Post by Prole Hole on Mar 3, 2016 12:10:21 GMT -5
Season Five, Episode 26 / Season Six, Episode 1 - "Equinox"
Seven-teen Again
"Equinox" does one thing extremely well, and one thing extremely badly. The thing it does well is being an excellent two-parter, and the thing it does badly is connect to any other part of Voyager. The question here, more than any other two-parter we've come across thus far, is whether this matters. Because so far the two-parters have been split fairly evenly between standalone stories and stories which impact the ongoing narrative. On one side "Basics" tied off the Kazon storyline for good, "Scorpion" re-introduced the Borg and introduced Seven, and "Dark Frontier" completed Seven's transformation from Borg to human. On the other side "Future's End" was just a fun romp (which, OK, introduced the Doctor's mobile emitter, but still), "Year of Hell" was by its very nature orphaned from the narrative around it, and "The Killing Game" is a little bit in-between - it will get followed up come Season Seven but it doesn't have a direct impact on the season surrounding it. "Equinox", by contrast, tries to have it both ways - this is a battle between two Federation ships, so there's a narrowness of focus and no great story arc to connect it to, but it also introduces additional crewmembers who will never be seen again, and the conflict which is played out between Janeway and Chakotay is strikingly familiar to anyone who remembers "Scorpion" (which ought to be everyone). So it wants to both impact the ongoing narrative and stay removed from it.
I want to get this part out of the way first - this doesn't work. That's a shame, since with one tweak this could have been a near-perfect two-parter, because other than the frankly baffling decision to try and integrate the Equinox crew into Voyager's, it's hard to see any fault that could be levelled at this episode. It's an extremely confident piece of work that juggles an unusually high number of speaking parts, plot mechanics, and tension, to turn in a generally brilliant two-parter. But that decision to keep the Equinox crew... why? From a purely in-world perspective it kind of makes sense - obviously Janeway isn’t about to abandon them. Yet we never get to lay eyes, or even have a single reference, to them again. If they had just been killed when the Equinox explodes (as we can assume a few probably are), then "Equinox" would have worked better because the whole thing would be a stand-alone adventure, and it could fully embrace the obvious tragedy of Ransom's flaws. Instead, by attempting some kind of rescue of the five remaining crewmembers we have this weird, uncomfortable compromise that doesn't help anything. I don't want to lean too heavily on this point, because so far I've been reviewing everything on an as-it's-being-watched-in-sequence way (i.e. viewed as it was supposed to be on broadcast, rather than with the benefit of hindsight) and the truth is when viewed as the final episode of Season Five and the first episode of Season Six this works staggeringly well. The lack of consequence of this episode shouldn't be ignored, but neither should it be allowed to overshadow a really, really brilliant piece of work - it's not "Equinox"'s fault nobody picked up on the threads laid down here.
It goes without saying that one thing that Voyager lacks that every other incarnation of Star Trek has is an ongoing connection with home. Home is Voyager's end-point but for Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Archer its rarely more than a month or two away at most. This means, practically, that those four captains get to have a string of basically nuts members of Starfleet to play against who essentially act to re-enforce the morality of the lead character. Kirk has Commodore Dekker, Picard has Maddox, Sisko has Leyton, Archer has... well practically half the galaxy it seems, and so on (of course there are multiple other examples). By contrasting the nobility or morality of our lead characters against people who are obviously found to be wanting we get a yardstick by which to measure our heroes and the actions that they take in defence of what it is Star Trek is meant to stand for. Obviously, what Star Trek stands for is to a degree nebulous, as is inevitable when any ongoing work is created by multiple creative forces, but the core ideas - freedom, liberty, honesty, respect, and so forth - resonate throughout all iterations of the franchise enough that we understand as an audience when a line has been crossed. We know Sisko goes waaaaay too far during the course of "In The Pale Moonlight" by intentionally starting a war, for example, but we're encouraged to forgive him this appallingly amoral act because we're asked to believe that he did it for the greater good, and that the inclusion of the Romulans in the Dominion War will tip the balance of power in favour of the Alpha Quadrant races and ultimately save what everyone's supposed to be fighting for. But still - he's "our guy" and we know (hope? Believe?) he wouldn't go too far, even as he pontificates on right and wrong in "Paradise Lost". "Equinox", then, is Voyager's first attempt at doing this kind of story, contrasting Janeway against another in a long string of Starfleet nut-jobs to see how she measures up, a whacking six season into Voyager's run. It's a compelling contrast, because one of the most engaging aspects of "Equinox" is that the line between Janeway and Random is paper thin. Up until about the mid-point Janeway has the moral authority, no question about it - she's not being strictly honest with Ransom when she tells him she's never broken the Prime Directive but she obviously believes she's walked the line close enough that actions were justified by circumstance. But once she beings her vendetta against Ransom? Well, that's a while different story.
We know Janeway isn’t the most psychologically sound captain and indeed it's one of her most interesting aspects. When placed under a very specific kind of pressure, the kind we see, for example, during "Scorpion", "Year Of Hell", and here in "Equinox", she cracks. Her vicious attacks on Chakotay during their scenes together in the ready room, the casual way she tractors the Ankari ship who might hold information despite being innocent of any involvement... these speak to someone who's been wounded in a very personal, very specific way, and as with those previous two-parters she lashes out. This is where the work done in "Scorpion" (and "Year Of Hell") really pays dividends, because we've had this reaction as an established character trait of Janeway's, and the speech Chakoatay gave Janeway about not letting her go too far back in "Scorpion" and the way they find to resolve their contrasting perspectives comes into full play here. Because, even if he's relieved of duty and confined to quarters, he really does stop her from crossing the line. It might only be by a millimetre, but his words are just enough to get through to her. She never becomes a Ransom. It's an absolutely fascinating piece of characterization for her, and Chakotay as a warrior fighting alongside his chosen leader, even when that means fighting with his chosen leader, is the best characterization he has - he's always at his most worthwhile during those scenes, and Beltran is never better than when he and Mulgrew are yelling at each other. This is where appreciating the history of the show really pays off - that promise to stop her when enough is enough from Chakotay adds so much dimension to their conflict here, but it's also why it's worth watching the series episode-by-episode rather than just dropping in on the highlights, because Chakotay often plays the sounding board role, but usually in an understated way - prepared to go along with Janeways's choices as long as its within a certain moral framework. This is a logical piece of characterization for someone who fought an occupying force on a point of principal as a member of the Maquis, and it makes sense that, when he collides with something he finds unacceptable, that becomes the moment he stands up and fights for what he believes in (even if now he's fighting with words rather than weapons). Equally Janeway, however much she might claim otherwise here, obviously respects him and the stand he's prepared to make, because otherwise his words would have no impact. But they do, and he's able to make her see sense just in time, building on what happened the last time they found themselves in this position. If Janeway is less than psychologically sounds (and I really don’t think there's any doubt left at this stage) then it's crucial for Chakotay to be there as a steadying hand on the tiller, and in "Equinox" he fulfils this role as well as it could possibly be done. Really, Chakotay is a brilliant first officer here.
Ransom, on the other hand, has nobody to hold him in check, and the difference between he two is, even if paper thin, also incredibly stark. Max Burke is no Chakotay, that's for sure, and rather than acting as a check and balance against his captain, as any good first officer should, he instead comes across as cravenly indulgent. Ransom doesn't have anyone to tell him no, and he abuses his position of power horrifically, murdering again and again and again to shorten his ship's journey home. Whatever the horrors they've come across in the Delta Quadrant it's clearly pushed him far, far over the edge of what's acceptable, but what's revealing here is that Janeway doesn't defeat him as such, bur rather forces him to acknowledge that what he's done is wrong, and to take responsibility for his actions. In this, the role that she plays for Ransom mirrors the role Chakotay plays for her, an incredibly satisfying building of one example upon another. Ransom's crimes are terrible, and the complicity of his crew is at best passive collaboration and at worst openly working to further the same agenda (which is why Janeway is so coldly dismissive of them), but even he's not so far gone as to be irredeemable. Indeed, despite the terrible things that happen here, there's a sense in which "Equinox" is surprisingly optimistic in its outlook - even people who have behaved appallingly are capable of some degree of redemption, and part of that redemption is guilt and acceptance of what he's done - that's what the hallucination of Seven in his synaptic stimulator landscape represents. Whether this makes up for what they've done is another matter, but given the stated redemptive aim of these reviews, how could I not warm to an episode whose ending suggests redemption is possible?
That there's a degree of conflict between the Equinox's crew also helps to enliven a lot of the debates that are laid out here, providing some contrast to our crew's attempts to do the right thing, and using their desperation to get home as a motivating factor that comes to outweigh their morality. There's an obvious contrast between, say, Chakotay desperately trying to use words to breach the gap between Starfleet and the "spirits of good fortune" (again, excellent characterization of Chakotay) and Burke using words to twist his way round B'Elanna and get whatever he wants. Similarly, their Doctor is, naturally, a leeringly evil version of "our" Doctor (until "our" Doctor has his ethical subroutines removed, anyway), but again we have a mirroring of relationships here. The Doctor's is rather more literal - given that Picardo gets the chance to play opposite himself - but again something interesting happens. Our Doctor's ethical subroutines are removed, which means, we're told, he can perform all sorts of unpleasantaries, but what it doesn’t do is remove a core sense of who he is. So our Doctor still enjoys singing, still has a flair for somewhat melodramatic overstatement and so on, and of course is contrite once his subroutines are replaced, but this provides a rather more direct, contrasting interpretation of the themes that play out between Chakotay/Janeway and Janeway/Ransom. We literally see what happens when someone's morality is taken away from them, and what the consequences of this might be. Their Doctor might be the cuckoo in the nest, doing all the bad things we expect of a morally absent character, but then again we don’t know this Doctor or what's been done to him, and we expect something better from our Doctor, even if his ethical subroutines have been taken away, just as we're driven to expect something better of Janeway or Ransom. That's the source of the tension in this episode - people who we expect to be better than they are failing to live up to their own standards, and it provides an extremely robust engine to drive the drama of the episode.
This also marks a triumphant return to Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic, with everything playing out over a large canvas and using the way Voyager functions to its maximum effect. Although "Relativity" and, to a certain extent, "The Fight" embrace the action-adventure aesthetic it's been a while since the show felt like it was returning to this part of its heritage, and most of the previous season really isn't driven in that way. But whenever a two-parter does the action-adventure it always comes with a lot more snap because there's just that much more time and space to let ideas and scenarios play out over. There's a lot of action here, and plenty of adventure, and despite the sophistication of the musing on morality, a lot of this feels old-fashioned. I mean that as a compliment though, because as I've mentioned in previous reviews, action has always been an integral part of what Star Trek does, and seeing the core elements here - action intertwined so successfully with discussions of morality and responsibility - is what really elevates "Equinox" to something special. It's able to take the core of what Voyager is, and what Star Trek is, and combine them to produce an extremely powerful hour and a half of television. And as with all the most successful iterations of the action-adventure aesthetic, the episode isn't afraid to slow down when it needs to, so a human dimension can come through - thus we get to actually care about all the people we're watching, not just the regular crew but the guest cast as well. In this, B'Elanna's previous relationship with Max Burke is something of a minor masterstroke because it gives one of our regular characters an anchor to care about what happens to the Equinox crew beyond "we need to save some humans who are also lost". Those personal stakes also feed into the episode's ongoing narrative of someone manifestly falling short of what's expected of them (as Burke obviously does) but, apart from providing another layering of this, it also means that, because B'Elanna cares about what happens to Burke, we end up caring as well because we're seeing things from her perspective. That’s a pretty neat trick to work on a character that's only in two episodes, and the fact that he really does end up being a rat, and gets his all-too-appropriate death, ends up feeling satisfying both narratively and emotionally. That's the beat that "Equinox" lands successfully again and again, and what makes it all come together at the end.
Because for the ending of the story to work, there has to be some kind of emotional as well as narrative resolution, a release to justify an hour and a half of Janeway losing her shit over another in a long line of Starfleet's best who quite demonstrably are not. And it's Ransoms better-late-than-never change of heart that the emotional catharsis rests on. The reason Ransom is such a success as a character is that his position, while morally reprehensible, isn't all that difficult to understand. We've had five full seasons of Janeway telling us she'll do what it takes to get her crew home, but the difference here is that we see someone who really means those words. He means he will do anything to get this crew home, whereas Janeway means, "I'll do anything more or less within the tenants of the society from which we come". The fact is Ransom comes across as a pretty likeable guy - he's no Riker on Risa but until we find out the true extent of what he's up to, he's easy enough to be around, and the palpable relief Janeway feels at finally being able to talk to someone in the same position she's in makes us want to be on his side, even as we learn just how far he's fallen. Thus when he does finally come to understand what it is that he's done, and why it needs to stop, it gives the audience that genuine catharsis. The knowledge costs him his life - and that feels right, because that's the tragedy of the episode, his flaws cost him everything as they must in a good tragedy - but just for a few, crucial moments, the Starfleet captain that he always should have been comes through, and gives the episode the conclusion it needs. There's no happy ending here, in the traditional sense - Ransom is stopped, his pitifully small number of surviving crew are stripped of rank and privilege, and many people die in the effort to bring him to justice. But, in the end, redemption is possible, and justice is finally served. "Equinox" ends Season Five brilliantly and kicks Season Six off in the same way, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Any Other Business:
• Well. I always liked "Equinox" but I wasn't quite prepared for just how much it would blow me away. Third best two-parter so far, after "Scorpion" and "Year Of Hell".
• Someone really must think Robert Picardo is good at playing evil versions of his character, because here he is, doing it again, after a whole zero episodes between this and the last time he was asked to do it. His work as "our" Doctor - coldly sadistic but restrained - is very well delivered, but there's a few moments as the Equinox's Doctor where he almost veers in to "Darkling" territory, especially during the "jail-break".
• You know how good "Equinox" is? Even Naomi's inclusion isn't pointless, serving as an example of everything the crew of the Equinox has lost, while at the same time allowing at least one connection to something outside that crew's own, selfish perspective. Neat piece of symbolism.
• The Shrieks are an appropriately different kind of alien threat - small, capable of flight and able to look both benevolent and furious. Their on-screen realization is broadly good - not perfect, but good enough - but the sound-effects of their arrival, the screeching noise that accompanies the subspace vacuoles forming, is really excellent, and properly disconcerting.
• The casting of the Equinox's crew is brilliant. Every single character we get to spent time with is excellently played. John Savage shines as Ransom, of course, and Titus Welliver is terrific as Max Burke, but some praise also for Olivia Burkelund as Maria Gilmore. She gives an incredibly resigned, weary performance that's very much an encapsulation of "the banality of evil". She's tired, she wants to go home even though she knows what they're doing is wrong, but she's just got no more fight left in her. Great character.
• The way the Equinox's Doctor is able to defeat our Doctor - by slapping the mobile emitter with a PADD - is a bit stupid, though. Couldn't B'Elanna fit it with a little plastic flap to stop that? What happens if the Doctor walks into a wall by accident, or someone collides with him in a corridor? Is that him just off line?
• The wrecked Equinox looks suitable dark and grimy, and it's excellently shot on screen, and yet again, low lighting levels make everything come alive. It must have been a hellish set to shoot on, but the results are more than worth it.
• The end of episode one cliffhanger has lots of end-of-episode acting and its a bit cheesy – oh no, Janeway might be killed by one of the aliens! Part Two? Ah, she's ok, just knocked aside!
• A few nice Seven put-downs. "You know Janeway isn't the only one who can help you explore your Humanity." Pause. "You would be an inferior role model." You tell him, Seven!
• Everyone deserves praise in this episode, and I can't list everyone by name, but so, so much respect for Robert Beltran here - arguably his best performance to date.
• Fantastic turnabout when Janeway again proves to be an excellent strategist when she works out what Ransom will do (hide rather than run), works out where he'll do it, and as a result is able to capture a couple of members of his crew. Good thinking, and really terrific writing because, for all her unbridled fury, she's still thinking like a starship captain rather than just being driven by her anger.
• The Doctor taking back his sick bay is great - the Equinox's Doctor just prattles on with pointless threats and our Doctor simply deletes him. Ha!
• And it all ends with salad and croutons. I like that the relationship at the end is still frosty between Chakotay and Janeway. It gets better, because she didn't cross the line and thus Chakotay can forgive her. But it's not all smiles and laughing in the mess hall either.
• Yup, my only regret here is that this never connects to anything. That's a great shame but, as I said in the review, that shouldn't overshadow just how good this is. I've run out of superlatives now, but still - what a phenomenal two-parter.
• And one final point worth observing – as of this point Voyager was the only Star Trek series airing, DS9 having just finished its run.
Seven-teen Again
"Equinox" does one thing extremely well, and one thing extremely badly. The thing it does well is being an excellent two-parter, and the thing it does badly is connect to any other part of Voyager. The question here, more than any other two-parter we've come across thus far, is whether this matters. Because so far the two-parters have been split fairly evenly between standalone stories and stories which impact the ongoing narrative. On one side "Basics" tied off the Kazon storyline for good, "Scorpion" re-introduced the Borg and introduced Seven, and "Dark Frontier" completed Seven's transformation from Borg to human. On the other side "Future's End" was just a fun romp (which, OK, introduced the Doctor's mobile emitter, but still), "Year of Hell" was by its very nature orphaned from the narrative around it, and "The Killing Game" is a little bit in-between - it will get followed up come Season Seven but it doesn't have a direct impact on the season surrounding it. "Equinox", by contrast, tries to have it both ways - this is a battle between two Federation ships, so there's a narrowness of focus and no great story arc to connect it to, but it also introduces additional crewmembers who will never be seen again, and the conflict which is played out between Janeway and Chakotay is strikingly familiar to anyone who remembers "Scorpion" (which ought to be everyone). So it wants to both impact the ongoing narrative and stay removed from it.
I want to get this part out of the way first - this doesn't work. That's a shame, since with one tweak this could have been a near-perfect two-parter, because other than the frankly baffling decision to try and integrate the Equinox crew into Voyager's, it's hard to see any fault that could be levelled at this episode. It's an extremely confident piece of work that juggles an unusually high number of speaking parts, plot mechanics, and tension, to turn in a generally brilliant two-parter. But that decision to keep the Equinox crew... why? From a purely in-world perspective it kind of makes sense - obviously Janeway isn’t about to abandon them. Yet we never get to lay eyes, or even have a single reference, to them again. If they had just been killed when the Equinox explodes (as we can assume a few probably are), then "Equinox" would have worked better because the whole thing would be a stand-alone adventure, and it could fully embrace the obvious tragedy of Ransom's flaws. Instead, by attempting some kind of rescue of the five remaining crewmembers we have this weird, uncomfortable compromise that doesn't help anything. I don't want to lean too heavily on this point, because so far I've been reviewing everything on an as-it's-being-watched-in-sequence way (i.e. viewed as it was supposed to be on broadcast, rather than with the benefit of hindsight) and the truth is when viewed as the final episode of Season Five and the first episode of Season Six this works staggeringly well. The lack of consequence of this episode shouldn't be ignored, but neither should it be allowed to overshadow a really, really brilliant piece of work - it's not "Equinox"'s fault nobody picked up on the threads laid down here.
It goes without saying that one thing that Voyager lacks that every other incarnation of Star Trek has is an ongoing connection with home. Home is Voyager's end-point but for Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Archer its rarely more than a month or two away at most. This means, practically, that those four captains get to have a string of basically nuts members of Starfleet to play against who essentially act to re-enforce the morality of the lead character. Kirk has Commodore Dekker, Picard has Maddox, Sisko has Leyton, Archer has... well practically half the galaxy it seems, and so on (of course there are multiple other examples). By contrasting the nobility or morality of our lead characters against people who are obviously found to be wanting we get a yardstick by which to measure our heroes and the actions that they take in defence of what it is Star Trek is meant to stand for. Obviously, what Star Trek stands for is to a degree nebulous, as is inevitable when any ongoing work is created by multiple creative forces, but the core ideas - freedom, liberty, honesty, respect, and so forth - resonate throughout all iterations of the franchise enough that we understand as an audience when a line has been crossed. We know Sisko goes waaaaay too far during the course of "In The Pale Moonlight" by intentionally starting a war, for example, but we're encouraged to forgive him this appallingly amoral act because we're asked to believe that he did it for the greater good, and that the inclusion of the Romulans in the Dominion War will tip the balance of power in favour of the Alpha Quadrant races and ultimately save what everyone's supposed to be fighting for. But still - he's "our guy" and we know (hope? Believe?) he wouldn't go too far, even as he pontificates on right and wrong in "Paradise Lost". "Equinox", then, is Voyager's first attempt at doing this kind of story, contrasting Janeway against another in a long string of Starfleet nut-jobs to see how she measures up, a whacking six season into Voyager's run. It's a compelling contrast, because one of the most engaging aspects of "Equinox" is that the line between Janeway and Random is paper thin. Up until about the mid-point Janeway has the moral authority, no question about it - she's not being strictly honest with Ransom when she tells him she's never broken the Prime Directive but she obviously believes she's walked the line close enough that actions were justified by circumstance. But once she beings her vendetta against Ransom? Well, that's a while different story.
We know Janeway isn’t the most psychologically sound captain and indeed it's one of her most interesting aspects. When placed under a very specific kind of pressure, the kind we see, for example, during "Scorpion", "Year Of Hell", and here in "Equinox", she cracks. Her vicious attacks on Chakotay during their scenes together in the ready room, the casual way she tractors the Ankari ship who might hold information despite being innocent of any involvement... these speak to someone who's been wounded in a very personal, very specific way, and as with those previous two-parters she lashes out. This is where the work done in "Scorpion" (and "Year Of Hell") really pays dividends, because we've had this reaction as an established character trait of Janeway's, and the speech Chakoatay gave Janeway about not letting her go too far back in "Scorpion" and the way they find to resolve their contrasting perspectives comes into full play here. Because, even if he's relieved of duty and confined to quarters, he really does stop her from crossing the line. It might only be by a millimetre, but his words are just enough to get through to her. She never becomes a Ransom. It's an absolutely fascinating piece of characterization for her, and Chakotay as a warrior fighting alongside his chosen leader, even when that means fighting with his chosen leader, is the best characterization he has - he's always at his most worthwhile during those scenes, and Beltran is never better than when he and Mulgrew are yelling at each other. This is where appreciating the history of the show really pays off - that promise to stop her when enough is enough from Chakotay adds so much dimension to their conflict here, but it's also why it's worth watching the series episode-by-episode rather than just dropping in on the highlights, because Chakotay often plays the sounding board role, but usually in an understated way - prepared to go along with Janeways's choices as long as its within a certain moral framework. This is a logical piece of characterization for someone who fought an occupying force on a point of principal as a member of the Maquis, and it makes sense that, when he collides with something he finds unacceptable, that becomes the moment he stands up and fights for what he believes in (even if now he's fighting with words rather than weapons). Equally Janeway, however much she might claim otherwise here, obviously respects him and the stand he's prepared to make, because otherwise his words would have no impact. But they do, and he's able to make her see sense just in time, building on what happened the last time they found themselves in this position. If Janeway is less than psychologically sounds (and I really don’t think there's any doubt left at this stage) then it's crucial for Chakotay to be there as a steadying hand on the tiller, and in "Equinox" he fulfils this role as well as it could possibly be done. Really, Chakotay is a brilliant first officer here.
Ransom, on the other hand, has nobody to hold him in check, and the difference between he two is, even if paper thin, also incredibly stark. Max Burke is no Chakotay, that's for sure, and rather than acting as a check and balance against his captain, as any good first officer should, he instead comes across as cravenly indulgent. Ransom doesn't have anyone to tell him no, and he abuses his position of power horrifically, murdering again and again and again to shorten his ship's journey home. Whatever the horrors they've come across in the Delta Quadrant it's clearly pushed him far, far over the edge of what's acceptable, but what's revealing here is that Janeway doesn't defeat him as such, bur rather forces him to acknowledge that what he's done is wrong, and to take responsibility for his actions. In this, the role that she plays for Ransom mirrors the role Chakotay plays for her, an incredibly satisfying building of one example upon another. Ransom's crimes are terrible, and the complicity of his crew is at best passive collaboration and at worst openly working to further the same agenda (which is why Janeway is so coldly dismissive of them), but even he's not so far gone as to be irredeemable. Indeed, despite the terrible things that happen here, there's a sense in which "Equinox" is surprisingly optimistic in its outlook - even people who have behaved appallingly are capable of some degree of redemption, and part of that redemption is guilt and acceptance of what he's done - that's what the hallucination of Seven in his synaptic stimulator landscape represents. Whether this makes up for what they've done is another matter, but given the stated redemptive aim of these reviews, how could I not warm to an episode whose ending suggests redemption is possible?
That there's a degree of conflict between the Equinox's crew also helps to enliven a lot of the debates that are laid out here, providing some contrast to our crew's attempts to do the right thing, and using their desperation to get home as a motivating factor that comes to outweigh their morality. There's an obvious contrast between, say, Chakotay desperately trying to use words to breach the gap between Starfleet and the "spirits of good fortune" (again, excellent characterization of Chakotay) and Burke using words to twist his way round B'Elanna and get whatever he wants. Similarly, their Doctor is, naturally, a leeringly evil version of "our" Doctor (until "our" Doctor has his ethical subroutines removed, anyway), but again we have a mirroring of relationships here. The Doctor's is rather more literal - given that Picardo gets the chance to play opposite himself - but again something interesting happens. Our Doctor's ethical subroutines are removed, which means, we're told, he can perform all sorts of unpleasantaries, but what it doesn’t do is remove a core sense of who he is. So our Doctor still enjoys singing, still has a flair for somewhat melodramatic overstatement and so on, and of course is contrite once his subroutines are replaced, but this provides a rather more direct, contrasting interpretation of the themes that play out between Chakotay/Janeway and Janeway/Ransom. We literally see what happens when someone's morality is taken away from them, and what the consequences of this might be. Their Doctor might be the cuckoo in the nest, doing all the bad things we expect of a morally absent character, but then again we don’t know this Doctor or what's been done to him, and we expect something better from our Doctor, even if his ethical subroutines have been taken away, just as we're driven to expect something better of Janeway or Ransom. That's the source of the tension in this episode - people who we expect to be better than they are failing to live up to their own standards, and it provides an extremely robust engine to drive the drama of the episode.
This also marks a triumphant return to Voyager's action-adventure aesthetic, with everything playing out over a large canvas and using the way Voyager functions to its maximum effect. Although "Relativity" and, to a certain extent, "The Fight" embrace the action-adventure aesthetic it's been a while since the show felt like it was returning to this part of its heritage, and most of the previous season really isn't driven in that way. But whenever a two-parter does the action-adventure it always comes with a lot more snap because there's just that much more time and space to let ideas and scenarios play out over. There's a lot of action here, and plenty of adventure, and despite the sophistication of the musing on morality, a lot of this feels old-fashioned. I mean that as a compliment though, because as I've mentioned in previous reviews, action has always been an integral part of what Star Trek does, and seeing the core elements here - action intertwined so successfully with discussions of morality and responsibility - is what really elevates "Equinox" to something special. It's able to take the core of what Voyager is, and what Star Trek is, and combine them to produce an extremely powerful hour and a half of television. And as with all the most successful iterations of the action-adventure aesthetic, the episode isn't afraid to slow down when it needs to, so a human dimension can come through - thus we get to actually care about all the people we're watching, not just the regular crew but the guest cast as well. In this, B'Elanna's previous relationship with Max Burke is something of a minor masterstroke because it gives one of our regular characters an anchor to care about what happens to the Equinox crew beyond "we need to save some humans who are also lost". Those personal stakes also feed into the episode's ongoing narrative of someone manifestly falling short of what's expected of them (as Burke obviously does) but, apart from providing another layering of this, it also means that, because B'Elanna cares about what happens to Burke, we end up caring as well because we're seeing things from her perspective. That’s a pretty neat trick to work on a character that's only in two episodes, and the fact that he really does end up being a rat, and gets his all-too-appropriate death, ends up feeling satisfying both narratively and emotionally. That's the beat that "Equinox" lands successfully again and again, and what makes it all come together at the end.
Because for the ending of the story to work, there has to be some kind of emotional as well as narrative resolution, a release to justify an hour and a half of Janeway losing her shit over another in a long line of Starfleet's best who quite demonstrably are not. And it's Ransoms better-late-than-never change of heart that the emotional catharsis rests on. The reason Ransom is such a success as a character is that his position, while morally reprehensible, isn't all that difficult to understand. We've had five full seasons of Janeway telling us she'll do what it takes to get her crew home, but the difference here is that we see someone who really means those words. He means he will do anything to get this crew home, whereas Janeway means, "I'll do anything more or less within the tenants of the society from which we come". The fact is Ransom comes across as a pretty likeable guy - he's no Riker on Risa but until we find out the true extent of what he's up to, he's easy enough to be around, and the palpable relief Janeway feels at finally being able to talk to someone in the same position she's in makes us want to be on his side, even as we learn just how far he's fallen. Thus when he does finally come to understand what it is that he's done, and why it needs to stop, it gives the audience that genuine catharsis. The knowledge costs him his life - and that feels right, because that's the tragedy of the episode, his flaws cost him everything as they must in a good tragedy - but just for a few, crucial moments, the Starfleet captain that he always should have been comes through, and gives the episode the conclusion it needs. There's no happy ending here, in the traditional sense - Ransom is stopped, his pitifully small number of surviving crew are stripped of rank and privilege, and many people die in the effort to bring him to justice. But, in the end, redemption is possible, and justice is finally served. "Equinox" ends Season Five brilliantly and kicks Season Six off in the same way, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Any Other Business:
• Well. I always liked "Equinox" but I wasn't quite prepared for just how much it would blow me away. Third best two-parter so far, after "Scorpion" and "Year Of Hell".
• Someone really must think Robert Picardo is good at playing evil versions of his character, because here he is, doing it again, after a whole zero episodes between this and the last time he was asked to do it. His work as "our" Doctor - coldly sadistic but restrained - is very well delivered, but there's a few moments as the Equinox's Doctor where he almost veers in to "Darkling" territory, especially during the "jail-break".
• You know how good "Equinox" is? Even Naomi's inclusion isn't pointless, serving as an example of everything the crew of the Equinox has lost, while at the same time allowing at least one connection to something outside that crew's own, selfish perspective. Neat piece of symbolism.
• The Shrieks are an appropriately different kind of alien threat - small, capable of flight and able to look both benevolent and furious. Their on-screen realization is broadly good - not perfect, but good enough - but the sound-effects of their arrival, the screeching noise that accompanies the subspace vacuoles forming, is really excellent, and properly disconcerting.
• The casting of the Equinox's crew is brilliant. Every single character we get to spent time with is excellently played. John Savage shines as Ransom, of course, and Titus Welliver is terrific as Max Burke, but some praise also for Olivia Burkelund as Maria Gilmore. She gives an incredibly resigned, weary performance that's very much an encapsulation of "the banality of evil". She's tired, she wants to go home even though she knows what they're doing is wrong, but she's just got no more fight left in her. Great character.
• The way the Equinox's Doctor is able to defeat our Doctor - by slapping the mobile emitter with a PADD - is a bit stupid, though. Couldn't B'Elanna fit it with a little plastic flap to stop that? What happens if the Doctor walks into a wall by accident, or someone collides with him in a corridor? Is that him just off line?
• The wrecked Equinox looks suitable dark and grimy, and it's excellently shot on screen, and yet again, low lighting levels make everything come alive. It must have been a hellish set to shoot on, but the results are more than worth it.
• The end of episode one cliffhanger has lots of end-of-episode acting and its a bit cheesy – oh no, Janeway might be killed by one of the aliens! Part Two? Ah, she's ok, just knocked aside!
• A few nice Seven put-downs. "You know Janeway isn't the only one who can help you explore your Humanity." Pause. "You would be an inferior role model." You tell him, Seven!
• Everyone deserves praise in this episode, and I can't list everyone by name, but so, so much respect for Robert Beltran here - arguably his best performance to date.
• Fantastic turnabout when Janeway again proves to be an excellent strategist when she works out what Ransom will do (hide rather than run), works out where he'll do it, and as a result is able to capture a couple of members of his crew. Good thinking, and really terrific writing because, for all her unbridled fury, she's still thinking like a starship captain rather than just being driven by her anger.
• The Doctor taking back his sick bay is great - the Equinox's Doctor just prattles on with pointless threats and our Doctor simply deletes him. Ha!
• And it all ends with salad and croutons. I like that the relationship at the end is still frosty between Chakotay and Janeway. It gets better, because she didn't cross the line and thus Chakotay can forgive her. But it's not all smiles and laughing in the mess hall either.
• Yup, my only regret here is that this never connects to anything. That's a great shame but, as I said in the review, that shouldn't overshadow just how good this is. I've run out of superlatives now, but still - what a phenomenal two-parter.
• And one final point worth observing – as of this point Voyager was the only Star Trek series airing, DS9 having just finished its run.
