Season 5 Ep 3 / 4 "Extreme Risk" / "In The Flesh"
Nov 19, 2015 12:08:07 GMT -5
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 19, 2015 12:08:07 GMT -5
Season Five, Episode 3 - "Extreme Risk"
"Lieutenant, my readings indicate this mission does not require a motorbike helmet"
Balancing the needs of character against the needs of basic storytelling is always a tricky act. Focus too much on the character work and the whole enterprise (heh) can come off as soapy and manipulative, focus too much on plot and you won't do enough of the character work to make it worth the effort. Two threads make up "Extreme Risk" - the character work of B'Elanna's depression and the race-against-time of the probe retrieval - and split the running time fairly evenly between the two, though there's a slight leaning towards B'Elanna's story, with the two dovetailing together to close the episode out. That's not an especially radical episode structure, but it allows both stories to develop fully and impact each other at the conclusion in a meaningful way.
Actually, "not an especially radical episode" is a perfectly fine description for "Extreme Risk" because it's far more invested in what it's trying to do with B'Elanna that it is reinventing the wheel, which is absolutely fine. But the Delta Flyer construction, which makes up the space race section of the episode is the only part of the episode which carries any consequence beyond the closing credits, which is a real shame. Because the character work done here with B'Elanna is absolutely terrific, and Dawson's distracted, distant performance contrasting with her damn-it-all actions make for an absolutely riveting performance. The only thing that takes away from this is there's not really been any build-up to it - B'Elanna's been fine the last few times we've seen her, then here she's clinically depressed and self-harming to make her feel anything at all, then it's done. It's just too abrupt. This is the sort of criticism that Voyager often comes in for, and though it's generally much better than it's reputation when it comes to character development, here there's some legitimacy to the criticism. I'm holding to my only-dealing-with-what's-on-screen approach to the reviews, so I'm not going to make excuses about Dawson's pregnancy meaning the character was effectively side-lined for a good chuck of Season Four, at least in part because we're now three episodes into Season Five and we could have had hints layered before this episode screened (as they managed to do with the Delta Flyer being prompted by a comment from Seven last episode). The fact of the matter is that what we get on screen - the set-up and resolution of B'Elanna's depression - just is dealt with too speedily.
But the failure to build to B'Elanna's depression isn't specifically the fault of this episode, and when the episode does deal with her condition it does it very well indeed. Nothing here feels off - though we haven't witnessed this side of her personality before all the other beats to her character feel consistent with what we have seen, so the fact that she pushes Tom away, for example, feels exactly the way the character would react because we've seen her behave in this way before (pushing him away as a cover for her fear of getting too close). Or the way that it takes Chakotay, a friend but crucially someone with a shared history and background, to force her to face up to her problems. Actually Chakotay and Beltran have an absolutely brilliant episode here - Beltran turns in an excellent performance, at turns compassionate, understanding, then eventually brutal as he makes B'Elanna face what she's so desperately trying to avoid. As is common with Chakotay's best moments it's the tiny little things that make up the performance - while Beltran is great during the Big Episode Confrontation it's the small moments of friendship that work best between the two characters. The way he flicks an eye, gives the tiniest hint of a smile, or even the fairly straightforward manipulation of getting B'Elanna to put herself forward for the launch of the Delta Flyer's retrieval mission, all speak of a relationship between the two characters that obviously stretches back a long way before the show began, yet isn't something which is delivered in a series of infodumps. It's a masterful use of character (of both characters) and it's the episode's greatest strength - even the Big Confrontation is simply treated matter-of-factly (exactly how Chakotay would do it) and is on screen for less than a minute. The past isn't something to be fetishized or lingered over, it's something to be used in service of the character work. And faced with this, Dawson and Beltran are wonderful together - the unspoken but incredibly deep friendship between them rings completely true, and it's a tribute to them both that it does.
And, though it's comparatively lightweight, the whole retrieve-the-probe plot is surprisingly good fun. It's not really taken seriously but it is good fun and adds... well, not tension really but a ticking clock always helps to drive the action, and it acts as the spark to fire up the design and building of the Delta Flyer... and this is going to bring me to a discussion which is one of the most boring in all of Voyager, but you know, sometimes you need to tackle these head on, and I've been holding off on this one until the Delta Flyer arrived, so here we go. It's the one about, "so how many shuttles does Voyager have, and haven't they all been destroyed by now?" The answer to the first bit is, "I neither know nor care" and the answer to the second bit is almost certainly, "yes". However, the point of waiting till this episode before broaching the ever-so-fascinating topic of shuttlecraft numbers is because this episode basically answers the question with - they can build more. There's only ever been two answers to this question, and the answers are either, "Voyager's crew can construct more" or "the production team just got it wrong". Here we see the crew not only design, implement and build and entirely functional, new design of shuttlecraft but it makes it implicitly clear that if they can do this for a Borg-enhanced, super-duper, flashy, shiny new shuttle they shouldn't have too much trouble knocking out one of the old ones. We've come across symbolic representations of the Federation's economy of plenty before in the show, so here we have what amounts to an admission that this extends to shuttles as well, and thusly the crew are capable of building new ones. Apart from being a much more satisfying, in-universe explanation, the existence of the Delta Flyer itself provides ample on-screen evidence that this is not only possible, but in fact extremely likely. So now, hopefully, we can leave this discussion in the past, where it belongs. And the Flyer itself is really rather pleasing, and it's another indication of good character work that it's design (right down to having physical controls rather than touchscreens) and implementation is an outgrowth of a character's already-developed traits and interests, rather than just being dumped into the series because someone thought it would be a cool idea. So top marks there too.
Sadly, however, this isn't quite a top-tier episode of Voyager, and the reason is the ending. All that character work between B'Elanna and Chakotay on the holodeck? Terrific. All that design work and race against the clock to beat the Malon? Good, pulpy stuff. But that ending? Eh. It’s just too pat. B'Elanna realizing that she really does wants to go on the mission thanks to Chakotay is well-handled enough - not really original, but it works for the episode. And then there's a crisis on the shuttle (admittedly one they do a good job of ensuing we know about over the course of the episode, so it doesn’t come across as too contrived), which is fine. And we really get to see B'Elanna actually work out how to fix the problem, and see her do it - this isn't a case of a rush of bafflegab and pressing a few Okudagrams to resolve the situation, we really get to see her physically construct the tool that saves the day, which is extremely welcome. But... yea, it's a bit under-heated, because "character has revelation in time to turn up and save the day at the last moment" is pretty clichéd, and the wall of the shuttle creaking inwards like an old World War II submarine at the bottom of the ocean is just silly, and not really in a fun way, just in an, "I'm not buying this at all," way (to say nothing of welding what appears to be an old tea tray over the bulging wall to keep things together for just a few more moments). It's a shame because with a stronger resolution this could have really stood out as something special. Instead, it's just really, really good.
Any Other Business:
• All the praise to Roxann Dawson. She's absolutely on fire here, and even if the rest of the episode was terrible (and it absolutely isn't) this would be worth watching for her performance alone. Brilliant.
• Neelix is well used here, with fairly little screen time. His cajoling of B'Elanna during her first pancake scene, and his delivery of the, "my security training is going really well. Tuvok told me the other day that I am, "not completely inept"." line is really very sweet (and it's good to know Tuvok is being just as catty when he's off screen as when he's on it).
• And speaking of catty Tuvok, "Perhaps you weren't paying attention when the Malon freighter imploded," is another in his long line of bon mots, though also another indication that the episode isn't taking this strand of the plot entirely seriously.
• Once again we are forced to ask what, apart from plot contrivance, is the point of holodeck safties, and why would someone be allowed to turn them off like B'Elanna does here?
• One other thing that might have improved the episode slightly would have been an explanation of why this specific probe was worth so much. There's a bit of vague waffle about Borg shielding and suchlike, but it's just a probe. It's fine that it's a motivator for the space race, but it's all a bit random, really.
• I like the design of the Delta Flyer. Not everyone does, but I do think it's pretty great.
• Only three episodes in, and we have the Malon back already. Here they're already showing their worth as a recurring species, a people who can challenge Voyager, aren't traditional out-and-out bad guys in the mould of the Kazon, but who can be defeated with wit and tactics.
• Vorik's back.
• Nice final scene with B'Elanna finally getting to enjoy her banana pancakes, and we see, without a single word, the re-emergence of the B'Elanna of old. Some more really great work for Dawson.
Season Five, Episode 4 - "In The Flesh"
Tigh A Little Cocktail Round Old Chakotay
What a curious little thing "In The Flesh" is. It's a significant episode for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that this is the last full appearance of Species 8472. It's also a strikingly old-fashioned episode, steeped in Cold War paranoia, and the sort of episode that would slot so easily into TOS it's oftentimes hard to imagine this isn't a script just left over from the 60s but with a few of the characters updated. Then there's the back-on-Earth setting, the return of Boothby, or more accurately "Boothby", what amounts to a Star Trek version of The Prisoner's "Village" … the list goes on. It all makes for a very peculiar tone, and in the middle of it we have an extended edition of Chakotay Investigates (complete with another sort-of romance), and everything ends on a shaky compromise and everyone promising to try and do better. If that just sounds like they've taken a bunch of stuff and thrown it at the wall to see what sticks, well, there's a reason for that.
This is, to be honest, another episode which is relatively tough to review, because there's nothing inherently wrong with any of the bits that make up this story, but it's hard to say that they really all belong in the same episode together either. Now, to be fair, the script does work hard to try and integrate them, with varying levels of success. Certainly both the script and the direction seem to understand that they're dealing with a setting trying to evoke something from before the fall of the Berlin Wall - the training camp for enemy agents is a Cold War classic (and again to mention it's most common popular culture reference, The Prisoner) but there's attention being paid to much smaller details as well. Take the scene between Archer and Chakotay and the way it's shot when he comes back to her quarters, especially when she takes her isomorphic injection - we get to see what she's doing only in shadow while Chakotay tries to get information out of the computer (or searches the joint, if you will), then we have an exposed leg with a sheer gown falling away while she injects herself. Then they're over by the window, gazing out on a balmy evening while delivering guarded dialogue as they both try to get the other to reveal something. It's noir, pure and simple, delivering a 40s and 50s sensibility and directly invoking the kind of spirit the script is going for. Even the death scene of the "hostage" in sick bay comes across as one of those very 1950s World War II movies - name, rank serial number all rattled out repeatedly, and an eventual suicide to stop the "enemy" getting any further information (he's even a sleeper agent). It all feels like it comes from a different era.
The problem is it doesn't mesh - at all - with the wide open panoramas of Starfleet HQ. The inconsistency of tone is at least partly this episode's big problem - Boothby's down-home, gruff demeanour doesn't fit with the noir of the Chakotay and Archer scenes, and both character and actor lack the gravitas or steel the role requires to really animate it. The relaxed vibe of the (terribly-named) Quantum Café suggests intimacy, something which immediately evaporates next to the excessively bright exterior scenes that bracket it. The diplomacy at the end of the episode, when an uneasy peace is struck, has the potential to be a brilliant reversal of the usual all-guns-blazing approach to Species 8472, and it feels like a good summation of Star Trek using diplomacy rather than violence to broker an agreement between otherwise intractable enemies... but it's tough to make a bunch of people sitting round a table tacitly agreeing with each other dramatic. Maybe they spend too long round the table. Maybe the final scenes which reiterate what's already just been seen round the conference table, but in the habitat rather than on Voyager, go on too long. Maybe it's the guest cast (it's largely the guest cast). But the episode never feels like a tense diplomatic stand-off with two superpowers having itchy fingers on the allegorical nuclear trigger (and that's clearly what Seven's nanoprobes are standing in for this week), so it ends up feeling like we're slouching towards an ending rather than arriving at one. It's not the worst sin an episode can commit, and moments of it work quite well individually, like Janeway being the first to actively take her finger off the trigger, but like everything else it's a good bit of an episode looking for an actual good episode to appear in.
That's a good description of Chakotay too. He's great in this episode, and Beltran is great in this episode. But it's in service of a wonky, all-over-the-place story that he gets to be great in but which that greatness is entirely down to Beltran, rather than the script having any meaningful idea of what to do with him other than, "this is the principal character from the main cast this week." There's a lot to like about the performance and character here, and it’s one of the better uses of Chakotay we've had in a while. But thematically his character isn't really the obvious one to use here. You have an infiltration mission, behind enemy lines, where stealth and tactical ability are at a premium so why not use... your security officer? To be fair, Tuvok is in the initial scene set on the habitat, but after that he's mostly just back at his console. This would be a perfect show-don't-tell chance to see him at work, doing what we're always being told he's actually good at (and what he was doing when the whole series kicked off, which would have been a nice call-back too). And, again, it's not that Chakotay is bad - quite the reverse - it's just that his selection as this week's character de jour comes across as a fairly random spin of the, "what character shall we use this week?" wheel and it just so happened to land on Chakotay.
And what are we to make of the use of Species 8472? There have been some complaints directed towards this episode that it removes their sense of threat rather early in their run, but I don’t think that's quite the issue - if you have a recurring enemy you need to deepen them at some point otherwise their use just becomes repetitious, so I have no issue with the fact that they respond to diplomacy here, or that we find out a bit more about them and why they were so single-minded in their desire to purge our galaxy of life. The problem is more that even before they start responding to diplomacy there's no sense of threat, or even that there's something deeply weird about finding Starfleet in the Delta Quadrant. This ought to be a profoundly unsettling experience, not a day out in the park, which is largely what it's treated as - this is at least in part due to the direction, which seems to have virtually no idea how to establish something as uncanny or tense, even while being good at establishing the Cold War vibe elsewhere. The one time the episode really nails this is when the habitat shifts to "day mode" after Chakotay has been discovered, and there's a real sense of how artificial all this is, a very effective use of the very simple trick of just turning on the lights. But there should be loads of these little moments, of something being not quite right, instead of literally no others. That's the biggest sin of this episode, really, because without the threat of Species 8472 being properly established in-episode it means that the big, Reyjkavik-ian summit doesn't come across as a Reagan/Gorbachev clash of fear and ideology but instead a bunch of character actors sitting around discussing what feels like somewhat arbitrary stances. There's just not enough stakes established, despite terribly serious-minded mutterings of Earth being invaded and Voyager being the only line of defence against that invasion. Some melodrama here would, not for the first time, help build the dramatic stakes until a solution is found, but no - they just end up agreeing, and that's that.
Look, this is a review that's ended up sounding harsher than it's really meant to. On a first watch, this is an entertaining enough slice of Voyager that has a real old-school feel to it, and nothing is essentially wrong. It's only if you've seen it more than once, or really begin to think about it too hard, that it begins to falls apart. Beltran acts as a dependable anchor in the middle of all this stylistic noodling holding everything together, there's plenty of moments to enjoy, and nothing is obviously flawed. But equally nothing adds up to more than the sum of its parts and, although this doesn't interrupt Voyager's long line of unbroken great episodes, it's hard to say that it really adds to it either.
Any Other Business:
• Right, a few other points where the episode glosses over things and we as the audience are expected to just go with it. For example, how are they spying on Earth? If they can recreate Starfleet down to the apparently smallest detail they must have some tactical knowledge, so why is it hard for "Boothby" to believe that Voyager is the only ship in the Delta Quadrant?
• And how can they manage to recreate Boothby, right down his speech patterns and mannerisms, and indeed right down to him being virtually indistinguishable from a real human, yet not work out that nobody in the Alpha Quadrant is mobilizing against them? One quick fig-leaf line about "ohh Starfleet would have classified that information" is not good enough.
• "Boothby" also refers to dozens of other habitats - whatever happened to them? It's meant to give a sense of scale to Species 8472's efforts but it just ends up raising more questions than it answers, and to be honest sounds a little ridiculous.
• Kate Vernon, who plays Archer (rather well, in fact), should be immediately familiar to fans of genre fiction, playing as she does Saul Tigh's wife, Ellen, in Battlestar Galactica. She has a nice, relaxed rapport with Robert Beltran which goes some way towards selling their entirely fictional relationship.
• But saying that, really all praise to Beltran who manages to make all this seem credible as threat really through his performance alone, because as I said in the review, the direction does nothing to back up the idea that this might actually be a dangerous situation he finds himself in rather that a casual day strolling around a park. It's also a nice little character detail that he's familiar with George Bernard Shaw - it's been established before (and will be again) that he's quite well read, so it's a lovely little point to see dropped in here.
• Nice to see the Delta Flyer get it's first proper outing, zipping about the place - and Tom and Harry hangin' out, shooting the breeze while waiting for Chakotay to check in is another in a series of minor character beats for them that nevertheless helps to nicely re-enforce their ongoing friendship. Even if Harry's pacing make is seem more like he's waiting for his daughter to come back from her first prom.
• I know his inclusion here is fan service, but I've never been a fan of Boothby, a tedious grumpy-old-man-with-hidden-wisdom cliché, so I'm not exactly thrilled to see him turn up at Starfleet HQ, and his character feels all wrong for this episode. I get that it's a familiar face meant to represent the Alpha Quadrant, but it's not really a successful conceit (not least because of all the, "but how?" questions including previously-seen characters raises). But, you know, it's fan service so... consider yourself serviced.
• Janeway tells "Boothby" that he has Voyager's com frequency should he ever need to get in touch, but he never does. Can we take it that this means his diplomacy succeeds?
"Lieutenant, my readings indicate this mission does not require a motorbike helmet"
Balancing the needs of character against the needs of basic storytelling is always a tricky act. Focus too much on the character work and the whole enterprise (heh) can come off as soapy and manipulative, focus too much on plot and you won't do enough of the character work to make it worth the effort. Two threads make up "Extreme Risk" - the character work of B'Elanna's depression and the race-against-time of the probe retrieval - and split the running time fairly evenly between the two, though there's a slight leaning towards B'Elanna's story, with the two dovetailing together to close the episode out. That's not an especially radical episode structure, but it allows both stories to develop fully and impact each other at the conclusion in a meaningful way.
Actually, "not an especially radical episode" is a perfectly fine description for "Extreme Risk" because it's far more invested in what it's trying to do with B'Elanna that it is reinventing the wheel, which is absolutely fine. But the Delta Flyer construction, which makes up the space race section of the episode is the only part of the episode which carries any consequence beyond the closing credits, which is a real shame. Because the character work done here with B'Elanna is absolutely terrific, and Dawson's distracted, distant performance contrasting with her damn-it-all actions make for an absolutely riveting performance. The only thing that takes away from this is there's not really been any build-up to it - B'Elanna's been fine the last few times we've seen her, then here she's clinically depressed and self-harming to make her feel anything at all, then it's done. It's just too abrupt. This is the sort of criticism that Voyager often comes in for, and though it's generally much better than it's reputation when it comes to character development, here there's some legitimacy to the criticism. I'm holding to my only-dealing-with-what's-on-screen approach to the reviews, so I'm not going to make excuses about Dawson's pregnancy meaning the character was effectively side-lined for a good chuck of Season Four, at least in part because we're now three episodes into Season Five and we could have had hints layered before this episode screened (as they managed to do with the Delta Flyer being prompted by a comment from Seven last episode). The fact of the matter is that what we get on screen - the set-up and resolution of B'Elanna's depression - just is dealt with too speedily.
But the failure to build to B'Elanna's depression isn't specifically the fault of this episode, and when the episode does deal with her condition it does it very well indeed. Nothing here feels off - though we haven't witnessed this side of her personality before all the other beats to her character feel consistent with what we have seen, so the fact that she pushes Tom away, for example, feels exactly the way the character would react because we've seen her behave in this way before (pushing him away as a cover for her fear of getting too close). Or the way that it takes Chakotay, a friend but crucially someone with a shared history and background, to force her to face up to her problems. Actually Chakotay and Beltran have an absolutely brilliant episode here - Beltran turns in an excellent performance, at turns compassionate, understanding, then eventually brutal as he makes B'Elanna face what she's so desperately trying to avoid. As is common with Chakotay's best moments it's the tiny little things that make up the performance - while Beltran is great during the Big Episode Confrontation it's the small moments of friendship that work best between the two characters. The way he flicks an eye, gives the tiniest hint of a smile, or even the fairly straightforward manipulation of getting B'Elanna to put herself forward for the launch of the Delta Flyer's retrieval mission, all speak of a relationship between the two characters that obviously stretches back a long way before the show began, yet isn't something which is delivered in a series of infodumps. It's a masterful use of character (of both characters) and it's the episode's greatest strength - even the Big Confrontation is simply treated matter-of-factly (exactly how Chakotay would do it) and is on screen for less than a minute. The past isn't something to be fetishized or lingered over, it's something to be used in service of the character work. And faced with this, Dawson and Beltran are wonderful together - the unspoken but incredibly deep friendship between them rings completely true, and it's a tribute to them both that it does.
And, though it's comparatively lightweight, the whole retrieve-the-probe plot is surprisingly good fun. It's not really taken seriously but it is good fun and adds... well, not tension really but a ticking clock always helps to drive the action, and it acts as the spark to fire up the design and building of the Delta Flyer... and this is going to bring me to a discussion which is one of the most boring in all of Voyager, but you know, sometimes you need to tackle these head on, and I've been holding off on this one until the Delta Flyer arrived, so here we go. It's the one about, "so how many shuttles does Voyager have, and haven't they all been destroyed by now?" The answer to the first bit is, "I neither know nor care" and the answer to the second bit is almost certainly, "yes". However, the point of waiting till this episode before broaching the ever-so-fascinating topic of shuttlecraft numbers is because this episode basically answers the question with - they can build more. There's only ever been two answers to this question, and the answers are either, "Voyager's crew can construct more" or "the production team just got it wrong". Here we see the crew not only design, implement and build and entirely functional, new design of shuttlecraft but it makes it implicitly clear that if they can do this for a Borg-enhanced, super-duper, flashy, shiny new shuttle they shouldn't have too much trouble knocking out one of the old ones. We've come across symbolic representations of the Federation's economy of plenty before in the show, so here we have what amounts to an admission that this extends to shuttles as well, and thusly the crew are capable of building new ones. Apart from being a much more satisfying, in-universe explanation, the existence of the Delta Flyer itself provides ample on-screen evidence that this is not only possible, but in fact extremely likely. So now, hopefully, we can leave this discussion in the past, where it belongs. And the Flyer itself is really rather pleasing, and it's another indication of good character work that it's design (right down to having physical controls rather than touchscreens) and implementation is an outgrowth of a character's already-developed traits and interests, rather than just being dumped into the series because someone thought it would be a cool idea. So top marks there too.
Sadly, however, this isn't quite a top-tier episode of Voyager, and the reason is the ending. All that character work between B'Elanna and Chakotay on the holodeck? Terrific. All that design work and race against the clock to beat the Malon? Good, pulpy stuff. But that ending? Eh. It’s just too pat. B'Elanna realizing that she really does wants to go on the mission thanks to Chakotay is well-handled enough - not really original, but it works for the episode. And then there's a crisis on the shuttle (admittedly one they do a good job of ensuing we know about over the course of the episode, so it doesn’t come across as too contrived), which is fine. And we really get to see B'Elanna actually work out how to fix the problem, and see her do it - this isn't a case of a rush of bafflegab and pressing a few Okudagrams to resolve the situation, we really get to see her physically construct the tool that saves the day, which is extremely welcome. But... yea, it's a bit under-heated, because "character has revelation in time to turn up and save the day at the last moment" is pretty clichéd, and the wall of the shuttle creaking inwards like an old World War II submarine at the bottom of the ocean is just silly, and not really in a fun way, just in an, "I'm not buying this at all," way (to say nothing of welding what appears to be an old tea tray over the bulging wall to keep things together for just a few more moments). It's a shame because with a stronger resolution this could have really stood out as something special. Instead, it's just really, really good.
Any Other Business:
• All the praise to Roxann Dawson. She's absolutely on fire here, and even if the rest of the episode was terrible (and it absolutely isn't) this would be worth watching for her performance alone. Brilliant.
• Neelix is well used here, with fairly little screen time. His cajoling of B'Elanna during her first pancake scene, and his delivery of the, "my security training is going really well. Tuvok told me the other day that I am, "not completely inept"." line is really very sweet (and it's good to know Tuvok is being just as catty when he's off screen as when he's on it).
• And speaking of catty Tuvok, "Perhaps you weren't paying attention when the Malon freighter imploded," is another in his long line of bon mots, though also another indication that the episode isn't taking this strand of the plot entirely seriously.
• Once again we are forced to ask what, apart from plot contrivance, is the point of holodeck safties, and why would someone be allowed to turn them off like B'Elanna does here?
• One other thing that might have improved the episode slightly would have been an explanation of why this specific probe was worth so much. There's a bit of vague waffle about Borg shielding and suchlike, but it's just a probe. It's fine that it's a motivator for the space race, but it's all a bit random, really.
• I like the design of the Delta Flyer. Not everyone does, but I do think it's pretty great.
• Only three episodes in, and we have the Malon back already. Here they're already showing their worth as a recurring species, a people who can challenge Voyager, aren't traditional out-and-out bad guys in the mould of the Kazon, but who can be defeated with wit and tactics.
• Vorik's back.
• Nice final scene with B'Elanna finally getting to enjoy her banana pancakes, and we see, without a single word, the re-emergence of the B'Elanna of old. Some more really great work for Dawson.
Season Five, Episode 4 - "In The Flesh"
Tigh A Little Cocktail Round Old Chakotay
What a curious little thing "In The Flesh" is. It's a significant episode for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that this is the last full appearance of Species 8472. It's also a strikingly old-fashioned episode, steeped in Cold War paranoia, and the sort of episode that would slot so easily into TOS it's oftentimes hard to imagine this isn't a script just left over from the 60s but with a few of the characters updated. Then there's the back-on-Earth setting, the return of Boothby, or more accurately "Boothby", what amounts to a Star Trek version of The Prisoner's "Village" … the list goes on. It all makes for a very peculiar tone, and in the middle of it we have an extended edition of Chakotay Investigates (complete with another sort-of romance), and everything ends on a shaky compromise and everyone promising to try and do better. If that just sounds like they've taken a bunch of stuff and thrown it at the wall to see what sticks, well, there's a reason for that.
This is, to be honest, another episode which is relatively tough to review, because there's nothing inherently wrong with any of the bits that make up this story, but it's hard to say that they really all belong in the same episode together either. Now, to be fair, the script does work hard to try and integrate them, with varying levels of success. Certainly both the script and the direction seem to understand that they're dealing with a setting trying to evoke something from before the fall of the Berlin Wall - the training camp for enemy agents is a Cold War classic (and again to mention it's most common popular culture reference, The Prisoner) but there's attention being paid to much smaller details as well. Take the scene between Archer and Chakotay and the way it's shot when he comes back to her quarters, especially when she takes her isomorphic injection - we get to see what she's doing only in shadow while Chakotay tries to get information out of the computer (or searches the joint, if you will), then we have an exposed leg with a sheer gown falling away while she injects herself. Then they're over by the window, gazing out on a balmy evening while delivering guarded dialogue as they both try to get the other to reveal something. It's noir, pure and simple, delivering a 40s and 50s sensibility and directly invoking the kind of spirit the script is going for. Even the death scene of the "hostage" in sick bay comes across as one of those very 1950s World War II movies - name, rank serial number all rattled out repeatedly, and an eventual suicide to stop the "enemy" getting any further information (he's even a sleeper agent). It all feels like it comes from a different era.
The problem is it doesn't mesh - at all - with the wide open panoramas of Starfleet HQ. The inconsistency of tone is at least partly this episode's big problem - Boothby's down-home, gruff demeanour doesn't fit with the noir of the Chakotay and Archer scenes, and both character and actor lack the gravitas or steel the role requires to really animate it. The relaxed vibe of the (terribly-named) Quantum Café suggests intimacy, something which immediately evaporates next to the excessively bright exterior scenes that bracket it. The diplomacy at the end of the episode, when an uneasy peace is struck, has the potential to be a brilliant reversal of the usual all-guns-blazing approach to Species 8472, and it feels like a good summation of Star Trek using diplomacy rather than violence to broker an agreement between otherwise intractable enemies... but it's tough to make a bunch of people sitting round a table tacitly agreeing with each other dramatic. Maybe they spend too long round the table. Maybe the final scenes which reiterate what's already just been seen round the conference table, but in the habitat rather than on Voyager, go on too long. Maybe it's the guest cast (it's largely the guest cast). But the episode never feels like a tense diplomatic stand-off with two superpowers having itchy fingers on the allegorical nuclear trigger (and that's clearly what Seven's nanoprobes are standing in for this week), so it ends up feeling like we're slouching towards an ending rather than arriving at one. It's not the worst sin an episode can commit, and moments of it work quite well individually, like Janeway being the first to actively take her finger off the trigger, but like everything else it's a good bit of an episode looking for an actual good episode to appear in.
That's a good description of Chakotay too. He's great in this episode, and Beltran is great in this episode. But it's in service of a wonky, all-over-the-place story that he gets to be great in but which that greatness is entirely down to Beltran, rather than the script having any meaningful idea of what to do with him other than, "this is the principal character from the main cast this week." There's a lot to like about the performance and character here, and it’s one of the better uses of Chakotay we've had in a while. But thematically his character isn't really the obvious one to use here. You have an infiltration mission, behind enemy lines, where stealth and tactical ability are at a premium so why not use... your security officer? To be fair, Tuvok is in the initial scene set on the habitat, but after that he's mostly just back at his console. This would be a perfect show-don't-tell chance to see him at work, doing what we're always being told he's actually good at (and what he was doing when the whole series kicked off, which would have been a nice call-back too). And, again, it's not that Chakotay is bad - quite the reverse - it's just that his selection as this week's character de jour comes across as a fairly random spin of the, "what character shall we use this week?" wheel and it just so happened to land on Chakotay.
And what are we to make of the use of Species 8472? There have been some complaints directed towards this episode that it removes their sense of threat rather early in their run, but I don’t think that's quite the issue - if you have a recurring enemy you need to deepen them at some point otherwise their use just becomes repetitious, so I have no issue with the fact that they respond to diplomacy here, or that we find out a bit more about them and why they were so single-minded in their desire to purge our galaxy of life. The problem is more that even before they start responding to diplomacy there's no sense of threat, or even that there's something deeply weird about finding Starfleet in the Delta Quadrant. This ought to be a profoundly unsettling experience, not a day out in the park, which is largely what it's treated as - this is at least in part due to the direction, which seems to have virtually no idea how to establish something as uncanny or tense, even while being good at establishing the Cold War vibe elsewhere. The one time the episode really nails this is when the habitat shifts to "day mode" after Chakotay has been discovered, and there's a real sense of how artificial all this is, a very effective use of the very simple trick of just turning on the lights. But there should be loads of these little moments, of something being not quite right, instead of literally no others. That's the biggest sin of this episode, really, because without the threat of Species 8472 being properly established in-episode it means that the big, Reyjkavik-ian summit doesn't come across as a Reagan/Gorbachev clash of fear and ideology but instead a bunch of character actors sitting around discussing what feels like somewhat arbitrary stances. There's just not enough stakes established, despite terribly serious-minded mutterings of Earth being invaded and Voyager being the only line of defence against that invasion. Some melodrama here would, not for the first time, help build the dramatic stakes until a solution is found, but no - they just end up agreeing, and that's that.
Look, this is a review that's ended up sounding harsher than it's really meant to. On a first watch, this is an entertaining enough slice of Voyager that has a real old-school feel to it, and nothing is essentially wrong. It's only if you've seen it more than once, or really begin to think about it too hard, that it begins to falls apart. Beltran acts as a dependable anchor in the middle of all this stylistic noodling holding everything together, there's plenty of moments to enjoy, and nothing is obviously flawed. But equally nothing adds up to more than the sum of its parts and, although this doesn't interrupt Voyager's long line of unbroken great episodes, it's hard to say that it really adds to it either.
Any Other Business:
• Right, a few other points where the episode glosses over things and we as the audience are expected to just go with it. For example, how are they spying on Earth? If they can recreate Starfleet down to the apparently smallest detail they must have some tactical knowledge, so why is it hard for "Boothby" to believe that Voyager is the only ship in the Delta Quadrant?
• And how can they manage to recreate Boothby, right down his speech patterns and mannerisms, and indeed right down to him being virtually indistinguishable from a real human, yet not work out that nobody in the Alpha Quadrant is mobilizing against them? One quick fig-leaf line about "ohh Starfleet would have classified that information" is not good enough.
• "Boothby" also refers to dozens of other habitats - whatever happened to them? It's meant to give a sense of scale to Species 8472's efforts but it just ends up raising more questions than it answers, and to be honest sounds a little ridiculous.
• Kate Vernon, who plays Archer (rather well, in fact), should be immediately familiar to fans of genre fiction, playing as she does Saul Tigh's wife, Ellen, in Battlestar Galactica. She has a nice, relaxed rapport with Robert Beltran which goes some way towards selling their entirely fictional relationship.
• But saying that, really all praise to Beltran who manages to make all this seem credible as threat really through his performance alone, because as I said in the review, the direction does nothing to back up the idea that this might actually be a dangerous situation he finds himself in rather that a casual day strolling around a park. It's also a nice little character detail that he's familiar with George Bernard Shaw - it's been established before (and will be again) that he's quite well read, so it's a lovely little point to see dropped in here.
• Nice to see the Delta Flyer get it's first proper outing, zipping about the place - and Tom and Harry hangin' out, shooting the breeze while waiting for Chakotay to check in is another in a series of minor character beats for them that nevertheless helps to nicely re-enforce their ongoing friendship. Even if Harry's pacing make is seem more like he's waiting for his daughter to come back from her first prom.
• I know his inclusion here is fan service, but I've never been a fan of Boothby, a tedious grumpy-old-man-with-hidden-wisdom cliché, so I'm not exactly thrilled to see him turn up at Starfleet HQ, and his character feels all wrong for this episode. I get that it's a familiar face meant to represent the Alpha Quadrant, but it's not really a successful conceit (not least because of all the, "but how?" questions including previously-seen characters raises). But, you know, it's fan service so... consider yourself serviced.
• Janeway tells "Boothby" that he has Voyager's com frequency should he ever need to get in touch, but he never does. Can we take it that this means his diplomacy succeeds?
