“Innocence”
Written by Anthony Williams and Lisa Klink
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 2, Episode 22
Production episode 138
Original air date: April 8, 1996
Stardate: 49578.2
Captain’s log. A shuttle from Voyager has crashed on a moon. Tuvok survived the crash, but Ensign Bennet did not. His last words are regret, as he’d always thought he was lucky that he had no family back in the Alpha Quadrant, but now that he’s dying, he regrets not having anybody to remember him. Since he’s not an opening-credits regular on the show, he can rest assured that no one would remember him anyhow.
Tuvok puts his body in stasis to protect it until he can get the body back to Voyager, then discovers that he’s not alone: three children, Tressa, Elani, and Corin, have also crash-landed on the moon, and the other people on their ship died as well. When Tuvok assures them that he will do everything he can to get everyone off the moon, all three kids hug him.
We cut to Voyager, where we get the whole story: the Drayans are a very isolationist people, but the moons surrounding their planet are full of polyferranides, which Voyager needs. Despite their xenophobia, the Drayan first prelate, Alcia, agrees to come on board and meet the crew, as she is intrigued by their story.
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To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
The children are impatient for Tuvok to fix the ship, but he responds with typical Vulcan bluntness with regard to their situation, refusing to sugarcoat it. (He also disappoints the kids by telling them that the only food they have available are rations.) The kids promise to sit quietly and behave well while Tuvok effects repairs and then they proceed to run around like crazy and behave badly.
Alcia is taken to engineering first. She explains that Drayans used to obsess over technology, but it became more important than the people themselves, and so they had a reformation to move away from technology. Chakotay points out that some humans have done that, too. But Alcia says that Drayans have avoided all contact with outsiders so that won’t happen again.
As night starts to fall, the children get scared. They are afraid of the Morrok, a creature that will take them away. They reveal that there were two other children with them, but the Morrok took them. Tuvok is skeptical, and he checks the children’s crash site, finding no evidence of a Morrok (or of the other two kids).
A Drayan ship flies overhead, and the children are scared to death of being found by the people on board. Tuvok accedes and hides from the search parties with the kids.
After visiting sickbay, Alcia is called away. Janeway is hoping this was the first step toward a trade agreement, but Alcia shuts that down, saying Voyager should continue on its way, but thanks for letting us visit!
Disappointed, Janeway calls back the various survey teams, but Tuvok and Bennet don’t report back. A search for them finds their shuttle and a body on a moon, but sensors can’t get any better a read on the moon’s surface. Alcia contacts them and is livid that one of their shuttles has violated their crysata—the moon is sacred ground to them. Janeway apologizes, and just wants to retrieve their people and go on their way.
As night drags on, Tuvok tries to get the kids to sleep, but they’re too scared. So he sings a song he used to sing to one of his children, “Falor’s Journey,” which puts them to sleep.
However, the next morning, Elani and Corin are gone, leaving only Tressa. Tuvok is concerned, and leaves Tressa at the shuttle with a phaser (a rather insane notion) while he checks out the nearby cave. There, he finds the other children’s clothes, and now he’s wondering if the Morrok is real.
Tuvok manages to repair the shuttle enough to take off. Kim is able to punch a comm signal through temporarily, and Tuvok and Janeway each fill the other in, including Tressa’s fear of the Drayans—which answers Janeway’s question as to what’s taking the Drayans so long to find them. Janeway takes Paris in a shuttle to the surface against Alcia’s wishes.
Alcia opens fire on Tuvok’s shuttle, and it crashes again. Paris lands the other shuttle, and everyone confronts everyone else. Alcia reveals that Tressa is actually 96 years old. Drayans age backwards, apparently, and when they reach this age they get confused and forgetful. They come to the crysata to die, with the attendants to aid them. But the attendants died in the crash. Upon seeing how much Tressa has bonded with Tuvok, Alcia realizes that Tuvok has served in the role of attendant, especially since Tuvok offers to stay with her to the end.
Janeway and Alcia both offer apologies, each realizing they’d misjudged the other. They leave Tressa to face her demise in peace, as she and Tuvok enter the cave.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway waxes rhapsodic on the subject of first contacts, as does Chakotay, and they’re both thrilled at the opportunity to meet with the Drayans. At first, things seem to go well, and she even quotes Plato at Alcia at one point, so she’s that much more disappointed when Alcia buggers off without continuing relations.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok tries to teach the children various Vulcan meditative techniques, to poor effect. Still, he generally does a very good job of taking care of them, showing his parental skills.
Half and half. Torres is thrilled to report that there’s tons of polyferranides on the moon she and Neelix checked out, which makes it that much more disappointing when Janeway tells her that the Drayans don’t wanna come out and play.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Kes has apparently been coaching the EMH in how to be diplomatic, and he does fairly well when Alcia is brought to sickbay. When she leaves suddenly, he fears he screwed something up, though both Janeway and Kes assure him he did fine.
Do it.
“He always used to ask me to play ‘Falor’s Journey.’ It is a tale of enlightenment consisting of 348 verses.” (Awkward pause and a devastated look on the kids’ faces.) “It may not be necessary to include the complete narrative.”
–Tuvok introducing his bedtime story, which his youngest son was very fond of.
Welcome aboard. Marnie McPhail plays Alcia; the actor will appear in First Contact as an ill-fated Enterprise engineer and as one of the Starfleet officers in the game Star Trek: Borg.
The three kids are played by Tiffany Taubman (Tressa), Sarah Rayne (Elani), and Tahj D. Mowry (Corin), while Richard Garon plays Bennet
Trivial matters: Voyager was last seen looking for polyferranides in “Tattoo.”
Of the three child actors, only Tahj D. Mowry is still in the biz, as it were, most recently having a starring role in Baby Daddy as Tucker Dobbs. Neither Tiffany Taubman nor Sarah Rayne continued acting once they reached adulthood.
The saying Chakotay speaks to Alcia when she beams aboard, which he says translates to, “Peace in your heart, fortune in your steps,” is not based on any actual Indigenous sayings, and the language he speaks the saying in doesn’t appear to be any actual Indigenous language. More nonsense from fake Indian advisor “Jamake Highwater.”
Voyager at this point has 147 people on the ship. They left the Ocampa homeworld with 154, and added one (the Wildman baby, born in “Deadlock”), while one departed (Seska in “State of Flux”), and seven have now died (Durst in “Faces,” Bendera and two others in “Alliances,” Darwin in “Meld,” Jonas in “Investigations,” and Bennet here). Only 145 are in a position to help on board, though, as one is an infant and the other is confined to quarters (Suder).
This is the second time Trek has gone all “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and given us a species who ages backward, the previous time being in the animated episode “The Counter-Clock Incident.”
Set a course for home. “May this day find you at peace and leave you with hope.” If it wasn’t for the ending, I would totally give this episode a 9 or a 10, as it’s really excellent. Tim Russ proves himself once again to be one of the best parts of Voyager, as he imbues Tuvok with a strong sense of compassion, of efficiency, and of logic. Best of all, though, is that he shows that he’s an excellent parent. Yes, he is a bit blunt with the kids, but he’s also honest and straightforward with them—and never condescending. Speaking as someone who works with kids a lot (teaching them karate), I’ve found that talking to children like they’re people (rather than talking down to them like you’re a grownup and they’re dumb kids) is much more effective, and that’s how Tuvok talks to Tressa, Elani, and Corin.
I also love that Russ actually breaks into song. Scripter Lisa Klink has said that she wrote that bit specifically to take advantage of Russ’s singing voice, which is excellent. (Russ still performs at convention appearances, too. I’ve seen him sing at both I-Con and Farpoint over the years…)
On top of that, it’s a strong first-contact situation. I adore the joyous exchange between Janeway and Chakotay about how thrilling first-contact situations are, even when they go badly (Chakotay gives an example of a fuckup he made early in his career). Marnie McPhail does a great job as Alcia, her fascination for Voyager’s story warring with her cultural mores. I also like that the Drayans are basically humanoid, but they wear full transparent face coverings. It’s a nice symbol of their isolationism and desire to avoid contact with outsiders.
But then we get the “sci-fi twist” that the kids aren’t kids at all, they’re actually elderly, they just happen to age backwards, and they weren’t being annoying bratty kids, they’re just confused and befuddled with age. And, um, no.
First off, this takes the zing out of Trek doing a show focused on kids right. The franchise is wildly inconsistent on the matter. On the one hand, you have the brilliance of “Disaster,” “Nepenthe,” and the characters of Jake Sisko and Nog. On the other hand, you have the wretchedness of “And the Children Shall Lead,” “Rascals,” and the character of Wes Crusher.
“Innocence” would nominally fall into the former category, but for the ending. And while the twist probably seemed like a good idea in the writers room, it utterly failed on execution, because childishness and dementia are not the same fucking thing.
This one is personal for me, because I spent the years between 2008 and 2016 watching my grandmother suffer from dementia, and the notion that running around and playing and asking silly questions and demanding things you can’t have and being scared of monsters is exactly the same as dementia or Alzheimer’s or senility or whatever (the script soft-pedals the notion, which doesn’t help) is at best ignorant and at worst insulting. The biggest issue with the analogizing of childishness to senility is that throughout the episode, Tressa, Corin, and Elani are completely coherent. Their sentences follow from one to the other, they’re aware of their surroundings, and they remember what they just said a minute ago.
And yes, they’re aliens, and yes, you can excuse why it’s not the same because of that, but the script is constructed in such a way that we’re supposed to think that the kids were acting like that due to the symptoms of old age, and we’re supposed to recognize it from human experiences. Star Trek aliens are almost never intended to be truly alien anyhow, they’re generally meant to be analogues for a type of human behavior, and this is a prime example of it. This was an attempt by people who don’t really get science fiction beyond “oooh, it’s weird space stuff” to do science fiction and failing at it.
Having said all that, I’m still ranking this episode high, because the work that was done up to the ending was so good—and so is the very ending, when Tuvok holds Tressa’s hand and goes with her to the cave. From the moment he sees the kids all the way to when he goes into that cave, Tuvok is acting as a guardian, and he’s really good at it. (Well, okay, except for the part where he hands a deadly weapon to a child and leaves her alone, which is seventeen kinds of nuts.) It’s one of the best vehicles for Russ’s superlative portrayal of a Vulcan, being true to what the previous thirty years had established about Vulcans.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be attending KAG Kon 2020: Home Invasion, an online event focusing on Klingon related stuff this coming weekend. Keith will be doing a reading, which will be available throughout the weekend, and also doing panel discussions on his Klingon fiction and on Klingon religion. Here’s his schedule.
There was a Buck Rogers episode with a species that aged backwards https://buckrogers.fandom.com/wiki/The_Golden_Man – when I first saw “Innocence” I thought of that one (usually Buck Rogers stole from Star Trek, not vice versa!).
AndyLove: As I said in the Trivial Matters section, Star Trek did do it once before, and it predated Buck Rogers: in the animated episode “The Counter-Clock Incident.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Right there with you on this one, Keith. The ending totally jobbed this episode, which I found well written and acted. I especially liked the part when Tuvok sings (I’m a sucker for singing in non-musical episodes/movies). But the ending was plain ridiculous. The kids should have had a deadly illness or something. Anything but the Benjamin Button routine.
@2: Krad: Sorry about skipping past that note.
The Counter-Clock Incident was at least set in another universe where time was running backwards to what is normal to us. Everything went backwards, not just the life cycle.
I agree this is a mostly good episode ruined by the backward-aging trope, but my objection is simpler: Backward aging is an incredibly stupid idea. What, are they born in a grave? Do they crawl back into somebody’s womb? It makes no sense!!!! The only thing that remotely salvages it is that the Drayans turn into some kind of energy beings at the end, so maybe they aren’t truly organic beings to begin with, but that leaves so many unanswered questions about what they are and how they got that way. Were they some kind of incorporeal posthumanoid species like the Organians who had a specieswide accident with a contraceptive and a time machine?
This is actually at least the third time the wider Trek franchise went to the backward-aging well. The second was in the debut issue of DC’s 6-issue Next Generation miniseries, written by Mike Carlin and illustrated by Pablo Marcos and Carlos Garzon. Riker and his team beam down to what they think will be a peaceful diplomatic mission and come under attack, and they ultimately find out the species ages backward and the adults attacking them are children playing war games. So it’s sort of a cross between “The Counter-Clock Incident” and “The Squire of Gothos.”
I liked the Drayans’ full-head veils. A very interesting costume idea. But they’re an even more appealing idea right around now. Maybe we should all adopt the fashion.
I’m sure I saw this episode in first run when it first aired but I have no memory of it and currently I’m not subscribed to any steaming service to give my opinion on it. But there is a very funny outtake from this episode compiled in this blooper reel where Tim Russ runs away from the cave (and another hilarious outtake from another episode where Russ reacts to getting shot by a phased blast):
https://youtu.be/7VE_iTwl-0o
Also, Taj Mowry is the younger brother of his more famous actor twin sisters, Tia and Tamera Mowry.
Lisa Klink had a smart take on this story, the notion of exploring Tuvok being a father and asking herself what Vulcan parents are like. It’s a good, honest question, and thankfully she didn’t use Sarek as a basis.
The concept is sound, and there are plenty of good scenes, both in the Tuvok front and in the Janeway front. But three things hold this episode back. One is the ending, which makes little sense when you stop to really think about the implications. As stated above, they were acting pretty rationally considering their “advanced” age. And how did they deal with this situation before achieving space flight? This moon is specifically designed for the ritual. Prior to that, did they have a specific sealed-off area in their homeworld for children to flock and die?
The second problem is the gratuitous use of child story clichés. Strike number one: the never-ending hugging of Tuvok, blatantly designed to garner cheap emotions. Strike number two: these supposedly “old” people decide to ignore Tuvok’s advice and act out. Most predictable way of poking fun at Tuvok’s Vulcan facade. Tressa is the only character that pushes past the cliché and sounds like a real character.
The third problem is, well, Shuttle Crash INC. – v. 3.0 (counting the Red Shirt as well).
@7 GarretH, he also had a series he headlined for awhile, Smart Guy, which I loved as a kid. Good time, those.
@7/GarretH: “(and another hilarious outtake from another episode where Russ reacts to getting shot by a phased blast)”
That was much funnier than most of the flubs I usually see in blooper reels. How much longer could he have kept that up? It was like a Tim Conway bit on The Carol Burnett Show.
@CLB, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but there was a line said by Alcia that twigged me on to the idea of their species not being born or aging the same way human’s do – I actually thought this was going to turn out to be some kind of instant puberty. I was expecting the missing children to suddenly show up as young adults to reassure Tressa that there was nothing to fear. Still would have been cliche, but at least the children’s behavior would have made more sense since they would have actually been children.
@9/Whitespine: Ah, you’re probably around a decade younger than me since the years that that show was on I was going from high school into college. I was more familiar with his sisters’ sitcom work because a few years prior to that I used to casually watch it as part of ABC’s TGIF Friday night sitcom block that included Full House w/the Olsen twins and Family Matters with Steve Erkel (“Did I do that?”). And Taj also made a couple of appearances on his sisters’ show so I may have seen him on that in addition to his guest role on Voyager.
Huh, when I saw the synopsis that said “if not for the ending” I assumed it was the one where the find a dead Borg, though I guess s2 was a bit early for that level of panic in the writing.
@13/TheNewNo2: No, that’s still 3/4 of a season away.
I totally agree with CLB, @6, on the blatant idiocy of the aging backward trope. I mean how the heck can that work biologically???
And I think full face veils would be a lot more comfortable than masks! Would my glasses still fog up?
“a specieswide accident with a contraceptive and a time machine”
That sounds like something From the Files of the DTI.
@15, a full veil should prevent glasses from fogging up after a couple of minutes. The reason glasses fog up is a combination of humidity and relative temperature. In a poorly-fitted regular face mask, your breath is both hot and wet relative to your glasses and tends to be directed upwards. So the glasses tend to fog, especially at first. As the glasses’ temperature starts to match the environment, the fogging pretty much stops. You can see the same thing when you exit an air-conditioned building; your glasses fog for a minute and then clear up when the glasses’ temp equalizes with the outside.
Now, all that said, a face veil should allow the warmer and wetter air you exhale to stay around longer to let the glasses acclimate better, but you’ll also probably feel stuffy and maybe like you’re gonna suffocate. Tradeoffs.
I haven’t seen this episode yet. Is it possible it’s literally portraying “second childhood”, so they are born and grow to adulthood in what we consider a normal manner, then dwindle back to childhood?
Thank you for these reviews.
I’ve always loved Voyager and it’s always been one of my favourite ventures into Trek. I’ve been reading these along with my own rewatch and listening to the Delta Flyers podcast and I find it all very comforting and some of your observations insightful into a part of my Trek history that I felt I knew so well.
@16/wiredog: ““a specieswide accident with a contraceptive and a time machine”
That sounds like something From the Files of the DTI.”
It’s actually an allusion to a line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Another “backwards aging” precursor that I should have mentioned – Mork and Mindy’s son, Merth, born as Jonathan Winters.
@21/AndyLove: Admittedly, Mearth (he’s Mearth from Earth, son of Mork from Ork) sidestepped one of the biggest logic problems with the backward-aging idea by being gestated in an egg. Maybe the Drayans form in a similar way.
There are, of course, many precedents much earlier than any TV show, as there always are for virtually any fictional trope. Merlin in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King lived backwards in time, remembering the future instead of the past and finding first meetings sad because for him they were goodbyes. (Probably an inspiration for River Song in Doctor Who.) The White Queen from Through the Looking Glass lived backward in time as well. Keith has already mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Plus there are various fountain-of-youth myths going back to antiquity.
I found this one rather sweet. It doesn’t give Tim Russ something different to do in the same sense “Meld” did, but watching the stoic and serious Tuvok having to play parent to a group of unruly children is a nice change of pace anyway, hitting the mark right from the end of pre-credits and him giving an “Oh great” look as they all hug him. The running gag of Tuvok’s carefully measured plans being disrupted by the children behaving like children never grows old, even when it uses such as obvious gags as the cut from them promising to be still and quiet to them running around the shuttle causing chaos.
After initially seeming like a friendly alien race of the week, the Drayans suddenly become threatening and unhelpful. But the twist ending feels very Star Trek: Races who are very different in some ways find common ground, and a threat dissipates when you get to know each other. I’ve read reviews pouring scorn on the reveal, wondering how anyone could be born in this society, and it seems that’s the view of many on here. I was agreeing with them right up until rewatching the episode, but you know what? In a universe as big as this one, I think it’s wrong to say “That couldn’t happen.” It’s a shame that budget restrictions mean they have to do it with a humanoid species, which possibly makes it doubly unlikely, but there are ways for it to happen. Alicia’s explanation of the children’s state is “At this age they become easily confused. Their memories are clouded. Near the end of life we reach a state of complete innocence. We free ourselves from all responsibilities to this life and we leave it peacefully.” Whilst I accept there’s meant to be some parallel with dementia, it’s obviously not saying “This is exactly like dementia”, it’s saying this is what happens to this species when they get “old”. It’s also worth noting that she refers to her people as being “created” rather than “born”. In short, there are more things in heaven and earth.
The Doctor trying and mostly succeeding in being polite to the visiting Drayans, reference to dignitaries having accidents aside, is quite a fun scene. (“Kes has been coaching me.”/“It shows.”) Paris gets to be present for the climax. Tuvok clearly wasn’t keeping that close an eye on the children for Elani and Corin to presumably wander off into the cave without him noticing. I hope he set that phaser on stun before handing it to Tressa.
Nitpick: I don’t believe Tuvok checks out the crash site or indeed that we see any sign of the actual crashed Drayan ship. Possibly a confusion with Tuvok checking out the cave where the Morrok supposedly lives.
Agreed that the ending is silly, and unneeded. The children could have just as easily been sent there for some kind of end-of-childhood ritual or something, which would have given us the chance to see some more of an alien culture without the silly twist.
This episode lucked out in that it relied heavily on the character of Tuvok, and Tim Russ was (as always) up for the challenge. Tuvok really is one of my favorite Vulcans, because Russ never forgets that the Vulcans are deeply emotional creatures that have worked very hard to suppress those emotions, and not just “humans but stronger and with no feelings.” Tuvok is clearly someone that feels things deeply, from his loyalty to Janeway, to his irritation with Neelix, to his love for his family and desire to see them again- but all of that is filtered through his intense emotional discipline, and Russ plays all of that so well.
So it’s more of a global comment than something that attaches to a specific episode, but: The geography of the DQ is kind of crazy, which I guess is a natural side effect of each episode being standalone with, most of the time, very little connecting them. So our little corner of space has the constant threat of Kazon/Vidiian raids, such as in last week’s Deadlock, but also standalone planets that don’t appear to give much thought to planetary defense, such as in this episode and Dreadnought. It really seems like these people are or will soon be organ banks, because they have no plausible way to defend themselves, and their little Amish philosophy is going to get them all killed soon enough once it turns out the Vidiians don’t play as nice as Janeway does here. Picard eventually revealed that the aliens from Prime Factors got assimilated, but really I suspect that most of these one off cultures we saw eventually got wiped out one way or another. But, really, the larger issue is that there wasn’t much thought to making the DQ a coherent setting and each author just went with whatever worked for this week’s story. Sometimes it’s infested with dangerous predators, other times defenseless planets can go about their business without worrying about alien threats.
@25/Rick: Space is immense beyond the ability of any Earthly precedents or analogies to cope with. We have to resort to numbers. Within a radius of just 100 light years, there might be something like 15,000 stars, at least in our neck of the woods. Nearer the fringe of the galaxy where Voyager spends its first three seasons, the stars are sparser, so let’s say that a civilization that operates within 100 ly of its home system has access to maybe 10,000 stars, virtually all of which would have planets, based on current models. If its ships visited one of those stars per week on average, then it would take nearly 200 years to visit every one even once.
So it’s entirely plausible that most of the worlds within range of a rapacious power would still be untouched even if others in the same range were under aggressive attack. Especially since such a power’s expansion would not be in a uniform sphere, but would probably branch out from the earlier worlds they attacked or conquered to other desirable worlds within range of those worlds, and so on. A lot of the surrounding territory would be skipped over.
Really, Federation geography is every bit as random. The Federation is shown to have members or allies in star systems hundreds of light years away like Rigel, but the Pollux system only 34 ly away is still uncharted as of TOS. The writers just pulled star names out of their hats without bothering to get the astrocartography right, so it’s a total mess.
Nobody in the DQ has transporter technology right? I just realized that I don’t remember the Drayans making any comment about that experience. Though they do comment about the Federation’s pride in its technological advancements.
@27 the people on that pleasure planet had some form of transporter technology that allowed them to jump from planets to planets (and, presumably hop around their own world, too). I think maybe the Federation Transporter technology isn’t in the DQ, but some other form of transporting matter is at least common knowledge, if not common practice.
I really liked this episode, ending and all (one must admit that I’m a student of the Humanities rather than a STEM-type; my patience with literary conceits such as ageing backwards might be a little more than that old chestnut strictly deserves), though you make an excellent point about the rather nasty flaws in associating childhood with dementia.
Children can certainly be demented, but thankfully that’s not the same thing as dementia.
@27/Austin: “Nobody in the DQ has transporter technology right?”
There have been at least two transporter-capable species in the show so far, the Vidiians and the Sikarians. They do seem to be the exceptions within this tiny sliver of the quadrant that Voyager‘s managed to get through so far, but that’s just a local variation. Overall, there’s no reason why any given 25% of the galaxy should be any different in its mix of primitive and hyper-advanced cultures from any other.
@30 – It seems strange, though, that the Kazon would hunger for that technology if it’s available somewhere else in the DQ. You would think that a technology like that would have proliferated throughout the DQ among the more technologically advanced societies.
What if Bennet had lived? We’d have had a conflict between a sentimental but inexperienced human dealing with children and an experienced parent who offends him by not being sentimental enough about their new charges. Suppose in addition that these are really children and they are wrecked on this moon because their parents tried to escape the dhayans inward looking culture? And the conflict is between the Dhayans wanting the children returned and the children’s own fear of going back?
@31/Austin: Proliferation requires commerce. The Vidiians probably see the Kazon merely as organ banks to prey on, not potential trading partners, especially given that the Kazon would probably try to steal their tech rather than trade for it. And the Sikarians have their own “Prime Directive” and don’t share tech with less advanced powers any more than the Federation does.
Keep in mind that the Kazon were envisioned by the producers as analogous for street gangs. If there’s a biker gang tearing up the neighborhood and robbing minimarts, you probably wouldn’t go up to them and offer to sell them your car. So I doubt many powers in the region are interested in sharing tech with the Kazon.
@33 – True, but I was thinking more along the lines of Kazon taking the technology by force. But they seemed oddly focused on Voyager for that (due, in some part, to Seska).
@34/Austin: They seem focused on Voyager because the show is called Voyager. We don’t see their attempts to steal it from others because the show isn’t about those others. It’s selection bias. You can only see the stuff you’re looking at.
And it’s only the Kazon-Nistrim that are focused on Voyager. The Kazon are an assortment of nomadic sects, each acting independently. Maje Culluh of the Nistrim is focused on Voyager, but that has no bearing on what other Kazon sects may be doing elsewhere.
@34 I think the intend was supposed to be that the Kazon were, basically, space pirates, and that Voyager was a tempting target because she had power and technology- but no back-up, allies, or home base. If they could take it over it would be a huge win for the Kazon, with no downside of, say, a government suddenly declaring war on them for doing so. I never saw them as being able to attack a whole planet (the Ocampa were already pretty devastated by ecological disaster and had limited understanding of the technology the Caretaker had given them, and the Kazon still couldn’t overtake them), or even really being willing to get a whole civilization mad at them. Picking off smaller trading ships or raiding outposts that wouldn’t *quite* get a planetary power to try to truly retaliate in force always seemed more like their M.O. to me.
@36 and @34,
Jeri Taylor’s stated the original idea with the Kazon was to use them as an analogy for Gang violence:
The series’ co-creators originally conceived of the Kazon as contemporary Los Angeles street gangs. Jeri Taylor recalled, “We felt with the Kazon we needed to address the tenor of our times and what […] was happening in our cities and recognizing a source of danger and social unrest. We wanted to do that metaphorically.”
Obviously, the idea was ultimately abandoned during pre-production, but aspects of it arguably remained intact with the different sects.
Would the Vidiians even consider harvesting Kazon organs? They’d probably consider them tainted. I recall Seven of Nine’s later admission that even the Borg considered the Kazon unworthy of assimilation. It made me laugh that even the show’s writers were willing to take passive agressive potshots at them. I know some of the actors weren’t fans of the alien race either, Kate Mulgrew being one of them, according to the Voyager Companion book.
@38/Eduardo: I’m sure Kazon organs are as good as anyone else’s. What tended to get lost in Voyager was that the Borg were more interested in entire civilizations than individual beings. They were a collective consciousness, after all, so to them, individual people were just cells in the body of a civilization. What mattered to them was the whole, not the parts. And the Kazon had no organized civilization or technological base of their own. They were roving bands using ships they’d stolen from the Trabe. That was why they were of no interest to the Borg. It had nothing to do with their physiology as individual beings, because the Borg don’t usually approach things on the level of individuals.
But the Vidiians’ priorities are in the opposite direction — the individual is a collection of useful parts to be deconstructed. They’re reductionist where the Borg are holist, so the standards are completely different. Whatever the Kazon’s limitations as a culture, they’re certainly physically robust, so I’m sure the Vidiians would find them suitable donors. They can’t exactly afford to be finicky, after all.
The Vidiians never came across as particularly brave to me, and “Faces” established that they aren’t physically strong, so I imagine that going after the Kazon wouldn’t be too wise. They might pick off one or two of them if they came across them, the way they did with Neelix, but I doubt they would try boarding a Kazon ship and try to engage in close-quarters combat with them.
@40/wildfyrewarning: It’s not like the Vidiians are hunting with spears and nets. They have extremely advanced weapons and ships and can run rings around Voyager. The Kazon would pose little threat to them.
“Speaking as someone who works with kids a lot (teaching them karate), I’ve found that talking to children like they’re people (rather than talking down to them like you’re a grownup and they’re dumb kids) is much more effective”
Being an English teacher for children in Russia myself, I agree! In my situation, I find that sometimes, in addition, it helps to put myself at their level, just like parents sometimes do. Out of curiosity, how about when you teach kids karate, is it all about training them to think and act like adults, or do you find moments when it’s okay to make them laugh or smile with humor appropriate for their age, and to laugh with them? (All while keeping behavior managed, of course)
erikm: As a cursory reading of my work for this very web site will imply, I always use humor. :) So yes, I do.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@43. krad: Aaah, your Kung Fu must be strong as Jacky Chan if you can make them both laugh and tie them up in knots!
(-;
@43, 44: I imagine KRAD’s karate lessons are this much fun:
https://youtu.be/7t8xwpW8gJQ
:op
GarrettH: Um, no. Not even close. (Though I do give the episode writers credit for getting the Japanese terms right, for all that none of those things would ever happen in any martial arts dojo…..)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
26 ChristopherLBennett: “Within a radius of just 100 light years, there might be something like 15,000 stars, at least in our neck of the woods. Nearer the fringe of the galaxy where Voyager spends its first three seasons, the stars are sparser, so let’s say that a civilization that operates within 100 ly of its home system has access to maybe 10,000 stars, virtually all of which would have planets, based on current models. If its ships visited one of those stars per week on average, then it would take nearly 200 years to visit every one even once.”
You raise a valid point about the vastness of space, but the relevant number isn’t the number of stars– for purposes of the Vidiians and a lesser extent the Kazon, the relevant number is the number of stars with sentient life (or at least similar enough that their organs are useful). So a fleet of Vidiian scoutships engaged in a logical search pattern, could determine easily which ones have life, and send word back. It’s generous to assume 1% of the stars will have planets with life, so suddenly the population of 10,000 stars only has 100 viable targets. With reasonable assumptions about number of stars and a small fleet of scoutships, it just wouldn’t take that long to scout out what the 100 targets are, then it’s just a matter of figuring out which ones are the softest targets. Hiding in the vastness of space shouldn’t work against a species determined to find organs. They’re surely advanced enough to scout the surrounding area in a logical way, and since Voyager encounters them both before and after this, then this planet is going to have to deal with them sooner or later.
Now, presumably, the Vidiians find it easier to go after primitive species– a primitive culture that had enough agriculture for a large-ish population but was still pre-industrial would be perfect. Much like the Wraith in SGA acted, these primitive cultures would essentially be cattle that ranched themselves. SGA handled this fairly well most of the time, concern about the Wraith was a common theme on planets in the Pegasus Galaxy even if the story wasn’t directly about them. This isn’t like that at all; with a couple of exceptions, either the Vidiians/Kazon are the threat of the week or for purposes of this episode they don’t exist at all.
@47/Rick: “It’s generous to assume 1% of the stars will have planets with life, so suddenly the population of 10,000 stars only has 100 viable targets.”
Your assumptions are out of date. We’ve now discovered thousands of exoplanets, enough to tell us that virtually every star system has planets, and nearly every one has at least one planet in its habitable zone. Not all those planets would have the right size or atmosphere to support life, but the percentage of lifebearing planets is probably much, much higher than 1%. Particularly given how ubiquitous sentient civilizations seem to be in the Trek universe, and how many civilizations have been shown to colonize, seed, or terraform worlds that didn’t evolve native life of their own (a factor that tends to be ignored in Drake Equation discussions).
“Much like the Wraith in SGA acted, these primitive cultures would essentially be cattle that ranched themselves.”
The Wraith had been around since antiquity and were found all over the Pegasus Galaxy. The Vidiians are surely a far more limited population, particularly considering how badly their numbers have no doubt been diminished by the Phage. It’s not just a question of the number of targets they have to explore, it’s a question of whether they have enough people to cover a sizeable percentage of them in a reasonable amount of time.
@46/Krad: I wasn’t being serious, that’s why I used the silly clip.
@38 – Eduardo: “Yay, a new liver!” / “Ewww, it’s Kazon!”
@6 CLB – Thanks for that Hitchiker’s Guide shout out. I’ve loved that “trilogy” for a long time (except for Mostly Harmless). It’s been way too long since I’ve done a re-read. I may have to remedy that.
As for the episode: It wasn’t one of my favorites so far. I haven’t developed an appreciation for Russ’ Tuvok up to this point. To me, full Vulcans are a very tricky concept to pull off and the portrayal hasn’t won me over. It may just be simplified tastes on my part. I can appreciate the torn nature of Spock and in its way I can appreciate the all out a-holish arrogance of the Vulcan captain that developed his own baseball team to rub it in Sisko’s face on DS9. Maybe the Tuvok character will win me over, but so far it hasn’t.
I didn’t mind the story itself even though I dislike the living life backwards concept. The concept of the Drayans’ isolationist tendencies was worth exploring and it was done fairly well. Of course, for a society that kind of shuns technology, they seemed to be fairly well in the starship and weapons department. No mule drawn buggies for them.
There’s actually another episode with backwards aging beyond this episode, The Counterclock Incident, and the comic mentioned by CLB. In TNG‘s Too Short a Season, Admiral Mark Jameson essentially ages backwards after taking an alien de-aging drug. Although I’m not sure that counts considering it was artificially induced.
I have no idea how to make it plausible, but there is a certain intrigue in the idea of aging backwards. You start out elderly and get all the complications of that out of the way first and you reach your “prime” towards the end of your life. However, I totally agree with Krad’s strong reaction to how it was portrayed in this episode. It’s treated with the subtlety of Tuvok giving a “loaded” firearm to a child. It’s ignorant and insulting to those (myself included) who have watched a loved one die from dementia.
As for Tuvok, this episode is another example of my strong belief that Tim Russ is every bit as good at playing a Vulcan as Leonard Nimoy was.
@7/GarretH: I’ve seen those outtakes too. Tim Russ’s never ending knockout by phaser blast is hilarious!
@52/Thierafhal: I wouldn’t count “Too Short a Season” (or “Rascals” or the resolutions of “The Deadly Years,” “The Lorelei Signal,” and “Unnatural Selection”) because we’re not talking about any backward aging, we’re talking about the problematic conceit of a species that’s somehow born old and dies a fetus, or whatever.
@53/CLB: Ahh okay, ya, that makes sense. Although, Jameson’s premature death from the strain of his cells being forced to grow younger makes me wonder what would have happened if he did go younger. It’s a similar question as with the Benjamin Button routine: Does he turn into an embryo before our eyes? It’s all ludicrous.
@54/Thierafhal: What fiction gets wrong about aging is that there isn’t one single mechanism behind it, so that reversing the process of growing old would ultimately reverse the process of growing up as well. Rather, to simplify enormously, there are two competing processes, cell growth and cell decay. In the first stage of life, cell growth dominates and we mature into adults. In the second phase, the processes are roughly balanced and we remain stable. In the third phase, cell decay dominates and we deteriorate. So it follows that if you reversed the decay processes that lead to old age, the endgame would just be adulthood — although if you just had growth unbalanced by decay, it would probably result in cancer.
Also, you can’t just reverse the process of bone growth. Maybe the organs could lose mass and shrink, but the bones are pretty much fixed at their final length, so I don’t think an adult body could shrink back to child size under any circumstances. It certainly couldn’t do it while we watched like in some reverse-aging fiction, since the mass couldn’t just disappear. It would have to be removed from the body through respiration, perspiration, or… methods unsuitable for broadcast. (Of course, the trope of rapid aging from child to adult has the same problem — how do they gain mass without eating?)
Bonkers science that makes no sense and defies basic understanding of a complex process like aging?
Are we sure this isn’t a Braga episode?
At least this shuttle is hardier than most. It actually manages to survive all the way to the end of the episode. I agree that the best way to deal or raise kids is to never talk down to them but just to talk to them. Innocence has the type of ending that M. Night Shyamalan likes to specialise in – a surprise reversal that upends everything but in retrospect seems rather hokey later on. But another example of this sort of twist was in the Red Dwarf episode Backwards which a lot of people say is a classic but I felt didn’t really hold up on subsequent viewings because it was predicated on one single gag.
6: I’d find a veil just as annoying as a mask. 7: Taj is probably more entertaining than those two put together. Oh, and it’s streaming. 10: I thought Robert Beltran was pretty funny too; I always thought Beltran had an underrated talent for comedy like his fake tale in Resolutions or winding Harry up about Seven in Revulsion. 56: Definitely not a Braga episode. Maybe that was Before and After?
Sure, the idea is silly, but the execution is about as good as you could hope, given the silly idea.
If Innocence were made later, I can imagine it would be Seven taking care of those three kids. I don’t know why the crew are so thrilled to get to know the Drayans because they’re so dull (unless it’s just because they have something Voyager needs).
Tuvok trying to instil discipline in the children is similar to the way his teaching methods fail to yield any results with the ex-Maquis in Learning Curve. Trusting a child with a weapon is madness; a parent trusting a child with a weapon is positively psychotic!
27: Maybe the Drayans did have transporter technology before they abandoned that as well. 39: The Kazon and Hirogen are similarly nomadic but it takes Voyager an astounding two years until they’re clear of Kazon space but with the Hirogen it just takes a few episodes (not wanting to make the same mistakes again).
@59/David: As I often point out, there’s nothing astounding about a nomadic people being spread across a very wide range. It’s exactly what you’d expect. Having them keep meeting the same Kazon sect was a stretch, but somewhat justified as Culluh was actively following them.
As for the Hirogen, they’re a lot older and more advanced, so it follows that their nomadic spread was even wider, but also more diffuse, so one might travel far before meeting a group of them again.
I love reading these comments. We’re still working through ST on UK Netflix having started with DS9 during the pandemic then seen all of TNG and making a slow start on Voy. It really has picked up once past the infamous Threshold.
I’d like to mention Counter Clock World by Dick which was my first aging backwards story. Characters did rise from the grave, regurgitate food and go into the womb but as I recall the problematic other end of the digestive process was not as you would imagine. He used, again as I recall some 50 years after reading it, the bizarre phrase ‘imbibed sorghum’.
As the children/elders simply disappear at the end of this ep rather than becoming fetuses etc I would assume some other kind of beginning for them rather than birth. Delighted others liked the costume design of the veils. Alien looks can add so much, or detract.
In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald doesn’t actually explain how the mother of the title character gives birth to an old man; he just describes the horrified reactions of the hospital staff. This approach seems reasonable, as it’s not really a science fiction story. Said story is now 100 years old; anyone interested can read it in the Tales of the Jazz Age collection on Project Gutenberg (or other public domain repository of your choice).
In the 2008 movie of the same name, Button is born as a baby with an appearance and health symptoms somewhat suggestive of progeria, which makes somewhat more sense. The movie bears very little resemblance to the short story; despite this (or more honestly, because of it), I quite enjoyed the film.
As for this episode, I basically agree with krad’s review. (I’m in my second Voyager rewatch currently.)