Season 4 Ep 26 "Hope And Fear" / Season Four Summary
Nov 5, 2015 12:06:32 GMT -5
Jean Luc de Lemur and rimjobflashmob like this
Post by Prole Hole on Nov 5, 2015 12:06:32 GMT -5
Season Four, Episode 26 - “Hope And Fear”
Weapon on loan from The Black Hole collection
As a title, "Hope And Fear" is not exactly subtle in suggesting what this episode is going to be about, but as a summation of the episode it is both succinct and accurate. In many ways the title's relation to the episode is the same as the episode's relation to the season it concludes - a neat summary of everything the crew have gone through while setting things up to go forward, though most unusually without a cliffhanger into Season Five. Season Three concluded a break-neck pace, but Season Four takes a more measured approach, which feels appropriate for what has turned out to be a more turbulent season, but which has nevertheless dramatically improved the qualitative aspects of the show.
The experiences of "One", it is possible to conclude, might not have quite led Seven to the conclusions that we assume it would. Far from her feeling more integrated into the crew, we instead get to see her as petulant and stubborn as we ever we have, or at least since the early days of coming aboard the ship. We might speculate that this is because, put in a situation she that almost killer her she didn't, in fact, die, but in fact both survived and completed her mission. Rather than give her a more humble perspective the initial scenes of this episode suggest she's gone in entirely the other direction - her survival seems to have convinced her of her superiority. She is Borg. Butting heads with Janeway in this context thus makes sense - after their increasing understanding of each other, an event has occurred which has caused Seven to move away and Janeway neither likes nor, really, understands it, and it produces unforced, natural conflict between the show's two strongest characters. As Seven's development over the season has produced the strongest character arc Voyager has yet seen, so her arc over this episode reflects that development, and, come the end of the episode when she's face with the very real prospect of being forced to re-join the Collective, the penny finally drops - for all her arrogant assertion of superiority, she really doesn't want to go back to being a drone. Forced to face up to the reality of what she is expounding, she backs down. She lost a lot when she was severed from the Collective, but by actively resisting the return to the Borg it's made clear that what she has gained is so very much more than what she lost, even when she is filled with uncertainty, doubt and... fear. This really does come across as a mirco-version of the arc she's experienced over the previous twenty-five episode, yet it doesn't feel like a simple reiteration of it - rather it feels like a conclusion to it, and when Seven is forced to face up to the reality of what re-integration with the Collective really means it's a powerful moment for her character, but it's also progressive in where it pushes her character to. She will in the future assert "I am Borg" as a mark of superiority, but she will never again have it suggested that the logical extension of that statement is a desire to return to what she was. She may fear what the future holds but the fear of losing the humanity she has regained, so hard won, is the more powerful terror. Her fear has been faced down, and she can now move on from it.
The message from Starfleet, received half a season ago, carries a lot of symbolic weight. This is the first season Voyager has made actual, unambiguous contact with the Alpha Quadrant, so the weight of this symbol is heavy indeed, and we've previously explored how much this means to the crew. It represents everything they have spent the entire show struggling for - home, family, security, a place in the world. It's a clever time to have its decoding be during the final act of the season, and of course it could never fulfil what every crewmember so desperately hoped it would. The weight of expectation on the message was always going to be unequal to anything it could contain, yet to have it decoded (by a conveniently-passing language expert) and deliver just what the crew wants to hear is a great conceit - we know that it can't really be what it claims to be at face value, because that way narrative collapse lies, so the game of the episode is, really, what is the message? What is the Dauntless? To have the (suddenly not conveniently-passing) language expert be motivated by revenge for the events of "Scorpion" is a terrific piece of motivation, and it gives a lovely circular narrative to the whole season, whereby actions taken in the past (nine months in the past, according to Janeway) have a direct bearing on the present. Janeway wasn't wrong when she concluded that the threat from Species 8472 was potentially even greater than the Borg, but the reason this is so successful is that the points here aren't belaboured - we again get to see the larger canvas that Voyager plays out over, and hear of events off-screen that suggest a galaxy much larger than the bits we get to see on a week-to-week basis, but the important detail here is that these events are allowed to stand as something which self-evidently happen, rather than being over-explained to us. Voyager always works well when it's written on this kind of broader canvas, so to meet a member of a species who has been affected by the events of the show but which we haven't directly witnessed, gives Arcturus a whole history and past that motivates his character while at the same time allowing for relatively little in the way of back-story or exposition. His back-story is really the show's back-story, and, as with "One", "Hope And Fear" is able to use Voyager's own history as something material rather than abstract, and without it just becoming a tedious continuity-ticking exercise. One of the key aspects "Hope And Fear" grasps is that history, recent or ancient, affects everything, and its use here is the perfect example of just how much more ambition Season Four has than any of the three preceding it.
But, again as with "One", what's also clear is that the show is able to deliver these kinds of parallels and reflections while at the same time being able to deliver an entertaining episode that doesn't over-sell its concept at the cost of being actually enjoyable. This isn't quite a full embrace of either Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic (it's paced too thoughtfully for that) nor is it a full ensemble piece (since it really centres round Seven and Janeway, even though everyone else basically gets something relevant to do). Rather, although this is a meditation on the season that it’s concluding, the episode still manages to find fun ways into what it is it’s actually meditating on. So, for example, there’s just something very cool about the Dauntless in both its interior and exterior design, which helps to drive audience expectations – we want this ship to be what it seems to be, a cool bit of starship porn with a new super-fast engine (and there’s something rather pleasing that we’ve heard of slipstream drives before, so this isn’t some out-of-the-bag fudge for this episode, but something previously established). That makes it fun when the script starts playing around with what the Dauntless actually is as opposed to what it seems to be. The ship itself symbolizes everything that the crew have been questing for – a way home - but the subversion of that symbol still has to carry enough thematic weight as to not make the whole exercise seem like a false set-up. In this Arcturus’s motivations and actions have to ring true so his revenge motivation works, and this allows the episode to remain entertaining while still allowing Arcturus’s own experiences to be understandable and relatable. This isn’t a moustache-twirling loony, it’s a desperately hurt and damaged individual who thinks he’s finally found a way to gain at least some measure of dignity in revenge. Of course, this being Star Trek quests for revenge never end well, so seeing Arcturus surrounded by the Borg, forced to realize what a waste of time and effort his revenge has been, makes his actions seem lamentable, but never contemptible and always relatable. That keeps his engagement with the rest of the episode, even as he works against Our Heroes, and Arcturus remains an intriguing, engaging (if a little underplayed) character that really helps move the episode along.
There’s no cliffhanger here. “Hope And Fear” ends with Janeway and Seven attempting to come to an understanding while playing Velocity together, just as they did at the start of the episode. “Hope And Fear” is a meditative episode, and in eschewing the usual action-adventure blow-out most seasons end with, stands as a markedly different, and successful, way of bringing a season to its conclusion. In its own way that’s really rather daring – there’s no hook to draw viewers back in when the next season kicks off – and instead shows faith that the viewers will understand what this kind of ending represents. Everything this season set out to do is brought full circle, and, with a flash of light and a cut to black, Season Four ends.
It’s been really, really good.
Any Other Business:
• Ryan is up to her usual high standards this week, but in an entirely different way from her fragile/strength dichotomy from the previous episode, getting more and more irritated with the perceived failings of those around her. Her irritation at Janeway during the Velocity match is especially good, and though different, so is her final admission that she really doesn’t want to return to the Collective.
• The Dauntless is a really nice piece of design. The “warp core” consisting of a plasma globe that would have looked cheap and dated when TNG debuted, is not.
• It’s a bit silly, but I like the fact that Arcturus’s ears are really far back on his skull, making what’s a fairly standard latex-alien-head look just that little bit different. It’s a nice attention to detail.
• Something something Voyager can’t use this particular iteration of slipstream technology again. Uh, Ok.
• Though I mentioned it in the review, I’d like to reiterate how great the circular narrative of this season is, bringing back and dealing with the consequences of “Scorpion” while still moving forward from them, and it also ties in with “Year Of Hell”’s literally circular narrative for Annorax, as he repeats his own actions ad infinitum, unable to escape his own ironic temporal date.
• I’m fine with the no-cliffhanger ending to this season, though I know not all fans are. I think “Hope And Fear” does its job more than well enough to justify taking an alternative approach to the season conclusion, so all praise, really, for not trying to shoehorn in some last-minute plot-twist as a hook into the next season, but rather letting this stand on its own merits.
Season Four Summary
Season Four cast
Kes leaves, Seven joins, Harry stays. That’s the essence of this season, and while naturally this doesn’t describe everything that happens it gets at the key components of what is, thus far, Voyager’s best season. That Season Four continues the arc of improvement that ranged throughout Season Three (and it very much does), then it also alters some of the components of what Season Three did to stretch at the boundaries of what the show could achieve. The conflict that Seven introduced into the crew is perhaps the most obvious example of it – Season Three was comparatively plain sailing, crew-wise, even with the break-up of Neelix and Kes. This worked well for a season that really needed to find a way forward for Voyager but it wasn’t necessarily something that needed to be continued in terms of development over the long term. Seven’s arrival changed all that, and the conflict she introduces into the crew shifts the dynamic away from the safety of Season Three into other directions entirely. This is an extremely significant development for Voyager in the long term, and we‘ll get to it in a moment, but first I want to talk about narrative circularity.
Because the narrative and thematic through-line of Season Four has been stronger than it ever has in Voyager’s past, and it immediately gives this season a resonance that’s lacking in the first three seasons in hindsight. “Scorpion” and “Hope And Fear” sit at either end of the season, one a big action-adventure set-piece and the other a contemplative meditation on what that big set-piece wrought. And within the season we have plenty of interactions with the events of “Scorpion” – most obviously the return of Species 8472 in “Prey”, but thematically the consequences of one’s actions and taking responsibility for them remains a constant throughout the season. Annorax is almost sociopathically incapable of taking responsibility for his actions (however much he suggests otherwise), and is punished with a The Twilight Zone-esque ironic punishment of never being able to escape his own fate. We see, in “The Killing Game”, how the Hirogen who are unable to take responsibility for their actions in the Hunt are condemning themselves to a future of extinction. “Random Thoughts” is about taking responsibility for ones thoughts. And so on. How does Janeway fit in to this? Well, she does take responsibility for her own actions, and by owning them is also able to move beyond them. When confronted by Arcturus in “Hope And Fear” over her supposed arrogance in allying herself with the Borg she is unapologetic. It’s not that she is insisting her actions are right or wrong, but rather faced with a choice she made the only one she felt she could. By using the final episode of the season to have this acknowledged – that one has to own the responsibility of ones actions – we have an explicit conclusion to the implicit through-line of the season. This simply isn’t the kind of thematic juggling that Voyager has show itself capable of until now, so to see such a development handled so well really helps to bring everything this season set out to do to a successful conclusion. This is what I mean when I saw that Season Four expands the range of what the show is capable of. By opening and concluding with these thematic statements, while including plenty of episodes which re-enforce it without smacking us round the head with it, there’s a genuine subtlety and intelligence to the process of constructing the season, and this expansion of what Voyager can do is exhilarating.
And part of that expansion is, naturally, Seven. I think I’ve probably talked enough about why she’s such an important, feminist character, but it is absolutely worth restating. Seven is a terrific character – second only to Janeway in terms of Voyager’s explicitly feminist agenda – and her recovery from trauma, the time taken to deliver this, and the constantly developing story of that recovery, is what makes her such great character, but it’s also what allows her to develop the show itself. The arc she’s give over the course of this season, and the impact she has on the crew, is part of the expanding of Voyager’s emotional palette as well as its narrative one. We’ve seen B’Elanna and Janeway have the beginnings of a mother/daughter relationship, and we saw a more fully expanded version of this between Kes and Janeway, but both of these pale next to the way this is developed with Seven. The fire and spark that Seven brings immediately shakes things up in terms of the crew dynamics, of course, but it also gives Janeway someone much more challenging to play against, and it’s of immediate benefit to both the character and Kate Mulgrew. Some of her best moments are when she’s facing off with Ryan, and both actors are just automatically better when they’re in scenes together (just look how easily Ryan dominates Wang, for example, when Harry tries his unsuccessful attempts at flirting on her). By giving Janeway someone who can kick back against her, while also still remaining outside the crew, and also someone they come to rely on, we see an entirely new dynamic, and it’s one that Mulgrew seems to relish and Ryan seems to throw herself at. The continuing, ever-evolving, relationship between them is one of Season Four’s highlights, and while it’s clear that one facet of this development ends with “Hope And Fear” it’s important that this is never posited as a conclusion to their development. Rather, it suggests the ending of one phase while being ready to move forward into another. But also, crucially, they never forget that Seven is also a fun character to hang out with, so her extremely dry wit, for example, stops her becoming either too po-faced or self-serious, and as it develops it widens what can be done with the character, so dropping her into da Vinci’s study while the Doctor ponces about in tights during “Scientific Method” can only work if we know she has a sense of humour to make the character function in that environment. She even gets odd jokes, like the exchange between her and Janeway in “Hope And Fear”:
Janeway: “I’m your captain. That means I can’t always be your friend. Understand?”
Seven: “No. However, if we are assimilated, then our thoughts will become one, and I am sure I will understand perfectly.”
Ha! It’s another lovely moment from the Ryan and Mulgrew playbook and, while showing just how far Seven has come over the season, also keeps pushing at the limits of what you can do with Seven as a character as her recovery continues, yet demonstrating that, yes, this is a fun person to hang out with as well. She has character, and dimension, and agency. What more could you ask for?
But a quick hypothetical digression. What would this season have looked like had, as I suggested back in the Season Three summary, it been Harry, rather than Kes, that got the elbow? Short answer: better. Wang is still struggling to find anything interesting to do with Harry, whereas by contrast even her two episodes during this season it’s obvious just how good Lien is at delivering the revised, Season Three, version of her character. Wang has a few good moments here (“Demon”, surprisingly) but for the most part he’s still just standing at the back of the bridge. Rather than Harry’s crude attempts at seduction, I think it would have been genuinely fascinating to watch some real scenes between Kes and Seven, and see them exploring a character dynamic together. Certainly it would be far removed from the mother/daughter bond both women shared with Janeway, and it’s easy to imagine Kes’s gentle compassion spilling over into frustration at Seven’s stubbornness, or Seven’s blank lack of understanding at Kes’s view of the universe. And of course both women are orphaned from their culture – Seven forcefully, Kes voluntarily – which could provide some extremely fertile ground for comparisons and development. Obviously this isn’t what we get – and that’s the only part of Season Four that feels like a shame. That could have been something really special.
And yet with all this thematic development, character dynamics, and circular narrative, fun is indeed one of the great pleasures of this season. The thematic heavy lifting doesn’t get in the way of this being an entertaining show, and it never becomes ponderously self-important. As a rule the most developed aspects of the season are layered throughout its episodes and very rarely do we get a moment where an episode will stop to give us a big This Is The Point speech. That suggests the show has figured out how to deal with more complex narrative and emotional stakes without sacrificing what it is that people want from an action-adventure show in the first place. Nowhere is this better realized in the transcendently perfect “Living Witness”, which manages to turn in a hugely enjoyable episode while dealing with aspects of history, perception, fact, development of society, prejudice… all without lecturing or hectoring the audience. It’s just… well, fun. It’s entertaining. It’s funny. It’s exciting. If ever there was an episode that manages to encapsulate the achievements that this year of television has delivered then it’s “Living Witness”.
But I’ll end this little summary with an admission. I’m glad to be done with Season Four. That’s at least in part for personal reasons – I broke off writing this for a few months around “Year Of Hell” so it feels like I’ve been writing about this season for ages, even though it’s not actually any longer than Season Two or Three. But it’s also the season that I’m most familiar with in terms of the episodes. There’s just so many classics in there (“Scorpion”, “Year Of Hell”, “Living Witness”), or just straight-up excellent episodes (“The Omega Directive”, “The Killing Game”, “Prey”) that its almost certainly the season I’ve gone back to most often. So yes. Season Four is an absolute triumph for both Star Trek and Voyager, greatly expanding the show and the characters, and delivering everything you could possibly ask for in a season. I’m glad I can just enjoy it again, rather than having to analyse it, but I’m also happy to be moving on to some slightly less familiar material.
Here’s to Season Five!
Weapon on loan from The Black Hole collection
As a title, "Hope And Fear" is not exactly subtle in suggesting what this episode is going to be about, but as a summation of the episode it is both succinct and accurate. In many ways the title's relation to the episode is the same as the episode's relation to the season it concludes - a neat summary of everything the crew have gone through while setting things up to go forward, though most unusually without a cliffhanger into Season Five. Season Three concluded a break-neck pace, but Season Four takes a more measured approach, which feels appropriate for what has turned out to be a more turbulent season, but which has nevertheless dramatically improved the qualitative aspects of the show.
The experiences of "One", it is possible to conclude, might not have quite led Seven to the conclusions that we assume it would. Far from her feeling more integrated into the crew, we instead get to see her as petulant and stubborn as we ever we have, or at least since the early days of coming aboard the ship. We might speculate that this is because, put in a situation she that almost killer her she didn't, in fact, die, but in fact both survived and completed her mission. Rather than give her a more humble perspective the initial scenes of this episode suggest she's gone in entirely the other direction - her survival seems to have convinced her of her superiority. She is Borg. Butting heads with Janeway in this context thus makes sense - after their increasing understanding of each other, an event has occurred which has caused Seven to move away and Janeway neither likes nor, really, understands it, and it produces unforced, natural conflict between the show's two strongest characters. As Seven's development over the season has produced the strongest character arc Voyager has yet seen, so her arc over this episode reflects that development, and, come the end of the episode when she's face with the very real prospect of being forced to re-join the Collective, the penny finally drops - for all her arrogant assertion of superiority, she really doesn't want to go back to being a drone. Forced to face up to the reality of what she is expounding, she backs down. She lost a lot when she was severed from the Collective, but by actively resisting the return to the Borg it's made clear that what she has gained is so very much more than what she lost, even when she is filled with uncertainty, doubt and... fear. This really does come across as a mirco-version of the arc she's experienced over the previous twenty-five episode, yet it doesn't feel like a simple reiteration of it - rather it feels like a conclusion to it, and when Seven is forced to face up to the reality of what re-integration with the Collective really means it's a powerful moment for her character, but it's also progressive in where it pushes her character to. She will in the future assert "I am Borg" as a mark of superiority, but she will never again have it suggested that the logical extension of that statement is a desire to return to what she was. She may fear what the future holds but the fear of losing the humanity she has regained, so hard won, is the more powerful terror. Her fear has been faced down, and she can now move on from it.
The message from Starfleet, received half a season ago, carries a lot of symbolic weight. This is the first season Voyager has made actual, unambiguous contact with the Alpha Quadrant, so the weight of this symbol is heavy indeed, and we've previously explored how much this means to the crew. It represents everything they have spent the entire show struggling for - home, family, security, a place in the world. It's a clever time to have its decoding be during the final act of the season, and of course it could never fulfil what every crewmember so desperately hoped it would. The weight of expectation on the message was always going to be unequal to anything it could contain, yet to have it decoded (by a conveniently-passing language expert) and deliver just what the crew wants to hear is a great conceit - we know that it can't really be what it claims to be at face value, because that way narrative collapse lies, so the game of the episode is, really, what is the message? What is the Dauntless? To have the (suddenly not conveniently-passing) language expert be motivated by revenge for the events of "Scorpion" is a terrific piece of motivation, and it gives a lovely circular narrative to the whole season, whereby actions taken in the past (nine months in the past, according to Janeway) have a direct bearing on the present. Janeway wasn't wrong when she concluded that the threat from Species 8472 was potentially even greater than the Borg, but the reason this is so successful is that the points here aren't belaboured - we again get to see the larger canvas that Voyager plays out over, and hear of events off-screen that suggest a galaxy much larger than the bits we get to see on a week-to-week basis, but the important detail here is that these events are allowed to stand as something which self-evidently happen, rather than being over-explained to us. Voyager always works well when it's written on this kind of broader canvas, so to meet a member of a species who has been affected by the events of the show but which we haven't directly witnessed, gives Arcturus a whole history and past that motivates his character while at the same time allowing for relatively little in the way of back-story or exposition. His back-story is really the show's back-story, and, as with "One", "Hope And Fear" is able to use Voyager's own history as something material rather than abstract, and without it just becoming a tedious continuity-ticking exercise. One of the key aspects "Hope And Fear" grasps is that history, recent or ancient, affects everything, and its use here is the perfect example of just how much more ambition Season Four has than any of the three preceding it.
But, again as with "One", what's also clear is that the show is able to deliver these kinds of parallels and reflections while at the same time being able to deliver an entertaining episode that doesn't over-sell its concept at the cost of being actually enjoyable. This isn't quite a full embrace of either Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic (it's paced too thoughtfully for that) nor is it a full ensemble piece (since it really centres round Seven and Janeway, even though everyone else basically gets something relevant to do). Rather, although this is a meditation on the season that it’s concluding, the episode still manages to find fun ways into what it is it’s actually meditating on. So, for example, there’s just something very cool about the Dauntless in both its interior and exterior design, which helps to drive audience expectations – we want this ship to be what it seems to be, a cool bit of starship porn with a new super-fast engine (and there’s something rather pleasing that we’ve heard of slipstream drives before, so this isn’t some out-of-the-bag fudge for this episode, but something previously established). That makes it fun when the script starts playing around with what the Dauntless actually is as opposed to what it seems to be. The ship itself symbolizes everything that the crew have been questing for – a way home - but the subversion of that symbol still has to carry enough thematic weight as to not make the whole exercise seem like a false set-up. In this Arcturus’s motivations and actions have to ring true so his revenge motivation works, and this allows the episode to remain entertaining while still allowing Arcturus’s own experiences to be understandable and relatable. This isn’t a moustache-twirling loony, it’s a desperately hurt and damaged individual who thinks he’s finally found a way to gain at least some measure of dignity in revenge. Of course, this being Star Trek quests for revenge never end well, so seeing Arcturus surrounded by the Borg, forced to realize what a waste of time and effort his revenge has been, makes his actions seem lamentable, but never contemptible and always relatable. That keeps his engagement with the rest of the episode, even as he works against Our Heroes, and Arcturus remains an intriguing, engaging (if a little underplayed) character that really helps move the episode along.
There’s no cliffhanger here. “Hope And Fear” ends with Janeway and Seven attempting to come to an understanding while playing Velocity together, just as they did at the start of the episode. “Hope And Fear” is a meditative episode, and in eschewing the usual action-adventure blow-out most seasons end with, stands as a markedly different, and successful, way of bringing a season to its conclusion. In its own way that’s really rather daring – there’s no hook to draw viewers back in when the next season kicks off – and instead shows faith that the viewers will understand what this kind of ending represents. Everything this season set out to do is brought full circle, and, with a flash of light and a cut to black, Season Four ends.
It’s been really, really good.
Any Other Business:
• Ryan is up to her usual high standards this week, but in an entirely different way from her fragile/strength dichotomy from the previous episode, getting more and more irritated with the perceived failings of those around her. Her irritation at Janeway during the Velocity match is especially good, and though different, so is her final admission that she really doesn’t want to return to the Collective.
• The Dauntless is a really nice piece of design. The “warp core” consisting of a plasma globe that would have looked cheap and dated when TNG debuted, is not.
• It’s a bit silly, but I like the fact that Arcturus’s ears are really far back on his skull, making what’s a fairly standard latex-alien-head look just that little bit different. It’s a nice attention to detail.
• Something something Voyager can’t use this particular iteration of slipstream technology again. Uh, Ok.
• Though I mentioned it in the review, I’d like to reiterate how great the circular narrative of this season is, bringing back and dealing with the consequences of “Scorpion” while still moving forward from them, and it also ties in with “Year Of Hell”’s literally circular narrative for Annorax, as he repeats his own actions ad infinitum, unable to escape his own ironic temporal date.
• I’m fine with the no-cliffhanger ending to this season, though I know not all fans are. I think “Hope And Fear” does its job more than well enough to justify taking an alternative approach to the season conclusion, so all praise, really, for not trying to shoehorn in some last-minute plot-twist as a hook into the next season, but rather letting this stand on its own merits.
Season Four Summary
Season Four cast
Kes leaves, Seven joins, Harry stays. That’s the essence of this season, and while naturally this doesn’t describe everything that happens it gets at the key components of what is, thus far, Voyager’s best season. That Season Four continues the arc of improvement that ranged throughout Season Three (and it very much does), then it also alters some of the components of what Season Three did to stretch at the boundaries of what the show could achieve. The conflict that Seven introduced into the crew is perhaps the most obvious example of it – Season Three was comparatively plain sailing, crew-wise, even with the break-up of Neelix and Kes. This worked well for a season that really needed to find a way forward for Voyager but it wasn’t necessarily something that needed to be continued in terms of development over the long term. Seven’s arrival changed all that, and the conflict she introduces into the crew shifts the dynamic away from the safety of Season Three into other directions entirely. This is an extremely significant development for Voyager in the long term, and we‘ll get to it in a moment, but first I want to talk about narrative circularity.
Because the narrative and thematic through-line of Season Four has been stronger than it ever has in Voyager’s past, and it immediately gives this season a resonance that’s lacking in the first three seasons in hindsight. “Scorpion” and “Hope And Fear” sit at either end of the season, one a big action-adventure set-piece and the other a contemplative meditation on what that big set-piece wrought. And within the season we have plenty of interactions with the events of “Scorpion” – most obviously the return of Species 8472 in “Prey”, but thematically the consequences of one’s actions and taking responsibility for them remains a constant throughout the season. Annorax is almost sociopathically incapable of taking responsibility for his actions (however much he suggests otherwise), and is punished with a The Twilight Zone-esque ironic punishment of never being able to escape his own fate. We see, in “The Killing Game”, how the Hirogen who are unable to take responsibility for their actions in the Hunt are condemning themselves to a future of extinction. “Random Thoughts” is about taking responsibility for ones thoughts. And so on. How does Janeway fit in to this? Well, she does take responsibility for her own actions, and by owning them is also able to move beyond them. When confronted by Arcturus in “Hope And Fear” over her supposed arrogance in allying herself with the Borg she is unapologetic. It’s not that she is insisting her actions are right or wrong, but rather faced with a choice she made the only one she felt she could. By using the final episode of the season to have this acknowledged – that one has to own the responsibility of ones actions – we have an explicit conclusion to the implicit through-line of the season. This simply isn’t the kind of thematic juggling that Voyager has show itself capable of until now, so to see such a development handled so well really helps to bring everything this season set out to do to a successful conclusion. This is what I mean when I saw that Season Four expands the range of what the show is capable of. By opening and concluding with these thematic statements, while including plenty of episodes which re-enforce it without smacking us round the head with it, there’s a genuine subtlety and intelligence to the process of constructing the season, and this expansion of what Voyager can do is exhilarating.
And part of that expansion is, naturally, Seven. I think I’ve probably talked enough about why she’s such an important, feminist character, but it is absolutely worth restating. Seven is a terrific character – second only to Janeway in terms of Voyager’s explicitly feminist agenda – and her recovery from trauma, the time taken to deliver this, and the constantly developing story of that recovery, is what makes her such great character, but it’s also what allows her to develop the show itself. The arc she’s give over the course of this season, and the impact she has on the crew, is part of the expanding of Voyager’s emotional palette as well as its narrative one. We’ve seen B’Elanna and Janeway have the beginnings of a mother/daughter relationship, and we saw a more fully expanded version of this between Kes and Janeway, but both of these pale next to the way this is developed with Seven. The fire and spark that Seven brings immediately shakes things up in terms of the crew dynamics, of course, but it also gives Janeway someone much more challenging to play against, and it’s of immediate benefit to both the character and Kate Mulgrew. Some of her best moments are when she’s facing off with Ryan, and both actors are just automatically better when they’re in scenes together (just look how easily Ryan dominates Wang, for example, when Harry tries his unsuccessful attempts at flirting on her). By giving Janeway someone who can kick back against her, while also still remaining outside the crew, and also someone they come to rely on, we see an entirely new dynamic, and it’s one that Mulgrew seems to relish and Ryan seems to throw herself at. The continuing, ever-evolving, relationship between them is one of Season Four’s highlights, and while it’s clear that one facet of this development ends with “Hope And Fear” it’s important that this is never posited as a conclusion to their development. Rather, it suggests the ending of one phase while being ready to move forward into another. But also, crucially, they never forget that Seven is also a fun character to hang out with, so her extremely dry wit, for example, stops her becoming either too po-faced or self-serious, and as it develops it widens what can be done with the character, so dropping her into da Vinci’s study while the Doctor ponces about in tights during “Scientific Method” can only work if we know she has a sense of humour to make the character function in that environment. She even gets odd jokes, like the exchange between her and Janeway in “Hope And Fear”:
Janeway: “I’m your captain. That means I can’t always be your friend. Understand?”
Seven: “No. However, if we are assimilated, then our thoughts will become one, and I am sure I will understand perfectly.”
Ha! It’s another lovely moment from the Ryan and Mulgrew playbook and, while showing just how far Seven has come over the season, also keeps pushing at the limits of what you can do with Seven as a character as her recovery continues, yet demonstrating that, yes, this is a fun person to hang out with as well. She has character, and dimension, and agency. What more could you ask for?
But a quick hypothetical digression. What would this season have looked like had, as I suggested back in the Season Three summary, it been Harry, rather than Kes, that got the elbow? Short answer: better. Wang is still struggling to find anything interesting to do with Harry, whereas by contrast even her two episodes during this season it’s obvious just how good Lien is at delivering the revised, Season Three, version of her character. Wang has a few good moments here (“Demon”, surprisingly) but for the most part he’s still just standing at the back of the bridge. Rather than Harry’s crude attempts at seduction, I think it would have been genuinely fascinating to watch some real scenes between Kes and Seven, and see them exploring a character dynamic together. Certainly it would be far removed from the mother/daughter bond both women shared with Janeway, and it’s easy to imagine Kes’s gentle compassion spilling over into frustration at Seven’s stubbornness, or Seven’s blank lack of understanding at Kes’s view of the universe. And of course both women are orphaned from their culture – Seven forcefully, Kes voluntarily – which could provide some extremely fertile ground for comparisons and development. Obviously this isn’t what we get – and that’s the only part of Season Four that feels like a shame. That could have been something really special.
And yet with all this thematic development, character dynamics, and circular narrative, fun is indeed one of the great pleasures of this season. The thematic heavy lifting doesn’t get in the way of this being an entertaining show, and it never becomes ponderously self-important. As a rule the most developed aspects of the season are layered throughout its episodes and very rarely do we get a moment where an episode will stop to give us a big This Is The Point speech. That suggests the show has figured out how to deal with more complex narrative and emotional stakes without sacrificing what it is that people want from an action-adventure show in the first place. Nowhere is this better realized in the transcendently perfect “Living Witness”, which manages to turn in a hugely enjoyable episode while dealing with aspects of history, perception, fact, development of society, prejudice… all without lecturing or hectoring the audience. It’s just… well, fun. It’s entertaining. It’s funny. It’s exciting. If ever there was an episode that manages to encapsulate the achievements that this year of television has delivered then it’s “Living Witness”.
But I’ll end this little summary with an admission. I’m glad to be done with Season Four. That’s at least in part for personal reasons – I broke off writing this for a few months around “Year Of Hell” so it feels like I’ve been writing about this season for ages, even though it’s not actually any longer than Season Two or Three. But it’s also the season that I’m most familiar with in terms of the episodes. There’s just so many classics in there (“Scorpion”, “Year Of Hell”, “Living Witness”), or just straight-up excellent episodes (“The Omega Directive”, “The Killing Game”, “Prey”) that its almost certainly the season I’ve gone back to most often. So yes. Season Four is an absolute triumph for both Star Trek and Voyager, greatly expanding the show and the characters, and delivering everything you could possibly ask for in a season. I’m glad I can just enjoy it again, rather than having to analyse it, but I’m also happy to be moving on to some slightly less familiar material.
Here’s to Season Five!
