“The 37’s”
Written by Jeri Taylor & Brannon Braga
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 2, Episode 1
Production episode 120
Original air date: August 28, 1995
Stardate: 48975.1
Captain’s log. Kim picks up traces of rust, which is unusual to say the least. They track it to a 1936 pickup truck that’s inexplicably floating in space. Paris recognizes the make and model, as he has a heretofore unknown and plot-convenient love of old vehicles.
They pull the truck on board, and Paris manages to start it up, er, somehow (gas would bubble off in a vacuum, but never mind). The truck’s AM radio picks up an SOS on a radio frequency, which Kim is able to track to a planet that has some manner of technobabble interference that prevents transporters, and is too dangerous for something as small as a shuttlecraft to fly through. But Voyager itself can handle it, so they land the ship, thus blowing the budget for the entire episode for the sake of a glory F/X shot.
They arrive on the planet, which is sunny and bright and clear and gives no indication of any kind of atmospheric interference. They explore the surface, and find a Lockheed L-10 Electra, which is the source of the SOS. Janeway is skeptical that the battery on the plane is still running, and sure enough, it’s hooked up to a power source of alien design.
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The away team also finds a cavern that is filled with what Torres recognizes as cryostasis chambers. Many of them are empty, but there are eight occupied ones, all humans who look like they come from the early twentieth century—the same era as both the truck and the airplane. One of them is wearing a nametag that reads, “A. EARHART,” and Janeway realizes that she’s just solved a very old mystery.
Returning to Voyager, Janeway briefs the crew on Amelia Earhart, one of the first female aviators, and who went missing along with her navigator while trying to circumnavigate the globe in a Lockheed L-10 Electra. Neither the bodies nor the wreckage were ever found, and lots of outlandish theories propagated—including the apparently correct one that they were abducted by aliens.
Because the method by which they were abducted and taken aaaaaaaaaaallllllllll the way to the Delta Quadrant might give them a way home, Janeway decides to awaken the eight humans, but only with human crew (the exception being Kes, who can hide her funky ears, who’s needed to check their medical status).
The revived humans are all very confused, because for them, 1937 was an hour ago. The last thing any of them remember is being taken away, and the next thing they know, they’re facing the Voyager away team. One of the humans is a Japanese soldier, whom they disarm, but Earhart’s navigator, Fred Noonan, is also armed, and he holds the away team hostage with his revolver, wanting answers.
Janeway patiently explains the reality of the situation, which they all have trouble believing—except for Earhart, who starts to believe it, especially when Janeway reveals that it’s generally believed that she and Noonan were on a secret mission for the government. Earhart thought nobody knew about that, but for Janeway, it’s ancient history.
Eventually, Earhart is convinced to let the away team take them to their ship.
Meanwhile, Chakotay and Tuvok lead a security detail to attempt a rescue, but they’re ambushed. Janeway takes Earhart and Noonan into that same ambush, but they manage to turn the tables on their attackers—
—who turn out to be humans! And they’re surprised to see that the away team aren’t Briori.
Eventually they figure it all out. The humans who ambushed them—one of whom is named John Evansville—are descendants of the people in the empty stasis chambers. The Briori apparently abducted more than 300 people from Earth in 1937 and made them slave labor. For whatever reason, Earhart, Noonan, and the others were never taken out of stasis, and after the slaves revolted and got rid of the Briori, they kept “the 37s” in a shrine as monuments to their ancestors who were enslaved. They also thought they were dead, and Evansville is rather stunned to realize they could be so easily revived. Earhart’s SOS signal was also preserved as a monument to the 37’s, hence the alien generator attached to the Electra.
Noonan was wounded in the firefight. He’s brought to Voyager where, convinced he’s going to die, he declares his unrequited love for Earhart. He never said anything because she was married. (Of course, her husband, George P. Putnam, has been dead for 421 years, so not really an issue at this point.) The EMH then cures him in seven seconds flat—it would’ve been two seconds flat, but Noonan has so much alcohol in his blood it inhibited the medical tools. Once he realizes he’s going to live, an embarrassed Noonan begs Earhart to forget everything he said.
Evansville offers to show off the city they’ve built since getting rid of the Briori. The crew and the 37’s are quite impressed, and we have to take their word for it, because they blew the budget on landing the ship, so we don’t get to see the city. At all. Not even a little bit.
Evansville offers homes for anyone who wants to stay. Unfortunately, whatever technology the Briori used to bring them here from Earth was lost during the slave revolts that gave the humans their freedom.
Janeway is torn—she doesn’t want to force anyone to stay on board, but they can’t afford to lose too many crew members. She says that anyone who wants to stay on the planet should assemble in the cargo bay. She and Chakotay head there to find it empty, to the surprise of her, Chakotay, and the viewership.
An even bigger surprise is that all the 37’s want to stay there also. So they leave the 37’s behind and head back toward home.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway totally nerds out over getting to meet Earhart, and it’s kind of adorable.
Forever an ensign. Kim talks with Torres about the possibility of staying. He says he’s iffy on spending the rest of his life on a starship.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH wows Earhart and Noonan with the capabilities of twenty-fourth-century medicine, snarking away the whole time, of course.
Everyone comes to Neelix’s. Neelix does the best he can to prepare familiar dishes for the 37’s in his galley. He also assures them that he’s staying on Voyager because Janeway would be lost without him.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Noonan has had the hots for Earhart all this time, but never said anything out of deference to her marriage to Putnam (who promoted much of Earhart’s aviation work).
Do it.
“Captain, I think I should tell you I’ve never actually landed a starship before.”
“That’s all right, Lieutenant, neither have I.”
–Paris expressing reservations and Janeway failing to reassure him.
Welcome aboard. It’s Great Character Actor Theatre in this one, as we have Mel Winkler as Hayes, James Saito as Nogami, John Rubinstein as Evansville, and the late great David Graf as Noonan. Graf will later appear as the snotty Klingon Leskit in DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire,” and Rubinstein will appear twice on Enterprise as a Mazerite (“Fallen Hero”) and a Vulcan (“Awakening” and “Kir’Shara“).
But the big guest is Sharon Lawrence, taking a break from her career-making role on NYPD Blue as Sylvia Costas to play Amelia Earhart.
Trivial matters: Originally intended to be the first-season finale, it was instead shifted to the second-season premiere. Since there were no plans to do a season-spanning cliffhanger, this decision didn’t affect things overmuch, though it did leave the first season ending with a rather wimpy episode, all things considered.
Voyager landing was part of the conception of the show from the beginning, but the opportunity to show it didn’t present itself until this episode. Unlike the Enterprise-D’s saucer separation, which was almost forgotten about over the course of TNG, Voyager’s landing capabilities will be returned to several times.
The planet scenes in the episode were filmed in Bronson Canyon, a location used many times by the original series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager once before as well, in “State of Flux.” It will be used thrice more on Trek, once on DS9, once on Voyager, and once on Enterprise.
This is the first of four episodes directed by James L. Conway, a Trek veteran who would eventually helm eighteen Trek episodes, including DS9‘s “The Way of the Warrior” and Enterprise‘s pilot “Broken Bow.”
It’s established that Voyager had a crew complement of 154 at the end of “Caretaker,” since Janeway says there are 152 people on board, and they’ve lost Seska and Durst in the interim.
Janeway and Chakotay reference both Jarvin (from “Parallax“) and Baxter (from “Eye of the Needle“), though neither appears.
Set a course for home. “I think you’ll find that’s manure.” Let’s see, what is there to like about the episode? Well, Sharon Lawrence is fantastic as Earhart. She does a wonderful job embodying the great aviator, and Kate Mulgrew is equally fantastic as a Janeway who is totally fangoobering her.
And Voyager landing is a cool-looking effect.
Yeah, that’s about it. This would’ve made a terrible season finale and it’s an even worse season opener, just a spectacularly dumb and unconvincing and idiotic episode from ground up and from the roof on down the other side.
Let’s start with the very opening, where it seems like Paris is the only one who recognizes the truck. Yeah, okay, it’s 400 years old, but you know what? If I saw a horse-drawn carriage from the late 1600s, I’d know what it was when I saw it.
Worse, the truck’s reason for being in space is never ever explained. Never mind that, if it’s been in the low-pressure vacuum of space for any length of time, the gas would be long gone, so it shouldn’t start, how the hell did it get there?
The middle part of the episode is a warmed-over rehash of TNG’s “The Neutral Zone,” with only two elements that make it stand out and improve on that 1988 episode: the aforementioned fangoobering and that Lawrence, David Graf, James Saito, and Mel Winkler are all really really really good actors.
Then the ambush happens and it all goes to hell. After the initial misunderstanding, everyone’s friends, and John Evansville offers to show off the wonderful city—which we never get to see. The end of the episode sets up this difficult choice the crew and the 37’s must make, but it’s hard to invest in the choice, because we don’t see any of the city. We don’t even get the vaguest hint.
And the reason why we don’t get a hint? Because they blew the budget on showing the ship land—which was completely unnecessary. That Voyager lands is meaningless to the storyline, and if Voyager was in orbit, and they used transporters—or, if they wanted the transporters not to work so the hostage situation would be convincing, have the atmospheric interference mess with transporters and just use shuttlecraft—it wouldn’t have changed the story one iota.
To make matters worse, we’re given no good visual reason for it. The ship lands in a bright, sunny clearing in beautiful weather. Supposedly the interference was so great that shuttlecraft couldn’t even be risked, and I’m expecting something like Galorndon Core or the Mab-Bu VI moon or some other storm-wracked planet, but no, we get a sunny southern California location that makes the need for landing even less convincing than it already is.
That production decision, to do the cool ship-landing bit, helps ruin the episode because we have absolutely no context for the crew’s decision-making process.
Then, to make matters worse, the script provides us with the most unconvincing possible permutation: every one of the 152 people on Voyager stay on the ship and all the 37’s stay on the planet. I didn’t buy that for a single, solitary microsecond.
Having all the 37’s remain makes even less sense. Keeping in mind that this is an Amelia Earhart whose transatlantic flight was only five minutes ago subjectively speaking, there is absolutely no way, none, that she would stay on the planet when the alternative is to get to fly through space in a spaceship. This is one of the pioneers of air travel at the height of her career as an aviator and there is no way, none, that she would make any other decision than to join Voyager.
But she couldn’t because the actor playing her had another gig. Sigh.
While the script was done in by production decisions, it wasn’t all that to begin with. Why were those last few 37’s never taken out of stasis? How did the truck wind up in space? Why did the truck still function? How did 300 people from 1937 manage to dope out advanced technology enough to evolve to a community of 100,000, especially since 300 isn’t enough of a diverse gene pool to avoid genetic stochastic drift? This was a point that was understood by a truly terrible TNG episode, “Up the Long Ladder,” so it’s even more embarrassing that “The 37’s” doesn’t get that right. (Then again, in “Up the Long Ladder,” Picard and Riker knew what an SOS was, too…)
And ugh, that ending. I get what they were going for, to end the first season (or start the second season, as it wound up being instead) with an inspiring choice showing the crew’s unity in trying to get home. But I just didn’t buy it. Even the incredibly muted version of the conflict between Starfleet and Maquis that we’ve had so far indicates that at least some of the 150-odd people left would want to say “fuck it” and stay on this nifty planet with this great community of people on this technological marvel of a world (that we only see three members of and none of those technological marvels, but whatever).
Plus, Earhart would definitely have come along for the ride back to the Alpha Quadrant. But external circumstances dictated it, just like they did everything else, and they served to utterly ruin what could’ve been a great episode. I mean, you’ve got Mulgrew and Lawrence being brilliant across from each other, and this is the best script you can give them?
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be contributing to three Crazy 8 Press anthologies later this year: Bad Ass Moms, edited by Mary Fan, a collection of short stories about mothers you don’t mess with; ZLONK! ZOK! ZOWIE! The Subterranean Blue Grotto Guide to Batman ’66—Season One, edited by Jim Beard, with Rich Handley, a collection of essays about the first season of the Adam West TV series; and the third volume of the shared-world anthology series Pangaea, edited by Michael Jan Friedman, a collection of stories about an alternate Earth where there was only ever one continent.
Also: The electrolyte in the battery would have boiled off. The lubricants would also have become solids. Seals would have badly deteriorated. Tires would be flat, at best.
What they should’ve done was stayed on the planet, established it as a home base of operations, and used its technology to work on a way to establish long-range contact with the Federation, as well as using it as a support base for Voyager as it made sorties about the quadrant looking for cosmic shortcuts or long-range transportation technologies. It was just stupid to keep trudging along in one direction without any means of support or any fallback position. The first thing they should’ve done, as soon as it was feasible, was to make an alliance with a local power, secure their survival, and then work on finding a way home. And this was the perfect chance to do that.
At the very least, I thought the same thing that Keith did when I first saw the ending: No way would nobody decide to stay behind. That was as unrealistic as the rest.
Let’s see, what else could space have done to the truck? There’d probably be some micrometeorite punctures, at least erosion of the paint from interstellar dust. Exposure to centuries’ worth of cosmic radiation would probably have done some damage, though I’m not sure what.
As for how it got out there, I always assumed the Briori dumped it on the way back from Earth, though why they’d wait to do so until they were nearly home is beyond me. As is why they’d go clear to the opposite side of the galaxy for slaves to abduct instead of someplace closer to home.
@2 CLB, re you 1st paragraph: That would have been a cool show.
Many thanks to my wife, Wrenn, who is also a major car nut, who gave me chapter and verse on why the truck should never have started. I only mentioned a couple…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@2, CLB: Oh man. Don’t get me started on missed opportunities to keep the Voyager crew on a planet long-term. They almost did a whole season planet side, but we will get to those episodes eventually.
I don’t dislike this show because it isn’t good. I dislike it because it could have, and should have, been great.
@5, Perene
Isn’t that Voyager’s epitaph in a nutshell. An entire production team terrified of doing anything interesting or, worse, accidentally committing art.
I couldn’t remember this ep, but knew Amelia Earhart wouldn’t become a regular, so spent the whole time thinking “Great, they are going to kill Amelia Earhart”. There is just no frelling way she would have stayed on the planet.
And the SOS thing bugged me and bugs me even more after you reminded us that they recognized it in TNG…
“I think you’ll find that’s manure.”
And, rather ludicrously, Janeway takes a sniff and opines that she thinks it’s specifically horse manure. Starfleet scientists never cease to amaze me.
The whole first act is so frustrating because it’s completely irrelevant. A teaser where they heard the distress signal, went to check it out, and don’t land could replace the entire ponderous first act and leave time for the meaty issues raised by the last third of the episode. Granted, budget issues might have prevented them from showing the city, but having the characters discuss an interesting situation is free, so no excuse
Horse manure does have a very specific stench…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Totally disagree with this review. I found this episode was very good. It tapped into our characters even further giving more depth to some of them.
The episode was sort of like a TOS type episode about exploration. The landing of the ship was really cool. Something that we haven’t seen on Star Trek before.
The Janeway and Amelia Earhart scenes were so well written and acted. Two strong women.
In the UK this episode aired as the first season finale and it worked. And I think it works better as a finale than a premiere but it was a strong start to Season 2.
In concept, this was an interesting notion for an episode. In execution, however, it leaves much to be desired.
It feels like a bunch of disparate story ideas cobbled together. The end result is a rather talky episode that doesn’t really have a central narrative structure. First you get the floating car, then landing the ship (a full overblown set piece), then finding Earhart, then the botched rescue, and finally the big stay or go decision for the crew. No coherence. No unity.
It’s nice to get the Janeway/Earhart moments (and the actors really dive into it, making for some entertaining scenes at least), but moments alone can’t comprise an entire episode. You need a hook. A car floating in space is as compelling a hook as the giant cat in Catspaw. A nice visual with no story behind it.
It’s painfully obvious Voyager was never going to break the status quo. With a structure this rigid and beholden by network demands, I never expected for any of the crew to break rank and enter the cargo bay. Plus, it’s so cliché! The notion that everyone holds hands and follow the plot so seamlessly. Where’s the conflict? Which makes it all the more maddening is that the writers still tried to wring tension out of nothing, making for a pointless exercise.
You want this kind of plot done right? Look at Babylon 5. Midway through season 3, Sheridan breaks from the Earth Alliance, in response to the government’s bombing of Mars, and orders the crew to battle stations against Earth ships! But then he announced if any of crew were uncomfortable in following those orders, they were free to leave their posts without reprimand! The result: two crewmen left the command center. At least someone showed dissent.
As for Voyager, the ship landing VFX was nice for its time, but even more drawn out than the ENT-D’s first saucer separation (at least Farpoint provided actual plot reasons for separating, and a good Riker/Data character beat during the reconnecting).
In a way, this was the make or break moment for Voyager. Even more so than Eye of the Needle, it was evident the show wasn’t going to break from the weekly adventures and try something new.
Paris recognizes the make and model, as he has a heretofore unknown and plot-convenient love of old vehicles.
@krad: I’d argue this is the one 20th Century passion that makes sense for Paris as a character. A pilot enjoying old cars is something at least plausible. Certainly more so than his later passions which are a lot more plot-convenient (sailing, anyone?).
@9/krad: Scent compounds tend to be volatile and easily vaporized (which stands to reason), so presumably they would’ve long since evaporated in vacuum along with the gasoline, moisture, etc. I doubt what remained would have any significant scent.
What I remember most about this episode was disappointment. Voyager was doing an episode about a personal hero of mine and they turned it into this pile of horse manure?
Nit-picky detail complaint: If Fred Noonan was Earhart’s co-pilot, and she’s still in her flight uniform (presumably being placed in hibernation immediately after the abduction) why is Noonan in a suit and a tie?
Also, wasn’t there an SNL Star Trek skit with Belushi as Captain Kirk and the Enterprise being chased through space by a Chevy or something like that? (It was about the cancellation). I flashed on that the minute I saw the pickup truck in space.
Something I’ve noticed as I’ve been watching episodes. What’s up with the bad wigs? Lawrence’s Amelia wig was pretty distracting. I’ve more or less become accustomed to Kes’ awful wig, but it still registers in my mind the first time she pops up on screen. Mulgrew’s, at least, looks pretty natural. I’m not sure how much is her real hair.
@14/JohnC: Yes, the classic “The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise” sketch. Which I’m pretty sure is the source of the meme of McCoy saying “Dammit,” since that’s something he’d never have been allowed to say in the original show.
@15/Austin: Mulgrew’s hair was short, so Janeway’s long hair was either a full wig or extensions, I’m not sure which. (We’ll see an oddity in a few episodes when Janeway’s hair goes short for one episode in “Parturition” and then is magically long again the next week.)
@14 John C: Wow, this is spooky. Like, really spooky. I was literally just scrolling on Facebook right now and there was a suggested post from a website that posted the exact SNL skit you referenced. This is some 1984 stuff right here…wow.
This is the episode that immediately comes to mind when I think of Voyager… and how terrible it is.
Among the show’s sins is that it seems to me that they were trying to resurrect The Original Series’ sense of weirdness and wide-open exploration, but that they didn’t understand that TOS’ weirdness worked (often) because it was in the service of ideas (usually). So in this case we have a Ford truck floating in space because it’s weird… kind of like Abraham Lincoln floating in space. And we have Captain Janeway meeting a legendary real-world historical figure (Amelia Earhart)… kind of like Captain Kirk meeting a real historical figure (Abraham Lincoln).
The problem here is, regardless of whether you think “The Savage Curtain” works on any level or falls flat on its face, you can’t accuse that episode of not having ideas it wants to grapple with. “Savage Curtain” came out during the Vietnam War, in the midst of protests of that war, and just a few years after the United States made an extremely large deal out of the American Civil War centennial. The necessity of violence (or lack thereof), the use of force, the limits of pacifism (if any), the iconic role of Lincoln as the savior of a once-divided country now divided again–these were salient issues in 1969 and these were issues the episode wants to prod and explore. (Possibly unsuccessfully. Or clumsily. Or ineffectually. That’s a separate conversation. Point is the episode is trying)
“The 37’s” just offers up the weirdness but what is it trying to grapple with? I’ll be damned if I know. It’s aping “The Savage Curtain,” but for no other reason, as far as I can tell, than the show’s creatives remember how strange it was that time the Enterprise encountered a floating Abraham Lincoln in space and then Kirk and Spock got to hang out with him. One can imagine someone in the writer’s room making exactly that pitch: “What if Voyager meets someone or something floating in space that shouldn’t be there, like when the Enterprise found a floating Abe Lincoln? Speaking of, what if Janeway met a famous historic person who inspired her?” One can also imagine a different hour of television developing from the (borrowed) premise, something grappling with gender issues in the workplace or the equal treatment of women in male-dominated fields or cultures, but Voyager isn’t going there: “The 37’s” is just “Here’s a thing that happened before the credits, and then this happened, and then this other thing happened, and then when everything happened things went back to the way they were and it was like nothing had happened.”
And that’s pretty much the entire frickin’ show, at least up to the point I’ve gotten to in my own personal watch/rewatch (I’m struggling through season 3 now). I like most of the characters (okay, I may never like Neelix), I like all of the cast (it’s not Ethan Phillips’s fault Neelix is terrible). But the show seems dead set on setting up some interesting premise or another at the beginning of an episode (or at the beginning of the series) and then just leaving those ideas on the table untouched while one episode after another wanders off into the woods and dies.
Sorry to jump ahead but, like Eric, I’m binge-watching ahead and I’m in the middle of season 3 now. This is my first time through this series- I find myself having to rethink my criticism of neelix. I thought for sure that he would be unwatchable throughout, but to be honest the character is growing on me. Yes there are still episodes where his morale officer schtick grates on me, but by and large he’s a valuable member of the crew, takes his duties seriously, and, with the exception of one episode where he loses his way trying to justify his continued usefulness to Janeway, he’s fiercely loyal.
Sorry for the aside, just suggesting that if there’s anyone else out there who hasn’t watched the series before and finds neelix to be unbearable this early on, he gets better. In my opinion, anyway. I got his back. :)
@9
As someone who spent two summers working on a horse ranch, I can confirm this.
@19: Neelix improves considerably over the show’s run. Once Kes breaks up with him, he has no reason to fall back on nurturing that petty jealousy that defined much of him during those first two seasons. That’s what made him and aspects of that relationship unappealing (I didn’t have a problem with any perceived age difference).
Three “d’oh”‘s about this episode:
The truck in space just to mock SNL mocking TOS.
The truck starting after floating through space for 400 years, all to set up a moment where Tuvok whips out his phaser as everybody else dives for cover when the truck backfires.
The landing sequence being used with the only justifiable reason being so Janeway and Earhart can talk about Amelia “learning to fly that ship” in Voyager’s shadow…which there’s no way in Hell, on Earth, or on an alien planet on the other side of the galaxy that AMELIA FREAKIN’ EARHART would ever decline a chance to do.
But despite all of this–I really love this episode! I can’t put into words why, but I just do!!
@21,
Yeah, and one thing they get right with Neelix later on was “Fair Trade”. I always did like how reality ensued at that point in the series with Voyager leaving Kazon space behind for good and Neelix’s anxiety that he would not longer be valuable to the crew with his knowledge basically defunct.
@2 CLB Your first paragraph summarizes best what could have – should have – been done with this episode.
@14 John C It’s not nit-picky to wonder why Fred Noonan would be in a suit…it’s a damn good question. We all wondered why too. “If Earhart is in her flight suit, why wouldn’t Noonan be also?” It didn’t make sense to us either that he wasn’t.
My goodness, but what a waste of a terrific group of actors. They each do great work here as their characters, but the episode is a gigantic POS. I thought the starship landing was cool too, but I guess our rewatcher is right to point out that it isn’t integral to the plot here. And. No. Effin. WAY! does Earhart chose to remain….that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense either. It’s also really frustrating that we never get so much as a glimpse as to what developments the humans on this planet have accomplished, so when none of the Voyager crew don’t choose to stay behind – who cares??? Because we’ve not seen any of the planet other the immediate area where the starship landed, that appears to be the right decision. So many opportunities lost here – and so many undeveloped storylines. Just awful.
As I mentioned in the last thread, I haven’t seen this one in years because I didn’t know it was up next, so I’m talking from memory. So yes, to be this is the first season finale, designed to be the one where the crew resolve to continue the adventure and fly off into the sunset until autumn. (And I’ve banged on about the issue of Janeway’s hair enough so I’ll save that until we actually get to the episodes.)
I’m aware it has a reputation on a par with “Spock’s Brain” and I’m also aware that I’ve rather enjoyed it in the past. I don’t think I was aware of who Amelia Earhart was beyond the name when I first watched it, so possibly the lack of preconceptions helped. I do agree with many of the points of the review though. It is convenient that all the crew stay on the ship and all the 37s stay on the planet. This thing happens too much, you very rarely get a dissenting or individual voice in Star Trek. (There’s a terrible example at the end of DS9’s “Paradise” which doesn’t even have the excuse of wanting to maintain the status quo: When that one guy who’s elected himself spokesman announces that they’re all staying, realistically you’d have someone stick their hand up and go “Y’know, I’m fed up of living in a mud hut and watching everyone die of tetanus and diptheria, I’d quite like to go home and see my family and friends again.”)
I kind of assumed that the Biori brought them there with some sort of transporter: We’re told the truck belongs to the farmer guy, so presumably they picked that up with him and then set it adrift. One thing I’ve always been rather impressed by is that you’ve got what’s basically a WW2 Japanese soldier there (Japan were at war from 1936, remember!) and he’s written as a sympathetic character when the cliché would be to make him a dangerous fanatic.
And honestly, any episode that has that scene where Noonan is making a heartfelt “deathbed” confession only for the Doctor to cheerily go “All done, you’re fine” can’t be all bad.
First time Torres is left in command of the ship, albeit while it’s grounded. I’ll let you know if I have any more thoughts once I’ve watched it.
I can sort of see the Starfleet personnel remaining on board. They joined Starfleet to travel to other worlds. The fact that none of the Maquis chose to stay behind was odd, but barely believable if you assume they all had family back home. What got me is that NONE of the 37s planet wanted to go with Voyager. Not one of 100,000 people looked at their planet and said, “Screw this grocery store job; I wanna see SPACE!”?
As you said, though. TV logic.
This episode frustrated me when I first watched it at 15, and does so every time I watched it. Voyager lands on a planet for some reason, and we meet Amelia Earhart. That’s it. I remember thinking in 1995, “Amelia Earhart would pass on a chance to fly a spaceship? No way!” I knew that happened at the time because Sharon Lawrence was on NYPD Blue, so all I could think was, what was the point of this episode? To see Voyager land? Who cares? I mean it looked great, but really, so what? Give me some story.
And the story we get is a confused mess, ruined by the need to show Voyager land. I would much rather had seen the cities and met some of the inhabitants than see Voyager land.
The episode is saved from being unwatchable by Kate Mulgrew and Sharon Lawrence and the other guest actors. Otherwise it’s an awful mess.
Well, I did love the scene where Earhart asks Tom, “How fast?” and he goes, “Warp 9.9… or about three billion miles per second”… pretty sure he understated it. But the rest of this episode … does not hold up in the least.
Though it did give us our favorite Sonnenbergh meme: “Voyager, the ship with the chief engineer that can’t detect crap with a tricorder”…
@2 – “It was just stupid to keep trudging along in one direction without any means of support or any fallback position. “
But it wasn’t stupid since they did get home in 1/10th the time estimated in Caretaker.
As far as the truck goes, here’s a prediction of Musk’s space Tesla:
“According to chemist William Carroll, solar radiation, cosmic radiation, and micrometeoroid impacts will structurally damage the car over time. Radiation will eventually break down any material with carbon–carbon bonds, including carbon fiber parts. Tires, paint, plastic and leather might last only about a year, while carbon fiber parts will last considerably longer. Eventually, only the aluminum frame, inert metals, and glass not shattered by meteoroids will remain”
More Star Trek “science”.
What a waste of the guest cast.
And how many alien contacts with pre warp drive Earth does this make? And Voyager and Enterprise do even more.
Bleck.
I remember this episode as being just okay. Not the worst, that will always be “Threshold” but not particularly good. Meeting Amelia Earhart was a good hook, but as others have said, she wouldn’t have stayed on the planet and she would have loved to fly a starship. Thank Heavens better stuff was coming.
Now, as far as Neelix, I always liked the character. I never liked Kes and I thought their so called romance was odd, but Neelix was a good example of a survivor doing what was necessary to get by, and determined to enjoy life even though he had suffered great loss.
You all are forgetting something about the truck. Folks, it’s built Ford tough.
@25/cap-mjb: “(Japan were at war from 1936, remember!)”
From 1931 if you start with their conquest of Manchuria.
@28/wizardofwoz: ““Warp 9.9… or about three billion miles per second”… pretty sure he understated it.”
Well, yes and no. Compared to the figure in the warp chart printed in the technical manuals provided to show writers, he overstated it by a factor of two or more. But on the other hand, those published charts routinely understated the velocities by a great deal compared to what was actually in the episodes.
@@@@@19. fullyfunctional
Yes, Nelix and Kes was a bad idea from the beginning. But besides that, his character developed nicely. You are in for a few good laughs when you hit season 7 – Prophecy. Nelix’s lust for the Klingon officer, Ch’Rega.
I think there’s an interesting comparison to be had with Farscape from just a couple years later. Also had a “lost ship traveling home” narrative and was very monster-of-the-week but was also strictly serialized. Every episode has major or minor changes that always propagate into future episodes.
Decades ago when I would be waiting in line, I’d love reading the headlines of the National Enquirer. The original tabloid magazine. They had the headlines and picture that they found a pick up truck in space. An it was still running. I wonder if someone got the idea from that article.
As far as Amelia Earhart goes, I could see her staying on the planet. She would have been a small fish in a big ocean that was 400 years more advanced then she was. On the planet she was probably with her peers and had the opportunity to be a somebody. Just like she wanted to be in her previous existence.
@34/Ryan H: Well, I wouldn’t say Farscape was “strictly” serialized. It had a healthy mix of episodic and serial elements; each episode mostly told its own distinct story with a beginning and end, but their events had an impact on what followed. People these days call that “serialization,” but it’s actually continuity. Serialization is when a single plot is spread out across multiple episodes, where any single adventure or crisis takes several installments to come to a resolution. That’s different from episodic-with-continuity storytelling, where a single adventure or crisis is resolved within a single installment, but has consequences that shape subsequent adventures or crises. Farscape did have some serial arcs from time to time, more so as it went on, but it also had plenty of one-and-done plots that simply had an impact on later continuity. Often it was its character arcs that were serialized while the episodic plots still came and went.
And I’m constantly bewildered by the desire people have to reduce this to a binary choice between episodic and serial. Most series fiction is a mix of the two in different ratios, and I believe it’s better that way than it is to hew strictly to one or the other. It’s good for each installment to tell a unified story with a real resolution, and it’s good for those stories to have a lasting impact on the characters and the world. We achieved that healthy middle ground in the ’90s and ’00s, but these days the pendulum has swung way too far toward the serial end.
I liked this episode despite it making no real sense. Janeway geeking out over Earheart is a lot of fun and there’s plenty of other nice moments. Even the idiotic truck scene is fun despite being totally implausible.
So, finally got around to watching this. And I think I enjoyed it more than Keith did, although I accept all (or at least most) of his criticisms are valid. The beginning of the episode sets up an intriguing mystery, although I accept that many of the questions don’t seem to be answered. The Briori are just a McGuffin to get the fun started and we’re given no explanation for why they were interested in this planet, why they abducted humans from the other side of the galaxy to function as slaves there and why they abandoned it after a revolt from a few hundred slaves. (Maybe they were a small mining consortium, rather than representative of the whole species, and either they were all killed in the revolt or they didn’t have the resources to reconquer the planet? Maybe the humans left in stasis were there as potential replacements if the workforce was depleted?)
I don’t object to the crew’s reaction to the truck: It’s only really Harry Kim thinking it’s a hovercar that crosses the line into boneheadedness. Otherwise, they all quickly recognise it as an ancient Earth vehicle, but only someone who’s studied the era thoroughly would recognise the exact type and know who to operate it. I’m not even sure that someone born in the 21st century would be able to start a 1930s vehicle easily! (How many newly-qualified drivers know how to operate a choke?) It was dumb of Paris to start it in a basically enclosed space though, they’re lucky they didn’t all get carbon monoxide poisoning. (Tuvok mentions increasing the ventilation, but they’d probably all be coughing by then.)
Voyager’s crew put in a pretty poor showing letting themselves get taken hostage by Noonan: They’ve got him outgunned and it looked like Paris and Kim could have stunned him without much difficulty, but they just let their weapons get taken without a word. Maybe the idea was that they didn’t want to appear hostile (although Paris suggests jumping him a couple of scenes later), or they were worried he could shoot Janeway before losing consciousness, but ideally it needed Janeway to tell them not to resist, or at least an extra beat of indecision from them, because the way it’s shot/edited just makes them look ineffective. I was amused at Paris volunteering Kes to stay with him though. I didn’t realise Janeway outright gave the date as 2371 (as she did in “Eye of the Needle”), more evidence that this should be a Season One episode.
I mentioned a couple of threads back that the show ended the first season (or intended to) not with Janeway and Chakotay realising they’re on the same side but realising the rest of the crew are behind them. But while that empty cargo bay scene is cheesy as heck, I’d forgotten about the scene in the ready room which is the real character work, as Janeway ponders for perhaps the first time whether her desire to get the crew home is just a personal quest that she’s dragged the rest of the crew on, and Chakotay makes it clear that it’s what he wants too. And I forgot too that nice moment on the bridge at the end where Janeway looks at each of her senior staff in turn (Paris first, obvs), knowing that they’re behind her. So…yeah, thumbs up.
This episode could have been a game changer. Here are thousands of earth humans with a magical city in Delta quadrant, as displaced as Voyager but adapted and settled. They could have spent a whole season exploring this culture and had the crew start to question the sense of their quixotic quest to ‘go home’. Have the alien tech still extant but over even 24th century heads – maybe. A possible alternative to paddling along at warp. Some of the crew settles in the city. Some city dwellers take their places aboard Voyager which begins to seriously explore Delta quadrant using the planet as a base. People come and go. Friends and enemies are made. They get their hopes raised and crushed as the back engineering project toodles along. Maybe the Briori come back. All kinds of stories and the status quo can go hang.
This episode could have been a game changer. Here are thousands of earth humans with a magical city in Delta quadrant, as displaced as Voyager but adapted and settled. They could have spent a whole season exploring this culture and had the crew start to question the sense of their quixotic quest to ‘go home’. Have the alien tech still extant but over even 24th century heads – maybe. A possible alternative to paddling along at warp. Some of the crew settles in the city. Some city dwellers take their places aboard Voyager which begins to seriously explore Delta quadrant using the planet as a base. People come and go. Friends and enemies are made. They get their hopes raised and crushed as the back engineering project toodles along. Maybe the Briori come back. All kinds of stories and the status quo can go hang.
@40, Yes, and at that point the show could have used a soft reboot as the original Starfleet vs. Maquis (not to mention the Kazon) plot thread was going nowhere and on the verge of being forgotten. The only drawback was that the producers eventually wanted to bring the Borg back and I’m not sure how that would fit with more sedentary protagonists. I guess they could have gone into Battlestar Galactica mode.
BTW that is so not Amelia Earhart’s hair. It needs to be shorter, closer to the head.
Amelia was very much a media creation. She was a genuine Aviatrix but it was her long lean resemblance to Charles Lindbergh that caused her to stand out among other female pilots and a clever publicity campaign kept her in the public eye.
@43/roxana: She’d been in stasis for centuries. Maybe her metabolism was just really, really slowed rather than completely stopped, and her hair grew out a bit.
I’ll go with that
CLB.
This episode reminded me that as much as I love ALL the incarnations of Trek, I realize there are a couple of things I have to remind myself about when I get too picky about the science vs the storytelling:
First, I have to remember that the shows were done a number of years ago & our knowledge of the universe has since increased. So things that may seem obvious (or ridiculous) now, would have been more acceptable to a general audience back then.
Second, the increased knowledge of science & the universe is more accessible to the public-at-large than ever before, so our expectations are higher. I remember back in school debating with my friends which was better: Star Trek or Lost in Space. LIS was campy space fantasy & Trek was science fiction. Since then, I’ve met people who didn’t experience TOS when it was new (or launched in syndication) who laugh at some of the science. I completely understand their POV, but that was ALL we had! It was the best “serious” sci-fi on tv for a long time and set a standard for everyone trying to do something similar. I try keep in mind when it was made, what science was available & understandable to a general audience and what the end goal was: to entertain! And I find all Trek to be first & foremost, entertaining!
PS–that is not an excuse, however, for BAD storytelling.
PPS–and if I’m being honest, I still love the original Lost in Space too! “Danger Will Robinson!”
@37/CLB “And I’m constantly bewildered by the desire people have to reduce this to a binary choice between episodic and serial. Most series fiction is a mix of the two in different ratios, and I believe it’s better that way than it is to hew strictly to one or the other. It’s good for each installment to tell a unified story with a real resolution, and it’s good for those stories to have a lasting impact on the characters and the world. We achieved that healthy middle ground in the ’90s and ’00s, but these days the pendulum has swung way too far toward the serial end.”
Amen!!
@44 – But Fred didn’t even have a 5 o’clock shadow.
Question, do the borg get the 37’s?
My bf and I recently watched this one and decided it would’ve made more sense as a two-parter. In that case, they could’ve shown the city. They could’ve done a lot of character development with the crew deciding whether to stay or leave. They could’ve shown conflict between the 37s themselves – I find it hard to believe a Japanese military officer of the era would be so complacent when confronted with this situation. And while I don’t know anything about whether Earhart had opinions on racial matters, one of the 37s was black, providing an opportunity for conflict with the others, and of course, for typical Trek moralizing about how humanity moved beyond those issues (maybe even allowing them to add to Trek lore regarding the birth of the Federation before Enterprise came along to mess that up).
Instead this episode just exemplifies Voyager’s biggest problem. It could’ve been so much more than it was. It had all the pieces of something great, but nobody ever put them all together. It has some great individual episodes, but it’s a frustrating show that mashed the reset button and only paid lip service to its premise.
@@@@@treebee72
Beyond the TNG recognizing the SOS, I recall Uhura frequently checking ALL radio bands, including AM radio. It’s how they were able to contact the ship in Piece of the Action.
@51 – The same thing happened with V’Ger in TMP.
SPOCK: A simple binary code transmitted by carrier-wave signal. Radio.
KIRK: Radio?
I do agree that Amelia Earhart would have leaped at the chance to explore the Delta Quadrant (something her gender would never have permitted her in the days of the space race) because exploring the unknown would have appealed greatly to a daredevil like Earhart. Although I thought Sharon Lawrence Ok in the role, I liked Amy Adams more and thought she was the best thing about the terrible Night at the Museum 2. I’m sure she would have aced Earhart. The real black mark on The 37’s for me is John Rubinstein, an actor I’ve despised since Crazy Like a Fox and the people of this planet live in three cities rather than one Krad (but you were right when you said we never get to see all the “beautiful” things they’ve accomplished).
Even now a spin off for the star trek 37s would work.
I agree with basically everything here, but wanted to add . . . They don’t know what gasoline is?
I’m fairly certain that expressions like “out of gas” were used on all the Trek shows at some point. No way the notion of ‘gas’ as a way to power vehicles will be forgotten by those who fly one into space. Especially if it is a big cause of climate collapse, though I guess not all Trek includes that per se.
Sure they can talk about it awkwardly, call it “fossil fuels” or “gasoline fuel” or something, but at least some of them should know what it is. Let alone the laughable, almost straight up comedic, choice of Paris saying “We should find something called ‘keys’ here somewhere.”
A future without keys. Long security passcode authorizations, yes, but nothing in anyone’s lives on any part of Earth involves keys, and nobody reads old stories or watches old movies or … keys.