Craggus’ Trek Trek:
Now, Voyager! Vol 7
Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 7 opens with one of the series’ best two-parters, sees a return of Q and Janeway do a Die Hard. Engage!
Star Trek Voyager S3E08: Future’s End
One of the more noticeable changes in Season 3 is that there’s a degree of confidence and comfort starting to worm its way into the stuffiness that’s lingered since the pilot and with Future’s End, there’s a wonderfully playful atmosphere that’s like a breath of fresh air. Pulled back in time through a temporal anomaly, the crew find themselves in orbit of Earth circa 1996. There’s a breeziness to the way the show brushes aside the obvious misalignment with established Trek canon (the Eugenics Wars, the rise of Khan Noonien Singh etc) with the suggestion that a 29th-century ship crashing in the late sixties altered the timeline and ushered in the computer age. It’s a confident move that shows that you don’t need to directly address every little canonic contradiction (something that Star Trek Enterprise Season 4 would have done well to learn). There’s great guest turns by Ed Begley Jr and a radiant Sarah Silverman who, like Catherine Hicks in Star Trek IV, makes you wish for them to join the cast on a semi-permanent basis. Future’s End shares a lot of its fundamental DNA with The Voyage Home: it’s light in tone but heavy in stakes, features fun fish-out-of-water comedy moments and takes the opportunity to make some important updates to a beloved character.
Star Trek Voyager S3E09: Future’s End, Part II
Although the second part inevitably isn’t quite as good as the set-up (Part 1s always benefit from having a cliffhanger instead of an obligation to wrap everything up) it still features some great dialogue, fun action beats and a prescient, if somewhat underdeveloped, b-plot about proto-MAGAts nursing their resentment against ‘the beast’ that is the federal government. Episode 2 adds to the fun by having The Doctor out and about with Paris and Tuvok, while Janeway’s battle of wits with Henry Starling take on a lower-voltage conference call dynamic. With action, comedy and adventure, Future’s End is one of the best candidates Voyager will ever produce as a potential feature-length adventure, especially as many of its subsequent two-part efforts would often be swamped by an overbearing guest-villain and increasingly burdensome continuity. An extra half hour (and a slightly bigger budget) and this could have been an absolutely barnstorming big-screen outing.
Star Trek Voyager S3E10: Warlord
Efforts continue to develop Kes’ character but there’s a concerning undercurrent that in order to make her interesting (and give Jennifer Lien something meatier to do), she needs to be influenced or – as in this case – fully taken over by another character. Lien does a passably good job of being a ruthless alien warlord and there are some interesting gender and sexual dynamics that come into play (which would probably be explored in more detail now than they could be then) but apart from that it’s a fairly routine story only really notable for the damage the episode does to Kes’ closest relationships. For better or worse, the seeds of Kes’ eventual departure were sown here.
Star Trek Voyager S3E11: The Q And The Grey
Back to a more innocent time when the American Civil War was treated as a fun trope for sci-fi and fantasy series to play around with, utterly sanitised of the profoundly terrible and depressingly unresolved issues which fomented it, we return to the post-euthanasia Q continuum to find them embroiled in their own internecine conflict which could result in an unusually high number of supernovae at best and universal Armageddon at worst. As if this metaphor wasn’t loaded enough, it’s also a sex comedy as Q tries to woo Janeway with an indecent proposal of cosmic proportions, believing that a child will bring peace and stability to the Q continuum – surely the ultimate in ‘having a baby to save the relationship’. The civil war never really feels vital and real, thanks to the diffuse nature of the Q continuum when viewed through a soft-focus allegorical lens but at least there’s the winning chemistry between de Lancie and Mulgrew to keep things interesting and a sassy guest appearance by the always entertaining Suzie Plakson as Q’s once and future paramour.
Star Trek Voyager S3E12: Macrocosm
. Janeway as Ripley seems as obvious as it was inevitable and so it finally happens here with a viral outbreak of unprecedented proportions on board the USS Voyager. Although equal to the physical challenge, Kate Mulgrew’s apathy for the action-oriented take on her character is palpable. Also, for a Die Hard knock-off, it’s still quite talky as Brannon Braga’s script struggles to establish the necessary exposition to let the fun begin. The special effects are decent although they do tread the fine line of the TV series’ budget and the action, when it finally comes, is decent but this doesn’t feel like a good fit for Janeway – it might have suited Chakotay better – and ends up being a fun but forgettably underbaked episode.
Star Trek Voyager S3E13: Fair Trade
Although he’s often unfairly dismissed as Star Trek’s answer to Snarf, Neelix often gets some of the most interesting storylines due to the irresistible appeal of putting someone with such a sunny disposition into an ethical and moral quagmire as often as possible. This time, there are shades of Carlito’s Way as Neelix’s nefarious past comes back to haunt him just at the point where he’s fearing his usefulness to the crew of Voyager is coming to an end. It’s a decent episode with some good material for Ethan Phillips to sink his teeth into but Janeway’s bleating at the end that Neelix has been one of her most trusted advisors and has now betrayed her trust reflects less on Neelix’s action and more on the fact that Janeway seems to be developing a habit of being ‘betrayed’ by her most trusted confidantes and, let’s be honest, isn’t above betraying trusts herself, as Chakotay can attest to.
Star Trek Voyager S3E14: Alter Ego
An episode that’s nowhere near as entertaining as the meme it’s inspired, Alter Ego mashes two Trek tropes into an unsatisfyingly cliched gumbo as ‘holodeck infatuation’ meets ‘lonely alien’. The pairing of Tuvok and ‘eager puppy’ Harry Kim is a surprisingly good one, though, even if it doesn’t really go anywhere during this run-of-the-mill episode.
Star Trek Voyager S3E15: Coda
Janeway’s nascent spiritual awakening is swiftly put back to sleep (as surely as if LL Cool J’s mama had instructed it personally) when she’s confronted by what appears to be the spirit of her father, here to guide her to the afterlife following her apparent death in a shuttle accident. Side note: somebody really needs to take a long hard look at Voyager’s shuttle safety record, surely one of the worst in the fleet? It’s a spooky and well-crafted tale that wrong-foots us with hints of a time loop before revealing its more metaphysical menace as the story unfolds. Compared to Macrocosm, it’s easy to see this is where the character of Janeway (and Mulgrew’s performance) excels – when the redoubtable Captain is facing a battle of the mind, using reason and intelligence to identify and defeat her enemy rather than with a sweaty vest and a phaser rifle.
