Season 7, Ep 2 / 3 "Imperfection" / "Drive"

Season 7, Episode 2 - "Imperfection"


"I need surgery like I need a hole in the he... oh"


And so we begin the final season of Voyager's run. "Imperfection" manages to achieve everything that "Unimatrix Zero" set out to do, and does it in half the runtime and with about four times the impact. So to put it simply, this takes an aspect of Seven, develops it, relates it to the essential conflict between her Borg and human sides, and allows her to meditate on not only what she is but what she is continuing to become. Watching this episode next to "Unimatrix Zero" just highlights how much better this is at doing everything that two-parter should have been done in the big end of season conclusion / new season launch.

But before we get into this, as I am occasionally wont to do, a little housekeeping. To whit, this is the episode where all the Borg children save Icheb are unsentimentally written out with barely a glance in their direction. When I say "unsentimentally" what I mean is there seems to be precious little love lost when they're written out before the credits, and with about a minute of screen time, rather than because they don't put any effort into tugging the heartstrings ("I prefer the human way", and all that). This gives at least some nod in the direction that, outwith the regular Voyager crew, these are actual people with bonds and friendships between them that don't rely on anything more than the length of time and circumstances they have shared. That works reasonably well, but the brevity of the scene – and the fact it's not even layered into the episode, just dumped into the pre-credits sequence – makes it awfully hard to invest in, even though the beats are correct. They're just written out and that's that. Though never bad – and though "The Haunting Of Deck 12" demonstrated how they could be used to generate slightly different narrative stances, and elsewhere how they can appeal to Seven's more maternal side – the Borg children always remained fairly inconsequential throughout their brief presence on the show, and so their low-key departure entirely matches their presence.

Still their brief everything's-fine departure is the only real miss-step "Imperfection" makes (and even calling it a miss-step feels a bit unfair) and instead gives over the rest of its running time to Seven confronting her own mortality and the fact that she very definitely is no longer "perfect". One of the reasons that Seven is the character gift that just keeps on giving is that she was introduced as an entirely blank slate, so literally every aspect of her humanity is open to interpretation and assessment as it begins to emerge. While she's had brushes with death before, she's never had anything quite like this either, and quite a lot of effort is put in to making this seem directly analogous to a transplant situation. Seven has a malfunctioning component, without which she will die, and a replacement needs to either come from a very recently deceased or still living drone/donor. While there's no attempt made to hide this comparison, it's all handled with a grace and elegance that never makes what's happening here seem emotionally clumsy or exploitative, and the matter-of-fact nature of what's happening to Seven (and Seven's very nature means that it will be addressed as matter-of-fact) stops it from spilling over into soap opera territory. Instead, the exploration of Seven's emotional fragility is played as a genuine growth experience from which she develops, both physically and emotionally – and we avoid melodrama here, which this so very easily could have become. By addressing why she is reluctant to embrace help when she needs it the most – essentially because she's integrated her past experiences as source of strength rather than vulnerability to help her move forward – the script also pays fealty to the developments of the character's past without allowing the progress she makes here swap out that past. This is an incredibly difficult balancing act to strike, and it's also one that's dependent on Ryan turning in a performance that matches the deftness of the script. Unsurprisingly she does just that and, although "Imperfection" isn't really a well-remembered episode for her performance (it's certainly a lot less flashy than, say, "The Raven" or "One", which similarly push her development) it absolutely should be, because Ryan is absolutely on fire here. As usual, when called on to deliver a range of emotions Ryan gives everything that's asked of her and more, and, as usual, the results are excellent. Of course it helps that she's got stronger material to work with than the last outing – she was never bad at delivering on the romance the character got in "Unimatrix Zero" but there's only so far you can take what amounted to very limited and limiting material. It's the combination of much stronger writing and a performance to match that really elevates this.

But this episode isn't just about Seven, and there's a real commitment to doing something interesting with Icheb here as well. The last time this happened, in the disappointingly flat "Child's Play", it was clear that there was a real chance to move his character forward, but that chance was largely blown. Here things are much more successful, and in being given the chance to move from an awkward adolescent to someone who can really take responsibility for his own actions the character finally gets some much-needed movement. In this sense the scene at the beginning of the episode with the other Borg children – who are unquestionably children – does help to lend a little contrast to Icheb's desperate struggle to try and get Seven to accept his help, since it's clear that while he is now mature enough to make the decision to help and be aware of the potential consequences, they absolutely would not be. The experiences that Seven goes through are also not privileged above the ones Icheb goes through narratively speaking, either, so while this episode is clearly more about Seven than it is Icheb, his experiences are allowed to stand equally as mattering to him, just as her experiences matter to her. This means that Icheb gets a fair crack of the whip in terms of getting the chance to expand his character, and it's by the far the most successful use we've had of him up until now. And it again helps that the strong material is matched by a generally strong performance – while Manu Intiraymi isn't in Ryan's league, acting wise (though so few are), he still delivers a strong, credible performance of a conflicted, angry teenager who just can't understand why he's not being taken seriously. This is questionable territory to stray into, and Star Trek has gone disastrously wrong when wading into this in the past, but this is a career best from him and everything about Icheb here remains believable and, most importantly of all, relateable, so his struggles don't seem either like petty teenage foot-stamping or writerly conceits, but actually flow from the character as established up until this point.

All of this necessarily means that the rest of the crew are somewhat in the background throughout "Imperfection", but there's an interesting little wrinkle here. Generally, the structure of these episodes tends to be spending about thirty-five minutes on the character work, maybe a bit of action at the end to spark things up a bit, then a nice conclusion. That's certainly how things went back in "Child's Play". But here the action portion is about a third of the way through the episode, as Janeway goes in search of a Borg debris field to try and get a new cortical node. This sounds like the most minor thing imaginable, but it really shakes up the structure of the episode and proves effective at making the action part of the episode actually feel relevant to the story being told, rather than tacked on the end to provide a few perfunctory thrills before the credits roll. It helps that it's a much better action sequence than we get in "Child's Play" in terms of the writing and the direction, both of which manage to wring a decent amount of excitement out of what amounts to "sifting through stock sets, and also a CGI battle". And the fact that Janeway entirely succeeds in her little side-mission, only for that success to flag up a whole series of new problems as the new node cant be used makes it feel like this is an important part of what's going on, while still using the action-adventure aesthetic as part of the episode's template, even if it's a small one. It's this kind of attention to detail and understanding of how different parts of the show can function together that really marks "Imperfection" as a cut above the average "explore a character's feelings" episode, and the emotional material given to Seven and Icheb really gives resonance to both the transplant analogy and to their ongoing developments. Season Seven is the season of Voyager I am least familiar with going into it this time around, and I had honestly no memory of this episode prior to re-watching it, but that seems like a real shame because this is a terrific episode, with a couple of strong central performances, that gets the season off to a great start.



Any Other Business:

• Farewell, Borg Children! Actually, thinking about it, it's extremely understated but really rather nice that Janeway, at least in part, succeeded with her stated aim when she brought the children on-board. She's looked after them, helped them recover, and successfully returned them to their families. That's much appreciated.

• There's a nice sense of escalation as Seven gradually becomes more and more ill, starting with her crying and escalating all the way to being incapacitated. The fact that we see her visibly deteriorating in front of us goes a long way to help sell the urgency of the situation.

• I like Seven's snippy response disguised as thanks when Neelix brings her flowers: "I will appreciate them later". Ryan is so, so good at delivering these lines.

• More praise for the few scenes we get with Janeway sifting through the Borg debris field, really. There's a proper sense of threat, and that the threat doesn't come from the Borg springing back to life or arriving unexpectedly is a nice little twist, and a good subversion of viewer expectations. Short, but well directed, space battle as well.

• Great effects of the cortical node being removed from Seven and Icheb's heads, certainly worthy of a mention.

• Though his role is mostly functional in this episode, the Doctor does get one killer line: "Persistence is futile".

• The "something bad happens, but it's just a simulation on the holodeck" card has been played just once too often for Seven's "death" to quite work, but it's played straight and it's been a while since we've had one of them, so this episode can almost get away with it.

• The top-and-tail of Seven crying because of her malfunction, then crying because she's actually feeling something, is just a touch on the cheesy side but Ryan's able to make it work.



Season Seven, Episode 4 - "Drive"


Good as gold, stupid as mud... carry on regardless


"Drive" is a deeply silly episode with an emotional core. That is, I think it would be fair to say, not an easy balance to strike, especially when throwing in some world-building, some new characters, a late-in-the-day twist, and giving time to everyone so they have something useful to contribute. "Drive" gets this right more often than it gets this wrong, and there's a real sense that the thought which has gone into striking this balance is what makes the episode a success when it so very easily could have been a disaster. Other than that latecomer-twist there isn't much of a threat here, there's no great thematic resonance, and it's all pretty linear in terms of the narrative geometry of the episode, but where the episode scores over previous attempts to do something similar (usually with Neelix) is that it the script here really understands what lies as the heart of Tom and B'Elanna's relationship. Their relationship gets moved to the next logical step here – marriage - and... ah but before we get there, lets deal with some mechanics.

That's plot mechanics, not building-things mechanics, though obviously in this episode there is something of an overlap. By choosing a race scenario – a simple, straightforward set-up that requires no introduction – the script keys in on two important things. Firstly, that this is something that Tom is going to go all enthusiastic-schoolboy over, but secondly (and this is really crucial) it's also something that B'Elanna can get behind with it just being some contrived "I want what you want" scenario. There are hints of that too, to be strictly objective, but the fact is that B'Elanna is an engineer, so there's plenty of grounds for her to get stuck in without it feeling forced, as it might have done if this had been drag racing on the holodeck or whatever. She is, in other words, relevant to the proceedings here, and indeed she gets slightly more emphasis than Tom early in the episode, so the episode never looks like she's playing catch-up to his hobby, and the interior of her emotional life is given equal footing with his, without either perspective being given narrative dominance. In some ways this episode qualifies as a genre collision, whereby a fairly traditional rom-com crashes in to Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic, but like everything else here this is treated fairly lightly, though its not without moments of weight. Indeed there's a few lovely point early in the episode with B'Elanna, and two scenes stick out as particularly relevant. The first is Tom informing her he's messing up the romantic time on the holodeck they have together – we expect B'Elanna to explode, shout at him, rip him to shreds, but she just calmly accepts it. This is worth pointing out because, even though we later discover the reaction comes from a position of melancholy and doubt, it also shows the emotional development she's gone through. Even a season ago she would have eviscerated him, but here she reacts differently. As a person she's grown and changed. It's a lovely, understated but entirely true piece of characterization for her. The second scene is the one in the mess hall with Neelix, where indeed we find she's having a lot of doubts about the relationship. This could have been ghastly – introduce some false fears so the big will-you-marry-me moment later in the episode has a set-up – but it isn't. That's partly because everything is under-played – there's no screaming "I hate you!" to be followed by a make-up proposal in the last act, this is something altogether more mature. This is one adult struggling with the idea that a relationship might have come to an end, not because of some faux-melodrama of infidelity or betrayal but rather because things have just run their course. It's a lovely little scene – and both Dawson and Phillips deserve real credit for never letting things become maudlin and self-indulgent – and, like the scene with Tom, demonstrates just how far B'Elanna has developed as a character. And of course it's all show-don't-tell, so we see her emotional development without having to have other characters point it out to either her or the audience. Even if the episode existed for nothing more than the demonstration of how far B'Elanna has come it would be worth watching.

But it's not just about that. It's also about The Whacky Races In Space, and in truth it's just incredibly fun. Seeing a bunch of ships sling themselves around a racetrack, dealing with "Mobius inversions" and whatnot, is just thoroughly entertaining, and of course with McNeill in the driving seat the boyish enthusiasm he has for the proceedings becomes incredibly infectious. It's not really revelatory, but it's straightforwardly entertaining in a way that doesn't require half the episode for a set-up and doesn't get in the way of the emotional beats which are going on elsewhere. Because having just Tom and B'Elanna have their time wouldn't be enough, oh no! So here, Poor Old Harry (yea, we're back to that again) gets to fall for yet another woman who is both way out of his league and someone who will turn out to have an agenda that wrecks everything for him. Here, she's a saboteur, in what would otherwise count as a forehead-slappingly obvious moment. But because everything in the race section, even Harry's little romance, is played comparatively lightly, it doesn't come across as particularly contrived, even if it's not exactly a shock either. We're seven season in now, we know the girl Harry's going to fall for is going to be a wrong 'un for some reason. It helps that she's integrated right from the first scene of the episode and that she was smart enough to play the long game with the Voyager crew so, in purely scripting terms, the revelation of her ultimate betrayal makes sense – even the offer of the fuel converter works well because it's her setting them up way in advance of the audience even knowing there is a set-up. Yes, it is a bit obvious, and yes it is a bit silly, but no more silly than anything else going on here, and because the tone remains pretty much the same, and the internal logic remains consistent, the episode can get away with it. As I said before there's not much of a sense of threat here, but that's OK, that's not really what this episode is about. In fact, this episode rather neatly mirrors they way Tom and B'Elanna first admitted their feelings for each other back in "Day Of Honour", which also involved them floating together, lost in space, awaiting rescue. There, B'Elanna finally broke down and admitted she was afraid of her feelings for Tom. Here, they finally get engaged in what's left of the Delta Flyer after they've saved the day. It's all very sweet really, and the de-emphaziation of the actual moment means again we swerve away again from the cheese factor that so easily could have brought everything crashing down.

And we don't get to see the wedding! Actually, this is a really rather smart decision. We've already seen one wedding between them, back in "Course: Oblivion", even if it was between bio-memetic copies rather than the real deal, so it makes sense not to waste time repeating a scene we've already seen. That feels in keeping with the episode, but it also feels fairly in keeping with the way Tom and B'Elanna's relationship works. It just does work, and in the end, there isn't a great need to linger over the details or explain everything, when we can just accept what it is and get on with it. That practicality feels very B'Elanna, and Tom's not one to make a fuss when it doesn't need to be made, so it all feels right. Instead, we cut to the silliest scene in the whole episode (for which there is a degree of competition), where the Delta Flyer has the words "just married" spray-painted on the back of it and is seen flying off into the distance towing a bunch of blue storage containers in lieu of tin cans. It is, without question, deeply silly. It's also just fun, and the episode has earned the right to be this silly because everything else has worked so well up until this point, and because it feels so in character for these two people at this stage. It's a daft ending to an endearingly daft episode.



Any Other Business:

• The teasing set-up, where Tom can't help but get pulled into a race, is very appealing. And of course (and you might have gathered this is the theme for this episode by now) very silly.

• Top marks to both McNeill and Dawson for really making this relationship feel like its lived in and been running for years.

• Wang is pretty good here. He's definitely in the B-plot, but his enthusiasm for Inara seems to genuinely be an adult expressing interest in another adult, rather than his usual adolescent crushes. That helps a lot, since we're covering familiar territory here.

• This is (at least) the third time Tom's been given the "you always fall for the wrong women!" speech to give to Harry. It's fine, Tom. We got it.

• The way the rest of the crew, even Tuvok, get enthusiastically caught up in the race despite themselves is very well handled. It makes sense for Chakotay, we know he has an interest in competitive sports, but the whole crew get dragged into it.

• Even Seven! Ryan is simply wonderful at delivering her amused acknowledgement of the race in astrometrics, but she's terrific in the scene where she explains to B'Elanna why she's helping Tom. These two usually have such an adversarial relationship, and it's great to see it being written as something a little more details and complex than just butting heads.

• Mulgrew is at Camp Force 10 throughout this episode, whether agreeing to Tom's request to enter the race or hosting the entrants in the mess hall. No complaints here!

• To an extent, this episode is also Voyager showing off just a bit. There's lots of special effects here – the race, the ships, the course, the nebula (natural and exploding flavours), the damaged Delta Flyer... That helps make everything here feel convincing because we get to see all of the exciting stuff rather than just watching it on a monitor or only having it relayed to us.

• Though there's some of that as well, and Neelix is put to good use as the race commentator.

• And it ends in the marriage. It's all terribly charming.