The fall of 1996 was the 30th anniversary of Star Trek. To celebrate, both of the shows running at the time, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, did episodes to celebrate this milestone. When I did the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rewatch from 2013-2015, I did a special thing when I reached this point in DS9’s run: “Tribbles Week Redux,” in which I covered not just DS9’s anniversary episode, “Trials and Tribble-ations,” but also the original series’ “The Trouble with Tribbles” and the Voyager anniversary episode, “Flashback.” I stand by what I wrote in 2014 about the episode, so we’re just going to rerun that entry here. On Monday, I’ll be back with a new rewatch entry for “The Chute.”
“Flashback”
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by David Livingston
Season 3, Episode 2
Production episode 145
Original air date: September 11, 1996
Stardate: 50126.4
Captain’s log: Voyager has found a Class 17 nebula, which is filled with sirilium, which can be used by the ship as an energy source. However, as soon as the nebula appears on the screen, Tuvok experiences dizziness and disorientation. As he goes to sickbay, he hears the voice of a little girl asking for his help. He gets flashes of himself as a boy trying to save a human girl from falling off a cliff. Tuvok loses his grip on the girl in his hallucination and his grip on reality in the present, as he collapses as soon as he enters sickbay.
The EMH examines Tuvok, saying that his heartrate and his adrenaline increased—in a human, he’d call it a panic attack. That tracks with his emotional response to the memory—except it wasn’t an actual memory. It never happened to Tuvok. The EMH lets Tuvok go, but attaches a doodad to his ear to monitor him in case he has another episode.
Tuvok tries a meditative exercise involving building blocks with his eyes shut while candles burn (because it isn’t a proper meditative exercise if there aren’t candles). Of course, it doesn’t work, because that’s the plot. He also can’t find any basis for that particular memory.
Kim has checked the sensor logs, and can find nothing to explain what happened to Tuvok. He suggests a tachyon sweep to try to detect a cloaked ship, as you can’t be too careful this close to Klingon space. The others point out that the Klingon Empire’s on the other side the galaxy, which Tuvok knows of course. Then he sees the nebula again on a monitor, has the flashback again, and collapses.
This time, the EMH has something: Tuvok has a repressed memory, which in Vulcans can cause brain damage. The treatment is to mind-meld with a family member and bring the repressed memory forward. Janeway’s the closest he has to family on board, and she agrees to participate in the meld. During the meld, Janeway’s function is to counsel him, help him objectify the memory and reintegrate it into his consciousness.
Tuvok initiates the meld, and they find themselves sent, not to Tuvok’s childhood as they expect, but to the bridge of a Starfleet vessel. They’re on the Excelsior, which was Tuvok’s first deep-space assignment as an ensign under Captain Sulu. Tuvok explains to Janeway that they’re in a battle against the Klingons—Janeway recalls that he thought they were near Klingon space in the engine room—and that the battle was precipitated by something that occurred three days previous.
Suddenly, they’re in the mess hall three days earlier, and Commander Rand is commencing gamma shift. The Excelsior is charting gaseous anomalies, just like Voyager was. That’s two similarities, which Janeway figures is not a coincidence.
We then get the opening scene of Star Trek VI all over again, with Praxis exploding, the Excelsior being caught in the subspace shockwave, and Sulu ordering Lojur to turn into the wave to save the ship.
Then we jump ahead to Sulu’s decision to rescue Kirk and McCoy from their imprisonment in Klingon space. He sets course for Qo’noS, and he orders Lojur to go through the Azure Nebula. Tuvok protests this action, as it’s in direct violation of orders. Sulu notes the protest, but also says that he served with Kirk and McCoy for a long time, they’re family, they’re in trouble, and he’s going to help them, regulations be damned.
They approach the Azure Nebula, which looks very similar to the one Voyager saw. As soon as he sees it, he flashes on the repressed memory again—and so does Janeway. But then Tuvok has a seizure, and the meld is broken. The synaptic pathways are breaking down, and the EMH has to sedate him for a bit.
Janeway reads up on the Excelsior’s mission, but Sulu’s logs are parsimonious with details. There’s no mention of a battle with the Klingons or of the Azure Nebula, probably because they were breaking regs. Tuvok awakens and they try another meld.
They’re back on the Excelsior. Tuvok and Valtane talk in their bunk as the ship goes through the nebula. Tuvok says that he doesn’t like the egocentricity of humans and their need to have everyone act like them. He only joined Starfleet because his parents wished it, but he resigned after his term on the Excelsior ended. He studied Kolinahr for a time, but then succumbed to pon farr, married T’Pel, and had children. With age, and parenthood, he came to understand why his parents thought Starfleet was a good fit, and he rejoined.
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Valtane and Tuvok are awakened by a red alert. A Klingon ship fires across their bow. Kang is the captain of the Klingon ship, and he contacts Sulu, who explains that they were examining the nebula and had a navigational malfunction and got lost. Kang offers to escort the Excelsior back to Federation space, which Sulu can’t come up with a good reason to refuse.
Tuvok reports the composition of the nebula to Sulu, including the sirilium. Sulu recognizes that as combustible, and Tuvok suggests a method of igniting it that would disable Kang’s ship. Sulu implements that plan, and they resume course to Qo’noS. But then, they’re attacked by three Klingon battle cruisers. Valtane’s console explodes, and Tuvok runs to Valtane, who calls Tuvok’s name, and then they both see the memory. But the meld is also breaking down, and now Sulu can see Janeway. He orders them both to the brig. They need to go back to Valtane’s death, but Janeway needs to be inconspicuous, so they go back to the destruction of Praxis and nerve-pinch Rand so Janeway can take her uniform. Why they can’t just break into someone’s closet is unclear.
Meanwhile, the EMH and Kes determine that there’s a second memory engram inside Tuvok’s, which appears to be a type of telepathic virus. He tries to eradicate it with thoron radiation.
The battle occurs again, and Valtane dies again. Tuvok concentrates, and this time so does Janeway. They soon determine that it’s a virus that jumps from person to person, posing as a memory engram of a traumatic childhood memory of dropping a child down a precipice, something so awful that the person would naturally repress it. When Valtane died, it went from him to Tuvok, who repressed it until he saw a nebula that looked almost exactly like the Azure Nebula where Valtane died.
The EMH and Kes are able to destroy the virus and everyone is healthy and happy again. Tuvok admits that the experiences of those days are ones he is grateful to have had, which is as close to nostalgic as he’s likely to get.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity?: Sirilium can apparently be ignited by a polaron beam, which Sulu then likens to like striking a match on gunpowder, or some such analogy that was so commonplace on the original series that Futurama made fun of it.
There’s coffee in that nebula!: Janeway doesn’t hesitate to help Tuvok in his time of need. She also goes on about those crazy 23rd century captains and how they’d all be drummed out of Starfleet today, but they were kinda cool, too, a rather patronizing attitude taken by someone who can’t even get her own crew home.
Mr. Vulcan: Tuvok was a stuck-up prig when he was an ensign, believing humans to be annoying and insistent on fobbing their emotionalism off on everyone else. He also protests Sulu’s actions on the bridge of his ship, which is a ballsy move for an ensign.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency: The EMH shows a remarkable awareness of what TV show he’s on by providing a lengthy list of possible reasons why Tuvok is suffering as he does: hallucination, telepathic communication from another race, repressed memory, or momentary contact with a parallel reality. “Take your pick,” he adds, “the universe is such a strange place.”
Forever an ensign: Kim verifies that there’s nothing strange about the nebula, and also confirms that it’s not even the same type of nebula as the Azure. It may look the same visually, but not on sensors.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s: Apparently, Talaxians like to tell the story of where their food came from. (Tuvok is less than enthused at the notion, saying he would prefer not to hear the life history of his breakfast.) Neelix also creates a fruit juice that is, to Tuvok’s abject shock, drinkable. (I was disappointed that no one chalked up Tuvok’s hallucinations to drinking one of Neelix’s juices.)
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Tuvok renders Rand unconscious so Janeway can take her uniform because, as he puts it, “Asking female officers for their clothing could lead to misunderstanding.”
Do it:
“I’ve observed that Captain Sulu drinks a cup of tea each morning. I thought he might enjoy a Vulcan blend.”
“Oh, I see. Trying to make lieutenant in your first month? I wish I’d have thought of that when I was your age. Took me three years just to make ensign.”
“I assure you I have no ulterior motive.”
“Whatever you say, Ensign. See you on the bridge.”
“You’ve never brought me tea.”
–Tuvok explaining to Rand what he’s preparing in the mess hall, Rand teasing him about it, and Janeway doing likewise at the very end.
Welcome aboard: The big guests, obviously are George Takei as Sulu and Grace Lee Whitney as Rand, reprising the roles they played in the original series, as well as the TOS films. Also back from the Excelsior crew in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country alongside Sulu and Rand are Jeremy Roberts as Valtane and Boris Lee Krutonog as Lojur. To add to the awesome, Michael Ansara puts in an appearance as Kang, having previously played the role in the original series’ “Day of the Dove” and DS9’s “Blood Oath.”
Trivial matters: Unlike “Trials and Tribble-ations,” Voyager’s tribute to the 30th anniversary was able to be aired only a few days after the actual 30th anniversary. The DS9 episode required more prep time and more post-production time, so it aired two months later. (DS9’s season also started later than Voyager’s, as the latter show was on a network instead of syndicated.)
The only “main” characters from TOS who weren’t in “The Trouble with Tribbles” were George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney, and Majel Barrett, so they weren’t in “Trials and Tribble-ations,” either. This was made up for by the former two appearing in this episode. Barrett was not at all involved in either episode, but given her recurring appearances both as the voice of Starfleet computers and as Lwaxana Troi, it was probably not considered urgent to get her in there. (Having said that, plenty of pieces of tie-in fiction have Dr. Christine Chapel as the chief medical officer of the Excelsior.)
The original notion for this story was to have it be a flashback to Janeway’s earliest days in Starfleet and meeting Tuvok for the first time, but when it was decided to make it part of the 30th anniversary, it was adjusted to Tuvok on the Excelsior. It was already established in “Alliances” that Tuvok was around during the Khitomer Conference and spoke out against a Federation-Klingon alliance.
A scene was written for Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, but it was only a brief cameo and Nichols declined.
Director David Livingston made an effort to re-create as many of the camera angles from Star Trek VI as possible. They couldn’t simply insert the footage from the movie into the episode, as five years later everyone looked different, so the scene with the Excelsior being struck with the subspace shockwave had to be reshot. We learn that the tea Sulu was drinking in that scene was actually prepared by Tuvok.
Several novels and comics have been published featuring Captain Sulu on the Excelsior, with Rand, Valtane, and Lojur all present, though there was no consistency in terms of the rest of the crew across the Star Trek VI novelization by J.M. Dillard, Peter David’s The Captain’s Daughter, L.A. Graf’s War Dragons, Denny Martin Flynn’s The Fearful Summons, the Captain Sulu Adventures audios, etc., all of which predated “Flashback.” Following this episode, there have only been two Excelsior novels: Forged in Fire and The Sundered, both by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, though Captain Sulu has appeared in several other novels and stories as well.
The tense camaraderie between Sulu and Kang is given its origins in the aforementioned Forged in Fire, which features not just those two, but also Kor, Koloth, and Curzon Dax.
With this appearance, Michael Ansara joined a select group of actors who played the same role on three different Trek series, and the only one for whom one of the three wasn’t TNG. The others are Jonathan Frakes (William Riker), Armin Shimerman (Quark), John deLancie (Q), and Richard Poe (Evek).
The Azure Nebula plays a critical role in David Mack’s Destiny trilogy.
Like “Trials and Tribble-ations,” this episode was novelized by Diane Carey, who also included a larger role for the rest of the Voyager crew.
This episode fails to explain how Valtane could have died prior to the Excelsior’s joining the Enterprise at Khitomer in Star Trek VI’s climax when the character was clearly seen with the rest of Excelsior’s bridge crew at the end of the film.
Set a course for home: “Perhaps you can be nostalgic for both of us.” This episode tries hard, it really does, but ultimately it comes across as yet another tiresome technobabble episode. There are some decent insights into Tuvok here, but what promises to be a look at a childhood memory instead turns out to be some silly technobabble virus that has nothing to do with Tuvok.
In fact, it has nothing to do with anybody. Once it becomes clear that it relates to Valtane, there’s a chance it might provide some insight into Valtane, perhaps, make his death meaningful, but that falls through as well.
George Takei has some good moments where he justifies his not following orders to Tuvok, though that too is a missed opportunity. There was a line in the script of Star Trek VI that was in both the novelization by J.M. Dillard and the comic book adaptation by Peter David that was one of the best lines in the script, and sadly got cut. Sulu says that he always hoped that if he was ever given the choice between betraying his friends and betraying his country that he’d have the guts to betray his country. I remember when I watched this episode in 1996, I was waiting for them to use the line, and was disappointed that Brannon Braga failed to do so. It would’ve been the perfect thing to say to Tuvok when he objected to Excelsior’s course of action.
Tim Russ isn’t at his best here, as his priggish younger self isn’t sufficiently differentiated from his priggish older self to be effective. We should see a noticeable difference between the 23rd century Tuvok and the 24th century one, but the superior attitude Tuvok gives to Valtane on Excelsior is exactly the same attitude he gives to Neelix on Voyager. And his bug-eyed portrayal of the seizures is just comically absurd. Russ does dry wit better than anyone this side of Leonard Nimoy, but that’s the only mode he’s comfortable in.
It’s a noble effort, but it feels meaningless at best, annoying at worst—particularly Janeway’s insufferably self-righteous look back at Kirk and Sulu’s heyday. Once the initial nostalgia hit wears off, there’s nothing to it, the solution coming out of the EMH in sickbay discovering one bit of made-up science that can stop the other bit of made-up science, which drains all the tension out of it, exacerbated by the actual culprit being something utterly irrelevant to the characters.
But it is fun to see Sulu in the center seat again…
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido never expected this entry to be reprinted because he never expected to actually be doing a Voyager Rewatch. Silly silly silly Keith……
The only thing I would’ve added to this, had I done it anew as part of this rewatch, was note in the Trivial Matters section that Ensign Golwat, mentioned by Neelix when he’s serving Tuvok in the teaser, was the female Bolian seen in the background of several episodes, including “Caretaker” and “Hunters.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Well, since the article’s a reprint, I’ll just quote my own comments from the original thread:
Another continuity error between ST VI and “Flashback”: In the movie, the Praxis explosion explicitly took place two months before the rest of the film (as stated by Spock at the start of his briefing to the rest of the crew), but the episode claims it was only a couple of days. But this can be rationalized as a flaw in Tuvok’s memory. Even Vulcan memory isn’t necessarily infallible, especially given all the neurological insults that Tuvok was subjected to over the years.
This is a case where I would emphatically recommend the novelization over the episode itself, because not only does Diane Carey add a nice Kes subplot (more Kes is always good), but she changes the ending so that it’s more than just a technobabble fix and has some real emotional weight for Janeway.
As for the “why did they need to steal Rand’s uniform?” question, I think the conceit was that, since Tuvok’s mind was breaking down, the barriers between what he knew to be real and what he knew to be imaginary were breaking down, so his mind was unconsciously shaping the scenario as if they were really there. Like starting off in a lucid dream where you’re totally in control and then losing that control and being at the mercy of dream logic. To put it another way, they weren’t playing in god mode anymore and had to follow the rules of the game. It symbolized that Tuvok was losing control of his own mind.
Although, yes, it was also a very contrived way to put Janeway and Tuvok in “danger.”
“Asking female officers for their clothing could lead to misunderstanding.”
I always loved that line. It always amused me that they chose Rand to mug for her clothes, asthere is NO WAY that Rand’s uniform would fit Janeway as well as it did.
Execution aside, I quite like the idea of a telepathic virus that disguises itself as a repressed traumatic memory. However little basis in actual science it might have, things like that make ESP and psychic species seem a little more ‘real,’ to me.
Six years ago, I was rather dismissive of this one.
In retrospect, I find myself more appreciative of this one. Prior to my doing the full Voyager first-time watch (last year), this is the only episode I bothered to watch past Tuvix, over 20 years ago.
Sure, it still suffers from much of the same flaws, especially the technobabble, the fact that Tuvok’s mental crisis goes nowhere, and especially the fact that Whitney is dreadful as Rand. But now I see it as a mostly decent, innoffensive episode otherwise. I have little problem with Janeway’s patronizing attitude towards the 23rd century (the “quicker to pull their phasers, slower to invoke the PD” line) because Janeway’s always had that attitude, or at least it always seemed so me in the way Mulgrew conveys the character.
It’s no Trials and Tribble-ations, but it’s a serviceable bit of nostalgia. An early template for what Voyager would transition into this season. More standalone episodic adventures, true to the spirit of Trek, but not bogged down by the baggage from those first two seasons.
David Livingston, ever the committed director, doing some nice work replicating the angles and overall tone of ST6 in the process. And getting a Kang cameo is a nice touch. Plus, this way we manage to get George Takei to still be a part of the 30th Anniversary, since he missed out on Tribbles thanks to Green Berets.
Hmm, in regards to Valtane dying and then reappearing chronologically later at the end of ST VI, maybe he had a twin aboard.
Also, Kang must have been one of the Klingons affected by the augment virus as he was formerly smooth headed and now has his cranial ridges restored.
As for the episode itself, I enjoyed the bits aboard the Excelsior but didn’t like the actual McGuffin about how it was incorporated into the plot: the alien life form that existed as bad memories or whatever and transferred from one host to another. I remember this episode serving as part of Takei’s efforts to lobby for a Captain Sulu series. I didn’t ever believe it would happen myself but always thought it was a missed opportunity. Nowadays with countless Star Trek spinoffs in the works as well as Short Treks, it wouldn’t be nearly as dismissed an idea should it be proposed. I still hope we can get Takei on another Trek series or a Short Trek as either Sulu or some other character.
@6/GarretH: Well, Lt. Leslie died in “Obsession” and was back to life the following week. These things happen.
Although Valtane has no dialogue in his scenes in the final act of the movie, so his presence on-camera is not plot-relevant and can be dismissed as a glitch.
Kang was first seen ridged in DS9: “Blood Oath,” along with Kor and Koloth. An explanation for how they, err, got their grooves back is provided in the novel Excelsior: Forged in Fire by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels.
GarrettH: As Christopher said, Kang was established as being ridged in “Blood Oath” on DS9, which aired three years prior to this. And George Takei had been lobbying for a Captain Sulu movie or series long before this episode, trust me.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Great to see the Excelsior crew and Kang again, and it was kind of cool seeing Janeway dropped in that era. But the medically induced flashback plot reminds me too much of “Shades of Gray” and that’s never a good thing. Although, at least the flashbacks were new footage this time.
I’d say one of the problems with this episode is that the setup and the resolution don’t match. We’re told that the problem with Tuvok is a repressed memory, and that the mind meld with Janeway is the only way to fix it. The episode spends a lot of time on this, but then throws that away by completely throwing away both the original explanation and solution, and having the actual answer have nothing to do with it. It makes the time we’ve spent on the mind meld completely pointless. Although I wish they’d spent less time on the mind meld anyway – all that focus on what was going on inside a character’s head was giving me flashbacks to TNG’s terrible Shades of Gray.
This episode is obviously a lot better than Shades of Gray, but there’s a lot of space between Shades of Gray and an actual good episode. It was great to see Captain Sulu, and George Takei undoubtedly provides the highlights of the episode – but that’s another problem. When the best part of your Voyager episode is the TOS character, that shows it’s not a good Voyager episode.
@7 / CLB:
Yeah, Forged in Fire was one of my favorite Trek novels of the late 2000s.
I think Mangels and Martin did excellent work at finally telling the story of Sulu’s captaincy while tying together the pre-The Undiscovered Country time-frame with story threads from “Affliction”, “Divergence”, and “Blood Oath”.
“Like a balloon and… something bad happens!”
Again, I’m glad that Keith came up with these categories just for the anniversary specials, yet stuck with them when the rewatch began. Did the same thing with “The Trouble With Tribbles” too…
As for the episode… I was definitely still watching the series when it was coming out, and trying to do the same with DS9, though I think I was starting to have trouble keeping up because of the commute to school… and lack of VCR. But I do remember seeing this one on my 13″ CRT TV and thinking it was great. Now… you know what, I still feel like it was fine, just not anywhere near as good as “Trials and Tribble-ations”. Always good to see Captain Sulu, though.
@7/Christopher: That’s only possible because of just how out of order the airdates on the original show were. Leslie was in Wolf in the Fold, which was filmed weeks prior to Obsession despite airing afterwards.
@13/Eduardo: but “Obsession” was filmed just before “The Immunity Syndrome”, and Leslie appears in both. So like CLB says, yeah, these things happen.
I’m gonna see if I can find my blabbering about this episode six years ago, but I do remember mentioning at the time that I although krad wasn’t planning a Voyager rewatch, it was awesome he had categories for one. I stand by that, and it’s definitely been worth the wait.
Blabbering found! (Thanks CLB for providing the link):
I always forgave the technobabble ending because of seeing Sulu on the Excelsior again. It was a nice peek at what was happening on the Excelsior during STVI. (And yes, I’m forced to admit despite my defense of technobabble in the past, Voyager took it and multiplied it by 70,000 light-years, rendering it nearly unbearable.) And of course, any chance to see Kang again is always welcome.
Thanks for doing this, krad. I know you’re not planning a Voyager rewatch, but I like that you’ve got categories for one. This was a fun week.
These days, I’m not as forgiving of technobabble as my younger self. The explanation that it was some random-ass made-up virus that needed to be destroyed by random-ass made-up radiation brought the fun nostalgia ride to a grinding halt. Still, I liked how the climax was shot, with David Bell’s score doing most of the heavy lifting of that sequence.
And it’s never not fun seeing George Takei as Captain Sulu; too bad he would have had to wait another 25 years for a Captain Sulu series to possibly be given serious consideration.
@7/CLB: I just like to imagine the Excelsior bridge crew propping up a dead Valtane to give a nice happy send-off to Kirk & company and pretend everything’s all hunky-dory over on Exclesior, Weekend at Bernie’s-style. (I made myself laugh!)
@7, 8/Krad: Yeah, I guess I forgot about Kang already showing up on “Blood Oath” with ridges, but at least with “Flashback” we now know chronologically he’s already had his ridges pop up all the way back in that TOS-era.
@8: I believe you regarding Takei’s campaign for his own solo adventures long before this episode, but for sure his appearance in “Flashback” was solid proof he could use in his campaign. I recall reading an article, it could have been Entertainment Weekly, where he stated he was doing lots of push ups daily to keep fit should he be called back to the role in his own series. It would have been cool too – a beloved character headlining his own series as the first ever Asian descent captain, played by a gay lead. Plus, I always loved the Excelsior class ship. Ah well.
@11/Mr. Magic: “I think Mangels and Martin did excellent work at finally telling the story of Sulu’s captaincy”
Well, “finally” isn’t really the word, because Howard Weinstein had done it for DC Comics back in 1992. In fact, though I didn’t realize it at first, Forged in Fire is basically compatible with the DC version, and I believe it was intentionally written to be.
@13/Eduardo: I gather that “Obsession” was scripted with a scene saying the dead guards had come back to life when the vampire cloud was killed, but that scene was cut, creating the continuity error.
“Why they can’t just break into someone’s closet is unclear.”
They only have Tuvok’s memories to move around in. Assuming he didn’t poke into any female crewmembers closets during his time on the Excelsior, they won’t have one in the memory landscape to pilfer.
Capt Sulu was The Series That Should Have Happened. I guess the idea was ahead of its time.
@19: As much as I would have wanted to see that series myself, I get why for practical purposes that didn’t happen. From ‘93-‘99 there were two Star Trek series airing concurrently. A third would probably have been seen as overkill. And so by ‘99 Voyager was left to be on its own for its final two seasons. Then when it was ending, Berman & Braga didn’t even want to do another spin-off so soon but being forced to do so they went the prequel route to do something different from before. I doubt they ever seriously considered a Sulu series, but even if they had, the prequel idea would still have won out because it allowed them to do something very different from what came before (at least in theory).
@20
Somebody better tell CBS then. I think they’ve got a couple hundred Star Trek series in the pipeline. I kid, but I’ve honestly lost track of all the things they’re planning.
As for a Sulu-Excelsior series… is John Cho available? Say what you want about Into Darkness, his brief scene as Captain Sulu was excellent.
@17 / CLB:
Well, “finally” isn’t really the word, because Howard Weinstein had done it for DC Comics back in 1992. In fact, though I didn’t realize it at first, Forged in Fire is basically compatible with the DC version, and I believe it was intentionally written to be.
Huh.
I wasn’t aware of that comic, so, heh, go figure.
Being one of the slice of Trek fandom who has always been heavily into the starships (hence I have been a subscriber to Eaglemoss’s Official Starships Collection from the very start that it was available to U.S. based subscribers), what I found to be the most jarring thing about this episode was that all of a sudden the Excelsior’s warp nacelles were glowing blue (when the ship’s nacelles as seen in the movies, including the very same Star Trek VI that they were intercutting footage with in this episode) did not glow.
love reading your takes on Trek.
Ah yes. The 30th anniversary story written by someone who wasn’t familiar with TOS. As a result, it doesn’t quite manage the same nostalgic feel as “Trial and Tribble-ations”. Instead, we have Janeway being vaguely dismissive of a kind of cartoon park version of the 1701 crew and Tuvok indulging in a brutal decimation of the worst elements of Rodenberry Trek (smug and irresponsible humans thinking everyone should be like them), even if he does back track a bit afterwards.
It’s kind of appropriate that they centre this episode about Sulu, given that George Takei wasn’t getting royalties for stock footage from “Trouble With Tribbles”. As has been pointed out, Valtane’s death during this behind-the-scenes part of Star Trek VI contradicts the fact that he’s seen alive at the end of the movie. This has caused Memory Alpha to contradict the whole premise of this episode and pretend Valtane doesn’t die here. Frankly, I’m more inclined to go for the Star Trek Encyclopedia’s suggestion that he had a twin brother onboard.
But anyway…The episode is okay, and it’s nice to see George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney back (and indeed Michael Ansara). It feels like we’re not going to have too many Tuvok-focus episodes going forwards, but his friendship with Janeway is used to good effect here. (All the same, this episode does emphasise that, even with a 50 year gap, he’s taken a very long time to get from ensign to lieutenant. Harry Kim has nothing on him.) And I like the subtle little scene of Tuvok and Kes in his quarters with her understated empathy.
I remember on first viewing thinking that there was going to be some sort of emotional connection between Tuvok’s reaction to Valtane’s death and his reaction to the girl’s death. Instead, we get an intelligent virus and the whole mild meld aspect of the plot being rendered largely irrelevant, as instead the Doctor solves everything by pushing a couple of buttons.
Even more irrelevant is the decision to shoo in a last minute bit of interaction between Janeway and Sulu, coupled with Janeway being stuck in movie-era uniform. The set-up to this doesn’t make much sense: Rand’s “Time to defend the Federation against gaseous anomalies” line was before the explosion of Praxis, but then we skip ahead to the battle with the Klingons, making it look as though she wasn’t missed for days (or months in the original timeline) and they did without a communications officer during that shift. Maybe it’s down to experiencing memories out of sequence? Mind you, the show abandons the usual “It’s only happening in X’s mind” rule of only showing things from Tuvok and Janeway’s perspective by giving us several model shots of the Excelsior.
The basic feeling at the end of this is that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but it’s still quite enjoyable.
The novelisation adds some decent stuff but also claims that Sulu wasn’t really trying to rescue Kirk and McCoy and it was all just a feint to distract the Klingons while the Enterprise got across the border, which I’m not too keen on. And don’t get me started on Forged in Fire. I continue to be astounded that someone went into an office and said “We want to do the story of how Sulu became captain of the Excelsior, and how those three Klingons from Blood Oath first met the Albino, and how the Klingons got their cranial ridges back” and instead of being shown the door got given a contract.
@21: Well yeah, CBS has a million Star Trek projects in the pipeline but so far they haven’t aired the ones that have been completed concurrently: their strategy, which I agree with, staggers the series, so that there’s only ever one airing at a time. Therefore, one isn’t “competing” against another, and fans can get new episodes of Trek aired across a given year.
cap-mjb: in fact, it was the guy in the office, Marco Palmieri, one of the Trek fiction editors from 1998-2008, who conceived Forged in Fire and assigned Andy & Mike to write it. And if you want to question Marco’s competence, you will get a very big fight on your hands from every author who worked with him, including me.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yes. Seeing Captain Sulu made it all worthwhile. And it was nice to see Rand again too.
@26
I’m not sure I agree with that model (even though it makes sense, since Trek is the flagship for CBS-AA). I dunno, depends on exactly how much new Trek they want to give us across a given year, but I can see burnout eventually happening regardless. Of course, as always, better writing would help.
I wasn’t very familiar with TOS when I first saw this episode (though I had seen Star Trek VI), but even so the highlight of this episode for me is seeing George Takei as Sulu again. It’s not as good as “Trials and Tribble-ations”, but it pushes what would otherwise be an average episode in my ranking to “above average”. It’s not awful, but it’s not brilliant either.
“I was disappointed that no one chalked up Tuvok’s hallucinations to drinking one of Neelix’s juices.”
LOL, when we watched this episode and Tuvok started behaving strangely my husband said “He shouldn’t have drunk that juice”.
krad: That would explain it. But let’s face it, everyone’s going to have a off-day every now and then. There’s mileage in telling the story of Sulu’s first mission as captain of the Excelsior and establishing how he and Kang know each other. But sometimes less is more, and when you’re just regurgitating stories someone else wrote a decade or two earlier, and leaving plot threads dangling for people to go and watch the episode, then it’s less story-telling and more housekeeping.
@00 / KRAD:
I was disappointed that no one chalked up Tuvok’s hallucinations to drinking one of Neelix’s juices
Heh, oh I nearly forgot one of my favorite wisecracks from Chuck Sonnenburg’s review of this episode at SF Debris:
Neelix: Y’know, if I injected sirilium into my thermal array, it might improve cooking time.
Chuck: And with that, Benjamin Sisko warps himself across the galaxy and begins pistol whipping Neelix for actually calling himself a chef when he thinks more energy equals faster cooking time.
You probably already know this but the line not used in the episode by Takei (ie choosing friends over country) is from E. M. Forester, of all people.
cap-mjb: I could not possibly disagree with you more. The story in Forged in Fire is exactly the kind of story that good tie-in fiction excels at: filling in gaps and fleshing out backstories that are unlikely to ever be dramatized on screen.
Aonghus Fallon: Yes, I did know that. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@35:
Yeah, some of my favorite Trek novels have been the ones that have done just that: Fill in the gaps in Trek history, weave together story threads from across the series and films, and spin entire yarns from throwaway lines.
Your own The Art of the Impossible‘s a quintessential example. KRAD, to this day I’m still amazed how you took a piece of exposition between Bashir and Garak in “The Way of the Warrior” and you gave us a kickass Cardassian-Klingon political thriller.
The Terok Nor Trilogy’s also another example. Is it necessary to read it to understand DS9 and the Occupation? No, of course not.
Is it still enjoyable for those seeking new context and finally seeing the DS9 backstory dramatized? Absolutely.
@20/GarretH: There were rumors of a potential Klingon-focused Trek series that would have happened after DS9’s conclusion in 1999. Given how much mileage they got out of them on DS9, it would have made perfect sense to capitalize on it. I know I would have gladly seen more of Klingon society post-Gowron.
But the decision to stick primarily with Voyager after June 1999 was very much a business decision. Ratings had been declining across both shows (despite the increase in VOY’s ratings post-Seven of Nine’s entrance). It made little sense to support multiple shows in this scenario.
Eduardo: those rumors never carried much weight, because a Klingon show would be hugely expensive, because most every speaking part would also have extensive makeup.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@37/EJ: I never heard that rumor but respectfully that idea of a spin-off wouldn’t have been too appealing to me. I had become Klingoned-out during the tail end of TNG and over the course of DS9. Every other word seemed to be “honor” or “Kahless.” It would make my eyes roll back in my head. Lol. But during the 2000’s, Michael Dorn was lobbying for his own Captain Worf show. I could get behind that though because I’ve always enjoyed that character as a singularly unique Klingon and Dorn portrayed him well.
Right, I’m aware that the ratings for DS9 and VOY were sliding the further they went along so it wouldn’t make sense to keep adding more spin-offs. And even the ratings blip when Seven of Nine was brought on was brief, like the first two episodes of season 4 were very solid, and then the ratings slide began again.
Rich, yes, that was as of when the episode aired.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@38:
I never heard that rumor but respectfully that idea of a spin-off wouldn’t have been too appealing to me. I had become Klingoned-out during the tail end of TNG and over the course of DS9. Every other word seemed to be “honor” or “Kahless.” It would make my eyes roll back in my head. Lol.
Yeah, I wasn’t initially happy about Worf joining DS9 for those reasons either. I was fine with DS9 getting the occasional Klingon episode like “Blood Oath” or “The House of Quark”, but I was also Klingon’d out by the end of TNG. I felt bring a weekly Klingon focus to DS9 risked oversaturation and would detract from the focus on the Dominion, the Bajorans, the Cardassians, and the Ferengi.
Ultimately, the Klingons for me are kinda like Harley Quinn. They’re a great part of the mythology and I don’t mind them every now and then….but making them the center of attention is just draining.
@35 and @36: In my opinion, Forged in Fire completely failed to do that. This wasn’t a throwaway line, this wasn’t a big gap in back story. This was a huge chunk of exposition delivered by Dax on screen: An albino was conducting raids, Kang, Kor and Koloth teamed up and beat him but he escaped, and he took revenge by killing their sons. That’s the whole story and that’s the whole novel. Sure, they chuck in Sulu but don’t actually do much with him. (He spends a good chunk of the novel stuck on the border forbidden to do anything interesting.) They make the Albino Kor’s outcast cousin and then don’t really do anything with that either. (I’m not even sure he was meant to be a Klingon on screen: The make-up implies he is but the dialogue implies he isn’t.) But basically, that chunk of dialogue in “Blood Oath” is the entire story, dragged out over hundreds of pages. As for Klingons getting their cranial ridges back, I think I just glazed over at the excess of dry technobabble and the only thing I remember about it is a rather nasty and completely pointless prologue involving Antaak dying a painful death.
Without meaning to boot-lick, I think The Art of Impossible does it perfectly: It takes throwaway lines like the Betreka Nebula Incident and fashions a story out of them, it dramatises the death of Ian Troi which it was clear by then we were never going to get fleshed out on screen, even when doing something already well-documented like the Khitomer massacre, it becomes something interesting because, rather than one speech from one episode that told us everything we needed to know, it’s pulling together sometimes contradictory information from numerous episodes, welding it together, plugging the holes and producing something interesting.
Similarly, the Terok Nor trilogy manages to take lots of throwaway elements from lots of episodes, flesh them out, turn these people who are just names into living breathing characters, and answer puzzlers like why the Bajorans are all fine with Odo when he worked for the Cardassians. It has a few problems and inconsistencies because of the change of author (Nechayev’s wandering character arc, a major plot thread from the first book being dispensed on in one scene in book two) but on the whole it adds flavour to the back story.
When I was about 14 years old, I pitched a Doctor Who novel dramatising the back story of Silver Nemesis to Virgin. I got a rather nice rejection letter (nice in the sense that it had some thought put into it) which among other things said there wasn’t enough story still to tell to make it interesting, since the main story elements and the ending were already determined. That, in my opinion, is what someone should have realised about Forged in Fire: There aren’t enough unknown elements to the back story to make an interesting story out of it. I get that it has its fans, I’ve read positive reviews, but to me it came across as a bad idea poorly handled.
cap-mjb: Fair enough. And thank you for the kind words about The Art of the Impossible, which is one of the books I’m proudest of in my entire bibliography.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Does the Talaxian custom of telling the story behind a meal remind anyone else of the problem of trying to simply find a recipe online these days?
I’ve always been disappointed and frustrated with this episode. Yes, it’s great to see Sulu again, but the story is almost half over before he finally puts in an appearance. And there’s the absurdly technobabble-heavy framing story. I would have preferred a straightfoward narrative in which Tuvok sits down with Janeway and tells a story of his days on the Excelsior, something alone the lines of Carbon Creek. And let’s have an original story instead of just rehashing ST6.
@46/Shaun B.: “And let’s have an original story instead of just rehashing ST6.”
Well, it was an anniversary special, so it was about looking back at the past, similarly to how DS9: “Trials and Tribble-ations” was about revisiting a favorite episode.
Also, I wouldn’t call it a rehash, since it’s really only the first scene that overlaps directly, and the rest is new information about what the Excelsior was doing offscreen during the movie. So it’s more of a parallel story.
I enjoyed this episode, but the end rubbed me all wrong. Tuvok spent several minutes explaining that his experiences on the Excelsior were so bad, he quit Starfleet for 50 years. He didn’t like working with the humans, they teased him, etc. And then at the end, Janeway has the nerve to say she thinks he’s nostalgic for that period. A time when he was bullied and stressed all the time, a time that made him leave Starfleet, and she thinks he’s a little nostalgic for it?
As my wife said as the credits rolled, “gotta assuage that white guilt.”
We have an episode that strengthens the bond between two characters by immersing them in the past of one of them. But as I watched this episode, I began to think: did I miss all those great stories about Janeway and Tuvok? Why are they so close? In fact, I began to yearn for the backstory of the two of them. If it would bring them closer and emphasize their bond by exploring past history, why not give them something unfinished business themselves? But if I’m not mistaken, we didn’t get any of the great background stories from Janeway and Tuvok before their time on Voyager up to this point of the series, right? At least, not directly, so it’s never shown.
Which is ultimately why I believe they undersell Janeway in this episode. There was no friction between them, and she didn’t have a moment to shine, except for a second when the virus attacked her, which solved the mystery. But it could have been anyone else, let alone Tuvok himself, or EMH, to figure that out.
@49/Andre: You’re right. Given that Janeway/Tuvok are supposedly close and have a long history together, you would think there would have been at least one episode featuring a story about their shared backstory. Like I’m not even sure how they know each other although I assume they served together on a prior vessel at one point. Just more missed opportunities which Voyager pretty much symbolizes.
The original plan for this episode was to do a story that flashed back to earlier in the Janeway and Tuvok friendship, but when they decided to make it the 30th anniversary episode, it was altered.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ah, you said that in your article, Keith. Apparently, I didn’t pay enough attention to pick it up here :-) I guess it is fair to say that the original story is still in the DNA of this episode.
It’s a pity, though, that the two ideas apparently had to be merged instead of implementing both concepts separately. Then this anniversary story would have been built on a more solid foundation, Janeway-and-Tuvok-wise.
@50/garreth Nice to know that we agree.
God I love that line and Tim Russ delivers it perfectly! He sure is great at deadpan.
@Valtane’s Death: I’d be more than willing to accept that Valtane has a twin brother aboard the Excelsior and the shot in Star Trek VI of the Excelsior‘s bridge crew giving the Enterprise a send-off is not clear enough to conclusively discern that Valtane’s “twin” is in an identical uniform. However, he’s also a bridge officer?? Assuming that’s true, it seems kind of morbid to think that he’s his dead brother’s replacement at the science position. I think that would be a lousy thing to do to someone who just lost their twin.
@The explosion on Praxis: One thing I’ve always wondered is if an explosion like that would send out energy rings. Wouldn’t an energy sphere be more plausible? We see the energy wave of the exploding star in Star Trek Generations as a sphere. I know one is a moon and one is a star, but it’s still a valid question I think.
@53/Thierafhal: The “energy ring” thing is ridiculous, an attempt to transpose the image of a ground shock wave from a surface explosion to an outer space setting where it makes no sense. I’ve always been dismayed that it was a Star Trek movie that introduced that dumb visual that has since become a common sci-fi cliche.
The only plausible way I can see that something like that could conceivably happen is if the moon was spinning so fast when it blew that all the ejecta were propelled tangentially outward, perpendicular to the rotational axis. But if it had spun that fast, it could never have held together as a moon in the first place. Sometimes a strong magnetic field can concentrate ejected plasma from a pulsar or something into jets from the poles, but I don’t know if a magnetic field could be configured to have the opposite effect and concentrate it into a planar ring. Well, unless it were spinning really fast and the magnetic poles were on the rotational equator, but then we’d have much the same problem as before.
Not to mention that if it were a flat ring, then it would’ve been a major coincidence that the Excelsior just happened to be traveling in that exact plane. A spherical wave front would have made far more sense.
Of course, that’s one of a number of things wrong with it. One is that, by definition, there are no shock waves in vacuum. A shock wave is a disturbance propagating through a material, essentially an intense, instantaneous sound wave. Well, there can be shock waves in the interstellar medium, but it’s so diffuse that they wouldn’t be felt by anything like a starship. There would be a front of ejected material expanding outward, but it shouldn’t propagate faster than light and hit the Excelsior when it’s presumably not inside the Klingon home system.
@54/CLB: Wow, thanks for the clarity! I think I’ve learned more about science from reading your replies than all of my schooling put together! Note: I did finish school, haha.
I have to admit that the absurdity of the Excelsior being on the same plane was certainly not lost on me, However, I didn’t realize ST6 might have pioneered the ring effect. I do know that the energy ring was added to the remastered version of the Death Star explosion in the Star Wars franchise and not in the theatrical release. lt is a pretty cool effect and was a hell of a jaw dropping intro to ST6 despite its scientific ridiculousness.
I usually hate mindscape episodes, but this one was entertaining at least. More Takei is always good.
@3 – wildfyrewarning: Future clothing adjusts to the wearer. Haven’t you seen Back To The Future 2? :)
@45 – lerris: Hah! But that’s only if you insist on getting your recipes from YouTube videos instead of just plain old webpages.
@48 – MeredithP: LOL!
It’s great to see Sulu, Rand and indeed Kang. (What lifespan do Klingons have by the way, this was 80 years ago and Kang was still alive in DS9 season 2 three years back) but the story is not really up to much. The virus had to be the silliest virus ever concocted in a writers room and the whole thing seems to be almost like a first attempt at The finale for Enterprise, just substitute the mind meld for the holodeck. They should probably have realised it didn’t work here It was not going to work then.
I’ve been very surprised by this rewatch, Krad. When you refused to do one for VGR for several years, I was expecting there to be a lot more hate than for TNG or DS9. But that may change as we go along, and I think it’s funny that both reviews of Flashback have about the same number of comments (but there are less pretty pictures in this second version!).
I would say that device is under Tuvok’s ear, and not on it. Since Spock’s enforced meld with Valeris is the major talking-point of TUC, it’s ironic that Flashback revolves around one in order to save Tuvok’s life. I liked that we get to see TUC from the Excelsior’s perspective because watching it again recently, it struck me how little Sulu got to do in that film.
Flashback seems to have borrowed an idea from Back to the Future II, by telling a parallel story inside of the main one. It’s never as dazzling though and it’s something both BTTFII and Trials and Tribble-ations did much better. The episode even forgets about being an anniversary special towards the end as the technobabble takes over, whereas TAT never lost sight of what it wanted to be.
Valtane was very much alive at the end of TUC but they were written five years apart so there are bound to be mistakes, like Scotty assuming Kirk charged to his rescue in Relics. The Doctor describing the many strange things that can happen to somebody in this universe mirrors a similar line Kim will get in Favourite Son later in the season. Could Neelix’s success with the juice be a residual of his experience as Tuvix?
@58/David Sim: “Since Spock’s enforced meld with Valeris is the major talking-point of TUC, it’s ironic that Flashback revolves around one in order to save Tuvok’s life.”
Huh? The meld here is entirely consensual. The issue with the forced meld in TUC is not that it’s a meld, but that it’s forced. A surgeon operating on a patient is not equivalent to a torturer stabbing a prisoner. Consent and intent make all the difference.
@58 – “Valtane was very much alive at the end of TUC but they were written five years apart so there are bound to be mistakes, like Scotty assuming Kirk charged to his rescue in Relics.”
It wasn’t a mistake. Moore made a deliberate choice. And seeing as everyone except Shatner, Doohan and Koenig had turned down the movie, he would have had two TOS characters instead of three.
“The only way to address the Scotty/Relics issue in Generations was not to have Scotty in the movie at all. I wasn’t willing to make that trade for the sake of a single line that can easily be rationalized away by saying “Scotty was momentarily confused.” I still wouldn’t do it.”
AOL Chat with Ronald D. Moore
Leslie, Valtane and Scotty’s memory, all support my theory that transporters can be used to copy and paste people.
I interpreted Tuvok’s expression and comment about the juice (“impressive”) to mean “You’ve exceeded yourself in creating something truly disgusting and vile this time, Mr Neelix”. Of course Vulcans have no sense of humour, so he’d surely have a logical reason for being so privately ironic about it.
17 months on I know, but I felt it was an important point.
(I’ve never been able to work out if Neelix is supposed to be a really good cook, or not. People say things like “I’ll eat Neelix’s food and save my replicator rations for two weeks”, but there’s usually plenty of people in the mess hall. I think his food looks quite interesting and appetising myself.
Tuvok doesn’t seem to like his food though, or his company, which makes it odd that he is always reading his tablets in the mess hall.)
@62/lessthanideal: “I’ve never been able to work out if Neelix is supposed to be a really good cook, or not.”
I think the idea was partly that Neelix had very alien culinary sensibilities, but largely that he’d survived for much of his life by scrounging and living off whatever he could find, so he was in the habit of cooking with ingredients most would find distasteful. It’s like a crew that was spoiled by gourmet dining having to learn to eat like survivalists.