Season 6 Ep 10 / 11 "Pathfinder" / "Fair Haven"

Season Six, Episode 10 - "Pathfinder"


Reg-imented


In which Troi saves the day. As much as anything, "Pathfinder" stands as another entry into Season Six's "nice try" category. It is, like a few of the most recent episodes, by no means bad, and it makes a real attempt at doing something narratively interesting by providing us with another perspective on Voyager rambling through the Delta Quadrant, but it's equally by no means a triumph either. At the heart of the issue here really is Reg Barclay, ported over wholesale from TNG. He's still the same old Reg, and that, here, is the problem.

I'm all in favour, obviously, of reviewing things as they stand, but "Pathfinder" intentionally invokes the past with the presence of both Reg, and everyone's favourite councillor, Deanna Troi. Troi largely works in this context, and Reg largely struggles, which is unfortunate since the episode rests on him, with her being more of a guest in "The Reginald Barclay Show". And it's not that Reg (or Dwight Schultz, slipping easily back into the role) is bad, it's just that we've seen everything Reg does here before, and if you're trying to use your episode to provide a new narrative perspective on the existing characters that's a problem. If your principal character is just jumping through the same old hoops, repeating the same old character tics, how can he be there to represent the possibility of a new perspective? The answer is he can't, and that's a pity because standing right next to him is a symbol of how this can work. Troi, and Marina Sirtis, took a long time to come into focus in TNG - at least until Season Five, possibly a bit later – but when both the show and Sirtis herself found a way of playing the character just that little bit differently she suddenly came alive in ways the character hadn't up to that point. There's not, on paper, a vast difference between the Deanna Troi of Season Seven and Season Three, but the way Sirtis plays it (more relaxed, a little more gently scathing, sarcastic, and of course in uniform) does absolute wonders for the character, and as I've mentioned when reviewing the TNG movies, as far as I'm concerned she's the MPV of the films hands down, despite having comparatively little screen time. Troi's appearance here continues this trend – this is definitely the more confident, enjoyable character we get in the films, and Sirtis is still playing Troi as someone who has discovered a real love for what she does, and for the people who are around her. It's lovely to see, and she's a charming, engaging on-screen presence, and she represents the shift in perspective – the development of character. This stands in stark contrast to Reg, who gets exactly the same character beats he always gets. Indeed the script goes out of its way to draw our attention to this, remarking that the time he spends in the holo-recreation of Voyager suggests his previous struggles with holo-addiction. A relapse into a previous condition could prove fruitful grounds for a bit of character movement or to tackle a particular type of issue, but then the script blows it by pointing out that actually it's not really a relapse at all, it's just everything we've seen from Barclay before, but now during an episode of Voyager rather than an episode of TNG.

And if all this seems a bit pedantic, well the thing is that the whole episode hangs off Reg, so for the episode to work, he has to work. Though the last ten minutes are above Voyager again, the first half hour is exclusively about Reg – it's basically just one stop short of being a workplace comedy starring a stuttering engineer from the future. Some bits of it are quite funny – the chase through the holographic version of the ship, for example – some bits are touching, some bits are cringe-inducing... everything you'd expect from a Reg episode. And again, that's the core problem. There's just nothing new here. The few new details that we do get aren't even especially Reg-centric (apart from him no longer being on the Enterprise). It's nice to spend a little time with Admiral Paris, and having a parent be present in this way, "hanging over" as it were a member of the regular crew, is a new thing for Voyager, though of course we've seen Deanna's mother in TNG and Sisko's father in DS9. He's a bit of a blowhard, but basically kind-hearted, and while that's fine it's a fairly peripheral detail (we'll gloss over the co-incidence of it being Tom's father conveniently in charge of the Pathfinder project by just assuming since his son was lost he pulled strings to be in that position after the events of "Message In A Bottle"). We see how much it means to the Voyager crew once we get around to actually having them in the plot, and of course it's going to be a big moment for the whole crew when they manage to make contact, and of course it's good that there's a personal contact to help define just what this means for everyone but... (and you knew there was a but coming)… but this episode isn't really about the Voyager crew, so having their reactions tucked away at the end of the episode doesn't really do this episode any favours. It's brave, commendable even, to wait that long, but it's not an attempt that quite comes off. There's going to be follow-ups to the events that happen here, so it's not like there won't be a chance to explore all of this further, but again sticking to our "seen as intended" principal, this means things are left feeling rather unbalanced.

But it absolutely wasn't a bad idea to try this. There's a huge jump in narrative perspective here, more than on any other episode of Voyager up to this point, and that's something which is worthy of considerable praise. It's a daring stance to take, in fact, and like "Course: Oblivion" it takes so long for the actual crew to arrive you wonder at certain points if they're ever actually going to. And of course you have to trust that your audience is smart enough to understand why this is worth doing and that they wont switch off halfway through, so points for taking that chance as well. It's also not hard to work out why they thought bringing back a semi-recurring character from a previous show would be a good idea – it bypasses a lot of the need to explain stuff so we can get onto the more interesting ideas in the story but without selling the episode short, and Reg is a popular enough character to make him worth a return to (apart from the holographic appearance we've already seen in Voyager of course, back in "Projections"). After all, he's not someone that's been over-explored in terms of his character, we know he's an engineer, we know he can make intuitive and occasionally brilliant leaps, and he's probably a lot cheaper to hire than LeVar Burton. So he's not the wrong character for this, not at all. So that all makes perfect sense.

So why not do more with him? That's the big unanswered question here, because there's time, and there's space, and there's cause. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, though as I said at the beginning, Troi does rather save the day. Because for all of the shortfalls that Reg has, Troi is just delightful every second she's on screen, and that helps in many ways to disguise the inert character work around Reg, because she does so much of the heavy lifting in their scenes together. Sirtis comes off as such an old pro here, which of course she is, and it's that charm that the episode could stand to have a lot more of. As it stands, though, this is OK. It establishes contact with Earth, a theme which will become increasingly significant over the course of the remaining two seasons, and it allows just a little push at the edge of Tom's character – even though he doesn't speak directly to his father, the look of relief that floods over him when he hears him speak for the first time a great tribute to McNeill's work here. Indeed Tom gets more progression than Reg does, despite being on screen for about two minutes flat, which tells you all you need to know.

So yea. Nice try.



Any Other Business:

• Some nice fringe details on display here at least, with the Maquis crew dressed in their non-Starfleet uniforms because of course Reg wouldn't know that they were fully integrated into the crew.

• All the characters agreeing with Reg and holding him up to be the absolute best of the best would be a trifle more effective if we hadn't seen exactly the same thing a few episode's ago in "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy".

• The chase through the holographic Voyager is quite inventive, though as with anything involving holodeck technology it doesn't bare too close inspection.

• I really do adore Troi here – just terrific.

• In an absolutely, genuinely shocking moment that is near-unparalleled in Star Trek history, holodeck safeties are actually seen – on screen no less! - to work.

• The fact that the scientists on Earth are able to work out roughly where Voyager is a bit suspect – how can they possibly work it out when Voyager has been taking shortcuts like the catapult from "The Voyager Conspiracy"? Or were their calculations so wildly off base that they ended up pointing in what ought to have been completely the wrong direction, only for Voyager to actually be there?

• The final scene, where Tom welcomes Reg as an honorary crew-member, is very, very cheesy. And not really in the good way either....



Season Six, Episode 11 – "Fair Haven"


Oh holodeck, the tripe, the tripe is calling...


The Space Irish! Here they are folks, roll up, roll up! The Space Irish are here for your pleasure! Every cliché from the Old Country! Pubs! Fair lassies upon a flower stall! Hot Irish tempers! The poetry of the heart! Yes it's all here and so much more! You can see Dublin from the local castle! And why not take a look at out conveniently-out-of-shot steam engine, whose puffing and whistling invokes the spirit of the Emerald Isle without having to actually spend any money! Did I mention a quick game of rings? Or a down-on-his-luck salt-of-the-earth type who just had a row with his missus, for that extra touch of down-home authenticity! Yes, why not come down and find them all and more at "Fair Haven", a respite for every lazy Irish stereotype imaginable! To be sure, to be sure.

… would be the easy way to deal with this episode, and it's an entirely valid one as well, because... well I mean to say. No banal, obvious cliché is left unturned, like a fine clod of rich Irish soil (gah, even I'm at it now). Not a single one. But this isn't (quite) as wretched as it could be. It's close, mind, but this isn't even in the bottom ten of bad Voyager episodes, and the reason it just, just, just about manages to not be a categorical disaster is because it does two things. Firstly, it frames the town of Fair Haven through the prism of Janeway's repressed feelings, which means that, for all that the characters are obvious and somewhat reductive, the episode does draw attention to that fact very directly (by having Janeway adjust character parameters, and spending a lot of time discussing the manufacturing of the holo-town) in relation to what it is she desires. These aren't real people, even if it's easy to believe that they could be. So by pointing out so directly the fact that they're manufactured it allows the episode to get away with an, ahem, straightforward portrayal in a way that something like, say, TNG's "Up The Long Ladder" can't because in "Up The Long Ladder" the Space Irish are actually meant to be real people, not just characters in a holodeck. It doesn't make their portrayal any less crushingly obvious, but at least it provides a bit of a lampshade as to why, and significantly we see this from Janeway's perspective. Equally, while much (well, all) of what we see in the town is ploddingly obvious, the episode goes out of its way to point out that, just like the characters, it's meant to be ploddingly obvious. This isn't even a holo-novel, where some attention to detail might be expected, this is just Tom mucking around on the holodeck, trying to build somewhere interesting that provides a respite from the years in space. It helps greatly that we've seen Tom do this before - Sandrines and the Talaxian resort programs - so it's not just some unprecedented thing that's been dropped in to the show, and neither of those programs were exactly what you'd call nuanced either, so of course his attempts at drawing up an Irish town from scratch are just as clumsy and the babes-n-himbos of the resort, or the 'Allo 'Allo clichés of Sandrines. Subtlety is almost besides the point.

This isn't so much a low-stakes episode as a no-stakes episode, which is a bit unfortunate, though not for the normal reasons. The attempts to provide a bit of threat this week, in the form of (oh dear) space weather, frankly isn't convincing anyone that there's something remotely dangerous going on, and there's a bit too much bafflegab thrown into the mix to try to sell us the idea of a storm that could actually threaten the ship. The thing is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with writing a no-stakes episode, and "Fair Haven" would be stronger if they'd just admitted that fact and gotten on with the business of writing towards Janeway's desperate need for some kind of companionship, whatever form it comes in, rather than all that wasted time on the bridge. Because, at least from a character perspective, some of the Janeway material has at least a bit of traction. Since we've seen how difficult Janeway finds both the isolation of their circumstances, and the incredible pressure it puts her under, it's logical that she would in some way want to find a release and... well if some tall, poetry-spouting Irish pub owner is her type, who are we to judge? Especially if it stops her going the full Ransom... This idea is explored with the Doctor – again, a logical chose to advise her, both from a holographic and medical perspective – as they bat arguments back and forth while walking round a (very well directed) corridor scene. I'm not that convinced the arguments make much sense – or at least not the sense I think the script is going for. Sullivan is charming, a bit roguish, and (eventually) pretty smart and (eventually) single. And the Doctor defends the possibility of a relationship with him because photons or flesh don’t matter if he makes the captain feel good. Which is all very well, but because the episode goes so far out of its way to point out the fact that Sullivan isn't a real person – he's not an emergent intelligence like the Doctor – the arguments don't hold any water. Or at least if they do, then Sullivan is basically just a sort of emotional...well prostitute is probably a bit strong but, you know. That's really the biggest problem with "Fair Haven". Sullivan isn't real – we're directly told that – so Janeway trying to form an emotional bond is nonsensical, but the episode itself doesn't seem to quite understand that. It misses its own point and thus becomes completely hollow.

But it's a fairly pleasant kind of hollow. Though everything we see is cliché piled on cliché there's almost nothing here that's embarrassing to actually sit through. The closest it comes to being outright bad is the "pub fight" after Sullivan has been drinking over the loss of Janeway, but even then it's a scene which is barely thirty seconds long, and it's still not all that dreadful – we've seen a lot worse. Similarly, while there's not a great spark between Janeway and Sullivan, it's not a complete bust either (certainly they seem like a more convincing couple than, say, Chakotay managed back in "Unforgettable") and at least both character seem to actually like each other. If the great passions and lusts of Irish literature are lacking here (and they are) then, small compensation though it might be, at least we have two people who do actually look like they'd enjoy spending time in each other's company, rather than because they're under contractual obligation. That counts for something. And there's something very pleasing about the Doctor spending the entire episode in his priest's outfit, rather than shifting back to his medical uniform when he's chatting with Janeway. It makes his "father-confessor" role fairly explicit when he's trying to advise Janeway on what course of action to take, but it's not over-written, and importantly it's not, in those scenes, played for humour, so the symbolism of it can stand there without having to have direct attention drawn to it or having it pointed out. Indeed Picardo is pretty good in the father-confessor role, and if the debate he has with Janeway is hollow, he does a good job of imbuing the empty words with sincerity and compassion, which also goes at least a little way to covering the short fallings of the actual argument.

So sure. If "not as wretched as it could have been" is the best I can find to say about "Fair Haven" then it's still miles better than I was expecting because, let's be clear, this is a pretty hard episode to mount any kind of defence of, and "could have been a lot worse" is pretty much the dictionary definition of damning with faint praise. The regular cast do as best they can with what they're given (Beltran is very good at delivering Chakotay teasing Janeway on the bridge), but most of them don't really get a lot to do anyway. The closest the episode ever comes to finding stakes is Harry's not-exactly-dramatic pronouncement on the bridge that to draw enough power to save the ship they might lose the town of Fair Haven. And if the idea of losing Fair Haven is your idea of "stakes"… well, that says it all really.



Any Other Business:

• Unusually, one of the problems with this episode is Janeway. This isn't Mulgrew's best performance, and she's a bit winsome when dealing with Sullivan. It's not hard to buy the idea of Janeway falling for someone of his ilk, but what we get on screen doesn't quite convince, especially when we've seen her deliver similar material much, much better ("Counterpoint", for example).

• Yes, I quite like the Doctor as the priest. The robes suit him.

• If I am to be fair to this episode, there is properly a sense that this is meant to be a lightweight episode. Whether that works as an excuse or not is up to the viewer, but obviously nothing here is really supposed to be taken that seriously.

• All together now: "Delete the wife!" The episode is worth it for that line alone.

• Seven and (sigh) Seamus playing rings at least manages to raise a bit of a smile.

• And if the Doctor's advice about Sullivan makes little sense because Sullivan isn't real, his advise about not trying to change someone you care about, but rather accept them for who they are, is miles better, and at least gives some emotional stakes to Janeway denying herself access to Sullivan's personality subroutines at the end of the episode.