“Once Upon a Time”
Written by Michael Taylor
Directed by John Kretchmer
Season 5, Episode 5
Production episode 199
Original air date: November 11, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Naomi Wildman is on the holodeck, doing a Flotter and Trevis program, specifically the one where Flotter and Trevis first meet and Flotter (a creature of water) realizes that Trevis (a tree creature) isn’t a monster.
Neelix interrupts to tell her that her mother is calling to say goodnight. Wildman has joined Paris and Tuvok on the Delta Flyer for an away mission, and says she won’t be back tomorrow as planned. After Naomi goes to bed, Wildman tells Neelix that they’ve hit an ion storm, and it’s taking a while to repair the damage.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
On the Delta Flyer, another ion storm hits. They barely get off a distress signal to Voyager, which the senior staff listens to in the briefing room—it’s full of static and is cut off. They’ve managed to track the Flyer to a star system, but there’s another ion storm brewing. Janeway orders them to plow through it.
Neelix asks what he should tell Naomi, but while Chakotay says she should be told, Neelix says she shouldn’t, and he’ll be in charge of distracting her while rescue operations are underway.
In the mess hall, Naomi explains to Neelix that she feels she should be doing more on the ship, and volunteers herself to be the captain’s assistant on the bridge. Naomi is also scared to death of Seven, and when Neelix excuses himself to talk to Kim (about how rescue operations are proceeding), Seven walks over to ask if she can sit with Naomi, who very nervously says the seat is taken.
Paris manages to crash land the Flyer on a planet, narrowly avoiding the volcanoes, but winding up in a crater deep underground. Wildman is badly injured in the crash, and she needs surgery that can’t really be performed with an emergency medikit by a not-so-glorified med tech (Paris). Unfortunately, Voyager hasn’t responded to their communication attempts—they may be buried too deep—and the cavern is flooded with poisonous gas, so leaving the Flyer on foot ain’t happening.
Kim finds some debris from the Flyer in a crater on the planet. That’s a bad sign, but it’s not enough debris to account for the whole ship, nor has he found any biological signs. Janeway has Chakotay take search teams to the surface.
Naomi is having a botany lesson with the EMH, after which Neelix takes her to the holodeck. Both of them distract Naomi from her querying as to why she hasn’t heard from Wildman today. When Naomi asks Neelix about his family, he says only that he hasn’t seen them in a very long time, not mentioning that they were massacred by the Metreon Cascade. Naomi then has the adventure of Flotter, Trevis, and the Ogre of Fire.
When Neelix puts Naomi to bed later, she asks again about her mother, and Neelix’s attempts to deflect her are stymied by the girl’s awareness of Starfleet regulations about how often away teams should check in. After he tucks Naomi in, Neelix calls up an image of his sister Alixia, asking her for guidance. That night, Neelix has nightmares about his family’s death at the hands of the Haakonians.
Janeway talks to Neelix about telling Naomi the truth, and Neelix rejects the idea wholeheartedly. She’s too young and sensitive, and he doesn’t want her to go through what he went through when his family was massacred. Janeway points out that it’s better for her to be prepared for the worst if it happens than to have the truth dropped on her all at once if the worst does happen. Neelix relents and agrees to tell her in the morning.
Paris and Tuvok have been unable to get life support functioning properly. Wildman expresses concern about what will happen to Naomi without her, but Tuvok assures her that she has been an excellent parent, and that influence will continue even after she’s gone.
Naomi wakes up in the middle of the night and calls for her mother. When the computer tells her Neelix is on the bridge, she heads there, noticing that Torres is putting an away team together. When she arrives on the bridge, sees what’s on the viewscreen (the crater where the Flyer crashed), and hears what everyone’s talking about, she figures it out. Neelix chases after her after she runs away, finding her on the holodeck. Flotter and Trevis try to get rid of Neelix, as Naomi doesn’t want to talk to liars. Naomi eventually agrees to talk to him, and Neelix explains why he didn’t tell her about the ion storm that hit the Flyer, and tells Naomi the full story of what happened to his family.
On the Flyer, Paris and Wildman both record final messages for, respectively, Torres and Naomi. Tuvok prefers to write prose letters.
Chakotay detects the Flyer buried in its crater. He uses phaser drills to make openings that they can put transporter enhancers into, which will allow Voyager to beam the entire shuttle and its contents to Voyager. This works very nicely, and Naomi is thrilled to be able to hug her mommy (after the EMH has patched her up).
When she’s well enough, Wildman joins her daughter on the holodeck for another adventure with Flotter and Trevis. Neelix and Janeway watch happily to see mother and daughter reunited.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? “Ion storms” were first seen on the original series in “Court Martial,” and have been used as “space hurricanes” by Trek ever since.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway played Flotter and Trevis on the holodeck when she was a kid. One time, she flooded the entire forest.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok does a magnificent job of reassuring Wildman that Naomi will be okay even if she doesn’t make it. He says: “My youngest child has been without a father for four years, yet I am certain of her well being, that I conveyed my values to her before leaving. And I have confidence in the integrity of those around her. You have been an exemplary mother to Naomi, and she is in the hands of people you trust. She will survive and prosper, no matter what becomes of us.” Just another reminder that Tuvok is a fantastic parent and is generally totally awesome.
Forever an ensign. Kim replicates a Flotter stuffie for Naomi. (Later in the episode, Naomi puts her combadge on it to keep Neelix from finding her.)
Kim also waxes rhapsodic about how great it is for Naomi to be growing up on a starship, getting to see supernovae, meet new aliens, and other cool stuff, conveniently ignoring the twenty-plus people who’ve died during their Delta Quadrant sojourn, not to mention the fact that she’s never even met her father…
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Once again Neelix’s insecurities overcome his common sense, as his own misery at the death of his family warps his ability to be a godfather to Naomi, leading him to prefer lying to her to preparing her for the possibility of losing the only family she’s ever known.
Resistance is futile. Naomi is scared to death of Seven, convinced that she’s going to assimilate her and everybody else. She will eventually get over this and become friends with the ex-Borg.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH is teaching Naomi about botany.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris tries to cheer Torres up in his message to her that she would find after he was dead by saying she’ll never have to stumble across day-old pizza or watch another Captain Proton chapter.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Apparently the adventures of Flotter and Trevis have been very popular with kids for a while, as Janeway, Kim, and Wildman all did those programs when they were children, and Naomi enjoys it now. Naomi is, in fact, using the same programs her mother used, as Flotter recognizes Wildman and remarks on how much older she is since the last time he saw her.
Do it.
“Did you envision a more heroic death?”
“I didn’t envision dying at all!”
“In accepting the inevitable, one finds peace.”
“If that’s another Vulcan saying, Tuvok, I’ll stick with, ‘live long and prosper’.”
–Tuvok trying and failing to comfort Paris.
Welcome aboard. Scarlett Pomers takes over the role of Naomi from Brooke Stephens, and will continue to the play the role throughout the rest of Voyager’s run (though Vanessa Branch will play a grown-up version in “Shattered”). Nancy Hower returns as Wildman. Pomers will be back in “Infinite Regress,” while we won’t see Hower again until “Fury.”
And we get a double Robert Knepper moment! Flotter and Trevis are played by, respectively, Wallace Langham (probably better known for his role as Hodges on CSI) and Justin Louis (probably better known as Louis Ferreira and for his role as Colonel Young on Stargate Universe).
Trivial matters: This is the first Voyager writing credit for Michael Taylor, whose previous writing credits include four episodes of DS9 (among them, “The Visitor” and “In the Pale Moonlight,” two of that show’s finest). He’ll write or co-write nine episodes this season as a freelancer before becoming a story editor for season six and executive story editor for season seven.
This is the only onscreen appearance of Flotter and Trevis, but they are mentioned a few more times throughout the run of Voyager, and the Flotter doll Kim replicated for Naomi will continue to appear. We will also see a Flotter lunchbox among Soji Asha’s possessions in Picard’s “The Impossible Box.”
Strictly speaking, this is chronologically Wildman’s last appearance, as when she appears in “Fury,” it’s in scenes taking place during the first season.
Neelix’s family was established as being lost in the Talaxians’ war with the Haakonians in “Jetrel.” An image of Alixia was seen in “Mortal Coil,” and the picture of her Neelix looks at is from that episode.
Set a course for home. “I think you’re scared of the tree monster.” One of Star Trek’s perpetual failings has been its general inability to come up with human popular culture that was created between the present day of when the show is aired and the present day of when the show takes place. This goes all the way back to the spectacularly unimaginative, 20th-century-and-prior creations of the recreational planet in “Shore Leave,” through to the holodeck programs favored by Jean-Luc Picard, William Riker, Julian Bashir, Miles O’Brien, Kathryn Janeway, and Tom Paris, and the music featured on Discovery.
Which is why I just adore the heck out of this episode, because it breaks that particular pattern very nicely by presenting us with a 24th-century children’s tale, that of Flotter and Trevis. It’s a lovely combination of adventure and learning (with the pair’s very first time meeting being an object lesson in not judging a book by its cover), and both Justin Louis and the great Wallace Langham do a superlative job of bringing the two elemental characters to life.
Trek also has a bad rap for its kid characters, but I think that’s mostly a byproduct of TNG‘s botching of the Wes Crusher character, and later also the Alexander character. (Well, okay, also “And the Children Shall Lead” was one of the absolute low points of the original series, but the kids weren’t the problem with that piece of garbage, and in fact the kid actors all did really well. Plus, TOS did fine with “Miri.”) We had great kids on DS9 in Nog and Jake Sisko—and watching them both grow up was one of the best ongoing concerns in a series that excelled at ongoing concerns—and Riker and Troi’s daughter Kestra on Picard is one of the best Trek characters ever.
And then we have Naomi. Scarlett Pomers just owns this episode. Naomi is bright, charming, inquisitive, adorable, but not cloying or unconvincing at any point. Plus, this is another good use of Neelix, as the thing that makes the character interesting—his insecurity and fear of losing those he loves—is used beautifully. As usual, when the writers remember to write Neelix as a character instead of a caricature, Ethan Phillips is more than up to the task.
Not to be outdone is Tim Russ, whose Vulcan dignity in the face of hopelessness comes across as comforting and helpful in a crisis. His speech to Wildman about what a good parent she is is one of the character’s best moments, of which there’s no shortage. Tuvok was my favorite character when I first started watching Voyager in 1995, and this rewatch has renewed that enthusiasm a hundredfold. (I also loved writing him in The Brave and the Bold Book 2, as well as his Mirror Universe counterpart in The Mirror-Scaled Serpent.) I like that his logic and emotional control is consistently seen as a benefit, rather than a problem to be solved, as it is far too often with Vulcan (or half-Vulcan) characters.
The shuttle-crashes-and-the-away-team-has-to-be-rescued plot is hoary as hell, but it works because it’s mostly there as a vehicle for dealing with issues of loss and parental responsibility (and god-parental responsibility), and also gives Pomers a superlative debut as a character who will continue to be a delightful recurring regular for the rest of the show’s run.
Warp factor rating: 8
Keith R.A. DeCandido wrote a short story for the forthcoming charity anthology Turning the Tied, which features stories about existing characters in the public domain by some of the best tie-in writers in the business, including fellow Trek scribes Greg Cox, Robert Greenberger, Jeff Mariotte, David McIntee, Robert Vardeman, Aaron Rosenberg, Scott Pearson, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Derek Tyler Attico, and Rigel Ailur. Keith’s story is about Ayesha, the title character in She by H. Rider Haggard. You can preorder the book now from Amazon.
I swear, the writers must have thought they’d actually killed her off in this episode, just like they got Hogan and Carey confused way back in Basics too. Which would actually have been kinda good if they’d had the balls to shake the series up like that. They didn’t, but they seemed to think they did because Naomi becomes a sort of free range kid after this and bounces between Neelix and Seven as her parental figures.
I lost my father a couple of months ago and this episode had me in an emotional state I might not have experienced when I saw this episode many years ago (I don’t recall how I felt back then). I actually felt myself tearing up when Tuvok gave his speech to Wildman. And Keith, I don’t think you mentioned it, but Ethan Phillips was superb in this episode. He brought a great pathos to this episode. This episode was basically themed around the inevitability of death. And I guess my recent loss really colored this episode for me.
@2
Sorry for your loss, Austin. I know the feeling. There was once what I’d usually consider a mediocre family drama TV movie helped me once get through the death of my grandfather.
Austin: I’m sorry for your loss. And yes, I did mention that Phillips did well: “As usual, when the writers remember to write Neelix as a character instead of a caricature, Ethan Phillips is more than up to the task.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@.-@ – Thank you. And my apologies! I probably read too fast and missed it.
Yup, Tuvok comforting Samantha as a fellow parent was a fine moment. He’s so aloof and stern most of the time that seeing unapologetic kindness from him was very special.
And yes, Scarlett Pomers was excellent as Naomi, a better addition to the cast than any of the Borg children who’d show up next season.
And yes, it’s refreshing to finally see a bit of future pop culture. I did have a quibble about it at the time, though, since Janeway says she played Flotter holoprograms as a child, while early TNG established holodecks as a relatively new technology. But then, that assertion always conflicted with TAS: “The Practical Joker,” and has been pretty solidly blown out of the water since by Enterprise and Discovery. And even The Making of Star Trek in 1968 asserted that the TOS Enterprise had holographic recreational facilities for watching immersive movies.
Chakotay will do something similar in “Shattered” when he is trying to sell Past!Janeway on how great the future is going to be, and he mentions that children will be born and grow up on Voyager as a positive thing. He also completely ignores the fact that Naomi might have wanted to know her father from the start and that Samantha would probably have much rather raised her kid on DS9 with her father than stuck facing danger a century away from home. (He also, weirdly, refers to children in the plural, even though at that point only one kid has been born on Voyager, and Naomi is the only one who did any amount of growing up onboard, since Miral was born about 10 minutes before they get to earth.) I get that they are all glass-half-full kind of people and are making the best of their situation, but it seems like an overly rosy view of the situation. She isn’t like Mayweather on ENT, who grew up on a ship surrounded by his family, who had made a deliberate choice to live that life.
That aside, I like this episode for the most part (although unlike our intrepid rewatcher, I don’t really like the Flotter stuff, although I do give them props for trying to come up with some new pop culture, even if it isn’t my taste). Neelix is at his best (IMO) when he isn’t stuck being goofy comic relief, and this is a great use of his character and Ethan Phillips acting ability. His instinct to hide the truth about what he is feeling from others has been brought up before (in “Mortal Coil,” most obviously), and his instinct to try to shield Naomi from bad things being a direct reflection of his own traumatic experiences pops up again in “Memorial.” He really comes alive in episodes like this, in a way he doesn’t when he is doing the lethal chef bit. Kids are hard to utilize well in Trek, and I think this one does it well by allowing some of the focus to be on the adults around her, rather than all about her. And unlike TNG, where it always seemed like negligence to have children on board, here there is the added layer of the fact that that, under normal circumstances, Naomi wouldn’t *be* in this situation, and it is something the whole crew has to deal with.
And yes, I love Tim Russ’ Tuvok, especially in moments like this. His words to Samantha are kind, comforting, logical, and true all at once, and it is one of those times when I feel that Russ was one of about 3 actors (obviously the other two being Nimoy and Lenard) who *really* understood how to play a Vulcan.
Yeah, I’m just as happy to dump early TNG‘s assertions about the newness of holographic technology into the same dustbin as the printouts in “The Cage.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@7 Wildfyre, re: multiple children-
Well, multiple children were born on Voyager, and several did some growing up (Naomi, the Ex-Borg… Tom Paris) it’s just that those sets don’t perfectly overlap.
I adore Scarlett Pomers as Naomi. I think she was an excellent addition to the cast.
Bobby
We are now in the Scarlett Pomers era of Voyager. I adore Naomi Wildman and she’s always a bright spot in any episode. And the Seven and Naomi duo could warm even a Vulcan heart.
The more I go through these rewatches though, the more I feel the weight of how severely undervalued Tim Russ’ contributions to the Vulcan portrayal are. Unlike Spock who was struggling with his humanity and emotions, Data who sought to understand and have human emotions, and T’Pol who was emo-curious, Tuvok had his emotions locked down, and was quite content with his logical secure state. I’ve seen plenty of people comment that his Vulcan portrayal was poor.
Back to Naomi though, she’s an incredibly endearing character since she was born into this situation, she sees herself as also having to do her part. It’s a very Steve Rogers personal attitude, where she wants to be a useful contributing member of her unit to the best of her abilities. A character actively seeking to not be the load dragging everyone down and it works beautifully.
I’ve always loved this episode, there’s some great character moments all round. And Scarlett Pomers is a joy – I generally loathe child characters in drama shows (unless the show is tailored for such) but she did a great job all the way through and she was written for very well. This episode has one of my favourite Tuvok speeches – he’s at his best when we’re reminded he’s a parent – and I also liked how Janeway talked Neelix into seeing the flaws in his plan. Good episode.
Sometimes, I don’t understand how ST can get kids so right in some cases, and so terribly wrong and one dimensional in others. Do the writers not have children? Or did they forget what its like?
@6 Better than Icheb? His arc was pretty good. Although it ended so tragically.
@13
In all fairness, Star Trek has gotten a lot of adult characters terribly wrong and one-dimensional, too.
“Naomi Wildman, but my friends call me Naomi.”
Pretty much an episode about Neelix being one of those annoying parents who turns the telly off if he thinks it’s too scary. (The moment where he drags Naomi out of the holodeck because he finds firey death from the sky triggering, leaving her in a state of confusion because she doesn’t get to the happy ending, obviously had a bigger effect on me than other watchers!) Actually, that makes it sound worse than it is, although we have to sit through a lot of Neelix at his worst to get to the good stuff. I once heard it said that those who avoid emotion in fiction avoid it in real life. Not only does Neelix not seem to understand emotional catharsis, he can’t cope with Naomi’s grief because he can’t really cope with his own, choosing to keep it buried and put on a front. He sidesteps Naomi’s questions about his family just as quickly as he sidesteps the ones about her mother.
Naomi’s possibly an acquired taste but I rather like her and she has just enough charm not to be annoying. It’s no wonder she likes Flotter: He talks just like Neelix. The Doctor says he’s pleased to see Neelix when Naomi has just started asking awkward questions: Things must be bad. Paris is back to being the McCoy to Tuvok’s Spock with his wry responses to Tuvok’s matter-of-fact catalogue of doom (“Tuvok, if you don’t have something positive to say…”). Seven is oddly willing to sit with Naomi: Were they that short of seats?
I’ve heard theories before that the writing staff forgot Samantha survived the episode: She’s still mentioned as being alive in Naomi’s next appearance at least, but by Season 6 it does seem at times as though Naomi’s living with Neelix, so that’s something to watch out for. Naomi is somehow able to pull the old “Fool the sensors by leaving your combadge somewhere” trick, even though she isn’t seen wearing a com badge at any point. (Is it stuck to her underwear?!) I think that’s the first reference to Neelix having “sisters” who died at Rinax although only Alixia is mentioned by name. (If you remember, in “Jetrel” he mentioned losing a younger brother, who isn’t mentioned here.) Since Chakotay, Torres and Seven are still alive next episode (well…mostly), the away team presumably gets beamed to safety at the same time as the Flyer, even though there’s no mention of the fact and the area where they were standing gets flattened by an ion storm moments later!
I don’t love this episode. I actually didn’t like it when I saw it first as a teenager due entirely to the Flotter and Trevis stuff. I was a bit of a killjoy as a teen. As an adult it’s no longer annoying but I don’t have any particular love for it.
I do however love Naomi Wildman. Best child in Trek hands down. Her relationships with Neelix, Seven, and Janeway are all different and all heartwarming, and Scarlett Pomers is as good a child actor as you can ever ask for, always walking that line between too cutesy and too precocious and feeling like a very natural character who is more at home on Voyager than anyone else there.
It is always funny to me though to see Hodges in that bright blue bodysuit. That’s range right there.
On the topic of no other children being born, I think one episode started with Janeway recoding in her captain’s log that they celebrated crewman’s soandso new baby. So probably other children were born offscreen.
And about Kim waxing rhapsodic about growing up on Voyager, I guess it’s similar to how many people it would’ve been cool living in the Wild West or Victorian England or whatever, ignoring the high mortality, health issues and other everyday problems.
@21 That was actually in “Course: Oblivion,” and the baby was born to the duplicated silverblood crew from “Demon,” not the regular Voyager crew. As far as I can remember, there is no indication that anyone other than Naomi and Miral were born on the real Voyager. It would have, frankly, made a lot of sense that there were a bunch of people getting married/ shacking up and having kids, considering that even Janeway realized that a 70 year trip would eventually mean they needed younger people to start taking over, but the only kids other than Naomi appear to be the Borg children, and they don’t stay all that long (minus Icheb). Every other kid we hear about or see either doesn’t stay (Seska’s kid) belongs to a different timeline (Linnus and her son), belongs to a duplicate crew (Harper’s baby), or is the result of holodeck shenanigans (Torres’ *other* pregnancy).
This episode handled emotional topics well, and had some good lines from characters like Tuvok, but I really struggle to get through the Naomi holodeck episodes. Maybe it’s just bias from not enjoying them as a kid, or from not really liking Neelix (even when his writing is good), but they feel like cheesy filler and I just don’t find them very fun. Naomi as a character is pretty great, though.
Also, I guess it doesn’t matter since Samantha won’t really show up again, but it was a bit confusing for “Naomi” and “Wildman” to be referenced as separate characters in this post, since Wildman is her last name, too… “Ensign Wildman” or “Samantha” would have been helpful for Momma W. IMO.
@23/brandonw: Agreed about Samantha Wildman. From what I can tell, in contexts where two people of the same surname are being discussed, formal style guidelines recommend using their full names to make it clear which one is being referenced. In more informal usage, my experience is that it’s fairly common to use first names to differentiate them even in contexts where you’d normally use surnames.
My own preferred stylistic choice is to refer to characters by their last name. If there are two characters with the same last name, then the “main” one gets referred to by last name and others by their first name. So I referred to the counselor on the Enterprise as “Troi,” but her mother as “Lwaxana.” The chief medical officer of the Enterprise was “Crusher,” and her son was “Wes.” The commander of Deep Space 9 was “Sisko,” but his son was “Jake” and his father was “Joseph.”
This is the same style I’ve been using in these rewatches for ten years now…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@25/krad: I think this situation is different, because in all those cases, the character you’re referring to by the last name is a familiar, regular character, the default person you’d think of when you hear the name mentioned, so there’s no confusion. In the case of Voyager, by contrast, Naomi Wildman appears more than twice as many times as Samantha Wildman (twice as a baby and 17 as a speaking character, versus 8 for her mother), so in this case Naomi is the one our minds default to when we hear the name “Wildman.” So it’s confusing in this case even though it isn’t in those others.
@25/krad I get the logic, and it usually works. I just found it confusing is all; I’ve read some of the TNG re-watch but not the others, so I wasn’t overly familiar with the style. I certainly don’t mean to make it a big deal. And again, it’s not like it will matter much here, going forward, given that Samantha doesn’t really show up anymore.
I’ve once heard that Taylor’s original pitch would have told the entire story from Naomi’s point of view, with us getting only glimpses of what the other characters were doing, never getting the full picture. Ultimately that idea was shot down. That’s why I believe the shuttle crash plot comes across as a bit by-the-numbers, in that we were never meant to see the whole thing playing out.
That aside, Once Upon a Time is a much welcome break from the norm. As was already said, it went a long way in crafting and depicting 24th century pop culture (which kind of contradicts Data’s claim in The Neutral Zone that television had gone extinct by the 2040’s; unless he only meant the devices and not the content).
It’s a credit to the casting department that they were able to find the right actress for the role of Naomi. Pomers had already done a number of guest spots on shows in previous years. In other words, she was already used to the breakneck pacing of filming. Given how challenging it is to find the right young actor, this could have easily been another Imaginary Friend situation where the guest star has no range or talent to pull off the title role. Plus, Voyager would prove a great springboard for her getting a permanent co-starring role in Reba afterwards.
Plus, introducing what’s essentially a new recurring character in the show’s fifth season is a welcome development, and unlike Alexander Rozhenko, she actually works well. They couldn’t know it at the time, but with Pomers they also had someone who would develop some nice chemistry with Jeri Ryan. I adore her scenes with Seven in later episodes, and it always makes me laugh that Seven always calls her by her full name, Naomi Wildman. Not just Naomi, not Ms. Wildman, it always has to be the whole thing every time they greet. Her deadpan delivery always works.
Samantha disappearing from the show afterwards is way too reminiscent of the way Keiko O’Brien disappeared from the later seasons of DS9 after giving birth to Kirayoshi, with only two appearances until the end. At least they had the war as an excuse to keep O’Brien’s family out of it. It’s puzzling as to why they sidelined Samantha after this. Maybe they really meant to kill her off, but were vetoed by Rick Berman.
The episode itself works very well, weaving in Neelix’s backstory as a fine reason for his keeping Naomi in the dark regarding her mother. It also uses Tuvok remarkably well, and the episode never loses sight of its newest protagonist.
@krad: Freelance for 9 episodes? I’m pretty sure Taylor was a full-time staff writer during that season, just like Fuller was the season before. TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT, and a lot of other TV shows from that era, didn’t really give onscreen credit to staff writers (WGA issues of that time, I assume). Only now with Discovery and Picard that we’re finally seeing that omission rectified.
I agree, Pomers was fantastic as Naomi and Kestra Riker (or Troi-Riker?) is a fantastic character played by an amazing actress and I hope she’s back in season 2 of Picard.
And as others have commented here, it’s really too bad that Samantha wasn’t in more episodes, especially the ones that Naomi was in. And End Game is one of the worst episodes, IMHO, and one of the many things that they could have done to improve that ep was have Naomi meeting her father, finally. (Maybe; I’m no writer so I have no idea how this would have gone down.)
@28 Eduardo — I really want a Naomi Wildman guest appearance on Picard so I can hear Jeri Ryan say the full name again. I loved how she used a recurring line on her first appearance on that show — asked how she was, she said “functional” in a world-weary tone that showed how much she had changed and how much she was still the same character.
I think the Flotter & Trevis show is more than filler. It’s another look at the emotional themes of the episode, and the punch line is that Neelix needs the lesson more than Naomi.
@30
Given Picard‘s tone, we would probably hear Seven say her name over her grave…
I have never seen this episode in first run and then coming back to the series when it was all out on DVD sets and streaming I picked through the episodes that looked good and intriguing and avoided other ones like this that featured Neelix or emphasized children. Scarlet Pomers was a good child actress but that didn’t mean I wanted to watch an episode that so heavily featured her character. But seeing the positive review and comments here at least encourages me to give it a shot. And then I can understand what this Flotter and Trevis business is all about!
I usually skip Neelix episodes as I couldn’t abide the character or more specifically the way the character was written, I was immensely annoyed when it was Kes who they wrote out to make way for Seven’s arrival and not Neelix. However this isn’t a Neelix episode it’s a Naomi episode and like everyone else I find her a delight and adorable.
Scarlet Pommers was great and although it appears she has retired from acting I agree with the comment that was made about giving her a cameo in Star Trek Picard just so we could see her interact with Seven one last time.. as long as they then don’t do to her what they did to Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh…. Yes I am still mad about that.
Not to mention that she and her mother presumably spent several months being repeatedly brainwashed and hunted for sport by the Hirogen along with the rest of the crew.
Here’s what I don’t understand… There’s only 3 of them on the shuttle, wouldn’t they have emergency environmental suits like Tom and B’lanna had in the shuttle that blew up in the previous season? It seems like whenever a shuttle blows up they conveniently have suits. So, why would they ever need to worry about running out of air when the shuttle crashes?
@36/Greg: Maybe the suits were damaged in the crash?
I like this episode a lot. Naomi is a great kid and Neelix is a good godfather. And even as an adult, i’d love to play Flotter and Travis at least as a computer game. :D
Funnily, i didn’t like Neelix too much in the past, due to the stupid episodes where he is shown as a useless passenger, but now in this round of my rewatch, i got to like him much more…:)
This is my first time getting through Voyager this far, and I almost skipped this one because Nellix + goofy holodeck characters was giving me “Cost of Living” vibes. Also, in Star Trek, whenever you have a kid near a pond it’s always bad news. But when I saw Keith’s rating, I decided to give it a try. And I’m glad I did.
I had the thought while watching it that it would have been more emotionally engaging without seeing what was happening on the shuttle craft (as another commenter said the original conception had it). Yet we would have been robbed of some fine character moments. So maybe it’s not so bad.
It seems like season 5 really was the mental-health-awareness season, which lead to some pretty in-depth storylines like this one. You can see Neelix’s struggle to answer Naomi’s questions about his own sister, and it really is heartbreaking.