Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Tattoo

Finally! We learn about Chakotay's tribe and why he wears that tattoo [Hence the title!] on his face (not that one needs a reason per se, but it's nice to have one). And in this spoiler-filled review of Star Trek Voyager's episode, "Tattoo," I'm going to talk all about one of our favorite first officers. I'm doing this solely for the enjoyment of my fellow Voyager fans, and in the hope of getting some nice e-mail, so if facial tattoos are too much for you, why don't you go look at some more traditional art?

A place you might enjoy would be Etiquette Hell.

No? Okay, then...

INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Well, I have been begging for some more Chakotay development, and we're certainly seeing a new side to him...Hey! that's Zorro's dad!...So, just like with Paris, Janeway, Torres, and Kes (and the Doctor), Chakotay's personality was formed by his father. Do they have mothers at all?...Ah, yet another race can teach us about peace and brotherhood.

PLOT
Torres, Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix, and some extras are surveying a rocky moon for some polytheranide for the nacelles. Neelix and Tuvok show Chakotay a spiral-like drawing on the ground, and this sends him into a flashback. As a fifteen-year-old, Chakotay walks through a Central American jungle with his father, Kolopak, looking for the tribe of the Rubber Tree People (his father's idea). Young Chakotay finds a symbol very similar to the one Neelix and Tuvok found. His father explains that it's a healing symbol of the Rubber Tree People. Chakotay is himself a descendant of these Rubber Tree People, though that does nothing to make the Young Chakotay any more interested in this field trip. Why would anyone choose to live in a jungle? he wants to know.

On Voyager, Wildman is trying to get the Doctor to help her with lower back pain caused by her pregnancy, but he's unsympathetic in the extreme. Kes tsk-tsks him for being so unfeeling. She credits his own lack of first-hand experience with illness, and wishes that for once in his life he could know how bad feeling bad feels. Alone, he comments, "I don't have a life, I have a program." Nonetheless, Kes' words seem to have given him an idea.

Chakotay tells Janeway about his trip to Central America with his father and shows her the similarities between the symbol he saw then and the one from today. She asks if he has an explanation, and, scoffing, he tells her of his tribe's ancient legend of the Sky Spirits who came to Earth to create the Rubber Tree People. He says he puts no more faith in this story than she does in Adam and Eve [see THOUGHT]. However, he is curious about the symbol.

Janeway tells him about the warp trail they've found leading away from the moon. She figures if the people who drew the symbol know warp technology, they might also know where they can lay their hands on some polytheranide. So Voyager follows the trail to a seemingly lifeless planet which shows signs of an of energy source. Janeway sends an unanswered hail, and Chakotay assembles his away team in the transporter room.

Where they are stymied. It seems every time Torres fixes on a site to beam down to the surface, a storm appears right over that site. They figure that maybe their transporter beam is causing an atmospheric disturbance (proving that even Starfleet officers can be blind to things they don't want to see), and Chakotay decides to take a shuttle down. In the shuttle, however, they have to deal with another lightning storm and more annoying comments from Neelix.

Chakotay has another flashback to when he was watching it rain in the Central American rain forest. He hates the bugs, and hates the whole trip, but Kolopak is worried that his son will lose his way if he doesn't have the spirits to guide him.

Present-day Chakotay looks out the window of the shuttle and sees a face in the clouds.

Kes activates the EMH, and the Doctor greets her with "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." He's taken up his old phrase because it "works" for him. He then sneezes and explains that he's programmed himself to mimic all the symptoms of the 20-hour Levodian 'flu. He blows his holographic runny nose on some holographic tissue (and hopefully throws it in a holographic trash can, but I didn't see for certain) and calls being sick an "interesting experience." It seems he's set this all up so that he can serve as an example to the crew of how to keep in good spirits even when ill.

Can you say, "Ain't gonna happen?"

Chakotay really digs the jungle down on the planet. It reminds him of the Central American forest. There's even a species of flower there which looks decidedly Terran. Tuvok knows all about the flower, and it turns out that he is a breeder of orchids. Neelix is delighted to learn this, as he breeds orchids as well -- they make good eatin'! Tuvok's nostrils flare.

Torres tells Chakotay that the polytheranide is there, but that they will have to mine it very carefully. They look up to see a hawk, and this triggers another flashback.

It seems that on this little trip through the jungle, Chakotay looks at a similar hawk and is asked by his father if he can hear it. Instead of listening to the hawk, he tells Kolopak about wanting to leave the colony because it's such a drag. In fact, he wants to join Starfleet Academy, and has gotten a sponsorship from Captain Sulu. Kolopak warns Grasshopper that he will be caught between the two cultures for the rest of his life. In the middle of this, they stumble across en empty dwelling site.

Neelix signals Chakotay that he's found something, but then starts screaming in pain. Chakotay and Torres run to Neelix, and find that he's been attacked by that hawk. Voyager has no trouble beaming Neelix to Sickbay, and Tuvok shows up to lead Chakotay and Torres to an empty dwelling site.

Neelix is treated by a hoarse Doctor who insists that he wants no compassion. The illness -- achoo! -- is not bad.

The ship is ready to start mining, and Janeway asks Chakotay if they've made any progress contacting the people on this planet. Chakotay tells her about the face he's been seeing in the clouds, and after her experience in "Persistence of Vision," Janeway doesn't suggest that her first officer spend less time with his hallucinogenic device.

Chakotay has Torres and Tuvok put down their phasers, though Tuvok objects strongly. Chakotay is too busy having a flashback to care. It seems his father had their expedition team set down their weapons to let the Rubber Tree People know they came in peace,

[And now if you'll allow me, I'd like to take advantage of the Internet to ask anyone reading this if they know whether we really have Rubber Tree People on Earth, or if this is all made up by Star Trek. Please e-mail me if you know anything about it, and I'll put it in the review.]

In simple clothes and tattoos on their faces just like Chakotay's, The Rubber Tree People do come out of hiding, and there's a tense moment when one of the men (there are no women in the expedition) moves towards their weapons. One of the Rubber Tree People, throws a spear, but Kolopak draws that symbol in the sand and even knows the Rubber Tree People's language. The Chief tells him, "We are of the same hand," and throws the spear away and all the Rubber Tree babes come out with beer and chips. Soon, someone's got the volley-ball net up and they're having a swinging good time.

Present-day Chakotay gets nothing for his trouble but a big wind storm. He calls for everyone to run to the shuttle, but he gets separated from Tuvok and Torres when he catches sight of a skinny man in the trees. Tuvok and Torres finally call for an emergency beam-out, but Chakotay has been knocked down (and his combadge knocked off) by a falling tree.

Holding Chakotay's retrieved combadge, Janeway is told that scans can no longer find Chakotay or the shuttle. She gets ready to lead another away team, but the Doctor calls for her in desperation. It seems something has gone horribly wrong with his little experiment, and his 'flu has lasted an hour longer than it should have. Janeway needs Kes for the away team, but she sends Kim to look at the Doctor's computer. In Sickbay, Kes is comforting the pathetic Doctor, but when Kim arrives she explains that she reprogrammed the Doctor's 'flu to make it last longer. It wasn't really a fair test, she says, when he knew exactly when it would be over. The Doctor tells Kim, "She far more devious that I ever suspected."

Chakotay wakes up without his combadge and does a tricorder scan. He realizes he's alone with no shuttle and walks back to the empty dwelling site. There, he tells the trees that he means no harm, then takes off his clothes.

This singular maneuver is explained with another flashback. His father's expedition take off their clothes and put on Rubber Tree clothes -- except for sulky Chakotay, of course. He just watches in moping silence as the Rubber Tree People paint a sign just like their tattoos on Kolopak's face.

Chakotay stands naked in the dwelling and says he wants to talk [insert Dumb Blonde joke here]. He finds simple garments on a bench and puts them on.

In the transporter room, Voyager's away team once again has trouble with those storms, and Tuvok finally points out that the weather seems to be controlled by people who do not want Voyager to bother them. They let the transporter take people away, but not bring them down. Janeway says she'd be happy to leave these people alone, but she needs to get Chakotay back. She tells Paris to land the ship, but the atmosphere once again treats them to a storm.

Chakotay gets out of the storm by dodging lightning and running into a cave.

Voyager gets caught in a full-blown cyclone. Impulse engines are off-line, and with inertial dampers off-line, they can't go to warp. In about ten minutes, they'll crash.

Chakotay hears Rubber Tree speech in the cave, but doesn't know the language. People appear and Chakotay gives them the one word he knows from his father, sort of the Rubber Tree version of "shalome." These people have alien foreheads complete with Rubber Tree own tattoo.

We see further indication that Voyager's gonna crash!

The leader holds Chakotay's hand and now they can talk. The leader asks about Chakotay's tattoo and he explains that he wears it to honor his father, who wore it to honor his ancestors.

It turns out these people are indeed the Sky Spirits. They came to Earth the first time 45,000 years ago and found a nomadic Eskimo tribe. They gave them some gifts, including a kind of cultural race memory, the faintest traces of which are in Chakotay (hence, I think, the face in the sky, but I'm not sure). This tribe grew a very strong culture and migrated to the rain forest. These people visited Earth several times (though the journey to Earth takes them two generations) to check on the tribe, but on the last visit thought that all the descendants of them had been destroyed by condominium developers and Pepsi-Cola ads. Chakotay says that in fact some did survive and Earth's a much nicer place these days (everyone only drinks the Uncola).

The storms have all been an attempt to keep these Earth people with no respect for the land off their world, but Chakotay assures the aliens again that Voyager's crew is better than they fear.

Voyager is a thousand meters from impact, and Paris is looking frustrated indeed, then, with ten seconds before impact, the weather clears right up. Paris gets them back into orbit, and Tuvok now reads a population of people on the planet. They scan for Chakotay.

Chakotay is talking to the leader in the dwelling site now. It seems the Sky Spirits will give Voyager some of the mineral they need. Chakotay tells him that his father died fighting Cardassia, and that's why he joined the Maquis and got the tattoo. He and his dad were on bad terms when he died, and though Chakotay has tried on many visionquests to talk to his father, Kolopak never answered...until now.

The leader draws the symbol in the ground as Torres, Kes, and Tuvok enter with weapons drawn. Embarrassed for his people, Chakotay hisses at them to put their weapons away, then gives the leader a big ole hug.

The hawk goes overhead and Chakotay tells his father that he finally hears him.

And the away team beams up.