“The Cloud”
Written by Brannon Braga and Tom Szollosi and Michael Piller
Directed by David Livingston
Season 1, Episode 5
Production episode 106
Original air date: February 13, 1995
Stardate: 48546.2
Captain’s log. Voyager has found a nebula that is full of omicron particles. Hoping they can be used to increase their power supply, and maybe get the replicators online so she doesn’t have to keep drinking Neelix’s awful coffee substitute, Janeway orders the ship into the nebula.
At first, they enter it with no trouble, but then they strike a barrier that is between them and the omicron particles. They punch through, but then an unknown compound attaches itself to the hull and starts draining power.
They manage to punch through the barrier and escape, but now their reserves are down 11%, the opposite of what they were hoping for when they went in after omicron particles.
Buy the Book
Network Effect
Paris introduces Kim to a new program on the holodeck: a re-creation of a bar in Marseilles that he frequented called Chez Sandrine. Besides Sandrine, the proprietor, there are three regulars, a woman who has designs on Paris, a man who has designs on every woman who enters, and a pool hustler, all of whom Kim meets.
In lieu of a counselor, which Voyager doesn’t have because they were supposed to be on a short-term mission, Chakotay offers Janeway an animal guide, which he describes as a Native American tradition.
While Janeway is learning what hers is—a gecko, apparently—they’re interrupted by Torres, who was examining the material that was attached to the hull. She thinks it’s organic, and the EMH concurs. That wasn’t a nebula, that was a life form, and they wounded it.
Janeway orders the ship to return to heal the being. Eventually, they figure out how, and then reenter the “nebula.” The creature doesn’t take kindly to their return, and the ship gets knocked about, with the inertial dampeners turned off before they get under control. The creature won’t let them get near the wound, however, so Janeway borrows a trick she uses with her dog: distract the puppy to get their attention away from the injury so she can look at it.
This works, and they cure the nebula/puppy. Of course, now their energy reserves are down over 20% after a mission that was supposed to increase those reserves.
Kim invites Janeway to Sandrine’s, where Paris, Chakotay, Torres, Tuvok, Neelix, and Kes are also present. Janeway proceeds to hustle the shit out of everyone in pool.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? In a classic case of “that’s no moon,” what they think is a nebula turns out to be a life form. Oops. Torres and the EMH are the ones who figure that out, and also together work out how to heal its Voyager-inflicted wounds.
There’s coffee in that nebula! This is the episode where this phrase comes from, as Janeway is desperate for coffee, not wanting to use up all her replicator rations on the beverage, nor is she thrilled with Neelix’s coffee substitute.
She also pretends not to know anything about pool (“Is this billiards or pool?” “Right, pool is the one with pockets”) before running the table on everyone in two seconds flat.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok is in Sandrine’s. It’s unclear why.
Half and half. Torres is in Sandrine’s. It’s unclear why, especially since she explicitly states that she doesn’t like the people and also that she doesn’t like Paris.
She is also the only person Chakotay knows who ever tried to kill her animal guide.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH aids Torres in her figuring out what the nebula is, and also makes a suggestion on how to heal the creature, based on the concept of suturing (a process the rest of the crew is unfamiliar with).
Forever an ensign. Kim sleeps with a mask on because of a roommate he had at the Academy who never slept and therefore kept the lights on all the time. Said roommate also helped Kim get through Quantum Chemistry, which is why Kim put up with it. He continues to wear the mask out of habit.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Upon learning that Voyager went into a nebula twice, the second time knowing that it’s truly a hostile life form, Neelix is appalled. He tries to get Janeway to let him and Kes leave in his ship while they go back in but, for once, Janeway refuses Neelix’s whims. Neelix is cranky about Starfleet’s tendency to investigate every damn thing (Kes, on the other hand, thinks it’s awesome). Once he calms down, he appoints himself morale officer, which initially at least includes feeding the crew.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Sandrine’s is full of women who fall all over Paris. That’s not creepy at all.
Do it.
“A nebula? What were we doing in a nebula? No, wait, don’t tell me—we were ‘investigating.’ That’s all we do around here. Why pretend we’re going home at all?”
–The EMH, cranky about Voyager’s tendency to be all Starfleety instead of just going the fuck home.
Welcome aboard. The only guests are the holographic patrons in Sandrine’s: Judy Geeson with a comedy French accent as the eponymous proprietor (she will return in “Twisted”), Angela Dohrmann with an even worse comedy French accent as Ricky (she will return in “Meld”), Luigi Amodeo as the gigolo (the character will return, played by Rick Gianasi, in “Lifesigns”), and the great character actor Larry A. Hankin as Gaunt Gary (he’ll be back in “Jetrel”). Hankin also appeared as the wind dancer in TNG’s “Cost of Living.”
Trivial matters: Sandrine’s was created as a hangout for the crew, much like Quark’s Bar and Ten-Forward were for DS9 and TNG, respectively, with pool being Voyager’s version of TNG’s poker game and DS9’s darts. It will continue to recur as a hangout for the first three seasons or so.
Chakotay’s beliefs are given prominence in this episode, though his actual tribe is never specified. The producers wanted to honor his Indigenous heritage without being clichéd about it, at which they failed utterly. However, the script provides an artificial means of going on a vision quest, thus eliminating the need for psychotropic drugs, which is a nice science fictional touch.
The EMH mentions that he was programmed by a Dr. Zimmerman. Originally, in the series bible, the EMH was going to take on the name “Doc Zimmerman,” naming himself after his creator, but that was abandoned.
Set a course for home. “Dismissed—that’s a Starfleet expression for ‘get out’.” In the 1960s, The Dick Van Dyke Show did an episode where Morey Amsterdam’s Buddy Sorrell has his bar mitzvah, belatedly. At the time, it was probably considered forward-thinking, but watching it now, it’s a mess, with Buddy referring to it as his “Jewish Confirmation,” because apparently the only way to make it workable to the TV audience of the time was to put it in Christian terminology. It felt like it was written by someone who was told about Jewish customs by a friend who was told it by another friend who was told it by an actual Jew, but things were lost in the multiple retellings.
I have the same issue watching Chakotay talk about animal guides and vision quests and such. The producers were trying so hard not to be stereotypical and clichéd that they wound up being incredibly stereotypical and clichéd. It’s frustrating, because there’s some good material here, but it has the same game-of-Telephone problem as that Dick Van Dyke episode.
Chez Sandrine probably seemed like a good idea, but the stereotypes are even worse here, from the pool hustler to the Europeans who all flirt with everything that moves. It wouldn’t bother me as much if it was a re-creation of an old 20th-century bar, but this is supposed to be a 24th-century locale in Marseilles, and ugh. Watching Ricky and Sandrine paw all over Paris is just oogy.
Having said that, I can watch Janeway hustle everyone at pool all day and night.
This is overall a decent little bottle episode with a fairly standard Trek plot where the thing we believe to be a spatial phenomenon turns out to be a living creature that our heroes have harmed and, as ever, compassion is the order of the day. Voyager is willing to sacrifice their power reserves to fix what they broke, and that’s a very noble thing.
I must also sing the praises of Robert Picardo, who provides one of the single funniest bits of business in all of Star Trek. The EMH is limited to sickbay (at least for now), and so when the crew on the bridge is discussing the “nebula,” the EMH is on the viewscreen. He’s babbling, as usual, so Janeway mutes the audio feed. For several seconds, we see the crew batting ideas around, with the viewscreen in the background, and on the latter, the EMH is wandering, fidgeting, grumbling, and then he obviously has something to say, so he starts waving and jumping up and down. Everyone’s got their back to the viewscreen, though, so nobody sees him except Paris—who takes his sweet time telling Janeway that she should maybe un-mute. It’s a hilarious sequence, beautifully played by Picardo.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written three works of Voyager fiction, most of which don’t actually take place in the Delta Quadrant: the Mirror Universe short novel The Mirror-Scaled Serpent (in Obsidian Alliances, in which Kes and Neelix go through the Caretaker’s array and wind up in the Alpha Quadrant), the novella “The Third Artifact” in The Brave and the Bold Book 2 (which tells the story of how and why Tuvok infiltrated the Maquis), and the short story “Letting Go” in the anthology Distant Shores (which focuses on the families of the crew left behind, primarily Janeway’s boyfriend Mark Johnson).
All I remember about my reaction to this episode is that I found it fairly unmemorable. Maybe because “living cloud creature” is a well Trek has gone to before, notably in TAS: “One of Our Planets is Missing.”
“It wouldn’t bother me as much if it was a re-creation of an old 20th-century bar, but this is supposed to be a 24th-century locale in Marseilles”
I had the impression that it was meant to be a historical reconstruction district a la Colonial Williamsburg, from Tom’s line about how it had pickpockets “for the tourists.”
It’s interesting that the Doctor’s first thought about what he’d do if he could program himself was “Create a family?” — something he would end up doing later in “Real life.” As for his second suggestion, “Raise an army?”, he never did that as far as we know (and probably not at all, given that EMHs are evidently still legal in Picard‘s 2399).
I wonder what Picardo was saying while he was on mute.
I remember it as the living nebula, perhaps because I haven’t seen the TAS episode.
Being able to efficiently fast forward makes it easy to skip the cringe-worthy scenes, which probably means I’ll be missing a lot of Neelix and Chakotay’s scenes. Though Neelix complaining about the side-jaunt was amusing.
Is the gecko here foreshadowing for “Threshold”? Or were those mudskippers in the later episode?
You’d expect that protocol would require a ship wide holodeck shut down to conserve power, but Voyager.
In case you didn’t get my previous messages: Glad you’re doing these Voyager re-watches, Krad / Keith :)
Good points about the stereotypes. Another thing that I personally didn’t like was how there’s no on-screen follow-up to Janeway’s offer to Neelix to leave for good if he wanted. Sure, by the episode “Fair Trade” it’s clear that Neelix really wants to stay on Voyager, but after his attitude on this episode (and I quote, “I’m not sure I would’ve wanted you to come along had I known… I did not come on board this ship to be a veterinarian… I just reached my limit”) I wanted to see how and why Neelix decided to stay on board, knowing that this would not be the last time something like this would happen.
I know, I know, we can imagine what happened and fill in the blanks, but I wanted to actually see this for myself.
Transceiver: They established in “Parallax” that the holodeck has a different, and incompatible, power system, so shutting power down to the holodeck apparently won’t matter.
Lame, I know….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Krad: I see! Voyager’s holodecks must in actuality be Dreamatoriums, which as we all know, harness the unlimited phantom power of imagination. This explains a lot.
We all remember that touching scene in DS9 where O’Brien offers everyone the Eucharist…
Presumably Carl Reiner knew what happened at a Bar Mitzvah, so that was all deliberately dumbed down for the benefit of the audience.
1 @@@@@ Christopher: “As for his second suggestion, “Raise an army?”, he never did that as far as we know (and probably not at all, given that EMHs are evidently still legal in Picard‘s 2399).”
I mean, I don’t know. In “Prophecy,” the argument will be made that Torres met the definition of winning a glorious victory against an army of 10,000 warriors because she helped destroy a borg cube. Similarly, the Doctor used an army of nanoprobes to defeat 8472, and actually in seasons 4-7 will deploy nanoprobes for various uses in an astonishing variety of circumstances. From a certain point of view, he spends half the series with a secret army at his command. I’m counting it.
@6. The incompatible holodeck power drove me crazy. Voyager is in another galaxy traveling through what should be entirely unknown territory and the creators made sure they could spend time in stereotypes of French bars and Victorian houses. Why????
@10 IBookwyrme
A focus group participant said their favorite thing about Star Trek was “them old fashioned ones” and an executive really leaned into that feedback?
@6, @10, @11: And thus, the Voodoo Shark was born.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VoodooShark
I don’t know why it struck me again with this episode, and I’m sure that this topic has been bludgeoned to death and back again many times in Trek message boards over the decades, but for as often as the ship is turned into a turbulent funhouse, why the hell don’t they have restraints like seat belts?. Meanwhile, Neelix walks in a few minutes afterwards with this perfect plate of whatever. . Can you imagine what that makeshift galley actually looked like after all that turbulence? By all rights, He should have shown up with Kes in his arms, both of them scalded, kind of like Scotty with his nephew in Wrath of Khan. “She stayed at her burner….”
And yes, I understand. They wanted to make good on having harmed the creature, but really, I kind of agree with Neelix here. Sending the ship back in turned out to be a very bad idea, saved only by the old “fortuitous circulatory system of the creature” trick.
Have to admit I’m completely bored with the Torres character. She showed so much promise in the first two episodes with her volatility, and now she’s this by-the-book, respectful, dutiful, insufferably boring officer. Someone please tell me she gets her crazy mojo back at some point. She’s much more interesting that way.
As for Paris’s holodeck fantasy being creepy, whatever. Maybe so, but I’ll bet there aren’t many of us who, if able to create that sort of environment for ourselves, wouldn’t go a little over the top in programming the libido of our creations.
I’m glad the EMH showed up when he did, as I was thinking while watching, This sounds like a medical issue for the creature and nobody’s consulting the doctor? And I know no one uses sutures anymore, but I’m surprised to hear that. Janeway’s never heard of one. I mean wouldn’t all Starfleet officers have some basic knowledge of how to render first aid when you don’t have your super cool laser thingie available?
These nitpicks aside, I liked this episode mainly for the first third of it, which was more of a slice-of-life vignette of life on-board. This is what bothers me about Discovery. They’re always in super angst mode, and you never really see them with their hair down.
@10: I mean, I don’t know, but my strong guess is that it let them shoot scenes that are somewhat “off ship” while not busting the budget because they could either construct the sets cheaply or reuse something from other productions. Just like how in TOS they kept encountering alternate Earths because that was a great way to reuse props/sets/costumes. I’m sure with an unlimited budget they would have given us a 22nd hotspot, but that wasn’t in the cards. The holodeck is a much more wondrous invention in the novels!
I rather liked this one; any episode that introduces Captain Janeway’s tendency to give that little caffeine fiend whispering into her ear just a little more attention than it deserves (just a little!) and shows her teeth as a pool shark cannot be accounted a complete loss (even without the other good bits popping up amidst the more dated or outright questionable elements). It’s also interesting to reflect on the insight into Lieutenant Paris’ mindset offered by his shift from that cheerfully skeezy pool bar to THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN PROTON! (It’s not hard to see the former as artificial validation for an officer still not quite able to believe he’s a valued member of ANY crew after so many years in the doghouse, while the latter represents the more cheerful escapism of a man who has found his place in the world and found it to be Good).
Also, one would love to know if the habit of going to bed with a sleep mask stuck with Ensign Kim all the way from the Caretaker’s Array back to Earth – is the habit that deeply ingrained, I wonder?
By the way Mr DeCandido, you’re doing excellent work with this series – please accept my Particular Compliments for sticking with it and please do Keep Up the Good Work! (-:
“I have the same issue watching Chakotay talk about animal guides and vision quests and such. The producers were trying so hard not to be stereotypical and clichéd that they wound up being incredibly stereotypical and clichéd.”
I seem to recall hearing that Voyager‘s “Native American cultural advisor” was a complete a total fraud.
@13 – Sure Tom and anyone else can have all the creepy fantasies they want, but does everyone watching the show have to see them?!?
As for the thing with the sutures, didn’t TNG do a similarly stupid ‘What’s a splint?’ in an episode? I seem to remember field dressings existing in DS9, but could be mistaken…
@8, I wondered about the appropriateness of Chakotay leading random folks on vision quests myself. My anthropology professor was actually taught Eagle Medicine by a Comanche shaman. She was an educated 20th c. woman who knew exactly what an Anthropologist was. She taught him because at the time she feared she would be the last Eagle Doctor and wanted to leave a record of her tradition. She commented wistfully on the irony of a white man being interested in the medicine when her own children weren’t. Dr. Jones, yes that was his name, realized she left out things she felt were unfit for outsiders to know and he was fine with that. Happily his interest sparked curiosity in her children and one son said he wanted to learn the medicine. Anyway the point is this this is religion not a convenient superpower!
The weird thing about Sandrine’s is that they seem to have been aware that it was skeevy. Torres calls Paris out on it, pointing out that both he and Gaunt Gary are pigs. ED also makes an interesting point @15 about how Paris’s holoprograms change over the years. IIRC, between this and Captain Proton there is also a beach setting of some sort.
Something else here is when Neelix calls out Janeway about using her replicator rations for coffee all willy-nilly. He’s a little less than diplomatic about it, but he’s not wrong. She does need to set an example for the crew on this matter.
@18 treebee72: The use of a splint did occur first on the ST: TNG episode “Contagion”, where the ship’s systems get comprised but there’s an urgent need to set a broken leg. Dr. Pulaski instructs the medical staff to use a splint. A splint is also seen on the ST: DS9 episode “The Ascent” where Quark uses one on Odo’s broken leg.
I like this episode well enough, but also didn’t care for the spirit guide portion, though (as krad points out) they do make an effort to keep it firmly in the science fiction universe. By the way…when Chakotay brings his medicine bundle with him to the captain’s ready room, he explains to her that he’s never shown it to anyone before but he’s brought it along as he needs it to demonstrate for the captain how to contact her spirit guide. B’lanna interrupts to speak with the captain and Chakotay interjects that B’lanna is the only person he knows who tried to kill their spirit guide. But if he’s never shown anyone his medicine bundle before then how did he demonstrate to B’lanna how to contact her spirit guide? I don’t know…maybe he used a different medicine bundle that time…does it even matter?
Someone else mentioned it early on in the comments here, but I also noticed that Janeway’s spirit guide was a reptile….just a tiny shade of foreshadowing perhaps???
I like the idea of Sandrine’s and especially the addition of Gaunt Gary, who adds some flair to the settings as a pool hustler. It is a bit much when the two women within the bar we’re introduced to fawn all over Paris….although Sandrine herself soon takes a similar liking to Kim. So there’s that too….
Almost forgot to mention the somewhat hilarious entry Janeway dictates to her Captain’s Log at the end of the episode, where she makes an appeal to her spirit guide. Captain’s Log are reviewed by superior officers, to gather information from the mission just completed, which we would assume would happen upon Voyager’s return to Earth….that’s one entry that’ll leave them curious!
The energy supply of the ship is hydrogen or deuterium (for the fusion reactors and half the matter/antimatter reaction) and anti-hydrogen (in magnetic cryogenic storage bottles). Anything else is BS handwavium concocted by lazy writers who can’t think of a better reason to explore an unknown phenomenon (like, its their job). This plus the holodeck and replicator situation is probably why I never watched more than the first two or 3 episodes (plus the Kazon being a spacefaring race who couldn’t find water, FFS). It would have been better to ignore the possibility of shortages than to make a big deal of them but then inventing bogus one.
@21/darrel: Janeway’s closing voiceover is not prefaced by “Captain’s Log,” so it could’ve just been a voiceover. Or if you prefer, a personal log entry.
I seem to remember when I first watched this episode, I liked the sci-fi plot of the nebula turning out to be a lifeform but wasn’t too keen on all the subplots. That seems to be similar to krad’s thoughts but I almost reversed my opinion this time round. My attention wandered most during the “Voyager getting thrown around” scenes but the actual meat of the plot, with Voyager accidentally injuring a creature and then putting themselves at risk to help it, is still a solid one.
Some of the character vignettes work better than others. Paris’ idea of home being a French bar where everyone seems to be over-sexed makes character sense, but it’s perhaps not as much fun for the viewers as it is for him. It’s a shame this becomes the characters’ regular hang-out for at least the first two seasons (and I even remember seeing it during season five). It is replaced in the first half of season three by that pool simulation, which I recall was originally Neelix’s although the rest of the crew (notably Paris and Kim and to a lesser extent Torres) embellished it a lot: I’m not sure if we see Sandrine’s again in the early part of the season or not but I don’t recall anything off hand.
Janeway learns to be a more personable captain quite early on. (Ironically, a lot of people seem to miss this part of the character at the time: As late as season three, reviews were picking out her socialising with her crew as something noteworthy.) Harry Kim being the one to break protocol and invite her to join them is another nice touch. (We see Tuvok playing pool in Sandrine’s by the way and I seem to recall later episodes establish he appreciates it as an exercise in trigonometry.) Given that we never see or hear of Janeway’s animal guide again, that plotline feels a bit of a waste of time, although it does give us the great “B’Elanna’s the only person I know who tried to kill her animal guide” moment.
Kes’ sense of wonder clashes with Neelix’s desire for self-preservation. The Doctor still isn’t quite viewed as a member of the crew by himself or the others: Janeway casually mutes him (it’s a funny moment but indicative of the lack of respect he’s shown in the early episodes: it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it even half a season from now) and he notes that he was only paying attention to the ship’s situation because no-one turned him off, even though he’s useful. (Torres pointing out the inappropriateness of his “Please state the nature of the medical emergency” greeting seems a step towards acceptance, even if it’s mostly because she finds it irritating.) A frequent problem on TNG and Voyager is that the first officer doesn’t have a bridge station, so if the captain’s there he doesn’t actually have a job to do: I notice that in the last two episodes they’ve solved it by having Chakotay play a key role in working out the solution.
First mention of Zimmermann as the Doctor’s creator. (The Doctor notes he looks a lot like him, something he forgets in “Projections”.) Neelix declares himself morale officer for the first time. (Thanks for that.) A rare use of the other two seats at command point, by Neelix and Kes here. Janeway refers to Tuvok as “lieutenant”, seemingly refuting a theory (stated as fact in at least one guide book) that he’s meant to be a lieutenant commander here (as per the rank pips) and the decision to retcon him as a lieutenant was taken later. (The fact that the guide book claims he would have outranked Chakotay if he was, which seems to be nonsense, is another reason to ignore it.) On a similar note, Paris mispronounces “ensign” as “en-sine” in the pre-credits.
A bit of a mixed bag. This works mainly for the character threads, rather than the overall plot. Some of the character bits work. Others fall flat. which is a natural occurrence this early on a show’s lifespan. What’s known as Piller filler tends to work better when the original story came up short and he was forced to come up with these little scenes to pad out the episode, the best example being the Picard/Data Shakespeare teaser on TNG’s The Defector.
But The Cloud‘s plot itself? Reheated TNG leftovers. I liked it better when they did the ship accidentally harms a space creature plot in Galaxy’s Child. At least, this is still better than the upcoming Elogium. And it does provide that comical Doctor on the screen scene. Plus, the crew’s willingness to risk their ship in order to do so is appropriately Trekkian.
Unsurprisingly, Chakotay’s spiritual side is the worst offender on the character threads. The funny thing is, they took the time to try and establish this particular world, going as far back as TNG’s Journey’s End. But never really bothered to provide layers of complexity and nuance the way the DS9 writers were doing with Bajoran religion at that point (DS9’s Destiny aired around this same time). Given how they aired side-by-side, it’s inevitable I’ll be doing VOY/DS9 comparisons throughout, plus every time VOY tries to ape a previously done TNG story.
I do like it, however, when Chakotay mentions B’Elanna’s animal guide issue. It’s one of those things that works far better as tell rather than show. Showing B’Elanna actually trying to kill it would likely kill a lot of the fun we had while trying to picture it based on Chakotay’s humorous account.
According to the DS9 Companion, the idea of doing a 20th Century Earth bar was in play in the DS9 writers room for a while until Voyager beat them to it, forcing them to come up with the dart board. It’s for the best. The dart game was a better fit for DS9 (and better than the 360º racketball contraption).
@25/Eduardo: It later turned out that Chakotay’s planet was not Dorvan V from “Journey’s End,” because it was settled much earlier. (The novel Pathways by Jeri Taylor named it Trebus.) So apparently there are two Native American colony worlds in the Federation-Cardassian Demilitarized Zone. For some reason.
@21 “By the way…when Chakotay brings his medicine bundle with him to the captain’s ready room, he explains to her that he’s never shown it to anyone before but he’s brought it along as he needs it to demonstrate for the captain how to contact her spirit guide.”
Haven’t watched the episode. How big is this bundle? Could Chakotay possibly be reasonably believed to have had it on his person in the pilot when he beamed aboard Voyager as his ship exploded?
@27/John: Not huge, but bigger than could fit in a pocket:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Medicine_bundle
I suppose Chakotay could be an accredited shaman/ medicine man fully qualified to lead others on a vision quests but the process seems oddly casual. The only Native American tribe I know much about are the Comanche, who had a much less complicated spiritual life than say the Sioux, but getting medicine power was a long process requiring training before seeking the final vision and a potentially dangerous one. Power came with a price, taboos that it could be fatal to break. It was not a path to be embarked on casually or experimentally.
@29.princessroxana: This relatively casual attitude could, in fact, be the sort of willingness to share (even overshare) you often see in ‘Born Again’ types – while Chakotay reconnected with a fundamentally different set of beliefs, it’s still interesting to wonder if some lingering guilt over youthful disinterest in his People’s traditions pushes him to be a little more prepared to show them off than somebody who’d lived them heart & soul from an early age (and share his love & respect for them in the process).
Chakotay mentions in this episode that Native Americans used to use psychotropic drugs to consult their animal guides, but science made that unnecessary, then walks Janeway through it fairly easily. So maybe the process got better understood and demystified along the way and is much more of a “DIY” thing. If we accept that in the 24th century it’s as easy as shown here, then there’s no reason a long medicine man accreditation would be necessary, a holodeck program could do it.
@26.ChristopherLBennett: In all fairness, one group of colonists won’t necessarily want to settle down with another no matter how similar they may seem to outsiders – even leaving aside the slightly reductive possibility that the colonists on both these worlds were originally one expedition that split over ideological differences (as more than colonising mission has), it’s perfectly possible that two separate and very distinct colonising endeavours found what they were looking for in the same general area, at a safe remove from each other (consider the Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts and compare them with, say, the original settlers of Maryland for instance).
@26 & 32 Maybe they wanted to be neighbors but not close ones? So they formed a sort of association of planets within the Federation. And they wanted a very sparse population of humans on any given planet. And what they wanted just happened to be right next to Cardassian space so it was traded in that strange treaty leaving our hypothetical association split by the border. Maybe
@30, Ed, that sounds like a explanation. Luckily Chakotay doesn’t know enough to get his initiates into real trouble. Though B’Ellana trying to kill her spirit animal suggests something went wrong there.
@31, Dunsel, not all Native American traditions used drugs. For many isolation, fasting and sleep deprivation were enough to trigger visions. I don’t think the holodeck can replicate a spiritual experience.
“@31, Dunsel, not all Native American traditions used drugs. “
@34, this one does! Or at least did. Per Chakotay: ” My ancestors used psychoactive herbs to assist their vision quests. Now they’re no longer necessary. Our scientists have found more modern ways to facilitate the search for animal guides. “
This episode posits that, in the 24th century, scientists have figured out finding animal guides just like they’ve figured out so much else. No need for “psychoactive herbs” because scientists have hammered this out. And, again, it takes Chakotay about twenty seconds to do this and as far as we know he has a 100% success rate. So we can’t necessarily import how this works now to how this works in the 24th century– this episode shows us pretty clearly the process has been streamlined. So there doesn’t seem to be anything special about Chakotay or what he did here, it’s just like needlepoint or woodworking, it’s just a matter of taking the time to learn well understood processes.
Yeah, that is certainly the impression one gets, easy peasy, no dangers or limitations… Weird.
@13 Agreed: Paris is not the first to do that, and presumably not the last. (Also, for what I take to be realistic holodeck use, including that, cf. The Orville.)
A further question would be: What was B’Ellana’s spirit animal? Maybe it was a scary Klingon beast. Or maybe it was an Earth analogue that she didn’t recognize, but saw as a threat.
I imagine it is hard to write a character who is generically anything, without producing stereotype and cliche.
I assume Chakotay’s vision-inducing device affects the brain in a manner similar to how things like drugs, fasting, sweat lodges, intense physical activity (like Dervish dances or the intense emotion of a revival meeting), or the like can alter mental states. This is plausible, as we’ve gained a lot of understanding of the neurology behind ecstatic trance or visionary states, so it should be possible to stimulate the equivalent neurological state using the right kind of electrical or magnetic fields, or maybe subsonic frequencies. Purists might find it an artificial substitute for the real thing, but given how many different ways there already are to achieve such states, more open-minded religious/spiritual types would probably feel that it’s the result that matters regardless of how you get there.
I’m a bit behind with my rewatches, but here goes:
This is a neat little episode. Yes, the plot is reminiscent of “One of Our Planets Is Missing”, and also of “The Devil in the Dark” because they heal a very alien creature by unconventional means, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. It’s less intense than either one of those, because they never talk to the creature, but it has the character scenes to make up for that.
After the previous episode, I wished for more insight into Janeway’s thoughts. We almost always knew what Kirk was thinking because he talked to McCoy so much; Janeway is much more restrained. Therefore the personal log entry at the beginning made me quite happy.
Also, Kim doesn’t get nearly enough praise. For one of the youngest members in the crew, his empathy for his boss is quite an accomplishment, and really, really nice, too. Plus, he doesn’t back down to Paris when he tells him that this just isn’t done.
I also love the scientific shamanism, and the idea that an animal guide is simply an animal that “chooses to be with us”. I have no idea if this is in any way sanctioned by real-world shamanism, but I like it. And Janeway’s special place looks almost exactly like the one I imagined when Chakotay told her to “leave this room and this ship”. And I love geckos. So yes, I can see the stereotype, but it’s still a lovely scene.
The only thing I didn’t enjoy was Paris’ French bar. As krad said, even worse stereotypes here, and much less likeable ones. And is it supposed to be witty that the guy named Paris has a thing for France? Anyway, I applauded Torres when she told Paris that he’s a pig.
@20/DemetriosX: “The weird thing about Sandrine’s is that they seem to have been aware that it was skeevy. Torres calls Paris out on it, pointing out that both he and Gaunt Gary are pigs.”
I had the theory that Paris was supposed to be obnoxious, but now I’m not sure. Perhaps they tried to please different audience segments? There will be fans who identify with Paris and others who will find him icky and identify with Torres, that kind of thing?
@41/Jana: I gather that members of faiths/cultures that believe in spirit animals are rather offended when the idea is appropriated by outsiders, like when people say things like “Baby Yoda is my spirit animal” or whatever, which is turning a matter of sincere religious belief into a joke. I don’t know if they’d respond well to seeing the concept portrayed as just a meditative tool that could be used by anyone whether they believed or not, stripping it of the religious context it’s an integral part of. Although of course I shouldn’t presume to speak for them.
As for Paris’s personality, there have always been characters like that in fiction, arrogant womanizing jerks with hidden hearts of gold. The idea is to portray their antics as only mildly transgressive and ultimately harmless because they’re really decent guys at the core, but that doesn’t play as well in this era when we’re more aware of things like sexual harassment and toxic masculinity. And I suspect that even back in the day, it was mostly only male writers and viewers who saw such things as harmless or endearing, and didn’t consider how women might react to them.
Of course, compared to a lot of such characters, Tom was quite mild, and he was toned down/reformed pretty quickly, becoming a more sensitive guy and the most domesticated, devoted family man in the crew. He was still portrayed as something of an immature scamp, but the way that manifested changed from “womanizer” to “fanboy,” lover of vintage cars and sci-fi serials and other geeky stuff.
@42/Christopher: That’s a valid point about the misuse of animal guides as a meditative tool. I’ve seen too much New Age shamanism.
Yep, I never found arrogant womanisers endearing. I was okay with Riker, because he always asked politely and, unlike Paris, didn’t indulge in creepy fantasies. And of course, further down the road there’s Kelvin Kirk, who is much worse than either of them.
Jana, there is a type of womaniser who genuinely likes women and enjoys spending time with them out of bed and won’t enjoy relations unless the lady is equally enthusiastic. Casanova of all people seems to have been that kind of womaniser. Then there’s the other kind that’s just after one thing. Often the latter are very young men who eventually learn better. Paris was apparently intended to be that type.
Original History’s young Kirk was not a womanizer, but a bookworm and positively grim as he himself says. He eventually lightened up a bit and judging by the fact most of his former girlfriends are perfectly happy to see him again he doesn’t become the second type of womaniser. In fact judging from what we see Jim Kirk tends to fall hard and be quite serious about his relationships.
@44/Roxana: Oh, absolutely, I agree. TOS Kirk is a great character. My favourite of all time. I also agree about the two types of womaniser. Would you count Riker as the first type?
@43: That would be Riker who, on barely turning down Kamala’s advances, paged the bridge to let them know he’d be in the holodeck if anyone needed him?
Yeah. Not so different.
@44: That may have been the original intention for Paris but it’s definitely not how it plays out on screen. As far as living sentient women are concerned, he’s pretty much always respectful and his number of Girls of the Week is considerably less than you might think.
@46/cap-mjb: I don’t have a problem with sexual holofantasies in general, and we don’t know what Riker’s looked like.
Paris wasn’t exactly respectful towards Stadi in “Caretaker”. Telling a woman that there’s something wrong with her because she turned you down is always a bad sign.
@47/Jana: Of course Tom Paris wasn’t a paragon at the start of the series. The point was to show him improving over time, learning to be a better person, and he did.
@Jana: “we don’t know what Riker’s looked like.”
Maybe we do… Carolyn_McCormick
Added: I forgot Riker tried out various looks for Minuet
@48/Christopher: So that’s the answer to comment #20. It’s skeevy on purpose, but they thought it was only mildly skeevy, and Torres calling Paris a pig is part of his improvement process. If that’s the point, of course Torres had to fall in love with him later. She’s the reward for his accomplished improvement. (I’m being mean, I know.)
@49/Sunspear: Oh, right! Well, as far as I am concerned, that’s a perfectly acceptable sexual fantasy.
@47: I admit Stadi is probably the most problematic of his interactions with women in the early episodes. (Arguably the only truly problematic one, especially in retrospect.) As ever, I think he gets away with it because she gives as good as she gets. I don’t think it’s a case of him only seeing her as an object though. It’s notable that she’s the first person he checks on when Voyager gets hit, and it’s interesting to speculate how things would have gone if she’d lived. (Aside from the fact that Paris wouldn’t get her job!)
I’m curious: How is Paris’ holodeck hangout more “creepy” and “skeevy” than Riker sneaking off to have sex with a hologram of Carolyn McCormack (or whatever)? He invites all his friends along and (admittedly in a heteronormative way) makes sure there’s something for everyone, including the ones who just want to have a drink or play pool. Yes, the two female holograms we see both fancy him, but they seem to be like that with everyone.
The Orville went a lot further in making holodeck use for personal gratification more explicit. Even though it was a scene broadcast on TV, not sure I can post the image of it here. Search for “Moclan Orgy in the Garden of Eden” at your own risk.
Also, some news about filming on Discovery getting close to wrapping. Then things start up on the Section 31 show:
section-31-discovery-filming-schedules
@50/Jana: “If that’s the point, of course Torres had to fall in love with him later. She’s the reward for his accomplished improvement. (I’m being mean, I know.)”
I doubt they had any intention this early on of pairing Tom with B’Elanna. There’s an episode somewhere in this early run, I forget which one, that toys with B’Elanna being in unrequited love with Chakotay, though it’s dropped forever after that. And Tom at this point was being written as a rival to Neelix for Kes’s affections.
As a rule, romances in TV series tend to be written in response to the chemistry between actors, or the lack thereof. The producers may initially set up a potential romance between A and B, but then discover that A has no real chemistry with B but a ton of chemistry with C, so they’ll rework the story to put A and C together. (A prime example is Arrow. In the comics, Green Arrow’s perennial love interest is Black Canary/Dinah Laurel Lance, and Arrow‘s Laurel Lance was initially set up as Oliver Queen’s main romantic interest; but Emily Bett Rickards as minor supporting character Felicity Smoak turned out to have fantastic chemistry with Stephen Amell, so they promoted her to regular and eventually had her and Oliver fall in love and get married.)
“Well, as far as I am concerned, that’s a perfectly acceptable sexual fantasy.”
I don’t think anyone has the right to judge the “acceptability” of other people’s fantasies. The value of fantasy is that it’s private, a safe space to indulge urges and temptations we’d never choose to act on in public or want to subject anyone else to without their consent. People should be allowed to have “unacceptable” fantasies, because fantasy is the one place where unacceptable desires or behaviors can be worked through in a harmless and healthy way. And it’s therefore wrong to assume that the focus of someone’s fantasies is in any way reflective of how they’d treat other people in real life. Often it’s just the opposite, a harmless release of temptations or frustrations we’d never let ourselves act on outside of fantasy. (I learned this from a college friend who was utterly kind and gentle in reality, but who was fond of sick and tasteless jokes and confessed to having incredibly sadistic fantasies about taking vengeance on people who’d hurt her.)
Granted, Trek’s holodeck episodes muddy the issue somewhat by blurring the line between private and public fantasy. You could argue that maybe Tom aired some of his fantasies a bit too publicly — or conversely that other characters were far too willing to intrude on people’s private fantasies (e.g. Barclay’s in “Hollow Pursuits”).
I suspect most people’s sexual fantasies would be disturbing to witness. Everybody gets skeevy in the privacy of their own brains.
Jana, I’m not sure about Riker, probably because I’m not particularly interested in him, but the fact he gets along well with Troi is in his favor.
@51/cap-mjb: “I admit Stadi is probably the most problematic of his interactions with women in the early episodes. (Arguably the only truly problematic one, especially in retrospect.)”
Agreed.
“I think he gets away with it because she gives as good as she gets.”
I don’t know about that. I can hold my own in a verbal match, but I’m still annoyed when some random guy forces me into one while I’m trying to do my job. I imagine that Stadi feels the same way.
“I’m curious: How is Paris’ holodeck hangout more “creepy” and “skeevy” than Riker sneaking off to have sex with a hologram of Carolyn McCormack (or whatever)? He invites all his friends along and (admittedly in a heteronormative way) makes sure there’s something for everyone, including the ones who just want to have a drink or play pool. Yes, the two female holograms we see both fancy him, but they seem to be like that with everyone.”
I don’t have a problem with people having sex with holograms, and I don’t have a problem with Paris creating a hangout for his friends – that’s actually a nice thing to do. But I would feel distinctly uncomfortable in Sandrine’s. I wouldn’t want to watch Paris play out his sexual fantasies with the female holograms while the male holograms make sexist remarks. Torres spoke for me in that scene :)
@54/Christopher: I found their romance unconvincing, but perhaps that’s just me.
“I don’t think anyone has the right to judge the “acceptability” of other people’s fantasies.”
Sure. It was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek comment. Sorry if that didn’t come across.
@55/Roxana: “Everybody gets skeevy in the privacy of their own brains.”
Yep :)
“I’m not sure about Riker, probably because I’m not particularly interested in him, but the fact he gets along well with Troi is in his favor.”
Yes, that’s what I was thinking too.
I guess context might explain the Paris/Stadi interaction. I’m not sure how long they’re meant to have been on that shuttle together: Probably not all the way from Earth, maybe from a nearby starbase. So do we assume Paris has been hitting on her the whole journey (which would definitely be irritating) or was she giving him the cold shoulder like some of the other officers did, in which case him coming out with a line about Betazoids usually being warm and sensual, whilst still irksome, might have been intended as a clumsy ice breaker? Anyway, his interaction with Kes is actually quite quixotic, they seem to be spending time together as friends without him expecting anything. And whilst I very much doubt anyone said “Okay, in Season 4, Tom and B’Elanna get together”, there are moments between them in the first season that had me going “Hmm” and probably had the staff doing the same, so ultimately that’s another relationship that came out of a friendship. Even the Delaney sisters seems to end up being more of a friendship than anything else. So if he’d known Stadi for more than about a day, they may have become friends as well. He certainly seems as capable of being friends with women as Will “We spent some time together” Riker.
(It’s “Persistance of Vision” which portrays Torres as secretly in love with Chakotay, by the way.)
@57/cap-mjb: “[…] was she giving him the cold shoulder like some of the other officers did, in which case him coming out with a line about Betazoids usually being warm and sensual, whilst still irksome, might have been intended as a clumsy ice breaker?”
This reading has never occurred to me. That’s why these discussions are fun!
Concerning the Paris-Torres relationship, I remember that it was discussed on the Internet back in the day way before it actually happened in the show. But there were also a few proponents of a Kim-Torres relationship.
The other pairing people were hoping for was, of course, Janeway-Chakotay.
@58/Jana: Jeri Taylor was definitely a proponent of Janeway-Chaktotay, as is most evident in “Resolutions,” which she wrote. I figure that’s why their romantic tension evaporated after Taylor left the show.
Kathryn Mulgrew was very anti having a Janeway/Chakotay romance.
https://trekmovie.com/2017/07/02/kate-mulgrew-talks-sex-and-seven-of-nine-on-star-trek-voyager/
@60/andreatheartisan: I’m glad that there was no Janeway-Chakotay romance because I think that TOS was right, a captain shouldn’t sleep with their crew. But that’s a weird quote. I’m not even sure what Mulgrew is saying. That they brought in Seven as a love interest for Chakotay?
@Jana: her comment is a bit incoherent. And you won’t like Kate Mulgrew much if you read about how she treated Jeri Ryan on set. Mulgrew seemed to resent her presence and behaved in a passive-aggresive manner. For example, it’s considered good form when performing a two person scene to be there off camera while the other actor is performing her lines. The co-star “ literally sat off-camera picking their nails, thumbing through a book, and just haphazardly saying their lines off camera without even making eye contact.”
Ryan doesn’t mention a name, but in context she says she loved working with all “my boys” and that the scenes took place on the set created for Seven, Astrometrics. Ryan says this went on for a couple years till she started dating the boss, Brannon Braga. Office politics everywhere, I guess.
jeri-ryan-kate-mulgrew-feud
@61/Jana: I think what Mulgrew means is that she wanted Janeway to be defined by being the captain rather than by her sexuality as female characters usually were, and that she believes her resistance to being sexualized led to the producers bringing in Ryan to be the sex symbol.
@62/Sunspear: That sounds pretty bad. I can understand that Mulgrew was annoyed at the producers, but taking it out on Ryan is ugly.
@63/Christopher: I’m not sure if female characters were usually defined by their sexuality, but yes, it was pretty obvious that Ryan was supposed to be a sex symbol, like Troi before her and T’Pol after her. Well, it was nice to have three seasons of Voyager without a woman in a catsuit.
@64/Jana: At the time, yes, it was still the norm for female characters’ sexuality and romantic lives to be played up more than it was for male characters. Really, it still is a lot of the time, which is why so many critics are praising the new Birds of Prey movie for its refreshing absence of male gaze.
@65/Christopher: I agree with that, but “defined by their sexuality” sounded a bit stronger than that. Or is this just me misunderstanding English words?
@66/Jana: I was trying to simplify a range of concepts into one phrase, which is always imperfect. But I don’t think it’s an overstatement. Even if they weren’t defined exclusively by their sexuality, there was still a pervasive emphasis on it, and there was almost always a subtext or outright text that even the most successful career women wouldn’t be truly fulfilled in life until they found love — whereas male characters were more often written as finding fulfillment and self-definition in their careers, with romance often being a complication or distraction.
I always felt that Janeway and Chakotay shared a mutual attraction and an understanding that pursuing it was a Really Bad Idea under the circumstances. They were grown ups, they dealt with it.
@67/Christopher: “Even if they weren’t defined exclusively by their sexuality, there was still a pervasive emphasis on it […]”.
Hmm, I may be wrong, but could this be a gendered reaction?
I’m thinking of the films I watched when I grew up in the 70s. Quite often there were a bunch of men and one woman. The woman was young, beautiful, and the main guy’s love interest. These were the fixed points. I didn’t give them much thought; if you watched films, especially adventure films, this was what you got. But there were vast differences in how the woman was portrayed. Was she smart, dumb, competent, useless? Did she have a job? Did the men respect her or talk down to her? Was she tough, or did she scream all the time? Was she inspiring or annoying?
At the time we were talking about, the good characters already outnumbered the bad ones. TNG had Pulaski and Ro Laren. They even had a female chief engineer who wasn’t beautiful (albeit only for one episode. Put there by Dorothy Fontana, by the way). I remember being particularly delighted by Lindsey Brigman in The Abyss. Still almost the only woman, young, beautiful, the main guy’s love interest. But also a great character. They introduced her by showing her legs, but the emphasis was on her capabilities and her capacity for enthusiasm. At least that was how I perceived it.
@68/Roxana: I like that. It could even help to explain the Chakotay-Seven romance. Perhaps they came together because they both liked Janeway.
@69, Jana, as I recall two scenes seemed to me to depict this reading of Janeway and Chakotay’s relationship. In one Chakotay is expressing concern at Q’s intruding on Janeway prefaced by words to the effect that maybe he shouldn’t be saying this because he’s one of her officers not a lover. And a late episode where Janeway confides her technical problems with a Holo lover, ‘ I’ve got a boyfriend who glitches’ and Chakotay is amused.
@69/Jana: “Hmm, I may be wrong, but could this be a gendered reaction?”
I don’t appreciate the implication. This is not my exclusive opinion, it was the complaint of many feminists, actresses, critics of both sexes, and others back in the day. As established earlier in this thread, Kate Mulgrew was one of the people who complained about it. I’m not offering my opinion, I’m clarifying what Mulgrew meant by her comments, which is what you asked about in the first place.
@70/Roxana: I watched all of Voyager when it was new, but I have forgotten so much. I hardly remembered that Q was even in it.
@71/Christopher: I take it that this means “no”.
@25 – Devin Smith: Light a world on fire?!?! Do you realize we’re talking about STAR TREK here?
Of course Voyager’s problems with sterotyping of Native Americans for Chakotay weren’t helped by the fact they hired Jamake Highwater, also known as Jackie Marks, a man who fraudulently claimed Cherokee heritage and built a career on spreading lies, half truths and fantasies about Native American cultures. (Xxxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater).
Yeah, “Highwater” was exposed in 1984, but he kept getting work as a “Native American consultant,” including for Voyager, which explains a lot about how ham-fisted their treatment of Chakotay was. After he died in 2001, his mendacity was completely exposed.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@72, Jana, certain scenes stick in my mind but I haven’t seen any Voyager in a long time myself.
@roxana: I remember Janeway’s holo-boyfriend, but not the Q episodes. Probably because I never cared much for Q.
Jana, me neither. I seem to recall a distinctly unamused Janeway unwillingly sharing a bubble bath with Q. No wonder Chakotay was disturbed!
A belated response, here.
Quoth fullyfunctional: “As for Paris’s holodeck fantasy being creepy, whatever. Maybe so, but I’ll bet there aren’t many of us who, if able to create that sort of environment for ourselves, wouldn’t go a little over the top in programming the libido of our creations.”
Yes, but I wouldn’t then invite my friends to watch…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Is there some reason they don’t just grow coffee beans in the hydroponics bay?
@80/karey: Presumably the airponics bay was reserved for essential foodstuffs. And yes, cue the jokes about coffee being essential.
In a way, I miss the early days of the EMH being treated with casual indifference, only because Robert Picardo plays cranky pretty damn well. It could of become a running gag throughout the series and perhaps produced more comedy gold like the scene on the viewscreen in this episode. This is Star Trek, however, and I understand it wouldn’t do to have the EMH treated that way for 7 seasons. Regardless of my thoughts on that, Robert Picardo was still a highlight of the show throughout.