Post by Prole Hole on Aug 11, 2016 1:48:37 GMT -5
Season Seven, Episode 21 - "Friendship One"
The Last Of The Gang To Die
At least in one respect, "Friendship One" functions as sort of alternative-history of Voyager, one in which the ship, specifically designed for these kind of missions, is deployed by Starfleet on short assignments to resolve whatever it is that needs to be done this week. That is, after all, what was going on at the beginning of "Caretaker", and this mission is only Voyager's second in the ship's history. And it highlights one of the things that makes Voyager an interesting proposition – TOS and TNG's Enterprise's would encounter strange anomalies and whatnot on a regular basis but they always came back from those encounters - sometimes a bit battered and bruised, but back nonetheless. So what would happen to a ship that didn't manage to return safe and sound? That's what Voyager is, really – a what-if scenario. And that makes "Friendship One" a what-if scenario based around a what-if scenario, and what it suggests is that a show based around a smaller, shorter-range craft acting as a Federation "fixer" could be a pretty interesting watch because "Friendship One" is generally a strong episode, and seeing the ship used in this way is an interesting variation on the usual storytelling techniques we have in Voyager in order to get the crew involved in the plot of the week. I seem to be saying this a lot of late, but we're now just four episodes away from "Endgame" and still new ways to do things within the show's format are being tried, and are yielding results. Whatever else "Friendship One" is, it's not business as usual, and it doesn't feel like a show that's in imminent danger of winding up.
Well, with one exception. Joe Carey dies here, brought back specifically for that purpose. This feels like a very the-show's-nearly-over move, and that's because it is. TNG did the same thing during its last season, bringing characters back to specifically given them a resolution one way or the other (Ro, Wesley) so this feels like something that's consistent with what's happened before. And though Carey never really became the regular character he could have, which is a shame (he's been in two episode over the last two seasons and neither of them were set contemporaneously), it's nice to see the show take the time to close off his character... well, arc is probably too strong a word, but journey maybe. It's the thing that signals the end of the show approaching most strongly here, while also acting as a bit of a warm-up for the events of "Homestead". Yet his use as a character here makes perfect sense, as if he's always just been hanging about the place – B'Elanna, agreeing to not go on the mission because of her pregnancy, needs to be replaced on an away mission and Carey, the person she superseded to become Chief Engineer, is a logical choice to replace her. This is something the show could have stood to do a bit more with, a small but present background staff that can be put into episodes, but that failure isn't the fault of this episode, and Carey is generally well-used here. He's still a likeable character, and he has a nice rapport with Tom, especially when discussing fatherhood. It's a fairly low-key charm but it works well with the tone of the episode and it makes his death carry just that little bit more weight, killed for nothing more than a chance for someone to make a point. That low-key feel to the characterization here fits in well with the rest of the characters, so even someone like Otrin, pushed in to the none-too-unusual role of someone with the right ideas who needs to take charge because the current leadership is too blind to really move things forward, manages to be both believably knowledgeable in terms of the local situation but not stridently written so as to overpower everything else with what could have ended up being a straightforward cliché. Had things gone differently, it's not hard to imagine Otrin suffering the same fate as Carey, killed so Verin can make his point.
There's some pretty great world-building going on here, which again makes this feel unusual so close to the end of the show. In a lot of ways "Friendship One" is about the idea of unintended consequences, and by following through on the unexpected results of sending the probe centuries ago, the episode draws a vivid picture of a planet devastated through the very best of intentions. There's something striking and impressive about the world we find here, with it's unlaunched missiles and nuclear winter, and even though most of what we see is a couple of caves and a few special-effects shots, the detail and shading are what make this society come alive. Though we get told about at least some of the damage the probe's engines did, we principally get to see this through the devastating effects it's had on the people of this world, with vicious radiation scarring (somewhat redolent of the Malon, and for similar reasons, a nice little piece of make-up continuity) and birth defects. Getting to witness the well-meaning-but-catastrophic effects of the probe's impact makes it feel real, but more than that it gives space for the narrative to do other things while the stuff that should be obvious – the effect of all of this – is given enough emphasis to explain lasting hostilities but not so much that it becomes burdensome. Obviously there are real-life parallels going on here and though an anti-nuclear polemic in 2001 feels a little out of step with history at that point, the episode is at least able to make its anti-nuclear arguments based on the debate surrounding the importance of disarmament even after the apparent threat the weapons were built for have gone, which is a suitably post-Cold War approach to a familiar subject.
And we again have a number of payoffs to the ongoing Tom and B'Elanna relationship story, with Tom able to use the fact that he's an expectant father to reach out to, and finally win the trust of Brin, the woman whose baby he's eventually able to save. McNeill does some really strong work here – probably his best all season – and it's a pleasure to see the more gentle side of his character come through in a crisis, rather than resorting to shouting or shooting. A few quiet, well-chosen words do more for the situation than any amount of futile-gesture escape plans might and it's a testiment to the development the character has gone through with B'Elanna that he's able to reach that point. Similarly, though it's a small detail, the fact that B'Elanna is able to listen to and take her husband's point of view into consideration when deciding whether to go on the away mission represents obvious progress for her, choosing rationality over her natural tendency to flare up when challenged. The fact that all these elements can be seamlessly woven into a script which is essentially a parable about the futility of revenge and the damage it can inflict, and a nuclear disarmament screed, just shows how well everything integrates here. Are there a few flaws? One or two yes – Carey's death, for all that it's nice that he returns at all, does still feel a little off-handed, though at least he's given a moment to be properly memorialized at the end, with the ship-in-a-bottle scene. And Janeway gives up just a little too easily after declaring that she can't force their help on to the local population, mostly so that Tom and Neelix can have The Big Speech about the damage that's been wrought and what to do about it. Yet these are comparatively minor complaints in the grand scheme of things, and "Friendship One" succeeds far, far more than it fails. In one sense, it's a shame it takes this long for Voyager to get sent on its first mission because this really does show that there are still ways for new stories and new types of stories to be told within this framework. That's not what we're going to get over the course of the next three episodes, but one of the successes of "Friendship One" will always be that it's able to find interesting ways of doing things that just haven't been tried before within the framework of this series. And that's always something worth applauding.
Any Other Business:
A View With A Room
• Farewell, Joe Carey! As I mentioned in the review it's nice that he at least got to return for one final outing, and it's a shame he didn't get to appear in a few more episodes.
• Verin's apparently-genuine apology before killing him is, however, well handled.
• During the scene where Tom and B'Elanna argue about her going on the away mission, there's a fantastic moment when B'Elanna tells Tom that the next time they decide to have a child he can carry it and she'll go on the away missions, to which he agrees. What makes this so great is there's absolutely no suggestion that this a joke, or being played as anything other than what it is – a man offering to take on the burdens of pregnancy for his wife while she gets on with her career. It's bracingly, wonderfully non-heteronormative.
• Great shot of the range of missile silos once the Flyer makes it to the ground, and some generally great exploratory work as the away team search for the probe. It really feels like they're exploring this environment rather than just turning up and inserting themselves into it.
• Neelix is well-used here, and as with the rest of the characterizations his scenes are fairly under-played, but the results are some good work from Phillips.
• The clearly rubber baby Tom has to attempt to resurrect after it's early birth is not the most convincing practical effect the show has ever done, though it suffices.
• The shot of the sunshine finally breaking through the nuclear winter is a bit cheesy but it works anyway, at least in part because almost everything planet-side is shrouded in darkness and It's the lone moment of light they get.
• Heartfelt final speech from Janeway at the end, though I'm not sure it really draws the right conclusion even though it's a great acting moment from Mulgrew.
Season Seven, Episode 22 - "Natural Law"
Ok, so that was a bit weird. "Natural Law" feels like a Season One or Two episode, but written in Season Seven for some reason. So the character work for Seven, the mature approach to local culture, and the pushing of story arcs all feel very much latter-day Voyager. Whereas Chakotay learning to talk to native people, not-especially-funny comedy B-stories, and the exceedingly languorous pacing feel very much like the Voyager of old. It's an odd mix, and it's especially odd coming from the pen of James Kahn, who thus far has only written three Voyager episodes. They've all been basically good or excellent ("Critical Care", "Lineage", "The Void"), yet this feels distinctly different in tone and execution, even though the same thematic work that's been running throughout the season is loosely present here, with a debate centring around the rights of technologically sophisticated societies to impose themselves on native cultures. So, in other words, it's a straightforward colonialism parable, with the native people just waiting to be exploited by theBritish more technologically advanced parts of the planet. Indeed the exploitation of people and resources that might potentially happen should the Ventu lose their convenient-forcefield-of-protection actually finds a resonance with "Workforce" (the first time that's happened), and everything else, at least plot-wise, is straightforwardly just presenting a colonialism-is-bad-mmmkay argument which, while not wrong, is both something Voyager has covered (many times) before, and not something that's really required at this point in the series.
Still, it's not like this part of the script is badly done. Indeed, there's a fair argument to be made that the Ventu might just be the best native people that Voyager ever manages to portray. They're treated respectfully by the story but not reverentially, so the script avoids coming across as patronising, which it could very easily do. They're portrayed as smart and inquisitive even as they're technologically ignorant, yet they never fall into a wise-native cliché, though they clearly know more about their immediate environment than Our Heroes. And they have a gestural rather than a spoken language, another of Voyager's occasional attempts to portray a language structure that's not just a handy Universal Translator away from being understood, which benefits the episode hugely. In terms of the story they're pretty low-impact, but then everything here is very low-impact, so that hardly makes them stand out against Seven's gentle exploration of friendship, or Tom's comedy piloting lessons. So, while the story they're stuck in isn't likely to get anyone's pulse racing, they work well within the confines of this episode, and are well-drawn enough to be engaging as a presence in their own right. That Seven is able to establish a tentative friendship, without a single spoken word of dialogue, is an achievement in its own right, and the episode is smart enough to allow Chakotay to use his understanding of societies like this to communicate with them, but the script doesn't feel the need to directly draw a line to his Native American heritage. It's plenty implied, so the need to state it isn't there – the correct choice.
This is inevitable so close to the end of the show, but there are a number of "lasts" here which should be drawn attention to. Notably, this is the last time Voyager will attempt to create a whole culture which has no reference to any other – next week we get some Talaxians, the week after we get the Hierarchy, and then in "Endgame" we're back for one more round with the Borg. The Ledosians aren't the most striking race we ever encounter, even if the Ventu are worthy of some praise, but its still interesting to observe their status as the last new race the show creates. It's also the last time we visit the Garden Centre Of Doom (though confusingly, it appears to be intercut with actual exterior locations), and it's the last attempt to actually show planetary locations other than cities or corridors. It's the last time we get any meaningful connection or reference to Chakotay's past (no pan-pipes, thankfully, though we have some trilling flutes as a stand-in and doing roughly the same job), and it's the last time Seven Has An Important Lesson To Learn. And, for those keeping count, it's the very last time a shuttle gets destroyed. Yet despite this, and despite the somewhat odd beginning-of-series tone to all of this, there's no real sense of nostalgia or looking backwards here. Indeed, Seven's friendship, and her getting to spend a proper amount of time with Chakotay to appreciate his perspective on the world, feels like it's following up on the work done by "Human Error". Her initial dismissive attitude towards the view from the shuttle, later balanced by her coming to appreciate a different view on the ground, shows her gradually coming to understand what he was talking about, and it's made perfectly explicit without having to have it laid out in a line of dialogue. Her growth here is organic, unforced but realistic, and that alone makes the episode feel like it's moving forward, despite all those final things getting checked off. It's absolutely true that there's no sense of threat, or even drama really, here but then that's obviously not what the episode is going for. The shuttle crash is obviously only there to get Seven and Chakotay into position, the "thunderstorm" might be the least "scary" event in Voyager's seven-year history but it's there to start her friendship, and so on. Most of this could be done a bit better, but neither is it done so badly that it makes the episode feel like a failure, just a bit on the slow side.
Over at the B-plot, stuff happens. Nothing of consequence but certainly a few moments pass in an effort to try and get a few lines of dialogue for the rest of the cast. It's all very inconsequential, really, as Tom gets his knuckles rapped, the rest of the crew tease him over his infraction, Janeway pays lip-service to following local laws, you know the kind of thing. There's a bit of work put towards integrating Tom's B-plot into the resolution of the Seven-and-Chakotay A-plot, the effort for which is easier to appreciate than the end result. It's a decent try, I suppose, but it's fairly predictable that if you have a stuffy teacher concerned about going too fast then the chances are he's going to end up being put in a situation where... you know. He goes too fast. Some decent special effects though, which at least provide a bit of a contrast to the fronds-and-painted-extras we get planet-side. I wish I could summon up a bit more enthusiasm for this, but it's proving a bit tough. The colonial aspects, which are most drawn out in the B-plot, are perfectly fine and all the points made are entirely valid but there's a bit of a sense of, "...and?" about them, as if they've started to make a point that's going to build to something else, then doesn’t. The natives are just natives, the people that want to exploit them just want to exploit them, and that's that. Oh, and it's A Bad Thing. Yea. We know. Thanks. To be clear, watching this episode isn't a painful process, and the worst sin committed here is that languorousness of pace that makes it feel like a throwback. Seven's character bump is slow but it's well paced and thoughtful, and her concluding scene, where Chakotay explains why she needs to keep the blanket she was given and she thanks him for the experiences she's just had, works as an appropriate microcosm of the episode without trying to oversell it. To put it another way, while this will be an episode most will struggle to remember much about after the credits have rolled, which is rarely much of a recommendation, there's no sense that this is in anyway derailing or even really harming the season as we draw in to final furlong. By at least taking the time to explore a culture and spend a decent amount of time within it, we have a sincere, final, attempt to create a race who are more than just extras in makeup, even if they largely consist of extras in makeup. So fine – this doesn't suck or triumph, and while it's pretty easy to find a redemptive angle here, it's also not so easy as to be completely unchallenging, even if it is fairly unremarkable. Moving on...
Any Other Business:
• Nice shot of the shuttle getting cut in two by the energy barrier.
• Very little Neelix this week. Guess he'll make up for it next week...
• Janeway taking such obvious pleasure in making Tom jump through the local authority hoops is quite funny, and well done by Mulgrew, who resists the temptation to overly ham it up (just).
• The Ventu really do deserve some praise, they're by far the best thing going on here, and the sense of them as an actual culture is pretty remarkable for a people with no spoken language and given that all we really see of their settlement is a couple of old huts. There's some great non-verbal acting going on too.
• Some praise for Jeri Ryan as well, who does a decent job of bringing Seven's small but significant emotional journey across here.
• One of the problems with the story is that, by the time Seven and Chakotay find the shuttle's front section and bring down the barrier, the story is basically over. That's what the story has been about up till now. Then out of nowhere we get a colonists-exploiting-the-natives extra story dropped in from nowhere. It would have been much better to drop all that and give more time over to Seven's emotional development.
• The little oasis that Seven and her friend find looks terrible. Really bad bluescreen and dreadful CGI. It communicates what's in the script, so as usual it gets a pass, but it still looks rubbish.
• Seven thanking Chakotay for the experiences of this episode in the final scene is genuinely sweet, and it's great that it's from her perspective, not his. He's able to provide the information she needs, but it's all about her experience and growth, as it should be.
The Last Of The Gang To Die
At least in one respect, "Friendship One" functions as sort of alternative-history of Voyager, one in which the ship, specifically designed for these kind of missions, is deployed by Starfleet on short assignments to resolve whatever it is that needs to be done this week. That is, after all, what was going on at the beginning of "Caretaker", and this mission is only Voyager's second in the ship's history. And it highlights one of the things that makes Voyager an interesting proposition – TOS and TNG's Enterprise's would encounter strange anomalies and whatnot on a regular basis but they always came back from those encounters - sometimes a bit battered and bruised, but back nonetheless. So what would happen to a ship that didn't manage to return safe and sound? That's what Voyager is, really – a what-if scenario. And that makes "Friendship One" a what-if scenario based around a what-if scenario, and what it suggests is that a show based around a smaller, shorter-range craft acting as a Federation "fixer" could be a pretty interesting watch because "Friendship One" is generally a strong episode, and seeing the ship used in this way is an interesting variation on the usual storytelling techniques we have in Voyager in order to get the crew involved in the plot of the week. I seem to be saying this a lot of late, but we're now just four episodes away from "Endgame" and still new ways to do things within the show's format are being tried, and are yielding results. Whatever else "Friendship One" is, it's not business as usual, and it doesn't feel like a show that's in imminent danger of winding up.
Well, with one exception. Joe Carey dies here, brought back specifically for that purpose. This feels like a very the-show's-nearly-over move, and that's because it is. TNG did the same thing during its last season, bringing characters back to specifically given them a resolution one way or the other (Ro, Wesley) so this feels like something that's consistent with what's happened before. And though Carey never really became the regular character he could have, which is a shame (he's been in two episode over the last two seasons and neither of them were set contemporaneously), it's nice to see the show take the time to close off his character... well, arc is probably too strong a word, but journey maybe. It's the thing that signals the end of the show approaching most strongly here, while also acting as a bit of a warm-up for the events of "Homestead". Yet his use as a character here makes perfect sense, as if he's always just been hanging about the place – B'Elanna, agreeing to not go on the mission because of her pregnancy, needs to be replaced on an away mission and Carey, the person she superseded to become Chief Engineer, is a logical choice to replace her. This is something the show could have stood to do a bit more with, a small but present background staff that can be put into episodes, but that failure isn't the fault of this episode, and Carey is generally well-used here. He's still a likeable character, and he has a nice rapport with Tom, especially when discussing fatherhood. It's a fairly low-key charm but it works well with the tone of the episode and it makes his death carry just that little bit more weight, killed for nothing more than a chance for someone to make a point. That low-key feel to the characterization here fits in well with the rest of the characters, so even someone like Otrin, pushed in to the none-too-unusual role of someone with the right ideas who needs to take charge because the current leadership is too blind to really move things forward, manages to be both believably knowledgeable in terms of the local situation but not stridently written so as to overpower everything else with what could have ended up being a straightforward cliché. Had things gone differently, it's not hard to imagine Otrin suffering the same fate as Carey, killed so Verin can make his point.
There's some pretty great world-building going on here, which again makes this feel unusual so close to the end of the show. In a lot of ways "Friendship One" is about the idea of unintended consequences, and by following through on the unexpected results of sending the probe centuries ago, the episode draws a vivid picture of a planet devastated through the very best of intentions. There's something striking and impressive about the world we find here, with it's unlaunched missiles and nuclear winter, and even though most of what we see is a couple of caves and a few special-effects shots, the detail and shading are what make this society come alive. Though we get told about at least some of the damage the probe's engines did, we principally get to see this through the devastating effects it's had on the people of this world, with vicious radiation scarring (somewhat redolent of the Malon, and for similar reasons, a nice little piece of make-up continuity) and birth defects. Getting to witness the well-meaning-but-catastrophic effects of the probe's impact makes it feel real, but more than that it gives space for the narrative to do other things while the stuff that should be obvious – the effect of all of this – is given enough emphasis to explain lasting hostilities but not so much that it becomes burdensome. Obviously there are real-life parallels going on here and though an anti-nuclear polemic in 2001 feels a little out of step with history at that point, the episode is at least able to make its anti-nuclear arguments based on the debate surrounding the importance of disarmament even after the apparent threat the weapons were built for have gone, which is a suitably post-Cold War approach to a familiar subject.
And we again have a number of payoffs to the ongoing Tom and B'Elanna relationship story, with Tom able to use the fact that he's an expectant father to reach out to, and finally win the trust of Brin, the woman whose baby he's eventually able to save. McNeill does some really strong work here – probably his best all season – and it's a pleasure to see the more gentle side of his character come through in a crisis, rather than resorting to shouting or shooting. A few quiet, well-chosen words do more for the situation than any amount of futile-gesture escape plans might and it's a testiment to the development the character has gone through with B'Elanna that he's able to reach that point. Similarly, though it's a small detail, the fact that B'Elanna is able to listen to and take her husband's point of view into consideration when deciding whether to go on the away mission represents obvious progress for her, choosing rationality over her natural tendency to flare up when challenged. The fact that all these elements can be seamlessly woven into a script which is essentially a parable about the futility of revenge and the damage it can inflict, and a nuclear disarmament screed, just shows how well everything integrates here. Are there a few flaws? One or two yes – Carey's death, for all that it's nice that he returns at all, does still feel a little off-handed, though at least he's given a moment to be properly memorialized at the end, with the ship-in-a-bottle scene. And Janeway gives up just a little too easily after declaring that she can't force their help on to the local population, mostly so that Tom and Neelix can have The Big Speech about the damage that's been wrought and what to do about it. Yet these are comparatively minor complaints in the grand scheme of things, and "Friendship One" succeeds far, far more than it fails. In one sense, it's a shame it takes this long for Voyager to get sent on its first mission because this really does show that there are still ways for new stories and new types of stories to be told within this framework. That's not what we're going to get over the course of the next three episodes, but one of the successes of "Friendship One" will always be that it's able to find interesting ways of doing things that just haven't been tried before within the framework of this series. And that's always something worth applauding.
Any Other Business:
A View With A Room
• Farewell, Joe Carey! As I mentioned in the review it's nice that he at least got to return for one final outing, and it's a shame he didn't get to appear in a few more episodes.
• Verin's apparently-genuine apology before killing him is, however, well handled.
• During the scene where Tom and B'Elanna argue about her going on the away mission, there's a fantastic moment when B'Elanna tells Tom that the next time they decide to have a child he can carry it and she'll go on the away missions, to which he agrees. What makes this so great is there's absolutely no suggestion that this a joke, or being played as anything other than what it is – a man offering to take on the burdens of pregnancy for his wife while she gets on with her career. It's bracingly, wonderfully non-heteronormative.
• Great shot of the range of missile silos once the Flyer makes it to the ground, and some generally great exploratory work as the away team search for the probe. It really feels like they're exploring this environment rather than just turning up and inserting themselves into it.
• Neelix is well-used here, and as with the rest of the characterizations his scenes are fairly under-played, but the results are some good work from Phillips.
• The clearly rubber baby Tom has to attempt to resurrect after it's early birth is not the most convincing practical effect the show has ever done, though it suffices.
• The shot of the sunshine finally breaking through the nuclear winter is a bit cheesy but it works anyway, at least in part because almost everything planet-side is shrouded in darkness and It's the lone moment of light they get.
• Heartfelt final speech from Janeway at the end, though I'm not sure it really draws the right conclusion even though it's a great acting moment from Mulgrew.
Season Seven, Episode 22 - "Natural Law"
Ok, so that was a bit weird. "Natural Law" feels like a Season One or Two episode, but written in Season Seven for some reason. So the character work for Seven, the mature approach to local culture, and the pushing of story arcs all feel very much latter-day Voyager. Whereas Chakotay learning to talk to native people, not-especially-funny comedy B-stories, and the exceedingly languorous pacing feel very much like the Voyager of old. It's an odd mix, and it's especially odd coming from the pen of James Kahn, who thus far has only written three Voyager episodes. They've all been basically good or excellent ("Critical Care", "Lineage", "The Void"), yet this feels distinctly different in tone and execution, even though the same thematic work that's been running throughout the season is loosely present here, with a debate centring around the rights of technologically sophisticated societies to impose themselves on native cultures. So, in other words, it's a straightforward colonialism parable, with the native people just waiting to be exploited by the
Still, it's not like this part of the script is badly done. Indeed, there's a fair argument to be made that the Ventu might just be the best native people that Voyager ever manages to portray. They're treated respectfully by the story but not reverentially, so the script avoids coming across as patronising, which it could very easily do. They're portrayed as smart and inquisitive even as they're technologically ignorant, yet they never fall into a wise-native cliché, though they clearly know more about their immediate environment than Our Heroes. And they have a gestural rather than a spoken language, another of Voyager's occasional attempts to portray a language structure that's not just a handy Universal Translator away from being understood, which benefits the episode hugely. In terms of the story they're pretty low-impact, but then everything here is very low-impact, so that hardly makes them stand out against Seven's gentle exploration of friendship, or Tom's comedy piloting lessons. So, while the story they're stuck in isn't likely to get anyone's pulse racing, they work well within the confines of this episode, and are well-drawn enough to be engaging as a presence in their own right. That Seven is able to establish a tentative friendship, without a single spoken word of dialogue, is an achievement in its own right, and the episode is smart enough to allow Chakotay to use his understanding of societies like this to communicate with them, but the script doesn't feel the need to directly draw a line to his Native American heritage. It's plenty implied, so the need to state it isn't there – the correct choice.
This is inevitable so close to the end of the show, but there are a number of "lasts" here which should be drawn attention to. Notably, this is the last time Voyager will attempt to create a whole culture which has no reference to any other – next week we get some Talaxians, the week after we get the Hierarchy, and then in "Endgame" we're back for one more round with the Borg. The Ledosians aren't the most striking race we ever encounter, even if the Ventu are worthy of some praise, but its still interesting to observe their status as the last new race the show creates. It's also the last time we visit the Garden Centre Of Doom (though confusingly, it appears to be intercut with actual exterior locations), and it's the last attempt to actually show planetary locations other than cities or corridors. It's the last time we get any meaningful connection or reference to Chakotay's past (no pan-pipes, thankfully, though we have some trilling flutes as a stand-in and doing roughly the same job), and it's the last time Seven Has An Important Lesson To Learn. And, for those keeping count, it's the very last time a shuttle gets destroyed. Yet despite this, and despite the somewhat odd beginning-of-series tone to all of this, there's no real sense of nostalgia or looking backwards here. Indeed, Seven's friendship, and her getting to spend a proper amount of time with Chakotay to appreciate his perspective on the world, feels like it's following up on the work done by "Human Error". Her initial dismissive attitude towards the view from the shuttle, later balanced by her coming to appreciate a different view on the ground, shows her gradually coming to understand what he was talking about, and it's made perfectly explicit without having to have it laid out in a line of dialogue. Her growth here is organic, unforced but realistic, and that alone makes the episode feel like it's moving forward, despite all those final things getting checked off. It's absolutely true that there's no sense of threat, or even drama really, here but then that's obviously not what the episode is going for. The shuttle crash is obviously only there to get Seven and Chakotay into position, the "thunderstorm" might be the least "scary" event in Voyager's seven-year history but it's there to start her friendship, and so on. Most of this could be done a bit better, but neither is it done so badly that it makes the episode feel like a failure, just a bit on the slow side.
Over at the B-plot, stuff happens. Nothing of consequence but certainly a few moments pass in an effort to try and get a few lines of dialogue for the rest of the cast. It's all very inconsequential, really, as Tom gets his knuckles rapped, the rest of the crew tease him over his infraction, Janeway pays lip-service to following local laws, you know the kind of thing. There's a bit of work put towards integrating Tom's B-plot into the resolution of the Seven-and-Chakotay A-plot, the effort for which is easier to appreciate than the end result. It's a decent try, I suppose, but it's fairly predictable that if you have a stuffy teacher concerned about going too fast then the chances are he's going to end up being put in a situation where... you know. He goes too fast. Some decent special effects though, which at least provide a bit of a contrast to the fronds-and-painted-extras we get planet-side. I wish I could summon up a bit more enthusiasm for this, but it's proving a bit tough. The colonial aspects, which are most drawn out in the B-plot, are perfectly fine and all the points made are entirely valid but there's a bit of a sense of, "...and?" about them, as if they've started to make a point that's going to build to something else, then doesn’t. The natives are just natives, the people that want to exploit them just want to exploit them, and that's that. Oh, and it's A Bad Thing. Yea. We know. Thanks. To be clear, watching this episode isn't a painful process, and the worst sin committed here is that languorousness of pace that makes it feel like a throwback. Seven's character bump is slow but it's well paced and thoughtful, and her concluding scene, where Chakotay explains why she needs to keep the blanket she was given and she thanks him for the experiences she's just had, works as an appropriate microcosm of the episode without trying to oversell it. To put it another way, while this will be an episode most will struggle to remember much about after the credits have rolled, which is rarely much of a recommendation, there's no sense that this is in anyway derailing or even really harming the season as we draw in to final furlong. By at least taking the time to explore a culture and spend a decent amount of time within it, we have a sincere, final, attempt to create a race who are more than just extras in makeup, even if they largely consist of extras in makeup. So fine – this doesn't suck or triumph, and while it's pretty easy to find a redemptive angle here, it's also not so easy as to be completely unchallenging, even if it is fairly unremarkable. Moving on...
Any Other Business:
• Nice shot of the shuttle getting cut in two by the energy barrier.
• Very little Neelix this week. Guess he'll make up for it next week...
• Janeway taking such obvious pleasure in making Tom jump through the local authority hoops is quite funny, and well done by Mulgrew, who resists the temptation to overly ham it up (just).
• The Ventu really do deserve some praise, they're by far the best thing going on here, and the sense of them as an actual culture is pretty remarkable for a people with no spoken language and given that all we really see of their settlement is a couple of old huts. There's some great non-verbal acting going on too.
• Some praise for Jeri Ryan as well, who does a decent job of bringing Seven's small but significant emotional journey across here.
• One of the problems with the story is that, by the time Seven and Chakotay find the shuttle's front section and bring down the barrier, the story is basically over. That's what the story has been about up till now. Then out of nowhere we get a colonists-exploiting-the-natives extra story dropped in from nowhere. It would have been much better to drop all that and give more time over to Seven's emotional development.
• The little oasis that Seven and her friend find looks terrible. Really bad bluescreen and dreadful CGI. It communicates what's in the script, so as usual it gets a pass, but it still looks rubbish.
• Seven thanking Chakotay for the experiences of this episode in the final scene is genuinely sweet, and it's great that it's from her perspective, not his. He's able to provide the information she needs, but it's all about her experience and growth, as it should be.