Fight or Flight (ENT)

Fight or Flight is a smart second episode for Enterprise. When the show committed itself to filling in the gaps between today and Star Trek, to showing the early days of Starfleet, it committed to a scary galaxy. The Enterprise is always the only ship in range. Everything is new, a lot of it is scary, and the only friends they'll have are the ones they make.

It's smart to focus this story on Hoshi Sato, too. She's the first communications officer in the main cast since Uhura, and Uhura's character was woefully underdeveloped. (Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest is essentially a parody of that reality.) By contrast, Hoshi is at this point probably the most relatable character on the Enterprise after Captain Archer. And she's not a space cowboy like everyone else on board. She's excited about the academic opportunities and very very good at her job as a linguist, but being a linguist doesn't usually involve being shot at or interacting with dead bodies or climbing into a claustrophobic EV suit.

Hoshi Sato is most of us, if we found ourselves being asked to go on an interstellar exploration mission. She's terrified and she's in way over her head. But in the end, she finds her mettle and proves that Starfleet didn't make a mistake putting her on the mission.

Around the story of Hoshi Sato, which is really the emotional meat of the story, is a lot of storytelling that builds up the background of the show and sets trends for the future - basically solid second episode stock.
So Fight or Flight finds the crew itching for first contact, upset that the only alien life form they've met yet is a slug, and it's about to die.

When they drop out of warp to do some target practice, their dreams come true: they encounter an alien ship. Unfortunately, instead of being full of aliens, it's full of alien corpses whose blood is being drained out through tubes.

A classic Archer-T'Pol debate ensues. Archer wants to hang around and try to lend aid, attempting to contact the dead aliens' homeworld. T'Pol wants to get the hell out of dodge before the fluid-stealing aliens return. They both make good points, but T'Pol turns out to be right and the aliens come back, scan the Enterprise, and discover that human fluids are equally delicious.

Luckily, the dead aliens' compatriots arrive at about the same time. But only Hoshi Sato's language skills can convince them to save the Enterprise.

The day saved, the Enterprise stops off to drop Sluggo the slug off on a planet similar to, but not the same as the one they found him on, to be a metaphor for humans struggling out in the larger universe. But also, very possibly, to irrevocably damage an alien biosphere.

At the end of this episode, I find myself excited about this show and its potential. Looking forward to delving more deeply into some of the other characters.

Random observations:

- Pretty great scene between Phlox and Trip in the mess hall, and some cute Archer/Hoshi scenes. The difference between how Kirk interacts one on one with female subordinates and how Archer does shows us that, if nothing else, sexism has become less overt since the 60s. On the other hand, T'Pol's catsuit and decon gel.

- Speaking of comparisons to classic Trek, this episode's basic "whoa space is scary" conceit is quite reminiscent of "The Corbomite Maneuver." Pretty solid episode 2 fare, I guess.

- Meanwhile, Hoshi's stars are going the wrong way and Archer's floor is squeaky. Isn't spaceboard life wacky?

Time and Again (VOY)

            “It was all just a dream” is one of my least favorite endings ever for an installment in a serialized work. It means all the character development, everything we learn about these people over the course of the episode, is completely irrelevant. “It was all just an alternate Timeline”, i.e. the “Temporal Reset Button” is Voyager’s version of this trope, and “Time and Again” is its first victim. Which is a real shame, because other than that it’s a very solid episode, way more watchable and entertaining than anything in TNG’s first season.

            The episode opens with Tom and Harry discussing Voyager’s extremely limited pool of eligible young women, when Voyager is hit by a shockwave. At the same time, Kes feels a great disturbance in the force, as if a thousand voices cried out and were suddenly silenced. When they take a detour to investigate, they find a Polaric energy discharge has destroyed an entire prewarp civilization in a few minutes. Unfortunately, it’s also fractured the space-time continuum, leaving little time-travel pockets, one of which sucks Janeway and Tom into the past. About a day and a half in the past, to be precise.

Tom wants to try and prevent the disaster, while Janeway considers that a violation of the Prime Directive and just wants to try and get out before everything goes up in flames. Janeway doesn’t really have a good answer for Tom’s assertion that nothing they could do could screw things up more than the destruction of the entire planet, and honestly she comes off as kind of a cold-hearted bitch, especially when a cute little kid starts tailing them.

Alderaan! No!

Meanwhile, back on the ship, B’Elanna and Harry devise a method of opening the space-time fractures, but only for a few seconds at a time. They, along with Chakotay, Tuvok, and Kes, whose telepathic powers have been flaring up, go down to the planet to try and mount a rescue. You’d think they would leave one senior officer on the ship, but apparently not. Guess Neelix is in command.

It turns out this planet uses Polaric energy as a power-source, and many of the locals are aware of how dangerous it is and have been staging protests about it for years. Some are more extreme about this view than others, and Janeway and Tom are soon kidnapped by terrorists with a plot which Janeway thinks is what leads to the accident. They also kidnap the little kid.

Janeway changes her mind and decides to try and stop the explosion after all, and after some heroics where in Tom gets shot, she ends up in a standoff with the terrorists. The twist is that what really causes the explosion is Torres and Kim’s rescue attempt. Fortunately, Janeway manages to stop in by firing a disrupter into the fracture, and the entire timeline ceases to exist. There is no shockwave, so Voyager never comes to investigate, so the only part of the episode that’s canon is Tom and Harry talking about hitting on the Delaney sisters. The only one who has any inkling that this episode happened is Kes, because of her weird telepathic powers.

I sense great plot holes...

When I watch ensemble-based, episodic TV, I want to watch a group of characters overcoming adversity together and growing and developing in the process. Episodes that get aborted at the end don’t contribute to that feeling at all. I guess under the right circumstances it can be a cool twist ending for a sci-fi story. But in this case it just made the entire episode feel thoroughly pointless. 

Random Observations:

That Tom. Such a playa.

The opening exchange between Tom and Harry is hilarious –

            “I’ve got a girl back home!”

            “I’ve got five, who cares?”

The scene where the EMH gets upset because the proper paperwork wasn’t filled out when Kes was brought on board is also precious, but it seems kind of a strange oversight. Surely someone on the crew should have realized that having medical scans on file for Neelix and Kes is a good idea? I mean, what if they get injured and the doctor has to operate on them? Hopefully this gets addressed off-camera soon in the main timeline.

“Everyone should drink plenty of fluids.” 

Tom continues to be really dense about how Time Travel works.

Tom and Janeway are both really good at rolling with the punches and blending in with this totally unfamiliar civilization though. Almost unbelievably so.

It seems weird that Tuvok would be the most skeptical about Kes’s powers, given that Vulcans are also telepaths.

Recurring Character Watch: First mention of the Delaney sisters.

No shuttlecraft lost.

No fatalities.

A Man Alone (DS9)

So, I failed in doing my research. "A Man Alone" was intended to be the actual second episode of the show, not "Past Prologue." And I think it works a little better as a second episode, actually. It's slower paced than the other and tries a little harder to give us a slice of life on Deep Space Nine. The second scene of the episode establishes this nicely, using the huge set of the promenade to full advantage and staging three simultaneous conversations on the various levels, which set up the different threads of the story.

More on that in a second; I want to hit the first scene of the episode first. You could make a case that the Dax-Bashir nonrelationship kind of sums up everything that's wrong with the first two seasons of Deep Space Nine. The big problem with it is that the writers haven't really figured out Dax OR Bashir yet, and they're basically the two shallowest characters on the show at the outset. Bashir's characterization is that he's booksmart and streetdumb, young, and overeager. Dax's characterization is that she has a worm inside her that makes her wise beyond her years.

And that's it. At this point, that's all there is to these characters. The "locals" - Odo, Kira, Quark - all have occupation backstories tied to the plot. O'Brien has imported backstory from TNG. Sisko's backstory takes up a good chunk of the pilot, and is also tied into the plot. Alone in the main cast, Bashir and Dax just work here. So when you have two characters sorely in need of more depth, the smart move is not to throw them into a relationship with one another. It might seem good on the surface, but what you get is a relationship between two types, not two characters. Bashir hits on Dax inexpertly, cause he's all clueless and stuff. She rejects him, cause she's all old and stuff. That's it. Never mind that later we'll find out that what Dax says about Trills avoiding relationships is a complete lie.

Ok, digression over. In Quark's, Quark and Odo are at the bar watching two conversations across the room: Miles and Keiko O'Brien fighting because, basically, Keiko hates it on Deep Space Nine and feels useless, and Sisko and Dax catching up. Like I said, it's a smart use of the sets. The promenade is more open than any set on TNG or Voyager, where a starship necessitates tight corridors. And Deep Space Nine is a place where a lot of things happen at once, not just a single mission of the week that everyone's wrapped up in.

Quark and Odo's gossip session is interrupted by the arrival Ibu Dan, a Bajoran criminal Odo is not happy to see. Odo would like to just throw him off the station, but Sisko tells him Starfleet's kind of into due process and individual rights and Odo needs to get on board with that. Still, Odo makes his dislike of Ibu Dan pretty obvious, which is a big problem when the dude turns up dead locked in his quarters. All signs point to Odo as the murderer and the restless Bajorans on the station start to go full on pitchfork mob as he (with Bashir's help) rushes to solve the case and clear his name.

That A-plot is solid stuff: It helps define Odo's somewhat ambiguous social role and professional function on Deep Space Nine. Odo's outsider status meshes pretty nicely with his job - cops often feel like outsiders, since they might find themselves arresting anyone, and all close bonds are, in some sense, potential liabilities. When Quark says that being Odo's enemy makes him the closest thing Odo has to a friend, it's not a silly line. It has some real resonance. That's the essence of Odo's character: A Man Alone.

Meanwhile, over in the B-plot, Keiko is starting a school on the station. A big challenge is convincing Rom to send Nog to the school. Rom is rather jarring here, lacking all of the markers that made him into the beloved character he would become. Here he's just another Ferengi, and nearly a villain. There's not too much to say about the school plot, as it just feels very much like a setup, a loose end that didn't fit into the pilot. We've got these kids on board and Keiko, what do we do with them?

Odo's plot ends with a convoluted and sightly troubling clone-related twist, complete with a Scooby Doo-style rubber face mask ending. (Probably the most awkward part is when Sisko reveals in a voice over that the clone Bashir was growing "Woke up and began a new life.") Cloning is a pretty lofty issue with a lot of ethical nuance and grey area, and TNG did at least one episode all about the subject, so to see it turn up here as a technological MacGuffin with no discussion or ethics or repercussions is a little jarring. And the premise is a tinge convoluted.

So the episode succeeds in being meaningful and interesting throughout, but fails to stick the landing, in my opinion. In terms of establishing the tone and style of the series to come, though, it's a solid sophomore outing.

Random Observations:

- Morn, everybody's favorite barfly, is in Odo's lynchmob. This is kind of strange, though it's possible he was just swept up in the crowd, I guess.

- For more about Bashir's prowess with women, this is a highly recommended read.

-This episode features another forgettable Bajoran dude, whose name I am not going to bother to look up.

Code of Honor (TNG)

As much as I’ve been dreading what I remembered as an objectively terrible episode, I was sort of looking forward to reviewing one of the few Tasha-centric stories the show has to offer. Unfortunately, this isn’t really a Tasha story. Inasmuch as its about anything, it’s about the Prime Directive, and when it comes into conflict with Picard’s mandate to protect his crew. It’s also about pride, and when it’s necessary to swallow it for the greater good. Ultimately, it’s about a power struggle between Picard and the alien Lutan, in which the Strong Female Character Tasha is pretty much treated as a commodity.

Let’s back up a little. Our story opens as Picard and co. have been given an important mission by Starfleet command – negotiate for a rare and valuable vaccine that can’t be synthesized and is needed to treat a plague on a nearby world. The plague provides the stakes for the episode, though not terribly well because we never see it and have to rely on Dr. Crusher constantly popping up to remind us that it’s terrible. But unfortunately, the planet is controlled by a power-hungry guy named Lutan, and his demands in exchange for the vaccine are kind of… unorthodox. He kidnaps Tasha Yar and wants to make her his wife.

Of course, this is not immediately obvious. Data’s research into the planet’s history shows that they have a tradition of stealing things basically just to show that they can, and to humble an enemy by forcing them to beg for the object back, in this case Tasha. Picard is initially extremely reticent to play this game, but ultimately the importance of the vaccine convinces him to swallow his pride and ask for Tasha back. Lutan says he’ll return her at a banquet being held in Picard’s honor. At the banquet, though he reveals his true plan.

There’s just one problem (well, one more problem) Lutan already has a wife (whose name is Yarina. Yar vs. Yarina? Seriously? But I digress.) Anyway, by their alien laws, she has the right to challenge Tasha to a fight to the death. Which she does.

YARR!

            I’m actually super confused about what happens next, because as far as I can tell Lutan never actually promises the vaccine to the crew whether Tasha wins or loses, and while Tasha does think Lutan is kinda cute, she doesn’t actually want to leave Starfleet to marry him and live in his weird, misogynistic, oppressive society. But Picard has a secret plan, and Tasha commits to the fight and kills her rival, at which point everyone is beamed to the Enterprise to be revived by Dr. Crusher. But because she technically died, her marriage contract with Lutan is void, and because of weird alien politics that aren’t explained very well, this makes Lutan no longer the planet’s leader. Yarina chooses a new husband who is more than happy to send the Enterprise on its way, vaccine in tow, and everyone lives happily ever after.

            Despite the jarringly racist costuming and casting choices – the hyper-masculine machismo driven race is all black in in stereotypical African Tribal getup - this episode was actually not nearly as bad as I’d feared. It’s reasonably entertaining. The main problems I think come from the fact that the interesting conflict, Picard’s mandate to protect his crew vs. the Prime Directive, is examined only briefly, as the Captain comes up with a loophole pretty quickly. Meanwhile, the specifics of the alien political system aren’t set-up well enough ahead of time to make the ending feel like anything other than an ass-pull. I also would have liked to see a little more of Tasha besides “she’s a badass”, as I think the writers are struggling a little with who exactly she is beyond that.

She is kind of a badass though.

Random Observations:

The conversation Troi and Tasha have about Lutan being what every woman secretly wants was just ugh in so many ways I don't even want to get into.

 

The subplot with Wesley and Picard was just the tiniest bit distracting, but I can’t help but feel those are minutes that could have been used to help build up the tension in the main plot and also make it make a little more sense.

The first season sees contact with a lot of misogynistic cultures, of which this is the first. I’m not sure why this is a recurring theme. It might have something to do with the eighties.

Deanna Troi is actually kind of useful here, offering Diplomatic advice and an analysis of the alien culture.

The Holodeck! Now we see it can make characters, but not any smarter, really, than what current AIs are capable of. They can learn from their opponents. It’s an inkling, though, of the Pandora’s box this seemingly innocuous technology is going to turn out to be.

There are some very nice character moments in this episode. Riker is good with kids and happily humors Wesley, in sharp contrast with Picard. Troi kind of insists on talking to Tasha woman to woman, which makes Tasha uncomfortable in kind of a fun way.

Bros.

Most importantly, this is the first we see of the Data/ Geordi bromance, possibly the third greatest bromance in Star Trek lore (it must, of course, follow Kirk/Spock and O’Brien/Bashir.) It is on point, as Geordi tries to teach Data how jokes work.

Speaking of Data, at some point he makes a disparaging remark about the French, and Picard takes offense. Because Picard is French. Hee hee.

Wesley’s shirt is in this episode is exceptionally ugly. 24^th century teenage fashion continues to be terrible.

The Corbomite Maneuver (TOS)

The first episode of Star Trek (well, second first episode) took the Enterprise to the edge of the galaxy, and to the edge of human evolution, which are both very appropriate Star Trek themes. But it didn't really get into the "seek out new life and new civilizations" part of the opening credits.

"The Corbomite Maneuver" is a first contact story, and for the first like 40 minutes of this 45 minute episode it's a really disastrous one. (Also an almost unforgivably cheesy one.) There are some big ideas we're getting across in big ways. One is that humanity is small and the universe is big and dangerous. The other is that humanity has some X factor of pith and vinegar that lets us triumph even over overwhelming forces, provided we can master ourselves.

What actually happens in this episode? The Enterprise, now with Dr. McCoy and Lt. Uhura at last aboard, encounters a series of geometric shapes with weird powers. First its a multicolored cube that parks in front of the ship and won't get out of the way, matching their position whenever they try to go around it. And then it follows them when they try to run away from it.

Kirk is going through the paces of measured responses and playing it safe, while young bridge officer Bailey is itching to fire phasers at it. Finally, when the cube is emitting harmful radiation damaging the crew, Kirk fires the phasers, destroying the thing.

And then they make the same decision they made last episode, to sally forth into obvious danger for no apparent reason. Kirk wants to make contact with the alien race that sent the object. He does, and it turns out their ships are spherical and many times the size of the buoy, and also massively powerful.

The captain of the alien ship identifies himself as Balok of the First Federation and abruptly sentences the Enterprise to death for ignoring the warning buoy and trespassing into First Federation space. Kirk's protestations and attempts at peaceful contact fall on deaf ears.

Balok's speech is the cheesiest part of the episode and deserves to be reprinted in full:

"We make assumption you have a deity or deities or some such beliefs which comfort you. We therefore grant you ten Earth time periods known as minutes to make preparations."

Over the course of the ten Earth time periods known as minutes, rather than preparing to meet the deities they may or may not have, Bailey flips out, Kirk removes him from command, and Spock suggests that, like in Chess, it's time to give up and die. Kirk is inspired by a chance reference to bluffing by Dr. McCoy, and decides the game afoot is not chess but poker. So he performs the titular maneuver, bluffing to Balok that the Enterprise is filled with a volatile substance called corbomite which, if ignited, would destroy both ships.

Apparently just convinced enough to be cautious, Balok alters his plan and dispatches a small vessel to tow the Enterprise to an uninhabited planet, empty it of crew, and then destroy the ship. How does this solve the corbomite problem? I have no idea, just go with it.

The smaller ship is more of a match for the Enterprise, and when the tractor beam wears down its power supply, the Enterprise is able to make an escape which damages the other ship. Captain Kirk sees this as an opportunity not to take revenge or merely to flee, but to offer aid, potentially salvaging the first contact situation and "showing what our high-sounding words mean." He brings Bailey and McCoy along too.

What they find on the ship is a small, child-like alien with a fondness for a drink called Tranya, who informs them, in the final minutes of the episode, that the whole encounter has been a test. He asks that the Enterprise leave an officer with him for a cultural exchange.

Here we finally thought we had an episode that wasn't about the heroes being tested by God-like beings, but in fact, that's exactly what it is. Perhaps not so God-like.

This isn't a great episode of television. The plot is kind of convoluted and confusing, the resolution bizarre and unsatisfying, and it takes a lot of thought to figure out the message. But it does have some things going for it.

This episode is a distillation of Kirk's character, which is meant to be a future vision of the best of humanity (we'll politely ignore the sexism inherent in his objections to having a female yeoman). He's smart and tough against the probe, inventive and cocky against the ship, and then finally compassionate in the end, when he has no reason or need to be. Kirk keeps doing the right thing instead of the expected thing.

This episode paints a picture of the Enterprise as a little ship in a big, scary universe, but it also pitches human ingenuity and compassion as the tools that will see us through it. We'll see how they fare in the years to come.

Random Observations:

- Costumes are not quite settled into the norm here. Uhura in yellow is particularly jarring. Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu's characters, however, have settled into where they'll be for the rest of the series.

- Also debuting is Janice Rand, who never gets counted among the main cast but really was in a lot of the series and several movies. All she does here is bring Kirk a salad, so it's hard to get much of a sense of who she is.

- Classic Spock and Kirk: "Has it occurred to you that there's a certain...inefficiency in constantly questioning me on things you've already made up your mind about?" "It gives me emotional security."

- The only part of this episode I remember from watching it as a child was the final scene with Balok and the Tranya. Balok does seem quite preoccupied with that Tranya.

- They always call phasers "phaser weapons" as if phaser is an adjective, not a noun.

Past Prologue (DS9)

The second episode of a show gets a smaller budget than the pilot and less attention, but it's just as crucial, especially if the pilot was original enough to make people a little unsure what they were getting into even after it ended.

TNG's second offering, The Naked Now, made the mistake of trying to be a lot like a TOS episode, to assure the old fans that they were still getting Star Trek. Deep Space Nine might have been tempted to try the same stunt, delivering a TNG-style offering. And they do offer us two TNG guest stars in the form of Klingon sisters and politicos Lursa and B'Etor. But it's more of an Easter egg for returning fans than anything else -- the sisters' role on TNG is totally irrelevant to their presence as galactic petty thugs here.

For the most part, this is Deep Space Nine opening with DS9 strengths, not TNG throwbacks. It's a plot with Bajoran politics at its center, a looming Cardassian threat at the edges, and interpersonal cast conflicts throughout. Plus, it introduces Garak, one of many semi-regulars that will enrich the tapestry of Deep Space Nine life.

There's no real "B-Story" here, just a few different threads that come together in the end. The first thread, though, feels as if it's going to be a B-Story, as the young, naive Julian Bashir is joined for breakfast by Garak, the enigmatic tailor that Starfleet assumes is a spy. This relationship has absolutely captivated fans, many of whom have turned it into a bonafide 'ship. It's easy to see why. Garak is supremely quotable, and Bashir feeds him the perfect straight lines. Dialogue between them crackles with nuance and double meaning.


Clearly excited about his enigmatic breakfast, Bashir bounces up to Ops despite having no reason to be there and begins to pester the rest of the crew. Ops is playing the role of the bridge here, but visits to it will diminish as the show goes on. It's where everyone has to be though, when plot comes crashing into the system in the form of a Cardassian warship chasing a Bajoran vessel carrying a former resistance fighter turned Kohn-Ma terrorist.

Tahna Los is kind of a dull white guy, like pretty much every other former Bajoran freedom fighter we'll meet over the course of the show. When it comes to non-clergy Bajoran men on this show, it seems like the writers don't make much of an effort at characterization. They're all pretty interchangable. But Tahna is the first, I guess, so we'll give him a pass.

The conflict here is mostly an internal one for Kira. While the rest of the cast (including Garak and Bashir) are involved in tracking the nuances of the criminal plot that brought Tahna and the Klingons to the station, Kira is being forced to choose between old loyalties and new, and to confront whether she's sold out by allowing and assisting the Federation presence on Bajor. Nana Visitor plays internal angst really well, delivering certain lines such that you can just tell she doesn't quite believe herself.

It also becomes a conflict with Sisko, with Kira attempting to go over his head on the decision about whether to grant Tahna asylum. The attempt is hilarious -- why would Kira ever think a Starfleet admiral would trust her over a Starfleet commander? -- but understandable. Kira needs to be in control of things and gets frustrated when she's not. For her, doing something is better than waiting for someone else to make a decision, even if it's a stupid something.

I love the Sisko-Kira arguments, by the way, because they're written in such a way that it's not clear who's right and who's wrong. But it is clear who wins and who loses.

The episode has internal conflicts driving interest throughout, but it finishes with action, and pretty good, keep-you-guessing action at that. The one odd thing is that Kira and Tahna are so blase about sealing off the wormhole. Their back-and-forth is almost entirely about the economic benefit of the wormhole for Bajor, but it completely ignores the whole "Celestial Temple" angle. As a setup for the rest of the show (which this episode does mostly strongly) it's a curious omission.

This is a pleasantly surprising second episode, and one that makes me eager for more Deep Space Nine. I'm investing in not just these characters, but this place, and the surprisingly complex politics within and around it. And we haven't even gone through the wormhole yet!


Random Observations

- Really nice Kira-Odo scene here that sets up their friend relationship as one where Kira trusts Odo enough to be vulnerable in front of him.

- Weird that Kira and Tahna are old friends, but call each other by their first names (the Bajoran family name) rather than their last. It's like the writers forgot that detail about Bajorans.

- No Quark this episode. (Or Jake actually). I can't decide if this is smart or not, dropping some characters early on to focus on better developing others. But I have to say I didn't miss him too much.

- All Cardassians are hams. It's a simple characterization, but somehow it works wonders. Garak is much more subtle than, for instance, Gul Danar, but there's a subverted hamminess to his performance as well.

Parallax (VOY)

Today we're pulling a little switch because Jonah didn't get his article done. Today's scheduled DS9 review will run Friday and Nathan's Voyager review will run today.

Star Trek has gotten us very used to seeing the Federation from one perspective – the inside. But The Federation isn’t paradise to everyone. To B’Elanna Torres it’s a stifling, oppressive system that bogs itself down with unnecessary protocols and regulations. She believes in settling disputes more organically. Unfortunately, she’s also half Klingon, so a small disagreement with acting chief engineer Carey lands the man in sickbay with a broken nose.

It’s a promising way to start a second episode, as news of the altercation reverberates throughout the ship, bringing Chakotay into conflict with Tuvok, B’Elanna, and finally the Captain. And it gets us right to the heart of what this crew is going to have to deal with. The Enterprise was a flagship staffed with the best and the brightest. Voyager can barely keep itself staffed at all.

The A-plot and B-plot are surprisingly well integrated in this episode, which is good because the A- plot, Voyager’s attempt to escape a quantum singularity, is pretty dumb. It’s an escalating series of technobabble that’s eventually solved by more technobabble. But the B-plot, Janeway and Chakotay’s power struggle and Janeway’s search for a Chief Engineer, is compelling enough to keep the episode afloat (The C-plot, a bit of physical humor involving the Doctor shrinking, is merely distracting most of the time.)

So on TNG, Riker would often challenge Picard’s decisions. But Picard knew that Riker always had his safety and the ship’s best interests at heart, and would always back down and follow orders if it came to that. Janeway has no such guarantees from Chakotay. For all she knows at this point, he could still be contemplating a mutiny. This adds a real tension to the scene in Janeway’s office when she calls out her new XO.

Chakotay is remembered in the long canon of Star Trek characters for being always either an obnoxious Native American stereotype or insufferably bland. But early on he’s not like that at all. He’s a rough and tumble Han Solo-type forced into having to adjust to military discipline, a microcosm of all the Maquis on the ship. My guess is the main reason this characterization disappears is that he was too much like Tom (and to some extent, B’Elanna.) The edgy rule-breakers are fun, but too many and the ship becomes total chaos.

As fun as it is to watch him not be boring, Chakotay is somewhat secondary to this episode. Mostly, it’s about B’Elanna and Janeway, and it really takes off when they connect while trying to solve the singularity problem. By the end of the episode, Janeway has decided that the volatile former Maquis has what it takes to be her chief Engineer. But they don’t explicitly trust each other – B’Elanna is still resentful of Janeway for stranding her in the Delta Quadrant, and Janeway is still extremely apprehensive about asking her officers to take orders from a Starfleet academy dropout. And unlike most of the conflicts Voyager sets up, this one won’t have evaporated by season two – B’Elanna remains a deeply conflicted character throughout the series.

I want to take a moment how cool it is for a network show in 1995 to be doing a plotline about two women that doesn’t involve romance at all. The feminism of Voyager is riddled with problems, and believe me, we will get into them, but for now, it’s nice to enjoy an episode that passes the Bechdel test more than just incidentally.

Random Observations:

We will be talking a lot about race, gender, and B’Elanna Torres – another time. Suffice it to say I once wrote a five-page paper on the subject, citing this episode, “Faces” and “Lineage”, and then adapted that paper into a panel I led at Connecticon this year. So it’s something I’ve thought a lot about.

Because she’s half-Klingon, almost no one remembers that B’Elanna’s human father is named Torres, and she’s portrayed by Hispanic actress Roxanne Dawson, making her the first Latina Star Trek regular. Interestingly enough, that honor was supposed to go to Tasha Yar, originally named Macha Hernandez before blonde, blue-eyed Denise Crosby got the part. Just something to mull over.

The C-story does feature a very sweet scene between the EMH and Kes, and they have fantastic chemistry. They’re both kind of naïve in their own ways – Kes is only two years old, after all and technically the EMH is only a few days. He has a lot of preprogrammed knowledge, but not much real experience.

Neelix has a story or an anecdote for everything.

In a rare bit of foresight, Harry Kim mentions that it’s impossible to reroute power from the Holodecks, explaining why they will be able to keep hanging out in French pool halls when they don’t have power to use the replicators.

Recurring character watch: Joe Carey, B’Elanna’s long suffering assistant, will be a familiar face for the next couple seasons. He’s a salt-of-the-Earth type, like O’Brien but less interesting.

Also, is that Seska in a blue uniform?

No new fatalities.

No shuttlecraft lost.