“The Disease”
Written by Kenneth Biller and Michael Taylor
Directed by David Livingston
Season 5, Episode 17
Production episode 210
Original air date: February 24, 1999
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Voyager has spent the last two weeks helping out the Varro. A very xenophobic people, they’ve been living on a massive, segmented generation ship for four centuries. They only very reluctantly have accepted Voyager’s offer of help because their warp drive is offline and they can’t fix it.
Kim and one of the Varro, an engineer named Derran Tal, have been carrying on an illicit affair. This is violation of both sides’ regulations. Starfleet requires medical clearance and approval from the captain before getting into a liaison with a new alien species (should this be called the Kirk Rule? the Riker Rule?), and the Varro avoid contact with any outsiders. While they’re making mad, passionate nookie-nookie, both their skins glow.
Even after two weeks, Jippeq, the leader of the Varro, has to be bullied by Janeway into giving her access to his ship’s systems in order to test the repairs to the warp drive. Voyager transfers antimatter to the Varro ship. Kim and Tal hear the warp engines firing up and hastily get dressed and go to the test, late and separately.
The test fails because there are microfractures in the hull. They’ll need to check every segment of the ship, which could take days, a notion that does not make Jippeq happy, but he has little choice.
Paris and Kim babble at each other when they’re back on Voyager. Paris has guessed that Kim and Tal are having a liaison, though Kim insists that he was late because he was checking a plasma manifold. Kim retires to his quarters, and immediately sends a secure communiqué to Tal. Tuvok detects the comm signal, but Paris is able to sabotage it and make it appear to be a sensor glitch.
Chakotay hands out assignments for how they’ll examine the Varro ship. While he’s briefing them, Paris tells Kim that he covered for him, but that the relationship is a bad idea.
Kim and Seven are assigned to astrometrics. While there, Kim queries Seven about love, which she analogizes to a disease. Then Kim’s epidermis starts to glow like it did while enwrapped in connubial bliss with Tal, and Seven urges him to report to sickbay.
The EMH can’t determine the cause, and is worried about an alien pathogen. It isn’t until the doctor starts talking about quarantines and medical lockdowns that Kim finally comes clean about his relationship with Tal. Janeway immediately summons Kim to the ready room for a dressing down. Kim insists it isn’t just an affair, he’s really in love with this woman. Janeway doesn’t particularly care, as the regulations don’t disappear because the participants are in love. This will mean a reprimand on Kim’s record. She also has to tell Jippeq.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
Neelix discovered some petty thievery of rations, which led him to in turn discover some clandestine mucking about with the environmental controls, with life support being supplied for a Jefferies Tube. He brings it to Tuvok, and the pair of them find a Varro stowaway in the Jefferies Tube in question. Chakotay and Tuvok interrogate him, but he says very little beyond that he’s part of a dissident movement that doesn’t agree with the Varro’s xenophobic ways. He asks for asylum, but won’t answer any substantive questions, suspicious as he is of Voyager’s crew being sympathetic to Jippeq.
Janeway tells Jippeq about the Kim-Tal affair, which appalls Jippeq, especially given the chemical bond that occurs when the Varro have sex. The withdrawal from that bond can be brutal.
Torres and Seven report that Voyager has the same microfractures on their hull, and both sets of microfractures have the same source: artificial parasites that were placed on the Varro ship’s hull, and which later migrated to Voyager. They are definitely manufactured and not natural, which means sabotage.
Kim goes on a mission to inspect one part of the Varro ship in a shuttlecraft, but he finishes early and transports Tal to join him for a joy ride. They’re interrupted by Tuvok, who arrives in the Delta Flyer to arrest Tal for sabotage. Turns out, she created the parasites.
She confesses, and also absolves Kim of any responsibility for the sabotage. She’s part of the dissident movement the stowaway mentioned, and it’s much larger than Jippeq is willing to admit. Her intent wasn’t destruction, but to weaken the bonds among the segments of the ship so each could choose their own path. She agrees to slow the parasites down, but it’s too late, the ship is destabilizing—and it’s doing it faster than the segments can be evacuated. Kim suggests extending Voyager’s structural integrity field to the Varro ship to buy time, though that risks Voyager also being destroyed. Janeway does it, and everyone is saved.
Janeway also orders Kim to be confined to sickbay and treated for the chemical dependency he’s developed on Tal, but he refuses (bitching Janeway out on the bridge before she drags his immature ass into the ready room).
The Varro ship splits into different segments, with some folks choosing a path different from Jippeq’s hard-lined xenophobia. Kim visits Tal one last time; she’s off to explore a binary star, while Voyager will be continuing to go home.
Kim continues to refuse the EMH’s treatment for the chemical dependency he now has on Tal. Janeway allows him to do so, but reminds him that he will get no consideration for dereliction of duty—he’s expected to do his job like usual, no matter how miserable he is. Later Seven visits Kim in the mess hall, thanking him for finishing some work for her (he needed the distraction) and saying that maybe love isn’t a disease if humans are willing to suffer this much for it. She also implores him to get well soon.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The Varro ship started out as a single vessel, but they added other ships onto it, becoming both a massive generational ship and also a Transformer…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway reminds Kim that pretty much everyone on board has lost a loved one just by being stranded here. (She doesn’t mention that Kim is one of those, since Libby seems to have been completely forgotten.) Kim counters by asking if Janeway could take a drug that would make her forget Mark, would she do so? Janeway’s silence in response speaks volumes.
Forever an ensign. In an episode that seems to be about the theme that Kim is no longer the green ensign fresh out of the Academy but a grown-ass adult who’s got five years of experience, Kim sure spends a lot of time acting like an immature twit.
Also the title of this section is perhaps at least in part due to the reprimand he receives in this episode, as that’s the kind of thing that can keep you from being promoted.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix does some investigating, and it actually turns up a stowaway. Tuvok is suitably impressed and disturbed.
Resistance is futile. Seven describes love thusly: “A series of biochemical responses that trigger an emotional cascade impairing normal functioning.” She’s not wrong…
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH goes into a tizzy when he can’t identify what’s wrong with Kim and then an even bigger tizzy when he finds out he knocked boots with a new and unexamined alien species.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. So you know how some people are described as glowing after they’ve had really good sex? The Varro literally glow after sex. Which, if nothing else, makes it hard to be discreet about the fact that you’re having sex…
Do it.
“You are such a lousy liar! Haven’t you learned anything from me after five years?”
–Paris to Kim.
Welcome aboard. Jippeq is automatically established as an unsympathetic character by the very act of casting Charles Rocket in the role, as Rocket has made a career out of playing smarmy assholes. And veteran genre actor Musetta Vander (you’ve probably seen her in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Highlander: The Series or Stargate SG-1 or Babylon 5 or Xena: Warrior Princess or where I just saw her last weekend in O, Brother, Where Art Thou?) plays Tal.
Also Christopher Liam Moore returns as the stowaway, having previously played a Voth in “Distant Origin.”
Trivial matters: The opening scene includes an early version of something that is now very commonplace: a virtual set. When we first see Tal’s quarters, it’s entirely a CGI creation, which then transitions to the real set they built.
Paris references three of Kim’s previous doomed infatuations: with Marayna in “Alter Ego,” with Seven of Nine shortly after she came on board, and with Megan Delaney (when Jenny Delaney was the one who was interested in him) in “Thirty Days.” Janeway refers to Mark Johnson, established as her fiancé in “Caretaker,” and who was established as being married to another woman now in “Hunters.”
Star Trek has done several other examples of generation ships, including the original series episodes “By Any Other Name” and “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,” the original series novel The Galactic Whirlpool by David Gerrold, the DS9 novel Objective: Bajor by John Peel, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella Orphans by Kevin Killiany, the Lower Decks episode “Moist Vessel,” and the Discovery episode “Forget Me Not.” For that matter, the origin given to the Romulan people in the tie-in fiction (The Romulan Way by Diane Duane & Peter Morwood, the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz) has a group of Vulcans on a generation ship that eventually settles on Romulus.
Set a course for home. “Seven of Nine told me love’s like a disease!” There are a couple of really good concepts here, and both are pretty thoroughly botched.
The whole setup of the Varro is a fascinating one. Usually a generation ship is set up in order to get people to a destination, but the Varro seem to be content to be a big-ass city in space and never arrive anywhere—or speak to anybody, or interact with anything. It’s a nice twist on the typical story. Usually when a generation ship makes no contact with anyone it’s because they forgot their original purpose (viz. “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” on the original series).
But the whole thing is really only given a minor surface treatment, with a frustrating promise of more that we don’t get to see. I was way more interested in learning more about the stowaway and the dissident movement than I was in the romance between Kim and Tal.
I mean, as one-episode romances one, this one does one of the more critical aspects right: Musetta Vander is (as always) radiant and magnificent and charming and delightful as Tal. You can totally see why Kim is so smitten with her.
What I have a harder time with is figuring out why she’s so smitten with him. On the one hand, it’s not a bad idea to establish that Kim isn’t the fresh-out-of-the-Academy ensign anymore. In fact it’s such a good idea that we’ve already seen it several times: in “The Killing Game” two-parter, in “Demon,” in “Timeless,” and here.
And I’d have a much easier time accepting it if Kim was acting in any way like a grownup, but instead he’s acting like a whiny teenager. Worse, he’s acting like the same kind of whiny teenager that he keeps defaulting to over and over again. This isn’t the first time he’s had a breakdown on the bridge, for starters, as he whined at Tuvok on the bridge in “Resolutions.” For that matter, he had an existential crisis regarding a love affair in “Alter Ego” (an event mentioned by Paris in this very episode). It doesn’t really count as character development if you keep treading the same ground over and over again.
One other thing I want to mention is the regulation that you need to check with your chief medical officer and your captain before you go boinking aliens. While that seems to fly in the face of the entire history of Star Trek in general and the characters of Jim Kirk, Will Riker, and Tom Paris in particular, it’s actually a very sensible and intelligent rule. There are lots of medical and political reasons why having sex with random aliens could be a spectacularly bad idea. The problem isn’t with the rule showing up in this episode, the problem is all the episodes it didn’t show up in…
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest work of fiction is due out this weekend: the short story “In Earth and Sky and Sea Strange Things There Be,” a story of Ayesha, the title character in H. Rider Haggard’s 19th-century novel She. The story is in Turning the Tied, a charity anthology published by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, benefitting the World Literacy Foundation, and features a bunch of stories about various public-domain characters by some of the finest tie-in writers in the biz, including fellow Trek scribes Rigel Ailur, Derek Tyler Attico, Greg Cox, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Robert Greenberger, Jeff Mariotte, Scott Pearson, Aaron Rosenberg, and Robert Vardeman. Full list of ordering links on the IAMTW web site.
“The problem isn’t with the rule showing up in this episode, the problem is all the episodes it didn’t show up in…”
That is precisely my problem with the episode. Where was this supposed Starfleet regulation in every previous episode about a romance with a guest alien? It’s a nice concept as a standalone story, but it’s a pretty massive retcon for the sake of the story, and that pulls me out of the story.
Nobody ever went wrong casting Musetta Vander as a romantic interest, though it is hard to believe Harry Kim is in her league. And “Musetta Vander” has got to be one of the most magnificent names ever bestowed upon anyone.
Also the title of this section is perhaps at least in part due to the reprimand he receives in this episode, as that’s the kind of thing that can keep you from being promoted.
The reprimand shows just how little power Janeway has in some ways. As we’ve seen with Paris, even an outright demotion won’t really change someone’s life or responsibilities, since it’s not as if Janeway can send to Starfleet for a new Operations officer. So what’s a reprimand going to do, realistically speaking? Prevent him from getting a promotion that wouldn’t change anything anyway? While she’s at it, Janeway should say it’ll go on his permanent record. It might matter a bit when they actually make it home, but of course they have no way of knowing that’s coming at all, let alone so soon.
It seems like the characters know that Tal is just a guest star, because they don’t even really try the “come with me” cross-pitches.
For Tal’s part, Voyager is basically already doing what she wants to be doing, she’s into Kim for some reason, and surely engineering could use an extra pair of hands– if nothing else, to replace the casualties the department has had over the years. For Kim’s part, going on this new venture with the lady who is into you for some reason sounds way better than staying on a probably-doomed ship where he just got reprimanded for having sex. Alas, we don’t really do recurring characters or status quo changes here, so no dice.
Hang on, where is Musetta Vander in Firefly? I can’t find any information on that…
CJB: GAH! She wasn’t! I thought she was in “Heart of Gold,” but that was Melinda Clarke. I am a big honking doofus…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Seriously, what does the security training at Starfleet Academy *consist* of? Classes in looking the other way? Maybe it’s a result of tactical and security seemingly be one department (or at the very least headed up by the same person), but they are horrible at their jobs on an incredibly consistent basis.
@5/wildfyre: It’s selection bias. Security might be competent most of the time, but in those cases, they prevent trouble before it starts, so there’s no crisis to build an episode around, and thus we don’t see it when it happens.
krad: Ha! Yeah that’s exactly who I was thinking of.
For a long time, I thought that Capt. Tim Watters (“Valiant,” DS9) and Simon Tam were one and the same.
“he was checking a plasma manifold.”
Is THAT what the kids are calling it, these days?
“Love is not a disease. Get well soon.”
Back to Harry Kim’s disastrous love life! And Paris is still reeling off the list, although he’s enough of a friend to cover for him when he works out what’s going on.
So…Starfleet officers aren’t allowed to have sex with aliens without permission from their captain and chief medical officer? It’d be an exaggeration to say that it contradicts every other episode, as one review did, but it’s not far off. It would also likely lead to a lot of very embarrassing conversations, so it doesn’t seem entirely practical, at least as regards permission being needed in each and every case as indicated here. (Starfleet having a kind of “approved” list as to which species are safe to mate with each other would make more sense.) Apart from a jokey aside in “Prophecy”, I don’t think this all-important regulation is ever mentioned again.
Aside from that WTF detail, I think the biggest problem with this one is the titular “disease” which doesn’t actually seem to be a disease at all, and ends up as a complicated metaphor for love where the message seems to be that this alien species feel bad when they’re away from the person they love but so does everyone else so what’s the big deal, because Kim’s going to be over it by next episode anyway. To be honest, the episode would probably work better without that detail and just making it about the forbidden romance aspect, linked in with a message about the importance of individual rights in a closed society. Despite its flaws and its tendency to make me roll my eyes every few minutes, I actually quite enjoyed this one.
Fun fact: Charles Rocket once played a character named Commander Riker in an episode of Quantum Leap. (Which is impossible to watch without suspecting it’s a giant Take That at the TNG character.) Okay, so this week Seven’s wearing a blue catsuit that’s clearly not the two-tone outfit from earlier in the season (and as used on the video covers). She must have a whole rack of them in different colours like some sort of Borg Power Ranger. And yes, I guess this is another reason why Kim never makes it past ensign. (He really had a spotless record prior to this, as Chakotay claims? Even after being relieved of duty back in “Resolutions”?)
I had absolutely no idea until I went and checked it just now that that was the same actress who played a praying mantis in an early episode of Buffy. Huh. Can kind of see it now it’s been pointed out. And she was that Immortal that tried to kill Hitler in Highlander? Okay.
I thought they were going to handle the inconsistency-with-the-rest-of-star-trek issue because in the beginning it seemed like strict regulations on interactions with the Varro crew were made only for this one species encounter. They’re xenophobic, Janeway doesn’t want to piss them off because they have valuable long-mission technology to offer. So she issues special orders to respect their boundaries. But then they threw that excuse away in the later lecture by indicating that those rules were always there in starfleet anyway!
@9/cap-mjb: “It would also likely lead to a lot of very embarrassing conversations, so it doesn’t seem entirely practical…”
Militaries throughout history have accepted it as a fact of life that their personnel have sexual liaisons, and probably every military has fraternization policies in place to address that reality. There’s no reason why adults should be too embarrassed to confront the reality that sex happens, or too embarrassed to acknowledge that they are sexually active themselves.
In particular, militaries have always recognized the importance of sexual hygiene, not wanting their personnel to be laid low by STDs any more than by any other kind of illness. It’s a purely pragmatic consideration in that respect. From that standpoint, it makes perfect sense for a commanding officer and medical officer to need to sign off on interspecies romances, something which could potentially be a source of risk to the participants. As Keith said, the problem is not with the policy existing here, but with it not existing in all the other cases when it realistically should have been there all along.
“She must have a whole rack of them in different colours like some sort of Borg Power Ranger.”
That’s a metaphor fail, because typically any single Power Ranger’s entire wardrobe matches the color of their Ranger uniform (often even before they become a Ranger). Although I guess it could work for Tommy Oliver, since he was variously a Green, White, Red, and Black Ranger over the years. Also a few other Rangers have changed colors once or twice. But it was always a permanent change rather than simultaneous options (with the exception of Super Megaforce where they could take on past Rangers’ costumes and powers).
you know…the whole “forever an ensign” thing is especially funny since (according to memory alpha) there were around 45 other ensigns on voyager (some KIA), 42 lieutenants, and one temporary lt j.g. (tom paris). given some of the deaths of lts, surely harry could have been promoted at some point.
If the writers on DS9 liked to do the Chief O’Brien must suffer stories, then the writers on Voyager’s answer to that was the Ensign Kim must suffer in love stories as that character seems to get such a themed episode every season. Poor guy can’t seem to catch a break. I couldn’t feel very sympathetic to him here though because he does act like such a petulant whiny brat. In the episodes where Kim has these emotional outbursts, he typically comes across more like a teenager encountering these situations for the first time than a grown man who is able to keep the personal compartmentalized from the professional. It’s unfortunate the character is written this way. I’d much rather see stories about Kim growing as a better professional at his job but we’ll see such an example of that in the 7th season.
I did rather like the last couple of scenes where Janeway reveals to Kim how she does treat him different as in a more protective maternal way, and then Seven extending her sympathies to Kim. The direction was also pretty good, in particular the long tracking shot with Kim and Janeway that starts in the conference room and continues across the bridge as he has his emotional outburst, and then finally into Janeway’s ready room.
Sadly, Charles Rocket committed suicide back in 2005. I remember a brief mention of it in the news when it was first reported.
For me it was really maddening that they didn’t address the possibility that Tal remains on Voyager. They could’ve come with a variety of reasons why she couldn’t stay, but to not address it at all? All it took was a single line of dialog to say something like “and you know I can’t come on Voyager because soandso”. I usually don’t have a problem if some detail is not explained on screen and figure out my own explanations, assuming that were discussed by the characters offscreen. But here, this is the central conflict and the source of all the suffering for Kim. This completely ruined the episode for me.
@11/CLB: “Militaries throughout history have accepted it as a fact of life that their personnel have sexual liaisons, and probably every military has frasternization policies in place to address that reality.”
My issue isn’t that Starfleet has a policy on these things, it’s the way it’s portrayed and applied in this episode, as though permission has to be sought on an individual case by case basis. I would like to know if there’s any real-life military that requires its personnel to personally seek permission from two senior officers every time they want to go on a date with someone from a different service. Like I said in the following sentences you didn’t quote, it would make more sense if the medical officer scans a new species and posts a memo about which species it’s medically safe to have sex with them, and the captain issues a general edict about whether it’s acceptable to copulate with the latest ship/planet they’ve encountered, rather than have a shipfull of sex-starved officers lining up at their door to have their permission slips signed. The way it’s portrayed here, crewmembers from different species would have to ask permission to hook up.
“That’s a metaphor fail, because typically any single Power Ranger’s entire wardrobe matches the colour of their Ranger uniform.”
I’m going to cite Rule of Funny here, but perhaps I should have said she’s like a team of Borg Power Rangers.
@15/cap-mjb: “it would make more sense if the medical officer scans a new species and posts a memo about which species it’s medically safe to have sex with them, and the captain issues a general edict about whether it’s acceptable to copulate with the latest ship/planet they’ve encountered, rather than have a shipfull of sex-starved officers lining up at their door to have their permission slips signed.”
As far as that goes, it seems reasonable. But when it comes to interactions with new or non-Federation species, in the middle of a first contact or delicate diplomatic negotiation, a relationship could be risky or disruptive in ways that a commanding officer might need to be aware of.
“The way it’s portrayed here, crewmembers from different species would have to ask permission to hook up.”
I don’t think that was the intent. Kim said “before initiating an intimate relationship with an alien species,” but I think he was using “alien” not to mean “of a different species,” but in its more fundamental, literal sense of an outsider, someone not of one’s own group — in this case, someone outside of Starfleet or the Federation.
KIM: You reacted like any Captain would.
JANEWAY: Probably. But I can’t help wondering if my response would have been the same if it had been, say, Tom Paris instead of you. Oh don’t get me wrong, I still would have been angry and disappointed, but I wouldn’t have been surprised.
KIM: Because Ensign Kim doesn’t break the rules.
JANEWAY: The truth is, Harry, I think about you differently than the rest of the crew. Which isn’t to suggest that I don’t care deeply about each of them. You came to me fresh out of the Academy, wide-eyed with excitement about your first deep space assignment. From that first day, I’ve always felt more protective of you than the others.
And this exchange shows why Kim was never promoted no matter how well he did his job. Mama Janeway doesn’t want her little boy Harry to grow up. Same reason she decided to enforce the “No boinking” rule while ignoring all the previous cases where it would have applied.
I’d imagine that once they got back to Earth, an Admiral was going over all the personnel files and noticed Janeway’s bias towards Harry and immediately promoted him at least two grades.
Human aliens. Seems like the makeup department went on vacation.
The Disease, the episode that comes up with a rule out of nowhere that conflicts with every instance of interspecies lovemaking seen in previous stories. I agree with the consensus. The rule itself is pretty sensible, but immediately clashes with 33 years of Trek history.
And instead of exploring the intriguing possibilities of the Generational Ship, we spend way too much time dealing with a petulant Harry Kim throwing childish tantrums. Not my idea of entertainment. And yet again, Garrett Wang shows no range when playing this side of the character. It’s Alter Ego all over again. Even Wesley Crusher showed some growth in that area between season 2’s The Dauphin and season 5’s The Game.
Alas it seems inevitable. Every season has that one episode that really stinks. Last season, it was Demon. Now it’s this. That’s the price for making 26 episodes a year.
It’s not as complete a disaster as Favorite Son because at least we get some snappy EMH scenes as he bemoans having to deal with this whole thing. Plus, we get some glimpses of a potentia insurrection and revolution amongst the Varro. The episode really should have spent more time on that front.
Sex is a sensitive area in almost all cultures. The rules may differ drastically but there are always rules and ignorance is not generally accepted as an excuse for breaking them. The biological risks are the least of it!
As has been said before Kirk is nothing like the horndog legend makes him out to be. As far as I can recall his voluntary romances are with humans or at least species belonging to the Federation. When he makes moves on an actual alien it’s because he’s trapped in some way and has to resort to every tool he has to save his crew. Riker of course is another story.
@6/CLB Thanks for pointing out the “selection bias” aspect. I’ve found myself through this rewatch often frustrated with characters’ mistakes (often making them seem incompetent), but it’s a good point that we only see the exceptions rather than the business-as-usual competency. It doesn’t clear everything up for me, but it gives me a better overall feeling.
Regarding this episode, it was fine overall. Kim acting like a brat is whatever; plenty of adults do idiotic things when in love (to whatever degree). It’s not growth but it’s not entirely out of character either. I guess there’s a grey area in term’s of Kim’s agency in the whole thing; obviously he had to be involved with the initial act, but how many of the subsequent decisions were due to his feelings vs the chemical bond? Maybe it doesn’t matter, in the long run, but it feels significant.
Separately, as a thought experiment, I have to ask myself: “What would Janeway have done if it had been Seven having a relationship with a Varro?” I realize that Seven isn’t formally a part of Starfleet, but she can literally get away with going back to the Borg one episode with no repercussions, and then we get formal reprimands for some nookie in the next. It’s not hard to imagine Janeway giving Seven the old high-five for “exploring her humanity” so to speak.
Maybe this isn’t a healthy way of looking at it. I just can’t help but feel that what this episode could have been does not necessarily match up to what it is, which makes it… I dunno, average.
@21/brandonw: The problem with the selection bias idea, though, is that the idea that most missions are routine and we only see the exceptional ones is harder to justify when there are two dozen episodes per year, some of them taking up weeks of story time. There’s not much room left for the routine missions. That’s why I like shorter seasons — although TV is so serialized these days that there’s even less room for routine experiences between episodes.
cap-mjb @9:
That’s how Babylon 5 handles it; in one early episode (the Pilot, I think; or maybe the Season 1 premiere?) Commander Sinclair confronts a crewmember who’s flirting with an attractive woman in a bar and warns him against taking it any further. The crewmember accuses him of being specieist and Sinclair replies that this species eats their mate after finishing and warns him to “stick to the list”.
That’s an effusive list of adjectives describing Miss Vander there, Krad, not that I can find fault with it. She’s about the only reason to watch this episode. Or Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (well her and Brian Thompson as Shao Khan. He’s always glorious). Even the title of this one is terrible; I get the metaphor they set up but calling an episode about love and sex “The Disease” is an obviously bad idea.
Maybe Kirk and Riker can write their own passes.
Maybe “Hailing frequencies open” has meant “that” the entire time. “All channels”. And every form of communication, which logically includes… “that”.
Maybe Tal was only irradiating Kim as a cover for her sabotage activities?
Maybe sabotaging Voyager as well makes her not entirely welcome on board after that? Though I expect you have a tally of who else has sabotaged Voyager so far.
And I did wonder how a generation ship with a warp drive has time for any generations… unless it only became a “generation ship” when the warp drive stopped working.
Although technically… 80 years from home or whatever, I suppose Voyager counts as a generation ship with a warp drive.
@27
Same way traveller cultures on Earth have travelling lifestyles even though they can get to their destination by car within a day or two. It isn’t about the destination. The generations live on the ship, not because it is mere transport, but because it is their home.
This is an aspect of space travel that SFF writers seem to have real trouble grasping, especially in Trek thanks to Ron D Moore’s influence, a real space going arcology has no need of a home planet. It is its own home. It is what the Ent-D was supposed to be before the writers chickened out. It is what VOY could have been, if they’d allowed more family hook ups and more kids than just Naomi, Icheb, and Harry Kim. There are so many story possibilities when you accept the ship as your home and the journey itself as the destination.
It is what I’d wished the Federation could have developed towards, the abandonment of planetbound identities and instead adopted a culture identity as The Federation of star-living peoples. It could have been the great metaphor for our times, teaching us how to put petty nationalism behind us in a time when it is only causing greater and greater discord and conflict, alas no though.
I tell you, it shows a pretty desperate state of affairs when the best representation the SFF field could write about space going arcologies is the Eldar in Warhammer 40k.
@25/erictheread: “I get the metaphor they set up but calling an episode about love and sex “The Disease” is an obviously bad idea.”
Why? That presumes that the analogy to STDs was accidental, but I think it was deliberate.
@23: It was in the B5 pilot. It was a civilian who was trying to impress the Arnassian woman before Sinclair intervened. I don’t recall if that scene was actually in the original 1993 edition, but it’s definitely in the reedited 1998 version, which I still own.
@12 FSS: you know…the whole “forever an ensign” thing is especially funny since (according to memory alpha) there were around 45 other ensigns on voyager (some KIA), 42 lieutenants, and one temporary lt j.g. (tom paris). given some of the deaths of lts, surely harry could have been promoted at some point.
Janeway has been dealt a really tough hand here and I actually think she handles it reasonably.
It’s a relatively flat promotion structure, so there’s only a few ranks between Ensign and Captain (LT JG, LT, Commander, Captain). She’s probably not authorized to promote people to her own rank, but even if she is it’s kind of nonsensical since she would still “really” be the captain. So the 45ish Ensigns can receive, at most, three promotions. And even after all these jumps, best guess at this point is that it’s still going to take decades to get home.
So if she promotes the ensigns to lieutenants, first of all there’s no ensigns left for them to be superior officers to, so it’s already kind of meaningless. She can pick and choose which ensigns she wants to promote, but then this is going to have a predictiable bad impact on morale on the ensigns who don’t make the cut and, critically, she has no real way to replenish the ensign ranks.
Rather than open the can of worms, I think it’s pretty reasonable to be freeze everybody in rank and put them in for belated promotions if they actually get home. Then find something else to reward good performance with– replicator rations, holodeck time, fresh rather than replicated meat, i.e. whatever has a scarce but somewhat flexible supply.
The only thing mishandled here is the whole Tom Paris thing– busting him down in rank and then promoting him again (soon) is only going to make everybody else wonder why there’s no mobility for anybody else.
Another option would be to promote the existing crew and start refreshing the Ensign ranks by recruiting people who felt like signing on– under the circumstances, surely Janeway can train friendly aliens on the holodeck and give them field commissions, then sort out the resulting mess when they get home– but alas that’s not the show we got.
@28Christopher – So they intended to draw a comparison between love and STD’s? Like, don’t hook up with strangers or you could catch icky feelings? I guess that could have been the intention, but then the episode adds another layer of distaste. Why would they want to imply that? And either way now I have another negative to hang on the episode, i.e., it’s confusing. What is this really about? If Kim was wrong for getting horizontal with an alien then why does the script give him multiple sympathetic speeches? And how come he’s the first person in Starfleet to ever be reprimanded for boinking a sexy alien? Where did this puritan attitude suddenly come from? I don’t know what “The Disease” is even trying to tell me.
Does anyone else have this issue with a single post duplicating itself? It must be me but I don’t know how.
@@@@@ 27 – “It is what I’d wished the Federation could have developed towards, the abandonment of planetbound identities and instead adopted a culture identity as The Federation of star-living peoples.”
That’s what I assume happens with Starfleet members in the Federation Council. In the council scen at the end of TVH, there’s Starfleet officers wearing the same pin as the ambassadors and council members but not the spectators. I see this as showing that wen you join Starfleet, you vote not for a representative of your planet but a representative of the fleet. You’re represented not as an Eartling or a Vulcan or a Catian but as a Starfleeter. That way, you don’t have allegiance, theoretically, to ony one planet but to an organization that represents them all.
@@@@@ 30 – Tom Paris’ situation isn’t the only weird thing about Janeway’s attitude to promotions.
Start of series 4, she promotes Tuvok. The crewmember whom we have most frequently seen screw up in his job over the previous 3 years. Who was head of security and tactical when the ship got taken over by the Kazon, a year before the promotion? Tuvok. Who was head of security when an alien was able to take control of Kes and then murder a crewmember? Tuvok. Who was head of security when Seven transmitted a signal to the Borg about two weeks before his promotion? Tuvok. Promoting Tuvok from Lieutanent to Lieutenant Commander in no way changes his role or responsibilities as far as we can see, so all it does is signal favouritism to the rest of the crew – “You can all do your jobs impeccably with no recognition, while I promote the man who regularly fails in his duty to keep us safe but whom I’ve known for years. Any questions? No? Good. As you were.”
The sensible thing to do would have been to give everyone a year or so after Caretaker to settle into their roles, then give out brevet promotions so that the people were at the right rank for the job they were doing (having a Lieutenant j.g. as Chief Engineer doesn’t seem to make sense). After that, if one of those people gets killed you brevet promote the person who takes over their role, and everyone else gets told at their regular performance evaluations whether under other circumstances they’d have been given a promotion or what they would need to do to get a promotion, and it all gets noted in the logs and everyone knows where they stand.
@31/erictheread: “So they intended to draw a comparison between love and STD’s? Like, don’t hook up with strangers or you could catch icky feelings?”
I think that’s taking a more sophomoric tone toward it than they intended. But yes, an analogy between the potential medical risks of interspecies sex and romance (as an allegory for military policies and precautions regarding sexual health and hygiene) and the potential personal risks of falling in love.
And really, it’s hardly unprecedented for people to talk about love as a form of illness or insanity, a “fever” that you catch and that you may long to find a cure for. I’m sure that metaphor goes back to antiquity. (E.g. the song “Fever” that Nana Visitor sang on DS9 once.)
“If Kim was wrong for getting horizontal with an alien then why does the script give him multiple sympathetic speeches?”
The problem wasn’t that Kim pursued a relationship, it’s that he pursued it irresponsibly, that he didn’t go through the proper safety checks before proceeding. The same as with any other activity that carries risks. If a 15-year-old takes his mom’s car for a joyride and gets chewed out for it afterward, that doesn’t mean she thinks it’s wrong to drive a car, just that she’s aware of how dangerous it is to do it recklessly and prematurely.
@30: You apparently missed Lieutenant Commander as a grade between LT and Commander. It’s a tricky one. Voyager’s a relatively small ship, with only about 15% of the crew of the Enterprise-D, so it makes sense that there’d be only a few mid-ranking officers and a lot more junior officers high up in the command structure. But on the other hand, given that they do loss or demote/promote lieutenants, you would expect some of the ensigns to be kicked up a grade at some point to compensate. (Rollins apparently was, since he’s an ensign in “Caretaker” yet referred to as being a lieutenant in Season 2. Goodness knows what the deal is with Ayala, who seems to bounce from lieutenant to ensign and back in different episodes.)
Oh, I think that would be a terrible idea; and I think you’re reading far too much into it. That would be very much like giving each branch of the armed forces (or the whole armed forces as a whole) electoral votes in the US. You also promote the idea that Starfleet is an equal entity to civilians, when it is supposed to be under civilian supervision.
I doubt that a Bolian officer (and I mean not just a member of that species, but a citizen of that planet whether of the Bolian species or other species) would consider themselves voting in Bolian elections any more “in unity” with the Federation as a whole than a Nebraskan or New Yorker or whatever would look at themselves voting in Nebraska or New York elections anymore in unity with the US.
Separating military personal from civilians is always problematic. Some separation is necessary, but it should be kept to a minimum. They certainly should not have separate representation on the Federation council.
I’ve seen those TVH pins interpreted as a sort of VIP pass for the Council chamber.
@37 – It would be giving them a very small voice in the organization that runs them. It also means that they’re not likely to support one planet over another since there’s members of (probably) most member planets in Starfleet. It’s also possible that the Starfleet representative is prohibited in voting on certain legislation in regards to Starfleet. For example, voting to declare war or to build new ships. They could be voting on non-military legislation that would affect members of the fleet while keeping their hands off of the big red button of war funding and the like.
On a related note, it’s also possible that Earth is more like Washington DC, seeing as it was the Federation president that issued the planetary distress call and not the leader of Earth. Earth may run it’s own territory but cannot issue orders to Starfleet or other Federation entities.
@38 – If they’re VIP passes, then almost everyone is wearing one except for Gillian and these guys.
@30: Oh, rank. I thought you said “Freeze everybody in tanks”, which in fact they’ve done.
@35: If I’ve got the right “Fever”, that only goes back to Romeo and Juliet. ;-) (It would be so Star Trek to have some extra verses in the 24th century version.*) In ancient Greece, Sappho wrote the hot stuff. “You burn me”, she said, and they did – at least, not a lot of her oeuvre survives to be read today.
* “Khan Singh and the ship’s historian”, “Mr. Scott and Mira Romaine”, and “Captain Kirk and half the quadrant” fit the metre?
I have yet to see this episode and have therefore not read any of the post or the comments above – I have therefore made this post purely to remark on how very Hilarious I find the proximity of that ‘kissy picture’ to the a title like ‘The Disease.’
Poor Old Ensign Kim either has the the Very Worst Luck or the Worst Judgement.
(should this be called the Kirk Rule? the Riker Rule?)
Definitely the ‘Tucker Rule’, as he has sexual relationships with bad political *and* biological results…
I liked it. Interesting and adult story about the aliens and also Harry gets laid and what’s more in a novel manner!. Amused to hear the same actress was the praying mantis in Buffy as I immediately thought of Xanders love life on starting this ep. I often feel a younger actor should been cast as Harry Kim. He looks barely younger than Paris but acts way younger. Glad they did not go the obvious route of Harry getting an actual disease or being endangered by his tryst (see praying mantis). The political plot was subtler and less hackneyed. I’d give it 8. Much as I love GW he barely changes expression so I take some off for his acting.
I didn’t dislike either the love story or the dissident story, but I felt like they got in the way of each other at times. As for the rule, not only doesn’t it fit with what we have seen in the past, even on this show, but it also doesn’t really seem necessary for the plot to work. Surely Janeway had enough reasons, given the delicate nature of the relationship she was trying to develop with a xenophobic society, to warrant trying to intervene in Kim and Tal’s relationship without adding a regulation into the mix, regardless of how much sense it makes in the abstract.
There’s just so much wrong with this episode. While it’s beating a long-dead horse (some three years later in thread time), it’s difficult to believe the writers really thought they could get away with using a very important rule that violates thirty years of Trek and no one would notice. Better they’d made this a rule just for this species based on the wishes of the their totalitarian leader. It’s almost as bad as making us believe anyone can just abscond with a shuttle craft on a whim (which, ahem, also happens in this episode).
My favorite part tho is the stowaway saying out loud what we’ve all been thinking: “your security protocols are remarkably easily to circumvent.” Amen, brother.