Season 6 Ep 8 /9 "One Small Step" / "The Voyager Conspiracy"

Season Six, Episode 8 – "One Small Step"


Module Never Walk Alone


"Voyager engages in some historiography" does not, on the face of it, seem like an obvious approach for the show to be taking at this point in its own history, yet that's exactly what "One Small Step" represents, a genuine attempt to grapple with the idea of writing history. That's what historiography basically is – the writing and methodology of history – and in this respect it's Janeway who gets the key line here, when pointing out to Seven that one of the great joys of the discovery of the Aries module is that they themselves become part of its history, that they write themselves into the ongoing narrative of history itself. Seven, naturally, is sceptical – she's literally given the line "history is irrelevant" at one point – yet it becomes clear just how wrong she is. Seven becomes part of history here as well, as the only human who steps foot on the module before it's lost again, and as the person who retrieves Lieutenant John Kelly's body so that it can be given a proper burial in space and the respect it deserves. This is not, come the end of the episode, the actions of someone who still finds history irrelevant.

This is the second time in recent Voyager history that the show has attempted to grapple with the idea of discovering history- the other being the more experimental but less narratively reliable "11:59", and it again proves to be fertile ground for the show to cover. Explorations of future history give a sense of progression that helps anchor the sci-fi fights of fancy to the present, and as a result the continuity of history is re-enforced. History isn't something that stops simply because we're the ones travelling through it at this particular moment, and that's where the emphasis of "One Small Step" lies. Everyone believed that the history of Lieutenant Kelly ended the day his module was struck by the anomaly, understandably, but that's not what happened. His history continued, and he worked, gathering data, right up until the moment of his death (indeed likely even past that moment, since he shuts down life support in order to keep the recorders running). And then, after the re-discovery of the module, his history begins again, albeit only briefly. This is how history functions in the real world – it's not a smooth, linear narrative that fits convenient, pre-defined expectations, but instead is made up for fits and starts, and parts that don't fit easily into our beliefs or preconceptions. That lack of linearity to history is what Seven really learns about in this episode – in her closing speech over Kelly's body, she points out that had she come across him as a Borg she would have found his technology primitive and unworthy of assimilation, and that makes sense because in one sense the Borg obliterate history itself – they are the opposite of history. They take entire cultures and worlds and mark a definitive end-point for them, exterminating everything that makes a people unique so that they may be absorbed into the Collective itself (and like all great dictators who seek to control history, we've seen the Borg Queen manipulate perspective to try and bend history to her will). Earlier in the episode, Chakotay also points out that Seven never developed a relationship with history herself because the Borg took that from her, so by the end of the episode we see another facet of Seven's humanity restored to her – she has a personal understanding of history in contrast with where she stood at the beginning of the episode. Chakotay really does succeed here – he entreats Seven to appreciate the history she's surrounded by, and despite her doubts his perspective is eventually shown to be correct – and she responds to that. Later in the show we know a relationship will develop between these two, and it's easy to believe that "One Small Step" is where the seeds of this relationship are first sown. Seven develops a genuinely new understanding and appreciation for Chakotay and his outlook here, and she acknowledges this.

And, much though this episode is about Seven, it's one that deals with Chakotay extremely competently as well. His character has the depth and, yes, wisdom to understand what it is they've discovered, but we get to explore lots of interesting little nooks and crannies around his personality, none of which are overplayed (and, perhaps significantly, not specifically tied to his heritage) but which do nevertheless paint a broader picture of the man than we usually get. The idea that he'd know about Kelly, or have an interest in palaeontology all align with what we know of him – we've seen his interest in archaeology, we know he's interested in the construction of history – even as they're not something we've seen specifically referred to before, so it feels like a worthwhile expansion of his character resting on traits which have already been established. That he refers to his sense of duty always getting in the way of what he genuinely wanted to do with his life helps to re-enforce this without overselling it, so working for the Maquis or Janeway aren't things he has a problem with, while still acknowledging that they're not everything to him and that there's space in his life for more – a sharp piece of characterization for him (again, especially since we know that "space in his life for more" will end up being a relationship with Seven). He even gets little moments of humour (having to jump out of his quarters because his doors are malfunctioning) and command (ordering Tom to tow the module) which refer to the character in more familiar terms, helping to ground him in the character we already know while still allowing him to grow and expand elsewhere. Beltran is terrific in his episode – he has a real rapport with Ryan which helps his gentle persuading of her to see beyond her own assumptions, but though Seven is more the focus here than Chakotay, Beltran is great throughout, and deserves some very real praise for what he does with the material. One of the weaknesses of Chakotay has been the tendency for the character to get stuck with fairly uninspiring material, but when given a decent calibre of material the character can really shine, and "One Small Step" demonstrates how great he can be.

One of the pleasures of this whole project has been having my own assumptions challenged and coming into it I, along with a lot of people I suspect, was ready to be seriously unimpressed by Chakotay, yet actually I've really come to like him, and that's in no small part because of Beltran rather than the way the character has necessarily been written. The character's had a few terrific moments of late – this episode, "Equinox", "The Fight" - and it really feels like he's gaining momentum, and it's wonderful to see. Beltran is almost the only actor in the regular cast who by default underplays everything, and that can sometimes mean as a result that Chakotay gets a bit swamped out by the characters that surround him (Jennifer Lien did this too, and to similar results). Yet the act of watching Chakotay episodes (well, at least the non-Native American based ones, because even I'm not trying to mount a defence of those) feels at odds with the character's reputation, and there's a lot of subtlety and nuance to the way Beltran delivers him. When he needs to yell and someone he's terrific at it (again, the scene here when he orders Tom to tow the module), but the older, more thoughtful side of the character is really where the heart of Chakotay lies, and when given a story that supports that reading of the character Beltran takes full advantage and turns in some really great work. So while it's understandable that "One Small Step" is more remembered for the character progression that Seven goes through, it shouldn't be remembered for that alone – Seven and Chakotay are almost equal here, Seven getting just a little more time, but it's him that helps her find another part of her humanity (not, significantly, Janeway this time out, despite her "encouraging" Seven to volunteer), and it's as much his story as it is hers. In case it's not clear, "One Small Step" is a fantastic episode – by miles the best of Season Six so far, even given how excellent "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" is – and it's the grounded, intelligent approach to, and understanding of, history and it's basically flawless approach to character that makes it such a triumph for the show. Just like Lieutenant Kelly, "One Small Step" deserves to be remembered, because it's really earned its right to be.



Any Other Business:

• I've seen "One Small Step" before, obviously, and always thought it was great but I was completely and utterly bowled over by it this time. Top ten episode.

• While the effects work inside the anomaly are generally terrific, there's no escaping the fact that the exterior looks like a giant lemon. While it's a strikingly different approach to designing an anomaly from the usual maelstroms or whatever... it still looks like a giant lemon.

• I mean, obviously among all the strong character work, this episode is arguing for the importance of the space program, which is about as Star Trek as you could hope for.

• I kept the praise in the review largely focussed on Beltran, because he really deserves it here, but Ryan is as excellent as ever. This episode marks a small but significant shift in Seven thanks to what happens to he here, which will be explored throughout the remaining two seasons.

• Also some praise for this week's lone guest star of note, Trek perennial Phil Morris, who does strong work with Kelly.

• A couple of nice jokes from Seven, especially "using humour to resolve tense situations".

• The debris field inside the anomaly is very well realized, with random bits of space junk drifting past leisurely.

• So after the big discussion around bafflegab in the last episode, here we're presented with lots of it all over again. It mostly works here (dark matter is a real thing, something emerging from subspace we've seen before) and it just about keeps on the right side of overload.

• Lovely moment when Seven picks up the photo from the module's dashboard, looks at it, then decides to replace it.

• Neelix is present for the ceremony at the end of the episode, but he has exactly zero lines here.

• And Seven's closing speech over Kelly's body in the torpedo tube is quite, quite lovely, and perfectly delivered by Jeri Ryan.



Season Six, Episode 9 - "The Voyager Conspiracy"


"And I once built a catapult this big!"   "Uh-huh..."


From the sublime to the ridiculous. "The Voyager Conspiracy" is a light-hearted riff on, well, conspiracy theories, using Voyager's own history as a jumping off point to construct any number of wildly implausible ideas based on a random assemblage of facts, inferences, guesses and co-incidences. It's mostly a fun romp, it's mostly entertaining, and it's an engaging piece of fluff which seeks to entertain, which it does. There's a bit of character work – Seven's arrogance that she can complete her alcove upgrade without any assistance is very similar to the Doctor making the same mistake when he tries to modify his program - but it's not really a character-heavy piece, nor is it trying for any big revelations, beyond the fairly obvious "Seven isn't perfect, y'know". Yet the obsession with history and its methodology that was present in "One Small Step" is present here, and indeed Seven's wild speculations regarding why the ship is really in the Delta Quadrant sees her indulging in her own form of historiography, as she tries to write, or more accurately re-write, the history of the ship based on existing evidence but different interpretations of that evidence. It’s a form of abductive reasoning – trying to logically extrapolate a from an endpoint what the start point would be. It does not, it would be fair to say, go according to plan.

Seven is certainly the right character to base an episode like this round – indeed, as she joined the crew at the beginning of Season Four she is in fact the only character this kind of story could be built around. Because she was absent for the first three seasons there is obviously a big chunk of history that she wasn't present for, and so therefore has to try and reconstruct. The success rate of this reconstruction is... not high, so the idea that she might be able to speculate on the motivations of, say, Kes, who is now long gone from the crew, on the basis of just a couple of lines from Neelix about her always having quite an imagination to us makes no sense. Kes was prone to many things but random flights of fancy wasn't one of them, and had Seven ever properly met her, it might lead her to question her own assumptions. Or maybe it wouldn't, because obviously Seven is malfunctioning here, and her desperate attempts to force order onto the chaos of the information she's trying to process would be unlikely to stop based on something as straightforward as mere facts. That "order into chaos" is a nice little reductive description of the Borg, and though the episode (to its benefit) doesn't lean too hard into this, the fact that we're given another example of Seven trying to live up to the standards of the Borg and once again falling short emphasises her continued move towards humanity and away from the Collective – a gentler version of the big character shift that happened during "One Small Step", in fact.

Seven's theories are, of course, ridiculous, but one of the nice concepts that "The Voyager Conspiracy" gets right is just how insidious the idea of a conspiracy can be. Nobody really believes anything that Seven comes up with, because it's all so patently ridiculous, but... well there's that element of doubt, and it's in that field that the ideas of the conspiracy can grow and flourish. When rattling off facts for Chakotay to convince him of her outlandish theory after he's dismissed it, she asks him, "can you be absolutely certain?" His reply is that no, he can't be absolutely certain, but again, this is where conspiracy theories can grow. You don't need to be absolutely certain, that's why legally the expression "beyond reasonable doubt" exists. Proving anything at all as an absolute is next to impossible, but proving something to the extent that any alternative seems so vanishingly improbable is possible. Is it impossible that this was some clandestine Starfleet/Cardassian mission to infiltrate the Delta Quadrant? No, of course not, and we've seen enough barmy members of Starfleet to know that someone's probably thought of it one time, perhaps on a bored Thursday afternoon while waiting for 5-00pm to roll round. But is it likely? No. Janeway points out that Seven has built a house of cards, but even a house of cards needs something to rest on, and that's where the damage is done. In real life, of course, conspiracies function in the same way – Elvis probably isn't living in [insert town here] doing [insert job here], you don't need jet fuel to melt steel for the Twin Towers to collapse, we don't really know what happened around JFK's assassination, the Queen probably didn't order Princess Diana's assassination. But in all of those examples there's just that teeny element of doubt which exists to allow people to deceive themselves into thinking it might just be possible. That's why Chakotay and Janeway end up in Seven's alcove, both armed, both wary of each other, and both utterly wrong. Because once the seed of doubt has been placed, it can be extremely hard to dislodge.

Yet like all conspiracy theories, the point is that when looked at rationally, for even a moment, they collapse. Just like Seven's does. None of it makes any sense, but there's a sort of momentum to it once it really gets started, even though it's nonsensical. There is one fact – the inexplicable maybe-a-tractor-beam she sees when the Caretaker's array was destroyed, and everything rests on and is extrapolated out from that. But the one thing that a conspiracy theory can't stand up to is rational analysis. This is just the simple laws of probability. If there was a vast conspiracy right now – say that the White House colluded to destroy the Twin Towers as an excuse to justify a war in Iraq – the chances of it remaining secret are virtually nil. Secrecy is the Achilles Heel of all conspiracy theories. Someone would leak. Or make a mistake. Or say the wrong thing. A conspiracy of that magnitude would require thousands, or tens of thousands, of people to always, forever remain silent on the biggest scandal of the age. In fact, forget the laws of probability, simple human nature just wouldn't stand for it. Someone would say something (there's even an equation now to work out how long a conspiracy would remain secret for, given certain factors). The probability isn't reduced to zero, but it fails "beyond reasonable doubt". So the improbability of Seven's theories become part of the standard conspiracy theory set-up, and become part of its collapse as well.

Because if secrecy is the Achilles Heel of all conspiracies, Janeway understands well enough the one other thing that breaks any conspiracy theory – facts. Facts wont stop everyone believing – see anyone who believes in chemtrails for one, or how any amount of scientific data can be used to prove climate change yet some still deny it – but to any rational mind facts will crumble any conspiracy theory. "The Voyager Conspiracy" understands this well, which is why the episode spends many scenes having Seven rattle off "fact" after "fact", yet concludes in the Delta Flyer with Janeway calmly laying out her facts, calmly and reasonably. Indeed there's a lovely contrast here in both the writing and direction – when Seven machine-guns out evidence in favour of her theories, she does it at great speed and relentlessly, so there's no time to pause and take stock of what she's said, but when Janeway refutes Seven she does it slowly, calmly and, yes, rationally. Seven has time to consider the words, and ultimately that's what gets through to her. Rationality winning out over doubt and suspicion feels like an incredibly Star Trek approach to conspiracy theories, because of course Star Trek, with its decades-long exhortations on the worth of science and exploration, is going to adopt a position for rationality. There's a certain amount of fun to be had here, as Seven plays around with the history of the show she now finds herself in, but this episode also makes it clear the kind of damage a conspiracy theory can inflict. Yes it's fun to play around with the facts, and yes there's a real understanding of how history functions here to make this work as a successful episode, but the fact that there's a real threat underlying all this, the physical threat to Seven and the potential damage that could have been done between Janeway and Chakotay, helps to give the episode that little bit more bite than if it were just a straightforward romp. Well, that's probably true. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe... I just made it all up?



Any Other Business:

• This is now the third episode in a row, and the fifth this season, to really engage with the idea of history as more than just "something that's happened". It's a refreshingly different approach to take as an ongoing part of the series, while also of course being a great piece of fun in the first half of this episode.

• The use of Voyager's own history is really smart here, and Seven's theories weave in everything from the Caretaker, to Chakotay's problems with Seska, to Kes's imagination, to great results.

• It's also a smart enough script to use the fact that Neelix has a history which extends back beyond the arrival of Voyager as a key element in Seven's theory-building. This is almost the first script to do this, and it's very beneficial to Neelix, reminding us that he had a whole life going on before Janeway and the Caretaker intervened.

• Though only really in the first third of the episode, Tash, the alien who constructed the catapult, is a lovely presence – there's no threat at all this week, and his inclusion is both sweet and charming.

• I quite like the few occasions we get to see Janeway and Chakotay having dinner together, and the fact that they're quite definitely doing it as friends and comrades, and nothing else.

• So one question does remain unanswered by the time the credits roll – what was the beam that Seven saw when the Caretaker's array was destroyed? It's never actually explained.

• OK this time out Naomi's inclusion is a bit pointless, and we don't really need to have the theme of the episode laid out in quite so much detail as we get, with Seven pointing out that the quality of data is more important than quantity. But she does also say that you need to know how to interpret the data you do have correctly, which is quite a neat summation of the process of redemptive reviewing. It's not just what you watch, it's how you interpret it. Thanks, Seven!

• "You didn't poison the coffee, did you?" "Not any more than I usually do".