MUCH better!
On the episode itself: it is a mash up of several of my favourite tropes (and, indeed, some of my favourite Trek episodes) so as long as I remember to leave my critical brain turned off I enjoy the heck out of it whenever I happen to catch it. If I fail to switch Critic!Brain off, however, it does fall apart in all the ways everyone else has mentioned, with one extra addition to do with Janeway’s ballet skills which, if she’s still doing a dance she learned at age 6, are actually not that impressive (other than the sheer fact she remembers all the choreography – I remember bits and pieces, but not entire routines!).
I liked this episode quite much because of the performances, and especially Chakotay’s. I like his character and every time he gets to act or develop as a character is interesting for me.
I always read Wah-Hey like Crustey from the Simpsons and now, having never watched Blackadder I feel lost :(
It just occurred to me that this is Jeri Taylor’s attempt to write a Brannon Braga episode. You know, messing with our minds, reality bending, nothing being what it seems, etc.
As for Len Cariou, I first knew him from my father’s Sweeney Todd original-cast soundtrack album, and then from his recurring role on Murder, She Wrote, reunited with his Sweeney co-star Angela Lansbury.
@7/garreth: I personally found that line in itself unimpressive, but Mulgrew definitely delivers it well.
The talent night discussion was a fun bit of flavor to further demonstrate the crew as a tight-knit community. The “apple-phaser-I’m Captain!” line was great! I’m glad they didn’t conjure some kind of Jackie Marks-inspired fake Indian talent for Chakotay. Also, I wonder if the “Tuvok reciting poetry” idea was a loose reference to Data’s poetry exploits. Felis Sehlat would have been an interesting companion piece to Data’s poem!
Cause and Effect is one of my top 10 TNG episodes and the rapid-fire time loop act had me hoping for some kind of clever new take on the trope. Sadly it was not to be and it’s good that the scenes passed quickly
As for the rest of the episode, I found it to be quite average and I think the 5 rating from Krad is appropriate.
aethergeo@22: it does fall apart in all the ways everyone else has mentioned, with one extra addition to do with Janeway’s ballet skills which, if she’s still doing a dance she learned at age 6, are actually not that impressive (other than the sheer fact she remembers all the choreography – I remember bits and pieces, but not entire routines!)
I’m not sure what the reference to Janeway dancing “The Dying Swan” at age 6 was supposed to mean for viewers.
Surely the writers were not totally ignorant of this famous ballet piece, choreographed specifically for Anna Pavlova to the segment called “The Swan” from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns? To have Janeway claim to have danced it at age 6 is ludicrous, as it requires trained technical expertise that would be impossible, I believe, for any 6-year-old. To suggest that she could still perform it at her age without continuing her ballet training with regular and consistent workouts is equally ludicrous. So were they ignorant? Or was this part of the overall hallucination, and had nothing to do with any “real” talent night on the ship? Or was it a deliberate set-up for the theme of the episode? The dance is said to represent a struggle of life resisting death to the end, so perhaps it was an allusion an “easter egg” for the benefit of those who know ballet?
@26/srEDIT: TNG: “When the Bough Breaks” had a child of elementary school age studying calculus. It’s a recurring idea in Trek that educational systems in the future are so much more advanced than ours that people are learning adult-level skills in childhood.
Alternatively, it’s entirely possible that sometime in the next 400 years, some choreography teacher will invent a simplified version of The Dying Swan for the benefit of Beginning Ballet students, or captains holding crew talent shows.
For what it’s worth, Jeffrey Lang’s “Talent Night” in Distant Shores interprets Janeway’s performance as being Odette in Swan Lake. Wikipedia says that The Dying Swan has “influenced modern interpretations of Swan Lake,” so it could be consistent.
@CLB, interesting detail, thanks. Yes, I was aware of the conflation now of Odette with The Dying Swan, although I don’t think that changes the need for technical expertise.
@26/@28
Like @27 I took it to be more of a reference to Swan Lake than Saint-Saëns because of Swan Lake being the more famous/familiar ballet, but you’re quite right that it doesn’t lessen the technical aspect.
@27
I don’t care how advanced the educational system is, you can’t get a six year old to have the coordination of a grown adult! (And simplifying some of the great ballet solos to the point where a six year old could perform it would pretty much render it unrecognisable, so why not actually do something age-appropriate?) So while the calculus one is something you could kinda-maybe-sorta squint at and let slide (for one thing, the very basics of calculus are not much more than multiplication so why the heck not start it young?!), this one is just…daft.
My personal guess is they went for a namecheck without even thinking how ludicrous it would sound to anyone with even a passing famliarity of dance.
To be fair, they do that with plenty of other subjects so I’m not sure why I’m so stuck on this one…
@29/athersgeo:
I wouldn’t be so quick to rule out the possibilities of human achievement. The Dune trilogy dared to depict a society so advanced as to make us seem like mice in comparison. It was depicted so well that it was even believable. Now I don’t claim that humans in the Star Trek universe are anywhere near as advanced as that; 400 years is not enough time. However, if a 20th century adult can attain the coordination to perform The Dying Swan, I don’t think it’s completely beyond belief to think that a 24th century child, properly trained and conditioned, could too. I’m not necessarily saying I buy it either and I think #27/CLB’s idea of a simplified version is more believable. And I don’t agree that a simplified version would be unrecognizable. All that being said, perhaps someone during the creative process for this episode actually didn’t do their homework. I do think for clarity sake, a more basic dance would have made more sense, but personally, I’m not opposed to suspending my disbelief.
@21/garreth: Thanks. I had a feeling it was in Engineering but I couldn’t remember the exact details.
You guys are making too big a deal out of this ballet thing. Janeway didn’t say she danced the lead at Covent Garden, she just did a four-minute routine she learned when she was six. Dancers under 12 aren’t even allowed to be en pointe because it could damage their feet, and if you are familiar with this particular dance, the expression of the upper body is the most important anyway. As for it being “unrecognizable,” the music and the story is what makes it The Dying Swan. Choreographers come up with new routines for traditional music all the time, and dance teachers adapt the piece to what their students can do. This dance is mostly an exercise in emoting, and anyone who has learned ballet adequately and has stayed in shape should be able to dance a short piece well enough to entertain their friends at Talent Night.
@32 Now I’m really sad we missed Talent Night.
I think it was a missed opportunity that viewers didn’t get to witness “Talent Night.” How cool would it have been to see Janeway dance. And I believe we’ve yet to see a captain that’s the star on their own Star Trek series “perform” in front of their crew.
Quoth garreth: “And I believe we’ve yet to see a captain that’s the star on their own Star Trek series “perform” in front of their crew.”
Incorrect: we got to see Sisko sing at Vic’s Place at the end of “Badda Bing, Badda Bang.” And you could argue for Picard’s rhapsody in Shakespeare (plus Tennyson) at the end of “Menage a Troi.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@35/Krad: Okay, okay. Those are “performances” if we’re being literal but I was really referring to the talent show vein of performing where you have an audience and clapping. And we still haven’t seen a captain dance for his/her crew!
garreth: Um, Sisko singing at the end of “Badda Bing, Badda Bang” still qualifies. There was an audience and clapping.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@37/Krad: I agree, it definitely counts. It’s also of my favorite Sisko moments in DS9.
@37/Krad: Admittedly, I still haven’t seen “Badda Bing, Badda Bang.” Lol. But it’s still not dancing the ballet!
garreth: You didn’t say dancing the ballet, you said performing in front of an audience. Sisko did that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Krad: I acknowledge that’s what I wrote and indeed Sisko performed for his crew by singing for them which I look forward to viewing at some point. I’m just reiterating it would have been enjoyable to also have seen Janeway perform the ballet for her crew.
I’m not really sure why you are doing this whole review of “Voyager,” krad. You even wrote in a previous comment on one of the other reviews that you would not review “Voyager,” because you dislike it. From the “Suddenly Human,” episode of TNG, you made it clear you really do not like Jeri Taylor; well, she was one of the key creators and writers of the first 4 seasons of VOY, especially Janeway’s characterization. So why do it? I already knew you were going to critically pan most of the episodes Taylor wrote, which was most of them because you don’t like her. You have not disappointed me in such regard. Mind enlightening us all precisely as to why? You don’t think she knows how to write “Star Trek?” Also, remember they had to do roughly 26 episodes a season; that’s a lot of pressure to come up with stories. It’s one reason “Enterprise,” failed so miserably; most of them were Berman/Braga rehashes of the previous series.
@42/SethC: Krad explains why he decided to do this rewatch in the Voyager rewatch intro. As to the Jeri Taylor thing, I’ll leave that as an exercise for the vie… err, for krad ;P
@42/SethC: Keith explained why he decided to do this rewatch in the introductory post:
https://www.tor.com/2020/01/16/introducing-the-star-trek-voyager-rewatch/
And it is not the job of reviewers to talk only about the stuff they like. It’s their job to provide an honest assessment. Naturally different reviewers and audience members will disagree with each other’s opinions, and that is not bad or wrong. It’s good for all of us to be exposed to opinions we don’t share instead of hiding inside our echo chambers.
I think at some point in this rewatch we had collectively decided not to count the number of shuttlecraft Voyager loses? I guess they are so easy to replace such as by replication? Still, you’d think by the 24th century they’d be a good deal more sturdy and their occupants less prone to dying or getting injured in crashes of said craft.
@45/garreth:
Haha ya, that’s something I commented on in a previous Voyager Shuttle Crash™ episode, although I don’t recall which one.
The point I made was that it was amusing that in Star Trek Enterprise, the original two shuttlepods lasted all the way to the beginning of the 4th season. Technology two centuries behind Voyager, and the shuttles were far more sturdy. Even then, when one was finally destroyed, it didn’t crash, it was blown up on purpose in the Storm Front two-parter.
Of course, I’m pretty sure that was by design because I think Brannon Braga and co. realized how cliche it had become in Voyager. Although, they came up with their own cliche for Enterprise: The Archer Goes to Jail™ cliche…
Actually, returning to the shuttle topic, maybe it isn’t so hard to believe that 22nd century shuttles are more durable than 24th. It’s often said that ‘back in the day’ things tended to last longer. While I’m sure that’s debatable, I do have a personal example of it being true. In my house, we have a 35 year-old microwave that still works to this day!
@46/Thierafhal: I think the electric range in my apartment kitchen dates from the ’70s, judging from the avocado-green color and the design of the dials and such. It’s nearly as old as I am! And the phonograph I’ve had since the ’80s still works, though I use it infrequently.
@47/CLB: Haha, crazy! That’s true of my example too, the microwave being almost as old as me. It’s kind of scary…
@46/Theirafhal & @47/CLB: on the topic of things lasting a long time, my father had a 1963 Impala he was constantly tinkering with and trying to find parts for. It had mismatched color on some of the body panels, etc. And I know in-show, the replicators solve a lot of these problems, but considering the number of times Voyager was damaged & the amount of time it spent in the Delta Quadrant, it would’ve been nice to see it looking like a patchwork of alien technology with a bunch of DIY fixit mods on it as the years went by. I can see it rolling in to the Alpha Quadrant at the end of its journey looking like one of the vehicles from Road Warrior!
@49/owlly72: That certainly would have made a lot of sense! It’s too bad Voyager was always so quick to re-embrace it’s episodic format. Personally, I also would have loved to have seen Voyager keep its visible Borg upgrades after Scorpion, but alas…
@50/Theirafhal: Completely agree about the Borg upgrades. Having to adapt alien tech from multiple sources to their needs would’ve given the writers so much more to work with. I mean, you’d at least want a few scratches on the paint job a la GalaxyQuest! A story about a journey across the desert isn’t quite so dramatic if you’ve always got enough food, water, shelter, etc. to make the trip.
@50/Thierfhal: I’ve also thought it would have been a very bold and more realistic idea on the writers part if they had allowed the Voyager to be destroyed at some point in their journey and the crew is forced to purchase or otherwise come across an alien starship that they then use to continue on their journey home. That would have opened up so many interesting story possibilities.
@52/garreth: I know it’s not what you meant, but we did have the bogus Delta Flyer operated by those con artists in Live Fast and Prosper!
In all seriousness though, Voyager being destroyed certainly would have been bold, but unfortunately had zero chance of ever seeing the light of day. And DS9 destroyed the Defiant, but then kind of cheated by giving Sisko another Defiant-class ship in time for the series finale.
@53/Thierafhal: Destroying the hero ship, or even permanently altering it, wasn’t really an option because they needed to keep reusing existing stock footage. That’s why the new Defiant even had the same registry number as the old one.
@54/CLB: I understand, I was even going to write that point, haha. I decided to say “kinda cheated” instead =P It still would have been cool to see either the São Paulo registry and the Defiant name, or the Defiant registry rebranded as NCC like the Excelsior was. Or heck, forget all the special dispensation stuff, just have the São Paulo as Sisko’s ship in the Battle of Cardassia. But I know all that would have been impractical.
@53/Thierfhal: Oh, I knew Star Trek: Voyager not having the Voyager was never a practical option but I just thought it would have been a very exciting, not to mention, more realistic, direction to take the show. I mean, Voyager, is one ship out there alone usually without a starbase for repairs, and survives repeated encounters with the Borg among other powerful and hostile alien species. I mean, c’mon!
Apologies if this has already been mentioned — Didn’t Ron Moore have some idea about making Voyager change radically over the course of the series, incorporating alien tech along the way? I thought I read that somewhere but could’ve dreamt it.
@56/garreth: Agreed. It should have looked like the Equinox or the “Year of Hell” Voyager by the time it reached Earth.
@57/JFWheele: I can’t say whether Ron Moore said that, but I do know that I have had a dream like that, haha.
Since I almost forgot, I think my thoughts on this episode, as always, are best summed up by this gem from Chuck Sonnenburg’s review at SF Debris:
“[Janeway and Neelix] actually talking about Talent Night, which Janeway had won…of course, by performing the “Dying Swan”…I’m presuming it’s the dance, and not that she took a swan out and killed it, but I can’t really rule that out entirely.”
We get teased with ditching Voyager the ship several times. It’s stolen… I remember two times. Most of the crew are fired halfway through the “Year of Hell”. Another two times, I think, a better ship is offered to them, and there’s the episode where we see Voyager sort of turning to ooze around them, or we’re told about it, I think it mostly looked the same. And the one where the captain orders self destruct and no take backs.
I suppose the in-universe logic of the time loop bit is that the parasite makes Janeway experience simulated death over and over to release the delicious… whatever. Makes her submit to death so that instead of using her strength to remain alive until death happens irresistibly, her unused resource is available for the parasite to consume.
And all in your head doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real experience. Ask Albus Dumbledore.
As for people saying nice things at the memorial service… if she’s dreaming it, Captain Janeway has attended a lot of funerals, and she knows these people very well. She would expect this type of send-off at her turn.
At the same time, the story is bewildering us as to what actually is behind it. It’s unlikely that Janeway will die, she’s the star, I suppose they could bring her back as the Command Hologram… Even Starfleet officers probably think “Not another time loop!” any time they are in one.
Command talent show… What about the performance that Kirk and the ensemble put on in “I, Mudd”? I know there’s some applause…
So Janeway had to literally let Kes walk through her in order to show up on the telepathy radar.
But she’s sitting right there next to Kes AND Tuvok, the two telepaths closest to her, and she can’t be bothered to stick her hands inside their head or something? C’mon now.
Snore… I hate time loop episodes, and I hate mindscape episodes.
@19 – ianc: I didn’t know the reference either, but context and its generic sound made its purpose quite clear.
I remember when I first watched this hoping it was going to be that creepy alien from Persistence of Vision who had returned, unfortunately it turned out to be a far less interesting Alien. It was intriguing first time around trying to figuring out what was going on but this time you can’t help but notice it’s a bit of a mess and neither one thing or another. Mulgrew however does her best with the material given here.
It’s ironic that Krad describes Tuvok’s Vulcan poetry as stultifying because it means illogical. If you ever try to Google Admiral Janeway, you bring up the one from Endgame instead. Was Admiral Janeway, Snr mentioned in Caretaker? A lot of people on here know about ballet, don’t they?
2: Chakotay likened the alien to a spider at the end of the episode. 4: Pacing is not this episode’s problem, I agree with Krad that Coda can’t decide what it wants to be from one moment to the next. “A 1989 episode” – that was the point TNG started to get good.
6: The fact the Admiral wasn’t wearing a TNG-style com badge really should have tipped Janeway off that something wasn’t right. 20: I think it’s telling that Janeway imagines an attack by the Vidiians rather than the Kazon, as if they’ve realised (too late) who should have been the Big Bad of VGR’s first two seasons.
45: We have to wait for the Delta Flyer until Voyager gets a hardier shuttlecraft. 55: There was quite a bit of face-pulling from the crew at the sound of the name Sao Paolo. 58: Ronald Moore felt the Year of Hell was what VGR should have aspired to all along. 61: I think Voyager is stolen more than twice – it’s become a running gag. 64: I would have loved a sequel to Persistence of Vision – the Bothan was a superbly scary ST villain.
She should have sussed it out as soon as he appeared.
“My father died 15 years ago. Your combadge should be oval, not rectangular. You are clearly an imposter.”
Fake Daddy Janeway: “Drat! I’ll get you again and you will nourish me for a long time! Muaaaahahahahahaaha!”
Just shaved like 15 minutes off the episode. You’re welcome.
Surf Wisely.