“Good Shepherd”
Written by Dianna Gitto and Joe Menosky
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 6, Episode 20
Production episode 240
Original air date: March 15, 2000
Stardate: 53753.2
Captain’s log. On deck one, Chakotay reports to Janeway that there’s a Class-T star cluster nearby and they might want to check it out. Janeway doesn’t think it’s worth altering course, but it’s worth sending an away team on the Delta Flyer to map it. Chakotay also mentions that Seven has a shipwide efficiency report to share with the senior staff.
Chakotay tells Paris to prepare the Flyer and Kim to do a long-range scan of the cluster. Kim asks Seven in astrometrics on deck eight to increase the metagenic resolution in the long-range sensors. Seven then tells Crewman Tal Celes to bring a padd of data to Torres in engineering. Tal brings the padd to Torres in engineering on deck eleven, who tells another crewman that they’ll need another five terawatts added to the sensor array. That crewman goes down to deck fifteen to give the request to Crewman Mortimer Harren.
And thus we go from the top of the ship to the bottom…
That night, Tal calls Crewman William Telfer to ask for his help with the level-three sensor analysis that’s due the following morning.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Seven’s efficiency report mentions Harren, saying that someone of his expertise should be in a more prominent position in engineering. However every time Torres has tried to put him elsewhere, he doesn’t do the work—hence, the lonely drudge work of plasma relays on deck fifteen. In addition, Seven notes that the EMH has spent an inordinate amount of time with Telfer, who’s a hypochondriac. Seven has given herself a less-than-perfect rating due to Tal, whose work must always be double-checked.
Janeway checks all three crewpeople’s service records, and notes that none of them have ever been on an away mission. They’ve gone off-ship for leaves and such (and presumably left the ship with everyone else in the “Basics” two-parter), but otherwise, they’ve been homebodies.
Chakotay says that normally you’d just transfer someone like that off to another post, but that’s really not an option here. So Janeway decides that she will lead the away team that’s investigating the cluster, and take these three with her.
Janeway briefs Harren, Tal, and Telfer in astrometrics. They’re all very surprised to be on the mission, and Telfer in particular is worried about what might happen if they beam down to a planet and contract some horrible alien illness. (Harren’s pointing out that the planets in the cluster are all gas giants doesn’t mollify him in the least.) Later, Telfer tries to convince the EMH that he’s feverish (his body temperature is 0.2 degrees higher than normal) and can’t go on the mission. The EMH calls him a silly goose.
Seven reminds Janeway that Tal’s work will have to be double-checked, and advises her to take a more talented team. Janeway says she isn’t just mapping the cluster, she needs to rescue three lost sheep—she then tells the story of the good shepherd from the Book of John, how the shepherd would always retrieve any member of the flock who went astray.
The Delta Flyer goes off on its mission. At one point, the ship shakes, but Tal’s sensor readings don’t pick anything up. Janeway checks her scans, and agrees. From the aft section, Telfer offers to make lunch for folks. Janeway orders pasta soup, and Tal sucks up and says she’ll have the same, and goes aft. Once there, she laments that Janeway is double-checking everything, and she and Telfer agree that they wish they were back on Voyager, and then joke that maybe they could take the escape pods back?
Up front, Janeway tries and fails to engage Harren in small talk. Harren is grumpy because he was only supposed to do a one-year bit on a starship before transferring to the Orion Institute of Cosmology. Harren is more interested in theory than practice, and Voyager falling down the Caretaker’s rabbit hole has completely derailed his entire life. When Janeway points out that space exploration is unpredictable, Harren tartly says that that’s why he hates space exploration.
The Flyer is hit by something that knocks propulsion and main power offline, and also rips off a chunk of the hull. Janeway orders red alert and they manage to get partial impulse power back online, but the warp drive is toast, as ninety percent of the antimatter was drained by whatever hit them. Janeway sends a distress signal.
Harren’s notion is that it’s a dark-matter proto-comet. (Janeway mentions reading a paper on the subject, and Harren says he wrote it.) He thinks they should eject the warp core, as the comet will be attracted to it, but Janeway isn’t willing to sacrifice the warp core on an unproven hypothesis. Tal suggests bringing the hull fragment that was torn off on board to scan it for dark matter.
Tal feels responsible for not realizing that her earlier scans might have prepared them for this. She doesn’t feel like she belongs—she struggles with everything, she barely made it through the Academy (she feels she was helped along by people feeling sorry for her because she’s Bajoran), and she does nothing important on Voyager because nobody trusts her work. Janeway points out that she was the one who thought of examining the hull fragment.
Harren and Telfer are effecting repairs, but Telfer is so distracted by his hypochondria that he doesn’t close a relay in time, which almost results in Harren getting gassed.
Janeway and Tal’s examination of the fragment is that it might be dark matter, but it might not. Janeway’s still not willing to eject the core, but they can make it on impulse to a gas giant that is surrounded by radiogenic rings that they can use to recharge the warp engines.
Tal detects another spatial anomaly. They fire a photon torpedo—if it is a dark-matter proto-comet, it’ll be attracted to the antimatter in the torpedo. Then some kind of energy reading converges on Telfer, who seems to be beamed away—then beamed back with a life-form inside him.
They bring him to a biobed. Sensors don’t read the life-form, they only know it’s there because they can see it (and Telfer can feel it). Then the Flyer receives a message on a Starfleet frequency—but it’s their own distress call being reflected back at them. Harren, meanwhile, is devastated to see that his hypothesis was wrong.
The alien takes control of Telfer’s motor functions, and enable him to walk through the force field. Janeway stuns Telfer with a phaser, and the alien then leaves his body. Janeway wants to try to communicate with it, but Harren shoots the creature instead, against Janeway’s direct order.
The dark-matter creatures are now pursuing them. Janeway orders the others to go into the escape pods and use the radiogenic rings to catapult them to full impulse and away from the creatures. Janeway will stay behind on the Flyer and fight them off. Tal and Telfer insist on remaining with Janeway. Harren, though, goes to the escape pods—and then engages the aliens, figuring he can sacrifice himself to save the others. Janeway fires on the rings, they are able to rescue Harren, and then the shockwave hits them a couple of seconds after when Tal thought they would.
Janeway wakes up on Voyager in sickbay. Chakotay reports that they found the Flyer adrift over a gas giant. No sign of the dark-matter creatures. Janeway says that the stray sheep found a wolf, but the good shepherd got them home.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Harren is trying to disprove Schlezholt’s Theory of Multiple Big Bangs. When he mentions this to Janeway, she is impressed, but reminds him that Wang’s Second Postulate “has more lives than a cat,” and also offers to help him with his disproving after the away mission. Harren is suitably nonplussed.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway tries to make her three most unproductive crewmembers into actual productive crewmembers, with varying degrees of success. She definitely gets through to Tal and Telfer—Harren, not so much.
Mr. Vulcan. Seven’s rating of security is near-perfect—her only comment is to rearrange how phaser rifles are stored. Tuvok’s very dry, “I’ll look into it” speaks volumes.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Telfer is apparently the EMH’s best—or worst, depending on how you look at it—customer.
Forever an ensign. Seven thinks that Kim’s night-shift personnel don’t have enough to do.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. The Delta Flyer’s replicator includes a pasta soup that is listed as Neeilx 651, and I shudder to think what Neelix has done to pasta soup…
Half and half. At one point, Torres, Neelix, and Paris are talking about Harren in the mess hall, and Torres and Neelix practically dare Paris to go talk to him. It goes poorly.
Resistance is futile. Seven has efficiency ratings for every section on the ship. When the EMH comments about how idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Seven snidely comments, “Religious metaphors are irrelevant.” Perhaps out of revenge for that, Janeway later tells Seven the titular story of the good shepherd.
Do it.
“Just making conversation.”
“Conversation filled with unspoken assumptions, which I don’t agree with. I’m a product of my nucleic acids. Where and how I was raised are beside the point. So, if you’re trying to understand me better, questions about my homeplanet are irrelevant.”
“All right, then—how’s your thirteenth chromosome? Missing a couple of base pairs in gene 178?”
–Janeway making small talk, Harren being a snot, and Janeway being a snot right back.
Welcome aboard. Jay Underwood plays Harren, Michael Reisz plays Telfer, and Kimble Jemison plays the engineer who brings the padd to Harren.
In a nifty cameo, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello—who is a massive Star Trek fan—appears as Crewman Mitchell. Morello previously also played a Son’a in Insurrection.
And then we have another Robert Knepper moment, this time a very young Zoe McLellan, whom I almost didn’t recognize in her Bajoran makeup as Tal Celes. McLellan is probably best known for playing two different roles in the “NCIS-verse,” as Jennifer Coates in JAG and Meredith Brody (alongside Enterprise star Scott Bakula) in the first two seasons of NCIS: New Orleans. McLellan will return in the role in “The Haunting of Deck Twelve.”
Trivial matters: This episode was very obviously inspired by the TNG episode “Lower Decks” as well as the previous Voyager episode “Learning Curve.”
The window in Harren’s little alcove on deck fifteen isn’t part of Voyager’s model, and was added for this episode. It isn’t seen in subsequent episodes.
The equation Harren shows Paris in the mess hall is a variation on equations seen in Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, a 1971 book developed by the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Paris jokes with Torres that he invited Harren to their quarters to watch TV. Torres made an old-fashioned television for Paris in “Memorial.”
Tal refers to the sympathy she received as a Bajoran at the Academy. Bajor was established as being occupied by the Cardassian Union in TNG’s “Ensign Ro,” and Bajor’s recovery from the occupation formed the through-line of DS9.
Set a course for home. “Captain Janeway, are you lost?” This episode oh-so-desperately wants to be “Lower Decks” for Voyager, and it comes very close to succeeding. Scripter Joe Menosky does as good a job as René Echevarria did in that TNG episode in creating interesting characters in the limited timeframe of a single episode.
Harren is my favorite of the bunch, though his storyline is the one I like least. Harren is a type we don’t often see on Trek, but is exactly the kind of person you see in some scientific disciplines, who would prefer to remain in the lab with theories and models and not deal with the very messy practical world at all. Jay Underwood plays him perfectly.
Telfer is my least favorite, as hypochondria is a serious condition that is always played for laughs, and it’s a tired, tiresome trope. Telfer’s friendship with Tal is way more interesting than his thinking he’s always sick, and I would have rather spent more time on that. The resolution to his storyline is a bit pat, too.
My favorite was Zoe McLellan’s Tal. I was a huge fan of McLellan’s work on NCIS: New Orleans as Brody, and I’m still disappointed that she was written off the show. And I love that she’s someone who has good command instincts, but is terrible at the grunt work—which is a problem, as you have to start out doing grunt work before you can get to the point where you can make decisions. I like the way Janeway encourages her.
Indeed, Janeway is excellent with all three lost sheep, though Harren refuses delivery of her work. This is a problem insofar as he shoots the alien against orders (and against, y’know, morality) and then tries to commit suicide rather than face the consequences of that action.
And then we don’t find out what those consequences are. Maddeningly, the script forgets to give us an ending. One of the reasons why “Lower Decks” worked is the final scene in Ten-Forward where Lavelle gets his bittersweet promotion and Ben encourages Worf to sit with the others as they grieve over Sito. But we get no such denouement here, so we don’t know if Harren will become more social, how Telfer’s epiphany from the aliens will make his life better, if Tal will take Janeway’s advice to heart.
More to the point, we don’t find out what disciplinary action Janeway will take against Harren, who spent the entire episode being insubordinate in a manner that should’ve had his ass thrown into Tom Paris’s old cell in the brig.
The other frustrating element of the episode is the same one with “Learning Curve“—this is something that Voyager should’ve done way more often, because they’re stuck with the same bunch of people. In fact, this episode probably also would’ve been much stronger if one or two of the malcontents from “Learning Curve” was one of Janeway’s lost sheep.
One final problem I have with this episode is a line of Janeway’s: “I wouldn’t trade the last six years for anything.” That’s a lovely sentiment, and also a despicable one. A handful of people died when the Caretaker snatched them, including the first officer, chief medical officer, chief engineer, and conn officer she picked for the ship, and more than twenty people have died since then during their attempt to get home. I’m really disgusted by the fact that Janeway wouldn’t trade the journey that got those score-plus of people killed for “anything,” not even, say, allowing those poor bastards to live.
Warp factor rating: 8
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Welp, I’m going to go ahead and state my potentially-unpopular opinion that I don’t really like this one.
The problem with this episode, IMO, is that it is trying to be TNG‘s “Lower Decks” without really understanding what made *that* episode successful- which was that it was from the point of view of the low ranking, barely-ever-seen-or-heard characters, and not from the main characters whose machinations we are so used to being privvy to. Here, we see the whole thing from Janeway’s point of view, which isn’t particularly new or novel from us, and the episode pretty clearly isn’t trying to make the other three characters all that sympathetic. The framing makes it apparent we are supposed to side with our Captain on this, and I don’t.
Frankly, I struggle to even really understand why this is such a problem in the first place. After all, they’ve gone almost 6 years without any of these 3 characters being an issue (having them be Maquis or even some of the former Equinox crew would have gone a long way toward making this a stronger story), and they don’t really seem to be causing any major issues now. Harren is a pain and a snot, but he seems to be doing his job, and honestly seems to be making the most of the fact that he is stuck a half a century from home. He’s found a niche that is (presumably) necessary to the function of the ship, but still leaves him time to work on his passion projects. We should all be so lucky. He has apparently spent the last six years putting his head down and rowing, and it is only when Janeway gets in his face that he points out (not without reason) that she ruined his life and he isn’t particularly interested in being all he can be on her ship because of it. The fact that he is basically the only character we ever see feel this way is something of a minor miracle, honestly.
Hypocondriac there is played for laughs, but considering what happens to poor dumb redshirts on away missions (and, indeed happens to him on this trip), it is kind of hard not to sympathize with him. The EMH complains about him, but it’s not like sickbay is overflowing, so other than being a minor annoyance he doesn’t seem to be detracting from anyone else getting medical care. Sure, maybe it is unfair that other people go on away missions and he doesn’t, but again after 6 years it kind of seems like a moot point. The guy doesn’t want to end up being some random plus-one who died on a mission and then was never thought about or mentioned again. If First Officer Cavit didn’t merit an on-screen memorial service or the occasional mention, you can imagine Telfer can’t expect much better.
Tal is the only one who seems to both need and want some guidance, and I really think they should have made her one of the Maquis, which at least gives her a better excuse for being bad at her job than “people felt bad for me”. And if she is so bad at this job, why not transfer her to another where she might be a better fit? Half the crew are former terrorists with minimal formal education on Starfleet ships, so if nothing else the on-the-job training on Voyager seems to be pretty good, why not train her up in something less technical that she might be more suited for? Considering how often redshirts get offed, there must be plenty of open positions. (Also, why is Seven in charge of this? Personnel reports like this are really more of an XO job, and clearly Chakotay never felt like any of these 3 were enough of an issue to ever bring it up.)
Overall, Janeway’s attitude in this one just annoys me. I have no idea what the thought process behind it was, but she comes across as both condescending and borderline pouting because 3 people on the entire ship aren’t up to snuff. She makes very little effort to really sympathize with them, and offers no practical suggestions for actually fixing their issues (like a transfer for Tal, or some counseling for Tefler, or Harren just being left alone to do his job). I wouldn’t want to be stuck in that shuttlepod with her, either. And, of course, none of this ever matters again later. Random Bajoran is (if I recall correctly) the only one of them that ever shows up again, and her impact in that episode is minimal. This isn’t a sign that almost 7 years on the road is wearing people thin, or that other characters who weren’t really suited to this life are starting to crack– it is just a character piece that doesn’t really do justice to any of the characters.
My biggest complaint about this episode when it aired was that I knew full well we’d never see these characters again, having already been burned by “Learning Curve” and “Equinox, Part II.” I did not realize until years later that Tal Celes did appear in “The Haunting of Deck Twelve.”
It was a decent episode, but with an overly abrupt ending.
Seven’s near-perfect assessment of the security department is almost laughable considering how incompetent ship’s security is portrayed aboard Voyager. Security officers casually strolling to the scene of emergencies, repeated thefts of shuttlecrafts, unauthorized uses of the transporter, repeated break-ins of and thefts from the ship’s computer. You know, Voyager’s bread and butter…
As always, I think my thoughts on this episode are best summarized by Chuck Sonnenburg’s SF Debris review.
“Quiet, or you’ll get another dose of the Medical Phaser!”
Crew members like this should have been part of the fabric of the show from day one, it’s a shame they barely tapped the potential here. With a few appearances, each of these three would have been more fleshed out than half the main cast!
More to the point, we don’t find out what disciplinary action Janeway will take against Harren, who spent the entire episode being insubordinate in a manner that should’ve had his ass thrown into Tom Paris’s old cell in the brig.
Arguably all three of them deserve discipline, because they all defied her direct order in the climax, but focusing on Harren: What’s she going to do about it? Paris can be threatened with a demotion and potentially losing his dream job of being the ship’s main pilot. There’s nothing to demote Harren to and he already hates his job. Ban him from the holodeck or brig him during his off-duty hours, maybe, but Harren is apparently good enough at the plasma relay gig, and presumably this job exists for a reason, so any discipline risks alienating the marginally effective crewmember they have now with no way to replace him. Everything was fine until Seven made this an issue, now an alien is dead for no reason and it’s not like it did Harren any good.
@1 wildfyrewarning: / He’s found a niche that is (presumably) necessary to the function of the ship, but still leaves him time to work on his passion projects. We should all be so lucky.: He’s found a niche that is (presumably) necessary to the function of the ship, but still leaves him time to work on his passion projects. We should all be so lucky.
Your entire comment is great but I wanted to highlight that section. Yeah, I don’t know what Janeway’s problem is here. Most people on the ship specialize in something, so this guy focuses on plasma relays and doesn’t have much interest in the away missions. If this is a “problem” that merits the captain’s attention, the ship is in shockingly great shape under the circumstances. Which leads me to my next point, as raised by your comment:
“And if she is so bad at this job, why not transfer her to another where she might be a better fit?”
She sarcastically suggests being a waitress in the Mess Hall, but honestly ship’s cook is a suggestion that deserves consideration. Neelix has it covered, kind of, but he could always quit (as he eventually does indeed do) or catch a phaser blast. Does she have any interest in food? If so, then great, the ship could probably use a second cook more than a sensor operator who doesn’t know what she’s doing. How about medical, so Tom Paris doesn’t have to pull double duty? I presume she must be good at something, but the script doesn’t take the time to ask what.
” (Also, why is Seven in charge of this? Personnel reports like this are really more of an XO job, and clearly Chakotay never felt like any of these 3 were enough of an issue to ever bring it up.)”
Also: This is, I believe, the only episode that posits that Seven has people who report to her, and she even orders Tal to deliver a PADD at one point. Which… no. I would have posited that Seven is in basically the same boat as Guinan, she can’t be ordered to do anything nor order anybody to do anything (but also lacks rights crewmembers have– in principle, Janeway can kick Seven or Neelix off the ship if she feels like it, but can’t just abandon Harren because he’s annoying). If Janeway is taking the position that Seven actually does have to follow orders, has her own department and outranks crewmen, then fine, give her a field commission as ensign and Starfleet can sort through it when and if you get home. The way they have it every which way with Seven’s status aboard the ship is actually pretty crazy.
This episode definitely needed to happen several seasons ago. It’s a good question, what does Voyager do with people who have performance issues? But it needs to be part of an arc dealing with personnel issues not just appearing spontaneously long after Chakotay would have dealt with this. Seven’s push for increased efficiency aside, they all seem to be in positions that mitigates their issues. Though you’d think the Doctor would have a better response to hypochondria than “he’s afraid of counseling.”
I think it would also work better without being compared to Lower Decks, as it’s not a story about these three people who aren’t in the title credits but about Janeway being the Captain at them. I don’t think the episode was trying to tell a complete story about these guest stars. So judging if the episode was successful (admittedly that’s just one way of evaluating it) should ask if it has a complete story about Janeway.
At my most generous, Seven could be something like a Highly Qualified Expert (which we do have in the military, although they are extremely rare). Could one of them technically give me orders? No, but if one of them asked me to do something for them, I most likely would. But you are right, it is weird that we are basically just left to guess at what, technically, Seven’s position on the ship really is.
I agree. Seven’s complaint about Harren wasn’t actually with Harren, it was with Torres and how she didn’t make the best use of his skills. But Torres’ response was that Harren wanted to be down on deck 15. Well, he didn’t actually want to be on the ship at all, but has made do with an assignment that allows him to contribute to the ship while pursuing his own interests. I mean, what is Torres expected to do? She says that Harren refuses other assignments. Are they going to put him off the ship? He’s doing a job that is apparently needed, although one has to wonder why Torres has to send written orders hand-delivered to deck 15 rather than just accessing the controls from engineering. And what is with these instructions being delivered all over the ship by hand? Even in the year 2000, there was e-mail and instant messaging, and on Voyager, there is the comm system they can use to relay messages and instructions. Why not have the padds delivered by messenger pigeons while they’re at it?
Also, why are the characters discussing Telfer’s medical history in a staff meeting? Presumably, there still exists doctor-patient confidentiality; in fact, we see Seven invoke doctor-patient confidentiality in “Imperfection.” The Doctor, and the Captain, should have shut that conversation down immediately. They can discuss sickbay efficiency without discussing specific crew members’ medical situations
@@@@@ wildfyrewarning – “He has apparently spent the last six years putting his head down and rowing,” which he really, really shouldn’t do because it’s bloody dangerous.
When rowing, keep your head up; it makes your stroke more efficient and reduces the risk of severe back injury.
This important safety message brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood coxswain.
I like this one, despite its flaws. It restores something to Janeway that she’s been missing since Jeri Taylor left — the way she’s not just a commander to her crew, but a mother figure as well, nurturing and guiding rather than merely being tough or domineering.
I love the concept of the opening sequence, the marvelous conceit of the camera coming in at the top of the ship, following the crew down through the decks in a continuous sequence, and finally passing out the very bottom of the ship, a marvelous visual way of illustrating the shift in focus from the upper to lower decks. The only problem is that it’s predicated on the idea that the crew have forgotten they can send messages through the computer and don’t have to physically carry padds around from place to place. Which is a pretty big problem. I love the sequence, but I also hate that there is no legitimate reason why it should happen in the first place.
I think one of the main problems with this episode is that it should’ve been done years sooner, and should’ve brought back a character or two from “Learning Curve” — or better yet, from “Equinox.” But at least they’re trying to remember that there’s a crew beyond the core cast.
Also — the Delta Flyer has escape pods? It’s a shuttle!
@1/wildfyre: “Frankly, I struggle to even really understand why this is such a problem in the first place. After all, they’ve gone almost 6 years without any of these 3 characters being an issue (having them be Maquis or even some of the former Equinox crew would have gone a long way toward making this a stronger story), and they don’t really seem to be causing any major issues now.”
It’s not about them causing “issues” for others — it’s about Janeway feeling they’re worth saving in their own right. That’s what’s good about it, the reminder that Janeway cares about her crew as individuals and not just as cogs in a machine.
@4/dunsel: “I would have posited that Seven is in basically the same boat as Guinan”
I doubt that. Seven is in the vein of a civilian specialist, someone who functions as a member of the crew despite having no Starfleet rank — like T’Pol in the third season of Enterprise, say. Guinan wasn’t crew, she was support staff, like Mr. Mot the barber, or like Chef on Enterprise. Neelix is the one closest to Guinan’s role, except he is more like a crewmember in that he’s the “morale officer” and has some security training.
Seven did the crew efficiency ratings on her own initiative and volunteered them to the “senior staff”/opening-credits regulars. It wasn’t part of her job or anything. And yes, she orders Tal around, but she also tends to order everyone else around, too, and everyone just shrugs and rolls with it (as Janeway and Chakotay do) and/or calls her the Borg Queen behind her back (as Torres does).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m in pretty close agreement with the consensus here in the comments. It’s an episode that should have been done earlier, more frequently, and in the end rather differently. I know they’re on a pseudo-military starship and should be working hard and being their best and can’t just ignore the command officers, but any good commander should know how best to use their personnel. If Harren is content to work in the basement and test his hypotheses alone then just let him. If Tal is no good at the technical stuff then get her a more menial job, or something she can at least memorize by rote instead of having to apply engineering principles she doesn’t quite understand. Ordering these folks into an unfamiliar situation with no preparation just seems like deciding that your cats aren’t good enough at playing fetch so you’re going to take them to the dog park and force them to play with the dogs.
Telfer – “I don’t want to be here. There’s all sorts of things that can kill you”
Goes on first away mission. Gets alien inside his body.
All too often we’re told that being in Starfleet is the best thing in the universe and if you don’t want to be, there’s something wrong with you. What percentage of the original crew is dead by this point? If your mundane workplace had a similar death rate, you probably wouldn’t be too eager to roll out of bed in the morning either and would try to find some reason not to.
I don’t really have many particular opinions on this episode itself, but I want to say that I’m surprised it was rated so much more highly than Learning Curve was, which is an episode I quite enjoy. I acknowledge that Learning Curve had some continuity issues with Tuvok’s backstory, but it had a better B plot and a more relatable premise, in my opinion.
My only real thoughts on this episode are that it is really let down by its lack of conclusion. There’s no real explanation for the aliens, there’s no follow-through on what happens with the characters going forward, etc. The characters were interesting enough, though. I generally prefer Janeway being more Science Nerd Captain than Mama Captain, but this episode works well regardless.
Remember: the warp factor rating is the least important part of a rewatch entry.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I really liked “Learning Curve” when it aired originally, although I remember being disappointed that we never saw those Maquis characters again. (Yes, I know Chell did finally appear in “Repression,” but that was six years later.) And with “Good Shepherd,” I knew as soon as it ended we’d never see the misfits again either. As I wrote above, I did not realize that Tal Celes made another appearance in “The Haunting of Deck Twelve” until years later.
@7: Ha! Ravens should deliver padds all over the ship, referencing another popular genre show. But it is pretty strange, comical really, that in the the 24th century we still have people hand-delivering electronic notepads to each other when in the late 20th century, people were emailing each other, and by now in the 21st century info is uploaded to the cloud. The sci-fi writers on Trek dreamed up warp drive and transporters but couldn’t imagine this kind of hands-free tech? I suppose it’s more for the TV medium about showing people doing stuff and walking around with padds is more visually interesting as opposed to simply pressing buttons on stations to get needed data.
I still like this episode despite all of the flaws because the premise is good and it introduces interesting characters. It’s still no “Lower Decks” that’s for sure. And it’s basically taking “Learning Curve” from the first season and instead of problematic Maquis crewman, we’ve got problematic Starfleet officers and Janeway takes Tuvok’s role as instructor. This episode should also have occurred earlier in Voyager‘s run. This could have been a good opportunity to being back one of the Equinox officers, like crewman Lessing, considering the rocky start he had with Janeway. I was surprised to learn here about Tal coming back in a later episode and had no idea that she did. I still haven’t seen “The Haunting of Deck Twelve” and don’t really have a desire to unless this rewatch can convince me otherwise (Neelix telling a horror story to the kids? Shudder.).
I did recognize Jay Underwood from the 80’s family flick The Boy Who Could Fly which I remember liking as a kid so it was cool to see him pop up here. Apparently he’s mostly quit acting now and is currently a pastor. Oh yeah, he was also in the never meant to be seen first movie version of The Fantastic Four as Johnny Storm which I believe you can still find on YouTube.
And I thought Michael Reisz was pretty cute and he made my gaydar ping. I looked him up on social media and sure enough he is indeed “family.” Looks like he also left behind acting to do behind the scenes work in entertainment.
Finally, and this has been a reoccurring issue I’ve had, is Seven’s position of authority; here ordering officers around. This goes beyond her sitting in on senior staff meetings and often going on away missions. I get Jeri Ryan is in the main cast so she’s included in pretty much everything, but it sure does strain credulity and is a personal annoyance of mine.
The hand-delivering of information on iPads — er, that is, padds to people is a conceit of television I’m willing to forgive because it’s visually more interesting to watch than sending an instant message.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“The Haunting of Deck Twelve” is okay. It’s not offensively bad like several season 6 episodes have been. It’s not great either; just okay.
It could also be a ship-wide mandate for crew to “get their steps in” rather than simply press buttons to send data instantaneously. Maybe humans (and aliens in Starfleet) have come to embrace a more interpersonal approach.
@17/garreth: “The sci-fi writers on Trek dreamed up warp drive and transporters but couldn’t imagine this kind of hands-free tech? I suppose it’s more for the TV medium about showing people doing stuff and walking around with padds is more visually interesting as supposed to simply pressing buttons on stations to get needed data.”
Exactly. It’s not about what they can imagine, it’s about the breaks from reality that are advantageous in a fictional presentation. Think of all the sitcoms where people leave their front doors unlocked so the wacky neighbors can make an entrance without bringing the scene to a halt for the business of answering the doorbell. It’s not that the writers have never heard of doorbells, it’s that they’re trying to stage a performance rather than accurately recreate reality.
It’s the same with all the episodes where they had a bunch of padds piled on Janeway’s or Picard’s desk. Logically they could’ve just had all those files in the computer, but the clutter of padds was a useful visual shorthand to show that the character had a lot of work piled up. It was a choice rather than a mistake or an oversight.
In this case, as I mentioned, the goal of the sequence was the concept of a single continuous scene traveling from the top to the bottom of the ship, so they needed an excuse to physically follow someone from deck to deck. The scene wouldn’t have worked if they’d sent the message through the computer. I do wish, though, that they’d come up with a better MacGuffin that needed to be physically carried through the ship.
The main thing I know Michael Reisz from is as the voice of Matt in the English dub of Digimon Adventures. As for Underwood, I know the name from the two things you mention, though I think I only read about The Boy Who Could Fly in Starlog rather than ever actually seeing it. (I have seen the Corman Fantastic Four movie, which isn’t great but handles Doctor Doom a hell of a lot better than any of the other movies have.) I know Zoe McLellan mainly from her later role in Sliders as a villainous gender-flipped parallel-Earth doppelganger of Jerry O’Connell’s lead character.
@@@@@#9 ChristopherLBennett: I can’t see how a ‘motherly’ Janeway is anything but unnecessary gender essentialism. She’s not their mother, she’s their captain. She doesn’t need to be a mother figure any more than any of the other captains of Trek need to be father figure to their respective crews. She can guide and nurture the careers of the people under her, as all good leaders do, without being a maternal figure.
I would also point out that most workplaces that lean hard on the “we’re all one big family here” dynamic are pretty crappy places to work. Mixing together the quasi-military rules that one obeys the captain because of the rules with the “we’re a family” structure where employees obey the parental figure to avoid emotional outburst/unemployment is a recipe for disaster – especially if you’re stuck together on a small spaceship for the foreseeable future with no relief in sight.
“Harren is my favorite of the bunch….”
“My favorite was Zoe McLellan’s Tal.”
Not trying to be a jerk or anything but maybe you want to clean this up a little?
@22: I don’t see anything wrong with a leadership figure taking on a kind of head of family role, whether paternal or maternal. Picard, who explicitly did not like kids, eventually developed a paternal role with Wesley, who clearly was looking for someone to fill that role with the death of his father. And naturally, Janeway ended up being a maternal figure for some of the younger crewmembers like Kes, Torres, Kim, and Seven, all of whom missed their parents or had some kind or troubled relationship with them. Having a maternal/paternal figure is a comforting thing. It really all depends on the dynamic though and isn’t appropriate or called for in every situation or professional relationship.
@23: Krad was referring to Harren as his favorite of the new characters introduced in the episode but his favorite character storyline was actually for Tal.
@22
This is hardly the first time Janeway has been seen as a “mother figure.” She’s been referred to as such numerous times going back to the ’90s in the media and amongst fans. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same said of Kirk and Picard being father figures to some members of their crews.
I can’t speak to office culture, but perhaps it’s simply a tendency for crews far away from home to want to replicate the feeling of a family with their coworkers. Seems like a basic need.
I can think of a number of fictional COs. and not just in Star Trek, that take on a parental role. At least in fiction, it’s a pretty standard model of relationship. All the more so as COs are often expected to take an interest in their junior officers personal and professional development. It seems to be one of the things that makes a Captain different from a boss (not that a boss shouldn’t also be trying to develop their subordinates’ capabilities but the vibe is different).
I hear what your saying about Janeway saying she wouldn’t trade the last 6 years but i think it’s worth pointing out that they have saved alot of people too and deaths are a tragic but normal part of life in space who knows if they were back home Voyager might have been destroyed in the Dominion war. I mean if Picard had said that in the TNG finale i don’t think anyone would throw all the deaths on the Enterprise in his face.
@22/Michelle: “ChristopherLBennett: I can’t see how a ‘motherly’ Janeway is anything but unnecessary gender essentialism.”
Not at all. I never said a female captain had to be maternal. But Jeri Taylor chose to bring that aspect to Kathryn Janeway’s character as a way of showing that there are more ways to be strong than the stereotypically masculine model that TV had favored up to that time. Back then, in the ’90s, it was a valuable statement that you didn’t have to be a macho tough guy to be a leader. And it was part of what made Janeway different from her predecessors. There was no question that she was strong, commanding, and assertive, but she was also warm and kind toward her crew, and she demonstrated that the same person can be both.
Which was a nice change from the “Strong Female Character” types we saw in the 1980s, who tended to be hyper-macho and tougher and more unemotional than the men, out of the sexist assumption that a woman had to be “unsexed” (as Lady Macbeth put it) and act as mannish as possible before she could be accepted as strong. It was great that by the ’90s, we’d progressed to the point that a female character no longer had to pretend to be macho in order to be portrayed as strong. It’s not essentialism to take pride in a feminine identity. It’s rejecting misogyny.
I mean, it’s not as if being maternal is a bad thing. Personally I admire the ability to be nurturing and compassionate far more than the ability to fight or kill or dominate, and I wish our society did as well. I like it when both male and female characters are nurturing and kind in that way. The male characters in my own fiction often tend to be gentle, nurturing, and emotionally open, and a number of my female characters have attributes or roles that would stereotypically be masculine, whether it’s being a fighter, being emotionally reserved, being a comic-book geek, or whatever. Because I’ve always seen essentialism as stupid. I never cared to emulate the definition of masculinity embodied by the boys who bullied me in the schoolyard. I always felt more in touch with what would then have been called my “feminine side,” and got along better with girls than with boys. Although I never thought it made me any less male, because I rejected narrow, essentialist definitions of what it meant to be male or female. They’re overlapping bell curves, not diametric opposites.
John: Yeah, but the Enterprise was actually on its assigned mission for all seven years of the show. Voyager was shot halfway across the galaxy, with a bunch of people on board who most assuredly did not sign up for this. Think of, for example, “Q Who,” when Picard angrily told Q that his point could’ve been made without sacrificing eighteen of his crew.
And it wouldn’t have taken much, just Janeway acknowledging that there’s been awful stuff to go with the good stuff. It’s trying to paint Voyager‘s Delta Quadrant journey as a completely noble and wonderful thing that makes my teeth hurt, because there’s a price in lives that that journey has paid, and they shouldn’t be forgotten.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Also, there’s the fact that Kate Mulgrew was a recently divorced mother of two when she took the role of Janeway. If she had anything to say about her character, and I’m assuming she did, then being a mother figure was bound to enter the picture in some fashion. No doubt it was on her mind.
And then, in “Friendship One,” Janeway says something to the effect of exploration not being worth the loss of a single life.
@29/krad: It’s a notable statement Janeway makes in this episode (“I wouldn’t trade the last six years for anything.”) when we contrast it to the actions of Admiral Janeway in “Endgame” but then maybe she took your criticism to heart!
Amen. Chakotay is going to say something very similar in a season 7 episode that I otherwise like very much, and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. I’d given up hope by this point that Voyager was ever really going to be a show that carried it’s scars with it as the years went on, but the level of “oh well, look on the bright side!” that is sometimes displayed borders on psychopathic.
Another major difference between Voyager vanishing and the Enterprise going on it’s seven-year missions is that, not only did those people sign up for it, but their families had time to prepare for it, too (not to mention the chance to either go with or plan to see their loved ones on shore leave). I think it gets lost in the shuffle a bit because so much of the main cast is single (minus Tuvok), and a lot of them also have parents that are either dead (Janeway, Chakotay) or that they don’t get along with (B’Elanna, Paris), but it had to be devastating for people with happy family lives to not only be separated from their loved ones, but for those loved ones to likely think that they are dead (prior to them making contact with the AQ). I mean, it is sad that Janeway’s fiancé moved on and all, but people like Ayala missed their kids growing up. Samantha Wildman had to raise Naomi on her own without her husband even knowing he had a daughter. Most of the Maquis didn’t even know if the people they loved and homes they were fighting for would even still exist when they got back. That’s a lot to handle and still be expected to show up to work every day and act excited that the ship has stopped to chart another nebula.
I thought the point of the episode was more about the captain doing some actual captainly work. It involved lower decks people but that’s where the similarity to the TNG episode ended. It’s a worthy subject that star trek doesn’t spend enough time on, makes it look like being captain is all about exploring space and meeting aliens. The mission of the ship and the the crew in general may be to explore space and meet aliens, but the captain’s job is to manage the crew and ship so they can do that. Here we get a nice reminder why Janeway earned her commission in the big seat.
Having said that, Lower Decks was more impactful because it had a tie-in to another storyline from the First Duty, got to see consequences and redemption for a previous character (and a sad ending) instead of being one shot characters. Same story as Tom Paris/Nic Locarno’s first episode too, as I refuse to believe they aren’t the same person.
Janeway’s sentiment about the last 6 years though a bit weird, considering she’s spent periods of depressed isolation in regret of her choices. She isn’t responsible for them getting pulled into the delta quadrant and the people that got killed, but she IS responsible for their taking the long way home, and the lives that have been disrupted (or killed) since. Harren was a nice example we don’t see very often, of someone that choice well and truly fucked over, and he hasn’t had an experience in the delta quadrant that “makes it all worth it”. Even so I would hope he spends the rest of the trip in the brig after disobeying orders in order to commit murder.
Amen. Chakotay is going to say something very similar in a season 7 episode that I otherwise like very much, and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. I’d given up hope by this point that Voyager was ever really going to be a show that carried it’s scars with it as the years went on, but the level of “oh well, look on the bright side!” that is sometimes displayed borders on psychopathic.
Yeah, I mean, I can sorta buy the crew overcompensating and trying to hold onto those values and mission drive to maintain a connection to home while trying to ignore that they’ll likely never see it again.
That’s certainly been my take on Janeway’s schizophrenic characterization for years and her fanatical adherence to Starfleet values and ideology.
@34/karey: “the captain’s job is to manage the crew and ship so they can do that.”
Actually I think that’s theoretically supposed to be the first officer’s job. They handle the day-to-day management of the crew and the ship so that the captain is free to focus on the big-picture decisions and situations outside the ship. But Trek has rarely done a good job of showing that. The closest it’s come is with Picard and Riker, with Picard being (at least initially) a more aloof figure.
Absolutely! I think that is often tough to show on TV, because while things like evaluation reports and making sure everyone has updated their medical readiness and reported their monthly inventories is super important in real life, it isn’t all that interesting to watch people talk about on-screen. Mostly First Officers on TV exist to get to step up and take command when the CO is incapacitated, because that is what is most cinematic. Although I will give TNG props, and more than once they showed Riker doing evaluation reports (although why Troi was always doing them with him, rather than say, the heads of the departments or an HR Officer surpasses my understanding), and managing personnel, including in “Lower Decks”. What, if any, actual XO-type duties Chakotay has (other than early on punching his fellow Maquis) isn’t really something they go into a lot on Voyager.
“Three people have slipped through the cracks on my ship. That makes it my problem.”
This one actually has a decent concept behind it, and also manages to stick with that concept instead of making a sudden swerve and ending as a different story to the one it started: Janeway goes on a mission with a trio of Starfleet misfits. There’s no instant solution to their problems (well, except maybe in Telfer’s case, with his hypochondria apparently instantly cured when he has something real to worry about) and they’ll likely still have their personality defects in future, but they have to step up and do things they wouldn’t normally do: Celes sticks around and tries to make a useful contribution, Telfer has to deal with an actual infection, Harren decides to try and do something for others. And I think it’s a nice touch that the aliens remain, well, alien: Distant and unknown.
The tone of the episode is kind of set by the scene of Janeway visiting the lowest of lower decks: The crew act like they’re receiving a visit from the queen and she clearly has no idea where anything is. The episode is about her interacting with people she wouldn’t normally have anything to do with. And, really, after it’s become a bit of a joke that Chakotay or Torres has to work a bridge station if the usual character isn’t there, it’s nice to see some crew beyond the nine on the opening titles: Tal Celes even gets a small return near the end of the season.
The efficiency review scene is rather amusing, with the highlight being Seven trying to find something bad to say about Tuvok. Someone noted last week that Paris hasn’t appeared much in the last few episodes. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed: I know he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but to me he’s one of those characters who always seems to contribute something character-wise even if he’s just doing his generic helmsman stuff on the bridge (which, to be honest, I think is all he did last episode). I don’t think he has a large role in an episode until “Unimatrix Zero” (or maybe even “Drive”), but his scene attempting to make conversation with Harren is one that sticks in my mind here. (I feel the need to add that since I wrote that, I’ve watched the next episode and discovered Paris had a lot more to do in it than I remembered!)
I actually don’t have a problem with padds being carried around the ship. Yes, we have e-mail and all that, but people normally have other things to do than sit staring at their inbox waiting for the next message. Actually sending someone to deliver the message in person is, in a way, a more reliable way of making sure that not only does the message exist but that the person it’s meant for reads it, acts on it and gives a response. Real-time communication, even by proxy, still has its uses. (Of course, I suppose the next question is why doesn’t Torres or whoever just tap their combadge and say “I’ve just sent you a file. Have a look at it and tell me you understand it.” Delegation?)
An apparent misunderstanding meant some spoilers claimed this would be the episode where Kes came back. I occasionally think about what that would be like.
2. bgsu98: I’ve always felt that Starfleet Security is one of those jobs where you can do everything right and STILL see things go very, Very Wrong – because, on a Watsonian level, the Galaxy delights in throwing every sort of weirdness at them and you can’t anticipate EVERY sort of weirdness and, on a Doyleist level, because if Starfleet Security got the job done ‘no fuss no muss’ there simply wouldn’t be very many interesting incidents in the History of Starfleet.
9. ChristopherLBennett: Perhaps there’s a bug in the comm systems or the network is down for some sort of overhaul? (Or perhaps a physical messenger is being sent on the understanding that it’s harder to miss a person than it is to miss an email when the person you’re sending a note to is snowed under with work … or the most wilfully isolated man on the ship).
I honestly think Voyager would have benefited from a memorial wall like BSG had:
I always thought BSG used it so well, right into the finale, when Adama walks through it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7rlkybo5b4&ab_channel=BattlestarGalactica
I know someone already brought up “The Boy Who Could Fly” and the ashcan Fantastic Four movie, but at least I can still say that there’s something Not Quite Human about Harren. ;)
@40/Jarvismo: Some kind of memorial to the Voyager crew aboard ship would have been a nice touch. But I would say BSG at least got the inspiration for its memorial having gone into production post-9/11. People can correct me to the contrary if that’s not so.
@41/Richard: Not Quite Human sounds vaguely familiar. I probably at least watched the original one in the series of films as a kid but I have no memory of it, but perhaps it wasn’t that memorable.
The Boy Who Could Fly. Man, that brings back memories. I have a lot of favorite nostalgic 80s movies. Ironically enough, I was just looking up The Boy Who Could Fly the other day because I caught The Great Outdoors (another favorite 80s movie) on TV the other day and I thought that the local girl the oldest son chases looked familiar. It was Lucy Deakins, the female lead on The Boy Who Could Fly. I was surprised to see that those two movies were basically the only big things she did. Her filmography is really small; she stopped acting after 1995, except for a 2002 episode of Law & Order.
Regarding the “I wouldn’t trade the last six years for anything” line, I have not rewatched this episode so I can’t recall the exact context here but couldn’t this be a case of her compartmentalizing. Yes, those terrible things happened on the journey and she of course who want those people not to have died. In this case, I presume that she is speaking specifically of the unique relationship this getting stranded has allowed her to develop with the others serving under her (and passengers like Neelix, Kes, and Seven).
Probably one of those types of overstatements most of us make from time to time when swept up in some type of heightened emotions.
Austin: Deakins quit acting to become an attorney.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Considering the fact that we’ve seen the ability to tap into comm systems throughout Trek, going all the way back to Balance of Terror, having messengers running PADDs back and forth makes sense from a security point of view. And as there’s been a number of instances where an adversary was nearby but not seen, whether by cloaking device or some other means, doing it all the time lessens the chance of them tapping in without the crew being aware of it.
@45 – Well, her randomly doing a Law & Order episode 7 years after she stopped acting makes sense!
For what it’s worth, this is much better than Learning Curve. It’s a type of story that should have been done more often, but better late than never. While it could have benefitted by bringing back one of Curve’s characters, it’s just as well it went with new faces. It keeps things from getting too repetitive.
Telfer is essentially Barclay. It probably would have worked better had Barclay been a part of the Voyager crew ever since Caretaker. Harren is a welcome new type of personality that we don’t see too often on Trek. Tel is undoubtedly the most interesting. All three characters contribute in some form (certainly much more than the ones in Learning Curve). And making it about Janeway brings out the best in her. It’s a good setup made all the better by the steady hand of Winrich Kolbe, who knows how to mine that dynamic better than most.
Personally, I’m not big on sledgehammer religious allegories. It’s almost as if Menosky and the staff came up with the title before writing that Janeway scene where she quotes the Book of John. It’s not really subtle. The episode would function just as well without the allegory.
Lucy Deakins was always a “Whatever happened to her?” figure for me because she had two prominent film roles in the ‘80’s, and seemed primed for more starring roles but then she disappeared. But I guess becoming an attorney ain’t bad! I haven’t seen either of her big movies since the ‘80’s. I liked The Great Outdoors as a kid but as an adult I’m not sure I’d appreciate the humor as much. But The Boy Who Could Fly I’d like to catch again since I remembered it was sweet and had “heart.”
@48/Eduardo: I don’t think the episode used the good shepherd as a religious allegory, just as a literary allusion (the Bible is a work of literature, after all). I mean, the Gospel of John uses the good shepherd as a metaphor for Christ’s sacrifice, in that a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Janeway uses it in a totally different way, as a metaphor for bringing back someone who’s strayed from the fold. She’s not making any kind of a religious statement, merely talking about her own sense of responsibility for “lost sheep” within her crew. Heck, she doesn’t even mention the Bible — she just calls it “the tale of the good shepherd.”
@50/CLB: Janeway seems to have got the reference to the Good Shepherd from John mixed up with the Parable of the Lost Sheep from Matthew and Luke. It was Jesus’ response to the religious leaders’ complaints about him spending his time with outcasts and sinners, explaining that he was there to bring them back into the fold.
@51/cap-mjb: Man, it’s really obvious from the Bible that its religious traditions arose among a society of animal herders. So many sheep metaphors. (And Cain and Abel — the pastoralist is good and the agriculturalist is evil.)
@50 – “I mean, the Gospel of John uses the good shepherd as a metaphor for Christ’s sacrifice, in that a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”
However, by the time we get to Endgame…..
KRAD, I just want to high-five you for pointing out that hypochondria (or health anxiety, as a lot of mental health professionals call it now) is a serious problem that’s always played for laughs. It can really mess you up and it’s not especially hilarious—likewise, sufferers usually know it’s annoying to other people. Ask me how I know!
This might be opening up a can of worms but I’ve also always thought Tal’s speech about how people just let her through because they felt sorry for her was a fairly uncomfortable swipe at affirmative action. This episode stuck with me for that reason. I was an undergrad at the University of Michigan when it first aired, and Michigan was definitely a center of controversy on this issue at the time (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger were both making their way through the courts) so it really jumped out at me. Especially because the occupation of Bajor was depicted as such a heinous thing on DS9 and then here it’s basically brought up as something that gives an unqualified minority an undeserved advantage. Do not want.
Harren reminds me of a number of guys I went to grad school with, which is funny since my degree is in English literature.
@54/Lea: I don’t think it was about affirmative action. Tal was talking about the “sympathy vote,” people going easy on her because her people were victims of the occupation. That’s a different situation from affirmative action, which is about correcting systemic inequality. It’s not like the Federation had previously discriminated against Bajorans and was trying to correct it.
Besides, that line wasn’t about making an objectively true ideological statement. It was about Tal’s personal belief that she was unqualified and undeserving — not because she was Bajoran (as we’ve seen plenty of extremely qualified and capable Bajorans in Trek), but because she felt she as an individual was inadequate. The point of her arc in the episode was that she was wrong to think that about herself, that it was just her lack of confidence making her say that.
@54/Lea: Two things:
1. Supposing the admissions board for Starfleet Academy did feel sorry for Tal and admitted her into their ranks out of shear sympathy, does sympathy on its own equate to affirmative action just because Tal happens to belong to a minority alien species? Put another way, perhaps her admission was based entirely or primarily on the unfortunate circumstances of her life, and her status as an alien is simply circumstantial. If say, she were human and she was the child survivor of parents killed by the Borg at Wolf 359, she could also say Starfleet took her in out of sympathy and it would have nothing to do with her species.
2. Her feeling of not being worthy of Starfleet could just be the manifestation of her insecurities. We’ve seen demonstrated before that it takes someone with a lot of drive and gifts to be accepted into Starfleet because it’s so selective. Tal, being prone to self-doubt, may be ignoring this truth and self-sabotaging her performance because it’s easier than to directly face challenges. The whole Bajor being occupied thing was therefore just an excuse feeding into her insecurities.
Either way, while your perspective is of course valid, the issue of affirmative action never once popped into my head.
OK, I only skimmed the comments, but I was glad to see references to how awful it is to be stuck in the military for the rest of your life. “Not what I signed up for.” And how toxic it is to mix the idea of a family with a hierarchical structure where the apex folks control life vs death for the rest.
I watched about four episodes of this show when it was new. Then I gave up in disgust. It showed the military hierarchy as the good guys, despite their stranglehold on people’s lives. It was clear the ship had minuscule odds of ever “getting home.” If they weren’t going to let a bunch of us crew grab a habitable planet to settle and make a real life, I’d have just spaced myself.
@57: Who says they weren’t going to do that? The whole point of the (intended) first season finale was that they found a human colony in the Delta Quadrant and gave any crew who wanted a chance to stay behind, and they all decided to stay on the ship.
Guest actress Zoe McLellan is in the news. I wouldn’t have even recognized her name had it not been for this rewatch having covered “Good Shepherd” so recently. Apparently, her ex-husband has accused her of kidnapping their son, as they haven’t been seen since 2019.
Wow, that’s crazy. There is a warrant out for her arrest for the kidnapping, and as was mentioned, she and her son dropped off the face of the earth two years ago. I guess being an actress is handy when it comes to disguising oneself as someone else. Her Wikipedia entry mentions that her ex-husband, the one accusing her of kidnapping their kid, was arrested last year on first degree rape and crime against humanity charges against their then three year-old kid, which were later dropped due to insufficient evidence. If Zoe knows this guy has harmed her child but the law fails to protect the kid, one cannot fault her for taking him and going into hiding. Just a sad situation all-around.
You are correct! News reports were short on details.
I’ll always think of Zoe McLellan as being in that god-awful Dungeons & Dragons movie back before Fellowship of the Rings came out a year later.
When Janeway was down looking for Harren and ran into crewman Michaels, I was expecting her to ask crewman Michaels what his name was (seeing as we never see her speak to any other crew ever).
Not a fan of this one. Especially the scene where Janeway chews Harren out for shooting the creature. You could argue that he should’ve tried to stun it first but you could also argue that with all the damage it was doing to the ship (most notably life support) that it was justified. Or as SF Debris put it:
“With the information the episode provides, there’s a 50/50 chance that Harren just saved all their lives and a 50/50 chance that instead he just killed a creature that was not planning to kill them but thought it was okay to kidnap and physically violate the crew and put all their lives at risk. Janeway calls him a murderer of course.”
kradeiz: There’s also the 100% reality that Harren disobeyed Janeway’s direct order. She’s still the captain and he’s still an ensign.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@64/krad: I’m not arguing that. He disobeyed a direct order and had been generally insubordinate and disrespectful of command, so he should be reprimanded. What bothers me is that the writers seemed to side with Janeway that he was completely in the wrong to shoot, even feeling the need to give him an attempted self-sacrifice to be redeemed.
@63: SFDebris obviously suck at maths then, since they’re missing the possibility that it was all a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up if they’d stopped and talked instead of having some triggerhappy idiot just kill the ugly alien slug thing.
@66: Late response on my part but yeah, fair point. And he could’ve at least tried the stun setting first.
In The Man Trap, McCoy shot to kill, not stun, when he shot the Salt Vampire. Spock was telling him to shoot it. He didn’t say kill it. And we know that the stun setting had already been established when Crater was stunned earlier. And in this case, it was the last of it’s species.
Having just rewatched this episode I had forgotten at how bad it is. It is overflowing with technobabble, filled with meaningless characters we’ll never hear from again; and the end of the episode doesn’t actually resolve the plot in any meaningful way. Harren is still an anti-social jerk, and on top of that needs to be disciplined for two serious violations of direct orders. Tal is still incompetent and in over her head. Only Telfer’s hypochondriac problem is magically resolved.
Season six really took a nose-dive in overall quality for Voyager. Though Seven is a great character she gets too much screen time and the rest of the cast are far too ignored. The underutilization of Tim Russ as Tuvok is especially unforgivable.
The Boy Who Could Fly!
Now that does bring back some memories! As it happens, that was my one and only movie appearance way back in the day. Basically, I’d taken an acting class back when I in high school, which led to an audition for the lead role (which, needless to say, I didn’t get past the first round) and to a summer job as an extra.
The big carnival scene at the climax of the movie was shot at Lord Byng High School in Vancouver, BC. If you happen to catch sight of a big white rabbit wandering around, that’s me!
Okay, since I keep seeing the name come up, can I just mention that I can’t stand SF Debris? I tried, I really did… but the snarky know-it-all voice and overall tone made me want to punch my monitor.
It’s like being smugged at by the worst aspects of myself and my nerdy friends when we were teenagers.
What I find incredible- is that after six years of living and working together, 24 – 7 and very little interaction with other people – everyone is not thoroughly familiar with each other. Only 150 people! My goodness. As a teacher – in a school of 200 students – we know students, parents, staff etc etc. and we spend WAY less time together. I find the technobabble way more credible.
@71
Fun fact: I feel like SF Debris is one of the least hostile and nasty reviewers these days.
I can’t watch Red Letter Media because it’s comparing Picard to being stabbed in the heart. At this point, I only watch SF Debris, Jesse Gender, and Trek Central.
Not counting the text reviews like KRAD and Tor.
The episode that shows that Chakotay doesn’t do his job as an XO. How can 3 people on a small ship like this slip and not get attention, help and support??? and then Chakotay would simply solve it by assigning them to a different ship if they weren’t in the Delta quadrant? Sure, why would they try to address the problem, right?
I just came to here to say how much I enjoy the opening sequence. The “camera” entering one portal, following a chain of interactions, and exiting another just hit all the right buttons for me. Tho I had to wonder, even with their anti-gravity plating, exactly how that funny little room works. The window points out at an angle, so where is the twist? Turbolifts move in all directions, but I’m trying to imagine that wacky diagonal.
The episode was a good idea, but it was somewhat perfunctory in execution. We don’t really learn about the aliens either (thanks, Herren!). I agree with KRad that its resolution didn’t really deliver.