[6.3/10] When I think about Voyager I think about the characters much more than the stories. I can toss off my favorite god-like being encounters from The Original Series, or the bold political and ethical thought experiments of The Next Generation, or the Dominion conflict and Cardassian entanglements in Deep Space Nine. But for Voyager, while I can remember some key moments for my favorite personalities, the plots and adventures are a lot more vague and nebulous.
I don’t want to overgeneralize. There’s plenty of strong stories in Voyager in plenty of weak outings in the Star Trek series that preceded it. But an episode like “Phage” reminds me why the characters of the show stand out in my memory, but the adventures they went on tend to fade into the din.
Because the actual plot here is pretty dull. Most of it is a pretty standard alien chase. Some ghouls steal Neelix’s lungs on an away mission, and Janeway and crew must hunt them down despite various illusions and an asteroid filled with a ship-sized hall of mirrors. It’s a dry, technobabble-filled adventure without much in the way of clever solutions. The ship’s crew finds mechanical solutions to mechanical problems, without much that shows them piecing things together or doing anything beyond the paint-by-numbers pace and chase procedures.
None of the main crew even seems terribly bothered or impassioned about finding these organ harvesters to save Neelix and stop them from stealing more body parts. And hey, why would they? They just met Neelix, and nobody’s made a particular bond with him yet. Still, it leaves the search to uncover and catch these thieves of the corpus a surprisingly cold and dull exercise.
Hell, even once Voyager does catch up with them, business doesn’t pick up very much. We discover that the two organ-stealers are from a planet where they’re all suffering from a disease to where the only way to stay alive is to transplant new organs to replace the ones eaten up by the titular phage. The prosthetics work for the aliens is outstanding -- grotesque in an impressive way that sells their condition. But their scenes are an object lesson in the perils of overacting through elaborate make-up, and the exposition dump of their species’ history is about as compelling as a wikipedia entry.
Even then, we don’t get any time to sit with the ethical dilemma of whether Janeway should kill the alien who stole Neelix’s lungs and transplanted them into himself to save Neelix. Kate Mulgrew gives a great performance in her contempt for their actions but commitment to UFP principles, but the rushed and slight treatment means the episode just breezes past the most morally interesting question in the story.
And afterward, the problem is basically magic’d away, as the aliens just happen to be so good at medicine that they can transplant a non-Talaxian lung into Neelix’s body without risk of rejection like it was nothing, and all is magically well again. There’s some mild zing to the fact that it’s Janeway sparing the organ bandit’s life that prompts them to help, but it’s thin gruel. Most of the actual plotting here seems like an afterthought, with little that seems earned or interesting in how the story progresses. And yet, it’s worth it for the depth the episode adds to Neelix and The Doctor, and to a lesser extent Kes. Jennifer Lien is still a weak link in the cast. She plays her boyfriend being on the verge of death or perpetual disability with all the intensity of someone who just learned her toast was burned. And this is also the first instance of the tedious love triangle with her, Neelix, and Paris.
But despite that, the writing for her is quite good. Despite the sleepy performance, Kes is devoted enough to the person she loves to stay by his side through it all and even donate her lung to save him. She is, once again, the one passenger on Voyager who recognizes The Doctor as a person, cares about his emotional state, and gives him credit for his accomplishments. And she proves her interest and bedside manner in a way that starts her on the path to becoming his medical assistant. It’s a good outing for Kes, even if the actor isn’t quite up to it.
Robert Picardo is, though. He plays The Doctor perfectly, as someone designed for one purpose and thrust into another, who is treated like an appliance by everyone on the ship save Kes. He conveys the frustration and indignity of that, the self-effacing humility and lack of identity he has from being a “mere hologram”, and also the recognition and dare I say pride he feels once Kes convinces him his achievements and chances to learn and grow are no different than that of any flesh and blood physician.
Between his justified annoyance at his treatment from the crew, his ingenious solution to use a pair of holographic lungs to sustain Neelix while they wait for a more permanent cure, and his small sense of psychological growth when someone recognizes his feelings and affirms them, makes this the best outing for The Doctor yet.
But it’s also, of course, a good outing for Neelix as well. He’s often something of a clownish figure, treated more like a pest or an extraverted houseguest than a full-fledged person. So it’s nice to see him humanized here (if you’ll pardon the expression) under such dire circumstances. Yes, much of this is false jeopardy, and it’s a fait accompli that he’ll be back on his feet and turning the captain’s personal dining room into a galley any minute now. But the experience deepens him as a player on the ship.
Much like Worf in TNG’s “Ethics”, the prospect of perpetual medical challenges is bracing for Neelix. He has a momentary freak out and bout of claustrophobia when he contemplates that he could effectively be trapped here for the rest of his life. He snarks a bit with The Doctor over the decor of the sick bay (and ol’ Doc amusingly snarks back) showing his resilience. He tells Kes to move on with her life and let him die in a moment of self-pity and resignation. This is a vulnerable, pathos-ridden Neelix, a side of him we don’t see very often, and it makes the time the audience spends with him memorable, even if the story isn’t.
That’s one of the essential qualities of Voyager. Fans make cracks about the reset button or missed storytelling opportunities because they dampened the series’ chances to tell truly engrossing tales of heroes stranded far from home, striving to get home. But even when the plots fell short, the characters and the performers still found ways to burrow into our memories and our hearts, with good moments to salvage even from the large pile of fine-but-dull outings Voyager would spin over the years.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-11-12T00:41:51Z
[6.3/10] When I think about Voyager I think about the characters much more than the stories. I can toss off my favorite god-like being encounters from The Original Series, or the bold political and ethical thought experiments of The Next Generation, or the Dominion conflict and Cardassian entanglements in Deep Space Nine. But for Voyager, while I can remember some key moments for my favorite personalities, the plots and adventures are a lot more vague and nebulous.
I don’t want to overgeneralize. There’s plenty of strong stories in Voyager in plenty of weak outings in the Star Trek series that preceded it. But an episode like “Phage” reminds me why the characters of the show stand out in my memory, but the adventures they went on tend to fade into the din.
Because the actual plot here is pretty dull. Most of it is a pretty standard alien chase. Some ghouls steal Neelix’s lungs on an away mission, and Janeway and crew must hunt them down despite various illusions and an asteroid filled with a ship-sized hall of mirrors. It’s a dry, technobabble-filled adventure without much in the way of clever solutions. The ship’s crew finds mechanical solutions to mechanical problems, without much that shows them piecing things together or doing anything beyond the paint-by-numbers pace and chase procedures.
None of the main crew even seems terribly bothered or impassioned about finding these organ harvesters to save Neelix and stop them from stealing more body parts. And hey, why would they? They just met Neelix, and nobody’s made a particular bond with him yet. Still, it leaves the search to uncover and catch these thieves of the corpus a surprisingly cold and dull exercise.
Hell, even once Voyager does catch up with them, business doesn’t pick up very much. We discover that the two organ-stealers are from a planet where they’re all suffering from a disease to where the only way to stay alive is to transplant new organs to replace the ones eaten up by the titular phage. The prosthetics work for the aliens is outstanding -- grotesque in an impressive way that sells their condition. But their scenes are an object lesson in the perils of overacting through elaborate make-up, and the exposition dump of their species’ history is about as compelling as a wikipedia entry.
Even then, we don’t get any time to sit with the ethical dilemma of whether Janeway should kill the alien who stole Neelix’s lungs and transplanted them into himself to save Neelix. Kate Mulgrew gives a great performance in her contempt for their actions but commitment to UFP principles, but the rushed and slight treatment means the episode just breezes past the most morally interesting question in the story.
And afterward, the problem is basically magic’d away, as the aliens just happen to be so good at medicine that they can transplant a non-Talaxian lung into Neelix’s body without risk of rejection like it was nothing, and all is magically well again. There’s some mild zing to the fact that it’s Janeway sparing the organ bandit’s life that prompts them to help, but it’s thin gruel. Most of the actual plotting here seems like an afterthought, with little that seems earned or interesting in how the story progresses.
And yet, it’s worth it for the depth the episode adds to Neelix and The Doctor, and to a lesser extent Kes. Jennifer Lien is still a weak link in the cast. She plays her boyfriend being on the verge of death or perpetual disability with all the intensity of someone who just learned her toast was burned. And this is also the first instance of the tedious love triangle with her, Neelix, and Paris.
But despite that, the writing for her is quite good. Despite the sleepy performance, Kes is devoted enough to the person she loves to stay by his side through it all and even donate her lung to save him. She is, once again, the one passenger on Voyager who recognizes The Doctor as a person, cares about his emotional state, and gives him credit for his accomplishments. And she proves her interest and bedside manner in a way that starts her on the path to becoming his medical assistant. It’s a good outing for Kes, even if the actor isn’t quite up to it.
Robert Picardo is, though. He plays The Doctor perfectly, as someone designed for one purpose and thrust into another, who is treated like an appliance by everyone on the ship save Kes. He conveys the frustration and indignity of that, the self-effacing humility and lack of identity he has from being a “mere hologram”, and also the recognition and dare I say pride he feels once Kes convinces him his achievements and chances to learn and grow are no different than that of any flesh and blood physician.
Between his justified annoyance at his treatment from the crew, his ingenious solution to use a pair of holographic lungs to sustain Neelix while they wait for a more permanent cure, and his small sense of psychological growth when someone recognizes his feelings and affirms them, makes this the best outing for The Doctor yet.
But it’s also, of course, a good outing for Neelix as well. He’s often something of a clownish figure, treated more like a pest or an extraverted houseguest than a full-fledged person. So it’s nice to see him humanized here (if you’ll pardon the expression) under such dire circumstances. Yes, much of this is false jeopardy, and it’s a fait accompli that he’ll be back on his feet and turning the captain’s personal dining room into a galley any minute now. But the experience deepens him as a player on the ship.
Much like Worf in TNG’s “Ethics”, the prospect of perpetual medical challenges is bracing for Neelix. He has a momentary freak out and bout of claustrophobia when he contemplates that he could effectively be trapped here for the rest of his life. He snarks a bit with The Doctor over the decor of the sick bay (and ol’ Doc amusingly snarks back) showing his resilience. He tells Kes to move on with her life and let him die in a moment of self-pity and resignation. This is a vulnerable, pathos-ridden Neelix, a side of him we don’t see very often, and it makes the time the audience spends with him memorable, even if the story isn’t.
That’s one of the essential qualities of Voyager. Fans make cracks about the reset button or missed storytelling opportunities because they dampened the series’ chances to tell truly engrossing tales of heroes stranded far from home, striving to get home. But even when the plots fell short, the characters and the performers still found ways to burrow into our memories and our hearts, with good moments to salvage even from the large pile of fine-but-dull outings Voyager would spin over the years.