“Rise”
Written by Jimmy Diggs and Brannon Braga
Directed by Robert Scheerer
Season 3, Episode 19
Production episode 160
Original air date: February 26, 1997
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Voyager is assisting the Nezu with one of their colonies, which has been bombarded by asteroids for several weeks. Voyager pulverizes one asteroid with their phasers, but it doesn’t disintegrate the asteroid as expected. Hastily, Tuvok fires on more fragments, but two of them make it into the atmosphere.
They strike a deserted area, but there’s another, bigger asteroid en route that will strike a major city. A scientist on the planet, Dr. Vatm, sends a garbled message, indicating that the asteroids may be artificial. The Nezu ambassador is urged by his aide, Sklar, to evacuate the planet, but the ambassador refuses until he hears what Vatm has learned.
Janeway sends three shuttles down to try to find Vatm. Meanwhile, Chakotay has Torres beam an asteroid fragment aboard to examine it.
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Tuvok and Neelix, accompanied by Sklar, go down in one shuttle, which then is forced to crash land thanks to the same atmospheric interference that wiped out Vatm’s communication.
The trio survive the crash without injury, but it will take some time to repair the comm systems enough to signal Voyager. However, they do accomplish their mission, as Vatm is nearby, along with a gallacite miner named Hanjuan, and they saw the crash. Tuvok takes charge and he and Neelix work to assess the damage to the shuttle.
Sklar tries to get Vatm to give his report, but he insists that he can only give it directly to the ambassador.
While inspecting the outer hull for a damage report, Neelix sees a nearby space elevator—an orbital tether that brings a conveyance into orbit on a very large pole.
Vatm says the orbital tether needs repairs, but Neelix says he worked on an orbital tether on Rinax when he was younger. If he can get it operational, they’ll be high enough in the atmosphere to contact Voyager and be beamed aboard, and it’ll be faster than it’ll take to repair the shuttle.
Tuvok agrees, and they hike over. A woman named Lillias is squatting in the conveyance, and threatens Neelix with a knife, but Tuvok and Neelix manage to convince her that they don’t want her stuff, they just want to fix the conveyance. She reluctantly agrees.
Torres and Chakotay examine the fragment with the ambassador observing, and they find a guidance system inside it. These haven’t been natural occurrences—someone is attacking the colony.
Vatm starts the launch sequence prematurely. Tuvok neck-pinches him, but it’s too late—the carriage is launching, but they haven’t completed repairs yet. Neelix has to manually monitor the carriage’s ascent as the magnetic cohesion is lost.
Tuvok—who is already peevish at Neelix for making small talk with Lillias when he should be working—discovers that Neelix exaggerated his experience a touch. He didn’t serve on an orbital tether, he worked with (very detailed!) scale models. It means there are gaps in his practical knowledge.
Unfortunately, their air supply is limited thanks to the incomplete repairs. Lillias and Hanjuan are pissed at Vatm for endangering their lives and they try to throw him out the hatch, but Tuvok talks them down. Tuvok also administers tri-ox to help everyone last longer in the ever-thinning air of the carriage.
Vatm, delirious, tries to open a hatch in order to climb on the carriage roof to retrieve something. But then he goes into shock and dies—and Tuvok’s examination reveals that he was poisoned. Someone put coolant in his water bottle.
Neelix thinks someone should check the roof to see what Vatm was talking about, but Tuvok dismisses Vatm’s words as delusional ravings of a poisoned, oxygen-deprived mind. Neelix insists, and stops the carriage’s upward progress. He’s the only one who can drive the thing, so Tuvok gives in to the inevitable and goes onto the roof himself, as his Vulcan physiology can handle the thinner air better than the others.
He discovers a device hidden in an access port. But then Sklar goes onto the roof. Neelix tries to stop him, and gets knocked on the head for his trouble. Sklar grabs Tuvok’s phaser and tosses him over the side. Sklar then demands that the carriage start up again—but the concussed Neelix is the only one who knows how to pilot it, and he’s in no shape to do so.
Tuvok, however, managed to grab a strut on the way down, because he’s just that awesome, and he clambers over to the hatch, which Neelix sees, and manages to open for him. Fisticuffs ensue, with Sklar being knocked out of the hatch and over the edge to his doom. Neelix manages to pilot the carriage high enough to contact Voyager.
The ship is a bit busy, as it turns out the asteroids were being sent by the Etanian Order, who have now sent ships. Voyager is defending the Nezu, though they do lower shields long enough to beam Tuvok, Neelix, Lillias, and Hanjuan aboard.
Tuvok realizes that the data pad from the roof contains the schematics of the Etanian ship, which they use to do serious damage to their vessels. The Etanians retreat.
Turns out that the Etanians do this sort of thing all the time: send asteroids to make it look like a natural disaster, forcing an evacuation, and then they swoop in to take the world. Voyager’s presence messed with the plan. And it turns out that Sklar was working for them.
In the mess hall, Tuvok thanks Neelix for opening the hatch to let him back into the carriage. He also allows as how Neelix can’t always trust his gut, and he hopes to some day convince him to follow logic, while Neelix hopes to some day convince Tuvok to trust his gut sometimes.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? It’s never made clear why Voyager’s only option is to fire phasers on the asteroids when they have a perfectly good tractor beam that can deflect the asteroids onto a different course. Or, for that matter, why they don’t destroy the asteroids when they’re much much farther away from the planet…
There’s coffee in that nebula! At one point, the ambassador tries to let Janeway off the hook for helping them, but the captain won’t abandon them under any circumstances, because she’s just that awesome.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok handles command mostly okay. Unfortunately, he also has to serve as a de facto field medic, and his bedside manner sucks.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix is frustrated by his inability to please Tuvok, and he and the security chief are at loggerheads for the entire episode, partly because of their different approaches to life, but mostly because Neelix overdoes the small talk and lied about his experience.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH commiserates with Neelix about how Tuvok doesn’t appreciate either of them.
Do it.
“I am the logical one to make the egress. I can breathe the rarefied atmosphere.”
“I can’t believe you’re going out there—you don’t even know what you’re looking for!”
“I’m looking for Mr. Neelix’s instinct. Perhaps it will be marked.”
–Tuvok being noble, Sklar expressing surprise, and Tuvok bringing the sass.
Welcome aboard. The great Allan Oppenheimer, having previously appeared as Koroth on TNG’s “Rightful Heir” and Captain Keogh on DS9’s “The Jem’Hadar,” plays the ambassador here. Lisa Kaminir plays Lillias with a constant state of anxiety, Kelly Connell plays Sklar with a constant state of neuroses, Tom Towles (last seen as a Klingon on DS9’s “Dramatis Personae“) plays Vatm with a wounded determination, and Geof Prysirr plays Hanjuan with a thuggish affect.
Trivial matters: The notion of a “space elevator” is a common one in science and in science fiction. It was first proposed in 1895 by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. This is the first time Star Trek has used one. A series of space elevators was also seen in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella Ring Around the Sky by Allyn Gibson.
Jimmy Diggs’s story pitch was inspired by the 1965 film The Flight of the Phoenix (which was remade in 2004), down to the bit about a character claiming to be an expert but only having worked on scale models.
This is the last Trek episode directed by the late Robert Scheerer, who directed eleven TNG episodes (starting with “The Measure of a Man,” a pretty auspicious first effort in the franchise), one DS9 episode (“Shadowplay“), and one prior Voyager episode (“State of Flux“).
Neelix names the carriage after his sister, Alixia. He tells Lillias that she died, along with the rest of his family, in a war, as already established in “Jetrel.”
Set a course for home. “You always have to get in the last word, don’t you?” As an episode of Voyager by itself, this is good. It’s got a great science fictional concept in the space elevator (which they call an orbital tether because “space elevator” was likely deemed too pulpy), it’s got good interactions among the characters, a fun little action B-plot, Tuvok being very Vulcan, and Neelix being very Neelix (without being annoying about it).
And if you just look at it by itself out of the context of the rest of Voyager, that’s all good. Hell, if you look at it in the context of all but one episode of the rest of Voyager, that’s all good.
But “Tuvix” is a thing that happened.
The Tuvok-Neelix interactions here make sense if they come during the first or second seasons, but coming after “Tuvix,” it’s nonsensical. The two of them shared a body and mind for two weeks. They should each have a much better understanding of each other at this point, and to have them back to the same rational vs. emotional dynamic they had starting in “Caretaker” is mind-numbingly idiotic. This was a grand opportunity to explore the aftermath of the merging of the two of them in that second-season episode, and instead, they act as if they don’t remotely understand each other, which makes no sense, none, after what they went through.
It’s maddening, because I like that rational vs. emotional dynamic, as it’s played with less verbal abuse than, for example, the similar dynamic between Spock and Leonard McCoy. Tuvok’s calmness is the only thing that keeps everyone alive, as he de-escalates the situation when Lillias and Hanjuan want to toss Vatm out an airlock. Neelix’s gut instinct that they should check the roof after Vatm died was the right one, though his method of going about it was dangerous. (Given how tenuous the ability to pilot the thing was, I can’t imagine that stopping it would make life easier.)
Neelix’s neuroses also have not abated despite Janeway’s reassurances at the end of “Fair Trade” that he’s still a valued part of the crew. He exaggerates his experience to Tuvok in order to prove he’s valuable to the away team, and he wants Tuvok to like him and respect him, neither of which are coins Tuvok is likely to part with, well, ever. Their closing scene is a bit too much of a callback to “Journey to Babel” and McCoy’s glee over getting the last word, but Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips sell it beautifully. Phillips is always better when he’s not being over-the-top goofy, and it’s good to have the Neelix of “Jetrel” and “Fair Trade” who’s an actual complex character.
The guest acting is less impressive. Allen Oppenheimer is utterly wasted in a glorified cameo as the ambassador, while the other Nezu are bland and boring. Between that, and the inability to remember that these two guys shared a brain for two weeks, what should’ve been a strong science fiction story turns into an exercise in frustration.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido is one of the guests of honor at the virtual Bubonicon 2020 this coming Saturday the 29th of August. Among the events (which can be seen on Zoom, YouTube, or Facebook) will be Keith doing a reading, and participating in panels on writing (with Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, Susan Matthews, and Lauren Teffeau) and the use of mythology in fiction (with Teffeau, Rebecca Roanhorse, Reese Hogan, and Chaz Kemp). Keep an eye on the con’s Facebook page for details.
Could the revelation that Neelix lied and only worked with models be an homage to Hardy Kruger and Giovanni Ribisi’s characters in The Flight of the Phoenix and its remake?
Milo: So I was about to type, “Of course it was inspired by that, didn’t you read the Trivial Matter?” but then I realized that I forgot to put that in the Trivial Matters. Herpity derpity derp. Will go fix that…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s a decent action thriller, but the mishandling of the space elevator concept annoyed me. I mean, it was nice that they used the concept, possibly the first time it was used in SFTV, but they bungled the specifics. They said the tether is 300 km long, which is a couple of hundred times too short for a viable space elevator around an Earth-sized planet. You need to have the center of mass of the thing at a synchronous orbital altitude, so the period of the orbit is exactly equal to the planet’s rotation period and thus it stays constantly over the same point. And that’s just the center of mass, so you need more tether extending out beyond it an equal length (or else a shorter length with a proportionally massive counterweight). It’s typical of Trek to shrink the size of things that should be ginormous, like the tiny solar sails on Bajoran sailships in DS9: “Explorers” and “Accession.”
I was also frustrated by the reset-to-zero tension between Tuvok and Neelix, and the missed opportunity to follow up on “Tuvix.” That episode ended without making it clear whether they remembered anything from their time as one being, and “Rise” seems to establish that they don’t. But it would’ve been so much more interesting if they had remembered, if this episode had given us the followup that “Tuvix” deserved.
“as his Vulcan physiognomy can handle the thinner air better than the others.”
You mean “physiology.” Physiognomy means facial or outward appearance.
Gyar. Thanks, Christopher, for that catch. I’ve corrected it to the right word. Sigh.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, grateful for the edit function to catch the dumbshit mistakes he makes while writing after a long day
What is so annoying to me about this (and so many other Neelix moments) is that there is really no reason for him to lie about his experience. They are trapped on this planet, and models or no models, he still has far more experience with this kind of thing than anyone else. All lying did was making it more dangerous, because they likely would have taken further precautions if they knew Neelix’s experiences were mainly theoretical instead of practical.
I think the episode once again makes the mistake of thinking that the audience harbors far more goodwill toward Neelix than we do. Tuvok is meant to come across as mean and dismissive, but he is a trained Starfleet officer with extensive experience, and Neelix is their goofy cook who exaggerates his knowledge and expertise. Even without the “Vulcans don’t have gut instincts” angle, it’s still pretty reasonable that Neelix’s “I have a funny feeling that requires some extremely dangerous and life-threatening actions to confirm” would be ignored. And his desired to be liked by Tuvok is just grating, really. He seems to be well-liked (lord knows why) by the rest of the crew, so it isn’t like he is desperate for friends. He is purposely annoying to Tuvok, and then gets all huffy when a Vulcan doesn’t find it endearing.
I remember liking this one when I first saw it. I thought the space elevator was really cool, it was a fun thing to finally see having come across references to the concept in other fiction. The Tuvok/Neelix interactions never bothered me because I assumed that after “Tuvix” they would have no memory of the event and the relationship here makes that clear. I always liked the way the two characters played off each other and Russ and Phillips do great things with it. I’m glad that bit didn’t change.
Somebody on Facebook asked an interesting question: Is there any reason this episode couldn’t come before “Tuvix”? I can’t think of a reason, other than maybe Janeway’s hairstyle, but then there’s “Parturition” where her hair was short for a week and then magically got long again the next.
@5/wildfyrewarning: “What is so annoying to me about this (and so many other Neelix moments) is that there is really no reason for him to lie about his experience.”
That’s the point, though, that it’s coming from his insecurity, his imagined fears rather than any genuine need. Starfleet characters in Berman-era Trek had to be perfect, but outsiders like Neelix could be screwed up and neurotic and self-defeating.
You know, watching this season again, the whole Neelix and Kes breakup is still really weird. For instance, in this episode, Neelix stops by medical to grab some supplies and briefly interacts with Kes. The interaction is as though the two characters don’t have a history. It’s not like the awkward interaction between exes trying to act normal, but as though they were strangers. I’ve never seen a show just drop a relationship before with very little explanation. It was bizarre when the show first aired and still very much a head-scratcher now.
KRAD wrote:
Or did it? The only way to stay sane with long-running Trek, I’ve found, is to assume each project is purely episodic except when a previous adventure is explicitly referenced; otherwise there’s a “reversion to the mean”, as it were (“reversion to the series bible concept of the characters and milieu”, more pertinently). If two characters have a certain relationship, we can infer that something led to that relationship, but we can’t say what it was — maybe an aired adventure? But conversely, if their relationship goes backwards, maybe an unaired adventure negated it. (While passing through the evidently-not-so-expansive Nekrit Expanse, aliens accidentally wipe their memories and inexpertly restore them. Makes as much sense as anything else this crew endures.)
No, it’s not satisfying if one demands large-scale consistency; but if an episode can entertain me on the small scale, I’ll restrain my complaints in the interest of healthy blood pressure.
I always thought along the same lines as @@@@@6/lesleyk and assumed that Neelix and Tuvok has no memory of Tuvix. I figured that added to the tragedy of the character. Sarek’s memories lived on through Picard/Spock and Data through Lal/B4, but Tuvix just didn’t exist anymore.
I always enjoy space elevators when they pop up, but I guess its name does sound a little silly compared to other names like “Dyson sphere” and “warp drive”. That said, “space elevator” is way better than “orbital tether”! The latter just sounds like more standard technobabble that viewers tend to tune out, rather than an actual scientific concept.
The opening of this episode is very TNG: You can imagine a similar pre-credits of the Enterprise having answered a distress call from the aliens of the week. And indeed there isn’t really much reason for the episode to be set in the Delta Quadrant, other than to explain Voyager’s lack of familiarity with the Etanians. Perhaps this is why later seasons went back to foregrounding the “trying to get home” angle: Without it, there’s a danger of the show retreading old ground.
I wasn’t really looking forward to another Tuvok/Neelix team-up, but it was a lot better than I was expecting. Hopefully we’ve seen the last of the crass cultural misappropriation that has characterised their interaction in the past. Instead, this was something deeper, with neither being entirely right or wrong. Neelix’s attempts to impress Tuvok are a bit cloying at times and he exaggerates his knowledge of maglev carriages yet does manage to get the job done. Tuvok has a point about him wasting time with personal conversations, but Neelix is right to try and boost morale. And his instincts are correct about Vatm’s final actions and pretty much save Voyager and the colony. Yet it’s Tuvok who has to do most of the donkey work. Their big showdown is telling. Tuvok has been behaving irritably towards Neelix ever since they met, and we kind of go along with it because frankly Neelix is very irritating a lot of the time. But Tuvok can’t express negative emotions towards him and then claim to have no feelings on the subject, and this gives up a glimpse behind Neelix’s usual grating ebullience to show how he really feels about the constant rejections. Of course, Tuvok pays him back with the wonderfully snarky “I am looking for Mr Neelix’s instinct. Perhaps it will be marked.” (Neelix does of course respond to this with the equally wonderful “It’s strange but I really like him. I just wish it was mutual.”)
It’s a bit of a weakness that Neelix seems to go from concussed and semi-conscious to perfectly fine just because Tuvok gives him a few words of encouragement: He doesn’t even seem to go to Sickbay on returning to the ship. After giving us a fairly interesting cast of guest characters, the most anonymous turns out to be the traitor, although that may have been the intention. It’s hard to see what Sklar was trying to achieve at the end: Did he think the Etanians could retrieve him if he got the maglev going? Janeway shutting herself in her ready room feels like an excuse to give Chakotay something to do. Hanjuan hugging a mortified Tuvok is a great comedy moment.
Ah, okay: This is the episode that has Kes back in her old multi-layered outfits because it was filmed before “Darkling”. This week, Chakotay is running tactical because the regular officer isn’t on board and they don’t want to hire another actor: Is there any job he can’t do? I think that marks the first mention of Neelix’s family being wiped out since “Jetrel”. Did Voyager just beam people aboard with shields up again? (The recap says they lower them but they seem to be under constant fire.)
So was “Orbital Turbolift” not an option? ;)
@10/Fry08: Structures of that type are, in fact, generally called tethers, such as momentum exchange tethers or electrodynamic tethers. It’s not just Trek technobabble. But space elevators are generally called just space elevators.
@8/Austin: The incongruity regarding the Kes/Neelix breakup is because for whatever reason, a filmed scene in ”Fair Trade” where the two characters addressed their breakup was omitted. So now every subsequent interaction between the two makes it seem like their breakup occurred with Kes being taken over by Tiernan in “Warlord.”
@14/garreth: Their breakup did happen in “Warlord.” As you say, the scene in “Fair Trade” addressed their breakup, meaing it discussed it as something that had already happened. It was a clarification that they had indeed already broken up. You can read more here:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Fair_Trade_(episode)#Deleted_scene
The dialogue for the entire scene (only 6 paragraphs long) is reprinted on p. 159 of the Star Trek Voyager Companion. Neelix says “It’s very apparent that our relationship has been changing… that we aren’t close in the way we once were…” and Kes replies “I know. We seem to have… drifted apart.” And they both confirm they’ll always be dear friends, and that’s about it.
@14 – Oh, I know the history behind it. I’m just saying it’s very weird how the show acts as though a relationship never existed. Like the recent episode where Kes falls for that guy. Nothing from Neelix about that. Was he even in that episode? And then this episode and their interaction in the sickbay. Like two strangers. It just feels weird to me.
Talk about coincidences. This past week I’ve been playing a Mega Man game whose primary plot involves a space elevator.
Ironically, for an episode that’s about rising constantly to the skies, Rise can feel like it’s spinning in place much of the time. For a long time, I didn’t realize what was wrong, but @krad nailed it. Tuvix happened, and not acknowledging the changes aand growth was a flaw on the episode. But that’s not the only issue.
It’s a great concept, and there are some real stakes (even though I figured the asteroids were stealth weapons long before the reveal). But while putting Tuvok and Neelix in close quarters for 40 minutes is capable of generating tension and drama, I can’t say the same about the other characters. Voyager usually lucks out with great guest performers (Sloyan, Grey, Kurtwood), but this was the exception. Other than Oppenheimer, everyone just fizzles. These ones barely qualify as characters. The side plot about Sklar helping the enemy was more trouble than it’s worth.
At least Braga was canny enough to not rely on the soap opera histrionics alone and wrote in at least one imaginative action set piece to liven things up. Tuvok having to climb outside the thing was a highlight, and the VFX – while dated by 2020 – was still able to sell the gut feeling of danger.
The Tuvix issue never bothered me as I don’t see why they would remember Tuvix’s experiences. The shared brain was essentially pulled into two. The memory engrams that form Tuvix’s mind’s memories would’ve been reduced to half bit chains. Like reverse torrenting all of his memories into two different files in two different folders on two different computers that speak two different languages since Tuvok and Neelix’s brains are structured differently.
Now, if there’s anything that should’ve remained that might’ve been cool to explore would’ve been a lingering telepathic link. There can be no more complete mind meld then a physical fusion. There’s drama and comedy to be mined from the fact that Tuvok would have an additional weight on his mental load, making sure that the telepathic door between he and Neelix remains permanently closed. For his own sanity, not his mental health, but to not be constantly annoyed, yet giving insight into Neelix’s gut in situations like this.
My thought on Tuvix is that Tuvok and Neelix do remember Tuvix’s experiences, but not each other’s. Tuvix was a blending of the two of them: It was made clear in the episode that they weren’t both conscious inside of him. When they were separated, they retained only those parts that belonged to each individual. I think they probably remember what Tuvix did in a kind of remembering someone else’s life way, but they wouldn’t have special memories or insight about each other as individuals, because they didn’t exist as individuals when Tuvix was around and everything individual about them from before was put back into the proper place.
The point isn’t about whether it’s logical for them not to remember Tuvix or whatever. This is a work of fiction, and it can happen whatever way the writers decide it happens. The point is that it’s a missed storytelling opportunity to have no consequences for the profound thing that happened in “Tuvix.” The point is that it could have evolved Tuvok’s and Neelix’s personalities and their relationship with each other in interesting ways if they had remembered, so not doing that was a waste of potential.
But what would they have taken forward? That they were more awesome as a fusion than they were as individuals? Tuvix was the sum of Tuvok and Neelix’s parts but he was also purely Tuvix. The synergy of their abilities that he had as a person isn’t necessarily one that they could duplicate. And the fact is that Tuvok would still be annoyed by Neelix. It’s part of their odd couple dynamic. The problem more specifically is that like with Neelix and Kes’ breakup, it’s something that wasn’t addressed on screen. It can happen either way, either they have a deep connection now, or they both rematerialize after the procedure and think that they just got beamed up and are wondering why the Captain is operating the transporter.
That said, considering how extraordinarily private Vulcans are, it would be amusing for Neelix to spend all his time talking about how he and Tuvok have this connection from having shared a body, which Tuvok completely ignores and denies.
That’s just Voyager’s episodic nature though. It seems rather extreme to trash an episode because it doesn’t reference another episode when there’s no reason to assume the events of the other episode are even relevant to this one, it’d just be “interesting” if it was.
@21/Mr. D: “But what would they have taken forward? That they were more awesome as a fusion than they were as individuals?”
It’s not about being better or worse. It’s just about a story that profound being remembered, resonating forward in the characters’ lives. “The Best of Both Worlds” was powerful, but what made it more powerful was that we got to see its enduring impact on Picard in “Family” and “I, Borg” and First Contact and Picard.
The most frustrating thing about “Tuvix” was the way it just cut off after the separation without a word to establish whether or not Neelix and Tuvok had any memory of the event, whether it had any consequence to their lives at all. That complete lack of followup was frustrating, and when this episode finally put that pair together again and never acknowledged that “Tuvix” had even happened, that was even more frustrating. I’m not asking for a single specific way of following up, since there are many possibilities depending on the writer. But the failure to follow up in any way whatsoever felt creatively lazy and dishonest. Because it should have had some effect on their relationship. Even if neither of them remembered being Tuvix, they would both know that they had been joined into a single viable personality, and that should have somehow informed their opinion of whether they could get along with each other. It should have given their relationship a history that felt totally lacking here.
@22/cap-mjb: “That’s just Voyager’s episodic nature though. It seems rather extreme to trash an episode because it doesn’t reference another episode”
You haven’t been paying attention if you think this is the first time I’ve ever complained about Voyager‘s lack of memory or consistency. And you’re wrong that it’s “just its episodic nature.” TNG was an episodic show, but it routinely acknowledged past events and their impact on the characters. It didn’t just pretend they never happened. By the 1980s-90s, most episodic shows had the characters at least remember and refer to events from previous episodes. Voyager was more of a throwback to the almost nonexistent continuity of the ’60s and ’70s. Even in its day, VGR fell far short of the expected norms when it came to character continuity and internal consistency.
@16 It’s been 10 episodes since they broke up. Maybe still too soon for some couples to be acting ok with one another, but its really been quite a long time and most people would expect them to be civil around each other and able to carry out their duties by now. Especially given Kes’s lifespan, 2-3 months equals years of anyone else’s life.
@23/Christopher: Ironically, for a show that tried so hard to emulate TNG’s storytelling structure, Voyager’s approach to episodic storytelling often leaned much closer to the Original Series, where you could air a significant part of that show out of order without breaking continuity.
@24/Karey: Kes having a faster aging process doesn’t mean she perceives time any differently than the other characters. If that’s supposed to be a character trait, the show hasn’t established it before. Humanoids in the Trek universe seem to follow Einstein’s perception of time flow in a uniform manner across all species. Therefore, it’s safe to assume her perception of breaking up with Neelix is more or less the same as his. 2 or 3 months have passed, and there’s no reason to assume it felt longer for her.
@25/Eduardo: I disagree. It’s not about the instantaneous perception of the rate time passes, but about its perceived proportion to your total lifespan. It’s a common experience that when you’re a child, three months feels like forever, but when you’re older, it feels like a very short time.
Personally I’m just as glad the show pretended Tuvix never happened, because that was… not a good episode, to put it charitably.
@16: “Like the recent episode where Kes falls for that guy. Nothing from Neelix about that. Was he even in that episode?”
Yes, but not much, and he didn’t have any screen time with Kes: His only scene was with the Doctor.
@23: “You haven’t been paying attention if you think this is the first time I’ve ever complained about Voyager‘s lack of memory or consistency. And you’re wrong that it’s “just its episodic nature.” TNG was an episodic show, but it routinely acknowledged past events and their impact on the characters. It didn’t just pretend they never happened. By the 1980s-90s, most episodic shows had the characters at least remember and refer to events from previous episodes. Voyager was more of a throwback to the almost nonexistent continuity of the ’60s and ’70s. Even in its day, VGR fell far short of the expected norms when it came to character continuity and internal consistency.”
I think that’s an exaggeration. This very episode references Neelix’s history from “Jetrel” as a way of understanding his character, as does “Mortal Coil”, as does “Once Upon a Time”, as does “Homestead” to a degree. Encounters with the likes of the Kazon, Q, the Hirogen and the Borg follow a developing storyline. An episode like “Someone to Watch Over Me” isn’t forgotten but informs the Doctor and Seven’s interaction going forward. Yes, you can throw “The Best of Both Worlds” out there as an episode that was followed up next week, but next to that you have “The Inner Light”, where something which should have had a dramatic effect on Picard was reduced to a conversation in “Lessons” and him playing the flute, or “Attached”, which should have profoundly changed Picard and Crusher’s relationship but was instead handwaved away in a pat final scene, or “The Pegasus”, the events of which should have had a major impact on Riker’s personal and professional life but instead were never mentioned again except in an episode of Enterprise that many people pretend doesn’t exist.
In short, I think both series have plenty of examples of episodes that had an impact and were referenced subsequently, and episodes that should have done but were quietly forgotten. Sure, Voyager wasn’t a good one for character development and got worse as it went on, but TNG seemed to have its characters all on friendly terms by episode two and there was very little change between then and the end of the show. “Tuvix” not being referenced here isn’t a continuity error, it’s a creative decision. Maybe a bad one, but sometimes the people working on a show like the characters and their relationships with each other and don’t want to change them too much. That can make a show stagnate, but then too much focus on the impact of events on characters can result in an originally lively and fun-to-watch ensemble becoming uniformly lifeless and miserable.
@28/cap-mjb: ““Tuvix” not being referenced here isn’t a continuity error, it’s a creative decision.”
I never said it was a continuity error. My explicit point has been that it was a creative decision I disagreed with.
@23/Christopher
I get it, I feel your pain. Which is frustrating as it can’t be chalked up to the era it was in when DS9 was doing that kind of character work on the same lot. And Voyager by it’s design had equal opportunity to consistently do that kind of character work. The reasons why they didn’t…have been discussed…a lot.
@25 They show Kes reading and learning material at superspeed, and in general developing as a person at a very accelerated rate throughout the show. In Darkling she tells people off for treating her like a child when she’s almost 3 for crying out loud! She can feel her life passing by at a proportional pace I think and still perceive time in the same relative way as everyone else. Minutes are still minutes, they’re just a bigger part of her whole life.
This is an interesting premise for an episode, but beyond remembering when reading the rewatch, it left no impressions on me.
@11 – cap-mjb: Of course they don’t want to hire another actor, but it makes sense that Chakotay, as a trained Starfleet officer, can do any shipboard job at least competently. You’re gonna be better at your specialty role, and pretty good at a secondary one, but you’re supposed to be able to do everything at least at a basic level.
@33- And while individual skills may not directly translate depending on the differences in control systems, versatility would have been highly important aboard a Maquis ship where skilled replacements for casualties could be a long time coming.
Good point.
I’ve often maintained that much of VGR’s third season is a pallid rehash of DS9’s much superior fifth season (which was running concurrently with S3), so it surprises me that no-one here has thought to mention Rise’s similarities to DS9’s The Ascent. Tuvok and Neelix may as well be Quark and Odo; an orbital lift instead of a Runabout; in either case, something is concealed from the characters that proves vital to they’re survival; being trapped together stirs up simmering resentments, etc.
3: VGR does enjoy resetting things to factory settings more than the other Trek shows. 4: That’s the upside to running your own website. I myself hate making mistakes and realising there’s nothing I can do to fix them. 8: We didn’t even know for sure that Kes and Neelix were no longer an item until Darkling. Certainly they’re breakup should have been dealt with more substantially than a throwaway line from the Doctor. 10: I think you mean Lal lived through Data.
11: There is a noticeable difference in the way Tuvok treats Neelix after this episode but that distance is always there. 14: I thought his name was Tieran. 23: VGR’s first experiment with serialisation in S2 was less than successful. 24: It’s more like nine episodes. 28: The only one in early TNG that wasn’t treated so well was the much hated Wesley Crusher. “Uniformly lifeless and miserable” – any ensemble in particular?
Another similarity Rise shares with The Ascent is the characters both have to make a long climb to the top of either a mountain in one, or the orbital tether.
@21 It was brief, but I thought the end of Tuvix suggested that Neelix (and so presumably Tuvok) at least remembered to some extent the weeks that had just happened to Tuvix.
– neither of them seems surprised to have appeared sitting on the bed in sickbay, instead of being in the transporter room as they’d expect if they had no memory.
– Neelix is overjoyed to see Kes in a “We’ve been apart for weeks” way, not a “I saw you this morning” way.
So I’d speculate they both had at least some memory of what it was like being Tuvix. And I certainly agree this story was weird making 0 acknowledgement of it. Even if the memory engrams degraded and they forgot them, they’d still remember remembering them just after they were split.
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I see Neelix is sporting a new outfit similar to Kes in the last episode – another forerunner to Seven’s catsuits?
When my wife and I first got together, I had never seen the Battlestar Galactica remake and she had never seen any Star Trek. We watched BSG together, her for the 2nd (or 3rd?) time, me for the first.
Fast forward 5 years. We’re married and have a toddler, and she is finally a bonafide Trekkie as we have watched TOS, TNG, etc. and here we are at this episode of Voyager.
Sklar goes parachuteless skydiving out of the carriage and my wife and I harken back to President Roslin’s Cylon mitigation policy and simultaneously shout, “Out the airlock!” We immediately laugh and high five each other. This is what I will forever remember about this episode! 😂
Surf Wisely.