Craggus’ Trek Trek:
Now, Voyager! Vol 3
Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 3 sees a visit from an old TNG friend or too, a couple of Chakotay stories and a lot of focus on Kes and her problematic Ocampan nature.
Star Trek Voyager S2E02: Initiations
A Kazon coming of age story that’s better than it has any right to be thanks to a great performance from guest star Aaron Eisenberg, a fun turn from a more action-oriented Chakotay and a welcome field trip to Vasquez Rocks! Once again a Chakotay story starts out with a hokey native American cultural cliche but thankfully whatever ceremony the first officer was intending to partake in (a solo memorial for his father) is interrupted by another ceremony, a rite-of-passage/ coming of age hunt and kill for Kar, a young Kazon-Ogla who’s set his sights on Chakotay’s shuttle as his scalp-du-jour. It’s great to see Chakotay getting to flex his Maquis muscles rather than his spiritual ones, calling back to the action-orientated freedom fighter he was in the pilot. The Kazon, for the first time, feel more fleshed out and three-dimensional – good job too because this season’s going to be very, very Kazon-centric.
Star Trek Voyager S2E03: Projections
The first of three episodes of Star Trek Voyager directed by Next Generation alum Jonathan Frakes (two in Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 3 alone), it’s also the first to feature guest star Dwight Schultz as Reginald Barclay and introduce what will come to be one of Voyager’s most unexpected but consistent tropes: episodes in which the Voyager crew are not actually the Voyager crew tend to be better than a lot of the episodes where the characters are their normal selves. This time, the Doctor activates to find himself on an apparently abandoned ship after a disastrous encounter with the Kazons. As the situation develops, though, the possibility arises that he is, in fact, Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, inventor of the Emergency Medical Hologram programme, trapped in a malfunctioning holodeck on Jupiter Station, plunging our favourite medic into something of a Cartesian dilemma. Although it’s a bottle show, Frakes’ confident direction, Branon Braga’s trademark twisty script and wonderful performances from Picardo and Schultz keep things compelling.
Star Trek Voyager S2E04: Elogium
Kes’ problematic relationship with Neelix comes under the spotlight as Voyager goes full After-School Special and deals with puberty and unplanned teen pregnancy! When Voyager encounters a swarm of space dwelling organisms, the ship finds itself caught up in the mating ritual, but Kes is particularly affected as the creatures cause her Ocampan physiology to begin its reproductive cycle. Poor old Jennifer Lien certainly gets put through the wringer in this episode and delivers a great performance under all the sweat and make-up but the episode, like the ship itself, struggles to escape the moral and ethical implications of Neelix trying to decide whether or not to have a child with a two-year-old let alone raising the unanswered questions of what exactly the nature of their relationship has been to date. If that weren’t problem enough, there’s the overring revelation that the Ocampan reproductive process seems so lengthy, convoluted and unpleasant that it seems preternaturally designed to dissuade all but the most determined would-be parents. No wonder the Caretaker had to work so hard to keep the colony alive.
Star Trek Voyager S2E05: Non Sequitur
In response to the Harry Kim actor’s request to get a bit more action, writer Brannon Braga gives Garrett Wang *all* the action in an episode that begins in media res and ends in mediocre reservations as a blockbuster premise gets an all-too-easy SyFy Original movie ending. Waking up to find himself back on Earth having never set foot on the USS Voyager, Harry Kim must try to unravel the mystery of how he came to be there – and what happened to his crewmates. What should have been a great episode to flesh out the character of Harry Kim ends up adding more colour to the background of Tom Paris instead and while Garrett Wang finally gets some to hit some action beats, the episode feels far too superficial for the story it’s trying to tell and frustratingly ends up with the character back in the exact same position they were before: the most expected Voyager sequitur possible.
Star Trek Voyager S2E06: Twisted
It’s Kes’ second birthday (hey – remember a couple of episodes ago when the series was mulling over whether or not she should get knocked up?) and to celebrate, the ship finds itself trapped in a spatial anomaly that’s reconfiguring the ship. It’s a crumpled, disjointed mess of an episode that never quite knows what to do with its intriguing premise – a premise the series would return to with greater success later this season – and it’s badly let down by a puerile subplot that treats the character of Neelix so shoddily that Michael Piller felt compelled to write an entire episode to repair the damage. The final coup de gracelessness of the episode is the throwaway statement at the end that the distortion effect has downloaded a copy of the ship’s database and deposited 20 million gigaquads of data. That’s a lot of information to never explore or even mention again.
Star Trek Voyager S2E03: Parturition
There are few tropes as Star Trek-y as the crashed shuttlecraft stranding one or more of the crew with an alien frenemy on a hostile planet, so it’s something of a surprise it’s taken Voyager over twenty episodes to get round to it. Thankfully, the tropiness is wheeled out in service of course-correcting the characterisation cul de sac of Neelix’s jealousy over Tom Paris’ attraction to Kes. Realising there’s little mileage in TV’s least [a]cute love triangle, the showrunners find a way to make the rivals bond over caring for an alien infant – an intricate puppet that’s 25 years too early and several design focus groups short of rivalling Baby Yoda. It does what it sets out to do in a watchable way, bolstered by the steady hands of Jonathan Frakes, taking his second of three turns in the Voyager’s director’s chair and second appearance in Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 3.
Star Trek Voyager S2E08: Persistence Of Vision
It’s something of a curious irony for a series that’s often decried for being formulaic and playing it safe, that no other Star Trek series dipped into the horror genre quite as often as Voyager did. While the results of these macabre forays varied in quality, Persistence Of Vision is definitely one of the good ‘uns. When Janeway starts to encounter characters from her gothic holonovel in other parts of the ship she fears she’s losing her mind. But as other members of the crew begin to fall prey to some kind of psychic attack it’s down to Kes and The Doctor to save the day. It’s a deeply creepy and unsettling story, with a satisfyingly ambiguous ending that adds to the impact of the episode. And best of all, no Bothans died to bring us this episode.
Star Trek Voyager S2E09: Tattoo
Coming back to Voyager after so many years, I’ve found myself confronting some surprisingly deep-rooted and yet unfair prejudices, one of which is not relishing revisiting some of the Chakotay spiritualism episodes but Tattoo is redeemed by its ‘big swing’ storytelling (even if it does seem like there were *a lot* of Delta Quadrant aliens visiting Earth in the very and not so very distant past). The subplot is fun, too, as The Doctor learns a little empathy and humility thanks to Kes stepping out of her earnest comfort zone and pranking her holographic pal.
And that’s it for Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 3 but come back next week for another eight episodes of variable quality Trek tales. 🖖
