Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Faces
Okay, this is a review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Faces." It's full of spoilers and solely intended for the enjoyment of Voyager fans and those who wanna see what Paris and Torres are doing. I mean, are you starting to notice that they're together a lot? Hmmmm. Anyway, those of you who don't care about any of this should go away and leave us Trekkers alone.
Perhaps The NASA Homepage is more your bag?
Still with us? Goodie. Let's get to the review.
INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
I was wondering what those Vidiians were up to...They still make me want to toss my cookies...This is an old Star Trek idea, but it's still interesting...I wonder what would happen if we could extract Clinton's Democrat DNA from his Republican DNA?
PLOT
A slow pan through a dark room reveals a bound Klingon woman. Hey, it's Torres!
Neelix forces Tuvok to eat some of his spicy ptolmic soup.
Kim can't find the away team Voyager left on some planet two days ago. Paris, Torres, and Durst may be unable to communicate through the rocks, and might be trapped in a tunnel. There seems to be a lot of strange seismic activity on the planet. Kim thinks of a way to use transponder relays to keep the next away team from getting lost as well, and then beams down the planet with Chakotay and Tuvok.
Torres, whose fully Klingon features now include the full set of ridges on her forehead and the fake teeth, lays bound on a table. Vidiian scientist Dr. Sulon explains that he has medically extracted all her Klingon DNA and made her fully Klingon. Why? Well, he has this idea that she may have some sort of immunity to the phage. How will we know if she does? Well, he's infected her.
Paris and Durst have been working hard on the Vidiian chain-gang, moving rocks for their tunnels because the Vidiians are too weak from the phage to do it themselves. In the bunkroom getting some rest, Paris and Durst plot to make their escape as soon as they can find Torres, but a Talaxian laughs at them. He's been here six years, and all the others from his crew have been taken to organ processing. He knows they'll all end up there sooner or later, like Torres doubtlessly has.
Kim, Tuvok, and Chakotay find a beat-up tricorder and traces of other humanoids besides the away team.
Torres suffers through the agony of the early stages of the phage without so much as a whimper, and Sulon marvels at both her stamina and her beauty. Torres looks at him like he's dog mess on her shoe.
Meanwhile, another Torres, a fully human one, is thrown into the bunkroom. She rouses a sleeping Paris and tells him she woke up feeling sick in some laboratory. They told her they had completely extracted her Klingon DNA, but she was too dizzy to really check the place out. Paris can only tell her that she looks human now.
Torres thinks it's funny, in a way, that she looks human, because as a child she used to try to hide her forehead. Her father was human, and he left her and her mother. Back then, things weren't "too cordial" between The Federation and the Klingon Empire, and she convinced herself that her father left them because she didn't look human. Paris can only sympathize, telling her about the caps he would wear to hide the haircuts his father would make him get the first day of every summer.
The away team encounters Vidiians and beams out.
Klingon Torres is starting to work some of her bonds loose, and when Sulon shows up she talks about how she feels somewhat grateful to him for making her fully Klingon. In fact, she comes on to Sulon, who doesn't think she could really find him attractive. [Man, you got that right! Not after eight beers with a bag over your head!]
The Vidiian guards come into the bunkroom and tell Durst he can call his ship. Paris, standing in an extremely attractive shaft of light, faces off in front of the guards and demands to be the one to contact the ship, if that's what's really going on. Durst is the one to go, however, and Paris returns to comfort an extremely frightened Torres.
Kim realizes that the reason they couldn't beam through to the tunnels is not the rock, but a forcefield covering a 600K circumference. Janeway wants a way to get through it.
Well, it turns out to be a good thing for Paris that despite that shaft of light the guards found Durst more attractive. Sulon has a "surprise" for Torres, and shows up at her bedside with Durst's face grafted over his own diseased skin. [MAJOR YUCK!] Torres is so angry she bursts out of her restraints and attacks him, but before she can finish him off, other Vidiians come and she has to flee.
Kim reports that there are microfissures in the forcefield. They could beam someone in, get that person to turn off the forcefield, and then beam the away team up. Chakotay gets ready to go, which means turning his face into molten silly putty and putting on an outfit like the Vidiians wore in "The Phage."
Human Torres and Paris take a break from moving rocks to drink some of the Talaxian’s water. Torres explains that somehow the Vidiian's experiments on her have turned her into a coward. Paris tries to make her feel better, but a Vidiian guard comes along and takes her back to the bunkroom. There, she hopes she might be able to contact the ship.
Chakotay beams down.
Klingon Torres finds the Talaxian guy and asks him about Paris (well, demands that he tell her about Paris, actually), and he tells her about the other human female in the group.
Human Torres fiddles with the Vidiian console in the bunkroom and makes some progress, but the Vidiian guards grab her and are dragging her off to organ processing when Klingon Torres shows up and beats the tar out of them. Human Torres and Klingon Torres stare at each other, then Human Torres faints and Klingon Torres carries her off. Later, they eat some vermin Klingon Torres has toasted up and argue about their different approaches to life. Human Torres calls Klingon Torres irrational, and Klingon Torres calls Human Torres weak, but they also both seek the other's need and approval. Finally, they agree on a plan to sneak back into Sulon's and see if they can get the forcefield down to contact the ship. Sulon's lab is the last place anyone would look for them.
Paris is trying to find out from the Talaxian how to get to organ processing when Chakotay shows up. Together, they bluff a guard and get out of the bunkroom.
The Torreses break into the lab and Human Torres forgets her fear as she concentrates on the Vidiian console. Klingon Torres also seems to be working better, keeping her nerve steady as she guards the room. Sulon shows up, however, and threatens to kill Human Torres if Klingon Torres doesn't behave. Paris and Chakotay show up and they all get ready to beam out. Sulon pulls out a hidden phaser and tries to shoot them, but Klingon Torres takes the fire. As Sulon screams in the realization that he's killed her, the away team beams out.
On the transporter pad, Klingon Torres is glad to die with honor.
In Sickbay, the Doctor explains that he must take DNA back from the Klingon Torres to reintegrate into Human Torres. Torres needs all her parts to function properly. She tells Chakotay that she feels more at peace with herself than she ever has with the Klingon DNA gone, but she also feels incomplete. She supposes she'll just have to accept that she'll always fight with the Klingon part of herself. Chakotay looks like he wants to argue with such an approach, but he leaves her alone.
And alone, Torres slowly runs a hand over her smooth forehead.
CHARACTER
We get the best of both worlds with this tried and true Star Trek device. Torres doesn't act like herself, per se, so it's interesting to watch her, but what's revealed here is still about her, so it's interesting to watch her.
Torres has always been offered to us as a woman torn not between two cultures, as Worf is, but between different species. She continues in the line of the Klingon/human K'Ehleyr, who also felt the push-me-pull-me quality of the different racial instincts of human and Klingon blood.
To understand this all, we've got to acknowledge that "racial" has a different meaning in Star Trek's universe. Star Trek people no longer seem to use it to distinguish between different humans or different Klingons, they way we do, so we have to be careful not to treat the "racial" differences between creatures from different planets on the show as though they were as culturally based and intangible as are the "racial" differences between people here on Earth. The Klingons are supposed to be more aggressive than other races on a genetic level, while humans seem to have a genetic predisposition towards peace (inner, cultural, and inter-stellar). Torres' inner conflict is thus not like Worf's at all, but like Spock's. She wants to be human (as he wants to be Vulcan), and so her Klingon side has suffered. Freed, Klingon Torres enjoys herself. No longer able to draw strength from the Klingon side of herself, the usually dominant Human Torres feels the lack of what she's lost.
So, neither the Human Torres nor the Klingon Torres is "really" Torres, though the Human Torres seems more like the one we're used to. And when they're apart, neither Torres functions very well. Klingon Torres is strong and determined, but not used to thinking before she acts. (She's not used to being allowed to think at all, what with the tight leash Torres has been keeping her on.) The Human Torres can think all too well, but she has none of the Klingon fearlessness she's been exploiting all these years without appreciating it.
So it's when they are united by their goal to reach the Vidiian console that they work best. This explains why Torres makes such a fine engineer. The more urgent the task, the more focused her warring sides become.
In the end, Chakotay wants her to have learned something different from this life lesson than that she will always fight with herself. He wants her to feel that she can come to peace with herself now that she appreciates her Klingon nature. But this strikes me as being most unlikely and not really all that desirable. Half of her does not even seek peace, unless it's in battle (I love cross-cultural paradoxes!). So why should she live in peace with herself? Instead, perhaps, she might be able to enjoy fighting with herself, or at least appreciate that it's part of what makes her strong. The struggle defines who she is. Human or Klingon, she is incomplete, and neither the whining woman we meet in the bunkroom or the warrior we meet in the lab is nearly as interesting as Torres is when we get her all together.
THOUGHT
We all understand the value of Worf's cultural struggles, but Torres' more science-fictional struggle between human and non-human genetic coding seems just as valuable to me. We're all human in the real world as far as I know (except for telemarketers), but we also have more than enough experience dealing with desires that do not feel like cultural conflicts, but like something from our genes. Who hasn't struggled with their temper, their fear, or their desire so strongly that it's felt like two of us in there? And how many of us could really use some therapy to learn how to appreciate our inner qualities? All this recent fascination with "feminine sides" and "inner children" and the like shows us that Torres' condition isn't alien after all, just a bit exaggerated.
Of course, Torres' genetic battles are as old as science-fiction itself. And we've also seen this split-person thing before, from "The Enemy Within," (Kirk split) to "The New Voyages," (Spock split) to who knows what.
Most of the Star Trek writers, I'm guessing, have more than a passing interest in self-analysis. It's something of a fantasy of couch veterans to be able to talk physically to one's inner self. Thank goodness Torres' conversation is interesting to us as well. I can imagine what mine would sound like:
Guilty Julia: "You really should have sent out all your jobs letters and washed the dishes and finished those papers and done your taxes and paid the bills and cleaned up the apartment and practiced your cello and organized your videotapes by now."
Lazy Julia: "I'm going to have a beer."
Anyway, getting away from Torres, I love the idea that the Vidiians can't keep track of what the others look like, what with the constant skin grafting going on. Think about it. Fingerprints would no longer be a reliable means of identification, nor would retinal scans. Vocal chords would get replaced and change people's voices. Maybe even appetites and postures, walks and heights get changed eventually. It's like everyone's a really, really ugly Trill, constantly changing hosts.
One complaint. Why didn't Voyager rescue some of the other slaves in the Vidiian compound? It would only have taken an additional line of dialogue or two. The Talaxian guy definitely deserved it. Poor thing.
I also can't help but think Torres should ship the Vidiians some of her DNA just in case it really could help them, Prime Directive be damned.
SPECTACLE
The sight of Durst's face on Sulon is just about the creepiest thing I've ever witnessed. It was made worse because we've seen Durst a couple times. Imagine how far gone Sulon is that he actually thinks seeing someone else's face on his head might get Torres in the mood. Maybe she shouldn't send them any DNA after all.
DICTION
Klingon Torres gets the best lines this week.
"Why not let your creature out of her harness? Study her in action?" -- Klingon Torres to Sulon, who probably hasn't had a date in a while.
"I'm sorry I can't replicate you a soufflé." -- Klingon Torres reminding Human Torres that real warriors don't eat quiche.
SONG
Great music with real people playing the instruments! If only it would catch on with other shows!
And now for the baggage...
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) LOVE
Useful villains. The Vidiians are truly horrid. Their misplaced value system makes a lot more sense to me than the fight-fight-fight mentality of the Kazon, and their goal of taking our organs makes me want to annihilate them even while I know they're sentient beings. They're a great mixture of pathos and evil, and I hope we see them a few more times before Voyager passes beyond their space.
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE
The Voyager crew knows they're in dangerous space. Whose brainchild was it to leave the away team on this planet in the first place? Whatever they were supposed to do there, Voyager could certainly have hung around for the two days they were supposed to take to do it.
Well, that's all she wrote today!
Star Trek Voyager Reviews
Or if you'd rather you can go ahead to ST Voyager Reviews -- Cathexis.
Or back to ST Voyager Reviews -- Jetrel.
