“Riddles”
Written by André Bormanis and Robert Doherty
Directed by Roxann Dawson
Season 6, Episode 6
Production episode 227
Original air date: November 3, 1999
Stardate: 53263.2
Captain’s log. Neelix and Tuvok are returning from a diplomatic mission with the Kesat in the Delta Flyer. Neelix’s attempts to engage Tuvok in conversation or games or something fall on uninterested pointy ears. When Tuvok finally agrees to a riddle, Neelix tells a joke with a bad pun for a punchline, at which point Tuvok retreats to the aft section to get away from him.
While there, Tuvok detects someone downloading their tactical data. Tuvok scans with a tricorder and finds a cloaking frequency, but he’s then hit with weapons fire and collapses. Neelix rushes to his aid and sends a mayday to Voyager. The Flyer and Voyager rendezvous and the EMH is able to stabilize Tuvok. However, he has suffered significant brain damage, and the EMH is unable to determine a course of treatment without knowing what kind of weapon he was struck with. Unfortunately, Neelix was too busy piloting the ship to take sensor readings of the aft section—which nobody blames him for, as his quick action is what saved Tuvok’s life—and Tuvok’s attackers destroyed his tricorder, wiping out the data he scanned.
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Janeway suggests Neelix contact his new friends among the Kesat to see if they know anything about it. They send a deputy investigator, Naroq, who comes on board. Naroq believes this is the latest attack by the Ba’Neth, a xenophobic species that cloak their ships and whom no one has ever seen, and whom many Kesat believe to be a myth. However, there have been twelve other attacks like the one on the Flyer, though the previous victims of Ba’Neth weapons fire all perished from the brain damage. However, Vulcans are made of sterner stuff.
Neelix brings some of Tuvok’s stuff into sickbay, and also plays Vulcan music and threatens—er, that is, promises to enact a Vulcan epic, but then Tuvok wakes up. He seems confused, and is as yet unable to speak. He appears to have lost his memory, as he doesn’t seem to recognize anybody or anything. But he is conscious and aware of his surroundings.
Naroq and Seven are able to examine the particle residue in the aft section of the Flyer and, using Kesat tech and Borg ingenuity, create a virtual image of the Ba’Neth. Naroq is thrilled to see what they look like, and Janeway believes they can adjust Voyager’s sensors to detect their ships with this new information.
The EMH reports that Tuvok’s brain is basically rebuilding itself. For the moment, he seems to have no recollection of who he is, and he still isn’t talking. Neelix takes him on a tour of the ship. He seems to recognize the tactical console, but then he accidentally activates the photon torpedo launcher.
Voyager is able to detect the Ba’Neth ships, only to discover that there are a whole fleet of them nearby. Without the cloaking frequency, however, they can only detect them when they’re nearby, and after a brief firefight, the Ba’Neth retreat.
During the firefight, Tuvok—who is now in his quarters with Neelix—gets scared and cowers behind a chair. He also talks for the first time, sounding very much like a child. He says that he’s safe with Neelix, mainly because Neelix has been telling him that since he woke up.
Tuvok meets Naroq, who queries him about the cloaking frequency he saw on his tricorder before he was shot, but Tuvok can’t remember it, and finds the bits of memory he does have disturbing. Neelix takes him away from Naroq’s interrogation.
Various crew members spend time with Tuvok to try to help jog his memory. Kim tries to show him kal-toh, but Tuvok grows frustrated with the game quickly. Tuvok then reads his personnel file and is annoyed that he is nothing like the person described in it. He has a tantrum, to the point where the EMH has to ask Neelix to leave sickbay.
Neelix and Seven have a heart-to-heart, as Neelix is frustrated with his trying to bring Tuvok back to himself, and Seven points out that he should be focusing on who Tuvok is now, not who he used to be. Tuvok then gives Neelix a wax flower he made by way of apology. He says he isn’t interested in logic and meditation and kal-toh. He wants to have fun—he’s also boggled as to why Tuvok and Neelix weren’t always friends.
They go to the mess hall, where Tuvok starts to bake things, which Kim and Paris rather enjoy tasting. So does Janeway, but she also asks him about the cloaking frequency. Tuvok does remember what it looks like, and he re-creates it with the icing on the cake he’s baking. Thrilled, Janeway takes that to the bridge.
Using that frequency, Voyager is able to track down the Ba’Neth. They explain that they seek out tactical information on alien species to see if they’re a threat. Janeway offers tactical information on local aliens they’ve acquired in exchange for the specs of the weapon they shot Tuvok with. If they don’t play ball, Janeway will just have to inform the Kesat of where the Ba’Neth are hiding.
The Ba’Neth agree, and the EMH is able to synthesize a cure for Tuvok’s brain damage. However, Tuvok isn’t sure if he wants to take it. He enjoys life, and doesn’t know if he wants to go back to the way he was. Neelix agrees that he enjoys this Tuvok more—but Voyager needs its tactical officer, and that’s more important than Neelix’s enjoyment.
Later, Neelix encounters Tuvok in the mess hall, now back to his old self, and ready to return to duty. Tuvok expresses no interest in continuing his baking hobby—though he does provide a variation on Neelix’s riddle with a bad pun of his own.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The notion of a cloaking frequency is introduced in this episode, and will never ever be mentioned ever again, even though it apparently allows one to see through a cloak, which would be, y’know, useful.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is surprisingly subdued in an episode that is about her oldest friend suffering. It’s like they forgot that Tuvok and Janeway’s friendship is the longest-standing one on board or something…
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok agrees to hear Neelix’s riddle, probably expecting it to be something worthy of the Sphinx. Instead, he tells of an ensign trapped on a Class-L planet for a year with only a calendar. He survived by eating the dates. While this initially sends Tuvok to another room to avoid the possibility of further stupid riddles, at the episode’s end, Tuvok admits that the ensign could’ve also survived by eating sundaes.
Half and half. Typically, actors directing their first episode, as Roxann Dawson does here, have very little screen time in their inaugural directorial endeavor—in this case, Torres doesn’t appear in the episode at all.
Forever an ensign. Kim seems to take great pleasure in the reversal of him teaching Tuvok how to play kal-toh, though the Vulcan’s frustration takes all the fun out of it.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix is still acting as ship’s ambassador, making contact with the Kesat, and also as morale officer, trying to help Tuvok throughout the episode.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Once he is given the specs of the weapon used on Tuvok, the EMH is able to cure him. Because he’s just that awesome.
Resistance is futile. Seven reminds Neelix that what happened to Tuvok is similar to what happened to her when Janeway separated her from the Collective. She had to learn to become a different person, and that may be what Tuvok needs more than reminders of who he once was.
Do it.
“The Vulcan brain: a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma housed inside a cranium.”
–The EMH’s poetic description of Vulcan neuroscience.
Welcome aboard. Only one guest this time round: Mark Moses as Naroq. Moses will later play Captain Archer’s Dad Henry in the Enterprise pilot “Broken Bow.”
Trivial matters: Roxann Dawson joins Robert Duncan McNeill and Robert Picardo from this show, and Jonathan Frakes, Sir Patrick Stewart, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Rene Auberjonois, Andrew J. Robinson, Siddig el-Fadil, and Avery Brooks from the previous two shows in going from in front of the camera to behind it. Dawson will take to directing like a duck to water, and in the years since Trek, her directorial career—like that of Frakes and McNeill—has eclipsed her acting career.
Neelix wants to re-enact Clash on the Fire Plains to Tuvok. Tuvok previously mentioned the Fire Plains on Vulcan in “Innocence” as part of the song he sang about Falor. The Fire Plains will be seen in the Enterprise episode “Home.”
Set a course for home. “If anyone can provoke Tuvok, Mr. Neelix, it’s you.” I’ve been going back and forth in my head about this episode, because there’s a lot to like about it, but also a lot that really frustrates me about it.
Let’s go with the three best elements of it to start. It’s not really a surprise watching this episode to learn that Roxann Dawson has become a heavily in-demand director to the point where she hasn’t done any acting work in a decade, but has more than fifty directorial credits in that same span. In her inaugural turn behind the camera, we see excellent use of closeups, strong performances from all the actors, and some beautifully framed shots. This feels like one of the better outings from Jonathan Frakes or Winrich Kolbe, which is high praise indeed.
And then there’s two of those great performances. As ever, when given material that takes his character seriously, Ethan Phillips is up to the challenge, giving us a Neelix who is almost fanatically eager to please, but also one who will do whatever he can to help the people he cares about. Even when he’s being Super-Duper Annoying Neelix in the early scenes in the Flyer, it’s not as irritating as it usually is—mainly because it plays so well against Tuvok’s dry wit. This double act has worked well any number of times, from their initial meeting in “Caretaker” (“You can… take a bath”) onward, most notably in “Rise,” and it’s nicely turned on its ear here.
Tim Russ gives the performance of a lifetime, as Tuvok does Flowers for Algernon in reverse. As good as he is as the petulant, childlike Tuvok who is frustrated by kal-toh and the spectre of his past self, the best performance he gives is before Tuvok regains his ability to speak. Watching him struggle wordlessly and seeing the emotions play on a face that we’re not used to seeing emotions play on is just amazing. In many ways, the point of this episode is to be an acting exercise for Russ in much the same way “Infinite Regress” was for Jeri Ryan. And as that, it works superbly.
But I find so much of the episode frustrating as well. For starters, where is Janeway during this? Her interest in Tuvok’s condition is far more related to whether or not he can help them find the Ba’Neth to cure him, but where’s her concern for her old friend? The Janeway-Tuvok friendship is one of many years’ standing, and has been a bedrock of the show (notably in “Prime Factors,” “Alliances,” and “Flashback“), and to not have it be a factor here is a major lost opportunity.
As good as Seven’s speech to Neelix in the mess hall was, encouraging him to let Tuvok be the current Tuvok instead of trying to recapture past glory, it was frustrating to watch because six years in, we know that Tuvok is gonna fixed by the end of it. Voyager doesn’t just push the reset button, it jumps up and down on it. That speech from Seven just felt like a waste of time, because it wasn’t going to matter. This would’ve been so much better as a multi-episode storyline in which Tuvok slowly recovered, but that wasn’t the mode the show chose.
At the very least, we had Tuvok being allowed to make the choice himself, rather than go all “Tuvix” and “Nothing Human” and have the decision made for the patient against their wishes. But I feel like the decision needed a bit more oomph to it than it got, and that the arguments needed to go beyond “Voyager needs its tactical officer.” This called for the level of conversation that we saw about the Prime Directive in TNG’s “Pen Pals” or about the “Jack pack” in DS9’s “Statistical Probabilities” and “Chrysalis.”
Plus, with a title like “Riddles,” I was hoping we’d get some genuine riddles. Not the cheap-shit wordplay Neelix indulged in, nor Seven’s literal-minded answer to Neelix’s conundrum (“When is a Vulcan no longer a Vulcan?” to which Seven replies, “When his genetic code is sufficiently altered”), but some real Oedipus or Bilbo-and-Gollum stuff. Though the sundae/Sunday pun at the end did make me smile…
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest book is All-the-Way House, which is part of the Systema Paradoxa series of novellas about cryptids. His tale, which spans three centuries, is about the origin of the legendary Jersey Devil, and is available to order.
Gee, I am sure none of them will have any problem with their information being given to aliens that randomly attack and kill people. I’m so glad Janeway really learned something about how her actions impact the innocent people of the Delta Quadrant after the whole Borg-Species 4872 debacle.
Hard agree on Janeway being basically absent, here. She will, in the finale, re-write decades of people’s lives in large part because Tuvok getting sick hurts her so much. And here she is…. just kind of around. It is a really weird oversight on the part of the writers, although sadly typical of Janeway’s extremely scattershot characterization.
Tim Russ is great here, and I love seeing him get to branch out a bit. That said, I just find Neelix’s continued pestering of him to be super annoying. I know they were aiming for a Spock-Bones kind of relationship, here, but Neelix is far, far more annoying than Bones ever was, and Tuvok has been very clear that he does not find it in any way enjoyable, whereas Spock seemed to enjoy his banter with the good Doctor. It comes off as less of an odd-couple friendship as it does a professional adult being constantly followed around by a childish fool who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. That said, Neelix is great in the scenes after Tuvok’s brain has been fried, and I wish that is the Neelix we got to see more of, because Ethan Philips really makes him shine in the times he gets to be a non-aggravating, compassionate caretaker.
So I only watched this episode for the first time a few weeks ago – it’s another one I had avoided for years because a Neelix/Tuvok story didn’t look all that appealing and Tuvok being all emotional seemed like an opportunity to let Tim Russ do something different for a change and be all out sorts like in “Meld.” But I was pleasantly mistaken. I found this story (the Tuvok/Neelix parts) to be really charming and sweet. I even got emotional myself! This story sort of reminded me of “Unforgettable” where Chakotay has the dilemma of his lover losing all memory of him and their happiness together. But this is much better because it involves two main characters that we know very well and arguably care about as opposed to the guest star of the week. To especially see Neelix troubled by the prospect of losing his new best friend was kind of heartbreaking actually. But then there was that damn reset button at the end! Ugh! I’m sure Russ would have loved the idea of playing this “changed” version of Tuvok who gets to be emotional and has a best friend in Neelix. I wonder if the writers even considered it but I doubt it. Just another in a long list of Voyager missed opportunities. A rating of 6 seems about right.
And yes, both Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ are excellent here. It’s always nice to see Ethan get something to do which doesn’t involve his character being annoying and obnoxious and trying to provide Jar Jar Binks-level comic relief.
A pretty good try, but like a lot of later VGR episodes, it just felt a little off to me, like a less successful attempt at something the franchise had done better earlier. The inevitability of Tuvok getting reset to normal by the end was probably a factor in that.
I think another factor is that by this point I was getting tired of Voyager‘s habit of taking away Tuvok’s logic in order to generate stories about him. It seems like going the easy route.
I like the calendar puns — a love of bad puns is genetic for us Bennetts — but I find it problematical that riddles based on English-language puns were being exchanged by two characters for whom English was not their first language. (Although this resolves the debate some of us have had in these threads over whether Neelix learned English or used a translator. Obviously he must know English by now, since the puns would be incomprehensible in Talaxian.)
“The notion of a cloaking frequency is introduced in this episode, and will never ever be mentioned ever again, even though it apparently allows one to see through a cloak, which would be, y’know, useful.”
Oh, we’ve seen plenty of different methods of penetrating cloaks over the years — motion sensors, gas emissions, tachyon readings, etc. Like I keep saying, cloaks wouldn’t be one single technology, because there’d be a constant arms race between stealth and detection, and every time a new detection method was found, the old cloaks would become obsolete and a new kind of cloak would have to be invented, and both sides would be back to square one. Which is a handy and plausible way to explain all the contradictory ways cloaks have been presented in Trek over the decades. And it means that any method for penetrating one kind of cloak should not be expected to be applicable to other kinds. It’s like codebreaking. The key to one code won’t work for any others, and if one code is broken, it’ll be replaced with a different one.
I always wonder how much of the UT is direct translation, how much is translation+ some cultural context (like eliminating colloquialisms that a Federation citizen wouldn’t understand), and how much is just straight-up woolseyism. Given how inconsistent the writing is for the UT and how it works, I suppose we’ll never know (or the answer is, somehow, “all of the above”), but it is an interesting thought exercise.
I didn’t even realize this was Mark Moses here. Of course it’s obviously him in Enterprise as Archer’s dad and he became much better known for his work on both Mad Men and Desperate Housewives.”
Also very cool that this is Roxann Dawson’s directorial debut since this will be the start of a new and prolific career for her.
@3 – It’s not just English that Neelix apparently knows (with no hint of an accent! Sure). He also is so culturally aware of things on Earth that I can’t help but think that the writers either forgot or just overlook the fact that he’s not from there. In fact, he has never stepped foot in the Alpha Quadrant, let alone Earth.
@6 It also assumes that Neelix specifically understands English– as opposed to any of the other languages on Earth- since the “Sundae/Sunday” pun wouldn’t work in, say, French.
Obviously, the Ba’Neth power their cloaks with beryllium and their overuse of it has led to the shortage that causes a single crystal to be worth a fleet of starships. You see, it’s all a master plan that ties together.
@7/wildfyrewarning: Yes, of course it’s English. There have been countless episodes and movies where the language spoken by Trek characters has been explicitly identified by name as English. That’s not an assumption, it’s an established fact. So of course that’s the language Neelix learned in order to communicate with his English-speaking crewmates.
Did anyone else think of “Tuvix” while watching this? At least Janeway didn’t force Tuvok to go back to how he was before, although Neelix’s “The ship needs its tactical officer” is kind of weak.
I adore Riddles. The choice of episode title aside, this is a welcome turn of tables in the Neelix/Tuvok relationship. I wasn’t a fan of their pairing when I first tried watching Voyager, but it is a dynamic that grew on me over time. Putting Neelix in a caretaker role, having to guide what’s essentially a lost child in Tuvok’s body, is heartbreaking. A tour de force for both actors. Even this late in Voyager’s run, they can still come up with these gems.
While I agree it’s become a yearly cliché to rob Tuvok’s emotional control, this is the kind of story that does it right.
Janeway keeping an emotional distance from this situation doesn’t seem out of character for me. At this point in Voyager’s run, Janeway has seen and lived enough loss to not get so involved in situations as Tuvok’s. Less of the motherly side of her, more common in the earlier seasons. Plus, as captain, she’d have learned to keep a safe emotional distance by this point. Whether that was intentional of Doherty’s script or a misstep, it doesn’t really hurt the story for me. Maybe a private scene of her mourning Tuvok’s condition would have slightly improved this.
And also, what a superlative directing debut for Roxann Dawson! Atmospheric, tense and emotional. Plus, that overhead angle was a sight to behold, not to mention getting those performances. Over the past decade, I pretty much lost count of her work. She must have directed half the non-Trek shows I’ve seen. LOST, The Americans, The Deuce, Agents of SHIELD, an endless list. For all of Berman’s faults, I’m glad he’s given these actors the chance to direct. A lot of the current television landscape is shaped by his having given her (plus Frakes and McNeill) that chance.
Let’s not forget LeVar Burton is also a very prolific and accomplished director (“Timeless” on VOY comes to mind as one of his particular standouts, as well as “Second Chances” on TNG). He also holds the distinction of any regular cast member from any Trek series to have directed the most Trek episodes (29 in total spanning TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT).
@@.-@ – Given that at least one Trek episode (“Darmok”) hinges on the UT not being able to handle idioms, I always assumed the translations were pretty clinical.
“You won’t call it fun. You’ll call it deriving satisfaction. But it’s basically the same thing.”
This is actually surprisingly good, although as krad says it does have more than a few flaws, some of them coming from the show’s format, some of them a bit more problematic. There’s some good character work here. While the spine of the story is Tuvok losing his memory and no longer finding Neelix irritating, it’s interesting to see other characters following the same trajectory. The Doctor would probably rather not have Neelix hanging around Sickbay, but he can see that it’s important to him so he lets him stay around. And that must be one of the few times Neelix and Seven actually have a serious conversation as equals, rather than Neelix being played for comedy. On first watching, I disliked that last line and thought Neelix was lucky Spock wasn’t there: He’d have pointed out that, once the rules for solving the riddle were established, it was logical to come up with a solution along those lines. But watching it again, I think Tuvok knows that and is just throwing Neelix a bone.
And the conversation between Neelix and Seven leads to an interesting realisation of the fact that, when someone has a life-changing accident like this, you sometimes need to learn to accept the person they are now and encourage them on that basis, rather than trying to term them back into the person they were before. Except, as has been pointed out, this is an episodic drama with a fondness for maintaining the status quo and we need Tuvok back to normal for next episode, so that lasts about two scenes before he goes back to the person he was before anyway.
At the end of the episode, Naroq gives up his opportunity to have his theories validated in order to get the information Voyager needs to treat Tuvok. Well, that’s nice of him and good for Tuvok, but what happens the next time the Ba’Nath come across someone they consider a potential threat? What about the previous twelve victims? The Ba’Nath don’t seem to have learned any sort of lesson and our heroes have actually made it easier for them to operate undetected.
With Torres absent and Tuvok out of action, there’s an odd reallocation of jobs. Kim is working tactical. (Okay, that kind of makes sense, he seem to be broadly part of the same department as Tuvok and we’ve seen Ayala switch between them.) Paris is working Ops. (This…doesn’t make much sense and seems to be done mainly so it’s easier to have Robert Duncan McNeill in shot.) And, during the initial treatment of Tuvok, Janeway is acting as the Doctor’s assistant. (What the actual heck?)
@14, good point. I assume that was supposed to be Paris in sickbay but Robert Duncan McNeill wasn’t available the day they shot that scene for whatever random production reason so they just had Mulgrew fill in. Which just goes to show how absurd the conceit of “Paris as sickbay assistant” is in the first place– Paris might be unavailable for any or no reason, plus one of the most likely scenarios to incur casualties is combat where he’s needed on the bridge. So even if Paris is somewhere in the depth chart, obviously there should be someone else either trained internally or recruited from the outside. But the show never bothered with that so, screw it, apparently the Captain helps out in Sickbay too sometimes.
I guess it’s not completely crazy. Her background is in science, so maybe at some point she did a rotation in medicine and picked up just enough information to be useful in a pinch– but I’m pretty sure this is one of those “never before and never again” things.
cap-mjb: Latter-day Voyager‘s unwillingness to admit that anyone not in the opening credits does any work on the ship (beyond Samantha Wildman and Vorik, anyhow) is really bizarre.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
At 6 –
I’m nitpicking, and your overall point is valid – But Neelix has in fact been to Earth (1996) orbit and spent some time watching American soap operas. Season 3 Future’s End. How useful that would be is a good question, of course.
The ensign with the calendar could of also “8 9” (ate nine)
Or
Could have eaten Pi(e) on the 3 and 14th days (3.14 etc = Pi).
Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system… How long am I banned for?
Couldn’t they just….hologram however many medical assistants are needed?
@18, if you want to play this game then he also could have toasted the new year. Unfortunately, all of these answers are pretty week.
#17 This may be attributing more character background than was intended, but since Neelix and Kes were both obsessed watching 90s soaps in that episode, perhaps he’s become obsessed with earth culture in general. It would also help that many of the crew are from earth, and are going to want to talk about their home to anyone who will listen.
And, we know that Paris is kind of a old-earth history buff, so he could have helped give Neelix the bug.
If Neelix were human, it would be crazy for him to learn English without an accent. It’s an extremely rare ability with us. After a certain age, the part of our brain that learns a language “naturally” just closes off.
But, Neelix’ species may be different. Maybe they have natural language acquisition their whole lives, or maybe they’re just really good at it.
Of course, it’s possible Neelix is just really good at it. Sure, we’d expect someone like that to more intellectual, but there’s no reason he’d have to be. And imagine having an incredible talent for languages in a world full of universal translators. Neelix may have an amazing, rare ability that no one ever notices because they get almost the same results with technology and no one ever notices.
@18, you are banned for a mouth of pun days.
Guess I’ll be joining you.
@22/Ellynne: “If Neelix were human, it would be crazy for him to learn English without an accent. It’s an extremely rare ability with us. After a certain age, the part of our brain that learns a language “naturally” just closes off.”
I’m not sure that’s true. Look at all the English or Australian actors who convincingly mimic American accents in our TV shows and movies, like Henry Cavill or Hugh Jackman, say. There are actors who can’t change their accent at all, of course, like Connery or Schwarzenegger, but that just shows you can’t generalize. Some people are good at it, others not so much.
Besides, learning a language and learning how to pronounce that language are two different things, as I can personally attest. When I studied Spanish and Japanese in school, the part that came most easily to me was the pronunciation (aside from the Spanish RR, which I could never master), while I never stopped struggling to remember the grammar and vocabulary. Yet I had a classmate who, after four years of Spanish class, handled the translation okay but hadn’t learned a thing about how to pronounce the sounds.
“Of course, it’s possible Neelix is just really good at it.”
Well, he did spend much of his life pre-Voyager as a wanderer and trader, interacting with people from many different worlds and learning to communicate and ingratiate himself with them. It stands to reason that he’d have practice at language acquisition.
On comments, I can see Captain Janeway being intensely concerned about Tuvok’s injury, and also, staying away from Tuvok’s anomalous recovery because having an anxious Human emotioning at a sick Vulcan must be worse than Neelix’s dad at a Talaxian comedy festival.
Neelix has been feeding the crew for years, when they let him. They may not have had a Year of Hell but there probably is still talk about the Month of Sundaes.
To be honest, my impression is that Captain Janeway takes one look at the possibility of losing Mr Tuvok and issues a ringing ‘NOPE’ (Though the episode sadly fails to make this explicit).
@10 I completely agree that this reminded me a bit of Tuvix at the end. They had the dialogue address the need to reset to dial but it was still taking someone away who didn’t want to go.
I do not have personal experience of people with brain injuries so I don’t know how realistic this is. I really liked Seven’s talk with Tuvix though, it was thoughtful and the welling acceptance in the crew was nice… until they decided they wanted Tuvok back (again)
@24: I once heard that Schwarzenegger has to take regular elocution lessons to keep his accent: Normally, surrounded by people who don’t talk like him, it would naturally soften but it’s a big part of his persona.
@28/cap-mjb: Hmm, that makes sense. I wonder if the same goes for Sean Connery. Maybe his insistence on using his Scottish burr even when playing a Spanish immortal or a Russian sub captain was more an affectation than a necessity.
I’m not sure Janeway is being insensitive or unconcerned about Tuvok so much as doing exactly what Tuvok would do in her place. Working the problem intently. Janeway knows that she needs that weapon so the Doctor can synthesize a cure. So her grilling Tuvok about the frequency is really just asking for the information needed to fix him. Though that’s still not the emotional attachment one would expect of Kathryn.
I still remember the immense joy I received watching an Agents of SHIELD episode and seeing Roxann Biggs in the Director Slot or an episode of Castle with Frakes. It’s almost like seeing a family member out there doing their thing.
@30, I feel the same way when I see Robert Duncan McNeill pop up in the credits for shows I’m watching (I vividly remember how surprised and pleased I was when I saw his name pop up in the Supernatural episode “Skin”). There’s that feeling of “Hey! I know who that is!” that always makes me smile when it is a Trek alum. Frakes especially does great work, and on TNG every time I (but a mere rube with no cinematic training or education) thought to myself “Huh, this episode is doing some really interesting things with the camera,” it was inevitably one of the episodes Frakes directed.
wildfyrewarning: If you’re not watching Resident Alien on SyFy, you should. If nothing else, you’ll get that happy feeling every time you watch it, as McNeill is one of the co-executive producers of the show. Also, it’s really good. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@29 / CLB:
I wonder if the same goes for Sean Connery. Maybe his insistence on using his Scottish burr even when playing a Spanish immortal or a Russian sub captain was more an affectation than a necessity.
Given how intrinsic the accent was to his personal branding…yeah, I can see Connery doing that.
I remember spotting Robert Duncan McNeill’s name on “Chuck” a fair amount.
@31/wildfyrewarning
Frakes ticks me off by how awesome he is sometimes. I mean this is David Xanatos we’re talking about here.
@34/JohnC
YES!!! McNeill’s name on Chuck was AWESOME!
Another one for Trivial Matters. The plot is basically a reworking on the 1991 Mike Nichols film Regarding Henry. Tuvok plays Harrison Ford role whereas Neelix is a combination of the Bill Nunn/Annette Bening role. As another Trek connection it was written by JJ Abrams.