“Pathfinder”
Written by David Zabel and Kenneth Biller
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 6, Episode 10
Production episode 230
Original air date: December 1, 1999
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Barclay is unpacking haphazardly in his apartment, working around his cat—named Neelix—when he gets a visitor: Troi. The Enterprise is in orbit of Earth, and Barclay has asked Troi to drop by to talk. He says he’s becoming obsessed with Voyager.
Two years ago, Barclay transferred from the Enterprise to the Pathfinder Project, under the direction of Commander Pete Harkins. They have been trying to find a way to communicate with Voyager ever since they made contact through the Hirogen communications array.
They made one attempt to create a transwarp probe, which failed. Barclay has been putting in long hours at the project—which is why he still hasn’t unpacked two years after moving back to Earth—and because his transwarp probe failed, Harkins is reluctant to approve his notion of using an itinerant pulsar to create a wormhole.
They’ve re-created Voyager on the holodeck, complete with personnel, based on what the EMH reported to Starfleet Command. (Amusingly, the program has Chakotay as first officer and Torres as chief engineer, but they’re wearing civilian clothes. The EMH didn’t say that the Maquis crew are all in uniform. Also Janeway still has longer hair tied in a bun in the simulation.) Harkins finds Barclay futzing with stuff in the simulation and not actually working on the diagnostic Harkins assigned to him. Admiral Owen Paris is coming to inspect the project the next day, and everything needs to be ready to go.
Harkins doesn’t want Barclay to speak during the admiral’s visit. He also offers dinner at his place—his sister-in-law is in town, and Harkins thinks she and Barclay will get along. But Barclay declines, preferring to spend the night with his cat. Though, in fact, he doesn’t spend the night at home at all, but on the Voyager simulation. He’s given the crew personalities that enable him to converse with them, play poker with them, and bounce ideas off them. They also rarely pass up an opportunity to tell Barclay how awesome he is.
Owen arrives for his inspection. First Harkins explains that plan to use the MIDAS Array, provided by the Vulcans, to send a hyper-subspace transmission. It will enable them to communicate with Voyager though the ship won’t be able to respond. Barclay is unable to help himself from proposing his plan of opening a wormhole. Harkins points out the flaws in the plan, and Barclay loses it, saying that they have to try everything, and that maybe they’ve forgotten that there are 150 people trapped out there.
Paris rather tartly points out that his son is one of those people, and he thinks about it every day. Barclay at least has the good grace to look incredibly abashed at his spectacular insensitivity.
Harkins sends him home for the day, but instead Barclay goes to the holodeck to bounce ideas off his holo-Voyager crew. He hits on scaling things down: creating a micro-wormhole. Harkins finds him on the holodeck, distressed that he’s spent his mandated time off continuing to work. Both Harkins in the past and Troi in the present are concerned that Barclay’s holo-addiction is coming back to the fore. Barclay insists that it isn’t.
He goes to Owen (hovering outside his office frightening his aide until the admiral finally lets him in) to pitch his idea, which puts Owen in an awkward position, as he got a report from Harkins that Barclay was removed from the project.
In the present, Barclay begs Troi to certify him fit for duty so he can get back to it, but Troi is genuinely worried about him—so much so that she requests a leave of absence from the Enterprise, so she can spend time with a friend, and help him through this. Barclay is at once embarrassed, touched, and frustrated.
Barclay breaks into the lab with the greatest of ease (unsurprisingly, his access code no longer works). He puts his micro-wormhole notion into practice. When Harkins breaks in on him partway through his third attempt to contact Voyager, he retreats to the holodeck, where he locks out the controls. Harkins sends security after him, but Barclay is able to evade them (aided by the holographic Tuvok and Torres). Harkins finally decides to go into the holodeck and initiate a warp-core breach in the simulation, which will end it.
Barclay ends the program, and Harkins escorts him back into the lab—just as Owen arrives. He was going to approve Barclay’s plan, but he’s already implemented it against orders. Just as Harkins is about to have him put in the brig, Voyager replies to Barclay’s most recent communication. They’ve found them!
They all exchange information in the few minutes they have before the micro-wormhole collapses. Paris is gobsmacked to hear his father’s voice, and Barclay, Harkins, and Owen reassure the crew that they’ll continue to work to stay in touch, at least.
Barclay’s sins are forgiven and he remains under Harkins’ command under what is now called Project Voyager. Barclay also took Harkins up on his invitation to dinner with his family…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Okay, seriously, the Pathfinder Project is full of Starfleet engineers, who are known for being able to work miracles with any piece of equipment. Why would they only secure their lab with an access code? If anything should have a good old-fashioned mechanical padlock, it’s a Starfleet engineering lab…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway tells Owen that her crew’s performance has been exemplary during their Delta Quadrant sojourn. At no point does she mention the crew members who’ve died since “Message in a Bottle” (they’ve lost at least five since that episode, depending on how many actually perished in “The Killing Game, Part II“). You’d think she’d want their families told, at least…
Mr. Vulcan. The holographic Tuvok stops participating in the poker games with Barclay because he doesn’t like to lose, apparently. Just as Seven’s hypothetical Tuvok was devious last time, Barclay’s hypothetical Tuvok is, apparently, whiny.
Half and half. The holographic Torres is Barclay’s most oft-used sounding board, probably because she’s (a) an engineer and (b) an attractive woman.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix isn’t part of Barclay’s simulation, probably because he doesn’t know what Talaxians look like, but he does name his cat after the morale officer.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH blithely reveals private medical information about Barclay to the crew in the mess hall, which violates whatever Starfleet’s equivalent of HIPAA is. He also fails to mention that he encountered an image of Barclay when his program went wonky in “Projections.”
Resistance is futile. Seven also isn’t part of Barclay’s simulation, for similar reasons to why Neelix isn’t. She’s the one who first detects Barclay’s signal and identifies it.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Barclay and Harkins’ sister-in-law get along well on their first meeting—for one thing, she’s also a cat person…
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. I know I’ve complained a lot about the entire notion of holodeck safeties that can be disengaged, so let me point out that the safeties work just fine in this episode, and it’s very funny to see the holographic Torres shoot the security guards and absolutely nothing happens to them.
Do it.
“Has it ever occurred to you that a tachyon beam directed at a Class-B itinerant pulsar could produce enough gravimetric energy to create an artificial singularity?”
“I can’t say it has.”
–Barclay bringing the technobabble and Troi refusing delivery of same.
Welcome aboard. The great Richard Herd, who previously played L’Kor in TNG’s “Birthright” two-parter, takes over the recurring role of Owen Paris, which he will continue to play through to the end of the series. Richard McGonagle, who previously played Ja’Dar in TNG’s “New Ground,” plays Harkins. Both will next be seen in “Inside Man.”
The big guests here, though, are Dwight Schultz as Barclay and Marina Sirtis as Troi, returning to the roles they created on TNG. This is Schultz’s second appearance on Voyager, having played the image of Barclay in “Projections.” Both will next be seen in “Life Line.”
Trivial matters: While they are not seen, Troi makes mention of the Enterprise, Data, his cat Spot, and La Forge.
Somehow, Pathfinder extrapolates Voyager’s general location, based on where they were in “Message in a Bottle,” despite the fact that they’ve made several leaps forward (“Hope and Fear,” “Night,” “Timeless,” “Dark Frontier,” and “The Voyager Conspiracy”) that Starfleet could not possibly have accounted for.
Barclay’s holo-addiction was introduced in the character’s first appearance in TNG’s “Hollow Pursuits.” He started his counseling sessions with Troi then.
There has been a significant amount of Trek fiction that takes place in the year following DS9’s finale, which corresponds to the sixth season of Voyager and also the Pathfinder Project. Several novels and stories taking place in the Alpha Quadrant make use of the communication with Voyager that begins in this episode.
In “Thirty Days,” Paris set his letter to Owen to be sent when Voyager next contacts Starfleet Command, which happens in this episode, so one wonders if the letter went through when Barclay made contact.
This episode takes place roughly a year after San Francisco was attacked by the Breen in DS9’s “The Changing Face of Evil.” The city, Starfleet HQ, and the Golden Gate Bridge all appear to have been reconstructed.
Set a course for home. “Keep a docking bay door open for us.” I joked with a friend that my latest Voyager Rewatch was a really good TNG episode, and I was only half-kidding. There are a lot of ways that this feels like it isn’t really a Voyager episode, so much as it is continuing Barclay’s arc that ran through the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons of TNG.
And yet, it’s very much a Voyager episode, in the same way that “Distant Origin” was. It’s still about the journey Voyager is on to try to get home, but seen through the lens of someone outside the ship.
Those two elements combine to make this an excellent Star Trek episode, because it sets Voyager in a place it rarely goes: within the history and setting of the greater Trek universe. This is only the third time Voyager has made contemporary contact with the Alpha Quadrant (caveat necessary thanks to “Eye of the Needle”), and of the other two, one happened off camera (the EMH’s report to Starfleet in “Message in a Bottle”) and the other was one-way: letters from home (“Hunters”) and an encrypted message from Admiral Hayes (“Hope and Fear”). This is real contact that, unlike the others, has the promise of more.
The one thing Voyager has shown very little of is how the Alpha Quadrant responded to their disappearance and rediscovery in “Message in a Bottle.” Here we get that, partly through Owen’s desire to see his son again—he gets to stand in for all the families left behind, and Richard Herd’s hangdog mien serves him well here, as he exudes a very quiet and subtle desperation—mainly through Barclay’s obsession.
What I love about Barclay’s arc from “Hollow Pursuits,” through his other TNG appearances and to here is that there’s progress, but it’s not all at once. Dramatic fiction has a tiresome tendency to have psychological issues either all solved at once or never solved at all, but a combination of excellent writing and brilliant acting by Dwight Schultz has shown a continuum, as Barclay has slowly gotten more social, less obsessive—but it’s not all at once, and the old behaviors still crop up. We see some of the low-self-confidence programming in the Voyager simulation as, just like the Enterprise crew in “Hollow Pursuits,” the holographic characters all do whatever they can to feed Barclay’s ego and reassure him that he’s awesome, mostly because Barclay can’t bring himself to believe it outside the holodeck.
And, in true Trek fashion, the people around him try to help. Harkins could easily have been written as a hardass, but he’s genuinely concerned about Barclay. His rebuking him is not just out of concern for the efficacy of the project, but concern for Barclay’s own mental health, and the latter is actually more important than the former. And Troi is her usual supportive self, effortlessly moving back and forth between friend/confidante and counselor/therapist.
All of it is nicely in service of moving Voyager’s story forward. It gets dinged a point for the rather major plot hole that there just no way Starfleet could possibly extrapolate their current position given all the big-ass jumps the ship has taken in the previous two years. But at least they’re closer to home in more ways than one.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido is making his first in-person convention appearance of 2021 at Pensacon in Pensacola, Florida (hilariously, his last in-person convention before the recent apocalypse was also Pensacon at the end of February 2020). He’ll be at the Bard’s Tower booth, E6 on the vendor floor, alongside fellow Trek scribes Melinda M. Snodgrass and Peter David, as well as Dan Wells, Christopher Ruocchio, Rick Heinz, Marion G. Harmon, Megan Mackie, T. Allen Diaz, Brian Anderson, and James Garner and voice actor Carlos Ferro, and will also be doing a panel on writing Star Trek with Peter, Melinda, and Tony Isabella Friday at 1pm. Come by and say hi!
Yup, the plot hole about Voyager‘s position really bugged me. I may be fabricating this in retrospect, but I think I expected the episode to end with the contact failing because the signal was bound to be aimed at entirely the wrong place. Except then it turned out not to be.
Yet while in one respect “Pathfinder” is frustratingly consistent with VGR’s tendency to ignore past continuity, it’s simultaneously the show’s biggest rejection of the reset-button approach since the introduction of the Delta Flyer, if not since Kes’s departure. Not only do they finally make real-time contact with Starfleet, but it persists. Okay, it doesn’t become regular until “Life Line” half a season later, but it’s the beginning of what will be one of the show’s few permanent status-quo changes — not only the contact, but the addition of Barclay, Owen Paris, Troi, and Harkins (in descending order of frequency) as recurring characters for the remainder of the series.
I don’t feel that making contact in the third try is that unbelievable. If Barclay started with where he felt they could be giving a general straight route home. A subspace transmission can cover a very large area. After the first failed attempt Barclay would aim for a spot much closer to the Alpha Quadrant, then a third attempt would be even closer to home and could account for the jumps they have done since message in a bottle.
Long-time lurker, first-time commenter. YAY!
I’ve always loved Dwight Schultz’s work; he brings so much dignity to his characters despite their foibles.
I recently leafed through Peter Straub’s excellent novel Mystery, where its young protagonist becomes obsessed with a 40-year-old cold case not even his world-renowned private eye neighbor could solve. The two men are dogged by the rich, haughty communities that surround them and preclude their investigations, risking certain death to themselves and their friends throughout. It gets nasty there, but it’s the nastiness that you’d expect from digging into a high-class murder case.
Barclay’s discoveries are, obviously, more benign, but are no less forward-thinking and compassionate in their aims. I really appreciate that the top brass here are given a heart to complement the story, even looking past Reg going against, well, regs. Even if Barclay isn’t the best at crafting fiction beyond himself, the narrative of his simulations adheres brilliantly to how he wants to save Voyager. Reg Barclay is awesome, and he’s only getting better at listening to the outside world.
Mr DeCandido, given this is the Starfleet Corps of Engineers of which we write, it can safely be said that a door exists not to keep them out, but to keep their experiments from being interrupted at the whim of passers-by (Really, they’d probably be better off posting a guard dog – figurative or literal – than relying on anything engineered to keep out any Starfleet Engineer with a serious inclination to get in).
@2/Makloony: “I don’t feel that making contact in the third try is that unbelievable. If Barclay started with where he felt they could be giving a general straight route home. A subspace transmission can cover a very large area.”
Except it’s not a transmission, it’s a wormhole, a phenomenon with a single fixed exit point. And they would’ve been aiming it some 30,000 light years behind where Voyager was by this point.
“After the first failed attempt Barclay would aim for a spot much closer to the Alpha Quadrant, then a third attempt would be even closer to home and could account for the jumps they have done since message in a bottle.”
He’s not clairvoyant. He has no way of knowing that they made any such jumps (since they’d only made the single Kes-assisted jump before “Message”), and he certainly would have no way to estimate how large they were. Good grief, Voyager traveled roughly three times as far in season 5 alone than it had traveled in the first four years. It would have been impossible for Barclay to predict such a vastly disproportionate change in their rate of progress.
We were talking about this back during “Hunters” (and I’ve brought it up throughout the Rewatch).
But I still think a missed opportunity of the post-DS9 Seasons was not at least touching on some of the fallout from the Dominion War and how it would affect Team Janeway.
Yes, I know the real reason why VOY didn’t do it (networks, markets, etc.).
But still, it would’ve been interesting to see how Chakotay, Torres, and the other Maquis would have reacted to the news of the War’s end and the Cardassian Union being reduced to a rump state (to say nothing of, oh, any satisfaction of revenge for the Maquis’ destruction evaporating in the wake of 800 million dead Cardassian civilians).
#6. I suppose in a roundabout way Starfleet’s interest in contacting Voyager could be connected to the fallout of the war. What better way to raise morale in the Federation than establishing a steady link to a ship far from home, and one that happened to have avoided the horrors of the conflict? Thus shifting focus back to Starfleet’s original mission — the frontier. Just a thought.
I completely love this episode. Barclay somehow extrapolating their position was a bit annoying this time, but usually I watch this episode out of order and don’t even notice the lack of continuity here. This episode is my go-to for cozy feel-good Star Trek and I just enjoy occasionally putting it on. (My other cozy feel-good episodes are Take Me Out to the Holosuite, Trouble with Tribbles, and The Next Phase, if anyone cares.)
I also really like the character of Admiral Paris and enjoy it anytime he’s on screen. I laugh every time I see that picture of Nick Locarno on the Admiral’s desk though!
@6: It would be hard to catch up the non-DS9 watching audience but, yeah, if the initial premise of the series was still operative, then at least some of the Maquis would be cracking the champagne after this episode. Dalby and presumably others joined solely for the purpose of killing as many Cardassians as possible, finding out nearly a billion are dead is a champagne-popping event. Let’s assume the “Dead Spoonhead” celebrations occurred in private, since most of the crew was either Starfleet or joined the Maquis for reasons aside from anti-Cardie sentiment.
Which, geez, just makes me think that Voyager Conspiracy should have occurred after this episode and had Seven go crazy with all the new data from the Alpha Quadrant– built in way to give the audience a crash course update on the AQ and more organically raise old tensions.
@krad: Barclay didn’t appear in the 5th season of TNG!
This was a good episode and it’s of course a cool idea to see how Starfleet treats the discovery of Voyager back at headquarters and the efforts to make contact with the ship.
I did feel uncomfortable and bad for Barclay in that with his obsession/use of the holodeck, that he had seemingly regressed from his years of improvement since “Hollow Pursuits.” It’s like knowing a friend in AA who’s abstained from alcohol for years but has just fallen off the wagon.
So Barclay gets no punishment at all for his disobeying orders and breaking into the engineering lab? So I guess the ends justify the means (the successful contact with Voyager)? So if his attempt at contact with the ship was unsuccessful, even just initially, he’d be sitting in prison instead of being allowed back on the project, past transgressions forgiven? Doesn’t seem right to me.
As expected, it’s hard to go wrong with Reg Barclay, no matter which Trek show. And just as he was about to complete a full decade since his first appearance in Hollow Pursuits. Barclay comes full circle, showing us just how much he’s grown since then and how much he’s still dependant on his insular fantasies, now being fulfilled by the Voyager cast. It’s always fun to watch our ever insecure engineer.
Plus, it’s nice to get a glimpse of the Alpha Quadrant, post DS9. And they even use Deanna Troi well, which doesn’t happen often. Troi the therapist is usually preferable to Troi the empath.
I particularly like Richard Herd as Owen Paris. The supportive old admiral is a far better take on the character than the stern figure we’ve previously seen. Sure, that’s an aspect of his contentuous relationship to Tom, but it’s nice that the writers are willing to crack the facade and show us a more weary person, more reasonable and more willing to listen to others as he tries to solve the Voyager problem.
On a side note, it’s a good thing Barclay wasn’t in Insurrection. It would have created a bit of a continuity problem, given the Pathfinder project dates set by Message in a Bottle.
Another side note: David Zabel. Most freelance Trek writers tend to specialize in science fiction or other genre shows. Other than a stint on Dark Angel, Zabel has mostly moved on to more conventional procedural television work, most notably the 8 years he spent writing and running ER. Once again, the Berman-era Trek shows working as effective career springboards for future prolific writers/producers like him.
@8: In Robert Duncan McNeill’s Voyager podcast with Garrett Wang, he speculated that Nick Locarno and Tom Paris were really twins. This was in specific reference to the episode “Fair Trade” in which he felt the writers were getting Tom’s backstory confused with that of Nick’s.
@7,
I suppose in a roundabout way Starfleet’s interest in contacting Voyager could be connected to the fallout of the war. What better way to raise morale in the Federation than establishing a steady link to a ship far from home, and one that happened to have avoided the horrors of the conflict? Thus shifting focus back to Starfleet’s original mission — the frontier. Just a thought.
Yeah, it’s been a while since I reread the early VOY Relaunch novels. But IIRC, that was one reason cited for Starfleet and Federation prosecutors declining to prosecute Chakotay and the remaining Val Jean Maquis after “Endgame”.
The official stance was that the authorities considered the 7 years spent in the DQ to have been time served, as it were.
The unofficial stance was that the VOY crew were universally considered to be heroes by the UFP public. Prosecuting Chakotay and company would have been a PR clusterf**k for Starfleet at a time when they were still trying to rebuild goodwill and morale after the Dominion War.
@9,
It would be hard to catch up the non-DS9 watching audience but, yeah, if the initial premise of the series was still operative, then at least some of the Maquis would be cracking the champagne after this episode. Dalby and presumably others joined solely for the purpose of killing as many Cardassians as possible, finding out nearly a billion are dead is a champagne-popping event. Let’s assume the “Dead Spoonhead” celebrations occurred in private, since most of the crew was either Starfleet or joined the Maquis for reasons aside from anti-Cardie sentiment.
Agreed. I can definitely see at least some of the surviving crew of the Val Jean popping the bubbly in private.
The most mileage would have been gotten out Chakotay and Torres. I think Chakotay at that point in the series would have been absolutely horrified (especially given his people’s own history with genocide and pogroms). Torres, even after “Extreme Risk”, I think would have been more middle of the road and conflicted.
And there’s another missed opportunity with Chakotay: The whole point for his joining the Maquis was to honor his father and protect his DMZ homeworld. What now if they get home? What happened to his world and people during the interim?
While the artificial wormhole in DS9 had two set terminal points, we’ve seen other instances of naturally occurring wormholes that ships have to escape from and get shoved out the side somewhere along the way. I read it to be something like that phenomenon, a sort of subspace tunnel that they sent the transmission along. They wouldn’t need Voyager’s distance, just direction.
Richard Herd passed away at 87 last year. Before Voyager I knew him from Seinfeld as George Costanza’s (Jason Alexander) boss. It was a notable and funny role (there was one episode in particular where he joins a cult and acts zombie-like which was hilarious) so it was interesting to see him here in a more dramatic part.
https://youtu.be/KjQWXDp3Vww
#13. Fascinating. I should give those relaunch novels a look. Thanks.
@12 – Or Admiral Paris could have been getting a bit on the side.
After all, this is Star Trek. It’s a small galaxy.
@16,
The opening novels of the VOY Relaunch are not unlike show: Good premise, not so-good execution.
It wasn’t until Kirsten Beyer got the reins with the fifth book that it really kicked into high gear (and their success played a part in Beyer getting into the Writers Rooms for DSC and PIC).
If you do hit them, do keep in mind:
1. The novel continuity and the post-series fate of VOY characters (Seven esepcially) has been superseded by the events of Picard.
2. The Relaunch was running in tandem with the TNG Relaunch and so developments there (specifically Peter David’s Resistance and David Mack’s Destiny Trilogy) heavily impacted the Beyer-era novels.
In the upcoming episode “Drive” they will straight-up confuse the two, with Torres claiming that Paris was kicked out of the Academy, and Paris responds by saying “Ok,” and changing the subject. Paris was kicked out of Starfleet proper, while Locarno was kicked out of the Academy as a cadet.
I always liked this episode for the exact reason that the Maquis were wearing their civilian clothes, which I always felt they should have continued to do (or at the very least, should have worn them for far longer than they did). Despite Voyager being lost in space and everyone having to live there 24/7, everyone is in uniform 100% of the time unless the script calls for them to be in the holodeck or be woken up from a dead sleep. I like seeing them in something that shows they have, you know, personalities and a personal life.
@14/JasonD: “While the artificial wormhole in DS9 had two set terminal points, we’ve seen other instances of naturally occurring wormholes that ships have to escape from and get shoved out the side somewhere along the way.”
That is very much the opposite of how wormholes work. I think you must be thinking of more imaginary wormhole-like phenomena like transwarp or slipstream conduits. The whole idea of a wormhole is that the internal space connecting the two mouths does not overlap or map onto normal space, but passes through a different dimension where the internal distance is tiny compared to the external separation in normal space. The mouths are the only points where the wormhole intersects the normal universe. That’s the whole reason it’s called a wormhole, like the tunnel a worm bores through an apple, only connecting with the apple’s surface at the entry and exit points.
@15/garreth: I always think of Richard Herd as the leader of the Visitors in the original V miniseries, the first major role I knew him from. He was also the police captain in William Shatner’s T.J. Hooker in the first two seasons (co-starring with James Darren in season 2).
@18/Mr. Magic: “The Relaunch was running in tandem with the TNG Relaunch and so developments there (specifically Peter David’s Resistance and David Mack’s Destiny Trilogy) heavily impacted the Beyer-era novels.”
Resistance was J.M. Dillard’s Borg novel that started the TNG Relaunch. Peter’s book was the sequel two books later, Before Dishonor (preceded by Our Humble Rewatcher’s Q&A and followed by my own Greater Than the Sum).
Also, Destiny was not a TNG novel specifically, but a multi-series crossover that equally featured the Enterprise, the Titan, and the Aventine commanded by Ezri Dax.
I particularly enjoyed Richard Herd when he played Captain Galaxy on a episode of QUANTUM LEAP. Kind of fitting that Captain Galaxy is the father of Captain Proton …
@20/CLB: Ah, I remember watching the original “V” mini-series as a little kid but the only things I really remember are the iconic shots of the huge flying saucers hovering over the city (which apparently Independence Day borrowed from), Marc Singer, Diana: sexy evil lizard lady, whenever the aliens peeled off their human skin coverings, and the title card with the letter “V” in red dripping blood which always scared the crap out of me.
@20,
Right, right. I meant Before Dishonor, not Resistance.
In my defense, I’m in my mid-30s, my memory’s like a faulty positronic brain, and they’re both TNG books about the Borg. :D
@22/garreth: “Ah, I remember watching the original “V” mini-series as a little kid but the only things I really remember are the iconic shots of the huge flying saucers hovering over the city (which apparently Independence Day borrowed from)”
I don’t know if it was deliberate borrowing or convergent evolution in that case, but Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End did it long before V did. Kenneth Johnson claimed he hadn’t read Childhood’s End before doing V, but they had a lot in common — not only the ships hovering over cities (and specifically the UN building), but the dynamic of seemingly benevolent aliens offering to better our lives but having a hidden agenda. And Johnson did have a tendency to copy earlier works — for instance, “Doomsday is Tomorrow” on The Bionic Woman featured a computer villain named ALEX that was a blatant knockoff of 2001‘s HAL, and “Prometheus, Part 2” on The Incredible Hulk borrowed a lot from The Andromeda Strain. So I’m not sure how much I can trust his denial about Clarke.
You use an itinerant pulsar (not a real thing, I think) to locate a starship with an unknown itinerary? It’s what I’d do. :-)
An “Improbability Drive” starship is everywhere in the universe momentarily when it jumps, and then it materialises where it needs to be. Or it says something like that in the brochure… But it may no longer be what it needs to be… Anyway, maybe this does that. If they put the same thing on Voyager itself then the story ends pretty quickly, happily.
garreth: Crap, you’re right about Barclay not being in the fifth season of TNG. Him and Q both…..
Also, of course there are no consequences. This is Star Trek. There are never consequences. See “The Menagerie,” “The Die is Cast,” “Maneuvers,” and the eight million other times characters have violated rules and regs and suffered zero consequences.
Also I refuse to point out anyone who was in Seinfeld for anything. So there.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“I’ve become obsessed with Voyager.”
In danger of being that one guy criticising a fan favourite again but I’m beginning to get the feeling that the problem with Voyager in this period is that it has good ideas but poor execution. (Maybe they should have been focusing more on good stories!) In this case, the message is decidedly mixed. Barclay spending all his time living in a simulation of Voyager, hanging out with replicas of the crew, instead of interacting with his real world colleagues is rightly portrayed as unhealthy. (As well as making him look like a Star Trek fan! He even says he replaced his attachment to the TNG cast with the Voyager one, like a lot of viewers did in 1994!) But then the episode ends with him being vindicated and succeeding in establishing contact with Voyager. They do at least show him moving on from his fantasy and beginning to engage with the real world at the end, so I guess the moral isn’t entirely lost. Right idea, wrong method? Maybe if he’d got to know Harkins more, Harkins would have trusted his judgement in the first place.
But hey, it’s good to see Barclay and Troi again, and the final scenes of Voyager getting back in touch with Earth, however briefly, are actually quite touching. Richard Herd’s avuncular portrayal of Admiral Paris is light years away from Warren Munson’s “bad dad” version, and I found it a bit on the nose to have him openly declare he’s proud of his son when “Hunters” deliberately left it ambiguous as to what his message was, but it just about works. (Of course, Fridge Logic dictates that right after this moment of delayed paternal affection, he’d have found that letter from “Thirty Days” in his inbox…) I’m tempted to wonder if showing the Maquis out of uniform was a bit of wish fulfilment on the part of the show’s staff. They seem to have got everyone’s haircuts about right too.
The Doctor has to look up who Barclay is despite encountering a hologram of him in “Projections”, although maybe he never recovered his memory of that incident after “The Swarm”. More pertinently, he makes no mention of Barclay being involved in his creation, another reason why we shouldn’t believe that information from an unreliable source was actually true. And yes, there seems to be no way for anyone on Earth to work out exactly where Voyager is at this point: Barclay even says it’s 60,000 light years away, when we know it should be a lot closer.
To be fair, pretty much the first thing Janeway does on establishing contact with the Alpha Quadrant is send them full details of Voyager’s recent missions, which presumably would include casualties. Re the Relaunch novels, I seem to recall the first one established that Starfleet declared an amnesty on any Maquis who volunteered for Starfleet during the Dominion War and extended it to those serving on Voyager during that period.
@26/krad: That’s not true that characters on Star Trek never face consequences. For instance, Michael Burnham was sent to prison for her actions in “Battle at the Binary Stars.” Also, Captain Kirk was demoted in Star Trek Into Darkness for disobeying commands.
And that’s not true about you not pointing out anyone who was in Seinfeld for anything. In your rewatch of “Think Tank” you mentioned Jason Alexander’s famous role on the former show.
@28/garreth: Neither of those “consequences” stuck for long, though. Well, Burnham was in prison for months and took the whole first season to be restored to rank, so that pretty much counts, but STID Kirk’s demotion was very short-lived.
@29/CLB: That was just a couple of examples. Kirk was demoted to captain at the end of ST IV:TVH and that pretty much stuck. And Worf in “Change of Heart” received a reprimand from Sisko such that the latter said it would affect the former’s chances of ever receiving a command of his own and in canon that seems to have stuck as well.
@29 – And it took Burnham three whole years to be promoted to Captain. I wonder if someone convicted of mutiny has ever made captain in the real world.
JUDGE: To the charge of dereliction of duty, to the charge of assaulting a fellow officer, to the charge of mutiny. To all these charges, how do you plead?
BURNHAM: (sotto) Guilty.
#30. Kirk’s demotion was pretty much a gift to him (and fans) though, hence the celebratory tone with the verdict. Shatner and Nimoy point this out in the commentary for Voyage Home. They also felt “captain” had a more adventurous sound than “admiral” anyway, and they’re not wrong.
@32: Oh, I agree it was actually a good thing for him and fans but it still works as an example of a punishment and consequences that were carried out and weren’t immediately forgotten about and returned to status quo by the next movie/episode.
@33,
Yeah, the demotion itself is fine. It was the catalyst for that demotion that’s always bothered me, though.
I mean, it was always a given going into TVH that Kirk and crew were gonna need one hell of a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card after the events of TSFS (and I can only imagine what the wait was like for the audiences in-between films back in 1984-86).
I’ve just always had issues with the Whale Probe Ex Machina being used as that catalyst.
@10
“So Barclay gets no punishment at all for his disobeying orders and breaking into the engineering lab? “
With respect to this incident, I can imagine something like the following in Barclay’s service record:
Censure for disobeying orders
Commendation for imaginative thinking and displaying initiative
cancelling each other out …
@26 Keith, would I be correct in saying you share my utter lack of enthusiasm for Seinfeld? (I for one found the main characters to all be thoroughly unpleasant and self-absorbed.)
@28 Despite Keith’s implied distaste (?) for Seinfeld, not mentioning it in connection with Jason Alexander would have been a glaring omission.
@30, 32-34 Yes, Kirk’s demotion at the close of ST-IV was presented pretty much as a reward.
When he did retire (presumably right before the start of ST Generations) he might be on the books as an admiral again, since that’s what navies (and presumably Star Fleet) do. At the very least, he’d have been promoted posthumously after his apparent death on the Enterprise-B.
@34: Well, Kirk and crew got very lucky there but if anything would absolve them of their crimes it would be saving Earth and its inhabitants.
@35: But that was a big part of the humor of Seinfeld: the unpleasantness and self-absorption of the main characters. It was refreshing from the typical sitcoms where everyone is happy and a do-gooder all of the time. And the characters on Seinfeld often suffered or received a comeuppance for their wretched traits so it wasn’t like they were rewarded for their bad behavior. Anyway, I get it wasn’t for everyone but it was one of the most popular TV shows of all time so I couldn’t have been alone in my enjoyment of the series!
@30/garreth: “Kirk was demoted to captain at the end of ST IV:TVH and that pretty much stuck.”
I’d say that’s the opposite of a character facing meaningful consequences. When we talk about whether characters face consequences, it’s not about how it’s presented in-story, it’s about whether it makes a meaningful narrative change or just hits the reset button and lets the character proceed as normal. And since Kirk had only been an admiral in a few movies and was restored to his traditional role of captain of a starship — in command of the exact same bridge crew he’d commanded 20 years before, in defiance of all military logic — I’d call that a profound case of hitting the reset button.
“And Worf in “Change of Heart” received a reprimand from Sisko such that the latter said it would affect the former’s chances of ever receiving a command of his own and in canon that seems to have stuck as well.”
Same answer: It doesn’t count since it made no change in Worf’s narrative status quo. “This might affect your chances at something that might happen years down the road” is hardly a meaningful consequence within the parameters of the story itself, just a handwave to create the superficial appearance of one without actually changing anything.
@15: I remember Richard Herd from rewatching the first season of SeaQuest a few years back, thinking “wow, they managed to get Karl Malden for this?!” and then looking it up and realizing they had not, in fact, managed to get Karl Malden for that. Not to take away anything from Herd’s performances (he’s the classic character actor, improving just about anything he’s in) but the resemblance was uncanny.
@38 / CLB:
Same answer: It doesn’t count since it made no change in Worf’s narrative status quo. “This might affect your chances at something that might happen years down the road” is hardly a meaningful consequence within the parameters of the story itself, just a handwave to create the superficial appearance of one without actually changing anything.
Yeah, it’s different from the fallout of Worf’s Discommendation “Sins of the Father” — although even that was stymied by Worf not even living in the Empire, the nature of Main Cast billing, and the episodic nature of that era of Trek.
The long-term impact and repercussions of that is really only visible in hindsight knowing how that arc played out across TNG and DS9.
@35 – “@26 Keith, would I be correct in saying you share my utter lack of enthusiasm for Seinfeld? (I for one found the main characters to all be thoroughly unpleasant and self-absorbed.)”
That was the joke. These characters were horrible people, unlike just about any other sitcom. But it was so well done that most people didn’t even realize it; a lot of people hated the finale, IMO, because the show pointed this out to the audience with the flashbacks and the trial.
Seinfeld was also counter-programming to the warm, friendly, “very special episode” style of sitcom that was everywhere at the time. Maybe they went a bit too far in the other direction, your mileage may vary, but it’s easy to see how it stood out from the crowd and eventually became a hit. Personally, I could stand watching Urkel, Blossom, or Michelle Tanner learn a valuable lesson every week only so for long.
@31
Peter Haywood, who was a HMS Bounty mutineer ended up as a captain in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Heywood
The writers of Seinfeld were obvious Star Trek fans as references to the latter franchise were peppered throughout the series including one big plot point from STIII: TSFS:
https://youtu.be/ad8M_QrSf40
@31- It took Burnham three whole years to be promoted to Captain. I wonder if someone convicted of mutiny has ever made captain in the real world.
From a certain point of view, leading a mutiny can be a very direct path to becoming Captain… albeit not generally in the same service.
@10: Success tends to bring forgiveness for disobedience. Think Admiral Horatio Nelson ignoring the order to withdraw at the Battle of Copenhagan. He disobeyed orders but since he went on to win a resounding victory not only was he not punished, but he was made a Viscount. Likewise in the Korean War, Major General Holland Smith disobeyed an order to keep advancing in the face of the apparent entry of China into the war and instead had his forces dig in on high ground. Smith was never punished for disobeying the order to continue advancing because his disobedience prevented his division from being wiped out when the Chinese attacked in force the next day.
And Starfleet seems to follow that same ethos. (Think of Picard praising Data at the end of Redemption Part II for having disobeyed orders since by doing so Data basically prevented the fall of the entire Klingon Empire, or Admiral Toddman not punishing SIsko for taking the Defiant into the Gamma Quadrant against orders in The Die Is Cast, since Sisko succeeded in his mission.) Barclay not being punished after achieving a smashing success is in full accord with that tradition.
@46 – Nelson didn’t really ignore an order to withdraw at Copenhagen. Parker made the signal to disengage to give Nelson a chance to retreat without breaching the Articles of War (retreating without orders being a capital offence under Article XII) if the battle was unwinnable, knowing that if Nelson saw a path to victory he would disregard the signal (Parker directly said as much to his Flag Captain at the time and it was recorded in the log, so it’s not a retrospective attempt to cover up disobedience). It was a deliberate win-win being given to Nelson by a superior who knew him well.
@47: Fair enough (though that raises the question of why Nelson felt the need to hold up his blind eye to the telescope when the order to withdraw came in if that order was just a suggestion) but regardless even if Nelson wasn’t technically disobeying orders the idea of Nelson disobeying orders at Copenhagan was still mythologized within the Royal Navy to the point that one hundred years later First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher would actually criticize a Royal Navy captain for obeying orders.
“In war the first principle is to disobey orders. Any fool can obey an order. He ought to have gone on, had he the slightest Nelsonic temperament in him.”
-First Sea Lord Fisher in condemning Captain H. M. Pelley’s strict adherence to his orders at the Battle of Dogger Bank
And Starfleet seems to have the same kind of mentality where they want their officers to be audacious and to be willing to practice “intelligent disobedience” when appropriate.
I’m sure in Starfleet, as in most modern militaries, the decision to bring someone up on charges rests with their commander, who has a lot of discretion in choosing to do so or not. If Admiral Paris is the overall commander of the unit Reg is in, and he decides he doesn’t want to court-martial or NJP him, then he isn’t going to be court-martialed or NJP’d, simple as that.
@48 – Nelson held up his telescope to his blind eye, if indeed he did so, to show he was making a joke. He was a Vice Admiral in charge of a squadron; reading signals was the job of a Lieutenant and a couple of Midshipmen, who then relayed the signal to him. He ordered the signal acknowledged, but not repeated, and then jokingly said to his own Flag Captain (Foley) that having only one eye entitled him to be blind sometimes; if he did the telescope thing, it was as a flourish to illustrate the joke.
Parker was covering Nelson’s arse for him; Nelson saw what he was doing and let everyone around him know it by making a (pretty legendary) joke out of it.
You know I’ve always heard of references to the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, including on Star Trek, but until now didn’t know what it was really about until I just read the Wikipedia entry. Now I want to check out the movie versions. Sometimes this rewatch can really be insightful about real life events!
#51. You’re in for a treat then. I’ve seen three of the Bounty movies. The one with Clark Gable is generally considered the all-time classic, and for good reason, but I have a fondness for the Marlon Brando version. It’s too long and Brando’s performance is a tad cartoonish but I can’t help but like it. That’s mainly due to Trevor Howard as Bligh, I guess.
The one with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins is good too and probably the most realistic/historically accurate. I believe it’s one of the few tellings of the story that depicts Christian and Bligh as friends before things go to hell.
@52: Thanks. I’ll have to track down each one and find out which platforms they’re available to stream on. And with1984 being the last time a film take on the subject was made, it seems it’s time for yet another modern remake!
#53. I agree! We’re overdue for another telling. But who to cast? Cumberbatch might make a good Bligh.
@54: Good suggestion! And perhaps Eddy Redmayne as Christian.
The end of this episode always makes me tear up. Without fail. It reminds a little of just how right “United” feels on Enterprise, when the story is something so singularly integral to the premise just knocks it out of the park. And it’s always good to see Reg.
As for Reg disobeying orders, it is like Picard said, “The claim, ‘I was only following orders’ has been used to justify too many tragedies in our history. Starfleet does not want officers who will blindly follow orders without analyzing the situation. Your actions were appropriate for the circumstances, and I have noted that in your record.” It’s not just that the Outcome Proves, Starfleet wants officers to cultivate good instincts and follow them.
I also wonder if there’s a bit of treatment in the incident as well. Everyone knows that Reginald Barclay has confidence issues. While there are regulations and orders to be followed, they also I think asked would it serve Barclay as a person and an officer to punish him for such a success. Even when he wins, he loses? Barclay isn’t an officer whose problem is disobeying orders because he likes to flaunt authority, he has self-esteem issues that cripple his effectiveness. Therefore punishing him to bring him in line isn’t the way to help him improve as an officer but rather rewarding his successes will be more effective. In short throwing him in the brig is more likely to wreck a good officer as a person rather than make them correct a deficiency in their career.
There’s also the fact that Admiral Paris was in fact going to authorize him to try, so Reg jumped the gun. I’m sure everyone in Starfleet knows someone that saved the day by following their gut once.
@56:
I also wonder if there’s a bit of treatment in the incident as well. Everyone knows that Reginald Barclay has confidence issues. While there are regulations and orders to be followed, they also I think asked would it serve Barclay as a person and an officer to punish him for such a success. Even when he wins, he loses? Barclay isn’t an officer whose problem is disobeying orders because he likes to flaunt authority, he has self-esteem issues that cripple his effectiveness. Therefore punishing him to bring him in line isn’t the way to help him improve as an officer but rather rewarding his successes will be more effective. In short throwing him in the brig is more likely to wreck a good officer as a person rather than make them correct a deficiency in their career.
I’d imagine Reg would have advocates within the fleet (Picard, Deanna, Geordi) making that same argument if Reg had been court-martialed (Deanna and Geordi especially).
But like @7 was speculating, I think the potential PR was another factor that would have helped iron things out for Reg’s potential court martial.
At this point, the Feds had known about VOY’s situation for nearly 2 years — and here’s a subtle horror element to that which never really got played up by the show: Starfleet Command had no way of knowing if Janeway and company were even still alive at this point.
Remember, the Hirogen network went down during “Hunters” and Command wouldn’t have known what happened on Janeway’s end of the call, so to speak. It would have been reasonable to assume whatever took down the Network may have taken VOY out too (or they had fallen victim to any anomalies or other threats in the DQ frontier in the interim).
The entire Pathfinder project was gambling that the ship and crew were still out there — and in the wake of the post-Dominion War rebuilding, I can only imagine how hard and difficult it would have been to petition for those resources for such a long shot.
So Reg’s actions not only vindicated the Project’s goals and technology, but proved these heroes were still alive, making their way home, and continuing Starfleet’s core mission. It would have been a major morale booster and prosecuting Reg would have been another PR nightmare.
The one thing that just occurred to me that apparently no one back home is looking for the Equinox. It is never mentioned in this episode, despite presumably vanishing under similar circumstances to Voyager. Sure, Starfleet had heard from Voyager at least once and hadn’t had word from the Equinox, but it is still a little weird that the Pathfinder project doesn’t seem remotely interested in finding the other Federation ship that got sucked into the Delta Quadrant. Even if they presumed the Equinox destroyed, learning that Voyager had survived meant there was at least a chance the Equinox had, too. Am I forgetting some time after “Equinox” when Voyager would have been able to send word back?
@58,
Oh, yeah, that’s a very good point. It is kinda weird nobody in the Project mentions Equinox.
And there’s another missed opportunity: VOY and Equinox weren’t the only AQ ships that went missing in the Badlands. What about the Cardassian cruiser as established in “Voyager Conspiracy”? Would have been interesting to see the families and friends of other missing ships being updated by the project or expressing anger that VOY had survived and their loved ones were still missing and likely dead.
Am I forgetting some time after “Equinox” when Voyager would have been able to send word back?
Reports on the Equinox incident presumably would have been part of the data transfer at the end of this episode. If the transmission didn’t complete in time, then it would have been after the permanent monthly contact of “Lifeline”.
@58/wildfyre and 59/Mr. Magic: Starfleet has no way of knowing that the Equinox ended up in the Delta Quadrant, only that it disappeared. It is never stated in “Equinox” that the titular ship was abducted in the Badlands. That can’t have been the only place that the Caretaker abducted ships from, since he was searching the entire galaxy for compatible gene donors. And Voyager didn’t encounter the Equinox until well after they made contact with Starfleet in “Message in a Bottle.” So Starfleet would’ve had no reason to connect the two ships’ disappearances.
The sensible answer to the whole “where Voyager is now” question is as follows:
The script of this episode wisely dispenses with a complication that would, if anything, undermine a plot that could reach the show’s general audience (meaning this wise decision is not a “plot hole”, a term so abused nowadays it practically invites a moratorium.)
@61/Truth Alone: Okay, but if the producers had no intention of following through on the big jumps, then it was dishonest to include them in the first place. They were always treated like a big deal, actual progress being made, but that means nothing if later episodes are written as if nothing has changed, whether it’s the same species still showing up or Starfleet still being able to find them or whatever. Either make the progress meaningful or don’t pretend it’s being made at all. Trying to have it both ways was a cheat.
@@@@@ garreth – “HMS Bounty”. Not “the HMS Bounty”. “The His Majesty’s Ship” doesn’t make sense.
Nice cat. But it doesn’t look happy in that picture!
@64/roxana: “Nice cat. But it doesn’t look happy in that picture! “
Actually, it kinda does. Feline body language is nothing like human facial expressions. Lowered eyelids are a sign of contentment and affection in cats, and the ear position looks relaxed, not folded back as they’d be if the cat were upset. The body is relaxed too, just hanging limply in Schultz’s hands, even though he’s not holding it in an ideal position.
If you want a cat to be picked up on camera, you get a cat that’s used to being picked up on camera and won’t make a fuss over it. Otherwise you’ll never get the shot.
I agree with Christopher. My wife and I have had a lot of cats. (We currently have 11, yes all properly licensed and within the law where we live). This cat looks relaxed and content. If he (I’m assuming he given the name) were angry those ears would be back and he would be far more tense.
I bow to your expertise, costumer, but that’s my cat’s getting ready to pounce look.
@67/roxana: I think you might be mistaking the arch in its posture from hanging limp in Dwight Schultz’s grip for the arch of a cat that’s doing it on purpose. Those are not “ready-to-pounce” ears. Those are perfectly casual ears.
I think part of the subtext of this episode is that even though Barclay appears to have “regressed” and is indulging in holodeck fantasies again, he’s doing it primarily to help Voyager and not for himself, and the end of the episode implies that he’s re-engaging with the real world once he establishes contact with Voyager.
@69 That suggests to me that this “regression” is out of the ordinary for his current behavior, and he’s falling back on old habits because he’s stressed out trying to solve this problem.
Has anyone ever considered that Troi might not have been there at all and was merely a projection, holo or otherwise? When rewatching it struck me as convenient that the Enterprise, which spends 99% of its time away, just happens to be in orbit at this time. Not a single other person is available for a social visit, which is what the encounter was originally shown as, except his old therapist. Who is able to suddenly take leave from her high level position to help a former client. And we never see her interact with anyone except Barlcay. Just as the Holo-Voyager crew existed to reinforce Barclay and help him work through his technical problems, perhaps Deanna was there to reinforce and help him with his social anxiety problems. Either as a holo-projection or in his own mind.
I don’t necessarily think this is what the show creators originally intended, but rather an alternate what-if scenario. Barclay might not have been as far along the recovery path as some think.
They could have had a line (but they didn’t) to say that they detected at least one Picard Signature from the Delta Quadrant, representing a starship, Voyager, blipping towards Earth at considerable speed, but still being a long way away afterwards. Or have only Reg believe it actually was that.
Reg looks pretty anxious there with the cat… I think it would pick up the vibe. Maybe get defensive.
Are we remembering that James Kirk commanded the HMS Bounty on screen…
@72: @63 says it’s improper to use “the” in front of HMH Bounty. ;o)
@73/garreth: I would submit that the renamed Bird-of-Prey in TVH was not actually His/Her Majesty’s Ship Bounty, but a private vessel whose full name was HMS Bounty, just the initials. Therefore, in that case, “the HMS Bounty” would be correct, even though it’s incorrect for the original.
When I first saw this episode I didn’t think about the “hiw could Barclay find Voyeger after several jumps” problem, so it stuck out when I read the post. However, then I though of a solution. Barclay most likely would have found Voyager by calculating their average rate, that is distance traveled divided by time. What he might not have remembered is that Voyeger’s single longest jump was when Kes helped them through Borg space. It’s quite possible that all the jumps after that added up to about the same distance as the Kes-jump, so Barclay calculated their actual distance travelled up to the Doctors report without accounting for the Kes-jump; and used that info to extrapolate their new position that by pure chance happened to be their actual position thanks to all the other jumps they made. If they hadn’t made those other jumps, Barclay’s estimate would have been way too close to home, on account of the ship not traveling as fast as he thought.
@62: I suppose it’s a cheat to you, if you feel cheated. I don’t, so to me, it’s not. I can’t say I expected the dramatic beats of lone episodes to get the ship home any faster than I expected the same when they happened to Sam in Quantum Leap. The premise of the show seemed likely, on the whole, to persist as long as the show did.
@76/Truth Alone: Yes, that’s exactly the point. If there’s no intention of the episodic beats representing any actual progress or change, then don’t pretend they do. The pretense was that the big jumps were not just routine episodic events, but major changes in the status quo. So they had an obligation to justify that pretense. In Quantum Leap, whenever it seemed that Sam had made a major step closer to getting home, something happened to reverse it and justify the return to the status quo. The show never pretended to give him a major victory and then just ignored it thereafter, because that would be bad writing. And it was bad writing when Voyager did it.
Besides, it’s not like it’s a binary choice between “perpetual status quo” and “series ends altogether.” Series premises can evolve and change over time, like how DS9 became a series about a war, or how ENT shifted focus to the Xindi storyline in season 3 — or, for that matter, how Voyager‘s own dynamic changed when regular Starfleet contact was established late in season 6. If VGR’s producers wanted the major jumps to carry real weight, they should’ve come with real consequences. They should’ve been clean breaks from any storylines involving pre-jump aliens, unless those aliens were sufficiently far-ranging like the Borg or Hirogen.
Trivial matters: While they are not seen, Troi makes mention of the Enterprise, Data, his cat Spot, and La Forge.
Captain Picard is also mentioned in the episode.
One of the redeeming things about Voyager is it did give us a few more episodes of the Great Reg Barclay, if these hadn’t occurred then his final appearance would have been the blink and you miss it Cameo in “First Contact” following the truly Terrible TNG episode “Genesis”
I have always loved Dwight Schultz, as a child growing up in 80s one of my favourite shows was the A Team, we all loved it at school, we had all the action figures and in the school playground all of us wanted to be BA or Murdock (I can’t remember anyone wanting to be Hannibal or Face) so any chance to see him on screen was always a delight.
This is a wonderful episode I have no hesitation as saying it’s in my top 5 Voyager episodes.
The emotional payoff of Starfleet and Voyager getting to talk to each other at the end of the episode is so amazing. Despite all the show’s flaws, the one thing it did well was make us care about the characters. Mulgrew’s “Keep a docking bay open for us,” line was perfectly delivered. Just typing it put a lump in my throat.
I feel like the “they couldn’t possibly know where Voyager is” plot hole could have been easily solved to some degree: have Harkins assume that Voyager travelled at warp 9 or the likes.
In “Caretaker”, Voyager’s specs are given as a “sustainable cruise velocity of warp 9.975”. This number has never come up since and they’ve mostly crouched along at warp 5–7, for reasons both inexplicable (same how TNG’s Enterprise would often fly at low warp speeds (cough “The Wounded”) and only increase when the plot demands it) and explicable (fuel shortage, equipment damage, etc.).
Harkins’s estimate of warp 6 is realistic and probably close to Voyager’s actual average speed, but if he had assumed that they travelled at warp 9, their lower usual speed and several shortcuts could have evened out enough that he might have estimated their position well enough that one could excuse the remaining implausibility.
That wouldn’t work, since the ship’s published specs say that warp 9.975 can only be sustained for 12 hours. It’s not a standard cruise velocity, it’s emergency speed, pushing the engines to their safe limit. Nobody would assume that the ship could maintain it indefinitely without stopping.
Not to mention, why would they assume anything in the absence of evidence? That’s the exact opposite of rational thinking. They would estimate the ship’s most likely position based on the available data and precedents, not on some random ad hoc assumption they pulled out of their, err, wormhole.
Leave to Barkeley to imagine B’Elana’s best hairstyle of series. I’m only sad that next episode we go back to her worst. Speaking of B’Elana, I like how she and Chakotay were imagined as still wearing Maquis gear. Nice touch.
As always the holodeck strains belief, but it’s worth it for what this episode provides. I got teary eyed, I’ll admit. But I’m an easy mark. All in all, a good episode, despite whatever plot(worm)holes may have been required to get it done.