Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Persistence of Vision

Well, hello there, fellow Voyager fans, and welcome to my review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Persistence of Vision." This review is full of big ole spoilers and (I hear) is the last time we're going to see that stupid gothic romance holonovel. [Hey, Janeway! the wife isn't dead!!] If you're not a Voyager fan...

...may I suggest for your pleasure The Onion?

Not in the mood right now? Wanna read my review instead? Great!

INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
A harried-looking Janeway is pestered on her way to engineering by Neelix to make time for a meeting with him about the Botha, a mysterious race whose space Voyager is soon to encounter. She shrugs him off and watches Kim and Torres try to transfer the Doctor to engineering via the remote holo-emitters we heard about back in "Projections." They get the Doctor all right, but he shrinks to an itty bitty guy -- an extremely annoyed itty bitty guy.

Janeway, however, is even more annoyed, and actually snaps at Kim. The Doctor invokes his powers as Chief Medical Officer and orders her to do something fun to relax.

Janeway goes back to her holonovel, which if you'll recall was in the middle of this tediousness about his "dead" wife. The young daughter complains about the cucumber sandwiches and they drink tea before Lord Whatshisname grabs Janeway for a big smoochie. She seems bothered by how passionate the whole thing is just as Chakotay signals in that the Botha are hailing Voyager and she's needed on the bridge.

Neelix pesters her some more as she steps off the turbo lift and says that the Botha are really dangerous. He's heard rumors that ships disappear in Botha space Never To Be Heard From Again.

The Botha finally talk to Voyager, though the guy who's doing the talking is severely back-lit and doesn't show his face. He says a Botha ship will rendezvous with Voyager to discuss whether Voyager can have permission to cross Botha space, then signs off.

Janeway wants to talk this encounter over with Neelix, who suggests having their meeting in the mess hall. Tuvok's eyebrows, Kim's sweet face, and Chakotay's smile all support Neelix's argument that she isn't taking care of herself and needs to eat. [Well, I for one am happy that she doesn't bolt down chocolate all day and still stay skinny like a certain counselor I could mention.]

In the mess hall, Neelix is extolling the virtues of some perfectly horrid-looking food when Janeway is stunned to see cucumber sandwiches and a cup from the holodeck tea service among Neelix's offerings. He says he found the cup in storage.

Somewhat disturbed, Janeway walks in the hall and hears Lord Whatshisname's voice say something amorous. She then sees the little girl from the holonovel in the corridor saying that her mother is still alive.

After checking out the holoprogram with Kim and Torres, and finding out from Neelix that there were no cucumber sandwiches or strange cups at lunch, Janeway goes to Sickbay. While the Doctor checks her out thoroughly, Kes gets a case of the major willies. Then Janeway sees the little girl from her holonovel standing in the room. The Doctor doesn't see the girl, but Kes does, and when she looks at her she rushes into Janeway, as if Kes were reflecting this image of the girl back at the captain like a mirror. Kes explains what she sees and thinks it may have something to do with the mental exercises she's learning from Tuvok to hone her abilities.

The Doctor sends Janeway to her quarters to rest, and she nixes an order of soup for some coffee ice-cream (which she doesn't get to eat!) when there's a noise in her room. She hears Mark's voice and a little dog yapping, then opens her door to find the holonovel housekeeper coming at her with a knife. They wrestle around and Janeway calls and calls for Tuvok.

But then Tuvok is there with her, in Sickbay, calling her name and trying to snap her out of her delusion. She does come out of it, only to be horrified at how far gone she was.

Janeway gets Chakotay ready to take over the ship for awhile, laying out the different meetings she's supposed to go to and all that. Chakotay assures her the crew can handle her absence for a few days and that they're all sure the cause of her delusions can be found (diet pills?). The Doctor chases Chakotay out of there, and Kes tells Janeway that she saw the housekeeper with the knife and thinks whatever is going on involves the whole ship, not just the captain.

The Botha arrive and once again the back-lit guy shows up. He snarls a bit at Chakotay, and Tuvok breaks off communication with news of strange sensor readings which suddenly prove to be cloaked ships which, well, decloak and start firing on Voyager. Janeway runs to the bridge as Kim scans the attacking ships and finds no life signs on them. Voyager also can't seem to hurt the ships with phasers, though the ships are hurting Voyager pretty bad.

Chakotay calls a halt to the battle and the Botha guy demands surrender as Janeway makes it to the bridge. She tells him to stuff it, but then the Botha guy moves away from that light and turns out to be...Mark!

Janeway asks Paris what he sees, and he tells her it's his father. Kim, who tries but can't turn off the viewscreen, sees Libby. Tuvok sees his wife, and his lute, and Vulcan itself. Janeway tries to get Tuvok to get the ship ready for more battle, but she can't get him out of his trance.

Torres reports from engineering that people are becoming delusional because of a psionic wave coming from the Botha ship. She's going to set up a resonance burst to stop the wave. Janeway sends Chakotay to help and orders everyone else to do something else useful. "Mark" asks from the viewscreen if she always has to be captain. She ignores him and tells Kim to scan the ship, but Kim is officially ga-ga. Paris, however, is still with her, and does the scan.

In engineering, Torres is working on her resonance burst when Chakotay comes in and tells her the captain and everyone else has succumbed to the psionic wave. He wants to take a shuttle back to the last friendly planet they passed and get help. Torres says that doesn't sound like him, and he tells her he's the Chakotay she's always wanted him to be, the one who loves her.

Cut to her quarters where they get it on.

Paris gets some readings from the scans, but before he can actually be helpful his father appears from behind him and says such mean things to him that he goes ga-ga too. Janeway puts the bridge on security lock-out and heads for engineering, running into a ga-ga Chakotay in the turbo-lift. Mark shows up and puts the moves on her, and she resists pretty well until he accuses her of being unfaithful to him with Lord Whatshisname. He says he's vowed to wait as long as it takes for her to come back, and she turns to him for a kiss.

The turbo-lift doors open to reveal a ga-ga Janeway.

The Doctor tries to raise someone on the com and fails. He and Kes are the last left, and he sends her to engineering to finish Torres' resonance burst. He says he can walk her through it once she's there.

On the way, however, she finds a injured and pitiful Paris, who begs her to help him. She figures out that this is a delusion and leaves him.

Once in engineering, she contacts the Doctor and starts working, but when the Doctor signs off for a moment to look something up, Neelix appears. He's so worried about her and wants her to come with him in his ship. Why didn't he answer the Doctor's hails? He didn't hear them. How can he want her to leave everyone this way? "Neelix" starts to look angry. The Doctor signals back in and she tries to follow his instructions for the resonance burst, but now Neelix is really mad and glares at her. Horrible sores sprout all over her face and hands and she screams in agony. The Doctor tells her to "look at him" and use her powers as a mirror again, but it hurts too much. Neelix turns off the Doctor's console and stares in satisfaction as Kes screams in pain.

Finally, Kes gets her eyes up to Neelix's and now he's covered in sores and screams in pain and falls to the ground, where he then turns into a wrinkled little man. Kes gets the Doctor back on the screen and finishes the resonance burst. Everyone comes out of their trance. Janeway arrives and asks the little Bothan man why he did this to them.

"Because I can," he says. He considers Kes, and says she's "a powerful little thing."

Janeway considers all the ways she could put an end to his psi-terrorist days, but he tells her he's not really there and disappears. So do the ships outside.

Alone in the mess hall, Janeway thinks about the episode's many unanswered questions. Torres joins her and wonders if the delusions were "correct" in what they secretly wanted. The women both look worried by the idea, then wish each other pleasant dreams.

CHARACTER
Well, this is another episode with scattered character development, all of it pretty interesting.

Janeway's longings for Mark are pushed off-stride by what is basically a case of the lonelies. She's gotten caught up in the holonovel and kisses Lord Whatshisname and discovers: Hey! that feels pretty good. This is different from that passing flirtation with the Sicaran leader, Gath. He turned her head without touching her heart, but now Janeway's having to deal with just wanting someone around. That's a much greater temptation to fidelity than some guy with hula-hoops in his hair.

It's fun to watch the crew all show her their certainty that whatever is wrong with Janeway is not psychotic. While she considers that it's caused by stress, they talk about alien intruders and new diseases. I was worried when Voyager began that we were going to get seasons worth of Maquis sneering at her. But, among the command crew anyway, we're getting some genuine loyalty now.

And speaking of loyalty, Tuvok's Vulcanite concern for Janeway when he's trying to snap her out of her delusion works nicely indeed.

And speaking of loyalty brings us back to Janeway and Mark. It tells us much about her that the Botha's "Mark" finally gets her to talk to him by accusing her of being unfaithful. He's playing on a very real concern she's feeling about her loneliness, and the combination of wanting to be with him and wanting to defend herself against this close-to-the-mark criticism (totally unintended pun) are simply too much for her to resist.

All of this is helped too by what Janeway must feel is a slight betrayal by Chakotay for going ga-ga in the turbo-lift. I looked carefully, however, when Janeway goes into her own trance, and I couldn't see Chakotay standing behind her in the turbo-lift. Did the Bothan make her see Chakotay there to weaken her before he made his big move?

The other temptations are nice as well. Tuvok succumbs rather easily, but using his wife is a timely reminder of how much he's got going on in the Alpha Quadrant. He's the only main character who has a spouse and kids back home, and that's gotta hurt.

I'm less than thrilled with this revelation that Torres is secretly lusting after Chakotay. Their friendship has never been properly exploited on the show, and this seems like a poor substitute for an interesting relationship. I don't think it will do much for either character to be with the other, especially after Chakotay worked so hard to get her the job of Chief Engineer. She didn't seem particularly certain of her own attraction at the end, however, so maybe this is just another one of those latent attraction deals that won't be pursued, like the one between Kira and Bashir [although that one had its own type of pay-off, didn't it?!].

[Ooops! Julia here. I was trying to drive to my job and there were some sort of strangely charged, temporally ionized particals on my chassis. Anyway, when I tried to leave my car, I wound up back here, in a long-ago time, when I was, I see, worried that we'd get more of Torres lusting after Chakotay. Well, I and my cohorts in the future not only know how the O.J. verdict came out, we've all seen "Blood Fever." Torres would seem to have transferred any lust for Chakotay to everyone's favorite pilot. We're still waiting to learn more about the Chakotay-Torres friendship, though. Oh, look! My car pool have managed to find me in this socially turbulent time, and right before I could go change the O.J. verdict and start a huge urban riot! Just call me Gabriella Bell.]

It's a real shame that we don't know what gets Chakotay in a trance, and it's really telling about Kim's lack of development that all we need to hear is that he sees Libby to believe he succumbs.

Now, Paris once again gets the most interesting vision, because it seems to be the only one that's of someone the victim doesn't like. However, since we already knew he has a mean father, I'd rather discuss Paris' vision in THOUGHT.

Kes turns in a few real surprises here. She's evidently going to be pulling psychic rabbits out of her hat now with these "undeveloped" powers of hers. She's kind of like Spock in TOS. I mean, every week he seemed to grow some new telepathic ability, and use them with greater ease as the series went on. I hope she doesn't get omnipotent or anything, but it's fun watching her turning into a "powerful little thing." I like that her two temptations are an injured Paris and a protective Neelix, though I hope there's nothing in the fact that she sees Paris first. I've already made my offerings to the Trek gods that Paris' attraction for Kes is truly a dead and buried storyline after "Parturition." Instead, I like the injured Paris because he's always getting hurt, and because he manages to be so incredibly pathetic. "Don't leave me. Come back!"

Neelix's wanting to take Kes away works for obvious reasons, and I like watching Neelix get more evil-looking as she refuses to go with him. Neelix would make a good character for a possession story, I think: from Smurf to Troll in one fierce expression.

THOUGHT
Janeway is the captain, for those who haven't figured that out, and like Kirk and Picard she's the one who swoops in to save people as well as the last to succumb to weakness. So it's great that she gets attacked via her holonovel. Fantasy is a weakness we all have, though we exploit it in a million different ways, and when we play make-believe we are extremely vulnerable to attack. I sometimes think that's why adults usually stop making pretend: it's just so easy to be put down or picked on.

More to the point, fantasy is only fun when it taps desires or soothes anxieties we don't get to reach in our ordinary lives. In pursuing their day-dreams, people get psychically naked in the holodeck. That's why I can't stand the idea that the holodeck's door doesn't seem to lock, and why it was physically painful to watch TNG's "Hollow Pursuits."

The Bothan uses Janeway's interaction with the holonovel to hit all her buttons, and it's hardly surprising that he affects her so greatly, especially since Lord Whatshisname's come-on ties in so nicely to her longing for Mark.

Paris' confrontation with his dad works in a wildly opposite way. Paris has already introduced his father to us as the archetypal Bad Dad. We're all pretty fascinated by bad parents these days, and love to blame adult behavior on childhood trauma. Can't you just see Paris and his father on Oprah?

What makes this Bad Dad work well is that he becomes what bad parents are supposed to become: the voice inside us that pokes at our self-esteem and tells us we're worthless. Bad Dad says almost nothing to Paris that is unique to him. It's your basic ego-killing rant: "I'm just telling you what you already know. What the going gets tough, you crumble." Paris responds with the same sort of thing we tell our own mean inner voices, "Not any more." But that's too weak to stand up to "You don't really believe that in your heart. You believe you'll fail again, and of course you will. You can't do anything right. You'll fail. Why even try?"

So it's not only plain that Paris acts heroically because he's desperate to make the Bad Dad voice shut the hell up, it's also clear that for the tough cases the Bothan is using fantasies which are simultaneously pleasurable and fearful. Janeway gets pleasure from seeing Mark and fears her own infidelity. Torres gets pleasure from having Chakotay make love to her and fears that she really desires him. Paris gets the pleasure of telling his dad to "get out of [his] life" and the fear that he will fail once again.

So when the Bothan has to resort to those simple, even childish sores on Kes' face, we know he's already lost.

And speaking of that Bothan, I like his motivation: "Because I can." Having the power to delude others so thoroughly would be corrupting indeed, so we don't need a long elaboration on why he's so evil. Probably, though, he had a Bad Dad.

SPECTACLE
Did anyone else notice that the Bothan ship suddenly looks Kazon half-way through the fight?

The white foam off those sores was even more disgusting that Neelix's buffet.

DICTION
I've already noted some good lines. Others include:

"My programmers didn't clutter me up with pithy Earth trivia." -- the Doctor.

"I suggest you don't look at the viewscreen." "It's not even tempting." -- Janeway and Paris.


SONG
Lovely music and real musicians. Now that's a fantasy come true!

And now for the baggage...

STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I ANYWAY) LOVE
Frankly, I can't get enough of stories that make characters' inner fears and desires come to life and light. However, I do wish we had this episode a little later in the series, when we've have more character development to work with. What does Chakotay see?

STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE
Lords, governess, housekeepers, and bratty kids are why I don't watch The Nanny.

Well, that's all for this one!

Star Trek Voyager Reviews

Or go ahead to ST Voyager Reviews -- Tattoo.

Or back to ST Voyager Reviews -- Parturition.