Craggus’ Trek Trek:
Now, Voyager! Vol 5
Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 5 opens with a big-name Next Generation guest star and ends with Janeway taking a bath and Chakotay confessing he honed his massage skills on his mum. It’s a rollercoaster!
Star Trek Voyager S2E18: Death Wish
Not one, but two big TNG guest stars liven up this Star Trek morality play as John de Lancie’s Q pops in to complicate Janeway’s journey home and brings Commander Riker with him. Guest-starring as another Q, Gerrit Graham brings an enormous amount of pathos to his character, a being so weary of omnipotent immortality that he longs for the sweet release of mortal life. Although its metaphorical jaunt into the Q continuum is a disappointment of Jodie-Foster’s-Dad-in-Contact proportions, the episode makes the most of its meaty philosophical subject with that tried and trusted Trek Trope of a hearing and there’s wonderfully effervescent chemistry between Janeway and Q, as good as yet distinct from Picard’s and undeniably better than the dead on arrival rapport with Sisko.
Star Trek Voyager S2E19: Lifesigns
A wonderfully poignant and romantic story for The Doctor is tarnished by a misjudged subplot featuring Tom Paris’ increasing discontent and afterthought cuckoo in the nest Crewman Jonas who continues his correspondence course with Seska. The main thrust of the story deals with a dying Vidiian, who the Doctor manages to save through an innovative treatment that gives her a temporary new lease of life through holographic technology. The romance is well handled and surprisingly touching despite its brevity but with all this romantic atmosphere, disaster’s in the air because Paris and Chakotay are definitely NOT feeling the love tonight. Paris’ heel turn is so clumsily abrupt and hammy that you wonder how anyone could be fooled by this. After Tuvok and then Seska, maybe Chakotay has good cause to be ashamed of his inability to see through deception.
Star Trek Voyager S2E20: Investigations
Having struck out with Detective Tuvok a couple of times, the writers turn their efforts to Detective Neelix and double down on the goofery with an awful glimpse into shipboard day to day life with Neelix’s bizarre breakfast TV show. Of all the ways Star Trek crews have tried to solve mysteries in the series’ long history, this overly elaborate scheme to flush out a spy is one of the worst. A convoluted trap that would shame an episode of Scooby-Doo embarrasses everyone who’s involved in it and raises genuine and justifiable concerns around Janeway’s treatment of her first officer.
Star Trek Voyager S2E21: Deadlock
A typically high concept Branon Braga script brings us another series highlight which takes bold, big storytelling swings that see tragedy strike not once but twice. While the spatial scission is a cumbersome piece of technobabble to duplicate the ships, it’s wonderfully utilised as we watch both crews grapple with their situation and the tendency for one crew’s solution to make the situation worse for the other. The arrival of an external threat raises the stakes and it’s a profoundly brave choice to have the episode end with the pummelled Voyager being the one that barely survives the story – or at least it would have been had the next episode not shown everything back to normal.
Star Trek Voyager S2E22: Innocence
It may lack the necessary hangover from the events of the previous episode, but it mitigates that somewhat by being giving us a glimpse of Tuvok the parent in a story that’s as cute as a [Benjamin] button. There’s a cutesy, campfire ghost story quality to the episode that stands it in good stead, with the performance solid across the board – especially from the kids. It’s a gentle story, touching on themes of death, ageing and senility that are sensitively handled and avoids ever becoming silly.
Star Trek Voyager S2E23: The Thaw
Craggus’ Trek Trek Vol 5 brings us an early contender for “best Voyager episode ever”, The Thaw owes a lot to oddball sixties psychedelic spy caper The Prisoner and even more to guest star Michael McKean who energises the whole – literal – circus with a playful malevolence that’s simultaneously chilling and delightful. Simple in premise and wonderfully unhinged in execution, the story of a group of aliens trapped inside their own virtual reality thanks to a manifestation of their own fears provides fertile ground for a psychological thriller with fun moments for the Doctor, Harry Kim and, finally, Captain Janeway. It deserves credit, too, for ending on such a macabre note and rejecting the notion of an “all’s well” wrap up scene.
Star Trek Voyager S2E24: Tuvix
Belatedly controversial in the febrile internet age, Tuvix is a polished example of a classic Trek trope, the transporter accident. Prior to this, we’ve had light and dark sides separated, Mirror Universe counterparts exchanged and even Transporter-created twins but this time we’ve got the exact opposite as Tuvok and Neelix are fused into a single being, one with a distinct and separate personality from his forebears. The episode makes good use of the conflicting nature of Neelix and Tuvok’s personalities to create a new being who seems to enjoy the best of each of them. Of course, it’s a thorny moral dilemma for Captain Janeway or at least it would be were this not a case that’s easily and obviously decided by one of Trek’s most famous homilies: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one.
Star Trek Voyager S2E25: Resolutions
Ahoy, shipmates – if you’ve been shipping Janeway and Chakotay then here’s the episode for you, or at least it would be if it weren’t so lopsidedly lifeless in both set-up and execution. It feels overly contrived for Janeway and Chakotay to have been infected by an alien disease for which the only treatment seems to be to leave them on the planet where the infection occurred. It also seems archly convenient that The Doctor, who has of course defeated and will go on to defeat, innumerable alien pathogens seems stumped by this and the decision to simply abandon two of the crew seems to fly in the face of everything the series and Starfleet seem to stand for. The romance between Janeway and Chakotay seems desperately one-sided, with Janeway seemingly developing more chemistry with the monkey than the man who’s busy crafting her increasingly elaborate carpentry gifts and boasting of his matriarchal massage skills. The Vidiian encounters are slightly more exciting, but nothing manages to conceal the overpowering stench of filler episode from this outing, especially as the three-month relationship between the Captain and First Officer has no repercussions or impact on anything beyond the end of this episode.
Well the final episode of Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 5 may have made a monkey out of Chakaway shippers, but season three is right around the corner…
