Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written By Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Parallax

Okay, this is a review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Parallax." It contains many spoilers and is solely intended for the enjoyment of those Voyager fans who can't get enough of spacial anomalies. As for the rest of you, may I suggest you enjoy a good book?

A good place to find one would be Bibliofind.

Not interested? Very well then...

INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
It's the beginning of a new series, so we have to deal with all the different personalities on parade, but did she have to hit him so hard? After all, Carey kind of looks like Chief O'Brien...Groan, not another time loop...well, not another thing that acts just like a time loop, whatever you want to call it...It took LaForge a whole season to become chief engineer.

PLOT
While the holo-doctor tends to Carey's wounds, we learn that he and Torres had a fight in engineering. He lost.

Tuvok wants Torres charged, but Chakotay says he'll handle it. Muted chest-thumping ensues.

Two Maquis, a male human and a female Bajoran, tell Chakotay they've heard horrible rumors about how the Maquis are to be treated aboard the ship. They announce they're ready to take over the ship if he wants, and chest-thumping continues as Chakotay threatens to throw them in the brig if they ever say such things again.

Chakotay goes to see Torres, who throws a dish at him and reveals that she's feeling very frustrated on this Starfleet ship. Chakotay tells her to deal with it. He wants her to be chief engineer, though he hasn't shared this brainstorm with Janeway yet.

At a meeting for senior officers, Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, Tuvok, and Kim try to figure out ways to conserve energy. Besides turning down the thermostat and replacing the regular warp engine lightbulbs with 70-watt blubs, they have tried to use the holodeck generators, but the energy systems aren't remotely compatible.

Neelix and Kes enter with suggestions and Paris rather leeringly gives Kes his chair. Kes thinks they should have a hydroponic garden in a cargo bay. Janeway puts Kes in charge of the project, which should get the little elf to shut up for awhile, anyway.

Next, Chakotay offers up a list of Maquis who would make good officers to replace the dead ones lost in "Caretaker." Janeway immediately notices Torres' name and isn't pleased.

Realizing the ship can't get by with just the Emergency Medical Holographic doctor, or EMH, Janeway assigns a reluctant Paris to train as field medic.

In the middle of all this housekeeping, the ship is shaken by spacial distortions in the space-time continuum [I hate it when that happens to my Toyota!] and they find they are confronting a quantum singularity. Their Good Samaritan instincts come to the fore when they see a ship stuck inside the singularity's event horizon.

Now, the event horizons I've heard of in science class...well, on public television...describe it as the point at which light can no longer escape gravitational forces, which is why black holes look black in everything but that silly Disney movie. But here we are to understand that the event horizon is just that: a sort of horizon under which gravitational forces crush space.

Janeway hails this dimly-seen ship to ask if they need assistance, but there's no answer. Neelix suggests going over to Illidaria, a nearby pretty-friendly planet, for help. Janeway thinks time may be too short.

Chakotay contacts Torres and asks if she has ideas about rescuing the ship. Torres suggests a subspace tractor beam. An extremely PO'ed Janeway puts Carey in charge of the project and calls Chakotay into her ready room. That, she says, was out of line. But Chakotay wants to let Torres show her stuff so that Janeway can fairly consider her for the position of chief engineer. Janeway and Chakotay discuss just where their perspective loyalties might lie, with "her" crew, "their" crew, or "his" crew. Muted chest thumping ensues.

Kes gets soil samples for her garden from the holo doctor, who is both sensitive and shrinking. He calls Kim for a repair crew and gets fobbed off. Kes asks the doctor's name, but he doesn't have one, so I'd better get used to calling him Doctor. Anyway, they have a nice moment and I'm sure a friendship will be developing there.

The tractor beam gets finished, and they give it a try. Unfortunately, Voyager gets pulled into towards the singularity instead, and Carey has to cut the engines. Janeway decides enough's enough and heads for Illidaria.

Janeway tries to take advantage of the trip by having a heart-to-heart with Torres, who bristles a lot. Trying neither to offend nor kiss up to Torres, Janeway says she knows about the woman's couple of turbulent years at the academy and asks her if she thinks she's ready to work on both the ship and her people skills. Torres sneers that she hates Starfleet and stalks out. [At the employment agency at which I used to work, we called this a "negative" attitude. The fact that Torres is still up for the job can only be explained with such complex Star Trek psychobabble that I'll just go on to the next plot point.]

The Doctor, who's continuing to shrink, tells Janeway that nine crew members have shown signs of illness. Janeway thinks it might be connected to their encounter with the singularity. Thank goodness they've left it far behind.

But have they? Back on the bridge after another ship-tossing, we find that the singularity is once again in front of the ship. They try again to leave, and again are in front of the singularity.

Janeway analyzes the data so far and calls a meeting of senior officers. In concession to Chakotay, Torres is to be there with Carey.

Kim has such a hard time trying to gossip with Tuvok that he ends up in Sickbay.

At the meeting, people blabber unhelpful things until Torres suggests a way to use a dampening field around the external sensors so they can contact the other ship. Janeway agrees and then gives Chakotay the nod he seeks, acknowledging Torres' smarts.

An extremely hyped Torres breaks through the communication problems and we hear Janeway's original hail coming from the trapped ship. Clearing up the image of the ship, we see that it is, in fact, Voyager. Torres figures out that Voyager has been caught in the event horizon since pretty much the beginning of the episode. Voyager has been trying to rescue itself.

Paris attempts to recount the plot so far and sounds stupid, but Torres grabs the spotlight by announcing that Voyager has about nine hours to get out of the event horizon before it will be crushed. Janeway and Torres now leave the others far behind as they fall into science talk, hypothesizing means to get out of the horizon. There must have been a crack made in the horizon when Voyager first entered, so all they have to do is find it with..."Warp particles!" they say together.

Back on the bridge, the crew uses these warp particles to find the hole that Voyager made. It's too small to go through now, however. They need to use a decion beam, but Voyager's engines might cause the hole to collapse. Paris volunteers to fly a shuttle, but Janeway says flying there's the easy part. She gets Torres to come with her instead.

During the four-and-a-half-minute ride to the breach in the event horizon, Torres apologizes to Janeway for losing her temper. She really left the academy, she says, because she couldn't take it, and no one was sorry to see her go. Janeway corrects her. One of her professors enjoyed having Torres challenge him all the time [which is an even more fantastical moment than the part about Torres still being up for the job of chief engineer].

They reach the rip in the horizon and widen it, but when they try to go back to Voyager they see two ships instead of one. One of the ships is actually a temporal echo. Should they take the one on the right or the left? Speaking together again, they opt for different ships, and Janeway sticks her with her choice...luckily so, as it turns out.

Back on the bridge, Janeway hears that the rip has gotten too small again, but "Sometimes you just have to punch your way through." Voyager makes it out.

Chakotay takes Lieutenant Torres to her team in engineering. Carey shakes her hand and pledges to do his best. Later we will hear of the warp engines being filled with oatmeal and energy conduits being TP'ed, but for now things look peaceful enough.

Chakotay asks Janeway, who's watching all this from that balcony thing, whether she would have served under him if they were on his ship, and she says, "One of the nice things about being captain is that you can keep some things to yourself."

Paris goes to see the Doctor, who's too small now to fix the cut on his hand. Paris likes him better this way. I hope the banter improves if Paris really is going to train with the Doctor.

CHARACTER
Torres is the main character this time, and we find out more about her early days at the academy. Her good and bad record there fits her deeply conflicted personality. She's not only half-human/half-Klingon, she's half-academy/half-street smarts.

Proving herself to Janeway goes pretty much as you'd expect, but I also liked the way Janeway has to prove herself to Torres. Torres didn't really choose to be here, nor swear loyalty to this chain of command. Janeway's overtures of understanding are met with suitable hostility. Improvement in relations begins when Torres sees that Janeway can appreciate her. Janeway's open-mindedness is not what Torres seems to be expecting. When the two of them talk science, there's a real connection made between them, and when Janeway is right about which Voyager to take, she proves that Torres doesn't know everything all the time. Among the Maquis, it's quite possible Torres has gotten used to being the smartest one in the room. That changes on this Starfleet ship.

We see a nicely appropriate development in Torres' attitude towards Janeway. In "Caretaker," Torres tried to stop Janeway from blowing up the array, but here when Janeway says they'll take the Voyager she thinks is the correct one, Torres says with obvious restraint, "If you're wrong, we're going to have a long time to debate it."

Chakotay gets some development here, and is doing a good job showing both his respect for Janeway and his discomfort at his new position in life. He should feel responsible to his people, but we all know this isn't going to work (as a ship or as a show) if he doesn't eventually trust Janeway completely. He pushes Torres in Janeway's face a little harder than he should, but that strikes me as being fairly realistic. Torres becomes nothing less to him than a personal crusade.

The Doctor gets minimal development, but that's more than we saw in "Caretaker." The name business and his complaint that he should have been told about the quantum singularity point to the sort of difficulty he's going to have becoming more than just a regular EMH.

I don't think the Paris-as-medic thing is the world's greatest idea. The helm officer is supposed to be on the bridge, far as I can remember, not running off to bandage people up.

THOUGHT
There's some difficulty in the script's presentation of Torres' challenge. Why does her rival for the post have to be a white male? Carey could just as easily have been another woman, or a man of another race. I know, we all know, that Torres' situation is supposed to resonate in 20th century minds with job discrimination in the world today, but do they have to be so obvious about it? This is the same discomfort I felt when Crusher was captaining the Enterprise, and a black woman's theories turned out to be better than the higher-ranking white man's. Beat us with a club, why don't you?

Getting on to much more pleasant thoughts, this episode really offers insight into what Starfleet itself means both to the characters and to the Star Trek audience. To be accepted into this group means that one is a recognized military authority, and that one has certain skills and capabilities. Barkley maybe something of a silly-willy, but he's a damn fine diagnostic engineer. Why? Because he's a Starfleet engineer!

Now here we have the Maquis, who didn't work to be in Starfleet and don't even want to be Starfleet. Watching the Maquis walk around in those uniforms reminds me of how I felt watching Wesley do it once Picard had fully promoted him. "Get out of that and put on trainee outfit!" I want to scream. To wear that uniform is supposed to mean something. No wonder some fans get such a kick out of having a suit of their own, even if sometimes it seems a little extreme.

And yet the Maquis are not children, and they do have training -- just not academy training. Janeway has the power to promote everyone on ship to whatever she likes. And it wouldn't enhance teamwork to have people in mis-matching outfits.

So, without the uniforms to designate people as worthy of hero status, what will we have to base our like and dislike of characters on? Only their service on the ship. These Maquis and even these Starfleet people are going to have to make a difference before we can even trust them not to be lazy, mutinous, or worse. That's the same position the crew are in regarding each other. Janeway has learned that she can trust her command staff at least to a point, but the rest of the road will doubtlessly be bumpy.

SPECTACLE
I'm continuing to have trouble with the warp horizon. Why doesn't the singularity look black? Wavy shapes and pulsating colors look murky, not mysterious.

We get to see more of the inside of the ship, and frankly the sets look like a real labor of love.

DICTION
Some good lines include:

"Ms Torres is no longer a member of the Maquis, and with all due respect, Commander, neither are you." -- Tuvok chest-thumping with Chakotay.

"I have no intention of being your token Maquis officer." -- Chakotay chest-thumping with Janeway.

""I am the embodiment of modern medicine...how much dirt do you need?" -- Doctor to Kes.

"Could we have traveled back in time and met ourselves?" -- Kim, who's obviously never been to Milliways.


SONG
More excellent work on the score. Kudos all 'round.

And now for the baggage...

STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) LOVE
Vulcans. Tuvok's "dislike" of Chakotay promises to be entertaining. I hope they don't have a warm-fuzzy anytime soon.

Neelix's reference to there not being enough chairs at the conference table was nicely allusive to the Ferengi bargainer's complaints in "The Price."

STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE
Spacial anomalies that just lie around waiting for some unsuspecting ship to fly in really irritate me. I don't like them any better, I admit, when an amoeba is waiting inside them, but for a while I was waiting for someone to come along and claim responsibility. Of course, since Voyager is searching for wormholes and other anomalies as a way to get home, we're probably going to be seeing a lot of these. Oh well, one can't have everything.

Well, that wraps up this one!

Star Trek Voyager Reviews

Or go ahead to ST Voyager Revs -- Time and Again.

Or go back to ST Voyager Reviews -- Caretaker.