Season 4 Ep 14 / 15 "Message In A Bottle" / "Hunters"
Sept 24, 2015 12:43:29 GMT -5
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Post by Prole Hole on Sept 24, 2015 12:43:29 GMT -5
Season Four, Episode 15 – “Message In A Bottle”
The Two Doctors
For an episode that’s primarily known as a comedy knockabout, “Message In A Bottle” contains two extremely important plot developments. We’ll come to the comedy stuff in a moment, but we first get the introduction of a new race of aliens who will come to be important in the ongoing show, the Hirogen, and much more importantly we have the first proper, actual, not-fudged-around, no-temporal-displacement contact with the Alpha Quadrant. It’s a significant, powerful moment and it’s given the gravitas it deserves, in a small but affecting scene in sickbay. The lead-up to this scene throughout the episode implies the usual bafflegab-laden plot-convenient way of sending the Doctor across vast distances but doesn’t ever suggest quite what an emotional punch this will carry. Because, for a scene that only lasts a minute or two, the Doctor informing Janeway that they’re not alone any more really packs a wallop. And it does it by underplaying. There’s no big swelling strings, no wobbling lower lips and single tear, but instead everyone (but especially Kate Mulgrew) really show just how much this means to the crew. We know things will never be quite that simple, but now the truth is out there – Starfleet knows the ship exists, and they’ll do what they can to get her home. Such a small moment, such a big punch.
That it’s placed right at the end of the episode, and that we’re spared a cutsie final scene as we so often get on Star Trek, also really adds to the power and really lets this moment hang in the mind of the audience. There would be a whole week between this and “Hunters” (where we get to meet the Hirogen proper, sort of) on transmission and the way the episode allows this moment to hang in the air is incredibly skillful. Lots of episodes end on big moments which are allowed to sit in the mind of their audience but that underplaying, the fact it’s not over-sold to the audience as a big moment even though we definitely know that it is, is really where this scene derives its power from. Anyone can do swelling strings. Anyone can knock off a cutsie ending. But here we have neither, and it’s just terrific, actually one of Voyager’s most affecting moments. And nobody ever remembers it, because it’s right at the end of, “the funny one with the two Doctors in it.”
Which is, of course, in some ways fair enough, because, emotional punch of the final scene aside, this is a really great episode, funny when it’s meant to be, a terrific guest turn from Andy Dick, and everything firing on all cylinders. It’s the second episode in a row that’s a bit of a romp, but that’s OK because when they’re this good it’s pretty tough to complain about it. Comedy isn’t an easy thing to pull off, especially in Star Trek (think of all those agonizingly bad Ferengi stories with laboured humour and tedious plot devices and cringe), so to see everything carried off here with such elegance is blissful. But this episode also has to strike that balance between the highs of the comedy and the delivery of that final scene, and it manages this balancing act perfectly as well. It would have been very easy to turn in a funny script (well, not easy, but you know what I mean) then have the final scene be a, “oh and they know you’re out there” and done. But no, the comedy never overshadows the emotional impact of contact with home (and after nearly one hundred episodes, this was something the episode really couldn’t mess up), and the emotional impact never eclipses the fun of the two doctors. So much praise, then, to Lisa Klink and Rick Williams for getting that balance 100% right. What’s especially pleasing here is that the episode keeps suggesting that there’s going to be some kind of feint – we saw this before in “Eye Of The Needle” where they do technically make contact with the Alpha Quadrant, just in the past – but it never delivers on this and instead allows the contact to stand. So we have an experimental ship, lost in space, invaded by Romulans, no crew and only a slim chance of the Doctor being able to return to Voyager. There’s just so much scope for things to go wrong, but the episode treads the line of constantly suggesting that the Doctor will save the day but fail in his mission… then he doesn’t. It adds a surprising amount of tautness to the episode, whereby each time the Doctor(s) have to deal with a new crisis it’s just one more thing getting in the way of what our Doctor is really here to do. It’s not that there’s a lot of tension from the Romulan takeover of the Prometheus – it’s a comedy episode and tension isn’t really the point – but every barrier that they put up is just delaying the Doctor’s chances of completing his mission.
The argument around special effects I talked about in “Rise”, whereby I argued that the improvements in special effects increase the range of dramatic tools at a writer’s disposal also gets a, somewhat unexpected, boost here. We’ve had ships separating before, but we’ve never had a ship separate quite like this before. The “multi-vector attack mode” is one of those Star Trek ideas which is a bit silly, entirely strategically understandable from a real-world perspective, and something the show could only really pull off at this point in its history, where CGI can be used to render something that would have been next-to-impossible with traditional practical effects. This means that the writers are able to greatly increase the threat that a single ship is able to present, thus (at least in theory) allowing them to utilize the ship in a way that can increase the dramatic stakes of the story and widen what can be done with that single ship. In practice, though, this isn’t quite what we get on screen. It’s really lovely to see the ship separate, both early in the episode (though it’s a real Chekhov’s Phaser moment) and in the climactic battle, but in truth it doesn’t add that much in the way of storytelling. That’s a little bit of a shame, but this episode is stuffed with enough going on as it is, so maybe to expect this is hoping for just a little too much. Indeed, it’s a slight shame we never get to see the Prometheus again, though given Voyager’s set-up that is, perhaps, inevitable. Despite this, though, we still see the same progress of effects equalling progress in storytelling, and it’s a good sign that this is on-going.
In terms of his character, it’s good to see the Doctor stepping up to the place again as well. It’s been a while since we had a really good, meaty Doctor-centric episode, and it’s clear throughout “Message In A Bottle” how well he’s deployed here, and once again just what a useful character he is. Having him meet the EMH Mk II gives us a chance to pause and reflect on just how far it is that the Doctor has come. When he’s boasting about having relations or being able to go on away missions it’s a good indicator of the progress that’s been made as a character and unlike, say, Seven, his character progression hasn’t been a big flashy thing put front-and-centre of the show, but has been allowed to gradually build (this is also true of B’Elanna, as a point of contrast, who gets a huge amount of development over Voyager but this often gets forgotten). Compare and contrast the relaxed, confident Doctor we get here to the one complaining about how much dirt he needed to find back “Parallax” in Season One and the difference is both stark and immediately apparent. Indeed he’s remarkably quick to agree to the mission even though it might mean his program is irreversibly lost, something which would have been inconceivable back in the first season. At this stage, it looks more and more like the Doctor has become and emergent intelligence – he’s obviously not programmed to be one, but his experiences, most clearly in “Projections” and “The Swarm”, have directly led to the character that we have now, and at this point in the show there’s no real question that he’s an entirely separate, self-aware entity very much in the mode of Data (and he’ll get his own shot at proving he’s a real boy in Season Seven). By giving us a chance to reflect on the Doctor here, the audience is given proper insight into his development as contrasted with an EMH with substantially less experience, and who essentially functions as a reminder of what our Doctor used to be like. In doing so it proves, beyond the skill of Robert Picardo in playing him or the specifics of this script, just what a journey he has been on. Crossing the bounds of space via a vast, unknown alien network? That’s nothing compared to the real journey he’s been on throughout the whole show.
Any Other Business:
• I didn’t discuss Andy Dick, star of the brilliant NewsRadio and any number of Los Angeles police cells in the review, but he’s terrific in this episode, and has great comedy timing and rapport with Robert Picardo.
• Nice little piece of friction between Seven and B’Elanna early on in the episode, and good to see Chakotay doing some proper first officer work by reminding B’Elanna that she’s a senior officer on the ship and needs to sort things out.
• Tom and Harry’s attempt to create a replacement Doctor should their one not make it back – mildly amusing but not as much as the writers believe.
• Yea, the Romulans aren’t even remotely threatening here, but they fulfil their plot function just fine.
• During the scene “the Doctor” stats reciting Grey’s Anatomy, you can see that Robert Picardo is reading his lines off a cue-card.
• It’s made very clear that the Doctor has modified his own program to give himself genitals, and that EMH’s don’t come with them as standard. So, uh, that’s useful to know.
• We never get to see the EMH Mk II again. Given how good Andy Dick is here that’s a bit of a shame, but it would probably be quite tough to find a reason to have him turn up that didn’t seem contrived.
• And once again, all praise for that final scene in sick bay. Really great work.
Season Four, Episode 15 – “Hunters”
Doctor And The Medics
Another entry into the great pool of Voyager episodes whose title isn’t especially what the episode is about, “Hunters” continues the teasing of the Hirogen that we got in “Message In A Bottle” and allows a bit more – but not all – to be revealed, but spends far more time on the implications of what contact with the Alpha Quadrant will actually mean for the crew. The title implies that this is going to be much more action-oriented, but it’s a feint – it’s the vignettes with the crew that are the real core of this episode, and the script spends a pleasingly long time finding new ways to spin old information, and really exploring the impact of the emotional punch than concludes the previous episode.
Take Janeway, for example. We know that she was engaged way back in “Caretaker” but in the excitement of making contact with home it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that the new received might not be good. Mark has, for obvious reasons, moved on with his life. It’s not the most devastating reveal of the letters from home, sitting as it does somewhere between Harry’s relief at his parents knowing he’s alive, and the crushing news of the end of the Maquis that Chakotay and B’Elanna receive, but it carries a lot of emotional resonance. The fact that she earlier reminded Seven that mail call could have a lot more emotional resonance for her because she might still have family on Earth helps set up Janeway’s own, slightly ironic, sense of disappointment when she gets what she wants (the letter) only to not get what she wants, an understated but elegant counterpoint. Still, obviously the biggest impact here is on B’Elanna – while Chakotay is clearly upset at what’s happened, she’s the one that lashes out with typical ferocity. I’m not going to over-comment on this now – it’ll become significant later – but it gives the lie to what B’Elanna told us at the start of Season One, when she professed not to care about being lost in the Delta Quadrant because nobody back home would miss her and she would miss nobody. This rather neatly gives us further insight into the character she was back at the beginning of the show – hiding her true feelings under shrugging dismissal – and just how far she’s come. The turning point – “Day Of Honour” we can assume, when she admits she’s a coward for not confronting her own feelings – is still relatively recent in her own history, and the strength she drew there, facing up to how she felt about Tom, is still a real and developing part of her personality. This is brought into sharp relief in the scene between her and Tom in astrometrics, when he blithers on about the difficulties with his father, only for her to point out that she can’t quite feel sorry for him right now because all her friends have been killed. It’s another terrific scene between Dawson and McNeill and another in the (very many) scenes that make them seem like a convincing couple because they’re given something to do that isn’t either overtly romantic or shouting at each other. They both have a chance to extend support to each other, despite both being incredibly touchy about the open wounds of their feelings, and both haltingly find a way forward. It’s a really great piece of character work and gives them a real chance to breathe, and it’s a very grown-up and adult scene in all the right ways.
The way this episode is built up suggests a very World War II set-up – waiting for mail call was always an important part of the troops’ lives (even using the term “mail call”, thus drawing direct attention to it, sounding very 1940’s), and the fact that the letters are delivered by hand, not just sent to someone’s terminal, re-enforces the idea that this episode has the skin of science fiction but the flesh of something quite different underneath. So Janeway getting a “Dear John” letter – a familiar part of any number of war movies – continues the WWII reading, even as the fact that it’s a woman who gets it leans into a feminist inversion of typical war movie tropes but very much in line with what we’ve come to expect from Voyager. It’s understated, for sure, but it’s definitely there. The Hirogen play into this reading as well. What we get to see of them here (and it’s not all that much really), suggests that they’re going to be unequivocally the bad guys, and when Tuvok describes them as being free from any moral or ethical stance… well, they’re Nazi’s, aren’t they? They’re stronger than the Voyager crew, they’re free of moral compunction, they live for a single dedicated purpose, they don’t share, and they don’t play nicely. Oh, and they have the towering stature of ubermensch. It’s not a 100% match – they’re not Daleks – but the parallels are pretty clear. This will be made substantially more explicit in “The Killing Game” in a couple of episode’s time, of course, where a direct parallel between the Hunt and Nazi philosophy will be drawn, but even this early the lines are already being drawn. There’s also a continuation of a rather navel feel to proceedings here – the Hirogen station could easily be a harbour, the collapsed black hole a whirlpool and so on – which plays even further into this war-time reading, even down to Tom referencing his estranged father, who is of course an admiral. The navel feel is something that runs throughout Star Trek – there’s probably a very good essay to be written about the parallels between Trek and the navy, but by someone better informed than me – and here we see it again being deployed effectively. Even making contact with Starfleet after being lost at “sea” for so long seems reminiscent of naval movies (to say nothing of how it lines up with Chakotay’s “watch” story in “Year Of Hell”). It gives an underlying dimension to the episode without overtly imposing itself upon it.
Yet despite a lot of good work here, this isn’t quite a complete success. We get a good ten minutes of Hirogen action, but they still feel a little in the background at this point. This works as both a plus and a minus – a plus because the less we know about them the more mysterious and dangerous they feel, and as a minus because it would be great to just get on and meet them proper (more of which in the next episode). It feels a little like stalling, even though in general I quite approve of taking a few episodes to introduce the new race a little piece at a time and give them the time and space to have a gradual reveal. In this sense it’s a good choice for it to be Seven and Tuvok who go up against them physically – Seven’s a former drone, and we know that Vulcans are a lot stronger than humans, yet both still get their asses kicked, a good way of showing how formidable the Hirogen are as an enemy. Saying that, though, they do just growl a lot of declarative statements and stamp about the place, which doesn’t give the audience a lot to go on in terms of understanding them, even though we do get a fair amount of their background delivered here. This is slightly exposition-driven (a lot of “why do you do this?” “Because this is what we are like”-type dialogue on their ship), and though it’s not too awful it’s a bit more clumsy than it needed to be. And equally, while we again get to see again what a great pairing Tuvok and Seven are, there’s just a little bit too much “this then that” dialogue between them in the shuttle as Tuvok seeks to calm her fears that Janeway is picking on her because Seven is not yet trusted. Seven’s fears are perfectly rational and it all works as a way to explore the character’s insecurities, it’s just a little inelegant.
But still, “Hunters” generally delivers on its promise. The Hirogen already seem like an intimidating foe – we’ve had about ten minutes of screen-time from them and they already seem infinitely more threatening than the similarly-purposed Kazon. Taking the time to explore the emotional resonance that contact with the crew has was a sensible step – this isn’t the first time Voyager has taken an episode to explore the impact of something that happened the previous week and although it’s not a common feature it’s worth drawing attention to when it does happen, like those little between-episode continuity nudges the show sometimes drops in. It gives a feeling of a more cohesive whole without ever going into full-on DS9-style continuity and once again it works well here. “Hunters” is mostly memorable for the Hirogen, but the emotional impact of contact with home should most certainly not be overlooked, and it’s in this that the episode really delivers the goods. When the show takes the time to really explore the impact of events it can only ever really be adjudged a good thing.
Any Other Business:
• Some praise for Robert Duncan McNeill here – faced with his conflicted feelings over his father, Tom snaps back to his Season One, hyper-defensive mode, and McNeill really delivers the goods as Tom’s shields go back up.
• Interestingly the scene between him and Harry in the mess hall, after Tom is really being at his most defensive again, is the first time since “The Swarm” the two of them have shared a scene that felt slash-y, which maybe offers some insight as to exactly where that slash feeling comes from.
• Mulgrew does a good job of acting conflicted over Mark, considering he was such a non-presence in “Caretaker”. And nice to see her puppies get a mention, an un-necessary but welcome call-back.
• Harry’s a bit variable here – fine in terms of Plot Delivery At The Back Of The Bridge or when trying to persuade Tom that a letter from his father might actually be a good thing, but a bit too enthusiastic-puppy and/or self-pitying elsewhere.
• The Gamma Quadrant wormhole gets an off-handed mention. Which is nice.
• It’s a well-known continuity gaff but I guess it deserves a mention here – everyone seems amazed by the fact that the station is sustained by a quantum singularity, despite that being exactly how Romulan Warbirds are powered. You could maybe hand-wave it by saying they’re amazed by the fact it was done 100,000 years ago. Maybe.
• The towering stature of the Hirogen, massively larger than either Seven or Tuvok, is a really great way of establishing their physical threat even before we get into a fight scene, and extremely well realized on screen.
• Seven’s obvious, clear contempt for the Hirogen, and her lack of understanding as to what value her intestine might be, is wonderfully played by Ryan. Seven and Tuvok – Joan and Betty.
• Surprisingly brutal scene of Tuvok slashing at one of the Hirogen’s throats with a blade during his failed escape attempt. It doesn’t work but it looks nasty.
• The collapsing array looks great.
• So this week’s consequence – the alien sensor network is taken down for good. This works in terms of helping to maintain Voyager’s isolation and keeping the pressure on them, but it gives the Hirogen a very real and justifiable grudge against them.
The Two Doctors
For an episode that’s primarily known as a comedy knockabout, “Message In A Bottle” contains two extremely important plot developments. We’ll come to the comedy stuff in a moment, but we first get the introduction of a new race of aliens who will come to be important in the ongoing show, the Hirogen, and much more importantly we have the first proper, actual, not-fudged-around, no-temporal-displacement contact with the Alpha Quadrant. It’s a significant, powerful moment and it’s given the gravitas it deserves, in a small but affecting scene in sickbay. The lead-up to this scene throughout the episode implies the usual bafflegab-laden plot-convenient way of sending the Doctor across vast distances but doesn’t ever suggest quite what an emotional punch this will carry. Because, for a scene that only lasts a minute or two, the Doctor informing Janeway that they’re not alone any more really packs a wallop. And it does it by underplaying. There’s no big swelling strings, no wobbling lower lips and single tear, but instead everyone (but especially Kate Mulgrew) really show just how much this means to the crew. We know things will never be quite that simple, but now the truth is out there – Starfleet knows the ship exists, and they’ll do what they can to get her home. Such a small moment, such a big punch.
That it’s placed right at the end of the episode, and that we’re spared a cutsie final scene as we so often get on Star Trek, also really adds to the power and really lets this moment hang in the mind of the audience. There would be a whole week between this and “Hunters” (where we get to meet the Hirogen proper, sort of) on transmission and the way the episode allows this moment to hang in the air is incredibly skillful. Lots of episodes end on big moments which are allowed to sit in the mind of their audience but that underplaying, the fact it’s not over-sold to the audience as a big moment even though we definitely know that it is, is really where this scene derives its power from. Anyone can do swelling strings. Anyone can knock off a cutsie ending. But here we have neither, and it’s just terrific, actually one of Voyager’s most affecting moments. And nobody ever remembers it, because it’s right at the end of, “the funny one with the two Doctors in it.”
Which is, of course, in some ways fair enough, because, emotional punch of the final scene aside, this is a really great episode, funny when it’s meant to be, a terrific guest turn from Andy Dick, and everything firing on all cylinders. It’s the second episode in a row that’s a bit of a romp, but that’s OK because when they’re this good it’s pretty tough to complain about it. Comedy isn’t an easy thing to pull off, especially in Star Trek (think of all those agonizingly bad Ferengi stories with laboured humour and tedious plot devices and cringe), so to see everything carried off here with such elegance is blissful. But this episode also has to strike that balance between the highs of the comedy and the delivery of that final scene, and it manages this balancing act perfectly as well. It would have been very easy to turn in a funny script (well, not easy, but you know what I mean) then have the final scene be a, “oh and they know you’re out there” and done. But no, the comedy never overshadows the emotional impact of contact with home (and after nearly one hundred episodes, this was something the episode really couldn’t mess up), and the emotional impact never eclipses the fun of the two doctors. So much praise, then, to Lisa Klink and Rick Williams for getting that balance 100% right. What’s especially pleasing here is that the episode keeps suggesting that there’s going to be some kind of feint – we saw this before in “Eye Of The Needle” where they do technically make contact with the Alpha Quadrant, just in the past – but it never delivers on this and instead allows the contact to stand. So we have an experimental ship, lost in space, invaded by Romulans, no crew and only a slim chance of the Doctor being able to return to Voyager. There’s just so much scope for things to go wrong, but the episode treads the line of constantly suggesting that the Doctor will save the day but fail in his mission… then he doesn’t. It adds a surprising amount of tautness to the episode, whereby each time the Doctor(s) have to deal with a new crisis it’s just one more thing getting in the way of what our Doctor is really here to do. It’s not that there’s a lot of tension from the Romulan takeover of the Prometheus – it’s a comedy episode and tension isn’t really the point – but every barrier that they put up is just delaying the Doctor’s chances of completing his mission.
The argument around special effects I talked about in “Rise”, whereby I argued that the improvements in special effects increase the range of dramatic tools at a writer’s disposal also gets a, somewhat unexpected, boost here. We’ve had ships separating before, but we’ve never had a ship separate quite like this before. The “multi-vector attack mode” is one of those Star Trek ideas which is a bit silly, entirely strategically understandable from a real-world perspective, and something the show could only really pull off at this point in its history, where CGI can be used to render something that would have been next-to-impossible with traditional practical effects. This means that the writers are able to greatly increase the threat that a single ship is able to present, thus (at least in theory) allowing them to utilize the ship in a way that can increase the dramatic stakes of the story and widen what can be done with that single ship. In practice, though, this isn’t quite what we get on screen. It’s really lovely to see the ship separate, both early in the episode (though it’s a real Chekhov’s Phaser moment) and in the climactic battle, but in truth it doesn’t add that much in the way of storytelling. That’s a little bit of a shame, but this episode is stuffed with enough going on as it is, so maybe to expect this is hoping for just a little too much. Indeed, it’s a slight shame we never get to see the Prometheus again, though given Voyager’s set-up that is, perhaps, inevitable. Despite this, though, we still see the same progress of effects equalling progress in storytelling, and it’s a good sign that this is on-going.
In terms of his character, it’s good to see the Doctor stepping up to the place again as well. It’s been a while since we had a really good, meaty Doctor-centric episode, and it’s clear throughout “Message In A Bottle” how well he’s deployed here, and once again just what a useful character he is. Having him meet the EMH Mk II gives us a chance to pause and reflect on just how far it is that the Doctor has come. When he’s boasting about having relations or being able to go on away missions it’s a good indicator of the progress that’s been made as a character and unlike, say, Seven, his character progression hasn’t been a big flashy thing put front-and-centre of the show, but has been allowed to gradually build (this is also true of B’Elanna, as a point of contrast, who gets a huge amount of development over Voyager but this often gets forgotten). Compare and contrast the relaxed, confident Doctor we get here to the one complaining about how much dirt he needed to find back “Parallax” in Season One and the difference is both stark and immediately apparent. Indeed he’s remarkably quick to agree to the mission even though it might mean his program is irreversibly lost, something which would have been inconceivable back in the first season. At this stage, it looks more and more like the Doctor has become and emergent intelligence – he’s obviously not programmed to be one, but his experiences, most clearly in “Projections” and “The Swarm”, have directly led to the character that we have now, and at this point in the show there’s no real question that he’s an entirely separate, self-aware entity very much in the mode of Data (and he’ll get his own shot at proving he’s a real boy in Season Seven). By giving us a chance to reflect on the Doctor here, the audience is given proper insight into his development as contrasted with an EMH with substantially less experience, and who essentially functions as a reminder of what our Doctor used to be like. In doing so it proves, beyond the skill of Robert Picardo in playing him or the specifics of this script, just what a journey he has been on. Crossing the bounds of space via a vast, unknown alien network? That’s nothing compared to the real journey he’s been on throughout the whole show.
Any Other Business:
• I didn’t discuss Andy Dick, star of the brilliant NewsRadio and any number of Los Angeles police cells in the review, but he’s terrific in this episode, and has great comedy timing and rapport with Robert Picardo.
• Nice little piece of friction between Seven and B’Elanna early on in the episode, and good to see Chakotay doing some proper first officer work by reminding B’Elanna that she’s a senior officer on the ship and needs to sort things out.
• Tom and Harry’s attempt to create a replacement Doctor should their one not make it back – mildly amusing but not as much as the writers believe.
• Yea, the Romulans aren’t even remotely threatening here, but they fulfil their plot function just fine.
• During the scene “the Doctor” stats reciting Grey’s Anatomy, you can see that Robert Picardo is reading his lines off a cue-card.
• It’s made very clear that the Doctor has modified his own program to give himself genitals, and that EMH’s don’t come with them as standard. So, uh, that’s useful to know.
• We never get to see the EMH Mk II again. Given how good Andy Dick is here that’s a bit of a shame, but it would probably be quite tough to find a reason to have him turn up that didn’t seem contrived.
• And once again, all praise for that final scene in sick bay. Really great work.
Season Four, Episode 15 – “Hunters”
Doctor And The Medics
Another entry into the great pool of Voyager episodes whose title isn’t especially what the episode is about, “Hunters” continues the teasing of the Hirogen that we got in “Message In A Bottle” and allows a bit more – but not all – to be revealed, but spends far more time on the implications of what contact with the Alpha Quadrant will actually mean for the crew. The title implies that this is going to be much more action-oriented, but it’s a feint – it’s the vignettes with the crew that are the real core of this episode, and the script spends a pleasingly long time finding new ways to spin old information, and really exploring the impact of the emotional punch than concludes the previous episode.
Take Janeway, for example. We know that she was engaged way back in “Caretaker” but in the excitement of making contact with home it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that the new received might not be good. Mark has, for obvious reasons, moved on with his life. It’s not the most devastating reveal of the letters from home, sitting as it does somewhere between Harry’s relief at his parents knowing he’s alive, and the crushing news of the end of the Maquis that Chakotay and B’Elanna receive, but it carries a lot of emotional resonance. The fact that she earlier reminded Seven that mail call could have a lot more emotional resonance for her because she might still have family on Earth helps set up Janeway’s own, slightly ironic, sense of disappointment when she gets what she wants (the letter) only to not get what she wants, an understated but elegant counterpoint. Still, obviously the biggest impact here is on B’Elanna – while Chakotay is clearly upset at what’s happened, she’s the one that lashes out with typical ferocity. I’m not going to over-comment on this now – it’ll become significant later – but it gives the lie to what B’Elanna told us at the start of Season One, when she professed not to care about being lost in the Delta Quadrant because nobody back home would miss her and she would miss nobody. This rather neatly gives us further insight into the character she was back at the beginning of the show – hiding her true feelings under shrugging dismissal – and just how far she’s come. The turning point – “Day Of Honour” we can assume, when she admits she’s a coward for not confronting her own feelings – is still relatively recent in her own history, and the strength she drew there, facing up to how she felt about Tom, is still a real and developing part of her personality. This is brought into sharp relief in the scene between her and Tom in astrometrics, when he blithers on about the difficulties with his father, only for her to point out that she can’t quite feel sorry for him right now because all her friends have been killed. It’s another terrific scene between Dawson and McNeill and another in the (very many) scenes that make them seem like a convincing couple because they’re given something to do that isn’t either overtly romantic or shouting at each other. They both have a chance to extend support to each other, despite both being incredibly touchy about the open wounds of their feelings, and both haltingly find a way forward. It’s a really great piece of character work and gives them a real chance to breathe, and it’s a very grown-up and adult scene in all the right ways.
The way this episode is built up suggests a very World War II set-up – waiting for mail call was always an important part of the troops’ lives (even using the term “mail call”, thus drawing direct attention to it, sounding very 1940’s), and the fact that the letters are delivered by hand, not just sent to someone’s terminal, re-enforces the idea that this episode has the skin of science fiction but the flesh of something quite different underneath. So Janeway getting a “Dear John” letter – a familiar part of any number of war movies – continues the WWII reading, even as the fact that it’s a woman who gets it leans into a feminist inversion of typical war movie tropes but very much in line with what we’ve come to expect from Voyager. It’s understated, for sure, but it’s definitely there. The Hirogen play into this reading as well. What we get to see of them here (and it’s not all that much really), suggests that they’re going to be unequivocally the bad guys, and when Tuvok describes them as being free from any moral or ethical stance… well, they’re Nazi’s, aren’t they? They’re stronger than the Voyager crew, they’re free of moral compunction, they live for a single dedicated purpose, they don’t share, and they don’t play nicely. Oh, and they have the towering stature of ubermensch. It’s not a 100% match – they’re not Daleks – but the parallels are pretty clear. This will be made substantially more explicit in “The Killing Game” in a couple of episode’s time, of course, where a direct parallel between the Hunt and Nazi philosophy will be drawn, but even this early the lines are already being drawn. There’s also a continuation of a rather navel feel to proceedings here – the Hirogen station could easily be a harbour, the collapsed black hole a whirlpool and so on – which plays even further into this war-time reading, even down to Tom referencing his estranged father, who is of course an admiral. The navel feel is something that runs throughout Star Trek – there’s probably a very good essay to be written about the parallels between Trek and the navy, but by someone better informed than me – and here we see it again being deployed effectively. Even making contact with Starfleet after being lost at “sea” for so long seems reminiscent of naval movies (to say nothing of how it lines up with Chakotay’s “watch” story in “Year Of Hell”). It gives an underlying dimension to the episode without overtly imposing itself upon it.
Yet despite a lot of good work here, this isn’t quite a complete success. We get a good ten minutes of Hirogen action, but they still feel a little in the background at this point. This works as both a plus and a minus – a plus because the less we know about them the more mysterious and dangerous they feel, and as a minus because it would be great to just get on and meet them proper (more of which in the next episode). It feels a little like stalling, even though in general I quite approve of taking a few episodes to introduce the new race a little piece at a time and give them the time and space to have a gradual reveal. In this sense it’s a good choice for it to be Seven and Tuvok who go up against them physically – Seven’s a former drone, and we know that Vulcans are a lot stronger than humans, yet both still get their asses kicked, a good way of showing how formidable the Hirogen are as an enemy. Saying that, though, they do just growl a lot of declarative statements and stamp about the place, which doesn’t give the audience a lot to go on in terms of understanding them, even though we do get a fair amount of their background delivered here. This is slightly exposition-driven (a lot of “why do you do this?” “Because this is what we are like”-type dialogue on their ship), and though it’s not too awful it’s a bit more clumsy than it needed to be. And equally, while we again get to see again what a great pairing Tuvok and Seven are, there’s just a little bit too much “this then that” dialogue between them in the shuttle as Tuvok seeks to calm her fears that Janeway is picking on her because Seven is not yet trusted. Seven’s fears are perfectly rational and it all works as a way to explore the character’s insecurities, it’s just a little inelegant.
But still, “Hunters” generally delivers on its promise. The Hirogen already seem like an intimidating foe – we’ve had about ten minutes of screen-time from them and they already seem infinitely more threatening than the similarly-purposed Kazon. Taking the time to explore the emotional resonance that contact with the crew has was a sensible step – this isn’t the first time Voyager has taken an episode to explore the impact of something that happened the previous week and although it’s not a common feature it’s worth drawing attention to when it does happen, like those little between-episode continuity nudges the show sometimes drops in. It gives a feeling of a more cohesive whole without ever going into full-on DS9-style continuity and once again it works well here. “Hunters” is mostly memorable for the Hirogen, but the emotional impact of contact with home should most certainly not be overlooked, and it’s in this that the episode really delivers the goods. When the show takes the time to really explore the impact of events it can only ever really be adjudged a good thing.
Any Other Business:
• Some praise for Robert Duncan McNeill here – faced with his conflicted feelings over his father, Tom snaps back to his Season One, hyper-defensive mode, and McNeill really delivers the goods as Tom’s shields go back up.
• Interestingly the scene between him and Harry in the mess hall, after Tom is really being at his most defensive again, is the first time since “The Swarm” the two of them have shared a scene that felt slash-y, which maybe offers some insight as to exactly where that slash feeling comes from.
• Mulgrew does a good job of acting conflicted over Mark, considering he was such a non-presence in “Caretaker”. And nice to see her puppies get a mention, an un-necessary but welcome call-back.
• Harry’s a bit variable here – fine in terms of Plot Delivery At The Back Of The Bridge or when trying to persuade Tom that a letter from his father might actually be a good thing, but a bit too enthusiastic-puppy and/or self-pitying elsewhere.
• The Gamma Quadrant wormhole gets an off-handed mention. Which is nice.
• It’s a well-known continuity gaff but I guess it deserves a mention here – everyone seems amazed by the fact that the station is sustained by a quantum singularity, despite that being exactly how Romulan Warbirds are powered. You could maybe hand-wave it by saying they’re amazed by the fact it was done 100,000 years ago. Maybe.
• The towering stature of the Hirogen, massively larger than either Seven or Tuvok, is a really great way of establishing their physical threat even before we get into a fight scene, and extremely well realized on screen.
• Seven’s obvious, clear contempt for the Hirogen, and her lack of understanding as to what value her intestine might be, is wonderfully played by Ryan. Seven and Tuvok – Joan and Betty.
• Surprisingly brutal scene of Tuvok slashing at one of the Hirogen’s throats with a blade during his failed escape attempt. It doesn’t work but it looks nasty.
• The collapsing array looks great.
• So this week’s consequence – the alien sensor network is taken down for good. This works in terms of helping to maintain Voyager’s isolation and keeping the pressure on them, but it gives the Hirogen a very real and justifiable grudge against them.
