“Eye of the Needle”
Written by Hilary J. Bader and Bill Dial and Jeri Taylor
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 1, Episode 6
Production episode 107
Original air date: February 20, 1995
Stardate: 48579.4
Captain’s log. Kim has picked up subspace emissions that could indicate a wormhole. The only way to be sure is to get closer, but it’s off their course home. Janeway and Chakotay agree it’s worth the detour.
Kes has been studying medicine under the EMH’s care, and also acting as his nurse. When the EMH treats Lieutenant Baxter—in for overexerting himself while exercising, which is his way of dealing with the stress of being stuck far from home—the lieutenant will only talk to Kes, barely acknowledging the EMH’s existence.
Voyager arrives to discover that the wormhole’s mouth is only thirty centimeters in diameter. Nonetheless, Tuvok sends through a microprobe to see where the terminus is. However, the probe gets stuck in a gravitational eddy. The crew theorizes that the wormhole is in an advanced state of collapse.
During a senior staff meeting, Kim and Torres brainstorm the notion of a subspace carrier wave that can get a communication through, using the probe as a relay. A carrier wave is sent back from the other side, and Tuvok confirms that the communication is coming from the Alpha Quadrant.
Kes talks to Janeway about how the crew treats the EMH. Janeway speaks in terms of reprogramming him, but Kes convinces her that he’s a person with the ability to learn, even though he’s a hologram. Janeway talks to the EMH directly. He’s frustrated by the fact that the crew only occasionally remembers to turn him off when they leave sickbay, and sometimes he doesn’t actually want to be turned off, as he was in the midst of an experiment that he can only now get back to because Janeway reactivated him. Janeway agrees to have the engineering staff figure out a way for him to control his own activation and deactivation.
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Kim manages to get a subspace signal through, and eventually, they are able to have direct voice communication with the ship on the other side. However, it’s a Romulan cargo ship who refuses to believe that they’re communicating from the Delta Quadrant, preferring to assume that they’re Federation spies.
The Romulan cuts off communication. Tuvok points out that the sector the Romulan claims to be in isn’t a shipping route, and he is more likely a science vessel on a classified mission.
Eventually, the Romulan calls back when Janeway’s asleep, though she’s happy to be awakened for that. In her quarters, she converses with the Romulan, who has examined their subspace carrier wave and determined that it really did come from the Delta Quadrant. Janeway explains that they were sent there against their will and are trying to get home. The ship can’t go through the tiny wormhole, but Janeway wonders if he can accept letters to their loved ones. The Romulan says he will consider it, but would be more willing if they could communicate visually, something he thinks he can manage.
The next day, the Romulan manages to get a visual signal through, though Kim is having trouble with some phase variances in the subspace signal. The Romulan doesn’t recognize Voyager, which surprises Janeway—the Intrepid-class is new, but it’s not classified. The Romulan points out that he’s been on his mission for a year, and isn’t always kept in the loop.
He’s passed on Janeway’s request to the Romulan government, but the Senate moves at its own pace. Janeway is worried that the wormhole will collapse before they get an answer, but there’s nothing anyone can do about that. However, Janeway has Chakotay instruct the crew to prepare messages for their loved ones, in case the Senate agrees.
Torres comes to Janeway with a notion that they might be able to punch a transporter beam through. Janeway tells her to use whatever personnel is necessary to implement it.
Kes shows off her newfound anatomy knowledge to the EMH, who is impressed with how quick a study she is. Only then does the EMH learn that the possibility of them beaming over to the Romulan ship is in play—nobody ever tells the EMH anything. And he’s tethered to Voyager‘s sickbay, so he won’t be able to go with. Sadly, he requests of Kes that, if they do all get to beam through the wormhole, that she remembers to turn him off before they go. She promises to do so.
They test the transporter by sending a test cylinder through. (Tuvok assuring the Romulan that the cylinder, which is made of multiple materials both biological and artificial, is not classified, and indeed the Romulans have similar devices for such testing.) While there are phase variances, Torres is able to compensate and the transport is a success.
After several more attempts, they are ready for a live subject, but the Romulan can’t allow Federation citizens onto his ship. He has requested a troop transport rendezvous with him, and they can beam there, which Janeway accepts. However, they still need to test it with a living person, and so the Romulan himself volunteers to beam to Voyager.
The transport is successful, but then Tuvok examines the Romulan, which tells him why they’ve been having issues with phase variances. He asks the Romulan what year it is, and he says it’s 2351—but it’s 2371 on Voyager. The wormhole’s terminus isn’t just in the Alpha Quadrant, but in the Alpha Quadrant twenty years ago.
The Romulan—who says his name is Dr. Telek R’Mor—offers to tell Starfleet in twenty years not to launch Voyager’s mission, but none of the Starfleet crew agree to that, nor can they go through the wormhole to twenty-years-ago Romulan space, in both cases due to the risk of altering the present. Janeway therefore goes back to her original request: R’Mor takes letters home back, and promises to give them to their loved ones twenty years hence, thus preserving the timelines.
R’Mor is beamed back and the wormhole collapses. Only after he’s gone does Tuvok reveal that records indicate that Dr. Telek R’Mor died in 2367, four years earlier. While it’s possible he left instructions for the letters to be sent, there’s no guarantee of it—and honestly, even if he lived, the chances of the Romulan government actually allowing it was always small.
Janeway orders Paris to continue homeward, as the Alpha Quadrant’s a long way away. Meanwhile, Baxter actually acknowledges the EMH’s existence, which is a relief to Kes and to the doctor.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The wormhole is remarkably stable, having apparently been collapsing for centuries—most natural wormholes have a much shorter shelf life (as seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and TNG‘s “The Price“).
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway plays on R’Mor’s compassion, including discussing his own wife and daughter, left behind while he’s in space (his wife was pregnant when he set off, so he’s never actually met his seven-month-old child).
Half and half. We learn that Torres’s Klingon half is her mother’s side, but Torres hasn’t spoken to her in years—she’s not even sure if she’s still living on Qo’noS. Her human father hasn’t been in her life since she was five. The only family she has is the Maquis crew on Voyager right now.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH finally starts to accept that he’s part of the crew, not just a program, aided by Kes, and then by Janeway, who is convinced by Kes that the EMH should be treated as such. He ends the episode by deciding he should have a name, though he will go the rest of the show (and beyond, at least according to the tie-in fiction) without ever choosing one, making him the second character in a long-running science fiction franchise to be known only as “the Doctor.”
Forever an ensign. Kim’s the one who discovers the wormhole initially, and Paris suggests that the wormhole be named after him.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. While Neelix doesn’t appear in the episode, Kes indicates that the two of them plan to join Voyager’s crew in the Alpha Quadrant if Torres’s transporter notion works out. This is particularly amusing in retrospect, since neither Neelix nor Kes ever do leave the Delta Quadrant, and are gone from Voyager by the time they get home in “Endgame.”
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. At one point, Janeway looks longingly at her picture of Mark and Molly.
Do it.
“Let’s just say I’ve become accustomed to being treated like a hypospray.”
–The EMH lamenting his lot in life.
Welcome aboard. The main guest is the great Vaughn Armstrong, in his third of eleven roles on various Trek shows, having previously appeared as a Klingon in TNG’s “Heart of Glory” and a Cardassian on DS9’s “Past Prologue.” He’ll appear again four more times on Voyager as a Borg separated from the collective in “Survival Instinct,” as a Vidiian in “Fury,” as a Hirogen in “Flesh and Blood,” and as a Klingon in “Endgame.” He’ll also appear as another Cardassian on DS9, have the recurring role of Admiral Forrest on Enterprise, and also appear as a Klingon and a Kreetassan on Enterprise. (I really hope they cast him on Discovery and Picard at some point, just so he can keep his distinction of appearing on all the spinoffs going…)
In addition, Tom Virtue makes the first of two appearances as Lieutenant Walter Baxter. He’ll be back in “Twisted.”
Trivial matters: Christie Golden wrote a three-novel sequel to this episode, the Dark Matters trilogy, in which Voyager once again encounters R’Mor. Golden expands R’Mor’s backstory based on this episode, and shows us more of the Romulan Empire in the 2350s.
This was the only Voyager story by the prolific Hilary J. Bader, who also contributed stories to DS9 and TNG, as well as a couple of scripts for the latter, and also wrote for several Trek videogames. She died in 2002 of breast cancer.
This was also the only Voyager writing by Bill Dial, who also co-wrote two DS9 episodes. Dial, who died in 2008 of a heart attack, is probably best known as the writer of the infamous Thanksgiving episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. (“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!“)
A scene in the teaser with Janeway acting out a holonovel on the holodeck was cut for time, but a version of it will be used in “Cathexis.”
Set a course for home. “We raise one ship from the Alpha Quadrant, and it has to be Romulan!” I adore this episode tremendously, even though it ticks all the cliché boxes, because it works. One of the problems with goal-directed television shows like Voyager is that the premise sets the crew up for routine failure. They can’t make it back to the Alpha Quadrant, because if they do, the show’s over. So every time there’s a shot at a way home, you know they won’t make it.
“Eye of the Needle” solves this problem by having the wormhole not be an option from jump—the minute they discover it, they know they can’t fit the ship, or even a person, inside it. So we already know that the crew won’t be getting home—but at least communication is a possibility.
From there, the script does a lovely job of providing hope followed by the rug being pulled out. There’s a wormhole—but it’s too small! We can send a probe—but it’s stuck! We can send a message through, and it leads to the Alpha Quadrant—but it’s in Romulan space! He thinks we’re spies—no, wait, he believes us! We can transport through the wormhole—but it’s twenty years ago on the other side! It keeps the episode moving nicely and keeps the viewer guessing about how it may actually turn out.
In many ways, this episode does right what DS9’s “The Sound of Her Voice” would later do completely wrong, as the surprise about the time jump makes much more sense in this episode than it will on the DS9 episode, where the conversations were longer and friendlier. It also gets the one thing that the DS9 episode did right, to wit, a great guest character, as Vaughn Armstrong does yeoman work making R’Mor a rounded, complex, fascinating character. A respectful friendship develops beautifully between Janeway and R’Mor, starting with the heartfelt audio conversation in Janeway’s quarters, all the way to their goodbyes in the transporter room. Just fabulous work by both Armstrong and Kate Mulgrew. Mulgrew also is wonderful alongside Roxann Dawson in another nerdy technobabble exchange between Janeway and Torres when the latter suggests using the transporter. The joy both characters take in doing science is always tremendous fun.
In addition, the EMH gets a lovely subplot with Kes arguing for his rights in a manner we’ve seen before and since on Trek—notably in “The Measure of a Man” and “The Offspring” in relation to Data in particular and androids in general, and again both on this show and on Picard—and it’s to Janeway’s credit that she comes around as fast as she does. It’s a little disappointing in retrospect that the EMH never does actually pick a name, but it’s nice to see him wanting one here.
Speaking of disappointments, the one thing that keeps this episode from a perfect score is the fact that we never actually see any of the letters home that the crew wrote. This is a blown opportunity to do some quick-and-dirty character development, in much the same way that Discovery will later in “Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2,” not to mention the excellent Stargate: Atlantis episode “Letters from Pegasus.”
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido has, to his great disappointment, never written any of Vaughn Armstrong’s characters in any of his Trek fiction, though Admiral Forest was mentioned in The Brave and the Bold Book 1.
I like that, in later episodes, they decided “we won’t keep giving the crew routine failures, we’ll just get them home faster and faster.” It’s not that exciting of a change, and you still have to deal with the fact that they won’t make it home entirely, but it was a nice way of spicing things up a little, in my opinion.
What made me even more excited was episodes like “Message in a Bottle” and “Pathfinder”…if they couldn’t bring the crew home, they could give them more and more hope.
@1: Those are some very good points.
I don’t have much to say about the episode except that Vaughn Armstrong and Robert Picardo are two of the best actors in the whole of Star Trek, and they prove it again here.
This is a good episode for the reasons you cite, Keith, but it always felt a little contrived that a) they found a wormhole close to their path just a couple of months after being stranded and b) it happened to go to a territory neighboring the Federation. Given the sheer size of the galaxy, the odds of the terminus being so close to the UFP are something like 1 in 100 — and even that’s thinking 2-dimensionally. One thing that’s bugged me for decades is that wormholes in Trek always have destinations within the flat disk of the Milky Way, instead of coming out somewhere along the z-axis, well outside the galactic plane. I handwave that to myself by assuming it’s the gravitation of the stellar disk that attracts the wormhole termini, but I’m not sure that holds up, since most of the mass of the galaxy is in the form of dark matter, which forms a much larger, more spheroidal halo around the stellar disk that we think of as the galaxy (but which is really more like the pit inside a dark-matter peach). And if that were the case, then more wormholes would come out near the galactic core, surely. So even with all the reasons the wormhole couldn’t get them home, it’s still a huge contrivance that it exists at all and that they find it so soon. I would’ve preferred to see this story come along somewhat later.
Well, except for the Doctor subplot, of course, which could only come where it did. And it meshes well with the situation because of the crew’s willingness to just abandon him with the ship, something they would’ve been less likely to contemplate after they’d gotten to know him better.
I always loved how Kes related to the Doctor and encouraged him to grow and assert his individuality. They’re two of a kind, in a way — the two youngest people on the ship. She’s grown a lot in a very short life and is eager to learn more in the time she has, and she encourages him to do the same. It’s a relationship I think the show handled better than her relationship with Neelix, although it unfortunately led to them settling far too often for just sticking her in sickbay all the time when she should’ve been eagerly devouring every life experience she could. Kes’s other best relationship in the show was with Janeway, the mother-daughter dynamic they formed, and this episode helps establish that rapport between them.
– I agree. This is the one episode from the first season I’ve gone back to numerous times.
– R’Mor makes me kind of wish the crew had been stuck with Romulans instead of the Maquis. It would’ve ratcheted up the tension between crews even more and been a good way to finally flesh out their culture.
– A great bit of acting by Kate Mulgrew in the final scene, going from heartache and disappointment to deciding to keep her chin up and press forward with their mission. Nicely done.
I always loved the early Kes/Doctor relationship. In essence, she treated the Doctor like a person simply because she didn’t know she wasn’t “supposed to”. The way the whole crew, Doctor included, came around to that way of thinking was fancinating to watch.
Credit where credit is due. This is The Cloud done right. Effective character development across the board with enough of a plot worth the 45 minute investment. I wouldn’t rate it a 9, but it’s an effective, well written early installment. And once again Kolbe rises to the occasion (as he did in Phage), bringing the best out of the cast, as well as providing an effective mood throughout.
I, for one, am glad they chose to do the wormhole to home plot this early on, just to get it out of the way and not bog the show down in needless suspense. Voyager would have grown stale even faster had they dealt with a possible road to home plot every other week, Dungeons & Dragons 1983 style. By doing Eye of the Needle, they do an honest dramatic take on the concept and move on. Plus, that twist ending just nails it.
Character-wise, this is a solid outing. Thankfully, Jeri Taylor had already noticed the potential breakout star in the cast. Thus she gives Picardo a very welcome B plot. Even this early on, you can tell the Doctor is going to be Voyager’s version of Data/Spock/Worf/Odo. The outsider finding his own place in this universe. Even though Seven of Nine was years away, it was already clear the Doctor was set to be Voyager’s ace character (of course, Seven would take the finding humanity aspect of the previous characters, leaving the Doctor to chart a different but equally interesting path, getting to the meat of holographic rights later on).
And you can never go wrong with Armstrong. Korris was one of the best things about TNG season 1. It’s no surprise Berman kept using him on various roles.
The Romulan says he will consider it, but would be more willing if they could communicate visually, something he thinks he can manage.
@krad: I like how Voyager indirectly does a call back to the original series. Specifically addressing the difficulty in establishing visual communications with the Romulans and how it informs their relationship to the Federation and the difficulty in establishing trust between them. A plot idea that was first depicted in Balance of Terror, in 1966!
Eduardo: I actually thought Armstrong was terrible in “Heart of Glory,” but looking back, that was more a terrible script than anything. He was much better in his other roles, especially Forrest…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s not mentioned outright, but from the Romulan perspective this was the first contact with a Federation in 40 years. Because our Romulan guest is about 12-14 years before TNG’s “Neutral Zone,” where it’s stated there’s been no contact with Romulans for 54 years. No wonder he’s skeptical, but I wish he had mentioned it directly! (“We haven’t heard from Starfleet in 40 years and you’re hailing us from the DELTA QUADRANT?”)
“The transport is successful, but then Tuvok examines the Romulan, which tells him why they’ve been having issues with phase variances. “
This part bugs me, although it’s trivial. Torres and Kim just did the transport, are sitting at a real console, can use all of Voyager’s resources to scan him and are the science people. They have no idea the Romulan traveled through time, but Tuvok is able to figure it out with his tricorder? Geez. I guess Tuvok and tricorders are just that awesome.
@8/dunsel: To be fair, Kim and Torres are both fairly young and may not have had any experience with temporal phenomena. Tuvok has been in Starfleet a long time, and perhaps has come across temporal anomalies or time-displaced individuals before, which was why he could recognize the phase variance for what it was.
@3 ChristopherLBennett
Interestingly, the Bajoran wormhole was created by the prophets, and was stable due to their advanced knowledge. It’s possible that other such wormholes exist in Trek, and that no emissaries came to save them, or that other species with less advanced knowledge could have created inferior wormholes. This would explain their exclusive existence inside the galactic disk, and their distance from gravitational bodies. A naturaly occurring wormhole is every bit as theoretical as an engineered wormhole after all.
I’ve always felt this was the best episode of season one and the reason to keep watching Voyager.
— Michael A. Burstein
I find this to be a tremendously good episode, one I’ve watched a few times more than most others from Voyager. All the reasons for liking it so much have already been mentioned by krad and others here.
@9 / ChristopherLBennett – – thanks for pointing that out about Torres & Kim regarding the point @8 / dunsel made. I considered the incident/oversight a snafu during previous viewings, finding it odd that neither of those two wouldn’t have determined that Telek R’Mor traveled through time. But I think your observation does help to clarify this and certainly makes a lot of sense.
@9 / ChristopherLBennett, that’s a really good explanation. Well-played, and I’ll just assume he had some wacky time travel adventure on the Excelsior that prepared him for this moment.
I like how for much of its runtime, this one is simply about Voyager trying to call home, and then in the last quarter of an hour, we suddenly get the possibility of the crew getting home thrown into the mix. I guess it’s fairly obvious that the show isn’t going to ditch its main selling point after six episodes, but the episode does a good job of convincing that, despite all the difficult, it might happen, only to spring that last minute twist on us to make it impossible. There is a nice ambiguity as to whether the messages got through or not, which works here but sadly is never actually followed through on: It feels as though at some point someone should have said something like “So R’Mor never passed the messages on.” This becomes even more strange when R’Mor spends the first part of the episode needing permission from his government to do anything, only for the later scenes to act like he’s the only person involved (for instance, the test cylinder is beamed to his ship in the same scene that Voyager first requests doing so): The episode could have done with another draft there, perhaps. It seems disingenuous of Chakotay to turn down R’Mor’s offer to stop Voyager being stranded by saying they’ve had too big an effect on the region: He wasn’t on Voyager at the time, so he’d be stranded either way.
A real turning point for the Doctor here, with Kes’ role in his development never more obvious, asking Janeway a few pertinent questions and pricking her conscience. Robert Picardo does a good job making the Doctor brusque and vulnerable at the same time here, especially in the scene where he realises Janeway is serious about offering help and when talking to Kes about the possibility of being left behind. His final request for a name does lose some of its impact now we know he spends seven seasons completely failing to choose one.
A few other decent character vignettes: Kim and Torres’ chat about their different views of getting home stands out. Paris suggesting naming the wormhole after Harry seems half teasing, half pride.
And yes, shout-out for Vaughn Armstrong, one of the few actors to be in TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. (In fact, he’s in the first season of each!)
@14/cap-mjb: “It seems disingenuous of Chakotay to turn down R’Mor’s offer to stop Voyager being stranded by saying they’ve had too big an effect on the region: He wasn’t on Voyager at the time, so he’d be stranded either way.”
What difference does that make to the effect on the region? If Voyager hadn’t been abducted, it wouldn’t have freed the Ocampa from the Kazon or deprived the Kazon of the Caretaker’s array. And Kes might never have been rescued. Chakotay wasn’t being disingenuous; he was just thinking of people other than himself.
A real turning point for the Doctor here, with Kes’ role in his development never more obvious, asking Janeway a few pertinent questions and pricking her conscience. Robert Picardo does a good job making the Doctor brusque and vulnerable at the same time here, especially in the scene where he realises Janeway is serious about offering help and when talking to Kes about the possibility of being left behind.
@140/cap-mjb: While I think Picardo doesn’t really find the Doctor’s voice until season 3, I do credit the writers for giving him more to do, aware of his potential.
And in retrospect, I do regret the show losing Kes. She was invaluable in these early episodes. Essentially, she’s the one who made that first push towards humanizing the Doctor. And she has strong connections to just about every member of the crew. She’s already closely attached to Neelix, Janeway, and the Doctor. And she soon establishes a close relationship with Tuvok, as well as Paris. That’s five out of eight characters. And Lien makes the most out of each dynamic.
Random musings:
I enjoyed Kes’s empathy for the doctor. That said, over the past few episodes I have noticed myself getting a bit creeped our by her soft, deliberate speaking style. It’s so precise it’s unnerving. Like she’s the hologram instead of the doctor.
I knew it wouldn’t happen, but I kinda wish the Romulan was unable to transport back and had ended up stranded on Voyager. Would have made an interesting addition to the onboard dynamic.
First episode without Neelix. Highest rated episode so far. Coincidence?
That scene just before the intro with Paris suggesting the wormhole be named for Kim, cutting to Kim looking all uncomfortable– had a strange feel to it. Awkward, like It had some special meaning to the characters that we don’t know about.
Chhakotay’s s reasoning is so much more selfless than say, Odo’s in DS9, who, in Children of Time, wiped 8000 people (and 200 years-worth of their descendents) from existence because he was all hot for Kira.
I’ve always really enjoyed this episode since the first time it aired – it was like a big event episode because it was the first time since the crew was stranded that they had a real opportunity to get home and their excitement was palpable and that carried over to us, the audience, even though we knew they couldn’t possibly get home. It was cool that it was a Romulan on the other side “of the phone” because it was a (adversarial) race that we were all familiar with and it made the dynamic all the more interesting because both sides had to earn each other’s trust. Armstrong was great as was a bunch of the regular characters. You really felt sad for Torres when she describes the state of her relationships with her parents and the lack of anyone who’d miss her back home (although this revelation conflicts with her getting in a hissy fit in “Caretaker” when she raises an objection to Janeway for deciding to strand them all in the Delta Quadrant. Why object if everyone you care about is already with you? Of course, she may have at least wanted the option of reopening relations with her parents and of course continuing the Maquis fight against the Cardassians). So it’s touching that she is still encouraging Harry in his efforts to make the trip through the wormhole work. I also enjoyed the stuff with Kes being an advocate for The Doctor. And the guy playing the officer being treated in sickbay did a real good job of playing a prick! I had no idea he came back in “Twisted” but I abhor that episode and probably only ever watched it once. Finally, the revelation about the Romulan at the end to the crew in the transporter room is heartbreaking and Mulgrew is magnificent at capturing the pain and then the determination on her face. If I were her, I would have gone to my quarters and had a healthy cry.
@17/FullyFunctional: I didn’t see it as Harry being all awkward but just being modest because his friend proposed something that is quite significant (the naming of the wormhole after Harry) and he understood the great homornof it.
@krad – regarding the disappointment of not seeing the crew’s letters to home here – yes, we don’t see them, but at least we get that same story beat with the letters home I believe in the 4th season when the crew is finally able to communicate with Starfleet/the Alpha Quadrant.
Oh yeah, and there was no Neelix in sight and he was not missed!
This has always been my favorite episode of VOYAGER. As others said, even though you know they won’t get home, the twists and turns of the plot unfold so naturally and believably that the episode’s suspense is maintained vritually to its last moment. Each development builds on the previous, and without the obvious contrivances so common to episodic TV. By the end, you feel not just for the Voyager crew, but for the Romulan, and one is left with a bittersweet awareness of lost chances that transcends Voyager’s plight: after all, the crew still has a chance to get home, but the Romulan’s fate was sealed before they arrived in the Deta Quadrant, and they have no way of knowing if their letters were ever delivered.
@15: I’m not saying that’s not true by any means, but R’Mor is probably unaware of the Starfleet/Maquis split and so unaware that it wouldn’t be a solution for everyone, and Chakotay doesn’t make any attempt to enlighten him to that fact. If the Maquis ship had been stranded and Voyager hadn’t, what would have happened to Chakotay? Fallen off that gantry in the Ocampa city without Paris there to save him? Been blown up trying to fight the Kazon on his own at the array? At best, been stranded with a small vulnerable ship and even less chance of getting home. I’m not saying Chakotay wasn’t thinking of others, but he wasn’t being as selfless as the scene makes out.
@16: Even at the time, I felt losing Kes was a very big mistake. I could name at least a third of the cast who contributed less than her. And at least half who contributed very little going forward.
@18: That’s a pretty low bar to clear though…
@19/GarretH: I wonder if it was a missed opportunity to put a Romulan on the other end, though. What if it had been a Cardassian? Of course, a Cardassian from 20 years before would’ve never heard of the Maquis and wouldn’t know its significance, but what if the Maquis crewmembers’ resentment toward the Cardassians had sabotaged the situation and ultimately been the reason they failed to get home?
I mean, I like the episode we got, and I’m not sure this version would’ve been better per se. But the show missed a lot of opportunities to really do something with the Maquis situation. It was really a bizarre choice to base so many of the characters’ backstory on a conflict with the Cardassians and then fling them to the opposite side of the galaxy from the Cardassians.
@22/cap-mjb: But why assume it would only be the Voyager personnel that would be forewarned? If all the crew, including Chakotay and the Maquis members, had sent their messages, and if they’d accepted Telek’s offer to see that they were warned, then presumably that warning would extend to Chakotay’s crew as well. Tuvok was embedded among them, after all, so he could’ve passed the message to them. Or, heck, maybe the Federation could’ve been warned in advance about the whole Maquis crisis and found a way to prevent it from happening in the first place. If they were willing to change the timeline to fix things for themselves, why not go even bigger? (They eventually come around to something like this way of thinking in “Endgame.”)
@8.Dunsel: This being the Romulan Empire, past master when it comes to the Discipline of Silent Running*, it’s perhaps a little less surprising that the Good Doctor shows his hand only a few cards at a time (and doesn’t lay them down on the table for all to see even when the game’s done).
I’m always mildly impressed when negotiations with the Romulans progress beyond the ‘Name, Rank, Serial Number’ bare minimum!
*AKA ‘Run Silent, Run Deep’.
The problem with treating the EMH as a person is the implication that Starfleet created a piece of equipment with a program that can unintentionally develop personhood rather easily, or are using programs who are persons as pieces of shipboard equipment and do not care about it.
@25 The interesting bit about the EMH is that he seems to be a person out of the box and not accidentally like most of TNG’s rogue holograms. Did Zimmerman tell Starfleet he designed the EMH to be an actual person? Is it a natural solution to the uncertainties of medical care? Just an ego trip?
It always bothered me that we never found out if anyone ever got the letters. Another example of Voyager’s episodes happening in a vacuum where events are never followed up on.
@25/Crusader75: The idea was that Voyager‘s EMH was the exception, that it developed full sentience because it was kept running constantly and challenged by the circumstances to learn and grow beyond its original parameters. So yes, perhaps the potential for sentience was accidentally there in every EMH, but in most of them, it would never be developed.
@26/noblehunter: The operative words are “seems to be.” There’s a difference between a program that can convincingly mimic the behavior of a person and one that actually has conscious awareness. Most any holodeck character can convincingly appear to be a live person and engage in an interactive conversation that makes it seem like it has awareness and personality, but that’s just part of the game, part of the illusion it was designed to create. The EMH was designed to have a humanlike personality so it would be reassuring to its patients — although Dr. Zimmerman mistakenly assumed that an emulation of his own personality would work for that purpose. It took a while for the EMH to grow beyond the emulation of personality to the development of a genuine one of his own.
@27/Jonathan W Thomas – I think it’s the implication that the letters never did arrive to their destination. When Voyager finally makes contact with Starfleet in the 4th season no one back home knew that the Voyager and crew was still existing. And from that point on the crew sends letters home.
Jonathan: I think the power of the episode is the fact that they don’t know if their letters were ever delivered (though yes, it probably should have come up in “Message in a Bottle” and/or “Hunters”………………).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@23/CLB: I agree, it was strange to build up the Maquis conflict in prior Star Trek history and then in this new series fling them to an area of space where that conflict is moot and then they proceed to rather quickly and smoothly integrate into the Starfleet crew. It would have been better if a Cardassian ship was also brought into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker and its crew and Voyager and the Maquis would all have to integrate. And then there’s you’re ongoing conflict!
First-time watcher here . . .
I agree with fullyfuncional@17 about Kes: over the past few episodes I have noticed myself getting a bit creeped our by her soft, deliberate speaking style
I disliked her character from the start because of this phony and superficial way of speaking, and I couldn’t understand those who have been bemoaning the loss of her character. However, I do now see how important she was to the EMH, so I’ve become resigned to her manner.
I suppose they should have had Voyager stranded seven years from home, rather than seventy. Then you might expect them to get home at the end of a seven-year series. On a good day, they would make more progress than usual. On a bad day, they make less. So then the crew could have a successful day/ week/ however long the episode is meant to last.
@33/ad: I like the way Stargate Atlantis handled it. In the first season, they were stranded in another galaxy; they went there on purpose, but with the knowledge that they might not be able to get back, and indeed, that seemed to be the case, and that premise played out throughout the first season. But at the end of the season, they restored contact with Earth and were able to stay in contact for the rest of the series, initially going back and forth using intergalactic starships that took a few weeks to make the journey, and eventually building a Stargate relay bridge that let them go back and forth directly (with a stop at an intermediate way station for security purposes).
As I’ve mentioned before, the producers of Voyager said at the start that they didn’t intend to drag out the “search for home” dynamic indefinitely, but would eventually shift gears to a focus on exploration instead. It’s weird that they didn’t follow through.
@23/CLB: Because that’s what said in the episode. Telek says “I can assure you, Captain, that I would not do anything that might contaminate the future and perhaps harm the Romulan Empire, but, in twenty years I could alert Starfleet not to launch the mission which sent you here.” Said mission was, of course, find Chakotay’s ship, so he’s screwed either way. Yes, they could have come up with another plan, but it’s hard to see the Romulans agreeing to alter history in order to avoid a situation that is destabilising the Federation and the Cardassians, and thus benefitting them. (Didn’t work out in the long run of course, but neither they nor Voyager could know that.) It’s also going to require an extreme set of circumstances to just stop Chakotay getting lost. It would need the Romulans to contact Starfleet, who would then contact an undercover Tuvok, who would then somehow manage to convince Chakotay not to go out into the badlands on that particular day without being exposed as a spy and left tied up in a field or something. A simple warning to Starfleet which wouldn’t alter anything apart from Voyager’s fate (no-one involved knows what happened in the Alpha Quadrant afterwards, so it’s not “their” history) seems a far cry from that sort of temporal meddling which everyone involved says they shouldn’t do. If they’re going to go down that route, they might as well beam back with Telek and hide out for the next twenty years. Yes, they’d be twenty years older when they see their loved ones again but it’s better than seventy.
@30/krad: It actually should have come up before that. When Riker appears in “Deathwish”, Janeway automatically assumes no-one in the Alpha Quadrant knows what happened to Voyager, when you’d expect her to ask if Starfleet got their messages.
I think the only one currently beating Vaughn Armstrong in appearing in the most Star Trek spin-offs is Jonathan Frakes. He’s about to be featured on Picard so that only leaves Discovery. With that show now taking place in the 32nd century or so it would be pretty unlikely that Will or Tom Riker would show up so maybe he could play a different character.
Spinach juice with a touch of pear! I had no idea that green smoothies already existed in 1995.
Great episode, for all the reasons mentioned.
“It’s a little disappointing in retrospect that the EMH never does actually pick a name, but it’s nice to see him wanting one here.”
I don’t agree with that. He puts much effort into finding the perfect name in the next few episodes, and he does find it, and I loved his choice. Then bad stuff happens, and the name ends up making him sad, so he never tells the crew what it was, drops the subject and remains “the Doctor”. I found that quite touching.
Speaking of names, I like that R’Mor only tells them his name five minutes before the credits roll. It fits with the fact that we never learn any Romulan commander’s name in TOS/TAS, and makes it a real display of trust.
I was surprised that nobody mentioned that alerting Starfleet not to launch the mission would create a paradox. If Voyager never ended up in the Delta Quadrant, who would tell R’Mor to alert Starfleet in the first place?
@37/Jana: “I was surprised that nobody mentioned that alerting Starfleet not to launch the mission would create a paradox. If Voyager never ended up in the Delta Quadrant, who would tell R’Mor to alert Starfleet in the first place?”
That’s not the way time travel in Trek generally works. The characters always still remember an erased timeline after they change it back or prevent it. Time travelers themselves, or data provided to characters through time travel, are not erased by the prevention of the timelines they came from, since those individuals or data are no longer in those timelines but are part of “ours” now.
Recall that “Yesteryear” depends entirely on such a “paradox.” Spock would never have lived to adulthood if he hadn’t discovered the existence of a timeline where he was killed in childhood and thus known that he had to go back and save himself.
@38/Christopher: And yet Janeway didn’t remember anything in “Time and Again”.
@39/Jana: I’d say that’s because the Janeway and Paris who crossed into that timeline didn’t return, so the ones we saw at the end were alternate versions who never went back there to begin with. If they had returned, they would retain their memories of the original timeline. Think of “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” Alternate Yar didn’t get erased when her alternate timeline was erased. She lived on in the Prime timeline and gave birth to Sela at a time before her Prime counterpart was even born. Or think of DS9: “Visionary,” where they learned of the station’s future destruction and took action to prevent it.
In this case, the time traveler is Telek. He travels 20 years into a possible future where Voyager is stranded in the Delta Quadrant, then returns to his own time and (in this hypothetical) transmits information that ensures Voyager is never stranded in the Delta Quadrant. It’s the same basic dynamic as any other episode where characters learn of a dystopian or deadly future and act to prevent it, like “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “Visionary,” “Timeless,” or “Endgame.” There’s no paradox, because the time traveler is no longer in the prevented timeline after the change, but is in the new one resulting from the change, and thus continues on in that new one. (The one main exception to this rule in Trek was TNG: “Time Squared.” It was tricky explaining why that one worked differently when I wrote DTI: Watching the Clock.)
@40/Christopher: Now that you say it, I had the same problem with many of these episodes. Residues from erased timelines, okay.
@36: Well, Enterprise was set in the 22nd century and that didn’t stop him! Maybe the denizens of the Federation Remnant keep themselves entertained by taking part in recreations of Captain Riker’s last mission…
Maybe I missed it but why wouldn’t the Romulan save the message to be delivered by someone at some point to the Federation in the future, even if he had died? Couldn’t that person have simply waited?
@42: That’s certainly one creative way out of various options to get Frakes on screen on Discovery!
@43: There’s really no way of telling what happened. Maybe the Romulan had simply not anticipated dying and so didn’t adequately prepare for that event and the letters went undelivered. Or maybe he did prepare for such an event and leave instructions with someone else to deliver the letters and that person died prematurely and left no instructions. Then again maybe such a third party had the instructions to deliver the letters but was denied by the Romulan government to do so. And even if the Romulan had lived there was always the strong possibility that that same scenario would have transpired – that his own government simply would not let him release the letters. They may have seen nothing advantageous to them to allow that action and the Romulans and Federation didn’t exactly have cozy relations.
All of Romulan space is in the Beta Quadrant, right? Why do they keep talking about the other end of the wormhole being in the Alpha Quadrant? I can’t imagine a Romulan ship, even a science or trading ship, being in Federation Space in 2351. In fact, all of Trek seems to always equate Federation Space with the Alpha Quadrant when half of the Federation is in the Beta Quadrant. What’s up with that?
Actually, the notion that Romulan space was in the Beta Quadrant is based on absolutely no canonical evidence whatsoever — at least until last week, when Musiker mentioned going to the BQ in Picard.
Indeed, the notion that the Klingon and Romulan Empires were in the Beta Quadrant was based on one line of dialogue in Star Trek VI that was always specious to me, and the other canonical evidence — to wit, the entirety of DS9, particularly Gowron’s dialogue in “By Inferno’s Light” — indicated that they were in the Alpha Quadrant.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve always assumed that all of TOS took place in the Alpha Quadrant, which was “still largely unexplored” at the time (Janeway in “Flashback”). And the “Earth-Romulan conflict” was a century earlier than that. Romulus must be fairly close to Earth.
Actually, I had assumed that the whole subdivision of the galaxy into four quadrants was a 24th century thing. When they talk about quadrants in TOS, they seem to refer to smaller and more numerous entities. Krad, your comment just showed me that the first mention of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants was in TUC. I bet they didn’t intend it as the half of a four-quadrant subdivision of the entire galaxy back then. That may explain the speciousness.
For the sake of simplicity, I like to think of the bulk of Star Trek taking place in the AQ. That leaves the BQ as a big portion of the galaxy to explore. Hint-hint, Discovery…
Sadly, we seem to be at the point where the people running the show are either using the fan lore they’ve got in their heads or doing their research by looking at websites that are full of fan lore (even Memory Alpha is a big culprit where that’s concerned). So it increasingly looks likely that the wealth of canonical evidence on DS9 and Voyager that the Klingons and Romulans come from the Alpha Quadrant will be ignored in favour of something made up for a reference book.
Jana: the word “quadrant” by definition refers to one quarter section.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@46/krad: The quadrant map and the placements of the various territories relative to Federation space were worked out behind the scenes by the technical/art staff of TNG long before the dialogue based on them got onto the air. I have a copy of the TNG Writers’ Technical Manual, Third Season Edition, which has a galaxy map showing Klingon and Romulan space in roughly the same positions relative to the UFP that they’re now assumed to have (although on a vastly larger scale), which corresponds to what was later defined as the Beta Quadrant. And once the quadrant system was devised, the behind-the-scenes maps were adapted to reflect it. So it wasn’t arbitrary. It’s just that the DS9 writers chose to gloss over the Alpha/Beta distinction that existed behind the scenes and just call it all Alpha for simplicity’s sake.
As I see it, it’s analogous to the way we refer to Europe as part of “the West” even though nearly all of Europe is actually in the Eastern Hemisphere.
It’s worth noting that early episodes of TNG refer to a “Morgana Quadrant”. I’ve taken that to mean that there’s a different type of quadrant than the Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta set-up, possibly with Federation space divided into four within it. That seems like a more likely interpretation of the infamous “only ship in the quadrant” line from Wrath of Khan than that the Federation covers two quadrants.
I think what’s said on screen takes precedence over what was said in a 30-year-old writers’ guide and ignored by everyone. That’s not “glossing over”, that’s changing your mind.
@52/cap-mjb: “I think what’s said on screen takes precedence over what was said in a 30-year-old writers’ guide and ignored by everyone. That’s not “glossing over”, that’s changing your mind.”
First off, it was only a few years old at the time it was being ignored, and now after 30 years it’s not being ignored any longer, which is why the question has been raised. So you’re kind of getting that backward.
Second, it wasn’t ignored by everyone before now. The Undiscovered Country opened with Sulu’s log saying that the Excelsior was returning home after a survey in the Beta Quadrant, whereupon they were caught in the explosion of Praxis in Klingon space. Later, Sulu said that his ship was now in the Alpha Quadrant and thus couldn’t make it to Camp Khitomer. This was the first onscreen mention of either the Alpha or Beta Quadrant (after Gamma and Delta were established in “The Price” 2 years before) and both lines make it pretty clear that Klingon territory is in the Beta Quadrant — and TNG established that the Klingons and Romulans share a border. Therefore, there was canonical evidence for both powers being in Beta before DS9 came along.
And if you consider the context, it’s understandable why DS9 glossed that over. After all, the main quadrant distinction there was between the opposite ends of the wormhole, in the Gamma and Alpha Quadrants. Once that vocabulary was established and familiar to the audience, it was just simpler to keep referring to the Federation side of the wormhole as “the Alpha Quadrant” rather than be overly nitpicky by saying “mostly the Alpha Quadrant but parts of Beta too” all the time. It wasn’t a change, just a geographical shorthand, like calling Europe “the West” or calling Covington, Kentucky part of “Greater Cincinnati.”
I mean, really, from a galactic perspective, the territories we’re talking about here take up a fraction of a percent of either quadrant. They’re all just a very small speck intersected by the border between the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. On that scale, the difference is practically within the margin of measurement error, so it’s insignificant. And the labels are arbitrary anyway. The universe doesn’t recognize a distinction between the quadrants of the galactic disk; they’re just invented nomenclatural and cartographic conveniences. So if it’s more convenient to fudge the terminology a little when it’s all arbitrary anyway, there’s no good reason not to.
@53/CLB: I always took Sulu’s line to mean that they’d spent a year in the Beta Quadrant and had now left it, not that they were still in the Beta Quadrant when they saw Praxis explode. Given, as you say, the size of the area involved, it seems almost absurd that someone decided to draw two lines on a map of the galaxy and put one of them slap bang through the middle of the tiny proportion of known space, including, as some guides claim, making sure the Federation, Klingons and Romulans all had bits of both. The only way that nomenclature works is if the person who drew the boundary was actually insane. Using Beta Quadrant to refer to a nearby but largely unexplored region of space, which is one way of interpreting the dialogue in Undiscovered Country, makes a bit more sense.
@54/cap-mjb: You’re overcomplicating it. All this is based on a galaxy map that TNG’s art staffers (probably mostly Mike Okuda) drew up early in TNG and maintained consistently from then on, refining it with new information as they went. They always had Klingon and Romulan territory counterclockwise from Federation space in the galactic disk. Then, when “The Price” introduced the terms Gamma and Delta Quadrant, they established where the quadrant dividing lines were drawn — essentially, the Alpha/Beta border is a plane connecting Sol and the center of the galaxy, so that the border passes right through the Sol System analogously to how the Greenwich Meridian passes through London. That put the UFP mostly in the Alpha Quadrant but partly in Beta, with Klingon and Romulan space in Beta. Other powers like Cardassia were added to the behind-the-scenes map over the years as they were created for the shows.
This map was published in various reference books and was thus public knowledge, it was used fairly consistently as a basis for onscreen graphics in the shows and films, and the cartographic references in the movies and shows were based on that map paradigm, except for DS9’s and VGR’s shorthand use of “Alpha Quadrant” to mean the whole UFP and its environs. And I’ve explained why their use of that shorthand was understandable in context. No need to redraw the map when you can just accept that people speak imprecisely on occasion.
” it seems almost absurd that someone decided to draw two lines on a map of the galaxy and put one of them slap bang through the middle of the tiny proportion of known space”
It seems absurd to put the border between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres slap bang through the middle of London, but they did it anyway, because it’s not actually absurd at all; it was done for the purpose of navigational reference for British ships, and the Greenwich Observatory was a vital source of navigational and chronological information at the time. It stands to reason that Earth’s observatories and scientific institutions would play a similar linchpin role in Federation navigational computations, and thus it’s not absurd at all to use Earth, or at least Sol, as an anchor point for the central axis used in Federation cartography. If it hadn’t been Sol, it would presumably have been 40 Eridani/Vulcan. Although the difference in the axis then would’ve been infinitesimal on a galactic scale.
So back to my original question, why do we thing Tukok said the Romulan ship was in the Alpha Quadrant? It was 20 years before the Romulans and the Federation made contact again. Was it a show mistake? Tuvok’s mistake? Were the Romulans really in the Alpha Quadrant?
I’ve never ever liked the notion that the local powers were in two different quadrants. The galaxy is friggin huge — there’s tons of room for all the major powers and then some, it’s silly to throw some of them into another quadrant.
So I think Tuvok said the Romulan ship was in the Alpha Quadrant because that’s where the Romulan Empire is.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m with krad. Fans pay far too much attention to on screen graphics and diagrams in tech manuals, which becomes a problem when they’re the ones who end up running the asylum when in the past it’s been run by people who know what’s important and what isn’t. Distances are as far apart as the plot requires them to be, and all the major powers have borders with each other (Federation with Klingons, Federation with Romulans, Federation with Cardassians, Klingons with Cardassians, Romulans with Cardassians), which makes drawing a map difficult and trying to make the quadrant lines match the borders an exercise in futility. Sulu might say he’s in Alpha Quadrant as though that’s a long way away, but then he gets there mere minutes after the Enterprise, so clearly it isn’t. There’s archives of 90s AOL chats with Ronald D Moore on Memory Alpha were someone tries to ask why they never mention some of the Federation’s in Beta Quadrant, and he replies that they’ve established the Federation is in Alpha Quadrant and it would be confusing to try and claim otherwise.
It’s not over-simplification that people need to try and explain away, it’s clear that on DS9 and Voyager there was a clear behind the scenes policy of “Alpha Quadrant is where the Federation and its neighbours are, Gamma Quadrant is where the Dominion is, Delta Quadrant is where Voyager’s trapped, Beta Quadrant isn’t important”. If you’re going to use “quadrant” to refer to a quarter of the galaxy, then they need to be a long way apart, not right on top of each other with explored space straddling two of them. It’ll be very frustrating if New Trek tries to canonise the idea that has blighted fandom and tie-in fiction for years that “Gamma and Delta Quadrants are thousands of light years away and it takes decades to get there by conventional means, Beta Quadrant is an hour’s ride thattaway”, in the mistaken belief that that’s always been the case.
I think I once saw an “official” map, I assume developed by Okuda, that had the Alpha Quadrant/Beta Quadrant Border running through the Sol (Earth) system and the majority of the Federation was on the Alpha Quadrant side. The Klingons and Romulan empires bordered the Federation but the majority of their respective empires were on the Beta Quadrant side. So Tuvok is still technically correct when he mentions that this Romulan is in the Alpha Quadrant and just the general notion in DS9 that all of these major powers are in the Alpha Quadrant in contrast to their adversary, The Dominion, in the Gamma Quadrant. Like CLB mentioned, it jut makes very easy shorthand on the various Trek series.
@57/krad: Here’s the thing: Telek gave his location as “Alpha Quadrant” before he learned that Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant. If his home territory was in Alpha, he would’ve had no reason to mention that; it would’ve been taken for granted. The only sensible, non-contrived reason he would specify without prior prompting that he was in the Alpha Quadrant is if it was unusual for a Romulan ship to be in the Alpha Quadrant. Otherwise it’s just a bad bit of writing.
After all, Telek’s ship was a science vessel, so it’s reasonable to think that it was probing space somewhere beyond Romulan territory, rather than within the borders of the Empire itself. Thus, his ship could easily have been in Alpha while his homeland was still in Beta.
@59/Garrett: The Okudas state outright in the Star Trek Encyclopedia that they had the Federation in two quadrants because of a throwaway line in TWOK. It really does feel like putting adherence to every fact ahead of common sense. Or the sort of refusal to let go of an idea that had them telling everyone first contact with the Klingons was in the early 23rd century for years after TNG had canonically established it as the mid 22nd, resulting in people thinking Enterprise had got it wrong.
@60/CLB: He gives his location as “Alpha Quadrant Sector 1385”. Either everyone knows where Sector 1385 is and there was no reason for him to say Alpha Quadrant anyway (except so the viewers instantly know where he is, wink wink) or if he’d just said Sector 1385 then the next question would have been “Sector 1385 in the Alpha Quadrant or in the Beta Quadrant?”
@50/krad: “Jana: the word “quadrant” by definition refers to one quarter section.”
By definition, yes, but that isn’t how it’s used in TOS. Some examples (not a complete list):
“Moving on schedule into quadrant 904.” (The Squire of Gothos)
“While investigating an uncharted planet, the Enterprise and at least this entire quadrant of space has been subjected to violent, unexplained stress and force.” (The Alternative Factor)
“In the past twenty years thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant. Lives that could have been saved if the Federation had a treaty port here.” (A Taste of Armageddon)
“The Klingon fleet is in this quadrant.” (Errand of Mercy)
“Kirk: Said comet is now – , Spock: Quadrant 448, sir.” (The Deadly Years)
“While exploring an outer quadrant of the galaxy, the Enterprise received distress calls […].” (Wink of an Eye)
It’s still used like that in the films:
“We’re the only ship in the quadrant.” (TWOK)
“There must be other ships in the quadrant.” (TFF)
This is why I found Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta Quadrant so odd when they started using that instead. I got used to it after a few years, but at first it was confusing.
@62/Jana: Yes, TOS misused “quadrant” all the time, and it was annoying to those of us who knew what the word actually meant. It was a good thing that TNG etc. came up with a more logical use for the term.
Although it’s not really all that logical, because dividing something as vast as the galactic disk into only four pieces is going to be pretty much useless as a navigational referent except in a context like DS9 or VGR when entities on one side of the galaxy are speaking about the other. For contexts within Federation space and its neighboring environs, it’s kind of ridiculous to talk about quadrants at all — it’d be like someone giving walking directions in England or Europe saying “Head toward the Western Hemisphere.”
On the other hand, though, because the galactic disk is so huge, there aren’t really many practical ways to subdivide it for navigational reference. There are basically just the spiral arms, which are still too big and loopy to be useful references; the Orion Arm or Spur is smaller than the main arms, but still, the known space around the Federation is to the Orion Arm sort of like a raisin stuck in the middle of a banana.
@63/Christopher: Did you find it annoying at the time? Because words that mean fixed percentages often change their meaning to become more general, e.g. “decimate” or “quarter” (for parts of a city). I had simply assumed that this had happened to “quadrant”, too. It basically means “section” in TOS.
@64/Jana: Yes, I found it annoying at the time, because I studied Latin in school and knew why it was wrong. It’s true that the misuse of the term was never exclusive to TOS, but it was still a misuse. And people today seem to have forgotten, but in its day, Star Trek was far more intelligent and science-literate than the rest of SFTV, so I held it to a higher standard and was disappointed by its errors.
@65/Christopher: Interesting. I had Latin in school too, but I didn’t consider the usage wrong. Latin was full of words that had different meanings nowadays.
Also, as far as teenage me was concerned, the Star Trek writers could do no wrong ;)
@66/Jana: I think I once read a fan reference that tried to rationalize “quadrants” as subdivisions of sectors — although for a 3-dimensional sector, one would think octants would work better. But usually it was done the other way around. The 1980 Star Trek Maps by Geoffrey Mandel depicted a spherical Federation Exploration Zone defined by treaty and divided into four quadrants, which were in turn split into “North” and “South” halves which were essentially octants. So it wasn’t the whole galaxy split into quadrants, just UFP territory.
@67/Christopher: Yes, that works.
Here’s my own fan explanation: In the 23rd century, “quadrant” was the word used for 3-dimensional sectors. Sometime during the film era, classics scholars (or mathematicians) criticised that this wasn’t what quadrant means. At the same time, space exploration had progressed so much that a subdivision of the entire galaxy became useful. Hence quadrants were replaced with sectors, and the whole galaxy was subdivided into four parts called the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Quadrant. This nomenclature was still new at the time of TUC, and Sulu used it with great relish.
@68/Jana: Unfortunately, both Enterprise and Discovery have established that the quadrant notation was in use pre-TOS. ENT’s Borg episode “Regeneration” mentioned the Delta Quadrant, and at least two DSC episodes have mentioned the Beta Quadrant.
@69/Christopher: Then my explanation only works for fans of pre-Enterprise Star Trek.
@70/Jana: That always seems arbitrary to me, that idea that you can just ignore the parts of the franchise past a certain point. Every fictional universe evolves and refines itself over time. Much of the first season of TOS was set in a universe where the Enterprise was an Earth ship only, there was no Federation or Prime Directive, Kirk was an ultra-serious military man with no time for romance, Spock was a half-Vulcanian, the engines used lithium crystals, etc. A lot of what we now take for granted as part of the Trek universe was a change from what was originally proposed. Because creativity is a process of refinement over time. It makes no sense to say that the older version was more “right,” because it’s ideally the other way around.
That’s certainly true in this case. TOS’s writers used “quadrant” in a haphazard way with no rhyme or reason. TNG’s writers then came up with a single consistent, systematic way of using it. That’s an improvement, and the earlier TOS version doesn’t deserve any loyalty. It should just be ignored, just like we now ignore lithium crystals and Vulcanians and James R. Kirk.
@Christopher: The way I see it, I fell in love with a TV show in 1978. I didn’t sign up for fandom of a franchise. Every new film or TV show must endear itself to me. Some have managed to do so, others have failed.
I would have preferred to like them all, but it depends on them, too.
This is a harmless little episode, but I think it’s one of my favorites in VOY, and quite likely my favorite from the first season.
@@.-@ – BadHat: Ooh, stranded with Romulans, that would have been nice.
@17 – fullyfunctional: Cue naughty, immature “Kim’s black hole” jokes.
@72/Jana: Liking is one thing, continuity is another. Saying “I don’t like the later shows as much” is one thing. Saying “I deny that the later shows are even in the same fictional universe as the earlier ones” is another. It’s the latter that seems strange to me. I mean, even the older series have their better and worse parts, but we accept them all as part of the same whole.
@74/ Christopher: The later shows are derived works, just like tie-in novels and fan fiction. They all use a preexisting fictional universe to tell additional stories. They are all written by people who did not participate in the creation of the original fictional universe. (In the case of Star Trek, this isn’t true for all the derived works, but it is true for the more recent ones.) Why would I feel obliged to automatically accept one particular set of derived works as part of the original universe, especially if it changes said universe into a place I no longer recognise or like?
@75/Jana: You could just as well say that current Marvel and DC Comics are derived works with no participation from the original creators. Or that Doctor Who is, or James Bond, or any sufficiently long-running franchise. It’s the Ship of Theseus argument. Eventually any continuing series is going to have total turnaround in its creators. Why is it a bad thing for a creative work to have longevity past its origins and inspire new creators to follow in the originals’ footsteps?
Besides, this is about the usage of the word “quadrant.” Is purist attachment to the past a good reason to favor TOS’s random, nonsensical use of the word over TNG/DS9/etc.’s more consistent use of the word in a way that actually fit its definition? And why even bring “the more recent ones” into the discussion when this is about terminology that was introduced in The Undiscovered Country and TNG nearly 30 years ago?
@76/Christopher: Well, if someone puts a motor into the Ship of Theseus and does away with the sails, and I like sailing, I will sell it and buy a different ship.
Longevity is a good thing if the traits you originally loved a series for are still there in the new version. Otherwise it feels more like watching the zombie of the thing you loved walk around. And yes, this can happen to anything, story universes, restaurants, public swimming pools. It’s a common hazard if you fall in love with something owned by others. The good thing about story universes is that they’re never completely gone – the old stories are still there, and if you’re lucky, people will still write fan fiction and tie-in fiction.
We started talking about the status of recent derived works because I suggested a fan explanation for the changed usage of “quadrant” that only works if you disregard them. See comments #68-70.
Personally I’m with CLB regarding the Technical Manual putting the Romulans and Klingons in the Beta Quadrant, but that’s largely because I played too much Star Trek Online. And that map is pretty definitely simplified and off-scale, but Cryptic made their choice and stuck with it.
Also @76, I love the Ship of Theseus reference, especially in reference to Doctor Who. I always hear it as “Question: You take a broom. Then you replace the handle, then you replace the brush, and you do it over, and over, again… is it still the same broom? Answer, no, of course it isn’t, but you can still use it to sweep the floor, that last part’s not strictly relevant you can skip that.” It kind of does make me think about the differences between Roddenberry Trek and Berman Trek, and also of the differences between Davies Who, Moffat Who, and Chibnall Who; but I disagree with the 12th Doctor here, because it really is somehow the same broom.
It is amazing how the memory plays tricks. I remember Voyager using a micro-wormhole to contact a Romulan from the past, but I didn’t remember that he transported to their ship, or that either side realized the time difference. I thought I remembered a final shot showing a TOS-era bird-of-prey or something, showing the audience the time difference but not either the crew or the Romulan. Still, other than Bride of Chaotica (which I have rewatched half a dozen times over the years) that I actually remembered reasonably well. Watching it again after all this time was especially pleasant.
Much to love about this episode, but the final scene, with the big reveal, is absolutely heart-wrenching in so many ways. You really feel for these people and their predicament.
I don’t recall if later episodes ever mentioned the events of this one, but even if they didn’t, this is a stand-out story for me.
I like how the Romulan is treated as a real person by the writers and yet, still has the characteristic suspicious nature of a typical Romulan. He’s not an obstinate duche and fairly quickly comes around to believing Janeway’s claims. I also like how without missing a beat, Janeway reassures Kim that the probe could very well work its way out. It’s a nice little character bit that shows her thinking not only as a captain, but a surrogate mother.
I think that it’s telling that even though the Romulans are only in two episodes of Voyager, they still manage to be in two of the best episodes of Voyager. Anyways, love this episode, though I know of no physical reason why they would assume that a wormhole would necessarily open onto a point in the Milky Way galaxy.