Before we begin, I would like a moment of contemplation for the passing of our dear departed, a character with genuine interest and multiple possibilities who was lost to us through one of the silliest plot devices Star Trek has ever unleashed on an unsuspecting semi-regular.
We'll miss you, Mr. Hogan.
Okay, this is a review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Basics Part II," and so contains all the rest of the spoilers you didn't get to hear about over the summer. This review is solely intended for the personal enjoyment of Voyager-lovin' Trekkers who rejoice in the knowledge that this really does look like the end of the Kazon. Those who get their kicks only from earth-bound pleasures should go elsewhere. How about Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me? Still here? Wow, I never thought to compete with the sight of naked women...well, with the talk of naked women, anyway, but, still, he is supposed to be the King of All Media, while I am just your humble and abject reviewer. Anyway, let's get on with it. INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE Neelix, have you lost your mind? Hey, you guys can't kill Hogan!...Suder and the Doctor are great together...I wonder how long Culluh spent looking over planets before he found one that sucked this bad...After Neelix's cooking they might even enjoy those worms...Paris to the rescue...Suder to the rescue...Janeway back in the driver's seat. PLOT Janeway and company find a nicely defensible location for camp. Hogan finds a pile of bones near the mouth of a cave. Neelix blindly ignores this obvious sign of bad mojo and orders Hogan to pick up them bones, and in the single greatest waste of a character since the death of Boba-Fett in Return of the Jedi, Hogan is promptly eaten by a giant snake! Paris has kept things together in his beat-up shuttle and even manages to blow up a small Kazon patrol ship in a thoroughly satisfying manner. As Janeway looks over the grisly remains of Hogan's uniform, Neelix blames himself [with cause, I say!] for his death. Janeway announces, "I will not let this planet destroy my crew." She orders everyone out of the cave to look for supplies. Tuvok is to make weapons. Chakotay is to make a solar still from Hogan's remains (yuck!) and if everyone's so hungry, they can eat worms for all she cares. [Wow, she really does sound like my mother.] On Voyager, Seska has the Doctor check over her baby. The Doctor puts on a good show of holo-stupid, and she leaves his program alone. He returns the favor by letting her know that whatever games she played with Chakotay's DNA, this is Culluh's kid. Seska leaves in less than the greatest of moods, and the Doctor wishes he could tell Chakotay the truth. In fact, the Doctor wishes a lot of things, like the ability to call up a holo-army. But he knows it's all up to him now. He calls for a scan of the ship and finds there's no less than 89 Kazon running around. But he also discovers there's a Beta-zoid as well. Suder! He deletes Suder's signal from the scanner and contacts him with the news that the ship has been overtaken by Kazon. Suder is therefore able to demonstrate the depth of his new inner peace by calmly telling the Doctor that the reason he's crammed into this tight Jefferies tube in the first place is because he already knows the ship has had a change in management. Neelix suppresses private disappointment when the worm soufflé he was whipping up is preempted by Torres and Kim's discovery of eggs and cucumbers. Wildman's baby isn't feeling well. Chakotay tries to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together, but it takes some of Janeway's magic hair to do the trick. Neelix and Kes don't know any better than to wander off at night and get grabbed by the caveman locals. A dirty-faced Paris sits in his shuttle and convinces Talaxian Commander Paxim to help him get Voyager back. He knows the ship, he says, and his plan is great. Paxim agrees, and Paris starts thinking up a plan. Suder makes his way to Sickbay. The Doctor says they must get the ship out of warp and find some weapons. This distresses Suder, who's been working hard to control the violence inside himself. The Doctor, in a really interesting twist, has to convince this murderer that sometimes violence is necessary for one's ship. Suder agrees, but looks like he'd rather undergo oral surgery without novocain than pick up a phaser. Tuvok shows off his new bow and arrow set to Chakotay, and they go looking for Kes and Neelix, who are the object of contention among the cavepeople...Well, Kes is, anyway. No one seems to care what Neelix does, but he doesn't notice any difference. Anyway, the cavemen thump their chests a lot as Chakotay appears and tries to bargain with the leader, Clawman. Clawman offers up one of the local bathing beauties in exchange for Kes, but whom are they kidding? Finally, Chakotay tries to walk calmly away with Kes and Neelix. This lasts a good six steps or so, then we get a footrace. Tuvok shoots someone in the chest with an arrow, putting an end to some of the thumping for awhile. Chakotay leads the team into one of the snake-tunnels [This will turn out to be a very bad idea for the guy in the blue uniform that we don't recognize.], and the cave people don't follow. Voyager's warp drive is down and Seska is suspicious. She calls for a search, and the Doctor and Suder, who are eavesdropping over the com, try to figure out what to do. The cavemen try to smoke out their prey. Chakotay and the rest go deeper into the cave and find a sleeping snake. Janeway, Kim, Torres and some extras chase off the cave people, but not before the snake wakes up and eats the science guy. Since this whole scenario began with Neelix wandering off, this makes the second person he's killed in this episode. Someone stop this lunatic! While Suder lurks in the Jefferies tube, waiting for Kazon prey, the Doctor receives a secret message from Paris, who can't even be sure he'll hear it. He tells the Doctor he must somehow block the discharge from the backup phaser couplings. Suder enters, having dragged the dead Kazon through the tube with him. The Doctor tries to be supportive, but Suder curls up into a ball. Rejecting the Doc's offer of drugs, he just tries "to see the light that is [his] breath." Culluh has read Paris' bogus report that his shuttle has been destroyed and preens a bit for Seska, who sniffs a rat. Wildman's baby gets worse, but then no one cares because a volcano erupts all over their camp. It's another footrace, this time from hot lava! Seska confronts the Doctor, who enjoys lying to her. He says he has caused all the sabotage himself and shows her the dead Kazon to prove it. Seska locks out Starfleet commands and blows up the Doctor's console as Talaxian ships attack the ship. Suder gets to Sickbay and finds that the defunct Doc has left him a message commending his bravery and telling him he must do that thing with the backup phasers. The Kazon chase those Tellurians into a nearby nebula, where Paris awaits them. Running from the hot lava, the Voyager crew rescues one of the cavewomen, and the two parties finally make nice. Paris attacks Voyager's primary phaser power couplings. Suder attacks engineering and manages to block the secondary phaser discharge before being shot in the back. Paris gives Voyager the old "nah, nah, nah." Culluh and Seska lock phasers and switch over to secondary systems. The blocked energy disburses all over the ship, killing or stunning all the Kazon. Paris starts transporting Paxim's people to Voyager as Seska crawls to her crying baby and dies. Culluh gathers up the kid and abandons ship. Paris and Paxim themselves arrive and take over the bridge, letting the Kazon shuttle and a few escape pods go. Clawman treats Wildman's baby with a leaf, and they all hang together on this large cliff face. Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the Goodyear Blimp! No...it's Voyager. Janeway finds Paris on the bridge, and everyone goes back to their stations without stopping to wash their faces. Paris reports the Doctor and Suder's heroics. Standing over Suder's body, Tuvok offers him the Vulcan prayer, "May your death bring you the peace you never found in life." Chakotay seems to wish something similar for Seska as he pulls the sheet over her face.
CHARACTER Well, I'm very pleased with the use of Suder. I can't think of a single other story where a character feels this much pain for using his old violent skills. This is the ultimate nightmare of the reformed: going back to sin because it's for some greater good. I even agree with the decision to kill him, much as I'll miss the possibilities his character offered for the show and the actor offered for the character. In fact, his death, as inevitable as it is, is secondary to his sacrifices of violence. This works particularly well since it's the sort of pain we rarely see on Star Trek. Everybody in Starfleet talks peace like they were raised in a commune, but when the chips are down they'll kill everything in sight and party all night. Paris' casual destruction of the Kazon patrol, because he doesn't "have time" for them is a good case in point. Starfleet crews don't even seem to feel much about the death of their crewmates, unless it's for a regular who's not really dead or a really bad career move by Denise Crosby. When Suder curls up into that little ball on the floor and the Doctor tries to comfort him, the show makes up a lot in lost humanity. It's what killing does to the killer we get to witness here: the knowledge of actions as wrong but not as wrong as not taking action. This is a strong reminder that everyone in Starfleet is first and foremost a soldier, and that this trek of discovery is, like discovery itself, a violent process. A pacifist discoverer, therefore, is bound one day to end up curled on the floor and trying to see the light that is his breath: in other words, trying see his true self despite the soldier who has taken over. The Doctor's role here is all that much more important. His beloved Hippocratic oath goes right out the window when he reminds himself that he's not just a hologram, but a Starfleet hologram. He even seems aware of his own strange position, offering to "help" Suder by making it easier for him to kill. I wonder if the Doctor would in fact be capable of killing anyone? But we'll have to wait for another episode to learn about that. Looking back over the last couple paragraphs, I realize I'm taking a long time to state the obvious: Suder's life and death seem genuinely tragic to me. He climbs to a certain height with Tuvok's help, then purposefully climbs back down to defend the ship, then gets shot in the back. His face shows surprise and pain at his death, but he also looked to me a little relieved that it's all over. I want to complain one more time about throwing away Hogan like that. COMPLAIN!!! Okay, I'd better add that Janeway does a good job just hanging on to her crew until the ship comes back, and it's not her fault she didn't have a phaser to blast that snake to hell. I'm sure she would have if she could. And it's very interesting how much the Doctor really enjoys taunting Seska about his sabotage. He has a deep and refreshingly open dislike for her that's easily distinguishable from the arrogance he shows to the Voyager crew. Little sideways looks with his eyes say a lot, but most especially, "You bitch." THOUGHT Most of this section went into CHARACTER, but it's worth mentioning again that Voyager often shows us how important teamwork is without neglecting teamwork's dark side. Working together means personal sacrifice -- ennobling sacrifice, but still, it's gotta hurt if it's going to be interesting. Janeway has to give up most of her personal life, Paris has to abandon most of old personality, Chakotay has to offer up his independence and often much of his privacy, everyone on Voyager has to leave behind their Earth life, and so on. Suder's violence and death make him one of the crew in every sense. SPECTACLE More good battle scenes and lots of really depressing-looking rocks. I feel sorry for the cavepeople who have to stay there. The best shot by far belongs to Suder in Sickbay, whose eyes are visible right above the computer monitor as the Doctor's message urges him to save the ship. The Doctor piles compliments on Suder in a obvious attempt to push him towards self-sacrifice [the mission he's assigning couldn't be much more dangerous], and Suder's eyes show that he realizes he's being manipulated, but that the Doctor is also completely right that Paris' plan needs to be done. We watch Suder put his own fears to the side, including the fears for his own soul, and it's a chilling process. DICTION The Doctor once again gets the best lines: "What am I supposed to do? Lead a revolt with the gang from Sandrine's? Conjure up holograms of Nathan Hale and Che Guevara? I'm a doctor, not a counter-insurgent...Get a hold of yourself. You're not just a hologram, you're a Starfleet hologram." SONG Lovely score, as always. And now for the baggage... STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANWAY) LOVE Prodigal son saves the ship...one...more...time! Will the cavepeople one day evolve into a race that worships the Woman of the Hair? They tell stories of the day she came to their land with her iron voice and black-clad minions and stayed with them during the Big Volcano Eruption. She didn't really help them or anything, but she sure had a sweet ride. STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE The Kazon are gone! Wheee! Well, that wraps this one up. Star Trek Voyager Reviews Or go ahead to ST Voyager Revoews -- Flashback. Or go back to ST Voyager Reviews -- Basics Pt 1.