“Memorial”
Written by Brannon Braga and Robin Burger
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 6, Episode 14
Production episode 236
Original air date: February 2, 2000
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. The Delta Flyer returns from a two-week mission of exploration and searching for dilithium ore. Chakotay, Kim, Paris, and Neelix are pretty much sick of the sight of each other, all blowing off their post-long-away-team physicals to relax. (During the two weeks, the sonic shower malfunctioned, so they’re all pretty stinky.)
Upon returning to Voyager, Torres has a surprise for Paris: a replica of a 1956 television set. They watch some old television shows (complete with commercials!), and she even replicated popcorn and beer. However, Paris becomes completely engrossed in the TV, ignoring Torres.
Suddenly, he sees, instead of old reruns, himself fighting a war in a jungle. It turns out he’s dreaming, but it’s a very distinctive dream, and Paris remembers fighting in a war recently.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
While working in a Jefferies Tube, Kim starts hallucinating sounds of battle and has a panic attack. He immediately reports to sickbay, where the EMH diagnoses an anxiety attack brought on by the stress of the away mission. He prescribes a couple of days off.
In the mess hall, Neelix is sweaty and apprehensive as he chops vegetables, reacting in shock to a kettle whistling. When Naomi comes in to talk to him about one of her homework assignments, he blows her off, seeming nervous. When she burns her hand on a pot, he goes batshit, crying out for medical attention.
Chakotay has a nightmare about a battle in the same setting as the TV show Paris hallucinated. Chakotay is arguing with the commanding officer, a guy named Saavdra, saying that they have to stop shooting. These are civilians they’re supposed to be evacuating, not enemy combatants. But Saavdra insists they’re armed and dangerous.
Tuvok awakens Chakotay with a security alert: Neelix is holding Naomi hostage in the mess hall. Chakotay reports to the mess hall, and realizes that the details of the battle situation that Neelix imagines himself to be in is very similar to his dream. Chakotay tries something: He tells Neelix that Saavdra has ordered a cease-fire. This convinces Neelix to let Naomi go and stand down. Chakotay takes him to sickbay.
The EMH is forced to sedate Neelix, who is suffering PTSD. Chakotay says his dream matches what Neelix was hallucinating—except, according to the EMH’s scans, both Neelix and Chakotay are accessing memories. Belatedly, the EMH realizes that this may have been the cause of Kim’s anxiety attack.
Janeway has them retrace the away mission, since it must have happened there, given who’s being affected, though Chakotay recalls nothing untoward happening on the mission.
The away team meets in the briefing room with Janeway and Tuvok. Each member of the team remembers different bits, but the overall memory is the same: They were soldiers, serving under Saavdra. Their orders were to evacuate a colony, but then some resisted the evac and fired on the soldiers. Saavdra’s response was to fire indiscriminately on all the colonists. Neelix remembers trying to save some children, but they all ran away from him and were killed. Kim recalls getting lost in a cave system and coming across two scared colonists. He remembers offering to spare them, but then one of them reached for something, and Kim shot and killed them both, thinking they were going for weapons.
The four away team members are obviously devastated by these memories, and the EMH insists that they’re real memories. But there’s no other indication that any of this happened. Indeed, Paris distinctly remembers a shoulder wound, but there’s no sign of an injury on him.
Janeway and Chakotay join Seven in astrometrics and go over the fortnight the Delta Flyer was out. The first few planets and the ship they encountered are of no obvious relation, but then Janeway, of all people, recognizes a planet they orbited as Tarakis. Now Janeway starts to have memories of being on Tarakis and being appalled to see Saavdra ordering the bodies disintegrated so there’ll be no evidence of the massacre.
Janeway wakes up in the mess hall, hyperventilating. She’s been unconscious for hours, and now 39 more crewmembers have been debilitated by memories of Tarakis. She orders a course set for the planet.
Neelix is despondent, as he fears that Naomi hates him now. Seven brings him a dish of one of his favorite foods: Talaxian stew and terra nut soufflé. She has also added chocolate to the soufflé. Neelix isn’t really hungry, but then he talks to Seven about how she deals with all the atrocities she committed as a Borg drone. She points out that, while guilt can be awful, it can also serve to motivate her to become a better person. Neelix is comforted by that, and starts to eat his food.
Voyager arrives at Tarakis. Tuvok detects no life signs, but Kim finds a power source. An away team consisting of Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris, Kim, and a security guard beam down. (It’s not clear who’s in charge of the ship…)
It’s the same world that everyone remembers, only without all the fighting and stuff. Kim finds the cave system he went through, and almost loses his shit when he enters it, but he and Tuvok find the remains of the two people he remembers shooting right at the spot he recalls. The good news, though, is that the remains are three hundred years old.
Janeway and Chakotay find the power source: a giant obelisk. From astrometrics, Seven determines that it’s a synaptic transmitter that can send memories to anyone near the solar system. The words on the obelisk are a memorial to the Nakan Massacre, and also says that words are insufficient to convey the horror of what happened on Tarakis. The obelisk is also losing power, and will likely shut down soon. Indeed, its low power is probably why everyone has fragmented and different memories.
There’s another meeting in the briefing room. Chakotay wants to shut the thing down completely. His mind has been violated, and he’s disgusted with the notion that innocent people will be forced to have these memories thrust upon them against their will.
Neelix (who has actually lived through a war that claimed most of his family) takes the opposite tack: They can’t let the obelisk lose power. What happened here was so horrific, they can’t risk it being forgotten.
Tuvok agrees with Chakotay, but Janeway agrees with Neelix. She doesn’t want to shut it down; she wants to repair it so it’ll work right. They’ll also put in a warning buoy, which will address Chakotay’s very legitimate consent concern. They beam down and fix it all up nice, so that the Nakan will never be forgotten.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The EMH says that the memories that are implanted in the crew are permanent. At no point is Dr. Pulaski’s method of erasing memories (seen on TNG in “Pen Pals” and mentioned in “Who Watches the Watchers?“) mentioned as an option.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway’s memory focuses on Saavdra ordering the bodies vaporized. One of the things I’ve always hated about Star Trek is that phasers have a setting that allows you to, in essence, remove all evidence of your actions, and I like seeing it used here for that purpose.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok argues for shutting the obelisk down as the only logical course, which prompts Neelix to tell him that it isn’t about logic—it’s about remembering.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH is very bad at getting people who’ve been on an away mission for two weeks to report for their post-mission physical. Which is unfortunate, as that physical is there for a reason, as this episode proves…
Half and half. Torres replicated a 1956 TV set, 1956 remote control, popcorn, and beer for Paris, and also dug up some authentic video of the time period. She is a much better girlfriend than he is a boyfriend.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix’s memories focus on children he tried to rescue, and because of that, he tries to “rescue” Naomi, thus scaring the shit out of her.
Forever an ensign. Kim spends the entire episode miserable, as he’s the one complaining the loudest about how the away mission went, and he has one of the absolute worst memories, getting lost in a cave and shooting two innocent people.
Resistance is futile. Seven’s discourse on guilt to Neelix is an understated bit of brilliance, and she shows her development by not only preparing Neelix’s favorite food, but adding chocolate to it.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris’ response to Torres doing nice things for him is to ignore her and fall asleep watching the television. Sigh. Again, she is a much better girlfriend than he is a boyfriend.
Do it.
“Words alone cannot convey the suffering. Words alone cannot prevent what happened here from happening again. Beyond words lies experience. Beyond experience lies truth. Make this truth your own.”
–The translation of the inscription on the obelisk as read aloud by Chakotay.
Welcome aboard. L.L. Ginter, Fleming Brooks, Joe Mellis, Susan Savage, Maria Spassoff, and Robert Allen Colaizzi Jr. play the various people on Tarakis. Scarlett Pomers is also back as Naomi.
Trivial matters: This episode, like “One,” was based on a pitch by James Swallow, though he was again uncredited.
Paris dings Torres for including a remote control with the television, saying there were no remotes in the 1950s, but the remote she replicated is an actual model of a Zenith remote from 1956, the same vintage as the TV. Not the first time Paris has gotten details wrong on his area of expertise…
Paris and Torres watch the Merrie Melodies cartoon “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur,” a hockey game, and an episode of The Untouchables starring Robert Stack.
Janeway mentions that members of the crew have had their memories altered before, which has happened in “Flashback” to Tuvok, in “Nemesis” to Chakotay, in “Remember” to Torres (after a fashion), and to most of the crew in “The Killing Game” two-parter.
Set a course for home. “They always said television was a bad influence.” This is a nasty, powerful episode, which argues very passionately and semi-convincingly for the importance of remembering horrible things that have happened.
The “semi” before “convincingly” is there because I don’t think nearly enough time was spent on just what a horrible violation this is. Chakotay is right: Whoever built that obelisk is committing mental assault on every person who enters Tarakis’ star system, and that’s appalling. The fact that it’s in a noble cause doesn’t make it any less so, and that’s something that needed to be addressed as overtly as the rest of it. As it is, Janeway’s mention of the warning buoy is fobbed off in a quick line of dialogue, but that warning is what makes all the difference. Now people entering the star system can make an informed decision instead of having truly horrible memories downloaded into their brains willy nilly.
Robin Burger’s script and Allan Kroeker’s direction help a lot here, as the visuals, the acting, and the dialogue all combine to create a horrid picture of the mission to Tarakis that goes so incredibly wrong. I particularly love the scenes in the briefing room where the away team keeps modulating back and forth from four members of Voyager’s crew discussing what happened to four soldiers arguing about the morality of what they’ve done.
I want to single out Ethan Phillips for praise here, because he particularly plays Neelix’s PTSD supremely well, from his rapid-fire nervous chopping vegetables, to his losing it at the slightest noise, to his asking Seven about how she deals with what she did as a Borg, to his impassioned plea to not shut down the obelisk. It makes sense because, as established way back in “Jetrel,” Neelix’s own background is very similar to that of the Nakan, and as shown in that same first-season episode, Phillips can really bring it when dealing with his character’s trauma.
In many ways, this feels like Voyager wanting to do TNG’s “The Inner Light,” but (a) with more crew and (b) nastier. It also shares a lot of DNA with “Remember.” But it mostly works, though I would’ve liked to have seen more indication as to how this affected the rest of the ship. Thirty-nine other people got affected, but the only one we saw be affected was Janeway…
The importance of remembering awful things that happened in the past is a strong and important message, as the continued existence of Holocaust deniers can attest, and this episode delivers it nicely.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido has, with his wife Wrenn Simms, formed the very-small-press publisher Whysper Wude. Their first project is the anthology The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, which features alternate takes on the apocalyptic equestrians of yore. Among the authors are David Gerrold, Jonathan Maberry, Peter David, Jody Lynn Nye, David Mack, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, Michael Jan Friedman, Adam-Troy Castro, Laura Anne Gilman, Gail Z. Martin, and tons more. Read all about the four cats of the apocalypse! The four lawyers! The four opera singers! The four rock stars! The four cheerleaders! And more! The anthology is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, and has tons of nifty bonuses and extras—check it out!
I agree that this is a really good episode. I wish it had done a little more character work (my constant refrain during the Voyager rewatch), because I think the little bit we get here is really interesting, and I would have liked to see more. It makes a lot of sense to me that Chakotay is the one who deals with it the best, because he was the leader of a terrorist cell, and likely has had some experience in compartmentalizing the more violent parts of his life and being able to work around them. Paris and Neelix both have very complicated feelings around violence and guilt (Paris with the crash that killed his fellow officers, Neelix with his draft dodging and family loss), and I think that really shows in the way they react to this. Kim, being the perpetual baby of Voyager, doesn’t even know what is going on at first.
There’s a few things I wish got fleshed out more, like Paris yelling at Torres that she doesn’t understand what he is going through. She was a guerilla fighter, and I would have loved for her to snap back that she did, in fact, understand (also, do Starfleet officers seriously not take off their uniform blouses, even to relax in their own quarters? I take mine off the minute I get home). I mean, this is a ship half full of people who might have been in situations that are similar to the one they are being forced to re-live, but that is never mentioned. But it is a good episode overall, even if it doesn’t lean into the aspects of it that really could have made it unique to Voyager.
On the subject of the monolith mind-invasion, I always wondered if maybe it effected them in such a non-consensual way was that it wasn’t designed to interact with human (or Talaxian) minds. Giving the creators the full benefit of the doubt, it is possible that, had one of their own race approached it, it would have been a more voluntary experience.
I respect the idea behind the episode, but the execution did nothing for me. It felt like a heavy-handed attempt to redo what “Remember” did far better and with more nuance. It didn’t help that I was turned off by the whole “I replicated a TV for you” subplot. They’d really driven Paris’s 20th-century obsession into the ground by this point. I don’t watch TV so I can watch other people watch TV, certainly not in the 24th century on the far side of the galaxy.
I think part of what weakens it for me is that it’s so impersonal. I mean, both Chakotay and Neelix have been in actual wars and almost certainly have memories they’re ashamed of. It might’ve worked better to base the story in something traumatic that actually happened to them, as tricky as that would be when they’re both tens of thousands of light years from their respective battlefields. Having it just be outside memories imposed on them makes it feel superficial.
“She is a much better girlfriend than he is a boyfriend.”
Agreed. :)
Part of me likes this one a lot. The performances are great, the directing is really good. The idea of the memorial is a good sci fi concept, a holocaust museum with the made-up technology to impress on people what the words and images in our museums can’t ever quite convey.
The other part of me is just really bothered by the conclusion that this is okay to do to people. Especially making these memories apparently permanent. Making a lasting impression is one thing, mentally scarring people who didn’t even do anything wrong is appalling. People kill themselves over PTSD, inflicting it on someone intentionally is arguably as monstrous as the massacre itself.
It would be one thing if the monolith broadcast an invitation and warning to ships entering the system, come check out this memorial but be careful, it’s not for everyone and it will change you. Or maybe, since the builders apparently felt they needed to be aggressive and not give people the choice to ignore it, they could have implanted one memory, a single dream as a taste of the horror and included the message that you can come see the whole thing if you want, or go on your way and be susceptible to the committing of genocide.
I don’t know, Janeway just fixing it up and offhandedly dropping a warning buoy nearby feels like perpetuating a psychic crime.
@2
I don’t watch TV so I can watch other people watch TV, certainly not in the 24th century on the far side of the galaxy.
But you have been all along! ;-)
Ten demerits to Frito for linking to a Seinfeld clip on my rewatch.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who is kidding, but who also really hates Seinfeld
Thanks once again to Keith for a nuanced and in-depth look at one of the shows that emerged from one of my story premise pitches!
One quick point I wanted to add in here, re this comments:
“Chakotay is right: Whoever built that obelisk is committing mental assault on every person who enters Tarakis’ star system, and that’s appalling.”
All true, of course – but the intention was to suggest that the ongoing breakdown of the memorial is the reason why no-one effectively gets to read the “terms and conditions” before going through the traumatic experience of the memories. It’s not working correctly when the Voyager crew encounter it.
@@@@@wildfyrewarning – I always thought the writers should have written the Paris yelling at Torres scene differently and it could have been stronger and a lot more effective if they had done so. For one, it would have gone a long way to show their relationship to have been a strong one if he’d actually relied on her for the counsel she was offering instead of just yelling at her. I get that they were trying to show that he has PTSD, but the way it’s written in the episode it’s no wonder we all feel that Torres is a much better girlfriend than Paris is boyfriend.
And also maybe they could have shown them together at the end of the episode at the rededication of the memorial; then, once again, the writers would have given us a chance to see that their relationship was a healthy, mature one. I guess it was more important to give Roxanne the day off or not have to ship her over to the on-location shoot. :-)
@6
That’s okay. I kinda hate Star Trek too.
I had put off watching this one for a long time until very recently when I gave in as I’m running out of Voyager episodes that I’ve never seen before. An episode featuring Paris/Chakotay/Tuvok/Neelix sounded like a snooze and I’d start the episode and then it reminded me of “Nemesis” and so I’d turn it off. But this time I stuck with it, and wow, what a powerful episode! The story was compelling and you gotta love a story where you can see a debate for both sides of the issue as we see the characters do here. I do agree though that what this civilization did was a horrible mental violation even if their intentions are noble. Excellent acting all around. I also liked the directorial device of Paris watching the disturbing events on the TV set if just for it being creative. This episode did remind of a dark and nasty “The Inner Light” so in a way this one is like “Hard Time” but without the time compression and obviously a different but also awful scenario.
Seconding 2 CLB– the choice to center this around some faraway conflict with implanted memories really kneecaps this episode. In addition to Chakotay/Neelix, Janeway is also a veteran of the first Federation/Cardassia War, although this is a period of her life we know almost nothing about (she mentions rescuing an injured Cardassian in “Prey,” but presumably she has other memories that are more traumatic).
Just have them swap war stories or otherwise have to relive those memories– a contrivance, sure, but no more contrived than what we got.
Because the “Memorial” creates a bunch of in-universe problems. We don’t actually know the Memorial creator was even attempting to portray history– maybe it’s a true story, or maybe these are synthetic memories and it was atrocity propaganda the whole time, which Voyager is now perpetuating. Or maybe it was accurate in the sense that these are real memories, but the memories themselves are at least partially inaccurate (highly likely if their memories are as unreliable as ours are). Or even if they are accurate memories, maybe the next alien species won’t be so lucky and the memorial will damage their brains permanently. And there’s also no guarantees that the warning buoy will last longer than the Memorial itself, or that the Universal Translator will be able to accurately explain what it is they’re in for, or that the Memorial won’t break down in some other catastrophic way. Given the unknowns, either doing nothing or shutting it down are justifiable. Repairing it strikes me as incredibly reckless, and possibly libelous, because we just don’t know what really happened.
All of these problems go away if these are real memories of events that happened to our crew. But once the choice was made to center this around implanted memories that we have no way to know are even accurate, it just doesn’t work.
Well, I don’t really hate Star Trek. I see an episode like this and can’t hate what I see. I just wanted to sound like an internet big shot.
@11/dunsel: Good point about Janeway’s war experience. Imagine if the episode had been about a phenomenon that forced them to relive their own most shameful acts in war, to confront their real guilt rather than an artificial construct. We could’ve seen what everyone in the crew was most ashamed of in their past, see them overwhelmed with guilt due to the memorial forcing them to relive the events, and then it’s Seven who manages to overcome it and snap the others out of it because she lives every day with far deeper guilt than anyone else and so she’s used to it.
But heaven forbid that season 6 Voyager remembers that any of these people have a past.
@6: I’m sorry, and I know this has nothing to do with the episode (which I remember really liking, even though it felt a little heavy handed but heavy handed in only the way Star Trek can be) but you hate Seinfeld? Sorry it just surprised me that someone out there hates Seinfeld (i’m not a fan either)
Good comments, fellas: seeing former Maquis members like Chakotay, Torres and even Paris and Tuvok (remember they were members of the terrorist cell too, however briefly) relive those days; Janeway with her Cardassian War experience; and seeing Neelix fighting in his own interplanetary war would have been very insightful on those characters and just cool for the audience to see glimpses of them relive their past lives.
O you notice that it’s entirely from the pov of the killers? Nothing of the victim’s pov. Sounds like this is less about remembrance than imposing guilt on innocent bystanders.
I love Seinfeld and I keep linking clips of it from here (when there are actors from Star Trek episodes who have been on the former series or characters from Seinfeld reference Star Trek). Lol
princessroxana: Well, the victims are all dead, which makes getting their POV problematic. This memorial was obviously put together by soldiers serving under Saavdra who were wracked with guilt.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@16/roxana: Aside from what Keith said, I think the idea was that if you experience the guilt of committing an atrocity, that makes you less likely to let it happen for real. Although negative reinforcement like inducing PTSD doesn’t really work like that. “Scared straight” is a myth — subjecting people to trauma makes them more likely to act out harmfully, not less. The best prevention is to encourage empathy and constructive impulses, not pain, fear, or shame.
Re: The point of view of the memories- it is the opposite direction than I’ve usually seen stories like this take. In The Devil’s Arithmetic and Forget Me Not: The Anne Frank Story*(and, I seem to recall, at least one episode of an Outer Limits type anthology show, though I can’t find any evidence of that), teenagers who don’t take the Holocaust seriously enough are transported back to experience it first hand- none of them as Gestapo officers or camp guards.
On another note, while it’s obviously wildly less intrusive than implanting false memories of committing atrocities, some of the discussion around Stolperstein memorials, designed to be come upon unexpectedly and intrusively, whereas people might choose to avoid or ignore more obviously presented memorials, seems relevant.
@18, guilt racked soldiers who want to impose their trauma on Innocents? That doesn’t sound healthy. But of course it supposed that these are actual memories of actual participants not representative reconstructions.
Long-time reader, first-time poster.
re: “Whoever built that obelisk is committing mental assault on every person who enters Tarakis’ star system, and that’s appalling.”
Several posters (e.g. @@.-@, 7, an 10) have expressed agreement with this statement. I, on the other hand, find that this position could benefit from a little more nuance.
For example, the evening news used to show violent images of war atrocities on TV with barely more than a token warning (far, far less than the more extensive “viewer warnings” offered today). No one was really given a full choice in those cases. Sure, you had the choice to stop watching the news altogether, but that wasn’t really a “choice” at all. If you wanted to know what was going on in the world or what was happening to your loved ones, you were forced to watch. And those images would be forever seared into the minds of those who viewed those newscasts.
Yet, many people who look back on those times rarely consider those newscasters “appalling” and inconsiderate because they took away the viewers’ opportunity to turn away. In fact, one could argue, that was the point. They forced the public to confront the event in the hopes of informing the uninformed and changing opinion. Those newscasters are, on the contrary, lauded because they unflinchingly showed the violence of the event in a way that could not be avoided, and their decision to “force” views to watch ultimately galvanized a generation to action.
I think it must be considered that, if people are given the choice to remember only what they want to see about the past, and not in some sense “forced” to encounter certain uncomfortable, possibly scarring events, then civilization risks devolving into the echo chambers we see so often today. That, one might argue, would be truly “appalling.”
(NB: I am in no way advocating methods of forced education or arguing that it is an effective way to teach a lesson–in fact, I lean more toward an educational model that is based on persuasion. What I am attempting to say is that a “forced” encounter with the past, even a traumatic one, is not always “appalling” in its implications.)
And to anticipate a possible objection: one could say in response that the crew of Voyager were not part of the Tarakan culture, and therefore should not be forced to re-live someone else’s massacre just because they flew by the planet. True, if Voyager had the benefit of a warning buoy in orbit, then they could have turned around and gone in a different direction, avoiding the trauma.
Such a position, however, runs counter to the entire “seek out new life and new civilizations” ideal of Star Trek–the ideal of encountering and learning from other cultures, even if that encounter might put you and your crew at risk of harm. If Voyager encountered and learned from only the cultures it wanted to meet or chose to meet, then it wouldn’t be doing a very good job of fulfilling its mandate.
As seen over and over again in each of the ST series, humanity often grows most and best when it must encounter and learn from those cultures, events, and circumstances that are unceremoniously forced upon them. It is in those moments where the human potential has the greatest opportunity to flourish and expand.
1. Torres was in command since she’s the next senior staff officer after Kim (they don’t show it but I infer it).
2. I also detest “Seinfield” with a passion; some TV critic called it “the greatest show of all time.” Given that all time has not happened and the vast amount of time before did not have TV in it, let alone “Seinfield,” I don’t know how it merits such an accolade. Very unfunny.
3. You expect consistency from “Voyager,” in season 6? How amusing.
@22/thomasriker: You make a good point. I remember being in college and sitting through the films taken by the Allies when they liberated the Nazi concentration camps. I wanted to look away, but I made myself watch because it had to be seen.
Then there was The Day After, which gave an unflinching look at the consequences of nuclear war, and actually helped convince President Reagan to dial back on military escalation. People weren’t forced to watch it, but I’m sure a lot of teachers ended up making it a mandatory part of their assignments. (My father didn’t want me to watch it because of my anxiety issues, and I had to employ all the debate skills a high schooler could muster to change his mind. As it turned out, it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know from books.)
Still, witnessing is one thing. Experiencing the direct memories of the perpetrators, having them permanently implanted in one’s mind, is a lot more invasive, and I’d say it crosses a line. Legally, any enforced alteration of a person’s mind or memory would probably constitute battery, because it’s a physical alteration to the brain, and battery is an unwanted physical imposition.
@13 – Sorry but another “Seven says the day” episode doesn’t sound all that appealing. Chakotay or Torres would be a better candidate. I’d go with Chakotay because it would give him some much needed depth. He’s got all these memories that he’s been bottling up so tightly that nobody, not even Torres, has any idea just how badly scarred he is. That would be better than Seven in my opinion.
@24 – The Day After is a pale shadow compared to Threads. You want an unflinching look at the consequences of a nuclear war, Threads makes The Day After look like an after school special.
So, Janeway leaves a warning buoy and fixes up the obelisk. So what happens when the buoy fails? And just how long will their fix of the obelisk hold? After all, we’re talking about alien technology. Who know how well the two techs will get along. Sounds more like Janeway just passed the buck to someone in the future.
Also, the episode title gives away the mystery of what’s going on way too early.
@23
Seinfeld isn’t as funny as The Day After, but it has its moments.
“I stood by once before and did nothing. Not again.”
It might be ending soon, but it feels like the series has been on a strong run recently (and yes, I’m including “Virtuoso” in that!), as the show continues to take high-concept ideas and make them about characters. It might not be referencing the characters’ history, but it has a strong sense of who these people are. A story about Voyager’s crew suffering PTSD over something they never did ultimately turns into a restatement of the maxim that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. And it’s a lesson that the crew have a hard time learning, in more ways than one. In a way, the viewers are in the same position as the characters, having to experience the events and worrying that people we care about could have been caught up in it.
While the initial mystery is intriguing enough, as is the horror of watching what the away team believed happen, the real meat comes after the mystery has been solved. It’s a great episode for Neelix, who gets another good scene with Seven in the one of them musing on the value of guilt. Janeway is distracted and hesitant when the question of what to do with the memorial comes up, but she’s soon back using her old trick of standing back and letting her senior staff argue things out, then stepping in and announcing what she’s decided. It’s interesting that only Neelix is in favour of letting the memorial remain: Chakotay and Paris both think memory of the massacre should be allowed to fade, Kim is still trying to justify the troopers’ actions and Tuvok is only thinking in practical terms. But Janeway ultimately concludes that the victims deserve to be remembered, so long as the people remembering them know what they’re walking into.
The episode’s only real misstep is the abrupt dropping of Torres’ character arc. We see her trying to comfort Paris who just blows up at her (which I found a neat reversal of their usual dynamic, rather than a sign of him being a bad boyfriend all the time!), he apologises and she tells him he knows where to find her…and then she just disappears for the rest of the episode with no pay-off.
Curiously, despite apparently being sick of each other at the start of the episode, these four will be out in the Delta Flyer again just two episodes from now! Frequent background actor David Keith Anderson gets a line and credit as “Crew Member”, even though “Retrospect” identified his character as Ashmore. I would agree that Torres is most likely to be in command: She was left in charge of the ship when Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris and Kim were all absent back in “The 37s”. (See also the next episode!)
@23: Is Torres an ensign too if she’s next in command after Kim? Ensign Torres? I don’t like the sound of that.
Regarding Seinfeld being regarded one of the best TV shows of all-time, “all time” isn’t meant to literally mean all of time, but of the limited television era that’s existed. And the series definitely made an impact on popular culture both critically and commercially.
@24: Like a lot of landmark television events that happened before my time or I was just too young to remember, I hope I can find The Day After Tomorrow somewhere in which to stream it.
@25: If you’re saying this Threads movie is good too I’ll have to see if I can find it on a streaming platform as well.
Even though you can say the title gives away what the episode is about, personally I never paid attention to what the title was so it had absolutely no influence on me as a spoiler for the ensuing events in this episode.
@26: Now that’s funny!
@27: I think the downturn of the sixth season already started with “Fair Haven” and “Virtuoso” which was just okay. And we still have other stinkers coming up like “Spirit Folk”, the Borg kids episode, and “Fury” (my personal guilty pleasure).
@28/garreth: Chain of command isn’t just about rank. Doctor McCoy outranked Sulu, but Sulu was in the chain of command and McCoy wasn’t.
And it’s The Day After, not The Day After Tomorrow. The latter is a cheesy 2004 Roland Emmerich disaster movie.
@29/CLB: Whoops! The Day After is what I meant! I recently bought a season set of South Park and one of the episodes is entitled “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow” so that was on my brain as I replied to your comment.
It’s interesting to think of remembering atrocities in light of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre and the debate about critical race theory and what to do with confederate statues we have in the last few years.
i found it funny that Paris got more interested in the tv than Torres. Did they have remotes back then.
Who’d’ve guessed that the B plot of the Memorial rewatch was the number of people coming out as Seinfeld haters, (like me.) Can’t predict it; can’t make it up. Brilliant.
Didn’t like Seinfeld either.
@22/thomasriker:
Aside from the key difference other people have identified — that watching something on a screen is far less intense or immersive than actually living the experience in your memories — there’s another big difference there.
When Walter Cronkite showed the horror of Vietnam on TV, it was in order to show the public what was really being done in their name, by their own fellow Americans, in the present. The idea was that he was showing the full truth to the home viewers, who had the power to vote, speak out in public, write their Congressmembers, etc., so that they could exercise their responsibility as citizens to decide whether the carnage was worth the goal and then to do something about that decision.
That’s much different from an alien culture forcing random passersby (who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened) to experience an atrocity that happened years in the past, long after they could possibly stop it.
I get the “never again” message, but to me that’s more abstract and not a justification for what I’m going to call the “Cronkite defense” — particularly since the obelisk builders couldn’t possibly have any idea whether the cultures of whatever alien ships happened to pass by were particularly inclined to atrocities of that sort.
Reviewing the transcript of the final debate, I think we were supposed to be conflicted about the morality of what the memorial’s builders did — on the one hand, it was wrong of them to impose those memories the way they did, but on the other hand, that doesn’t make it right to destroy the only remaining evidence of the atrocities. There are many events in history where neither side is in the right — where the wrongs inflicted on one group cause them to inflict more wrongs on others. But the fact that they did wrong doesn’t invalidate their original grievances. Part of preventing future wrongs is understanding what provoked them in the first place. Erasing the past is never right.
So I think Janeway’s solution was a good compromise. It preserves the thing that’s right about the memorial — the fact that it preserves the record of the atrocity for posterity — while correcting the thing that’s wrong about it — the fact that it imposes the memories without consent. Just sticking a buoy in orbit is an imperfect solution; it would’ve been better to modify the memorial’s own code to include a preliminary caution and invitation before it imposed the memories. But it’s the right idea. The memorial wasn’t evil, just flawed in approach. And flaws can be corrected, or at least diminished.
I am ashamed to say that my initial reaction is this is a pretty tame atrocity as such things go. A My Lai not an Armenian Genocide and certainly not a Holocaust! Does that say something about me, or something about our Real World?
Speaking of the Holocaust, I hear there’s a museum where you are assigned a named victim and go through the display with a specific focus on ‘your’ Avatar’s fate. That sounds pretty rough to me but better than the Memorial.
@24, CLB, when I was young I watched a documentary series, The World at War, which included those films. I have considered myself excused from harrowing myself with holocaust movies ever since.
I never got Seinfeld.
@36 I had the same thought. It actually made me think that these aliens might have been (large scale) incredibly fortunate that this 80~ person massacre left such a lasting and lifechanging impression on them. Heck, in American history alone I can think of dozens of worse incidents, and very few of them prompted the kind of deep internal reflection we see here, especially not so soon after the event. (Although I guess it is possible it didn’t, and that this memorial might have been in whatever the alien equivalent of the boonies is)
If they had some sort of “portable” holodeck technology, it would have been a nice compromise to transfer the program into that. Not only would it give people a choice of it they wanted to experience it or not, but it would also allow them to stop the program if they needed to.
I’m also now kind of annoyed that it never seemed to occur to Janeway that what they were seeing might not be 1. factually accurate or 2. a fully contextualized recounting of what happened. Kim remembers the skeletons, but it seems like it could be possible that whoever made the monolith saw them too, and just made up a backstory to go with them. Janeway has an impressive ability to convince herself of the righteousness of causes, and I think some of that is going on here, too.
Yeah. If this is the worst thing members of this species/civilization have ever done they must have the cleanest history and highest moral standards in known space!
That said as wyldfirewarning says how can we know if this is an actual history, an accurate account, or even made in good faith? I have seriously doubts about that last. A warning buoy is definitely in order. Keep clear unless you’re okay with being traumatized!
@37/wildfyre: I think the idea was that the Doctor’s scans showed the memories to be genuine memory engrams rather than simulations. So even if they weren’t the crew’s own memories, they were still somebody’s firsthand lived memories, in a way that was medically distinguishable from an illusion. Although that could’ve been conveyed better.
Yet in reality, even firsthand memories are unreliable — they aren’t recordings, they’re narratives our brains construct, and they tend to alter over time and be subject to bias and distortion. And the experiences of only one group are going to cover only a limited part of the story and will lack context. In historiography, you never take any one subjective account as the full story; ideally you get multiple different perspectives and acknowledge where they agree and where they differ, as they inevitably will.
Can’t stand Seinfeld either. Never could.
Powerful episode, indeed. As has already been said, the only missed oppurtunity was to show the character’s pasts, making it more personal for them. I like your rewrite of the episode, CLB.
Well, since everyone else is putting in their two cents, the only Seinfeld episode I ever watched was the finale, which was enough to make me glad I’d missed the rest.
Remember was the better episode, no doubt. But Memorial mostly sticks the landing. I appreciate the effort to portray the sheer violence in a raw, convincing manner (which was mostly implied rather than shown on Remember); it’s a credit to Allan Kroeker, as usual. Voyager, like TNG before, always tended to portray displays of violence in a sanitized matter (unlike DS9). It’s a welcome sign that they’re finally trying to break out of the old aesthetics held firm by Rick Berman for over a decade by this point.
Any time the show brings Neelix’s trauma to the spotlight, the result is always good. I agree that the presence of the beacon and the way it imprints on nearby visitors is very much a violation, but the episode is wise enough to acknowledge that.
Interestingly, season 6 seems to have fallen into a bit of a wild pattern, going back and forth from very good episodes to very poor ones, but a clear pattern nonetheless. From Pathfinder to Fair Haven to Blink of an Eye to Virtuoso to Memorial. A pattern that will continue unbroken as we get to Tsunkatse, then Collective, then Spirit Folk. The use of color is intentional.
@41
Oh wow, that’s like judging all of Voyager for its terrible, rushed finale.
Don’t have much to add on this one.
I think Janeway’s solution is about as complete a one as they could muster.
I would think that an orbiting buoy barring micro-meteor damage with a solar power converter would last as least as long as the obelisk on the ground exposed to the elements.
Oh, Also, I too have no great affection for Seinfeld, and I only ever watched it for Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Stay tuned for next time on Sitcom Takes when we finally answer the question: Urkel or Balki?
If you are looking at films like Threads ‘The War Game’ is definitely worth a look. I saw it over forty years ago but I can still clearly remember some scenes – along with the horror they evoked. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
@41/CLB: Agreed in that you are misjudging IMHO a great series by having only watched a weaker entry in its run. There are many more excellent, “classic” episodes.
@42/EJ: I thought “Collective” was a rather weak episode and another nail in the coffin of what was once the mighty fearsome Borg but we’ll see what the general consensus is when we get there.
@48/garreth: It wasn’t just the episode I disliked, it was everything about the characters it depicted. I just didn’t like them, even though I like Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. And Seinfeld himself is just annoying. No thank you.
As for “Collective,” we’re more on the same page. Borg Babies? We needed that why?
@36-38: I wonder if maybe that’s part of the point. This isn’t a holocaust, it’s something subtler. If a genocidal dictator deliberately wipes out a section of the population, there’d probably be more warning signs. Here, a group of ordinary soldiers on a vaguely defined but apparently rather hamfistedly conceived mission massacre a group of civillians by accident because they panicked. It feels like there’s a lesson to be learned there.
@13/CLB: @11/dunsel: Good point about Janeway’s war experience. Imagine if the episode had been about a phenomenon that forced them to relive their own most shameful acts in war, to confront their real guilt rather than an artificial construct.
I like it better already. This idea is quite similar to Crusade’s “Path of Sorrows,” which I always found a strong outing in a notoriously troubled series, but our crew would have different enough regrets that it would feel fresh.
Since we randomly decided to discuss Seinfeld: I thought the series was okay, but the laugh track makes it unwatchable now. I don’t know who decided that comedies needed a laugh track, but it’s as absurd a conceit as a drama having a canned voice say “OH MY GOD THAT’S SO DRAMATIC!” every time something dramatic happens. If it’s funny, it’s funny, if it’s not, then the laugh track is trying and failing to tell me how to feel. Either way, the dreaded laugh track is an autopass from me. Enough high-rated comedies still have laugh tracks, though, that empirically speaking I must be the weirdo.
I won’t stand for the Seinfeld abuse going on here. It’s not the show’s fault that something went wrong with y’alls funny bone!
@51/dunsel: I’ve seen it argued that laugh tracks serve a valid psychological function. Laughter is fundamentally less an expression of humor than it is a social bonding mechanism. Scientists studying casual conversation have found that people laugh a lot at things that aren’t even funny, because it’s more about interpersonal connection, mutual approval, and participation in the group. (It’s also often a signal of nervousness or submissiveness, a way of showing vulnerability, which is why it helps people lower their defenses and bond with each other.) Laughter is literally meant to be shared; that’s its evolutionary function, as a form of social communication and signaling. So laughing along with other people — or at least having the illusion of doing so — can be a stronger emotional experience than laughing alone. And it’s a far more normal human experience, since for thousands of years, the main way to experience comedy was in a group audience rather than sitting alone in your living room or in front of your laptop. It’s what our psychology is wired to respond to.
Of course, it’s better when sitcoms have a live studio audience to provide the laughter, since that’s a genuine response, plus it gives the actors something to play off of, which can enhance their performance. Seinfeld did use a live audience in apartment or other soundstage scenes, supplemented with a laugh track for location work. (A lot of sitcoms would record twice, once before a studio audience and once without, and cut together the best bits from the two tapings, using a laugh track as needed.)
The earliest TV sitcoms were usually adapted from radio sitcoms with live studio audiences, and they tried to replicate that experience for the viewers, but had to use laugh tracks for filmed segments where it wasn’t feasible to have an audience. Sometimes they’d show the film to a live audience and record their reactions, but it eventually became simpler just to fake it. I think laugh tracks got a bad reputation because they were often used hamfistedly and unconvincingly, as subject to Sturgeon’s Law as anything else. But live studio audiences were always seen as more respectable, so I’m surprised that even those seem to have been abandoned these days.
@51
It’s not really a laugh track when it’s “filmed in front of a live studio audience.” Seinfeld was partly filmed that way, like in Jerry’s apartment. In fact, “live studio audience” used to be a proud selling point for some sitcoms. They would announce it at the top of the show.
Austin: the problem isn’t with my funny bone. Indeed, I freely stipulate that there are many parts of Seinfeld that are genuinely funny. And Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss are both great actors. But the characters are so incredibly unlikeable, plus on top of that, I lived on the Upper West Side when Seinfeld was on the air and, as usual, it was Hollywood’s notion of what living in New York is like, not anything remotely resembling the reality of what living in New York is like. I get that that last part is a personal bugaboo, but a bugaboo it remains. And I can’t invest in these characters at all.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@51: The creators of Seinfeld were forced to include the laugh track on the sitcom even though Larry David, one of the co-creators, protested against it. While it can be annoying at times, often it’s just background noise for me. It actually might be weird if the show didn’t have it because it might’ve thrown the timing off of the actors when delivering jokes and knowing how long to pause for reactions. I guess with non-laugh track sitcoms today there are no built-in pauses so the audience just laughs over dialogue as the actors continue speaking. But then that’s also the purpose of the rewind function.
@55
Yeah, about that. Apparently “the suits” who make sitcoms now have taken the likability factor too far. I heard a showrunner on a podcast not long ago talking about how he constantly receives notes about how they need to change characters to make them more “likable” and “believable,” and as a result it’s filing off the edges to those characters to the point of blandness. As Ken Levine points out on his blog, it’s no wonder the current network shows are in such a state.
@55/krad: I’m sure you’re aware, but the characters of Seinfeld were made intentionally unlikeable and because that was considered funny. They even had a no hugging rule for the characters. I agree with you in that I like my characters likeable…in dramas. A show that I recognize is brilliant is The Sopranos which is excellent in pretty much every facet, but as a whole, I don’t like the show because the characters are so unlikeable, I’m actively rooting against them, and I feel bad for the present state of our humanity. If Star Trek is my comfort food, then a show like The Sopranos is my food poisoning. But for a comedy like Seinfeld, unlikeable characters are fine by me because they are meant to be laughed at and not taken seriously.
@57/frito: That’s surprising that network executives would want to make sitcoms more likeable and not try to copy the template and landmark success of Seinfeld, and have unlikeable characters and still have audiences flock to your show assuming it was still actually funny.
@55 – That was kinda the point. Larry David had a “no hugging, no learning” policy meant to keep the characters from growing or becoming better people.
As for the live studio audience, when Kramer would come bursting into Jerry’s apartment, the audience would cheer for such a prolonged time that the other actors complained that it ruined the pacing. So they had to ask the audience to keep the cheering down.
@58
Unlikable characters can still live on cable networks and streaming, though. Always Sunny is still going, for example, and those are some of the most loathsome people ever put on television, ha.
@@@@@ 55 – “But the characters are so incredibly unlikeable”
I felt the same way starting about the New Caprica arc of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. It got to the point that I no longer cared about any of these people. It’s like they went out of their way to remove any shred of decency from them.
I can deal with unlikeable characters but I don’t want them to be the ones that win. Basil Fawlty is a prime example. He was a horrible person and it always came back to bite him in the ass. The Seinfeld crew eventually had that happen as well but it took until the final episode. Tried it, didn’t like it. Pass.
@61 – I would say the George and Elaine characters on Seinfeld often didn’t win. A running theme with George was continuously getting fired from various jobs, and also getting dumped by various women. Likewise, Elaine often suffered under her various bosses, and usually had trouble holding down a steady boyfriend. It was typically Kramer and Jerry Seinfeld himself who often “won” in every episode.
@62
Even Jerry had many a joke at his expense about his career as a standup. And his sitcom failed before it even really began. No, none of them were “winners.” And when they did succeed, the joke was that anyone this stupid or doofy looking would never have this happen to them in real life — see Kramer on a billboard, Kramer’s fine art portrait, Kramer in a Calvin Klein ad, etc.
George, this comment board was derailed by the linking of a Seinfeld clip… [sits back with a smug grin] and it’s pretty much all my fault.
@63: But there were still individual instances of the characters “winning.” Jerry had a rotating gallery of gorgeous women he was dating every week (guess it pays to be the star of one’s own show) so that’s a form of winning. And there was that one episode where he beat his his high school rival in a street race and “won” the woman they were both vying for the attention of. With Kramer, he got a settlement for his spilled coffee incident which was a lifetime of free coffee at that particular coffeehouse chain. That’s a pretty big win right there.
To bring the conversation back to Voyager, the CEO of the coffee company that Kramer sued was played by the same actor who was Barclay’s supervisor on the Pathfinder Project.
@66: I checked and you’re right! Lol
https://youtu.be/wMHsojpGV5o
@55, Krad–Yeah, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were a couple of LA hacks who knew *nothing* about life in New York. Sure.
Play a record, Karl…
R: I’m fully aware that David and Seinfeld are New Yorkers, which just made the lack of fidelity to the location that much worse.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
As a rule of thumb, I think some of Star Trek’s best episodes come from the ones that introduce moral quandaries that make you feel uncomfortable. It’s very, very easy to identify with the monolith builders: Something terrible happened here, they want to make sure everybody knows it in the hope of avoiding it happening again. What we’re forced to confront in this is the question of whether the end justifies the means, especially as the means is only getting people to identify with those involved in what happened. It is justified that the obelisk builders want this to never be forgotten, but it’s not justified that they force people into experiencing the memories without gaining consent. I’m honestly not sure which take on this I’d support if I had to make the choice. It’s very easy to deal with and come up with the “right” answer when you know it’s fiction, but it would be one hell of a lot harder if it was all for real.
@69/krad: I would say it’s just a conceit of television that the setting/apartment for a TV show taking place in Manhattan and not involving wealthy people is going to be unrealistically large and nice. Friends with its struggling barista characters living in big apartments also got this criticism. But I often heard Seinfeld got NYC right with stuff like rude commuters on the subway, realistic portrayals of real-life locals like the Soup Nazi, and even dipping into the mayoral race between Dinkins and Giuliani.
@71/garreth: I gather that Friends was also criticized for portraying New York City as overwhelmingly populated by white people, when non-Hispanic whites are actually a minority there and in a number of other major US cities. Looking over Seinfeld‘s cast list on IMDb, I had to scroll down a fair way before spying any nonwhite faces, none of whom were in more than five episodes.
garreth: It wasn’t just the apartment size. And whoever told you that they got the culture of the Upper West Side right didn’t know what they were talking about, as I lived on the UWS while Seinfeld was on the air and, um, no. Also what Christopher said about its portrayal of Manhattan as entirely populated by white people.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@71/CLB: Yes, both Seinfeld and Friends got knocked for their lack of diversity when they take place in one of the most diverse cities in the world. On Seinfeld, the main characters almost never had a love interest that was non-white. The one case that I’m aware of, was a Native American, and her race was made the butt of the joke of that episode. Star Trek alum Phil Morris did make 6 appearances though on Seinfeld portraying his reoccurring character.
@5/frito: That Seinfeld clip reminds me that many years ago I read an article where the owners of some mansion had designed their home theater room to essentially look like the bridge of the original Enterprise NCC-1701. Doing a search of the internet shows that’s not such an original concept anymore and many wealthy owners have done the same thing like this home theater room resembling the bridge of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/robbreport.com/shelter/homes-for-sale/this-star-trek-themed-florida-mansion-will-beam-you-up-in-luxury-2850563/amp/
If I had unlimited money at my disposal I’d probably do the same thing!
@74/garreth: IMDb lists only 5 appearances for Phil Morris. Perhaps you’re counting the hourlong finale as two episodes?
@75
Yeah, as goofy an idea as that is, I can’t deny how comfy the D bridge looks.
As for the size of apartments and other sets in sitcoms, I’ve always assumed they’re bigger than in reality so the directors have plenty of options in where to place the actors and cameras. That’s probably why Cheers was quite a bit larger than the actual bar in Boston.
@76/CLB: No, counting the finale as one episode, it’s still 6 appearances across the series:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Chiles
One episode is literally just a cameo with one line but it still counts.
@77: I think it’s just also for the benefit of the audience. TV is supposed to be an escape and even if the show isn’t focused on a family or a set of friends who are wealthy, the audience doesn’t want to view these characters existing in a living room that’s cramped or in squalor.
@79
Yep, that too.
I see criticism of sitcoms sometimes for being unrealistic with the sets, the characters, laugh tracks, etc., but what is a multi-cam sitcom at its heart? It’s a stage play with cameras pointed at it. It’s not reality, it’s a play.
@80: Exactly. The audience knows better than to believe it’s 100% reality and just accepts the medium the production is presented in.
@75, I don’t remember the 1701-D being quite so pink…. Is it the photo or the lighting?
@82: Ya know, I’m not sure. The lighting may just be capable of changing colors based on the user’s preference. I’m not if this other photo is of the same home theater or not but it shows the setup in more typical lighting:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pinterest.com/amp/pin/406098091382651220/
Jackie Chiles only appeared in five episodes: the coffee lawsuit, the bra lawsuit, the tobacco lawsuit, the one where Kramer got dumped in the Hudson (that was a cameo appearance at the end of the episode), and the finale. That Wikipedia link mentions a sixth episode in which he’s mentioned, but doesn’t actually appear.
And to bring this back around to Star Trek, Armin Shimerman (aka. Quark) appears in the bra episode as Kramer’s golf caddy.
@85: Good catch regarding Jackie Chiles’ appearances/that Wikipedia entry. I should have read it closer.
I did though already mention in the comments to the rewatch of “One Small Step” how Armin Shimmerman was in the same “The Caddy” episode as Phil Morris was. In fact, that episode had 4 Star Trek veteran actors in total between Shimmerman, Morris, Jason Alexander (from Voyager’s “Think Tank”) and Brenda Strong (from TNG’s “When the Bough Breaks”).
It was the comment thread on “One Small Step” that inspired me to go rewatch a bunch of Seinfeld episodes, including all of the ones in which Jackie Chiles appeared. He always cracked me up!
@87: Nice! Jackie was one of my favorite reoccurring characters. I always felt like he could have gotten his own spin-off series.
Obviously this is leading to an upcoming Seinfeld rewatch (or first watch, as it would appear the case with several of the commenters). Protest all you want Krad. After all, you claimed you’d never do a Voyager rewatch either!
To take the responsible route of tying this particular episode into Seinfeld based on subject matter, I suppose I could refer to the episode where Jerry and his girlfriend are caught making out in a move theater that’s showing Schindler’s List.
You Seinfeld haters are right up there with the Borg and Cardassians as irredeemable galactic villains.
@91/Fin: Agreed! :op
In all fairness to Friends, it was established in an episode that Monica and Rachel’s huge-ass apartment was rent-controlled or rent-stabilized, and they were subletting from Monica’s grandmother. Having never lived in an apartment in Manhattan, I don’t know how realistic that is.
Back to the episode: how did Janeway get the memories? Was it established that they’re transmissible, like an infection? Because she recognized the planet before Voyager got close enough for the obelisk to affect anyone other than the Delta Flyer crew, and began remembering the massacre right then and there.
terracinque: that situation is actually very realistic. But apartments in Manhattan are very very very rarely that large……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I remember having guessed what the twist was about ten minutes into the episode. They should have picked a different title.
For whatever this is worth, I thought this episode was a decent idea but not the best execution. Agreed that it makes no sense Janeway would have the memories at that distance. And it would have helped a lot (and been cool!) to establish that the monument was malfunctioning by traumatizing everyone. If we could establish that it was originally a kind of multisensory TV show but now it’s stabbing wildly into people’s brains, that would have worked fine.
Then the debate would have been “But what if it breaks down again?” rather than “This thing permanently makes everyone suicidal and breaks up loving relationships, potentially thousands… are you sure we want to plug it back in for the sake of 80 people? We’ve wasted less time discussing way more people than that…”
But the idea was good and it could have worked for me. As it was, only the Seven scene with Neelix really struck the mark. That was some good stuff. With some added, much needed, sweetness.
This episode hit me hard. I don’t know what else to add the KRAD hasn’t already said, but it’s amazing how well this came off. The memorial itself is horrifying, and I’m mostly with Tuvok on shutting it the hell down. While I get where Neelix is coming from, you just can’t go around giving people PTSD for something they weren’t involved in. Now, maybe when it’s running all normal full-power there’s a bit of framing for the experience. We’ll never know.
That scene between 7 and Neelix is just incredible. I feel this is really Trek at its essence.