Well, we're ten months along in Voyager's deep-space journey, and I'm seeing the beginnings of the sort of chemistry and depth that may indeed turn this from a show I LIKE into a show I LOVE. So here's a spoiler-filled look at the Star Trek Voyager's episode, "Cold Fire," which I offer exclusively for the enjoyment of Voyager fans who know the Dark Side of the Force when they see it.
As for the rest of you, perhaps you'd rather check out a list of traditional wedding gifts?
Nope? Okay then, into the maw of temptation we go...
INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Hey, we don't need a recap of the pilot!...Hey! it's Matt Sikes!...Oh, don't listen to him Kes...Two-year-olds shouldn't play with fire...Nice blood dripping...Why is the kid wearing that dress?
PLOT
As Lwaxana reminds us, it's been ten months since the Caretaker turned into a rose quartz and Voyager blew up his array to keep it away from the Kazon. We do learn from a new line of flashback dialogue that the Caretaker's mate lit out of Ocampa space a hundred years ago.
Kes and Tuvok are working on her mental skills, but she still lacks discipline. She goes to Sickbay, where once again she is late for duty. The Doctor starts to ask her to be more careful and place her medical studies above her studies with Tuvok, but they are interrupted by a strange noise and look in a Sickbay storage cabinet. The Caretaker quartz is rattling inside its salad bowl.
Torres examines the quartz, but finds no sign of life. They put it in a containment field, and when the quartz rattles again, she realizes it's responding to a sporocyistian lifeform about ten light years away. Janeway heads towards the site of that lifeform, wondering if it could be the Caretaker's mate.
Torres fixes up the quartz so that it will act as a compass, while the ever-cautious Tuvok discusses his plans for a weapon to use as a defense against the sporocyistian lifeform, should she become hostile. Janeway looks unhappy with the thought, but tells him to make the weapon.
Following the quartz compass, Voyager finds a smaller version of the Caretaker's array. There's no sporocystian life on it, but they do read 2,000 Ocampa. Janeway hails the array, but it returns fire, and a male Ocampa, Tanis, appears on the viewscreen with an attitude. "You're not wanted here," he barks, then signs off.
Janeway brings Kes to the bridge to mediate. Tanis is surprised to see her, and suddenly turns charming as he attends one of those Voyager conferences. Janeway explains that they're looking for the Caretaker's mate to get home, but Tanis recounts Voyager's poor reputation. Janeway tries to plead her case, but Tanis contacts Kes telepathically, saying he wants to talk to her alone. She gets Janeway and the others to leave, then she and Tanis go on a tour of her garden.
Tanis likes her garden, but doesn't think much of the "sterile" ship. He talks about how great things are on the station with all the other Ocampa. He talks of the advances these Ocampa have made, like the fact that he himself is fourteen years old. He talks about how great the Caretaker's mate, Susperia, is, and that she's been showing the Ocampa how to use their mental abilities.
Gee, says Kes, what all can you do?
As an answer, Tanis makes the plants in the garden grow much bigger. Kes is enchanted and impressed. Tanis says this is only the beginning.
Talking with Kes, Janeway is pleased that she's "opened a dialogue," but advises caution in dealing with Tanis. Kes feels overwhelmed by Tanis' powers.
On the station, we see Tanis contact Susperia telepathically. Her voice sneers that she doesn't care about Kes, but she wants him to bring her the ship.
Janeway holds a ship's dinner for Tanis, with Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix, and Kes in attendance (some red-uniformed guy waits on them but doesn't get any lines). Neelix asks Tanis about his age, and Tanis says his father lived to be twenty, and that the technology they use to extend their lives could be used on Kes. Tanis tells Janeway he'll take them to a meeting place with Susperia, and invites Kes to come live with the Ocampa on the station. Janeway, perhaps sensing that Tanis doesn't want to hear a negative response, keeps her from saying no right away. Tanis offers to show Kes how to develop her mental skills better than Tuvok's teachings ever could -- no offense.
In engineering, Tuvok shows Janeway his anti-Susperia gun.
In the mess hall, Neelix watches, barely containing his run-away mouth, as Tanis teaches Kes how to move a cup with her mind. He urges her to focus on the goal, not the task, and even gets her to heat the liquid in the cup. Kes looks thrilled by it all, and Tanis says there'll be more fun tomorrow. Alone with a proud but perhaps worried Neelix, Kes asks him if he'd be willing to live on the Ocampa station with her, and he says yes, of course, sweetie, my darling, I love you, yadda yadda yadda.
Voyager arrives at the meeting place and Tanis supposedly signals Susperia. He says she should arrive within the next 47 hours and goes to his quarters. Tuvok and Janeway exchange suspicious looks.
Kes shows off her fire trick to Tuvok, but in the middle heating the liquid, she realizes she doesn't know how to stop the fire of her mind. "Tuvok" she thinks, "help me."
Well, this turns out to be a bad idea for Tuvok, since Kes' fire now heats up his blood. Kes turns to him, sees his face bulging from the heat and screams.
And what a scream that gal has got! And with only one lung, no less.
The Doctor revives Tuvok. He tries to restrict Tuvok to light duty for three days, but of course Tuvok says that's not necessary. Kes tries to grovel in abject apology, but Tuvok tells her that she should learn from the experience, not feel guilty. In fact, he'll keep helping her explore her abilities, especially since she's just proven she needs guidance very badly.
In her garden, Kes is worrying about the experience when Tanis appears to sneer a bit at the lesser-evolved humanoids on Voyager. Kes is so much more than any of them, he says. She can see beyond the physical, and "know" the life around her in a sort of mental Biblical sense. She follows his instructions and experiences this "knowing" with her plants, something we perceive through the magic of Technicolor. Kes walks around the plants in ecstasy, and Tanis tells her to bring the fire. Kes goes into a sort of orgasm and collapses with pleasure.
Tanis helps her up, and Kes discovers the price for her high: all her plants are dead. She sucked the life right out of them. She's worried about hurting people, but Tanis says, "Hurt them, help them, give life, kill: it's all the same." Now, this firmly establishes Tanis as a Star Trek devil, but Kes hasn't seen enough in her life yet to recognize the danger of Tanis' words. Besides, killing all those plants really did feel good. She's tempted to go live on the station, but says she needs more time.
Tanis says Susperia is Kes' future, and if she's really good, Susperia may take her to Exotia, a sub-space realm of pure thought. Kes looks ready to pack her bags.
Torres watches the quartz resonate, but the readings are strange.
Janeway and Chakotay get themselves ready to meet Susperia, but Kim reports that strange readings are coming from engineering. Janeway hails Torres and gets nothing. Tuvok heads down there with security.
In the mess hall, Tanis tells Kes that all the Ocampa are waiting for her to join them. She can actually feel them in her mind. He tells her to try to feel Susperia too.
Tuvok signals Janeway that Susperia is in engineering, but then doesn't say any more. Janeway heads down there (Doesn't she know the axe murderer always hides in the basement?) and finds first an empty room, then a little girl in a horrid pink dress cradling the quartz and crying.
Kes feels Susperia, and so realizes that she's angry and wants to destroy the ship. Clueless Neelix comes into the middle of all this.
Janeway tries to get Susperia to help them, but the little girl accuses Janeway of killing the Caretaker and destroying his array. Before Janeway can explain, the little girl's voice turns into that of a crone's and she says she'll kill them. Blood drips onto Janeway's shoulder, and she looks up in horror to see that it's dripping from Torres' mouth. She and Tuvok are hanging suspended over the deck. (Well, her name is Susperia, after all!) Janeway looks back down to the little girl and does one of Kirk's big body "Oomphs!" before starting to levitate. The ships starts to shake, and Paris tells Chakotay that Voyager's molecules are coming apart.
Tanis urges Kes to abandon the ship to Suspiria, but she resists. Neelix tries to intervene, and Tanis mentally flings him across the room. Now, this really pisses Kes off, so she thinks bad thoughts at Tanis until blood starts running out of his facial orifices. So great is Kes' rage, in fact, that Suspiria is affected and collapses to the floor. Soon after, Janeway, Torres, Tuvok, and the rest follow like ripe apples -- plonk, plonk, plonk.
Janeway shoots Susperia with the anti-Susperia gun, and Tuvok traps her in a containment field. So you'll kill me now, says Susperia. No, says Janeway, we don't want to hurt anyone, we just want to get home. Then she releases Susperia (not making Tuvok's day), and the creature is so surprised by Janeway's mercy that she turns into a giant wormy thing and slides out of the ship, scooping up Tanis on the way.
Janeway is disappointed, but determined still to make it home. Voyager sets a course.
Kes tells Tuvok that without Tanis around she can't boil water with her mind anymore. Frankly, though, she's relieved. She doesn't want to think about her dark side anymore, the part of her that liked killing those plants and almost went to live on the station. Tuvok gives her the old "How can we recognize the dark without the light?" cliché, and they get back to Kes' Vulcan mental studies.
CHARACTER
Well, this seems to be the episode Voyager's been leading up to for a while now about Kes. She does indeed have some powerful mental abilities, even accounting for the boost Tanis is giving her, and she has some real temptations to wrestle with.
The corrupting nature of power is always a fascinating subject, and Kes is the perfect member of the crew to face the possibilities of such corruption. We should take advantage of the Bothan's warning in "Persistence of Vision." Kes looks like a "little thing," very cute and sweet. But she's got power in that tribble-covered head and not much time in her life to learn how to deal with it. Tanis' crash course in superpowerdom has given Kes a taste of what she'll have to face as she properly develops her abilities, and I hope she's as frightened as she seems by that taste. Since Tanis was inflating her abilities -- even, I think, when she turned on Susperia -- and now is gone, she's got something of a reprieve. Tuvok will show her the slow and steady way, but he can't guarantee that she won't once again have the desire to suck the life out of something just to see how good it feels.
Kes' surprise at her own dark side would be laughable in another character, but her two years' of sheltered life allow us to buy that she hasn't realized that one of the things the Caretaker was protecting the Ocampa from was themselves. With Janeway and Tuvok as foster parents, Kes may have a very interesting maturing process ahead of her indeed.
Tuvok's refusal to be put off by Kes' mistake helps us realize he really is a good teacher, and gives us a glimpse of the patience he's learned from raising four children.
Janeway's decision to have Tuvok make the weapon and her quick realization that Tanis won't be pleased by Kes' refusal to join the Ocampa on the station show off her captain skills nicely. Doubtlessly many will criticize her decision to let Susperia go, but what else could she do without becoming a bad guy?
THOUGHT
It's true that Kes' whole confrontation with the easier, quicker power that Tanis offers and the slower, more disciplined route to power Tuvok offers reminds us of Luke with Vader on the one hand and Yoda on the other. That it's also true that this confrontation between darkness and light is hardly original to Star Wars. I have to wonder, in fact, if there were ever a time when stories on Earth which didn't have that theme.
Just to look in one cultural area, dark/light contrasts show up in all sorts of religions, in all sorts of ways, from Hindu shadow puppet theatre, to light/dark images in Judeo-Christian beliefs, to the yin-yang of Asian faiths, to whatever you like. It's a simplistic and yet extremely helpful way of imagining an assortment of dichotomies: good vs. evil, night vs. dark, power vs. weakness, honesty vs. deception, etc. And it can also easily be made more complex to suit the more philosophically demanding.
The yin-yang design, for example, puts a spot of dark in the light to illustrate that darkness can be found even in the light itself, and vice-versa.
So while we may find Tuvok's comment about darkness and light to be somewhat cliched, it's also a culturally popular view of the universe. What's important is that the story itself offers us some new way of looking at this old idea.
I mean, let's face it, all the really good philosophies are pretty old.
The "new way of looking" that we get in this story comes with Kes and Tanis. Tanis is the perfect tempter for Kes. He looks like the good people she remembers from home, and he offers her everything a little Ocampa could want, namely an increased lifespan and the fulfillment of those mental powers. Moreover, he offers her a version of the "dark side" which she doesn't recognize, and which even sounds new (though not totally unfamiliar) to us" "Focus on the goal, not the task." This is the sort of thing we get from motivational speakers [Just do it], and it's dangerous thinking indeed. Tanis is telling Kes to think about what she wants, not the means to get there, and, pushed to its logical extreme, that's the ultimate corruption of power. Tanis manages to avoid buzzwords like "cruelty" and "evil," but he presents her with an express elevator going down that the rest of us can see clearly enough. Even his instructions to heat up the cup are over-simplified to the point that when she goes to show off her trick to Tuvok, she looks just like a kid playing with mental matches. Watching the scene, we just wait for something horrible to happen.
Appropriately, the solution for Kes is also new to her and familiar to us. Released from Tanis' influence, she simply has to explore all her sides and get to know what she's really made of. She has no more certainty about where it will end than do any of us, but she does have the guidance of people who care about her.
As for us, however, the argument proceeds a little farther. Tanis may set off all our alarms, but he never actually says anything that doesn't make some sort of sense. His comment that he knows more about Kes' abilities than some Vulcan are right on the money. His point of view is also consistent with his culture, and that's supposed to count for a lot in Star Trek culture. And finally, he's not just one guy, but the leader of a 2,000-member community which has committed itself to increasing Ocampan mental abilities. In order to achieve their impressive success, they've made some sacrifices, including their morality, but if we really hold to our own cultural tolerance, we shouldn’t condemn Tanis and his people for that.
Which is why it's interesting that we do condemn them without a second thought. Tanis' indifference to giving life or killing definitely crosses the line. Instead of admiring Kes for listening to this alternative cultural viewpoint, we decide that she's clearly making a mistake (at least, I hope we all do!).
Cultural tolerance -- one of our brightest ideals -- thus has its own spot of darkness. We can become a little too tolerant, too drawn in by the beauty of a culture to recognize its dangers. We can sneer at Kes for not seeing it coming, but it can be a fine line indeed between a cultural difference which violates an important taboo, and one which can cost us our souls.
The only solution for the rest of us, therefore, is the same stuff we get on Star Trek each week. Somehow the crew must respect other cultures without abandoning their own.
Now, this should make us all the prouder of Janeway for letting Susperia go. Whatever Voyager's need, it's not part of Federation ideology to threaten lifeforms into cooperation.
SPECTACLE
The dead plants are great, but Tuvok's anti-Susperia weapon looks like a really big tube of Krazy Glue.
The best shot goes to the dripping blood on Janeway's shoulder. It's an old horror movie device, but it works well in the scene.
DICTION
Good lines include:
"There are people, but there's so little life." -- Tanis to Kes about Voyager.
"Vulcans make the worst patients." -- Doc
SONG
Great accompaniment to Kes' "fire" in particular, and a lovely score all around. No real musicians were harmed or fired in the making of this episode.
And now for the baggage...
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) LOVE
Much as I hate seeing recycled Trek guest stars, I love recognizing people from other good shows. You know, Matt wouldn't be in this trouble if George were around.
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE
Things that are weird with no purpose bother me. Why is Susperia a little girl in a horrid pink dress? Why does she suddenly get an old voice? Does the Caretaker's death make her feel vulnerable? Are we supposed to be reminded that she's been around for a long time? Did they need a cheap special effect? Bleh.
Well, that wraps this one up!
Star Trek Voyager Reviews
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