Caretaker, Parts I and II (VOY)

When Voyager premiered in 1995, I was in first grade. When it ended I was just starting middle school. Somewhere around season 3, my family moved and didn’t have a TV for a while, and I missed a whole big chunk of it. I’ve picked some of that up in reruns, but I am nearly certain there are at least four or five episodes I’ve never seen. I’ve definitely never watched the whole thing straight through, and there are many, many episodes I haven’t seen since I was a kid.

In other words, my familiarity with this show is much lower than with TNG. I am looking forward to seeing whether or not I even like this show as an adult. I hope I do, because otherwise it’s going to be a long five years.

            Okay, so the first thing we see on the screen is an opening title crawl. No, we’re not watching the wrong Star franchise, the producers just felt that would be the best way to get a mostly irrelevant political situation out of the way so they could dive right in and open the episode with a space battle. But, as some of you are not as familiar with TNG or DS9 as I am, let me summarize. Several years ago the Federation ceded some territory to the fascist, reptilian Cardassians. Some human and Bajoran colonist refused to leave that territory. Buying or stealing ships, they formed the Maquis, a sort of sympathetic terrorist group, fighting to reclaim their homes.

It is a dark time for the Rebel Alliance.

           We meet three of these noble outlaws, as their tiny ship is chased by a Cardassian warship. Chakotay, a badass-looking human with a tribal tattoo, B’Elanna Torres, a half Klingon with a temper, and a Vulcan named Tuvok. To escape their foe, they run head first into some sort of unstable graviton wave and we fade to white. Then, opening credits.

            These are the prettiest credits. They’re under this kind of serene, majestic orchestral theme, which is weird because we just saw this violent, action-packed opening and there’s sort of a sense of whiplash going on. But it’s not too bad. The visuals in the credits are also super gorgeous, and I’m pretty sure I never want to skip this main title sequence. Seriously, it gets an A+. Okay, moving on.

           The scene opens on a Federation Penal colony. It seems quite pleasant for a prison, but this is Starfleet we’re talking about, so that makes sense. We meet two main characters – Tom Paris, a former Maquis serving his time, and Captain Kathryn Janeway. She wants Tom to come along on a mission to track down his old captain, Chakotay, in exchange for his parole. Paris reluctantly agrees.

The signature pose, a Janeway trademark.

            This scene does do things. It gets some nasty exposition out of the way, and it introduces two of our main characters. I’m gonna be talking about Tom a lot in this review, but for now he’s sort of playing a poor man’s Han Solo. He’s over playing it, but part of that is the heavy-handed dialogue meant to shoehorn in all the exposition. So we’re getting an archetype from Tom, but we’re getting it clearly, and he’s charismatic enough that its not jarring. We’re not getting much off Janeway yet. She’s trying hard to be a hardass, but she’s negotiating with a criminal so you can’t really blame her.

            So next we get the standard flyover with techy details on the ship in a voiceover – in this case, the voice over is given to Tom by the sexy (and doomed) Betazoid shuttle pilot he’s hitting on. Oh, and Voyager is parked at Deep Space Nine, which makes sense given that they’re headed for the badlands. Anyway, Tom is a playa. Big surprise there.

            Now we meet Harry Kim, fresh-faced academy grad, and he has a scene with DS9’s mischievous bartender Quark, which, like the McCoy scene in TNG, is sort of a passing of the torch. This is way less forced, though, because this scene serves a real purpose – setting up the Paris/Kim dynamic. And Armin Shimmerman plays Quark so naturally that it actually makes us feel like this and Deep Space Nine are part of the same world, which is fun.

            So, in a normal pilot, this next scene would just be the introduction of the ship’s doctor, an important character on any Star Trek. But even if you didn’t already know that Voyager’s entire medical staff was Doomed with capital D, you’d be able to figure it out by this guy’s total lack of defining characteristics. Same goes for Janeway’s XO. There is at least a little indication of possible conflict between Tom and the Doc, but it’s really just not worth spending time getting to know people who will be dead in 15 minutes. Voyager’s original Chief Engineer never even gets a name.

           So, Paris and Kim pay their respects to the Captain. First, we see her on the phone with her fiancé, begging him to take care of her dog. This is kind of an important scene. Even though this review is going to absurdly long as is, I kind of want to unpack it, because it’s interesting. See, Picard and Kirk never had serious girlfriends, and Sisko was a widower. So it’s interesting to me that our first female Captain is also the only one who seems to have a healthy relationship with a non-Starfleet officer. It’s sort of implying that she has a gentle, nurturing side, which is important because in order to buy her as a Starfleet captain we have to see her being kind of a hardass for most of the pilot.

            The other important thing about this scene is it establishes that Voyager is a short range ship. It’s not meant for deep space exploratory missions like the Enterprises were. It goes out, it does a thing, it comes back. That’s why Janeway is able to have a fiancé and a dog. This is a major source of conflict in the first two seasons, so it bears pointing out.

Ok, Paris and Kim come in, there’s an interesting exchange about terms of address. She doesn’t like being called Sir, or Ma’am, preferring Captain. You would think by the 24^th century this kind of terminology would be standardized – Kim’s confusion implies that even now, a woman in the Captain’s chair raises some eyebrows. I can’t believe that’s actually the case. 

We’re almost to the Delta Quadrant. But first, we have a cool conversation between Kim and Paris, where we learn more about Paris and how he got kicked out of Starfleet. The writers clearly think Tom is the most interesting character, giving him way more time in this episode than anyone else.

So, Voyager gets to the badlands, encounters the WAVE OF DOOM, and everything goes to shit. XO: Dead. Cute Betazoid pilot: Dead. Doctor and Nurse: Dead and Dead. Tom and Kim get to sickbay and activate the Emergency Medical Hologram, a great character who doesn’t see much play this episode but manages to introduce himself excellently in the two-minute scene he’s given. Janeway heads to engineering, and, finding the chief dead and everyone in disarray, proves that she knows her own ship just a little better than Kirk or Picard as she locks down a warp core breach all by her lonesome.

Because what you expect to see after THIS...

Is this!

Now here’s where things get kind of dumb. Everyone is suddenly beamed to a farm. A kindly old woman offers them corn on the cob, there’s a banjo player, and this is incredibly jarring given where we’re coming from. Specifically, everyone’s acting is off. I mean, no one is really tempted by the obviously fake hospitality, but I’m weirded out by how not traumatized these people are. This is Harry’s first mission, ever, and he’s just seen things go as wrong as they possibly can. 75,000 light years from home, most of the senior staff dead, he should be visibly freaked out. At least a little. Janeway obviously is practiced at hiding her emotions, but jeez. She just lost at least three officers she’s served with for some time, not to mention any number of people under her command, I can’t believe she’s able to roll with it this well.

Ok, rant over. This silly, jarring farm scene ends when Paris and Kim discover the generators, and the whole crew gets medically experimented on and returned to Voyager three days later. Well, except for Harry. Also, the Maquis crew sans B’Elanna also come back to their ship, and now its time for really jarring inconsistency number two: Janeway and Chakotay trust each other almost immediately.

One of many ships that never really sailed.

There’s a little yelling and phaser waving, yes. But it’s minimal. I mean seriously, these are the terrorists we were chasing. She beams them onto the bridge without even bothering to shut down their weapons (something we know transporters can do) then proceeds to suggest an away mission where she, the Captain, and the enemy Captain, are a team. As in, just them beaming down to an unfamiliar space station together. In what strange, twisted Starfleet regulation book is this okay? Picard won’t even beam down to a planet surrounded by an away team.

            So they get back to the array, and everyone is gone but the banjo player, who is picking out a sad, sad song. He keeps insisting that no one onboard has what he needs, except maybe B’Elanna and Kim. Also, he must honor a debt that can never be repaid. But his search has not been going well. Finally, he says hee doesn’t have time to send them home. NOT ENOUGH TIME!

            And he teleports them back to Voyager. But Janeway won’t give up just yet.

            Before we see what she does next, we need to check in with Kim and B’Elanna, who have been transported to an alien hospital. They have weird lesions growing on them. B’ Elanna tries to escape from the hospital (her boobs also try to escape from her robe.) She is angry and Klingon. They sedate her.

            Back on the ship, Janeway and Tuvok follow an energy pulse from the array to a planet that appears to have undergone some kind of sever ecological disaster, turning it into a desert wasteland. Tuvok is Janeway’s friend and confidant, perhaps in an attempt to recapture the Kirk and Spock dynamic of the good old days. It plays differently, with Tuvok almost seeming more of a mentor – he is nearly a century Janeway’s senior, after all.

A man of many talents.

             On our way to the planet, we have to pick up one more party member (actually, he’s the second-to-last-one, but we’ll get there) – Neelix! I’ve noticed a lot of Voyager fans hating on this crazy guy. I honestly like him a lot, though I think he had a lot of unutilized potential. But here there is no indication he will become a regular. He’s just a weird, quirky alien here to give some exposition. The Caretaker, he says, has been abducting ships from all over the galaxy for some time, apparently, and the aliens who aren’t returned are taken to the Ocampa, who live below the surface of the planet.

           Also, no one in this part of space has transporters or replicators, so water is extremely valuable. This is kind of a sweet way to emphasize how alien the Delta quadrant is, which is cool. Part of the impetus for doing Voyager was that space had become too cozy and too familiar. This is a great “We’re not in Kansas anymore” moment. The Federation and its ideals don’t exist out here.

          Neelix and Tuvok are Different as Different can be! The joke is a little bit overplayed here, but not obnoxiously so. Pilots are kind of about testing out different relationships, and this one definitely has potential. It’s fun to watch Tuvok get annoyed.

Okay, this screencap kind of looks like an interpretive dance.

          Back at the hospital, we explore another relationship – B’Elanna and Harry. Oddly enough, they trust each other less than their commanding officers, though they still get over their mistrust surprisingly quickly. I wish the show had found a way to maintain the Starfleet/ Maquis tension for just a little longer. They get released from the hospital, into the weird subterranean utopia of the Ocampa, and told they will likely die soon of this weird disease.

          So Neelix gets another dimension when it turns out he was just using Voyager and her crew like the suckers they are (seriously, they trust everyone. Some intergalactic con man is going to clean them out.) to rescue his Ocampa girlfriend from a bunch of Kazon barbarians who he apparently cheated and stole from. The Kazon are really boring bad guys right now, but I’ll reserve judgment on tem because they’re rather tangential to the episode, just there to add a little tension when the action starts to lag. I’m more interested in Kes, the Ocampa girl. She’s ambiguously telepathic, but her species only lives 9 years. She’s 2.

         This is another nice “Kansas moment”. Get used to that shorthand. I like it. Will be using it more. Kes is sort of Neelix’s shoulder angel and convinces him to help the Voyager crew rescue their people. They get underground pretty easily with her help, but B’Elanna and Harry have already escaped. Kes refuses to go back to her people, chiding them all for being children and never trying to live on their own without the Caretaker. In her own way, even though she’s never heard of Starfleet, Kes is more what we think of as Starfleet material than most of Voyager’s regulars. She’s strong-willed, principled and adventurous. 

I just thought this picture was pretty.

         Speaking of Starfleet, that’s what B’Elanna calls Harry as they try and escape. B’Elanna is pretty tough. I vaguely remember playing Voyager with my brothers and I always wanted to be B’Elanna. Draw what conclusions you will from this about my gender identity, but I just thought she was a cool cat.

          Tuvok figures out the whole mystery of the episode and explains it to the audience in painstaking detail, just in time for things to start exploding. The Caretaker is closing off the conduits to the surface. The transporters aren’t working, so everyone has to escape through the tunnels. This is just for some drama and explosions to get us above Voager’s mandatory explosion quotient (I’m convinced this is a thing.) And a little character development, maybe some building up of trust between these dispirit individuals.

          Tom and Neelix have their “Don’t be a hero” moments, since both of them tried to run away at some point and have built up reputations for selfishness. Specifically, Tom wants to rescue Chakotay and gain his trust. Or something.

Our Hero?

           For the first series focused on woman Captain, this pilot sure focuses a lot on its men. Tom, Kim, Chakotay, Neelix, and Tuvok all see more characterization than the Captain. In fact, I would say if this episode has a protagonist, it’s Tom Paris. He’s the one who changes the most throughout it, and the pilot basically starts and ends with scenes between him and Janeway.

            Voyager returns to the array as the Kazon are trying to board it with lots of little ships. Chakotay’s little ship has to hold them off while Janeway and Tuvok try one more time to talk the sad banjo player into sending them home. He can’t do it though. He accidentally destroyed the Ocampa homeworld a millennium ago, and has been caring for the Ocampa and looking for a way to turn another sentient being who could be transformed into a new caretaker. Or something. It’s unclear.

            The Maquis ship kamikazis into the Kazon mothership. Chakotay escapes in time. But the Caretaker is blowing up the array. Oh, and he’s not actually a banjo player. He’s a glowing amorphous blob. His self-destruct program isn’t working, and with his dying breath he tells Janeway to destroy the array. And she makes the decision that dooms us all to the watch this series for seven years. She’s gonna blow it up. B’Elanna disagrees. She may be Klingon, but there’s more Riker in her than Worf. She speaks her mind and plays by her own rules. Actually there are a lot of people like that in this crew.

             Janeway decides to unify the crew. Tom gets a field commission and now outranks Harry. Neelix and Kes want to stay on for a while as native guides, and we have our cast. Unlike in TNG, where the crew was basically already together, “Caretaker” feels like the early levels of a Japanese-style RPG, as Janeway has to collect all her party members. That being said, it manages to do this in an engaging, well-paced hour. It’s not perfect. Some characters feel flat, like Janeway herself, and some, like Chakotay, have personalities that will quickly change rather drastically. But it’s a pilot that makes me excited to see what happens next. 

              TNG was about Starfleet’s drive to explore. Voyager is about Starfleet’s tolerance and acceptance of everyone, and how that isn’t always as easy as it is on TNG. Harry Kim and Tuvok are now the only members of Janeway’s senior staff who she actually chose. She’s going to have to deal with a CO who’s a principled criminal, a chief engineer with major anger issues, a conn officer who’s a much less principled criminal, a piece of hardware with no desire to be human, and wacky but lovable native guides. In short, this is not your father’s Star Trek, and it’s going to be wild ride.

Until next week!

Random Observations:

Janeway served under Paris’s father when he was a Captain. She was a science officer.

Kes would have been a real asset to the Ocampa when they inevitably have to fend for themselves. It’s a pity we’re stealing her.

Space combat is different on this show than it is on TNG. It’s more Star Warsy, with small, fast ships flitting about, and a little more exciting.

Voyager clearly wants to be the spunky, youthful Star Trek, with more action and more drama. This will be a blessing and a curse.

The tradition of God-like beings figuring into pilots continues with the Caretaker.

Shuttlecraft destroyed: 0

Crew members killed: At least 12.

Trivia:

“Caretaker” was the most expensive Star Trek episode in the history of the franchise, with a budget of just over 23 million dollars. It won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Effects.