INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Oh dear, Chakotay's in a shuttle with an ensign we've seen once or twice before, how long will SHE survive?...not long...hmmm, this is going to be a Chakotay episode, so will there soon be a reference to how he got his tattoo one night while he was drinking heavily with the Rubber Tree People?...No, but he finally gets to do something we were all wondering about...and then there are the Borg -- Whoopee!...whoops -- the end! Fast-paced and thought-provoking, a rare combination.
PLOT
Yes, Chakotay and Ensign Kaplan are looking for quicker ways through the Necrid expanse and get a little lost. They home in on a Federation beacon, but it's not the Voyager. A distress signal and sensor readings of some 80,000 humanoid life signs get them to send out a message buoy for Voyager and land on the planet...where they are promptly attacked. Kaplan is shot and killed. Chakotay is shot and is merely hurt. [Message to all non-command Voyager crew members: don't talk to strangers, don't go anywhere, and don't pick up a phaser!]
Chakotay wakes up on a bed with human woman Riley Frazier at his side. She tells him he's hurt, Kaplan's dead, and the shuttle has been stripped for parts. She also tells a somewhat weak story about how she and other people from all sorts of races were kidnapped by some unknown people who left them on this planet.
She goes on the describe this inter-cultural society. While the Good Guys have created a '60's co-op, the "raiders" of the group have started a lot of in-fighting. These raiders are the ones who've done all the damage, including some major harm to the communications array Riley used to send out the distress signal. Riley is working on repairs, but when Chakotay gets up, he just staggers around and she puts him back to bed (more on that later).
Back on Voyager, having no idea anything's wrong with her first officer, Janeway and crew find a Borg cube in space, listing and inert. Janeway orders an away team over to study the destroyed ship and find out if some Borg weakness may be exposed.
Chakotay is back on his feet, kind of, and tells Riley about life on Voyager, especially its 67-year ETA to Earth. He says she and some friends can hitch, but Riley explains that she's enjoying the pioneer life. She would like some help dealing with her civil unrest, but not a rescue.
On the Borg cube, Torres, Tuvok and some extras find a dead Borg body. Eventually they find 1,100 corpses and wonder what may have been more powerful than the Borg: Mother Nature, or another, more powerful race? Janeway, of course, wants answers, and goes to rendezvous with Chakotay.
Chakotay plays a bit of possum and staggers outside to find that Riley and her friends, like Orum the Friendly Romulan and medic, are actually members of the 12-step Borg Recovery Program. They were captured at Wolf 359 and various other engagements, became part of the collective, watched as the cube was deactivated by an energy discharge (hats off to Mother Nature after all), and then found themselves once again individuals.
All was great at first, says Riley, but then people became aware that they were all a little too different for good company. Now factions have formed and the planet is starting to remind everyone of Los Angeles' inter-city.
Back in sickbay, the autopsy of the Borg corpse shows that he was electrocuted five years ago, corresponding with Torres' findings that the ship suffered some sort of electrical burn-out at that same time. In the middle of all this, the Doctor accidentally restarts the Borg's programming. It's a strictly mechanical response, but functional enough in its way. Torres realizes they would all be in some real trouble if something started the whole cube up again.
Chakotay, meanwhile, is getting worse instead of better, and since the only real technology the ex-Borgs have is...well...Borg, Orum explains that Chakotay's best bet is to be linked to the collective neural energy so they can heal his brain. [Why didn't I think of that?] After being assured that the link will be temporary, and that Voyager is nowhere in sight, Chakotay agrees to link with Riley, Orum, and a few other scarred souls. "Be one with us," they call to him in his mind. "We feel your pain."
Chakotay finds the link more a hoot than he was expecting, watching and feeling the scattered memories of the others in the link. Waking up later and feeling much better, he tells Riley, "That was incredible!" "I know," she says, and the two of them proceed to explore a sort of after-glow of the link. She touches her face and Chakotay can feel it on his own face. She touches her arm, and...well, you get the idea. Chakotay, breathing pretty hard, asks how long this connection will last, and Riley says, "An hour, maybe two. Long enough." For what? Why, for some GREAT SEX!
Back on Voyager, alerted to the fact that Chakotay is in trouble, but having no idea that he doesn't want to be rescued right...this...minute, Janeway and company look for Chakotay.
Fortunately, this takes a while. Chakotay himself helps fix the transmitter. Orum tells him everyone has been greatly cheered up by sharing in Chakotay's feelings, and he seems to like this idea instead of being grossed out, which perhaps proves once and for all that he's truly spiritual. I would have put a bag over my head. But I digress. Chakotay has found out some things from the link as well, and now knows not only Riley's favorite flower, but that she wants more than just a little help from Voyager, which arrives right on cue.
On the ship, Riley asks Janeway not only for supplies, but also to turn the Borg cube back on so they can access the collective link transmitter. It seems Riley and the other members of her co-op want to create a kinder, gentler Borg that uses the link not to assimilate others, but to live happily together on the farm. Riley leaves, and Janeway asks Chakotay's opinion. While he likes Riley -- after all, they had GREAT SEX -- and knows she and the others are genuine, he also recognizes Janeway's obvious, and obviously well-founded, misgivings about the whole plan. It would mean both imposing the will of the few on the many, and also taking a big risk with the Borg cube. Chakotay gives Riley the bad news.
Neelix, Torres, Chakotay, and some extras shuttle down and deliver some supplies to Riley and the others. Riley says she understands Janeway's decision, but back on the shuttle, Chakotay is taken over by that pesky collective consciousness again. It seems Riley and her companions are using the transmitter to reinstate the link. Standing around in a circle, they chant at Chakotay to help them, even as raiders pound away at their front door.
Under the link's command, Chakotay stuns Torres and takes the shuttle to the cube, then goes to fix the main power switch.
Voyager pursues, and Tuvok manages to find Chakotay just as he's about to get the cube working again. Chakotay shoots Tuvok, Kim (!) stuns Chakotay...but it's too late. The cube's lights go on and the reanimated Borg start advancing on our intrepid away team. Everyone (including all the shuttles) get back on Voyager, which takes off just as the Borg cube initiates its self-destruct and blows up.
Janeway and the bridge listen to the collective apologize for using Chakotay and express its gratitude. Chakotay apologizes to Janeway for his actions, and she tells him it wasn't his fault. Together, they worry about the effects of what has happened. Janeway comments that Riley's collective isn't acting like the Big Bad Borg, but Chakotay wonders, obviously echoing Janeway's thoughts as well, "how long their ideals will last with that kind of power."
CHARACTER
This is the first of the Chakotay episodes I've really liked. Moreover, they didn't change his characterization around to achieve it. He still combines idealism and practicality, tolerance and self-protective suspicion, and he again blames himself too hard for things that aren't his fault.
The difference is simply the story line. This is doubtlessly not the kick-ass Borg episode many Trekkers were wanting, but it's a nicely different view of the Borg that shows how incredibly influential and even attractive the idea of a collective can be. However, I'm going to go into all that under THOUGHT, below. Here, I want to say that the idea of a maybe-good collective works well with Chakotay's personality. He's very much an individual with his own very decided opinions, but he also derives a lot of his identity from being a member of a tribe, even though he's shown several times that he's uncomfortable with that tribe.
He has a medicine wheel and talks about the legends of his people, but he sneers (or sneered, anyway) at the idea of the Rubber Tree People. He was a good Maquis fighter and leader, but he's more at peace serving on a team under a leader whose needs "come first." He encourages people to tell him their opinions, but has no trouble telling others that they're wrong. He wears the mark of his tribe on his face, but he does it more to honor his father than to be "one of the gang." He instantly applauds the vegetarian-friendly farm co-operative, but he would rather die than have a Borg chip implanted in his brain, even temporarily. Chakotay is the perfect crewmember to sympathize with Riley's desire to be One of Many, and to distrust the whole concept at the same time.
His attraction for Riley, even after seeing under her wig, seems right on target as well. She has many of the same characteristics he likes about Janeway, without any command structure to get in the way. She is brave and beautiful (with the wig) and wise, courageous and even a little motherly. Her desire to unite the community seems very much like a parent wanting to control her naughty children. Moreover, being able to feel each other's feelings is a very nice sci-fi set-up to GREAT SEX.
Janeway's reluctance to tell Riley's she's nuts for wanting to activate the cube also works because of Riley's similarity to Janeway. The two women seem to recognize shared goals without making a huge issue out of it. Perhaps it's because of this as well that Janeway would like to believe there's some chance the new collective will become something other than a new Borg abomination.
THOUGHT
As promised, let's discuss the flip-side to the Borg. We've seen from the beginning that they are wonderful as the Collective from Hell, announcing like some Terminator chorus that "Resistance is Futile" and we will be assimilated, like it or not. Frankly, the first time I saw them, they made me rethink The Vogons and their similar "Resistance is useless" motif. And people have had a ball comparing the Borg Collective to Soviet Communism.
But this new side to the collective, the idea of wanting to be a part of it even when you value your individualism, that's interesting too, and maybe even more frightening in its own way. We, like Janeway, may want the nice collective to stay that way. But we must also agree with Chakotay -- like Janeway -- that it's most unlikely this will happen. Chakotay therefore has even more cause for concern that he wanted to help these people, that he was tempted to help them willingly in restoring the Borg link.
When we see the raiders who were attacking Riley's party get assimilated into this new collective, we don't feel sorry for them. But why should we pity them less? Sure, they're being violent, but from their point of view they have their reasons. How awful of us not to feel the same concern for them we feel for the victims of Wolf359 and others. How awful of Riley and her so-called peace-lovers to impose their notion of morality on 80,000 other people -- and yet how hard it is really to feel that is it awful.
This is the really cool sort of thing Star Trek can do: turn the tables on us. Once again the Borg can give us a "kick in our complacency," this time by reminding us that it's easy to hate a collective when it's attacking you, but harder to remember it's loathsome when it espouses your own points of view.
All this wonderful discomfort, however, comes to an abrupt end with the closing credits. Voyager can only last an hour at a time, and I much prefer overly quick endings to overly lengthy ones, but how I wanted that conversation to go on for a little bit! [And not, I'd like to make clear, because I want any sex to happen between Chakotay and Janeway, however others may feel.]
The thing is, Voyager's basic structure takes The Odyssey for a model, and therein lies the strength and weakness of the show when we compare it to the other Trek series.
The strength: It often felt on TNG, and usually feels on DS9, that we are trapped in one place. My friends and I have often asked, why should we want to spend so much time on the Enterprise/station rather than down on some interesting planet? Don't you remember feeling cheated at the end of such episodes as "Data's Day" because we hadn't gone anywhere? Many criticized DS9 for feeling claustrophobic and stale in its early seasons. TNG finally got through this problem when we really did care enough about the characters to watch them talk in their own rooms. And DS9 has wonderfully evolved a real society around that space station.
But Voyager doesn't have that problem -- except for the early mistake of being in Kazon space for too long. They're tooling through the stars as fast as they can, meeting new people and seeing new wonders all the time. As long as the characters don't complain too often about how much they miss Federation space, adventure and novelty pervade the story line with ease. This can make for new and interesting things all the time, and we can at will leave behind anything we don't fancy.
The weakness: on the other hand, all long-running series rely on the establishment of an atmosphere, and the entire Delta Quadrant is just a little too big. DS9 and TNG were able to mark out territories: the Klingon Homeworld and the Neutral Zone, the Wormhole and Bajor. After a few seasons we got some nicely repeating characters: Kye Winn, Shakaar, Lwaxana, and so on. They allow the ship and the station to be a part of some greater workings, so that decisions made can have long-lasting, far-reaching effects like avoiding a coup or saving Earth.
The Voyager is all alone. Nothing it does can ever really be seen again without some contrived writing or hanging around in someone's territory for too long. By the very nature of the show, we need to be moving on, and quickly too. This starts to get wearying, which works on something like The Fugitive, but not on Star Trek. The only solution to this problem, it seems to me, is to get some recurring characters, but the only one we've had so far with any promise is Q -- and he's not exactly new, is he? A better resource would seem to be Voyager's own crew, but so far the trend is definitely to continue the Star Trek tradition of killing off anyone we get to know who's name isn't in the opening credits. They even killed off Hogan, and that was such a waste! I used to want to see the famous Delaney sisters, but now I'm afraid if they came on screen they wouldn't even get to say "Good morning, Tom," before some lifeform would come along and suck out their brains.
All of this -- surprise! -- brings me back to this week's episode, which was actually seemed somewhat encouraging along these lines. Even though we did lose Kaplan right on cue, did you notice the security guy in the background when Riley was talking to Janeway? He had (gasp) an expression on his face that reacted to the conversation. I think McNeil's idea as director here is to show that with only a crew of 140 or so (????), Voyager's security cannot be expected to stand around like statues. Everyone knows each other pretty well by now, so even a lowly guard feels personally involved when someone talks to the captain about the Borg. He even exchanges glances with Janeway and Chakotay on the way out, a look which says pretty clearly, "Don't even think about turning on the Borg cube!"
I hope we see much more of this sort of thing. Star Trek writers: [who I know are dying for my opinion] Voyager's pretty much a city in space now, let's see it act that way. We need married couples (though I wouldn't mind having the kids kept to an invisible minimum), and community theatres, and coffee clubs, at least in the background. And you've simply got to stop killing off your limited supply of crewmen, not to mention those often-mentioned shuttles...
SPECTACLE
Speaking of McNeil's direction, he does a good job with smooth camera shots during conversations, and with a limited set gives the impression of a large complex on the planet. The Borg ship seems nicely disused without looking dusty. He does linger too long on the Borg in sickbay before it comes "awake," ruining any jump-out-at-you scare, but the understated body language he gets out of all the actors more than makes up for that. Let's see him do something else.
Hey, Mulgrew. You gonna direct one?
DICTION
I may need to start up some sort of Star Trek sexual euphemisms page. E-mail me if you'd like to contribute. Until then, let's note here:
"I want to be closer to you." -- Riley to Chakotay
SONG
Nicely muted score on the Borg ship, suggesting empty disuse. The temptation to do some Jaws-like da-da-da music may have been strong.
And now for the section where I deal with Star Trek baggage...
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) LOVE
Hmmm, unfortunately for this section, I pretty much covered this stuff in THOUGHT.
I don't mind mentioning the Borg again though. They really are scaaarey.
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE
Any and all Star Trek sexual euphemisms. Still, nothing will ever again be as bad as "Then, please, Captain [Kirk], help me again."