*NOW VOYAGER*
The Official Newsletter of the Kate Mulgrew Appreciation Society
* Volume II Number 1
*THE BUZZ*
Happy New Year everyone! It's time to take stock of things, and in that
spirit, this issue may be more critical in tone than the past several.
We're here to celebrate Voyager. I don't care about things like how many
shuttles get blown up. But I care passionately about the characters--I
think we all do, which is why the reviews herein are as long and as
forceful as they are. So I am going to make my own plea:
Rick, Michael, Jeri: GET RID OF THE HOLODECK. All the holodecks, on all
the shows--convert them into schools, tennis courts, even brothels which
are all they're good for anyway. Oh, I know this won't happen, since the
holodeck has become a necessary plot device for making it look like there
are trees and castles and bistros on starships--in TNG first season they
hardly left the ship, they were so busy in fantasyland. But if you must
keep the holodeck, treat it the way you'd treat any other use of
hallucinogens. Assume that Starfleet recognizes the dangers of
holaddiction. Stand by "The Barclay Rule": When the holodeck get used in a
way which is demeaning or dehumanizing to the user, it's time to turn it
off. And lately, we rarely see the holodeck used any other way.
Jeri Taylor told the British magazine Dreamwatch that if she suspects
holographs, if they existed, would primarily get used for sex. I can't
argue with that, but it bothers me seeing it all the time on Trek. Maybe
I'm old-fashioned in that I prefer to see the characters involved with
living, breathing people rather than projections. Maybe I'm concerned that
the young people in the Trek audience will think that it's better to have
relationships comprised of rigid role-playing, bodies which never get fat
or age, and designer sex than to have emotional interaction. Or maybe I'm
just a prude: I don't want to watch characters satisfy themselves with
inflatable people any more than I want to see them using sex toys. They can
do what they want to scratch their itches off-duty, but not in front of the
rest of us, please.
So stop making Kira and Dax act like they're so desperate for sex that
they'll dress in ridiculous clothes and play bimbos. Let Riker forget
Minuet and have a lasting relationship with a woman who won't fall for his
skanky lines and might snap back. If you must write Tom Paris as a
womanizer, let him stick to Kes and the Delaney sisters, rather than some
flake named Ricky who doesn't really exist. Of course Tom can't deal with
live women; he's getting all his practice with what Sandrine describes as a
puppydog who sits and waits on his every whim. Sandrine's pretty bright
about such limitations. I guess in some respects holocharacters are smarter
than their programmers.
But most importantly, please delete Janeway's holonovel. I hated it even
before it went berserk, from the moment it became clear that Janeway's idea
of "relaxation" is nookie with a fake English lord. I worry about a woman
who thinks it's less degrading to have a physical relationship with an
artificial construct than with a living, breathing person who happens to
serve on a ship she commands. Maybe the hologram's supposed to be safer,
but playing it safe is hardly one of Janeway's trademarks. There's not a
person on the ship I wouldn't rather catch the captain with than a hollow
man. If Janeway must fool around with substitutes, why not the Doc, who at
least has independent personality and wouldn't try to boss her around like
a British fop? Janeway's showing all of the weakness and vulnerability
attributed to women in love with none of the strength and passion. She
looks hysterical, desperate for sex but too scared to deal with a real man.
And given that she plays Lord Burleigh's servant and mommies his kids, the
tone of the story is downright masochistic. Can't she at least rope 'em up
and drag 'em in, have some wild fun?
I keep reading the producers say that it's all right for Janeway to touch
people and show emotion becausethey want her to be "feminine," but that
Janeway can't date crewmembers because it would compromise her position. It
seems to me that since the crew is allowed to perceive her as human, not
perfect, they already see her as a woman and a captain simultaneously, with
no threat to her authority. This is a much more passionate person than
Picard; it makes sense that she would want love in her life.
But compromises have to be made for a 20th century audience which has
trouble seeing a woman in command. So instead of a lover she gets a
holonovel, which is supposed to convince us that she's a good captain and a
Real Woman. Janeway's fantasy says to me that she secretly enjoys not being
in command of herself, that underneath that captain is a lady who wants to
be taken by a burly lord. The fantasy compromises her image more than
dating half the crew would. And even if we write it off to bad taste,
Janeway's choice of plot makes little sense. Why would she pick a genre
piece involving roles and repression just as rigid as Starfleet's? Why fall
for another man she isn't supposed to have, only reversing the
servant/master roles? Elevated endorphin levels aside, Janeway's going to
leave the holodeck just as unhappy as when she arrived. Burleigh may be
anatomically correct, but he can't talk to her; he can only order her
around, speak in cliches, and disappear when she's finished with him.
"Persistence of vision" is the term for the way your brain lies to your
eyes when you're watching a movie. I imagine it's like the way the mind
works in a holonovel; you know you're seeing a projection, but you let
yourself believe in it, to a point. What the alien did to Janeway in that
episode wasn't as bad as what she did to herself: she forgot that she has
the power to turn it off. But that's a TV producer's dream--that fans will
accept fantasy as reality (and spend all our money on Viacom products). On
some level, we're all supposed to be like the Doc--"I don't have a life, I
have a program." If the holodeck represents us, maybe it's time we shut
down the program ourselves.
Michelle
*REVIEWZZZZZZZZ*
PERSISTENCE OF VISION
Unreal sex is Trek's stock-in-trade. Either it's all a dream or evil
aliens force them to kiss. That's the standard approach; anything else
breaks format. It's why they dropped the Picard/Crusher and Riker/Troi
romances from TNG so quickly. It is frequently obvious that Trek is a
profit-driven franchise, but the fudges and absurdities of "Persistence of
Vision" made that fact stick out even more that usual.
I'm not sure all the goings-on were supposed to be the deepest fears or
desires of the crew--just ones this sadistic bastard latched onto to
distract the people who were actively working to stop him. He did
concentrate on significant others for the sex potential of the episode
(hear those cash registers ring?). I think Jeri Taylor was avoiding the
gender split that obtained in "The Naked Now," one of the worst TNG
episodes, in which all the women had uncontrollable sexual urges and the
men more substantial concerns--so not only the women saw romantic figures
here--but they got all the scenes. The alien started with things that were
close to the surface, like cucumber sandwiches, then worked up to menacing
stuff, apparently just to be mean--and of course this was the Halloween
episode, so it was hilarious when Janeway explained away her uniform as a
costume!
I did like seeing the captain show a little strain. That was illuminating,
as was the approach she took to finding out why she was seeing things--and
the laundry list she gave Chakotay in Sickbay, as well as the
conspiratorial smiles among the bridge crew trying to get her off duty. The
bit with Janeway and Mark in the lift (and Chakotay standing right there!)
was odd. The nasty alien creep had been working on her for a long time, she
was already stressed and her resistance low, so I suppose that's why she
gave in, but I wish she hadn't. I do not like the idea of Janeway having
sex with images. The holonovel embarrasses the hell out of me. She
obviously felt weird kissing Lord Burleigh, enough so that guilty memories
of Mark bobbed up to the surface. That line about having someone else on
her mind was priceless. Obviously it has to be Chakotay, but there was the
ambiguity of that holokiss to murk it up! The main problem with her
succumbing to Mark was that she had no hand in saving the ship. Her crew
and their safety was not paramount. In the TOS episode "The Naked Time,"
for which "Persistence of Vision" is the equivalent, Kirk's devotion to the
Enterprise resolved the matter--he could not succumb to the virus because
he had to save his ship. Janeway got sidetracked in a way that her
detractors can point to with glee. I don't mind Kes's resourcefulness,
because Jennifer Lien does everything right with that part, but she's not
the captain! I wanted Janeway to be part of the solution. It feels wrong to
have her staring at the wall while a two-year-old Jill-of-all-trades pulls
her fat out of the fire.
B'Elanna has a complex relationship with Chakotay. He represents her
missing father (probably having a resemblance to the Hispanic Mr. Torres)
and the Starfleet career she lost by dropping out of the Academy--serving
in the Maquis, under a former commander who still had a strong attachment
to the uniform, was the closest she could come to it. He has backed her up
with Janeway, getting her the job of Chief Engineer, and treats her like a
parent, chewing her out like a kid when she loses control. She has
gravitated towards Janeway and lost touch with Chakotay to some extent. I
don't buy that B'Elanna would really want a love affair with him--when she
was lucid, she seemed to realize that. I can buy that she thought about
having sex with him. They were together in close quarters for a long time,
under the kind of circumstances that bind people together tightly. Plus we
are talking about that particular man, and a woman whose genes predispose
her to a strong appetite. But I don't like to see such an interesting
landscape reduced to maximum titillation value. Torres realized that the
guy was not for real, but went ahead with it anyway! If she was thinking
clearly enough to dismiss the consequences of sex with a delusion, she
could have dropped him with a well-placed knee and kept working on her
project. Her limp reaction to his embrace was worthy of a romance novel.
That's not my B'Elanna. She went Klingon when she decided to do it, but
more for the laugh than for character reasons. And despite the undeniable
entertainment value in seeing Robert Beltran finally have a romantic scene,
it was a cheap thrill. Fake sex again! The real reason for that tussle is
that Taylor wanted Chakotay to advertise his erotic potential, and B'Elanna
was the logical choice. My impression of the whole episode was that Taylor
is trying to string out the Janeway/Chakotay flirtation, so she throws in
something like this.
Can the issues raised by Voyager's superb setup ever be honestly addressed
in a medium that in this country exists to sell cars and fast food? The
original series, which was also TV and had some dreadful episodes, managed
to deal with the relationships and Big Ideas much more consistently. I am
hoping that it is just growing pains. But another factor is the big-bucks
status of Trek as the crown jewel of the Paramount entertainment empire,
and the kingpin of the UPN network project. That drags it down into the
fray with a lot of mainstream sitcoms and cop shows, and doesn't allow it
the idiosyncratic brilliance of a cult phenomenon. This is serious business
now. The accountants torpedoed TNG at its height for the sake of the
balance sheet, and the pressures of the Neilsens are weighing heavy on
Voyager. Now there's a truly scary obstacle--"Captain! There's a Sweeps
Week on our tail!" "Fire phasers, Mr. Tuvok--and Commander--could I see you
in my ready room? I knew it would have to come to this before I asked you
about mating practices again..."
--L.R. Bowen
[Photo of Janeway with Lord Burleigh]
There's a whole generation that grew up in the belief that going into
space would not be an edifying experience--a generation that malingered
through its youth, heavily infected by weekly doses of The Outer Limits,
and overdosed on weekend flicks such as IT! The Blob and Invasion of The
Body Snatchers. We might refer to those early connoisseurs as graduates of
the Paranoid School of Science Fiction. It's interesting to note that the
original Star Trek does not show up so very much later than these kinds of
stories. In fact, some of the earlier TOS episodes balanced rather uneasily
between the typical Us-Against-Whatever-It-Is of early science fiction and
the more upbeat positivism that most people tend to associate with Star
Trek. The most recent trend is a shift back to that delicious state of
paranoid delusion that was once so much a part of the American scene, as
evidenced by the growing popularity of such shows as The X-Files, the
return of old favorites such as The Invaders, and the cult following of
movies such as Alien.
Against this latter day trend, Star Trek has largely stood alone. With
some resident gloominess on DS9 notwithstanding, most would agree that Star
Trek has retained almost to a fault the optimism that first set it apart
from the standard SF shows. But it also stands to reason that Space is a
big place and that being real big, there's a lot of room for some
occasional threatening ugliness of the alien variety. "Persistence of
Vision" is one of those shows that proves that the buoyancy of wearing the
Star Fleet uniform is no proof against sheer unreasoning malice, and that
unreasoning malice is probably not a distinctly human property (although I
still think we'll turn out to be better at it than most species).
One of the first things that struck me in the episode is that our
perception of being "captain" of a starship is largely dependent upon how
the captain reacts to the job. It's seems majestic and bigger than life and
worthy of aspiration only so long as the man or woman in the position is up
to it. Once the stress is evident, one begins to see the endless demand of
an impossible position. It's a useful insight, as well as a clever way of
setting us up to accept the red herring that the phenomena we're seeing is
just Janeway finally starting to shatter into the gibbering wreck toward
which the Anti-Janeway Brigade always figured she was heading.
Nearer to the end, we see each individual battling with the siren-like
quality of their individual character flaws. The inevitability of each of
their defeats lends a tragic quality to the story. But for me there's
something much worse, something that moves this particular episode over to
the darkest side of science fiction. The entity that finally appears in its
[true?] form in engineering responds to Janeway's demand for an explanation
with the ultimate alien put down. "Why?" asks Janeway. "Because I can," it
replies. Petty? Yes, but still the very worst thing to hear in the void of
unexplored space. Even the monstrous parasite in Alien has a purpose.
Terrible to serve as a host for one of its offspring, no doubt...yet
purposeful nevertheless. To humanity, motivation is a paramount concept.
Everyone and everything needs to have a purpose; even bad guys otherwise
lacking in redeemable characteristics have motives. Yet this thing plays
nasty tricks with the most private of our thoughts, and brings us to the
edge of wrack and ruin for no better reason than to practice its backhand
on our frontal lobes.
Therefore I find it difficult to fault Janeway for seeming a bit morose at
the end. Here she is, fearless captain of a grand ship and a gallant crew,
except that once in awhile she might have to face up to getting the
dilithium crystals beat out of her by an alien with nothing better to do at
the moment. We can sympathize with her, I think. Voyager is in its present
predicament due to the actions of a cosmic good Samaritan, and has just
been nearly destroyed by a cosmic brain hacker. It is a somber moment. Keep
on struggling, Captain. Keep up the good fight. Oh, by the way, it probably
doesn't make any difference. The poet tells us that "thisis the way the
world ends... Not with a bang, but with a whimper." Even as each individual
in the crew is going through the sobering process of facing up to their
individual weaknesses, they are left with this unthinkable thought... that
in the end, for all their effort, they may well be destroyed for no good
reason. Worse, for no reason at all.
--Richard Hanson
Ladies and gentlemen, coming soon for a limited engagement, Disempowerment
of Women Playhouse presents "Persistence of Vision!" Or "Persistence of
Derision" as it's been dubbed by many on the Net. This episode had definite
flaws, but I confess I didn't have the I'm-gonna-spew visceral reaction to
it that many seem to have. The plot can be summed up quickly...this week's
Dastardly Peril telepathically influences the Voyager crew, causing their
hidden desires and thoughts to come forward...at least that seemed to be
the goal (not to mention what the press releases said), but what actually
occurred was that most of the crew experienced visions of things that were
most certainly not hidden. Tom Paris saw his father, whom I daresay has
been a large influence on his personality and quite forward in Tom's
thoughts. Tuvok had a vision of his wife and home...if these are his
subconscious desires I think he needs professional help. Likewise, Harry
saw his girlfriend and Janeway saw Mark...in fact the only crewmember who
experienced a vision of anything even remotely qualifying as a deeply
buried fantasy was B'Elanna...which brings us to the real point of this
episode, largely a contrived excuse to get her and Chakotay into bed,
shoving it in our faces so we'd forget about the sexual tension between him
and Janeway. First of all, good luck. Second of all, the notion that
she'd harbor secret lust for him is farfetched at best. They're basically
army buddies...and that's all we've ever seen to their relationship, aside
from a glimmering of a paternal attitude towards her on his part. I could
buy her thinking he's damn attractive--just can't stomach that her deepest
fantasy is for him to grab her, utter a few romance-novel lines which I
can't bear to reproduce here, and throw her down on a bed. Yucky.
Which brings us to Janeway, who's been having holographic hanky-panky with
Lord Burleigh (aka Mr. Muttonchops), quite possible the most hated Star
Trek character since Wesley...wait, that's impossible. Okay, since that guy
who tried to take Data's daughter away from him. Anyway, the phony Mark
accuses her of forgetting him, and having someone else in her thoughts...he
later indicates that he meant Mr. Muttonchops but initially I know I was
thinking that he meant our favorite tattooed first officer. Even if he did
mean HoloStud, it's arguable that she is transferring her conflicted
feelings about her Number One to that hirsute faux Victorian fop...even
likely, since I can't see her being mentally occupied for any length of
time with a holographic character, even if he were studly, which this one
is definitely not.
[Photo of Janeway with Mark]
So one by one the crew are incapacitated by visions of home and hearth,
and of course it falls to Holodoc and Kes to save the day. Holodoc, I
fear, will soon begin to suffer from the Data
"I'm-the-only-one-unaffected-by-the-Dastardly-Peril" syndrome, much as
Tuvok is suffering from the Worf "no-one-takes-my-advice" syndrome and
Paris from the Riker "I'm-a-smarmy-space-stud" syndrome. But that's
another issue. Anyhow, Kes is sent to engineering to execute the
technobabble solution and has a vision of Neelix playing the ultimate
protector role, suggesting that she feels vulnerable, which is plausible if
unflattering. She succeeds and with her telepathic abilities is able to
make the Dastardly Peril drop his Neelix facade and lie on the floor
gasping for breath, where he gets to deliver the best line of the episode:
when Janeway asks him why he did this to them, he simply replies "Because I
can." I really liked that. No political agendas, no protection of
borders, no technology envy, just malevolence...something Trek writers are
often loathe to look in the face or admit the existence of.
So both of our cool women on Voyager end up swooning into the arms of
whatever man was around to dictate their emotions to them. It's not that I
fault them for falling victim to the Dastardly Peril's influence, but at
least give them decent temptations! I mean really...Tom got to face off
with his father, Tuvok was taken in by homesickness, Kes by her desire for
safety and fear of physical harm, and what did B'Elanna and Janeway fall
victim to? Libido. Again I say, yucky. I for one was very disappointed
they didn't show us Chakotay's fantasy!
--Lori Summers
Well, the barrier between reality and whatever else is out there has been
breaking down again--or more precisely, the barrier between the fantasy we
call "Star Trek" and the fantasy we call "really weird stuff happening on
Star Trek." I'm not a big fan of the
aliens-with-psychic-powers-mess-with-people's-minds type of episode in the
first place, but the problems with "Persistence of Vision" go beyond its
hazy connection with reality.
First of all: This alien comes in and roots around in people's minds and
that's the best it can come up with? Nobody has any really dark secrets
(unless we count Kes apparently preferring Paris to Neelix)? Considering
that we're seeing people's fantasies here, there was remarkably little
character development. It would have been more interesting to see Janeway's
father and one of Paris's ex-lovers rather than the other way around.
Executive producer Jeri Taylor wrote this--if she still doesn't know much
more about these people than was in the first-season writer's guide, we've
got problems.
Secondly: Are these people highly trained professionals or aren't they?
Can't they just ignore what are obviously hallucinations generated by a
threatening alien presence? Kes (whose telepathic abilities seem to have
become superior to Tuvok's despite vastly less training and the absence of
the cultural framework for dealing with them) has to step in to save the
day, using a mix of telepathy and technobabble, two of Trek's traditional
weaknesses. This brings back bad memories of Wesley Crusher having to save
the Enterprise on a regular basis, and it bodes ill for the ship's
future--they're running enough of a risk having someone with a nine-year
lifespan be half of the medical department.
Speaking of the medical department: Sure, the CMO technically has
authority over the captain in matters of health, but Starfleet captains
have traditionally been pretty unwilling to go along with that. Janeway's
going to let herself be sent to the holodeck by a 30-cm hologram when she
has a lot of work to do? I don't think so. This is definitely an "If you
don't like it, file a report with Starfleet when we get back to the Alpha
Quadrant" moment.
And that brings up the whole Holonovel Problem. I'll believe that some
people find ghost stories relaxing, though I'm not one of them, but frankly
it bothers me that the captain's idea of a good time seems to include being
a governess. It doesn't seem in character at all. Neither did Picard's
Dixon Hill program, really, but that's no excuse. Why doesn't she explore
her scientific interests, or go for a hike, or just go lie on a nice quiet
beach somewhere with a drink with a little umbrella in it, if she wants to
escape the pressures of command for a bit? (Something else she doesn't seem
to do when she's stressed out is chat with her lizard--if we're going to
introduce it, shouldn't it be a recurring character?)
The biggest overall problem with the episode, in my opinion, is the
portrayal of the captain. First she's having a major PMS attack in front of
her subordinates, then she's almost literally kowtowing to her CMO. The
best she can do when attacked fairly ineptly with what looks like a bread
knife is to parry the blade with her hand, and then despite the fact that
she seems to be winning the fight she gets completely hysterical. Toward
the end of the show, she gets to make more empty threats--let's not have
any more of those for the rest of the season, OK? At the end of the
episode, she seems more preoccupied by thoughts of her relationship with
Mark than by the rather pressing question of what to do if the alien
attacks again. When Kirk got hysterical or Picard did something stupid,
they generally had high and noble reasons for doing so. It should not be
different for Janeway. Her crew (not to mention the TV audience) need to
believe that she's capable of handling a more than usually difficult
mission. Sometimes I wonder whether TPTB really think she is.
--Jennifer Loehlin
This episode has major characterization problems--for B'Elanna Torres, for
Chakotay, but most of all for Kathryn Janeway.
What bothered me most about "Persistence of Vision" was the way the
holonovel scenario is developing. The show's creators seem to be saying
that the captain of a starship would "relax" (i.e., get her sexual jollies)
by fantasizing herself as the heroine of a gothic novel with a macho,
cliche-spouting hero. Even assuming for the moment that she can't "cross
the line" and have a relationship with a member of her crew, I can believe
her fantasizing about Chakotay, about Mark, about just about anything
except what Taylor has her fantasizing about. It just doesn't work, not
with the character of Janeway as she has been otherwise presented. Instead,
we have a very heavy-handed, trite, ultimately demeaning way of saying,
"See? She really is a real woman!" I hate it! And I hate even more the
implication via her "guilt" that interacting with this macho holo-hero is
her way of sublimating her feelings of missing Mark, her way of working off
sexual tension.
The other aspect of Janeway's characterization that disturbed me very much
can best be exemplified by comparing "Persistence of Vision" to the TNG
episode "Remember Me." Beverly Crusher, whom I liked but consider a less
interesting character than Janeway by far, was isolated in a situation from
which she could only save herself by not giving in, by triumphing through
the strength of her own character and will. Not only that, she had no help
at all--no one to work with her and support her emotionally as Janeway did
in this episode. All by herself, she figured out what was happening and
what she had to do to save herself from it, then did it and was saved by
her own actions. Of all the Trek characters, Kathryn Janeway is the one who
should have been able to do this. But even though she had much more
knowledge and much more help than Crusher did--even though she knew that
"Mark" was an alien illusion--she wasn't strong enough fight tooth and
nail. I just don't believe this. This is not the Kathryn Janeway I've come
to know and admire. Although Kate was terrific as it was, if it had been
written right for her, she could have been magnificent. What a missed
chance!
Then there's B'Elanna: I could believe that she's in love with Chakotay
without admitting it to herself. But not that Chakotay--not that macho
apparition who seduced her into leaving her position in an emergency
situation, forced her to kiss him when she was resisting, and then threw
her on the bed. I could laugh if it weren't so grotesque. Where did this
creature come from? The Torres who has worked with, respected and admired
the real thing for months is never going to be attracted by this impostor,
no matter how much she lusts after Chakotay in her heart. To suggest that
she would be is an insult to her--and to us, who are apparently expected to
believe this scene.
Last but not least, I hated seeing Chakotay unable to command effectively
and needing Janeway to rescue him. I do realize that this bad
characterization was a by-product of bad writing and probably
unintentional: apparently TPTB wanted to demonstrate that Janeway still had
all her marbles and couldn't think of a better way to do that than to make
Chakotay look ineffectual. In other words, I don't think we were supposed
to believe this of him; we were supposed to be looking at Janeway. But
somewhere along the line, the writers are going to have to realize that
they can't do sloppy stuff--especially sloppy characterization--and expect
the audience to overlook it.
On the plus side, I think the story was compelling, the nightmare aspects
well wrought and well played. The scene in Janeways's quarters, where she
started to eat the ice cream and then thought she heard Mark's voice, gave
me cold chills both times I watched it. Jennifer Lien outdid herself, and
Kate, as I said before, was terrific. But these people just have to stop
trying to make us believe that Kathryn Janeway would rather indulge in what
amounts to perpetual auto-erotic stimulation than have a real and loving
relationship with a real and present man.
-- Claire Gabriel
I genuinely liked this episode. The acting displayed by most of the cast
really won me over. Plus, I am glad that it did not resemble the poor promo
for it.
Where else should we begin but with the captain? Kate stole the show, as
she should. She took the viewers on an emotional ride, running the gamut of
stress, loneliness, fear, anger and love. Once again, Kate is the master of
facial expressions. I always marvel at all the different emotions she
conveys without even speaking. Her portrayal of the stressed-out executive
was perfect. That sharp tone at the beginning reminded me of my office so
much, I almost cringed. The moment was quickly lost as, once again, the
Doctor provided the comic relief by appearing in Engineering as a 10" medic
and ordering Janeway to rest. She showed us Janeway's loneliness as she
looked at the photo of Mark and allowed the foppish holograph to kiss her.
The abject misery she portrayed as Janeway sat in sickbay, hunched over in
defeat, was marvelous. I could feel her distress over her seeming loss of
control.
The entire scene in her quarters was very moving as she fought to ignore
the delusions around her. I loved the way she quickly rattled off all the
instructions to Chakotay, in Sickbay, without even taking a breath. You
could tell Janeway didn't want to be away from the bridge. Then, when she
returns to the bridge, she has to fight to ignore the image of Mark before
her. The turbolift scene was wonderful as she looks sadly at Chakotay
before she has to contend with the alien Mark, again. As with the scene in
her quarters, I gained a sense of Janeway's strength. She wants no part of
the delusion occurring around her. It is only after Mark questions her
loyalty that we see Janeway finally succumb to the loneliness and heartache
pent up for so long. His accusation of infidelity, combined with her
absence from him, would easily have her turning to him to say, "I haven't
been unfaithful." My heart wrenched, but I'm a sucker for good acting.
The performances from the other cast members was also noteworthy. Robert
Picardo was, as always, spectacular as the Doctor who saved the ship.
Jennifer Lien continued to provide an excellent performance as Kes. This
young actress is proving to be a real gem for the show. Her acting is
always consistently good. Ethan Phillips portrayed Neelix in a way that
finally endeared him to me. Usually annoying, Neelix's parental handling of
the captain was terrific. It's wonderful that he feels comfortable enough
to scold her. However, it was the evil, and intimidating, Neelix he
portrayed that impressed me. I wanted to throttle him. I enjoy watching
Roxann Biggs-Dawson's portrayal of B'Elanna as she had to contend with
lusting after her boss. I really liked how the Klingon half came to life in
her fantasy. I also like the fact that B'Elanna was left with a dilemma.
Tim Russ has melded into Vulcan mode very well. Tuvok seems much less of a
robot now. I also find it very logical that Tuvok fell for the alien's
spell, he's lost the most. Even though Vulcans suppress emotions, they
still have them. Robert Duncan McNeil, again, added to this episode what he
always does, his ever-vigilant observations and comments about what happens
around them delivered with that great Paris sarcasm. The whole exchange
with his father was remarkable. Despite succumbing to the alien, Paris was
able to vent some long-repressed feelings of resentment.
Overall, this is my favorite episode so far, elevated by the excellent
performances of the actors.
--Betsy Easton
I'm easy. I enjoy holodeck episodes. I don't mind "it was just another
space anomoly/alien" endings. Every week I sit down, already having wrapped
myself in a suspension of disbelief so that I can enjoy the idealistic
world which is Star Trek. Unfortunately, "Persistence of Vision" left me
completely drained.
Was it the acting? No. I have been a Mulgrew fan for many years. I
consider her a master of subtleties. The twitch in her face when she first
hears Mark's voice truly left me awestruck. But then, as Mulgrew fans, and
as Star Trek fans, we can rest easy in the knowledge that we have an actor
who will perform far above the script she is given, and we don't need to
worry about that issue.
My problem with this show? Easy: the choice of holonovels. Had the
producers opted to use Turn of the Screw for Janeway's holodeck romps, I
could easily have bought into the premise. I could have acknowledged that
there is a parallel between Miss Jessel's taking care of two children and
Janeway's taking care of a Voyager crew. I could even have believed that
there is indeed a parallel between Miss Jessel's sanity--seeing ghosts--and
Janeway's stress--alien life form possession. If a Trek writer wants to
bring in the classics, I applaud those endeavors. But for goodness sakes,
read them first!
And then Janeway succumbs to an alien telling her she's been unfaithful to
Mark because of her holodeck novel, while Chakotay stands beside her in all
of his zombiest masculinity? Please! I don't like Voyager nit-picking and I
have thought long and hard to come up with something good to say about this
episode (other than, I must reiterate, Kate Mulgrew's fine acting), and
finally, I have: I liked Janeway's hair. The premise of Voyager is
fantastic. There are so many possibilities waiting to be explored, if only
the writers would give us something to get excited about.
--K. Elaine Carnes
[Photo of Janeway in Persistence of Vision]
"Persistence of Vision" gets the viewer's attention immediately with
Captain Janeway's uncharacteristically cranky mood. This being the first
time we have seen the Captain in such a space, I was personally certain
that something was very wrong from the beginning. I suppose that it is
unfair to think that Kathryn Janeway wouldn't have a bad day.
Traditionally, Star Trek captains have been human beings with typical human
being characteristics that come to the forefront from time to time. The
interaction between the mini-Doctor and the Captain was reminiscent of
interactions between Captain Picard and Doctor Crusher in TNG. Even though
I found the Captain's mood disconcerting in some ways, it is reassuring as
well to find that the Captain is feeling all of her emotions. Like Picard,
however, I think she has tried in this case to stuff them down,
unsuccessfully, and the Doctor's intervention is both necessary and
comforting--to both the Captain and the viewer.
Although the first few times we encountered Captain Janeway's holonovel I
found it to be an interesting diversion, in this episode I found it to be
more of a distraction and more obviously a plot moving device. There is
some question whether or not the forward and pushy Lord Burleigh was in
some fashion under the influence of the telepathic alien; nevertheless, I
found this segment of the holonovel to seem counter to what I believe
Kathryn Janeway's tastes would dictate. I sincerely hope that this is the
last we see of the pathetic Lord Burleigh and his obnoxious children.
By the time the Captain begins to experience her hallucinations, it is
apparent that the initial conclusion is indeed accurate--there is something
definitely wrong aboard Voyager. Kate Mulgrew does a wonderful job
portraying the varying levels of emotion that Captain Janeway travels
through. Up until the time when Kes tells her that she believes something
is wrong ship-wide, we can see that Captain Janeway is genuinely afraid she
may be succumbing to a stress related breakdown of sorts. I would imagine
any Captain in this position--lost in the Delta Quadrant 70,000 light years
from home--would at some point experience similar doubts. Even in her fear,
it is apparent that Captain Jane- way does not like the idea of turning
over her ship to Commander Chakotay. Like Picard and Kirk before her, she
takes her responsibility to ensure the safety of her ship and crew
seriously, to the point where she puts it above her own state of health.
The battle scene on the bridge seemed very odd to me as there were only
male crew members present. At this time I am still uncertain whether or not
there was actually a battle or if this was a mass male-crew hallucination.
I think, however, that it speaks volumes that I was struck by the notable
absence of Chief Torres and Captain Janeway. It is not so much that I was
not aware of where they were, but this is the first time they have not held
a commanding presence on the bridge in a time of crisis.
As for the hallucinations that possessed Chief Torres and ultimately
Captain Janeway, I have this to say initially: Though the women succumbed
eventually, they did so long after the male crew members had already done
so. My impression of Kathryn's Mark was not a favorable one. The man I
remember from "Caretaker" was compassionate and understanding. This
recreation was sarcastic and downright condescending to Captain Janeway. I
found myself wondering what in the world she saw in this man. But keeping
in out-of-character performances, B'Elanna's Chakotay suggests abandoning
ship first and romance when that fails. This fact in itself was enough to
bother me and make me wonder just what it was that the telepathic alien was
doing.
The fact that it comes down to Kes' ability to use her power of mirroring
was a redeeming ending. Just the shot of Kes standing empowered before the
alien was a wonderful moment. I am thankful that the writers have moved her
from pixie status and are allowing her to come into her own. I was not
impressed with the appearance of the alien, however. It seemed to me to be
a toned down variation of the Vidians without the phage-ravaged skin. The
promise of a second season full of new and interesting aliens has yet to be
kept.
The premise of this episode is a good one--an alien species with
telepathic abilities that uses them to interfer with other species just
because they can. I am still left wondering how, and if, Voyager got
through Bothan space, if this indeed was the Botha, and if the alien was
not really there, where was he? The premise of looking at those feelings
that may be hidden deep within each crew member is also a good one. I agree
with Captain Janeway that it may be better to "look those feelings in the
eye than keep them locked up inside." I believe, however, there are better
and more satisfying ways to pursue these issues.
--Siobhan Wolf
I had high hopes for this episode: we were finally going to see Mark and
Admiral Paris "in the flesh," never mind the fact that B'Elanna and
Chakotay were going to make love. I was really hoping for some heavy duty
character development, some trips deep into the psyches of the major
characters that would show us just what made them tick. But when all was
said and done, I felt like I'd been submitted to an hour of foreplay with
no payoff. How disappointing and painful.
As 8:30 ticked by, I remember thinking, "When do the crew's delusions
start?" They certainly took their time getting to them, and once they got
there, they only gave us the barest glimpse of what was going on. An entire
episode centering about everyone facing their own personal demons would
have been interesting. M*A*S*H did this very effectively in one episode
many years ago. But only Tom really faced a demon in this episode.
Everybody else had sex. Were they supposed to be facing their demons, or
their buried desires, or maybe their hidden fantasies? The writers never
bothered making up their minds.
And what little we saw was either disappointing or tantalizing. Janeway
and B'Elanna giving in so easily to theirhormones rather than sticking to
their tasks was depressing. If I had a choice between saving 100 people and
having sex with my lover, I think I'd choose to save 100 people. Easy
choice. Now Tom's hallucination was interesting. We finally get to see the
Admiral Paris in all his menacing glory. But after less than a minute, it's
over. Wait! I wanted to know more! And I did actually want to know more
about Mark, about B'Elanna's attraction to Chakotay, about Tuvok's wife and
his love for his home planet. But they didn't give us any of that. That
would have been interesting.
Once again, I find it necessary to commend Jennifer Lien for a fine acting
job. She took lines that could have been cartoonish a la Deanna Troi and
made them poignant and meaningful. Robert Duncan McNeill did a great job
with the scenes with his father and the scene with Kes in the hallway.
Roxann Biggs-Dawson also managed to rise above the banality of the scenes
written for her. But no one else stood out. Half of Janeway's lines made me
cringe, and no acting job could overcome that. "Persistence of Vision"
promised a lot, and delivered far too little.
--Jennifer Pelland (Siubhan)
TATTOO
After two decades of living in the New Age, a dedicated television watcher
ought to be able to recognize the earmarks of New Age Propagandism.
Superficially, all the symptoms are here: the mystical way of knowing, the
heightened awareness of one's bond to the past, the need to honor the land,
and the way the advances of technology can get in the way of true
understanding. On the level of New Age fable, then, one is tempted to
dismiss the story entirely. In fact, some could, and have gone farther and
dismissed the entire character of Chakotay for the same reasons--as a
simplistic caricature of New Age romanticism. That is a mistake, one that's
been made more than once by Star Trek watchers. The error in such a
dismissal is that everything we've mentioned is as obvious to the writers
as it is to the watchers, perhaps even more so. Coming up with yet one more
advertisement on how living in the sensitivity fringe is a better way to go
isn't going to cut it with those writers any easier than it would with us.
Therefore, the answer to the unasked question is: of course there's
something more to it than meets the eye.
For example...Chakotay's ultimate regret at having wanted to break away
from the tribe as a young man could be viewed as a New Age rejection of
empirical knowledge. Note this message has come up before. We saw it in
TOS's "Way to Eden" episode, in numerous adventures in TNG and most notably
in ST:TMP when Spock pontificates on logic not being enough. Has any of
these sentiments ever suggested the rejection of empirical knowledge and
the embracing of mysticism? Hardly. What would Star Trek be without the
power of new technology to inform and empower? Chakotay's regrets are at
once more profound and more fundamental. On a fundamental level, it is in
the nature of young people to reject their parent's visions, to seek after
opposites. Occasionally, such decisions are good things. It is unlikely
that the world would have changed much if we all accepted the boundaries of
our parents' worlds. But it is part of human mythology that rejection
always carries the risk of throwing away the good with the bad.
Chakotay's tribe, like many older civilizations, followed a ritualistic
way of knowing the world. Such methods are not limited to the American
Indian. Many civilizations utilized communal methods of knowledge...song,
poetry, rituals of diverse types. These methods or traditions transmitted
knowledge like history, science, and other subjects from generation to
generation, with the added effect of serving to increase the social bonds
between individuals in the family and the community. The Western European
method also transmits cultural as well as abstract knowledge, but tends to
isolate the individual; the end result of abstract learning is a problem
for all of us, not just the descendants of American native tribes. Western
European people can look back on their history and submit that social
isolation is a part of their own social tradition, but the effects can be
difficult to live with. As difficult as the results of too mystical and
communal a way of perceiving reality. It is unlikely that a culture that
depended on oral traditions would ever have developed the calculus--as
unlikely as the European university tradition being able to develop
shamanism or even something so simple as sense of personal belonging. The
reality behind the surface then is simply this. Chakotay isn't really
looking for an alternative way of knowing, so much as an alternative way of
belonging. New age or not, dilemmas like this are a part of all our lives.
So too, it would be unlikely that Chakotay would be any more unaware than
we are of the idea of a race of beings that originally visited Earth and
passed on some kind of special knowledge to a select race. Myths like this
could hardly be unknown to any informed member of the human race. Of more
interest is the fact that the skypeople gave their gift to the ancient
Indian race because they found that the Indians had a reverence for the
land. And it's not the reverence itself, but the fact that they gave the
gift to a people that reminded them of themselves. The point, then is
kinship of a very special kind, the kinship of shared belief. This is what
Chakotay has been missing in his life, and that kind of kinship is not the
soul province of New Age philosophy, nor does one need to travel to another
star system to find it.
Whether New Age or old age, my point is that most of our legends and most
of our lives are wrapped up in fundamental cultural beliefs of one kind or
another. One civilization holds that one learns by studying something in a
book, another believes that one learns by singing songs, or dreaming dreams
around a fire, or by going on quests, or by fasting on a mountaintop. If
collecting facts is the goal, Western European models are the winners,
hands down, but data-processing alone cannot be the whole goal of learning
and growing. "Tattoo" is more about this simple fact than it is about
mystical realities beyond the realm of accepted knowledge.
Finally, there is always a danger in the presentation of social or
philosophical insight within the context of an anthologized series of
stories. If the writers show us a character receiving some kind of personal
revelation, the question arises as to whether that individual can go on as
we once knew him or her. Why even go back to the ship? Now that you know
what the hawk has been trying to tell you, can you justify getting your
next cup of coffee out of the replicator? Of course you can. We expect too
much of personal drama when we see it on television. On TV, we call
consistency what in real life we would label as juvenile extremism. Hence,
we demand either mysticism or empiricism of our Star Trek gods, even though
we know that all human beings, and probably all sentient life is a bit more
complicated than that. This is why, amazingly, Spock has always been so
easy to believe in for so many fans--much easier to accept than a Janeway
or a Chakotay. The reality which this show demonstrates is that living
beings are living compromises--beings like Chakotay who are both proud of
their uniforms but ready to rebel against them, willing to depend on the
benefits of technological supremacy while presenting the appearance of
mystical independence from abstract ways of knowing. It is that very
inconsistency that makes these people more than merely characters.
--Richard Hanson
Yay! Another Chakotay episode! Then I watched it. Not that it was
terrible...it was just kind of dull and more than a little pointless,
choosing a lame variation on a ship-in-jeopardy plot over the potential for
examining a discovery with huge implications.
Away team finds mysterious markings which remind Chakotay of markings left
by the Rubber People, his tribe's ancestors. Flashbacks tell of a trip to
Central America he took with his father when he was 15 to hunt for them.
They track a warp signature to another planet, Chakotay gets stranded and
meets the mysterious beings, who it turns out telepathically seeded ancient
Earth even before humans had made it over to North America, as well as
numerous other worlds. It would seem to me that this discovery, and its
extremely broad-ranging ramifications for the history of humans on Earth,
should have been the focus, but nooooo...basically all that happened was
that Chakotay got to reaffirm some faith that was never in doubt in the
first place as far as we could see and Voyager got caught in a cyclone
which of course disappeared at the last second in yet another bogus deus ex
machina ending.
There were, however, many bright spots to this episode that make it
worthwhile. First of all, the much-discussed shot of Chakotay's butt.
Even if it was body double, and it was only a fraction of a second long, so
no parental advisories yet. Second, the many brilliant smiles that were
laid upon us by same. Many times while watching this episode I would find
myself thinking things like "Boy, this isn't really very good...but damn
he's hot." Third, a lovely J/C conversation in his quarters, of all places.
I have since tried to decide why in the world they were talking there and
not in her ready room or some other neutral place and haven't come up with
anything.
Fourth, a very amusing subplot involving Holodoc infecting himself with
the flu after Kes accuses him of having no compassion for the sick, since
he's never been sick himself. It's supposed to end in 29 hours, but
unbeknownst to him Kes has programmed a few extra hours, reasoning (quite
correctly) that if he knew how long it would last it wouldn't be very
educational...this prompted the Doc to utter a truly memorable line in a
wonderfully agonized sick-person voice: "My simulated virus is leading me
to a simulated grave!"
Fifth, an unexpected Guest Star Alert...the chief of the tribe that
Chakotay and his father meet on Earth during the flashbacks was played by
none other than Richard Chaves, the studly Col. Ironhorse of "War of the
Worlds" fame. That was a good show...for one season.
There was also a rather odd scene of Chakotay meeting one of the so-called
Sky Spirits in a cave...right after he walks in, he's suddenly all lit up
by invisible footlights. For a minute I half-expected Siegfried and Roy to
come out with some tigers and fireworks. Then there was some interesting
camera work during their conversation...both were shot from directly over
the shoulder of the other, so that only half of their faces were showing,
the other half being blocked by the head of the other person. I suspect it
was to accentuate their mutual tattoos...it worked.
It's also nice that they're no longer underusing Chakotay. This is
already his second episode this season, and with "Maneuvers" coming up he
almost threatens overuse. Tuvok could use some good screen time, so could
Harry (even if Wang can't act) and Tom. B'Elanna is due for a storyline
also, but considering how many episodes Geordi got I'm not holding my
breath.
--Lori Summers
"Tattoo" at once astonished and delighted me. The Voyager "bible"
described Chakotay as a "...'contrary' [with] a mind of his own, an
individualistic rather than communal way of thinking.... He broke from his
people, educated himself in the ways of the 24th century, and attended
Starfleet Academy." Until "Tattoo," Chakotay showed no signs of being
contrary and had, in fact, been portrayed as deeply spiritual. He has an
animal guide; he has a medicine bundle; he has a medicine wheel--and he has
taught someone else the ritual. He performed a ceremony in memory of his
father in "Initiations." If he's doing all that, could it be that he has
merely adopted the trappings of his people's spiritual beliefs, but has not
accepted what lies behind those trappings? Being at one with the Land and
all the Peoples that dwell within it--animal and plant--is at the very core
of Native American spirituality. Could Chakotay actually be so shallow in
his approach to that spirituality?
At first that thought disturbed me greatly, that Chakotay could be such a
poser--but then I kind of liked the idea. That flaw makes him much more
human and a much more dynamic character. In this episode we learn that, in
his "contrariness," Chakotay virtually divorced himself from the beliefs of
his people. His younger self was little better than a brat. You'd have
thought the adult Chakotay would know better--yet he spoke deprecatingly of
the structure he, Torres and Tuvok found on the surface of the planet:
"You'd think with warp technology they wouldn't be living like this." If he
has, indeed, paid lip service to his spiritual path, then it will be
interesting to see him try to deepen his understanding in future episodes.
One way to show him doing that would be to develop his relationship with
B'Elanna. After all, she mentioned she could use some spiritual guidance in
"Twisted."
[Photo of Janeway and Chakotay bonding over religion]
Obliquely, this brings me to the question of the significance of the hawk
in the episode. My interest was piqued enough to do some research about the
qualities ascribed to animals in Native American spirituality. According to
one source, "Hawk medicine teaches you to be observant, to look at your
surroundings...the test is your ability to observe the nuances of power
lurking nearby... Hawk's cry signalled the need for the beholder to
heighten awareness and receive a message." Seen in this light, the presence
of Hawk makes sense. But I have no idea why it would want to attack Neelix
and try to pluck out his eye. It would have been far more interesting if
Hawk had attacked B'Elanna, who tried to kill her animal guide. Is Hawk
trying to tell her it's time for her to open her eyes and develop her own
spirituality? Or is it telling her to back off, that Chakotay is not for
her?
The frustrating part of all this speculation is that I don't know whether
there is a "master arc" for developing Chakotay's character, or if the
writers are making it up as they go along. I think "Tattoo" opened a real
Pandora's box of questions about Chakotay--and I hope that was Michael
Piller's intention. But if these ideas aren't followed up, the character
will be shallow and meaningless. I hope the writers will avoid giving
Chakotay the "trappings" of a Native American and will develop more
substance to the ideas introduced in this episode. At the end of the
episode, we learn two key facts about Chakotay: that his father fought in
the Maquis, and that Chakotay left Starfleet and joined the Maquis to carry
on the fight when his father died. What happened between the time he
resigned his commission and started fighting for the Maquis? How much time
did he have to absorb the spiritual principles of his people--principles he
had apparently rejected? If Chakotay did join the Maquis out of guilt, does
that make him any better than Tom Paris, who joined for mercenary reasons?
Wouldn't that bother the hell out of Chakotay, to the point where he might
project his own anger at himself onto Tom? Given Chakotay's prickly
relationship with his father and Tom's with his, I think these two may have
more in common than either of them know. I'd love to see a script centered
around this idea.
The B-plot of the Doc giving himself the flu was very cute, nicely written
and nicely acted. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But it had absolutely no place
in "Tattoo". The Chakotay story was more than enough to fill up the hour,
and the B-story was merely a distraction. Ditto all the Bridge scenes when
Voyager entered the cyclone ("I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto
-- or is that Tattoo?"). It would have been more than sufficient to show
Voyager spinning into the funnel cloud, then show the very last few scenes
where they realize they're going to impact. Again, it distracted from the
main story.
--Alanna Whitestar
Another episode that I awaited with high hopes. Backstory for Chakotay!
Maybe we'll finally learn what tribe he's from! Sigh...no. Instead we learn
that aliens gave the Native Americans their language and culture, and watch
them leave behind another shuttle. At least they finally got the raw
materials they were searching for.
I'm not Native American, but if I were, I think I would be insulted. At
first, I thought the "Rubber Tree People" (did they make them up?) had
ritual scarification, but upon further inspection, they seemed to have
alien foreheads. Ritual scarification would have left a very different
mark. And the alien-given language and culture? That very much undermines
the actual linguistic and cultural achievements of the Native American
peoples. If Trek did an episode where it was revealed that Jesus was from
outer space, Christians all over the world would start screaming. Why are
Native Americans fair game for fictional cultural revision?
Oh, the nits I could pick. But I think one of the most jarring things was
the cheesy special effects. The bird in the sky was very obviously shot on
a different kind of film than the rest of the episode. It looked like a
shot from a '70's National Geographic. And the entire "alien touches snowy
guy in the past" scene was just tacky beyond belief.
I must say, however, that the acting was very good (except from the "young
Chakotay"), and the naked butt shot took me completely by surprise. That
was interesting. And I'm glad that they are indeed continuing with
Wildman's pregnancy story. The Doctor's story was cute too, as was the
Captain Sulu reference. But overall, I was disappointed. I wanted
Chakotay's backstory, I got Chakotay's backstory, and frankly, it stinks.
--Jennifer Pelland (Siubhan)
This long-awaited episode, filling in some background on Chakotay, far
exceeded the hopes I held for it. Though I was initially thrown by
Chakotay's youthful skepticism and cynical, antitraditional attitude, I
believe that making this choice turns Chakotay into a real person rather
than just a cardboard cut-out of some "new age" Native American stereotype.
I found that my respect for the character grew after this episode, and I
hope the writers continue to write him with all the quirks and twists of
human beings.
We see that Janeway is truly interested in the history of her First
Officer as she permits his investigation while exploring for the needed
minerals for the ship. I think she is also instrumental in helping Chakotay
to open to the experience of meeting the legendary Sky Spirits when she
interjects her own doubts about anything in science being hard and fast
truth, just as with myth. A true bond is developing between the Captain and
First Officer which is a definited Star Trek hallmark. I genuinely hope we
get to see more interaction between the two as their relationship
strengthens and grows.
The use of imagery and symbolism in this episode was well done. As this
was another character growth episode, I was pleased to see the writers
allow Chakotay to make the step to a deeper understanding of his father and
his people. Though not a fan of flashbacks, I found them to be an addition
to the storyline here, rather than simply a convenient method for
information giving. Of course, the B plot with The Doctor and his flu was
cute and nice comic relief; I do wish that the time had been lent to the
main storyline which could have used the few extra minutes to save the
"information dump" near the end.
This was generally a fascinating episode and its time was due. I think
viewers will look on Chakotay in a different light from here on out. I hope
that this episode signals the end of the use of Chakotay as a bridge
ornament.
--Siobhan Wolf
COLD FIRE
There's an old Ocampan saying that goes something like, "Sometimes you've
got to stop and incinerate the roses." Okay...cheap shot. Nevertheless, I
very much fear that this week's episode will generate more jokes than it
will inspire fond memories. At first glance, "Cold Fire" should be a good,
old fashioned adventure as well as a way of moving the larger story of
Voyager's odyssey in the Delta Quadrant forward. On further examination, it
doesn't stand up to further examination.
Here we have Voyager, for the first time in a long time, getting close to
finding the creature they've been lookingfor, the sporocystian life form
that wacked them into the middle of the Delta Quadrant in the very first
episode. Seems pretty serious to me. After all, the desire to go home is
the fundamental tension upon which the entire series is based. So why, for
example, early on do we find Janeway and Chakotay exchanging smiles after
the captain catches him staring at her butt on the bridge? Or maybe it
wasn't that, maybe they were just smiling over Torres's figuring out a way
to use the dead mineral deposit/body of the Caretaker as a way to locate
the other Caretaker--a parental sort of moment: "Oh, that crazy kid of
ours, she's made a compass out of an alien..." It's a moment that sort of
hangs there.
Then we have the melodramatic story of Gary (Alien Nation) Graham playing
the Ocampan version of Count Dracula against the tender innocence of Kes.
Neelix puts his knee-jerk jealousy on hold for this episode while Kes
learns that the true appreciation of nature means never having to run for
the fire extinguisher. If this really is the way the Ocampans sample their
environment then it's enough to give a vampire the heebie jeebies. At least
the undead do what they do to survive. To the Ocampans, mass destruction is
all part of getting the most out of life, so to speak. I go along with Kes'
youthful naivete, but her being even momentarily drawn to Graham's
philosophy argues against her basic character. On the plus side, the
visuals were very well done, and Jennifer Lien pulled off some wonderful
acting that made the viewer almost see the point. Lien's combination of
youthful exuberance and an unconscious sensuality make a potent mixture.
But back to the silliness. Janeway's confrontation with the Susperia
entity was a study in nonsense. Why, after being told that Voyager's PR is
at an all time low in the Quadrant, would Janeway waltz into the meeting
thinking that she wasn't going to have to do some heavy explaining? I
expect Kathryn to be upbeat--heck, I want her to be that way. But you don't
have to render up all caution to be idealistic. In the past, I've consider
it to be one of Janeway's strengths, the melding of wisdom with idealism.
The writers didn't let her demonstrate it here. Partially, she makes it up
by the way she didn't hesitate to use the gun...a tad late, Kate. Again,
great visuals. The crewmen suspended in thin air and dripping blood onto
Janeway's uniform was a truly spooky moment, one I won't soon forget, and
the escape/transformation of the Susperia/Alice In Wonderland character was
beautiful and creepy at the same time. Odo would have fallen instantly in
love.
At the end of the show, we are subjected to Janeway's log in which she
re-dedicates herself to finding Susperia and to somehow convincing her to
get the crew back home. The Array houses a bunch of Ocampans looked after
by Susperia. We know that the Ocampans are frequently in contact with the
entity. We know that Voyager is looking for Susperia. So why, oh why, at
the end of the show, is Voyager heading away from the Array? Granted, their
first meeting was nothing to beam home about, but we've got to assume that
the Delta Quadrant is a big place. If I wanted to get back together with
Susperia and my only other option was a 75 year trip back home, I'd be
attaching myself to that array like a barnacle. Oh well, things could've
been worse all around. Kes might have ended up liking the idea of torching
the roses as the path to true happiness.
Or--Heaven forbid--Kirk might have been in command. "Engineering, we're
going to need top speed in a minute...the captain's going to put the moves
on the Alien." "She's jelly, Jim."
--Richard Hanson
MANEUVERS
[Photo of Janeway chewing Chakotay out]
I am an unabashed Seska fan, so when I heard that she was coming back, I
was a bouncy wreck. I would find myself thinking of her at odd moments,
like in staff meetings, and getting all excited. To keep calm for the
actual episode, I poured myself a stiff drink and sat in a hard chair so I
wouldn't be able to bounce with glee without hurting myself. Needless to
say, all my precautions were necessary, because Seska stole my breath away
again.
Forget the Kazon, never mind the Vidians, Seska is the best damn villain
that Voyager has going for it. She's intelligent, ruthless, has deadly
insider knowledge of Federation technology, and, best of all, is
Cardassian. The Cardassians and the Bajorans are the best alien
civilizations in the Star Trek universe, and Seska's been both, which makes
her doubly endearing. Martha Hackett chewed through the scenery every time
she was on screen, and was truly a wonder to behold.
Chakotay, on the other hand, was very disappointing. This seemingly noble
character degenerated into Kirk. Cradling his bruised male ego, Chakotay
sets off alone to confront the woman who wronged him and made him look bad
in front of all his friends. Gack! Aren't we beyond that yet? I loved the
scene where B'Elanna pled his case, but frankly, Janeway should have chewed
him up one side and down the other once he was better. He got off the hook
too easily. B'Elanna, get over Chakotay and tie Tom to your bed. As much as
I never thought I'd say this, Tom is less likely to play macho games than
Chakotay is.
And as much as I didn't like the "surprise" ending (which unfortunately I
already knew about), it did fit with general tone of the episode. Chakotay
plays wronged man, and Seska gets back at him in the most womanly of ways.
Fitting, really. Of course, the one truly beautiful thing about the way it
ended is that we get to see Seska again!!! Ah, be still my beating heart!
--Jennifer Pelland (Siubhan)
Tonight, Martha Hackett returns to reprise her role as the arch traitor,
Seska in an episode that leaves no doubt as to just how far some
Cardassians will go to have the last word.
In the initial battle, we are treated to one of those pinpoint timing
raids that are always so impressive on Star Trek. A little disconcerting to
find that this one's been mounted by a Cardassian, but--hey, it's always
fun to watch a professional work. At the end, we're left with some concern
at how much longer the ship can handle weekly bashings like this. But even
though there are enough battles in this episode, that's not what this story
is all about. This is a story about Chakotay and right from the start of
the show, he proves that he is no Will Riker. This is a man who knows how
people think, and how to use that against them. From the way he messes with
B'Elanna's head to his shrewd game of cat and mouse with Seska to the way
he plays with the Kazon leader's fears and jealousies is a clinic on human
manipulation techniques. In a way, that's what this episode is all about,
the pitting of Seska's Machiavellian techniques against Chakotay's more
principled psychological maneuvers.
B'Elanna's role in all of this is interesting. First we find her reacting
in true Klingon fashion to Chakotay's sports psychology. Then we have her
advising Chakotay on learning to control his emotions. Then we have her
advising Janeway to pay more attention to her feelings than her judgement.
Is there something more going on here than the obvious? Remember that
B'Elanna represents the alliance of Klingon and human. In a single person,
she is the spirit of Klingon revenge and blood feud united with human
principles of teamwork and duty to principle. At least in this story, the
voice of B'Elanna is the human urge to strike back and damn the
consequences versus the human desire to remain responsible to one's fellows
and to higher authority. There's even one point where B'Elanna reminds the
captain of those two facets of human decision and forces her to choose
between them, judgement vs. visceral intuition. It's instructive to note,
within the context of the story or our own lives, that extreme situations
can make it nearly impossible to mediate between these two sides of our
nature. That Chakotay makes the decision he does comes as no real surprise,
but neither should we be surprised at the unsatisfactory nature of the
conclusion, nor at the price he has to ultimately pay.
I was also struck by Janeway's reaction to Chakotay's disobedience. When
B'Elanna argued in Chakotay's defense, Janeway's reaction was typically
insightful. Kirk would have gotten a different point. Chakotay had a score
to settle--well, maybe we'll confine him to quarters for a day or
two--after all, men will be men. But Janeway perceives it as inherent
selfishness, a way of trying to make the ship's crisis all about him. This
is the root of the issue and, like it or not, that is the motivation behind
most strong human reactions. It's obvious that a ship can't operate with
everyone in the crew feeling free to take everything personally. Janeway is
open and honest enough to point that out, and that's what's unique about
her character. Insight and the courage to be honest about it, coupled with
real compassion and mercy are the kind of attributes that make her a hero
we can all look up to, regardless of our sex.
We seem confronted by a ambivalent ending. Chakotay notes that he will
find it hard to live with the fact that he has let the captain down.
Personally, I'm with him on this. Serving under someone like
Janeway is an honor. Letting someone like Janeway down isn't something to
be taken lightly. Some might feel it a small price to pay, but Janeway is a
stand-in here for the wounded Self, the disappointment we all feel at being
unable to find a temporizing path between the extremes of personal
behavior. Of course, Chakotay didn't know at that moment that Seska had
impregnated herself with his DNA, but personal loss is also the result of
giving in to petty reactions. Seska gets away in the end and she gets away
with a part of Chakotay. Played out against the all-too Klingon-like Kazon,
the war between Seska and Chakotay is a testimony to the penalty of giving
in to the temptation to react without thought. There is always a danger of
losing part of ourselves to the darker side of our own nature.
--Richard Hanson
OK, in some ways, I really liked this episode. The Starfleet-Maquis
tension has been absent for far too long. It just seemed like things
settled down too quickly after "State of Flux." This episode should have
been produced last season, maybe as a season finale. We have no way of
knowing how long ago this episode was written. Things that don't make
sense:
1) The conversation between Chakotay and Torres at the very beginning of
the show. Chakotay seemed very cold when he discussed the captain's order
to report to the bridge. He said that it better be good. This does not jibe
with the friendship we have seen develop between Chakotay and Janeway. He
went to her to talk about his father in Tattoo. Torres was not his first
choice. While it makes sense that he would enjoy recreation with Torres (he
has been friends with her for a long time), his statements do not fit his
character.
2) Torres pleading for Chakotay's case. This was a great scene, well acted
by both women. But there was a notable lack of warmth between the two that
was reminiscent of very early episodes last season when Torres was still
proving herself. I also noticed that Janeway stressed that Chakotay was
lucky to have B'Elanna for a friend. It did not sound to me like she
considered herself his friend.
3) Chakotay going off blindly without permission. This is very definitely
something the old Chakotay would have done. But given his strong statements
in Initiations about Starfleet and what it means to him, it didn't make
sense. He has demonstrated a strong loyalty to Janeway and this did not
fit.
4) Chakotay's macho trip. Although I found this mildly amusing the first
time I saw it, I later realized it was wildly out of character for him. He
was walking around in a testosterone fog the entire time he was held
captive. Must have been something in the environmental controls on the
Kazon ship! His pride was so badly damaged by Seska that he was reduced to
his most primal urges? Maybe he only wears a thin veneer of civilization.
Who knows? I just thought that Chakotay was above such tactics.
[Photo of Janeway with a gun]
Tense scene between the Captain and Commander at the end. Janeway's
statements about cowboy tactics were right on. She looked betrayed and hurt
more than anything else. Yet right to the end she was being considerate
when she would have given Chakotay a private moment. She does a lot with
this character.
Seska was great in this episode. No proclamations of love for Chakotay. We
know she wants power and she will do what she has to to get it. I loved the
way she played the Kazon against each other. Now she has another card to
play against our beloved Commander. Although I don't see how she could
impregnate herself from DNA, it was a great finish to the episode. It gave
the show a jolt of some much needed tension. I just hope that next time we
can get an episode where all the characters are well written that also fits
into the present timeline. I am going to chalk this one up to bad timing
and hope that things get back on an even keel next time.
--Elizabeth Klisiewicz
RESISTANCE
Joel Grey gives a top drawer performance in this week's story of sacrifice
and courage. Like most good stories, it's relatively simple. There are
essentially three stories going on and a third story hidden underneath it
all. First, there is the story of Tuvok and B'Elanna trapped in an
interrogation cell with no obvious hope of escape. Secondly, the story of
Janeway and the old man, Kalin. Third, the inevitable story of the crew's
attempts to save the away team.
B'Elanna and Tuvok reminded me of Spock and McCoy in the TOS episode
"Bread and Circuses." There's the same fascination with Vulcan reserve, the
tension between the human (Klingon?) response to misfortune (aggression and
bravado) versus Vulcan coolness. And of course it ends in the same
stalemate. Mr. Tuvok is, like Mr. Spock, a stand-in for the real issue--the
fact that most human beings just can't stand anyone who doesn't seem to
react to what's happening. Sherlock Holmes had the same problem with Doctor
Watson. One [fan?] I know commented that the best thing about the show was
Tuvok getting the stuffing beaten out of him. Mmm. See what I mean? It was
this sort of uneasiness that found good old Mr. Spock constantly confronted
with problems that strained his reserve. Tuvok seems destined for the same
fate. However, unlike Spock, Tuvok has no human half to pester him. So far,
Russ has done a first rate job of demonstrating that difference though I
fear some fans perceive it as a lack of acting ability.
Mulgrew and Grey, meanwhile, put on an acting clinic, making me grateful
that no one else in the cast was included (would we have noticed if they
were?). Grey, a scene stealer of the first order, put on one of his best
performances as a father driven out of his mind by guilt and loss. Mulgrew
kept up admirably and brought more depth to an already complex character.
This one show fully explores the depths of Kathryn Janeway...her
discipline, her courage, her intelligence, her compassion. And, yes, she
really does cry at the end of the story. Under the circumstances, anyone
have any problems with that?
Meanwhile back on the ship, Chakotay and Kim wrestle with the problem of
how to get these people out. Basic Treknobabble and plot contrivances. The
Mokra have an incredibly sophisticated planetary defense system for a race
that seems so technologically backward. And why do fascist civilizations
all look like they had their uniforms designed by Darth Vader? The comment
the chief bad guy makes about Voyager are an echo of an interesting
observation already made in "Cold Fire." The ship has gotten some fairly
bad press in the Delta Quadrant. The image of an intrepid (and lost)
starship as an evil invader to the inhabitants of the Quadrant is more of
the mixture of darkness and light that has made Voyager a tad darker than
TNG without being quite the blackout of DS9.
The final story of Grey's guilt over the death of his wife and daughter
comes as no surprise. Janeway's lie to him in the end is a tribute to her
humanity (would even a Vulcan have insisted on honesty at this point?), and
a way of bringing the story full circle. Again, compassion is the pivotal
issue around which the larger story of Voyager revolves.
One small point... When Janeway decides to use her not inconsiderable
assets to lure the security officer to drop his guard, I wonder if she
thought he might just notice she didn't have a hole in the bridge of her
nose. I've decided the whole thing can be simply explained on the basis of
what we know about our own society. Mokran teenagers no doubt grow up under
the same peer pressure as our own little darlings. Currently, the planetary
craze is to have drastic plastic surgery around the age of sixteen or so,
remove the hole and the ring and fashion a [Yuk!] straight smeller. Of
course, no adult Mokran would think twice about it (so much more polite to
pretend not to notice). Grey's daughter did the same thing, of course,
which is why he didn't get sick the first time he saw Janeway. "My precious
daughter...What the hell happened to your nose!?"
--Richard Hanson
"Resistance" started out with me wondering how they had located this
parti- cular planet and when they had become so desperately short of some
needed substance, but that is the only problem I had with the episode. From
start to finish, we were treated to action and adventure in the best of
Star Trek fash- ion. Curious societies, intra-planetary conflicts, and
Starfleet right in the middle of it all harkens back to the best of TOS
days.
Kate Mulgrew was superb in this episode. I am so glad that they finally
wrote her a meaty Captain's role. I think that it is finally catching on
that she is the Captain, and I am ever so grateful for this! Though I am
sure there are those who would question the wisdom of sending the Captain
on an undercover away mission to a hostile planet, I am glad that they did.
Kate did a wonderful job portraying the action-adventure side of Captain
Janeway. I was thrilled to see a female Captain in the action role and hope
that they do more with this as the series progresses.
As is constant with Mulgrew's portrayal of Janeway, she can in no way be
seen as a one dimensional figure. Her scenes with Joel Grey were some of
the finest of this second season. The compassion and care that Kate puts
into this character keeps me always coming back for more. The more I watch,
the more Captain Janeway becomes my hero, and she was already that from the
beginning.
This was a well put together episode. The ending did not seem rushed at
all, and I hope that indicates that the writer's are beginning to hit their
stride with the timing during episodes. Action and feeling were well
balanced. The supporting cast did a nice job as well. I think we were due
for a Janeway episode. Kudos to the writers for providing one that alllowed
her to fulfill so many roles while keeping the viewers on the edge of their
seats.
--Siobhan Wolf
[Photo of Janeway with her paws on the guard]
*THE KATE MULGREW FILM FESTIVAL COLUMN*
THE MANIONS OF AMERICA
by Joan Testin
The Manions of America is a 1981 mini-series that is available on video (2
tapes, about 5 hours) starring Kate Mulgrew, Pierce Brosnan, and a host of
others. Although the movie is not without its flaws, it is well worth
watching. Kate Mulgrew fans will love the film as the movie revolves
around the character she plays.
The story begins in Ireland in the 1840's where an English girl, Rachel
Clement (Mulgrew), and her father have come to the estate he has inherited
upon the death of her uncle. Almost immediately upon arrival, Rachel meets
Rory O'Manion (Brosnan), who is one of the tenant farmers on the land, and
an ardent supporter of the cause to free Ireland from English domination.
Rory holds an instant fascination for Rachel, and she arranges to hire him
as her groom. Their relationship begins quickly, but it takes many years
and many changes before they are finally married. The chemistry between
Mulgrew and Brosnan sizzles. Those who enjoy passionate love scenes will
be happy with those scenes which, although sanitized for network
television, leave no doubt that Rachel and Rory have a powerful attraction
for each other. The best may be their first kisses--shared as he rescues
her from breaking her neck on her horse. If her brother hadn't arrived at
an inopportune time...
The relationship between Rachel and Rory is the best part of the movie.
However, as is typical of a mini-series, there are many different
storylines: the historical (Rory is involved in the rebellion to free
Ireland, then immigrates to America and becomes involved in the Industrial
Revolution), the love story (Besides Rachel and Rory, there is her brother
David and his sister Dierdre, then Dierdre and an American lawyer Caleb,
then David and Dierdre again), incredible plot-twists (coincidences abound,
people are lost and then happen to run into each other, die and are then
found to be alive, etc. etc.). The story actually works for much of the
film; the characters are engaging enough to allow the viewer to ignore the
plot flaws. However, about 130 minutes into the film, the pacing becomes
more uneven, and the story is harder to follow. Events that take years are
covered in a few brief scenes, yet a wagon-train of gunpowder seems to take
forever to reach its destination. There are also problems understanding
some of the dialogue--especially some of the thick Irish accents, and many
of the scenes are very dark.
Yet with all of its faults, there are many great moments--more than enough
to please the most ardent fan. Kate Mulgrew shines in the role of
Rachel--a spoiled English girl who grows into a headstrong woman who will
do anything to be with the man she loves. Rachel begins the movie as a
breathless, flirting young girl who is looking forward to being rich, and
by the time the movie ends eighteen to twenty years later, she has learned
about the realities of life and of love. Mulgrew plays each of Rachel's
ages with perfect believability, and Rachel comes to life on the screen.
The viewer benefits by an actress who is dedicated to the craft of acting
and who is gifted in her ability to create real, believable characters.
Each gesture and tone of voice is used to help us see beyond Rachel's
immediate actions to the woman underneath. Rachel Clement-Manion is not
always an admirable person, but the viewer is forced to empathize with her
choices, and mourn the "happily-ever-after" that she never quite attains.
She chooses to love Rory O'Manion--a man with two loves, Rachel and
Ireland. It is ironic that in the end, he loses them both. Perhaps the
theme of the move is best summed up by Rachel herself, on her honeymoon,
when she says that "I think perhaps, all we can ask for, is to be perfectly
happy for a little while." At the end of the movie, the viewer, like Rory,
is left to remember those perfectly happy moments -- and mourn that they
were so few.
[Drawing of Kate Mulgrew and Pierce Brosnan in Manions]
*THE FUNNY PAGES*
[When I first read this story I laughed my butt off, but was afraid that it
was too risque for Now Voyager. Then I rewatched "Naked Time," "Naked
Now," "Fascination," and "Persistence of Vision," and decided that I'd be
hard-pressed to think of anything too demeaning to print!]
JUST A PINCH
by Jennifer Pelland (Siubhan)
"Good morning, Captain!"
"Good morning, Neelix. What's for breakfast?"
"Well, I have some laola root with spiny lobefish that I think you'll
like. Oh, and I've whipped up something special for you." He waddled back
into the kitchen, then reappeared with a steaming mug in his hand. "In my
continuing search for coffee substitutes, I've stumbled across this. Let me
know what you think."
"I'll do that, Neelix. Um, do you have any toast to go with this spiny
lobefish?" she asked hopefully. The entree was pulsating, and she wasn't
too eager to put it in her mouth.
"Oh, yes. Of course. Here you go."
"Thank you."
She walked over to an empty table and stared balefully at her breakfast
plate. Stabbing a fork into the spiny lobefish, she was rewarded with a
hiss of yellow gas that reeked of sulfur. Right, toast and coffee
substitute it was.
Hmm, this attempt at coffee substitute wasn't bad. Not bad at all. It
certainly wasn't coffee, but it had some of the enjoyable properties of the
brew. It made her feel quite pleasant, actually. Quite pleasant indeed. In
fact, after finishing it, she felt like she could single handedly conquer
the universe. She picked up her tray, dumped it down the recycling bin, and
walked to the door.
As she got there, Harry Kim walked in. "Good morning, Captain."
"Good morning, Ensign," she said with a friendly pat on the butt.
Harry's eyes grew wide, but he said nothing as she grinned and kept
walking down the hallway toward the bridge.
She entered the turbolift and was pleasantly surprised to see Lieutenant
Paris on his way to the bridge as well. "Good morning, Captain," he said
with a smile.
"Good morning. I trust you had a good night's sleep?" she asked.
"Oh, not bad," Paris replied with all the nonchalance he could muster. It
was kind of weird to have the Captain ask him about how he'd slept.
"That's good," she purred. The lift stopped and she gave his rear a good
solid pinch. He yelped and jumped away just as the doors opened, then
bolted for his chair. He would be safe in his chair, right?
Janeway strode to her seat with a smile on her face. Ah, that had felt
good. She hadn't pinched a tush that nice in far too long, although Harry's
had felt pretty good as well. She sat back and tried to compare the two in
her mind, but decided that she needed to get a good grab of both of them
again in order to truly compare their favorable qualities.
Chakotay walked into the bridge to report for duty, and with a sly grin,
Janeway put her hand on his seat, palm up. He started to sit down, then
noticed and said, "Captain?"
"Oh, excuse me," she said as she withdrew her hand. Well, she'd manage to
get a grip later.
Life went on as normal for the next few hours. Janeway managed to lose
herself in her work, pausing only occasionally to think about Chakotay's
butt. At one point he stood up and walked over to talk to Paris, and she
was riveted. Her eyes tried to make out the contours through the black
fabric, but the light was hitting it all wrong. Then he leaned over to look
at the console and she got the view she'd been waiting for. Oh, that looked
nice. She could practically feel it.
Harry watched with her with trepidation. He'd gotten used to the Captain
putting her paws on his shoulders and arms, but her sudden fixation with
derrieres was making him a little nervous. He'd have to tell Chakotay about
this at lunch time. In fact, it was just about time to leave. Chakotay
turned around and said, "Kim, Paris, time for lunch. We'll be back in half
an hour, Captain."
Janeway nodded. The three men got into the turbolift, and Harry said, "Um,
Commander, I have something I think I should tell you."
"Yes, Ensign?"
"The Captain...well, the Captain patted me on the behind this morning."
"You too?" Paris blurted. "She pinched my butt on the turbolift!"
Chakotay looked incredulously at the two officers. "Are you serious?"
"Yes, sir," Harry said with a squirm. "And I noticed her looking at yours
and making little squeezing motions with her hands."
"When?"
"Just a few minutes ago when you were bending over and talking to Tom."
Chakotay shook his head incredulously. "I'll have to have a talk with her.
I knew she was touchy-feely, but this is over the line."
Their lunch break ended and they returned to the bridge. Kim and Paris
dashed for their posts in an effort to evade Janeway's inquisitive hands,
and Chakotay said, "May I speak to you for a moment, Captain?"
"Not right now, Commander. It's lunch time," she replied with a grin. She
walked towards the turbolift, and Chakotay carefully kept his body
positioned so she couldn't make a grab for him. With a wistful sigh, she
stepped into the turbolift and the doors closed behind her. A huge sigh of
relief emanated from the men on the bridge.
Chakotay sat in the captain's chair, dutifully minding the bridge and
mentally rehearsing what he would say to her when she returned. "Excuse me,
Captain, but why the sudden predilection for butts?" Too vulgar. "Captain,
some of the crew have noticed that lately you've been conducting
unauthorized inspections of certain crewmembers' gluteus maxiumuses...or is
that maximi?" No, too weird.
His train of thought was cut off as Torres stormed onto the bridge.
"Chakotay, tell her to keep her paws off me!"
"You too?" Paris gasped.
"Me, Chell, Henley. She even made a grab at Neelix! Not that he complained
or anything, but she's having quite the little squeeze-fest in the mess
hall. If she doesn't stop touching my butt I'm gonna rip her arm off!"
B'Elanna fumed.
Chakotay stood up stoically and steeled himself for the confrontation he
was about to provoke. Someone had to stop the Captain's fondling rampage,
and as First Officer, that duty fell to him. "Mr. Paris, you have the
conn."
"Aye, sir."
But just then Janeway blew back onto the bridge, hair slightly disheveled,
and a huge grin plastered across her face. "Captain," Chakotay started.
"Commander, may I see you in my ready room?" she said.
"Ah, my thought exactly," he replied, following her off the bridge. The
doors closed, and he cleared his throat and said, "Captain, it's recently
come to my attention that..."
"Oh, shut up and get over here," she purred as she launched herself at him.
Chakotay made a dash for the desk, hoping to use it as cover, stammering,
"Now just hold on a minute, Captain. You're acting very out of character."
Chasing him around the desk, she growled, "You talk too much. Now keep
that cute posterior of yours still."
"No can do, Captain," he said as he tried faking her out with a quick
feint to the right. But she jumped up on the desk and hurled herself at
him. With a strangled cry, he tried to get away, but she managed to give
him a hard squeeze before he wiggled loose. "Chakotay to Tuvok," he
shouted.
"Tuvok here."
"Get in here fast."
The doors opened, and Tuvok surveyed the scene. The Captain was chasing
Chakotay around the desk, panting, "Get back here and let me do that
again," and Chakotay was evading her with an expression of utter panic.
"Yes, Commander?"
"Give her a neck pinch, now!" he yelled.
"Is that really necessary?" Tuvok calmly replied. Just then Janeway
whirled on her Vulcan friend and said, "I'll bet you've got a nice tush,
Tuvok." And with that she rushed him.
Tuvok quickly deduced that yes, a neck pinch would be the proper thing to
administer right now, and managed to knock her out just as her hand touched
his buttock. He lowered the captain gently to the floor and looked over at
Chakotay who was desperately trying to catch his breath. "I believe the
logical thing to do at the moment is beam her to sickbay, Commander."
"I believe you're right," Chakotay wheezed.
Kes and the Doctor hovered around the unconscious form of Janeway,
frantically trying to figure out what had caused such a radical change in
her personality. "There's something interesting in her bloodstream, but
it's very difficult to analyze," the Doctor said, brow wrinkled in
frustration. "Is it really necessary to keep her strapped down like this?"
Chakotay, Paris, and Kim all nodded in unison. Just then Janeway's eyelids
fluttered open. She looked at the Doctor and grinned. "Hello, you cheeky
monkey. I'll bet you're a handful."
The Doctor looked back at the solemn group of men and said, "I see your point."
"Doctor," Kes said breathlessly, "look at her neural readings. They're
very unusual."
"Hmm. Hmmmmmm. Hm. Very unusual. Hmmmm. Captain, other than the obvious,
has anything out of the ordinary happened to you in the past two days?"
"Not that I can recall. Oh, Neelix made this wonderful coffee substitute
for me this morning!" she said with a grin.
Kes shook her head. "I'll go get him."
After a quick chemical analysis of the coffee and the spiny lobefish
gasses showed that they were indeed the culprits, the Doctor whipped up an
antidote and gave it to Janeway. The veils of butt-crazed dementia parted,
and she blushed furiously. "Oh good lord, I can't believe I did that," she
muttered.
Chakotay nodded at the Doctor and the restraints were removed. Janeway sat up and buried her head in her hands. "This is mortifying. It's a terrible breach of protocol," she groaned.
"No harm done, Captain," Chakotay replied. "I'll be sure to inform the. .
.affected members of the crew that you were under the influence of a
drug interaction."
"Certainly. And tell Neelix no more coffee substitutes."
Paris and Kim mumbled their forgiveness to the Captain and ducked
out of sickbay. Chakotay turned to her and asked, "Why don't I accompany
you to your quarters?"
"That's a good idea. I don't think I want to walk around by myself out
there right now," murmured a still-bright red Janeway.
She slid off the bed and jumped as she felt a hand squeeze her behind. She
glared at Chakotay, who merely smiled and said, "Oops."
"I suppose I had that coming, but don't try it again!" she warned.
"I wouldn't dream of it. Shall we?"
With a sigh, she steeled her shoulders and exited sickbay.
THE END
TOP TEN WAYS JANEWAY COULD HAVE PUNISHED CHAKOTAY FOR DISOBEYING ORDERS:
Seen on AOL, believed to be by ChapShan, hilarious enough to share...
10. Write on replicated chalkboard with replicated chalk 1000 times: I am
not a space cowboy.
9. Force him to partake in holodeck program where he is a Maquis captain
again; half of his crew are Cardassian spies, the other half, Federation.
8. Replicator privileges revoked for one month. Force him to eat Neelix's
hair spaghetti.
7. Make him spend time alone in the brig with B'Elanna after she's had a
really, really bad day.
6. Make him spend time alone in the brig with Neelix (doesn't matter what
kind of day he's had).
5. Force him to have sex with a holographic Seska, fully restored to her
Cardassian physiology.
4. Tell him that every woman that he has ever slept with has impregnated
herself with his DNA.
3. Make him be Kes's guinea pig when she's in the mood to telepathically
move molecules.
2. Order him to play Lucy in Janeway's holonovel, including wearing her
dress and pursuing her affair with Lord-what's-his-name.
AND THE #1 WAY JANEWAY COULD HAVE PUNISHED CHAKOTAY FOR DISOBEYING ORDERS:
1. Tell him that Seska is expecting quints...
[Photo of Janeway freaking out in Persistence of Vision]
YOU'VE GOT THE TOUCH
She's slowed down, yet the touchy-feely count continues to rise:
Chakotay: 14 [back on top after Tattoo]
Kes: 12 [a woman who can make your blood boil]
Paris: 12 [saved the ship...again!]
Kim: 7 [slow month]
Neelix: 7 ["Get this to the ship"]
Torres: 5 [saved Chakotay...again!]
Doc: 3 [aaaaah-CHOOOOOO!]
Tuvok: 3 [no wonder he's been so jealous of Chakotay!]
Kalem: 5 [although in most cases he started it]
Lord Burleigh: 3 [and if it happens again I'll puke]
Mark: 2 [real men don't get jealous of holograms]
That sleazy jail guard in "Resistance": 2
[Tiny Trek cartoon with Captain and T'Neelix joke]
*VOYAGER PEOPLE*
ROBERT PICARDO
by Jennifer Pelland
[Siubhan interviewed Bob Picardo at Farpoint, where many Now Voyager
members were lucky enough to meet him and hear him sing! Her initial con
report was full of hilarious anecdotes about her tape recorder which had to
be cut for space reasons, but you can see what happens when you get two
comedians in a room together from this report nonetheless! Thanks to
Felicia Green of the Gersh Agency, Heather Koons of BGH and Melissa Honig,
Jennifer's photographer!]
NV: I have to ask you at least one question about Kathryn Janeway--Kate
Mulgrew--because it's her fan club newsletter after all. So, standard
question: what is it like working with Kate Mulgrew?
RP: It is the best possible professional experience for an actor. She is
immaculately prepared when she arrives on the set. She knows all of her
dialogue perfectly. She has already thought about the material. She has
made choices. She is extremely well prepared. And when you do a regular job
with another actor, that is the most important aspect of your working
relationship--that the other actor pays you the respect and courtesy that
you also are obliged to pay them, which is to come to the set prepared to
do your best work so you do not waste anyone else's time, you don't waste
the crew's time. Kate is the Platonic ideal of an actress, someone who is
perfectly ready to go the moment she hits the sound stage. I know you print
this verbatim, which scares me, because I'm the most redundant human being
on the face of the Earth. I say everything once and then I repeat it five
times.
NV: Well, that's fine. It'll be the first time it's been in Now Voyager.
What has your favorite episode been so far?
RP: I would say, personally, probably "Heroes and Demons," because it
afforded me so many different things to do. It was basically an Alice in
Wonderland story where the holographic Doctor got to go through the looking
glass, so there was a lot of fun, fun stuff. And the whole look of the
show, because of the exotic surroundings on the holodeck, made it a lot of
fun to do. One of my favorite shows of the series as a whole is "Eye of the
Needle." Also I enjoyed "Elogium" very much and I thought Kes' scenes with
Kate were particularly, uh...
NV: It seemed like it had the potential to be an awful episode and I was so
impressed when I saw it, because from the preview it sounded like she slept
with everyone on the ship and it sounded horrible.
RP: (Wincing) You're going "they're heading for a male audience"
(laughter). No, I agree with you. When I first heard what the story was I
thought it was very dicey, but I thought that Kate's scene with Jennifer in
my office was a particularly lovely scene. I like when Janeway is given
character, situations where we get to see the depth of her humanity and not
simply the command aspect, and I think that she was particularly wonderful
in that one.
NV: What weak points have you seen in the show so far?
RP: Well, I'm not new to genre, but I'm new to science fiction, pretty
much. I haven't done a whole lot of it; certainly not on television before.
So that sometimes the redundancy of the technobabble or the technobabble
situations, the, you know, spatial anomolies and all that, seem like
just... well, how many spatial anomolies can we go through, in three weeks?
I like the goal of exploration on our show. The unfortunate thing for my
character is I'm stuck back in sickbay so I'm like the little lamp burning,
waiting for everyone to come home. Although I like the shows where we have
away missions and visit other planets and all that, I feel a little like
the odd man out, because I
never get to go along for the fun. But I think that that is our primary
directive, that we reach out and explore on our mission home, and I think
that those are the episodes that grab me the most, the ones that get us off
the ship.
[Photo of Picardo as The Holodoc]
NV: Well, that segues nicely into another question. As the character who is
sort of the lamp burning, the character of the Doctor is very much stuck on
the ship and everyone is just dying to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, but
the Doctor possibly faces being shut off permanently when he gets back,
because he was only supposed to be a stopgap measure until a new doctor
shows up. How do you think the character feels about that, or deals with
that on a daily basis?
RP: I think that's one of the reasons I liked "Eye of the Needle" so much,
because it really presents that situation for the first time. That when
everyone else has the opportunity to fulfill their immediate dream, which
is to return to their loved ones back home, the Doctor, that doesn't have
any meaning for him, because his only existence has been defined by his
experience on Voyager, and once he gets back, then he goes from however
much humanity he has developed, he simply goes back to being a tool.
Because that is his purpose. The purpose of creating the program was for
medical emergency situations and the moment they're back home, whatever the
Doctor has managed to accomplish in growing beyond his initial limitiations
will become meaningless. In fact, they'll probably become disadvantages,
because it will have, dare I say, cultivated expectations in him that
cannot be fulfilled. So, I think that that is anirony that's just not
going to go away, that is a core irony to the holographic doctor's
situation.
NV: Do you think if you stay out there long enough, the character might
actually get rank pips?
RP: They would have to be holographic pips, but I think, absolutely, I
should have pips. I do have a rank, and I deserve some pips. I'm sure I'll
get pips some day.
NV: Buy some at the convention downstairs and sneak them on your costume!
If you could sit down and interview him, what kind of questions would you,
Robert Picardo, want to ask the Doctor?
RP: Are you anatomically correct? (Much laughter). Is there any future for
you and Freya or any of the other holographic babes you might encounter?
Um, let's see. I would ask whatever happened to Rogaine? (more laughter)
Everytime I see the commercial on television that says, "I'd like to find
out more about a real relationship, I'd like to find out more about working
out, I'd like to find out more about Rogaine," I think that I should do
those commercials in my Starfleet uniform as the Doctor.
NV: There's no emergency holographic hair?
RP: (Laughing). So, let's see, what questions would I like to ask? Um, I
would like to ask the Doctor why he has to communicate verbally with the
computer system on board the ship. Why he simply doesn't have to think it.
I suspect it's for dramatic reasons, otherwise they would have to subtitle
all of my scenes alone in sickbay. Um, I would like to ask the Doctor how
he manages to plan on not aging physically during the next six years of our
television run if we're so fortunate as to have one.
NV: You should ask Brent Spiner.
RP: Yeah (laughs), I should ask Brent. Brent still looks...Brent is older
than me and looks younger than me, so he's probably the wrong person to
ask. But uh, what else would I like to ask the Doctor? Mmmmm...I'll have to
think on that.
NV: If Jeri Taylor walked up to you tomorrow and asked you where you'd like
the Doctor's character to go, what ideas do you think you'd have to give
her?
RP: I would like to, in exploring the notion of what name the Doctor should
choose, whether or not he should name himself after his programmer, which
was the original concept, is that I was going to be called Zimmerman, after
the man who programmed me. In exploring that notion I would like to know
more about our programmer. Once you've named yourself after the greatest
medical humanitarian of the twentieth century and then decided not to do it
because it reminds you of this sad ending to a brief holographic romance
that never was, it sort of begs the question, "who do you name yourself
after next"? And to name myself after a programmer that we know nothing
about seems to open a lot of questions. What was so special about him that
you want to make this tribute to him? Or is it simply like being named
after your dad, which I think is cute, but not terribly meaningful. So I
would like to know the story of my programmer. And I have suggested what I
thought would be an interesting notion, and whether or not they'll do it I
don't know. I think it would be fun if we met the programmer. You don't
have to meet them on video in Star Trek. You can meet them on the holodeck,
of course. I would like my program to be a extremely shy, pathetically
unentitled human being, so that it becomes clear that the holographic
doctor's arrogance and brusque manner was the creation of someone who did
not have the courage to deal with people that way himself. The question
becomes, what was it about this man that made him so unable to deal with
people - so not only reserved, but actually frightened of human contact.
And have the backstory be that this particular doctor who became an
engineer, who retreated from the actual practice of medicine into
theoretical medicine and created this emergency medical program, had
witnessed an experience, such a trauma in a medical situation that he was
unable to treat people any more. In other words, he was the kind of person
who would volunteer in absolutely horrific emergency situations where,
like, Kalax had the metrion cascade, right? The equivalent of the 24th
century nuclear war. And that something had happened to him that had so
deeply affected him that he needed...he could not practice anymore, so he
in fact created the holographic doctor as his arms, to finish a job that he
couldn't do anymore. Which I thought would be sort of an interesting
notion. Whether or not they'll ever do it, I don't know. But this was sort
of a vague, sketchy outline that I pitched to them in my vague, sketchy way
(snickers). I'm hoping that they'll do that story someday, or something
like it.
NV: Do you know if all the emergency holograms on all the ships look
exactly like you?
RP: That is a question that I have posed to them. In theory they would. And
in theory the holographic doctor, well, let's put it this way, if you were
a brand new spaceship, or suppose you were a spaceship that had been around
for twenty nine years that was destroyed, for example, in a feature film in
recent memory and they build an entire new spaceship that has state of
the art technology in every critical area of the ship. It raises a question
to me, what about you? At least it's a technology that would have
been examined,
offered, and then refused, or turned down. Who knows? But it seems to me
that there's a question there that has to be dealt with sooner or later. Or
maybe all the emergency medical holograms, maybe they have different faces
that you can program. And it would be my voice and Claudia Schiffer's body
on the Enterprise since they have a male captain and, you know...I am
kidding (much laughter all around).
[Photo of Picardo and the Warrior Queens at Farpoint '95]
NV: Have you actually run into anyone dressed up like the Doctor at a
convention?
RP: I have not. There is someone here at this convention who claims to do
an impression of my voice, and it sounds pretty good, but you know what? We
have a parrot at home that sounds better. (laughing)
NV: I have a friend whose parrot does the whooshing of the doors on the
Enterprise.
RP: Oh, our parrots do everything. They do the screech of the rusty pool
cover motor. Our parrots are very talented. I think I'm going to teach my
parrots to say "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." That
would be funny. They tell our children to shut up when they cry. That's
really sad (laughter). You hear a four year old crying in the other room
and you hear, "shut up! Quiet!"
NV: Well, I know that yesterday you mentioned a little bit about that the
Doctor's big fear is that at any moment he could be shut off. He could be
doing anything and just be shut off in the middle of it. Is that, you
think, his biggest fear?
RP: Well, I think that was initially. But now that Captain Janeway has
graciously granted him control over his command sequence, he can turn
himself on and off. And that was the first sense of entitlement, the first
sense of self, I think, along the Doctor's long road to individuality.
Hopefully, we'll have more stories like that. Individuation, maybe the
process of becoming an individual. Maybe individuation, I don't know. I'll
have to check with a professor, somewhere.
NV: Do you have a new worst fear, do you think, or getting home to the
Alpha Quadrant and being redundant?
RP: I think that the Doctor has anxiety about being put in a situation that
he was not designed for. Well, obviously his entire position on the ship is
a situation that he was not programmed for, since he was supposed to be for
emergency medical purposes only, and now he's the chief medical officer.
But I think that beyond that, any particular situation like Heroes and
Demons where he's transferred to the holodeck, where he wants to - in order
to satisfy his secret desire to become a full fledged member of the crew,
he wants to complete any task that Janeway has assigned him, and yet he may
be completely unprepared to do that. So in situations like that where he's
called upon to do things that he really does not have...the expertise, the
programming, the know-how, however you want to put it, he must come
through. Those are the situations that generate anxiety in the Doctor but
also I think will be the most fulfillng for him. So, I would think that
whatever the steps are for getting the Doctor out of sickbay and ultimately
on an away mission, all of those are going to be the Doctor's greatest fear
and simultaneously his greatest desire.
NV: Last question so you can go to your reception. Do people, when you come
back from conventions, do you sit around and talk about things that
happened? Trade weird stories when you come back?
RP: I would say I talk to my wife quite a bit about it. The other cast
members, depending on our relationships maybe not quite as much. It seems
to me that there are only one or two cast members that I tend to talk about
convention experiences. I don't know if that's because the other cast
members haven't had as many convention experiences or they're not as
interested in the experience. The way it seems to shake down is that I talk
to John Ethan about convention experiences. Different people...I think...my
wife has once described me as a lounge singer waiting to be born, so
(laughs) the convention experience has been an easier adjustment for me I
think. It might be for another actor once they stumbled upon this new
opportunity in their career. I'm not saying I'm proud of this talent, I'm
merely telling you what my wife said about me. I tend to babble, but you
know that by now. Thank you very much.
NV: That's fine. That's more for the newsletter, so thank you.
JERI TAYLOR
by Michelle Erica Green
[This was over the telephone, November 29, 1995, and I actually asked her
everything people asked me to ask her--so much for my chances of ever
getting invited in to pitch! She was really, really lovely, did not scream
at me for asking about J/C, said everything I hoped she'd say about women
and the future...]
NV: What is your idea of the guiding principle of Voyager that makes it
different from the other Trek shows?
JT: The franchise is completely different in that our mission is to get
home. We're stuck 70,000 light years away from everything that we've known
and loved, and we are trying to get home, which is not a mission like any
of the other ventures. And we have decided to embrace the adventure and to
behave like Starfleet explorers, and learn what we can along the way. It is
very much Trek because it is Starfleet people behaving in a Starfleet way,
which means that they are enlightened human beings who do not go around
imposing their values on the rest of the galaxy, who try to behave in a
good and decent way, and who are upholding all the Roddenberry principles
as they move through this strange part of space. So that's all very
familiar. Some of the aliens that we have on the ship are familiar. We
have a half-Klingon, we have a Vulcan, we have things people seem before,
so there is that comfort level. But of course all of the other alien
species that we encounter in the Delta Quadrant, we've never seen before.
That makes it somewhat different.
NV: I asked Kate this question, so I'll ask you, although I expect that
you'll think about it differently since you actually created the character:
if you could sit down with Kathryn Janeway, what would you want to talk to
her about? What don't you know about her that you think, "If only I could
ask her!"
JT: I'd really love to tap into the mind of a 24th-century woman which is
not encumbered with our 20th century limitations, and discuss what it's
like to be captain and female. Now, in the 24th century it won't be an
issue, I would imagine, but today it still is, whether we'd like to pretend
that it is or not. There are things that we think twice before we let
Janeway do because we think that the audience views her in a different way
from a man and we feel we need to protect the image of the captain. I was
one who, in the beginning when we created Janeway, said that by the 24th
century a woman can have a position of power and authority without acting
like a man. But in the 20th century that's not true, and there are certain
emotional levels that I think the captain ought to have access to that
we're not entirely comfortable giving to her yet because we fear that it
would undermine her sense of being a captain. So I would love to talk to a
real 24th-century woman and just see how she balances the idea of
femaleness--is there a female essence, is there a female side of people, is
that something we have constructed in our own ignorance or enlightenment,
does that really have anything to do with it?
NV: Are you a feminist?
JT: Define it.
NV: Great answer! I guess the question is how do you define it...do you
see Janeway as a feminist heroine, were you consciously trying to make her
one when you created her?
JT: Absolutely not because, as I say, I genuinely believe--I hope--I
choose to believe that in the 24th century there won't be any need for such
terms, and that issues of gender simply won't exist. These are names we've
had to concoct now to deal with very troubling issues, and I felt very
strongly that in the 24th century that wouldn't come up, it simply wouldn't
exist so she could never be defined in that way. Can I be defined in that
way? I wouldn't even attempt a definition. They are so widespread and
far-flung that you tend to get yourself in trouble no matter what you say.
Do I care about the place of women in society? Very much. Do I uphold
positions that I think are helpful to women, do I rail and protest against
things that I think are derogatory to women? Absolutely! Everybody here
on the show will tell you that they are gradually being weaned away from
calling 40-year-old women "girls." That's a very tiny thing. But I take my
stands, and I fight the battles that I can. Do I go out and get
politically involved in feminist issues? Rarely. I don't get involved in
many because I simply don't have time.
NV: What's been your favorite episode so far?
JT: I would say it would be a tossup between "Prime Factors" and "Eye of
the Needle. " I thought "Prime Factors" worked on all levels.
NV: You're writing the novel of Janeway's life before Voyager. How much
of that did you have mapped out before the show was on the air?
JT: None of it. I am making it up page by page. When Pocket Books
contacted me, I had no business saying yes to a novel--I have even less
of a life than I ever did and that wasn't much! But I gave them an outline
which was very short and very broad that just kind of hit some high points
of where I thought I'd be going--no details, no specificity--and they said
great. So I sit down each day, and I usually do this all weekend, with my
little laptop computer--I have no idea where I'm going. It's very much a
moment-to-moment thing and it's a very frightening yet exhilarating way to
write. We don't do that in television, we don't have the luxury of that
kind of time. We have a very tautly constructed outline before we start
writing the screenplay. So it's kind of fun but it's very perilous, and I
always kind of have a lump in my stomach when I start, because I truly
don't know what the next page is going to bring. And so it's unfolding,
and I'm discovering things about her, or the way that I envision her, that
I might never have arrived at if I weren't going through this sort of
Zen-like process. I have thought that I must sit with Kate and get her
input as well. I'm drawing a lot from me, which is what writers do, the
incidents in my life and that kind of thing, and it's all very cathartic
and fun to do, but I think it would be interesting to get her thoughts too.
[Cartoon of B'Elanna Torres having a bad day]
NV: You created Janeway as a scientist, which I guess automatically means
that there's going to be more technobabble coming out of her mouth than any
of the other captains we've had. Are there plans to get more science into
the science fiction because of that opportunity?
JT: We certainly have the freedom to do that. The way we do stories
around here, people always think we know what we're doing more than we
do--we sort of don't set those goals and say "Ah, here's what will happen
because she's ascientist" and then try to live up to those goal. We let
the characters unfold as we go along, story to story, and we develop
stories because a story seems really wonderful--it's something we'd like to
see, it's provocative, it's intriguing, it's mysterious, it's spooky--it
has some emotional hook that gets us involved so we tell that story. It
may be a story about Janeway, it may be a story about Torres or about
Paris, and that's how the character is developed. We tend not to say.
"Okay, now we're going to do this arc for so-and-so." We let them evolve
as people do evolve, which is sort of day to day.
NV: So there aren't any long-term story arcs. Are there plans to explore
some of the things which have been vaguely established, such as the fact
that Tuvok and Janeway have a rather interesting past together, the fact
that a lot of the people who were in the Maquis came together during fairly
intense situations in the past--do you have plans to cultivate these
eventually, or do you wait and see what people come up with?
JT: A little of both. We put some things in place because obviously we
felt it would give us grist for future stories, and yes, it would certainly
be fun to see how Janeway and Tuvok first met, that's something I want to
deal with in the novel so maybe I don't want to use it on an episode, but
it's there to be used. We tend not to tell flashback stories. Anything
that happened in the past is harder to tell on TV than it might be in a
novel form because you just have a lot of talk about what went on. But we
have dealt with relationships with the Maquis, we have gotten into a kind
of an arc involving one of them that's going to be coming up in January,
and so we dip into all the things we've set up and hope they work.
NV: I'm going to ask you a very fannish question. We got a lot of these
questions from people on the Now Voyager mailing list, which consists of
several dozen fans who really, really love the show--
JT: The kind I like!
NV: Literally a hundred people asked me to ask you this one. I realize
this was probably not intentional on the part of the producers, but large
numbers of viewers are under the impression that there's something going on
between Janeway and Chakotay. The chemistry seems obvious--I know that Kate
and Robert get asked about it all the time at cons. I've heard both you and
Kate say that you think it would be unwise for Janeway to get romantically
involved with a member of the crew, and in past couple of weeks it has
seemed that there's been a concerted effort to separate her and Chakotay
and throw B'Elanna at him as a sort of consolation prize. I was just
wondering whether you have considered the extent to which your audience may
feel you've let them down by sweeping the issue under the rug.
JT: I was one who sort of tossed this out for consideration way, way, way
back early, and everyone else responded very badly to it, and I think with
justification. Again, we have to be very careful about what we allow this
captain to do and not do. I think that for her to breach one of the most
fundamental sort of rules of any profession, really, which are in place--if
not on paper, then it's an unwritten kind of thing, but for very good
reason--then we would be making her look terribly weak. "She's a woman who
just can't say no to her feelings, she's not enough of a captain that she
puts the well-being and functioning of her ship ahead of her own need to
have a man in her life." I think it really undercuts her. It's very
fetching, and I know that there is a large segment of fandom, and
particularly of women fans, who love to see our characters get romantically
linked. It provides problems not just for what I've stated, but because if
they do, then what do you do with that relationship? Does it stay in place
so that the opportunities for other romances are never there for them? Does
it become a soap opera in space instead of what Star Trek sort of is at the
core, which is science fiction? It's very tempting--I am one who is
constantly trying to inject little bits of romance and attraction and that
kind of thing in stories because I think it's a big part of people's lives,
and they like to see it reflected. But I just think in terms of Janeway
and Chakotay that would be a really bad idea, and I cannot see us doing it.
We put in the B'Elanna thing just because then it's there to play with.
Does she feel this way or doesn't she? Are they friends, is there a danger
if they become close friends because maybe that's going to be too hard for
her if he's attracted to someone else, what is that going to do to her? I
think we can play with some of those sort of deep-seated feelings that we
all have without compromising the captain.
NV: No decisions have been made on any of this?
JT: No decisions have been made. But I don't want to kindle hope that
something's going to happen between Janeway and Chakotay because I don't
think it will.
NV: I don't think anyone was really expecting it on the show--I think the
reaction was more that people don't want it killed. But it seems
contradictory...I keep hearing you say you don't want Janeway not to be
able to be emotional just because she's a woman in command. But every time
she's looked even close to tears, that's been something a lot of the net
people have jumped all over. How do you see being able to explore her
personal relationships at all in a way that's not going to have the macho
crowd crying foul?
JT: I think that it is perfectly all right for the captain to be feeling
and emotional when she's not in front of the crew, with someone like Tuvok
who is her close confidante and whom she can kind of unwind with. It's in
situations like on the bridge or the briefing room, when she is functioning
on duty as the captain, that if she becomes too emotional, this creates a
feeling of weakness. We get people immediately saying, "Who made that woman
captain of a starship? She's falling apart!" If the captain loses it, who
can you trust? You've got to have an anchor, you've got to have a rock that
is that solid in that position or everything else is hollow.
NV: Kate said that she gets into trouble because she's always taking
risks, since that's the only way to learn anything, and they constantly
tell her it's too emotional.
JT: We've had those discussions. We have a wonderful, fully textured
actress in Kate Mulgrew, who likes to use all of her instrument. And I know
it's frustrating for her, that it is her job to kind of push at the edges
and see what works. She is a marvelous actress, and she simply wants to use
her full self. It's a really fragile situation. I certainly do not want, in
the first instance of a woman being captain, to come out of it with people
saying, "That was a mistake." I'd rather err in the direction of her being
too captainlike than to stick her out there and have people say, "Let's get
back to a man who can really do the job."
NV: We only saw her lose it once, in "Persistence of Vision," and everyone
else was losing it too. I was intrigued that Janeway and Torres's
fantasies that were focused on--we saw a couple of seconds of Tom and a
couple of seconds of Tuvok, but we didn't really learn anything new about
them--I wondered about the choice to focus on the women. It seems like
some women viewers were upset because it seemed like the female characters
were becoming sex bimbos.
JT: I think that's a very fair comment. I got that same comment much after
the fact here--I wrote that episode--and certainly it wasn't my intention
to leave people with that taste in their mouth. As I said, I'm always
trying to inject a little romance and a little sex, sometimes our show is
very sterile, so when I have the chance I like to bring those sensibilities
to it. Part of the reason that was set in motion is that we want to resolve
Janeway's love affair at home with Mark--she needs to be able to get on
with her life, for her to become romantically interested in anybody would
seem like betrayal unless she comes to a decision and says, "He believes
I'm dead, he's gone on with his life, I have to do the same," and then can
moveon. So we started it by having this funny attraction to a holodeck
character which seemed like a very safe thing, it's not real, but clearly
it was disturbing her more than she was willing to admit. If you have a
program that is all written for you in essence--this is a book, she didn't
write it, she's simply playing a part--and it turns out that the hero in
that is attracted to you, that's the role you're supposed to play. It's a
way of having feelings that she's having to repress repress come to the
surface, except that she finds out--is it so safe? So to me it was a very
provocative way of her beginning to get at these feelings and come to grips
with the fact that she will need to get on with her life. I certainly did
not intend for the women to look like sex bimbos, I was trying to deal with
the real needs and feelings that it seems to me people would have in this
situation.
NV: I think it's what you were talking about at the beginning, the double
fact that you're writing about 24th-century people for a 20th-century
audience. I keep hearing who the demographic audience is, but it seems like
the advertising is equally targeted towards women and men. And I was
wondering if there is a consciousness that there is an increasingly female
audience, or conversely sometimes it almost seems as if that is seen as a
liability, like there's a sense of let's get back to techno Trek...
JT: Certainly the network and the studio perceive this as a show which
attracts young males, which is the audience they want to attract. And
there is a certain amount of encouragement for us to do stories, i.e.
action-adventure stories, that appeal primarily to young males. However,
the staff here, which includes not just myself but a number of enlightened
men--they have no interest in just doing shoot-em-ups. Rick and Michael are
much more attracted to the kind of shows that you would think women would
be attracted to. So I don't think we're in danger of not programming for
women--if anything our tastes go toward that and away from programming for
men, and we have to be reminded to do the other kind of shows.
NV: We hear conflicting things about Voyager's ratings: UPN is delighted
with them, they hate them, they're OK--are they pretty much where they were
targeted to be?
JT: They're either there or even a little better. Being on the UPN
network is a great disadvantage. If we were syndicated I think we'd be
doing even better than we are. The network does not have full coverage of
the country, so in terms of sheer numbers which are the ratings, we can't
compete with the other networks. We're hitting 85% of the country and
they're hitting 100, and even in those markets where there is an affiliate,
we're on Channel 71, very often the top channels have already gone to other
outlets and we, just like the Warners network, had to settle for like the
dregs. I get letters from people who don't get it at all, or don't have
cable--there's nothing I can do about it, but it's just going to be
impossible for us to compete when we don't even have access to the same
numbers of people. Basically we're at a very good place, we're at about a
ten share every week, and that for one of the big three networks would be a
pretty low rating; for UPN it's four times as high as anything else they
have, and so it's very good.
NV: What do you think Voyager is really on top of right now and doing
exactly the way you hoped it would be doing, and what conversely do you
wake up in the morning saying, "OK, we have to do something about this
problem?"
JT: That's a really good question, and I am not one whoever wants to get
too complacent and say, "Boy, we're doing this just right." I don't allow
myself to feel that, or I'm not able to feel it--I never feel that about my
own work. Other people will say, "That was a really good script"; I have no
sense of it, because I am afraid of becoming comfortable and satisfied and
I don't think that that's a good place for a creative person to be.
It's a lot easier for me to focus on the things that I want to shore up,
and they range from I'd like us to find better stories, they're getting
hard to find because the Star Trek incarnations over the years have done so
many that finding a fresh story is really tough, and I think that sometimes
we kind of sink back and do something that's familiar because we're just
not able to find that new, fresh, exciting sci-fi notion that's going to
boggle everybody's mind. I would love to have more of those. As long as you
produce some response, that's the important thing, to get people stirred up
one way or another, then you've touched their feelings.
NV: Do you ever think about doing what Classic Trek did and drawing upon
professional science fiction writers?
JT: Oh, of course. We have. We sent out years ago an open invitation of
the Science Fiction Writers of America to pitch, and got some response, not
very much, it didn't really prove a very fruitful way to go. The door is
open, and we've even made it easier for them than for others, and just not
gotten the response.
NV: Well, I think we all know that Janeway is a lot of people--she's part
the writers and part Kate and part you--
JT: Of course she is, and she will always be dear to my heart because I
drew on so much of me for her, but when Kate came along she was Janeway,
she is, as a person, that captain. And I just think we couldn't have made a
better choice, she's fleshed her out and I wouldn't even assign percentages
now because she's really the one who's brought her to life.
NV: Thanks very much!
[Drawings of Janeway]
*KATHRYN JANEWAY, FEMINIST HEROINE*
LEND HER A COMPASS: SHOULD JANEWAY HAVE TO PULL ALL THE WEIGHT?
by L.R. Bowen
Kathryn Janeway is the center of Voyager: her captain, her guide, her Rock
of Gibraltar. That's as it should be. She has the toughest job in
Starfleet, and handles it like the trained, talented professional she is.
Thrown into an impossible situation, she has managed to gain the loyalty of
renegades, defeat determined enemies, foil treachery and save her crew from
countless dangers. She has her principles, and although there is no one to
check up on her, she keeps faith with the Prime Directive. She's determined
to get her people home again.
But she's been led along a convoluted course of backtracking, blind
alleys, and dead ends. Wandering around in mazes of tunnels or corridors is
one of the recurring motifs of the series. She threatens the Vidiians with
"the deadliest of force" should they attempt to molest her crew, yet when
they do just that, she sneaks off. She works for months to find the
Caretaker's mate, but after confronting her without result, speeds away
again "on course." Is she heading straight for the Alpha Quadrant, or
looking for the magic solution to the journey in an anomaly or
technological trick? Is she going to duke it out with the bad guys, or back
down to save her photon torpedoes? When her officers disobey orders, is she
going to impose punishment, or just tell them they've been naughty? Is she
going to find solace in the arms of a hologram or those of a real person,
or not at all? A Starfleet captain of her caliber should have these
questions well in hand.
None of this is Janeway's fault, or Kate Mulgrew's fault. It's the writing
and the planning, or the lack of planning. Taken individually, most Voyager
episodes are enjoyable on a surface level, but suffer from worrying
inconsistencies. The basic science in the science fiction doesn't hang
together, even when the Star Trek laws of physics are taken into account.
The Voyager blasts through shell-like event horizons, gets annoyingly
tangled in time-travel, meets alien races with impossible reproductive
biology, and blithely transports people through shields. Dang, you just
can't DO that. People will notice. And this kind of carelessness spills
into the plots and characterizations, contributing to a general feeling of
chaos.
The producers say they want to show Janeway's emotional side, but they're
afraid to have her relax too much for fear that it will be perceived as
weakness. Her femininity is not a liability in the 24th century, but to a
20th century TV audience, it still makes a difference. There are
constraints on her actions, especially her love life, that Kirk or Picard
or Sisko have never had to face. But with more support from the writing,
Janeway would be in a better position to behave in a way that makes sense
for her warm, passionate nature. Many viewers have taken exception to
Janeway's misty eyes, but if her actions otherwise were less ambiguous, if
the show seemed to have a handle on her purpose, such criticisms would be
lessened. Janeway can only come off as a strong character if she is allowed
to exist in a universe whose underpinnings are also strong. Sloppiness on a
writer's part or indecision on the producers' part comes across as the
character's weakness, especially when she is the center of the show.
Taken as a whole, the oeuvre of the Voyager writers has no clear focus, no
theme. The producers have been quoted as saying there is no long-term plan
laid out, and that the character development has been at random. No arcs
seem to have been made at the beginning for any of the characters. It is
inevitable that they will change under the circumstances, so different from
what they are used to, but without a sequence mapped out for them, they
have stagnated, or taken huge steps all at once and then relapsed. Some of
them, notably B'Elanna Torres, vary so much from episode to episode that
there is no sense of her in the audience's mind yet. Why? Don't the
producers realize that viewers can sense this lack of consistency with
perfect clarity? There doesn't have to be a five-year arc worked out in
advance for every element, but some kind of general idea should drive the
motion of the series. There is no discernible direction. And in a show
that nominally concentrates on the idea of finding a way home, that comes
across as floundering in more ways than one.
The goal of "home" cannot last as a compelling one for very long. It was
weak to begin with, and passive. The Voyager noodles around hoping to fall
into a rabbit hole? That's not heroic or inspiring, and depends on random
luck. The people in isolation together are the real subject, but that
wonderful setup is stunningly ill-served except in flashes. We see brief
glimpses of something greater, get all excited about them, hope to see them
develop--like the attraction between Janeway and Chakotay or the general
idea of the bond of the crew--and then find out they were practically
accidental and will probably be ignored in future. The best things about
Voyager are casually introduced and then casually thrown away.
But if the producers had made some plans ahead of time about things like
what will happen in the way of romantic relationships, then the path of the
stories would not seem so twisty and confusing. Whether there is an agenda
or not, people will assume one and look for it. It's disingenuous to
pretend that any route to the goal is all right. This is all out in public
and what they might think of as "discovery," the viewer may well think of
as indecision and spinning wheels. And that rubs off onto Janeway and
weakens the perception of the character. The best thing that could happen
to Janeway would be for the show as a whole to acquire a decisiveness of
manner. Then she would be freer to act comfortable. Some of the burden
comes off the character directly and goes on to the structure of the show.
Take some of the weight off her shoulders. Let her breathe. Build a solid
structure around her and let Janeway be a person, not a monument. She'll be
stronger for it, and more real, and Voyager as a show far better off.
Janeway is a Colossus of a character, and Kate Mulgrew a powerful actress
and incandescent personality, so the temptation to let it all rest on her
slim shoulders is understandable. But the strain is too much, her strength
has been used as an excuse to let the other elements slide, and damages the
integrity of Janeway in the long run. As the credibility of her universe
grows, so will she grow to fit it. The possibilities are as large as the
Milky Way.
STARSHIPS AND THE SINGLE WOMAN
by Jennifer Loehlin
There have been numerous calls out there in Trekland for romance on
Voyager, beyond the somewhat improbable Kes-Neelix relationship. I do agree
that it would be nice to have some stable relationships depicted on Star
Trek, i.e. relationships which aren't over by the time the producer's name
appears astern. So far, it has tended to be a swinging singles scene. And I
certainly would expect Voyager's crew to begin "pairing off." That said,
however, I also think there's a strong case to be made for continuing the
existing Trek tradition whereby a starship captain is first and foremost
married to his/her ship and does not get involved in relationships lasting
more than about 43 minutes plus commercials. This tradition is there for
some very good reasons (in other words, reasons beyond the desire to let
Kirk have some fun with some alien babes).
For one thing, being a starship captain is an extremely demanding career,
even under less extreme circumstances than Janeway's. There's a lot of
travel involved, and as far as we know most starships still don't have room
for family members. Some couples, like Geordi LaForge's parents, seem to
manage to get by with commuter marriages, but that probably hasn't gotten
any easier by the 24th century than it is now. Also, of course, it's
dangerous work--the starships we've seen seem to run into major crises
about once a week. The responsibilities are very heavy. And no one becomes
a starship captain by accident. Janeway made the decision to switch from
science to command track, and she's presumably worked hard to accumulate
those pips. She may not have made a conscious decision not to marry, but
she's surely accepted that as a possible outcome of her career choice--she
doesn't seem to have been in any hurry to marry Mark. Under the current
circumstances, it hardly seems likely that she could muster the time and
energy for a relationship, even if there were no other obstacles. But, as
it happens, there are.
The barriers to a relationship between a captain and an officer under her
command are not just some impulse of Starfleet bureaucrats. Relationships
between unequal partners are inherently problematic. Chakotay (the favorite
candidate) might well have difficulty refusing to get involved in or
breaking off a relationship which Janeway wanted, or trying to initiate one
if he weren't sure she wanted it (and how often are both parties, at the
beginning of a relationship, sure what the other wants?). For anyone of
lower rank, these obstacles would be even greater. Consequently, becoming
involved in such a relationship would be highly unethical on Janeway's
part.
In Chakotay's case, the inequality is reduced somewhat by the fact that he
has commanded his own ship in the past (and by the fact that they're not
back in Federation territory--he's her first officer, not her prisoner).
There's another, very large problem, however--they have to work together
closely every day. Now, the rule against getting involved with one's
co-workers is like the Prime Directive--a good idea, but frequently
violated--but on Voyager, the potential problems loom especially large. If
they had an affair and it didn't work out, there's no place for either of
them to hide, short of staying behind on some M-class planet. People lower
down in the hierarchy can establish relationships with those in other
departments (almost all the people shown in the background in the mess-hall
scenes in "Persistence of Vision" were male/female couples with
different-colored uniforms), aiding their chances of not running into each
other too much if the thing goes sour. Janeway and Chakotay don't have that
option. Their professional relationship needs to work for the sake of the
whole crew--it would be poor judgment on both their parts to jeopardize it
for the sake of their personal romantic inclinations.
Add to these 24th-century obstacles to a romantic relationship between
Janeway and Chakotay or any of her other subordinates a 20th-century one:
would the show's writers be capable of depicting such a relationship in a
way which would be acceptable to an audience without either diminishing
Janeway's authority or making her lover appear weak? The convention that,
in a heterosexual relationship, the man should be more powerful (and older,
taller, smarter, etc.) than the woman is not one I personally endorse, but
historically speaking it's certainly been one of the more widely and firmly
held beliefs among human cultures, and it's a long way from dead.
I think there's some purpose to be served by sending the message that
finding Mr. Right doesn't need to be the highest aim in a woman's life and
that a woman who doesn't marry and isn't a failure. This may also be
somewhat difficult to get across, but I think it has a better chance of
success than a believable romance. I would like to see Janeway as a
successful, confident single woman with the respect of her crew and the
viewing audience. That doesn't rule out an excursion into other
possibilities, along the lines of "The Inner Light" or "The Paradise
Syndrome," nor the occasional fling with an alien, preferably a more
attractive one than Slinky-head. Nor does it rule out stories exploring her
relationships with the members of her crew--because there are interesting
connections other than romantic ones.
"JANEWAY/CHAKOTAY '96!"
by Julie Aiken
I met Michelle because of that provocative saying of hers, but I'm not
sure I want Paramount to put Janeway and Chakotay together. It's not that I
don't think they belong in a mature, sexy, respectful, funny and loving
relationship; they're already in one. But I'm afraid that the show wouldn't
do a J/C romance right. I haven't seen evidence that "Star Trek" can do a
long-term, passionate romance between two adults without reducing them to
muddled-thinking, hormone-driven adolescents. And one other point on which
I agree with Michelle is that it would be more than a little demeaning to
create the first major female on Trek and then make her incomplete without
a man--just the sort of thing I would expect from Trek, frankly. (Deanna
Troi craving chocolate and worrying about her weight when she's
lonely--please!)
But most of us have played J/C out in our heads, and they remain mature,
respectful, funny and loving even when they get sexual. First and foremost,
they do what's best for Voyager and her crew. They live, breathe, eat and
sleep duty and honor; that's one of the main things binding them together
so closely, and I seriously doubt that could change even if they began
living, breathing, eating and sleeping with each other. I cannot picture
Janeway faltering over sending her lover into danger like Picard did. It
might be painful, but she knows her duty, and she respects that he knows
his. And we know that Chakotay was a good captain in perilous situations
even while sleeping a high-ranking member of his crew. They are fair and
respectful no matter what: when Seska was accused of treason, Chakotay
treated her fairly yet managed to do his duty to Voyager. I don't see
jealousy and favoritism coming into play. We're not talking about Tom
Paris, who might give a girlfriend preferential assignments. These are not
teenagers, nor are they inexperienced with command. Their leadership styles
remind me of things I've read about President Kennedy. According to
legend, he would engage his cabinet members in discussions on issues,
actively seeking out their opinions--including ones which conflicted with
his own--and listening with respect. He didn't put them to a vote; he did
what he thought best, even if his advisors disagreed, but only after he'd
heard them out and let them know their input was valuable. This biography
may be apocryphal, but still it seems to define important qualities of
authority, qualities both Janeway and Chakotay possess.
I think someone at Paramount is secretly planning to do J/C whether they
admit it or not. They're already in that mature, sexy, respectful, funny
and loving relationship and it's utterly charming; he's crazy about her;
they sizzle whenever they come within 15 feet of each other; love between
two equal, independent people is a positive thing, not a demeaning one; and
neither one of them should have to be punished with celibacy for 70 years
just so they can appear not to be as sleazy as Kirk. (Are we going to be
dominated by Christian "the body is filthy" thought-forms in the 24th
century? That's not my idea of a bright future.) As to why, after the
Paramount-bashing I indulged in, I think they could do it right: I've never
seen the interpersonal aspect of Star Trek done so well as on Voyager.
>From the beginning, the characters have had more dimension than on previous
shows. Some examples: the deepening friendship of Harry and Tom, the
respect growing between Harry and B'Elanna, the mentor/protégé bond between
Chakotay and B'Elanna, the flirtation between Tom and Kes. All of these
relationships began in the very first episode, and have not been dropped
but rather have been sustained, explored and broadened into the current
season. Often in unexpected moments we will be reminded of the characters'
connections, as when B'Elanna sought out Chakotay in "Twisted." This is
great stuff!
Being the good pagan that I am, I wondered why Janeway saw an animal which
represents fire and thus her own passionate aspects while Chakotay was
guiding her in meditation. According to The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers,
the Kiowa (a Mexican Native American Nation) tradition's 13th Original Clan
Mother is named Becomes Her Vision. She is, among other things, "The
Guardian of Transformation and Transmutation," "The Mother of Rites of
Passage Into Wholeness," and "The Guardian of Personal History, Becoming
and Myth." What is Voyager's odyssey but a transformation, a passage of two
separate crews and philosophies into one whole? And who is there to
nurture them through it all, who keeps "a record of every choice made by
each life...noting how those choices alter and/or assist each individual's
path," like a Captain's Log? Becomes Her Vision's major learning
experience was meeting a lizard! "In the eyes of flame...all illusions
were shattered, revealing the purity of the Eternal Flame of Love."
Chakotay leads Janeway to her animal guide, and she sees a lizard. Just a
coincidence? Well, probably. But The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers is one
of those popular books on the market right now which someone creating a
Native American character might pick up and browse through. I just like the
thought of Janeway and Chakotay finding the Eternal Flame of Love together.
It's got a nice ring to it, no? Like Janeway/Chakotay '96!
[Drawing of the Voyager crew]
*COPYRIGHT VIOLATION CORNER*
[Paramount owns the names, but the characters have free will, and so do the
people who fill in the blanks for the show's writers.]
MEDITATION
by Diane Nichols
...dusted eagle wing
sweet prairie medicine
comfort me your lonely son...
[From "Impressions of the Peyote Ritual" by Lance Henson, Keepers of
Arrows: Poems for the Cheyenne, Renaissance Press, 1971.]
First Officer's personal log, Star Date 48539.3.
It's been a long time, and it's something I didn't think I'd ever be doing
again, keeping a log. Those last months in Starfleet before I left, I had
stopped altogether. It got harder to justify staying, and harder to keep my
disillusionment and endless questioning from turning every log entry into
an interior debate. Should I stay? Should I go? How do I live with my
decision, either way? Then, after I left--well, being a Maquis didn't
require personal logs. There was no time to think, and nothing to think
about, really. Or was it that there was too much? In any case, life in the
Maquis was lived, not reported. I doubt whether anything I might have said
at any point during that time would have made much sense to someone who
hadn't been there or somewhere similar. War stories aren't much good until
years later, when you've had time to rewrite them in your head, to edit out
all the pain and terror, so that you only remember the rare triumphs and
the funny parts. Of course, you have to survive the war in order to get to
that point, and it seems I have survived. I never expected that. And I
never expected it to happen the way it has.
I sit here in a Starfleet uniform, looking around the first officer's
quarters of a ship which, a few weeks ago, was sent out to find me and,
probably, blow me out of the sky. Captain Janeway won't tell me what her
orders really were, but I know that getting Tuvok back was incidental, and
that capturing us and transporting us back to face charges was simply the
first option. Nobody from the Federation would have wept had she found it
necessary to wipe us out in the process, and she and I both know that. It
didn't work out that way, though. Instead of sitting in Voyager's brig, or
having my molecules scattered all over the Badlands, I'm here, in this
uniform, in this room. It's something that I never dreamed could happen,
and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Maybe that's why I'm here, doing
this. Old habits die hard, especially old Starfleet habits, and I hope that
I can make some sense of everything that has happened to me--to all of
us--by picking up where I left off--how long ago?--a hundred years, it
sometimes seems. If nothing else, I can make up for lost time by recording
every trivial event of every trivial day here on Voyager. Or maybe,
hopefully, I can find some peace.
I talked to B'Elanna earlier. Our new Chief Engineer looks more than a
little bit uncomfortable in her Starfleet uniform, and she told me she's
not sure she can adapt to the changes, but I know better. B'Elanna can do
anything she puts her mind to, including proving to Captain Janeway that
she belongs in that position, in that uniform. She says that I look like I
never left, but I don't feel that, at least not most of the time. Oh, there
have been moments when the habit of command reasserts itself. A bridge is a
bridge, whether the ship belongs to Starfleet or to a bunch of rebels, and
I've never had much trouble making command decisions. But there are also
moments when I wonder if I've been away from it for too long, and I'm as
unsure as B'Elanna is about my ability to take orders from my new captain.
Maybe it's no longer in me to be a first officer. I understand the function
of the job well enough, but I'm not sure that I can easily fall back into a
subordinate position. Already, I find myself making decisions, rather than
offering suggestions, and I know Captain Janeway has had it to the top of
her bun with me stepping on her toes. I tell myself that I can adjust, but
I admit here that I'm not sure. This new role is as ill- fitting as my
uniform is. I spend my days tugging here and pulling there, and trying to
make it fit, but it doesn't, and I don't know if the problem is with me, or
with the rest of this strange new life I'm living. I thought about trying
to talk to B'Elanna about all this, but suddenly my rank asserted itself.
We have fought together, shared meals and living quarters and too many
close calls, but now I'm not just her friend and comrade, I'm her superior,
and there's a distance between us that Starfleet regulations won't allow me
to cross. Even if I could ask her for help, though, I wouldn't do it. She's
got enough of her own problems to deal with right now, without taking on
mine, too.
I've tried to work through these doubts by talking to my animal guide. She
has always helped me in the past, though sometimes I've doubted her
counsel, and sometimes she remains silent at the moments when I most need
her to speak. This seems to be another of those moments, but I suppose
she's as disoriented as I am right now. Do spirit guides need periods of
adjustment, too, I wonder? I need her to tell me what to do, and she only
wants to play. I wish I knew what she's really trying to tell me...
When Captain Janeway offered me the position of first officer, I thought
that she probably didn't expect me to accept it, or want me to. She was
backed into a corner, by her own actions, and by the situation we found
ourselves in. Maybe she thought she could press me into doing something
rash, like trying to seize control of the ship, and she could justifiably
stand back and let Tuvok shoot me, and be done with it, and with me. That's
what I figured, and I'm pretty sure it's what B'Elanna and the other Maquis
anticipated, too. Of course, I didn't know Captain Janeway then. I had no
way to judge the sincerity of her offer, so I decided to accept it, and
then wait to see what would happen. I expected her to be surprised, but
instead she was--grateful. No, that's not it--she was pleased, almost
excited, as if she had some kind of a vision of how things were going to
turn out, and by deciding to cooperate with her, I had done what she had
hoped for. I remember thinking that, and asking myself which particular
cabbage leaf I had just crawled out from under. It seemed like a naive
assumption, and if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that I lost my
innocence a long time ago. Now, though, I know that my instincts were
right. From the moment she decided to destroy the Array, Kathryn Janeway
knew that she had one goal to achieve, and that's to get this ship and
everyone on board back to the Alpha Quadrant. Everything she does,
everything she thinks, relates to that goal, and I assume that includes
choosing me to be her first officer. I guess it's a good thing I didn't say
no.
It was a hard decision to make, though, and made harder by the fact that
I've got certain problems with people on her crew. Tuvok--I thought I knew
him. During the time he was with us, I found myself trusting his judgment
more and more. I never doubted his integrity, or his devotion to the cause
I thought we shared. I didn't think of it like that, of course--we never
sat around telling each other we were heroes, or freedom fighters, or even
terrorists, as some would have it. We just did what we had to do whenever
it had to be done, and then we crawled back to our holes and got ready to
do it all again. But Tuvok, he fit in right away, or at least I thought so.
B'Elanna had her doubts, but I never could question the intentions of a
Vulcan. I assumed there could be no hint of subterfuge in him, no
possibility that he could be playing a part. I suppose he has justified his
actions to himself, if Vulcans feel that need, by saying that he was
following orders he believed in, given to him by a captain he believes in.
That's the Starfleet code, and as an officer he's expected to live by it.
The problem I have with it, though, is that by following those orders, he
betrayed me, and, yet, all I felt from him during our dealings together was
acceptance of my role as leader and even respect for me as a man. Shouldn't
I have sensed that something wasn't right? How could he have fooled me so
easily? Or, was it so easy? Maybe I'll never know the answer to that, and
maybe I'll never be able to give him my wholehearted trust. I've been
fooled once, and it's not something I'll be able to forget, or to forgive.
Is that my problem, or his? And how much of the anger and resentment I feel
toward him is caused by the fact that his loyalty was given to Captain
Janeway, not to me? She would understand that, I think. I've known
Starfleet captains who didn't have it in them to feel loyalty, or to
inspire it, but she's not one of those. It's obvious that she and Tuvok go
back a long way and mean a great deal to each other, which really makes me
wonder why she chose me, and not him, for this job.
And then there's Tom Paris. I don't know what to make of him any more, I
admit it. I never had any use for him during his short and spectacularly
unsuccessful career as a Maquis. He was the type who joined up for the hell
of it, because he thought he could make some money, cause some trouble,
and, probably annoy his father by doing it. He had the potential to be
whatever he wanted, whether in Starfleet or out of it, but he was always
more interested in finding the angle or scoring with the women or feeding
his own ego. When he came back for me in the cavern on the Ocampa
homeworld, I assumed it was to put me in his debt, because he knew how much
I would hate owing him anything. Hell, he admitted as much, didn't he? But
there are timeswhen I see him walk onto the bridge with the same look of
pride in his eyes that Harry Kim has, or Captain Janeway has, and that
surprises me. I think it surprises everyone, except her. It's almost as if
she saw something in him that no one else recognized, something worth
redeeming. She would be willing to give him a second chance--or a third, or
a fourth-- if she believed in him.
And, Paris, to give him credit, seems determined to live up to her
expectations of him, at least, so far. Maybe I'm more cynical than she is,
but I'm planning to keep an eye on him. If he keeps his nose clean, I'll
leave him alone, but if he sets one foot out of line, he'll be sorry that
he chose to save my life, because I'll spend the rest of it making him pay.
Out here, who knows what kind of opportunity might arise for him to do
something shady? I can picture the son of a bitch selling technology to the
Kazon, or something equally low. I can't help wondering if I should warn
her about him--but, then, she's got access to his complete record, and I'm
sure she's read it. Hell, it would make for an interesting bedtime story.
Well, let her make a project out of Paris, if it pleases her to do it.
Maybe before our time together is over, we'll all be needing to find
projects to keep us occupied. Maybe B'Elanna will take up crocheting, and
Tuvok can learn to juggle. Or flamenco dancing would be good, too. Pottery?
That would be practical, at least--you can never have too many pots...
Erase that last part, I'm getting tired and stupid, I think. But, I
wonder, what project will there be for Voyager's first officer? Learning to
be a Starfleet officer again? Allowing myself to trust the system that
betrayed my people? Or, considering how far away we are from the nearest
Federation outpost, is it only necessary that I give my trust to Captain
Janeway? Maybe I've already done that.
I wonder what she thought of my official record...
[Computer notes a lengthy pause in the first officer's monologue at this
point, and shuts down recording.]
First Officer's personal log, Star Date 48546.2.
I almost gave this up as a bad idea, especially after my thoughts
degenerated so quickly into farce. I had hoped that giving voice to my
concerns might be a good thing, for me personally, and for my role as first
officer on Voyager, but I wasn't ready to face my own thoughts that night.
I played the log entry back just now, and heard the frustration and anger
in my voice, and it shamed me that I could be so petty, and that I could so
neatly sidestep the truths waiting to be told and instead concentrate on
small, ultimately inconsequential details. I sounded bitter at times, my
words those of a man caught in a situation not of his own making, and
determined to see the worst in everyone and everything around him. What
happened before we came here--even who we were back there--doesn't matter
any more. Nothing can change the fact that we are here now, forced to rely
on ourselves and on each other to find some way to go back, or, failing
that, to forge onward and create a new way of life together. Holding
grudges against Tuvok, or Paris, or Captain Janeway, as some of my former
crew seem to do, is not just pointless, it's perilously close to treason.
We have to learn to work together if we're going to survive this test. I've
been giving lip-service to Starfleet since the day I put this uniform back
on, but something happened today that made me realize how far away from
acceptance I really have been, and how wrong I am not to give up the hidden
resentments that dictated my words in that last entry. I started to erase
the whole thing, but then I decided to keep it, as a reminder of how ready
I am to persist in my own folly.
What happened might seem like a small thing, but it made a profound
impression on me. I've known for a while that Kathryn Janeway is not the
average Starfleet captain. The other thing I noticed when I replayed my log
entry was that I said only good things about her, and it's fair to say that
I've been impressed with her from our first meeting. I never met her during
my Starfleet days, but I knew that she was one of the young hotshots on a
career track that had her earning pips in record time, so it didn't
surprise me to be confronted by Captain Janeway. What surprised me was that
she didn't fit the image I'd formed of her, based on the stories I'd heard.
>From the beginning, she seemed willing to listen to me, or to anyone else
who had something to say. Even the greenest ensign's opinions carry weight
with her. She hasn't developed that "captain knows best" mentality that
sometimes prevails in Starfleet. What could be considered a lack of
self-confidence, a weakness, in others, is a major strength in her. She
takes the best of whatever is offered to her, and acts decisively on it.
She's the most goal-oriented person I've ever met, and she's willing to do
whatever needs to be done to achieve her goals. She's capable of making
tough, unpopular decisions, and willing to accept the consequences, without
shifting blame or making excuses.
As I said, some of the Maquis, and even several of her own crew, have
expressed anger at her for destroying the Array and eliminating the
possibility that we could use it to return to the Alpha Quadrant. I've
asked myself more than once if I could have done what she did, and I
honestly don't know the answer. Her decision was immediate, true to her
convictions, and irrevocable. Even more impressive, she gives no indication
that she regrets it, or that, if faced with the same situation again, she
would act differently. I've come to feel that Starfleet morality is a pious
sham, but when confronted with Captain Janeway, I'm forced to admit that my
judgment may be in error. There is at least one captain with a conscience,
and a heart, and she--
But I was about to mention the incident, the thing that happened today,
wasn't I? We were on the bridge, and she leaned over and asked me what I
thought about the crew's morale. Of course it's a major concern at this
point, and as a good captain, she knows that. I thought that her intention
in bringing it up was to put me in charge of some kind of counseling
program, to shift her worries onto my shoulders, since crew problems are a
major part of my job. I waited for her to suggest it, but she didn't. In
fact, it didn't seem to occur to her that such mundane issues are supposed
to be below her notice. She was looking for answers for them, and for
herself, and not just pointing out to me that I might be lax in my duties,
as I first thought. As we talked, I heard myself babbling on about my
animal guide, and Carl Jung, and who knows what else, and I could see that,
far from being offended by my presumption in offering my own personal
experience as a possible solution, she was completely caught up in my
words, obviously intrigued at the idea that anyone can summon his or her
spirit guide.
That was when I realized that things are changing radically on Voyager,
that we are becoming a new entity, and that the old rules, in many cases,
no longer apply. She has recognized it, long before the rest of us, and by
confiding her fears to me, has acknowledged that the change is necessary,
even desirable. I tried, afterwards, to imagine any other Starfleet captain
of my acquaintance who would be willing to contact his animal guide, or
even one who would have sat there and listened and asked questions with so
much interest and intensity in his or her eyes, but could not think of one.
I heard myself suggesting to her that, as a first step, I could help her to
contact her own guide, something I had vowed never to do again after the
fiasco with B'Elanna, and, even more surprisingly, I heard her agree. This
captain, this woman knows that we are in for a long haul, and she knows
that unless we can begin to bond-- all of us, from captain down to the
lowest-ranking ensign--we are not going to survive it.
Even when confronted by this revelation, I didn't want to believe it. I
had to test it, to see if she was just playing a part, pretending to be
enthralled by the quaint and colorful traditions of my people. At the first
opportunity, I was off to my quarters to get my medicine bundle, to
demonstrate to myself and to her that she wasn't sincere. I even felt smug
about it, believing I could prove to her that, in spite of her words, she
would react with the same condescension that had been exhibited by those of
her race toward those of my race for countless millennia. She would have a
hundred excuses not to do it, I thought, or maybe she would try but fail to
conceal her amusement. As I think back, though, I admit that part of me
hoped to be proved wrong. I have begun to give her my trust, at least as
much trust as I'm able to give to anyone. I admire and respect her as a
person, and as a captain. But I've held something back, waiting for some
word or action that will show me that my initial reaction to her is wrong.
I'm like the dog whose former master abused him, and who can't bring
himself to believe that the kindness shown to him by his new owner is
genuine. Not to push the metaphor too far, but I trust only to a point, and
then I shy away, just like that dog...
I will never forget the look on her face as she surrendered to the trance
state--there was such wonder there, and such joy. I have deliberately
distanced myself from humanity these past few years. In part, it was
necessary in order to keep my sanity in the face of the horror of the
Cardassian occupation, and the willingness of the Federation to remain in
their state of benign ignorance while fostering a political solution. I
suppose it was also necessary for me to become remorseless myself, to set
aside my natural feelings and to become like my enemy in order to destroy
him. I've turned my back on lifelong commitments, and denied myself the
comfort of home and family. I've watched my companions die, and never shed
a tear. I've fired on Cardassian ships, knowing that there were probably
innocents on board, people who did not deserve to die. I've compromised my
own innermost beliefs, even though I continue to express them in an attempt
to convince myself that they're still there. Today I looked into the soul
of one person, and saw her goodness, and I felt something stir inside me
that I believed was gone forever. I was reminded of myself, catching my
first glimpse of the spirit world, and wanting to howl like the wolf whose
eyes still haunt me, out of excitement and fear and love. I expected to be
convinced that no one is worthy of my trust, but instead I was humbled by
her willingness to experience something new, and to allow me to witness her
joy.
I know that what I said before is the truth. This is a new time, and we
must become new as well. What happened before means less than nothing now,
because even if we are able to make the long journey home, we will be
different people when we get there. And, if we can follow Kathryn Janeway's
example, we won't just be different, we'll be better.
First Officer's personal log, Star Date 49437.5.
Months have passed since I spoke these words, words which I've just
listened to again because it seems to me that they contain answers to
questions I hadn't even begun to ask myself back then. I've kept this log
only fitfully, I'm afraid, sometimes allowing weeks to go by during which I
make no entries at all. At other times I find myself rambling on for an
hour about some incident or problem, and at the end of that time pausing
with my finger on the delete key, as if imagining that by erasing the
entry, I could edit my life--with one keystroke, Seska ceases to exist,
Durst is alive and well, we never encounter that Bothan obscenity which
toyed with our minds in what I can only consider an act of rape...
It's tempting, but I can't do it. One thing my father always told me was
that willingness to face the entirety of life, taking the bad with the
good, is the true measure of a man. He always seemed to reach out, as if to
embrace even the worst life had to offer, and I never understood that. For
a long time, I almost hated him for being so many things I never thought I
could be. I convinced myself that if I turned away from him and from myheri
tage, it would be easier for me to make my way, to become someone separate
and apart from him, no less a man, but different. I suppose on some level,
I succeeded, didn't I? My career in Starfleet was an honorable and
fulfilling one, or so I thought. Then, when my father was dead and I had
never reconciled with him, when my people were dying and the Land with
them, I realized that there was a hole inside me, the place where my soul
should have been. I did what I could. I took up the fight. I embraced the
old ways almost desperately, because I realized I had nothing left to hold
onto. I had a tiny flame of hope inside me, though, some legacy from
Kolopak, perhaps. Sometimes during those long months with the Maquis the
flame flickered and nearly died, but I went on, because I had no other
choice. In time, with the help of my spirit guide, I came to understand
that my efforts could not absolve me from my feelings of guilt, or give me
the peace that I craved, because I had not yet found that one thing I
needed to center my faith in.
The year we've spent in the Delta Quadrant has been full of personal and
professional challenges for everyone on Voyager. Some of us, notably Tom
and B'Elanna, and I think even Neelix, have used this experience to make a
fresh start in life. Some, like Kes and Harry, have broadened their
horizons and even reminded old spacehands like me that there is fulfillment
to be found in of exploring each new region of the galaxy we pass through,
not because we have to but for the sheer joy of it. Our holographic doctor,
even though he stubbornly refuses to choose a name for himself, has made
huge strides in understanding and extending his own consciousness, and has
far exceeded the limitations of his program, to the point where we have
come to regard him as simply another member of this varied and vital little
crew. Tuvok--? Well, Tuvok serves, as always. There are times when I try to
put myself in his place, just to see what it feels like, but I can't do it.
His Vulcan habit of reserve confounds me at every turn. And yet, there are
also times when I get a glimpse of something, a hint that this unique
experience has changed him, too. We still have our problems, Tuvok and I,
and I suppose that we always will, because of our past history, and because
we both feel the need to compete with each other for--
For her. For her attention, for her approval. Why is it that a simple
"Good work, Commander" from her makes even the worst day bearable? Of
course, I know the answer to that. It was there, in the first entries I
made in this log, and also in my thoughts tonight when I said that before I
came to the Delta Quadrant, I had not yet found something to center my
faith in. I found what I needed in the person of Captain Janeway, who has
taught me what faith really means. She starts every day in the sincere
belief that this will be the day that we find a way to go home. I know that
her faith has wavered, and that she sometimes feels unable to go on, but
she fights those feelings, and she wins. When we met the 37s and considered
staying with them--that was a difficult time for her, I know. She could
have made the decision for the entire crew, and been within her rights to
do so. Instead, she allowed us all to choose, knowing that if more than a
few elected to stay, Voyager would be undermanned and unable to proceed
without great difficulty. A big challenge, and she faced it with dignity
and heart. The smaller challenges--the dwindling resources, the encounters
with the Kazon and other alien life, the day-to-day stress which the crew
feels more keenly all the time--she meets them all with the same fortitude,
and the same confident smile, as if she has this quadrant by the tail and
she won't let go until it kicks us back to familiar space. This mission of
ours may not be successful, but she will never give up hope, or allow any
of us to do so.
For me, this journey has been one of self-discovery. There have been
problems--Seska springs to mind--but amidst all the drama, I've managed to
find some peace, with myself, my father, and my ancestors. Unlike many on
this ship, I could probably resign myself to living out my life here if
need be. But I also know that I would never willingly abandon Voyager, or
Voyager's captain. I've found my purpose, and my place, at her side.
END
[Tiny Trek cartoon]
*ALL ABOUT NOW VOYAGER*
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2--Photo by Melissa Honig courtesy Jennifer Pelland.
2--Illustration © Jennifer Pelland 1995.
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*CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE DEPARTMENT*
Kate: See you in Denver in April, hopefully!
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