Review of Star Trek Voyager: Season 2

Introduction

I was surprised to see Rich post his review of Star Trek Voyager Season Two, because I`d got a set of five review discs out of the Reviewer Lucky Dip as well. As with his set, discs five and six are conspicuous by their absence from mine. I have to say at the outset that Voyager isn`t my favourite addition to the Star Trek franchise. I thought there was a lot wrong with it, but at the same time it had some cracking stories and marvellous characters. I`ve taken my time to write this review because there`s a lot of material involved and I`m taking the opportunity to express my feelings about the show in a single Trekkie explosion. So bear with me.

When Voyager was good, it could be really good. Its faults all came from the story arcs the production team chose to send it on. The opening episode of the season is a case in point. In "The 37s", the ship encounters a 1936 Ford pickup drifting in space. This leads into a fascinating plot about alien abductees, and features Amelia Earhart. For once the story does not include the usual aggravating-species-of-the-week (a trait that has ruined the whole franchise). Rick Berman`s tenure at the head of the Star Trek franchise has been marked by his fondness for stories that are purely conflict-driven rather than character or situation-driven.

At the heart of more or less every conflict aboard the ship was its Captain. Kate Mulgrew took the centre seat, playing Captain Kathryn Janeway as an anally retentive pseudointellectual whose need to do everything by the Starfleet Manual frequently overrode her common sense. Janeway ran Voyager like a female Studio boss, happily pulling rank on anybody who disagreed with her. In the pilot show, when the Starfleet and Maquis crews had joined forces, she made the conscious decision (as well as deliberately stranding her crew in the Delta Quadrant) to do things the Starfleet way. What a chance was missed to do things NOT by the Starfleet manual. She could still have been the leader of the group, but a natural focus of the group - even a mother figure - rather than an arbitrary leader in her position just because of the pips on her collar. She never seemed to grow particularly as a character. She never seemed to have genuinely off-guard moments. Occasionally we saw chinks in the armour - the real character and not the Starfleet game-face she put on that came across as an impression of Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen. Unfortunately the moments were few and far between and had to wait for season four and the arrival of Seven Of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan). Season two frequently sees Captain Janeway at her most unsympathetic worst. She hits her absolute low point in the fascinating transporter-accident show "Tuvix" when Tuvok and Neelix become mixed up into a hybrid character.

Her crew had the potential to be interesting, although the Human characters were always the poor relatives of the aliens and non-humans aboard. Robert Beltran`s second-in-command Chakotay suffered from the production team`s obsession with the native-american-as-mystic, and with the exception of a couple of ship-board romances his character didn`t expand. Similarly, Robert Duncan McNeill`s Starfleet renegade Tom Paris and Garrett Wang`s ever-eager Harry Kim seldom made you really care for them or their situation. Later seasons introduced other more interesting Human characters, most noticeably the recurring character of Lieutenant Reg Barclay, played by the A-Team`s Dwight Schultz.

Tim Russ played Tuvok, the show`s token Vulcan. He was an old friend of Janeway`s who had infiltrated Chakotay`s Maquis pod. Compared with Spock, he was Vulcan-Lite, being the ship`s security officer rather than science officer. Season Two sees him reaching the height of his appeal as a character as he treats psychopathic Betazoid crewmember Ensign Suder (LOTR`s Brad Dourif) of homicidal tendencies using Vulcan mind techniques.

Slightly more interesting was Roxann Dawson`s half-human, half-Klingon engineer B`Elanna Torres. Later seasons would address her Klingon heritage, but the first couple of seasons she was just plain stroppy. Where the show really excelled were the light-relief characters. The first was the holographic doctor, also known as the EMH, played by Robert Picardo. The Emergency Medical Hologram was the show`s first equivalent of Data - a device proving more than the sum of its parts. He`d got the job after the ship had lost its real doctor in the pilot episode, and proved through the series to be a lot better than the flesh and blood variety. There was a lot of fun to be had with his attempts at broadening the remit of his programming and quite frequently he could be more human, or humane, than the Captain. For the first two series of the show, the alien compliment aboard Voyager included the empathic but ultimately colourless Kes played by Jennifer Lien. She eventually evolved her way off the show, she never amounted to much beyond being a girlfriend to the show`s best alien Neelix, played by Ethan Phillips. Neelix spent most of his time on the ship acting as comedy relief, where potentially he could have guided Voyager through the cultures of the Delta Quadrant, and getting them into a lot less trouble than Katy J and her Starfleet ways.

The Season Two Episodes themselves:

The 37s - A top-line adventure to open the season as Janeway and the crew find alien abductees including Amelia Earhart.

Initiation - From the heights to the depths as DS9 regular Aron Eisenberg (Ferengi light relief Nog) moonlights as a Kazon youth who gets mixed up with Chakotay on one of his regular Son of Cochise benders. Yes, we know Chakotay`s a Native American, but do we have to go into the minutiae of his beliefs? In showcasing his lifestyle, the production team were treating him like one of the aliens aboard ship - we never went into Janeway`s White Anglo-Saxon Protestant beliefs, or Harry Kim`s beliefs.

Projections - The reintroduction of one of Next Generation`s better characters - Lieutenant Reginald Barclay played by Dwight Schultz. In this, Barclay appears as a manifestation of the holodeck system when the Holographic Doctor (Robert Picardo) loses his digital marbles.

Elogium - Kes reaches her reproductive sell-by date. A bottle-show (entirely set onboard Voyager) it`s mostly about the pretty-much-doomed Kes-Neelix relationship.

Non-Sequitur - This is a Harry Kim show from beginning to end when he wakes up back on Earth.

Twisted - Considered by the production team to be so bad they held it back from Season One. It`s actually not that bad as the Voyager hits a section of space where the laws of physics have been scrambled.

Parturition - Or Ma and Pa Turition as Neelix and Tom Paris become surrogate parents to an alien hatchling after they crash land on an away mission.

Persistence Of Vision - Delusions aboard Voyager as the team encounter a race with advanced mental abilities. We find Janeway is a fan of faux-Jane Eyre holodeck romances.

Tattoo - They can only be talking about Chakotay, right? More of his roots showing in an episode that includes old High Chapparal regular Henry Darrow.

Cold Fire - Kes is showcased in this story about the Ocampa (who obviously get around).

Manouevres - The Kazon steal a transporter component and Chakotay goes after it.

Resistance - Janeway bonds with an old man (Cabaret`s Joel Grey) while trying to get supplies of essential Tellurium. Unfortunately the planet is run by standard-issue fascists led by Complete Bastard Augris (Alan Scarfe).

Prototype - B`Elanna Torres gets mixed up with a robot and Janeway pontificates about the Prime Directive.

Alliances - More fun with the Kazon. Not.

Threshold - Tom Paris fixates on breaking the transwarp barrier and turns into a newt. Yes, I said a newt. So does Janeway and they have a load of little newts together. Unsurprisingly after the event and once the Doctor has re-evolved them, they never mention the episode again. Ever.

Meld - Murder on Voyager leads to Betazoid Ensign Suder (Brad Dourif). Tuvok tries to find logic in the act and mind-melds with Suder, threatening his own sanity.

Dreadnought - Considering they are on the other side of the galaxy there`s an awful lot of Alpha Quadrant crap floating around the Delta Quadrant. This time it`s a Cardassian missile that B`Elanna reprogrammed when she was a Maquis. Now she`s got to defuse it before it blows up the totally innocent planet it`s heading for. I`d suggest she doesn`t get it started on philosophy.

Death Wish - Pure Gold as the Q continuum arrive on Voyager. Gerrit Graham plays Q2, the first Q who wants to die and he claims asylum on Voyager after they rescue him from his imprisonment in a comet. John DeLancie returns as Picard`s favourite Q.

Life Signs - Romance for the Holographic Doctor as he creates a holographic version of a Vidiian Doctor the ship encounters.

Investigations - Tom Paris quits Voyager and is kidnapped by the Kazon. Neelix investigates as part of his daily shipboard news show.

Deadlock - The Vidiians cause more trouble when they chase Voyager into a plasma cloud which nearly destroys the ship. Janeway can only call on a parallel universe version of herself for help.

Innocence - Spotlight for Tuvok in this high-concept story about alien life-spans.

The Thaw - Patrick McGoohan has a lot to answer for. All of those damn Prisoner ripoff sequences in shows ever since, full of weird camera angles and silly b*ggers dressed as clowns. Michael McKean`s the clown in this one and and all you want to do is punch him in the face…

Tuvix - A transporter accident combines Tuvok and Neelix into a single, more rounded and much nicer character called Tuvix. Kes freaks out and Janeway frogmarches him back to the transporter. Maybe he should have called himself Neelok.

Resolutions - Janeway and Chakotay bond when stranded on an alien planet having contracted a deadly virus.

Basics Part 1 - The cliffhanger climax of the series as the brewing story arc of defector Seska and the Kazon reaches the boil and the crew of Voyager wind up stranded on an alien planet.

Video

The episodes are presented in their original 4:3 format and in their entirety, uninterrupted by adverts or crazed continuity announcers. The pictures are excellent, sharp, colourful and and a distinct improvement on the SKY transmissions.

Audio

Recorded in Dolby Surround, the episodes have been remixed to a very pleasing Digital 5.1 matrix. The improved sound does much to enhance the experience of these episodes.

Features

On Disc One you find "A Special Text Trivia Version of `The 37`s`". This is one of those graphic popup jobs that tells you useless facts about the production. Curiously none of the other episodes have similar facilities and discs two to six are extras free. Disc Seven redresses the balance by filling up with: "Braving The Unknown: Season Two" - interviews with Executive Producers Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Brandon Braga and Jeri Taylor. "Designing the U.S.S Voyager" - designing the starship with veteran Star Trek artist Rich Sternbach. Includes photos and drawings. This wasn`t included in the Region One edition. "Voyager Time Capsule: Tuvok" - Tim Russ talks about his role as Tuvok and his interests outside Voyager. He even sings a song. "Saboteur Extraordinaire: Seska" - profiles recurring baddie Seska. "A Day in the Life of Ethan Phillips" - A short puff piece that doesn`t really tell you much or show you much of the trouble that Phillips goes through to become the ship`s genial Talaxian. "Red Alert" - visual effects producer Dan Curry explores various season treats such as the landing of Voyager in "The 37`s". "Real Science with Andre Bormanis" - Star Trek`s scientific consultant discusses astronomical phenomena and other real scientific theories seen on Voyager. "Lost Transmission from the Delta Quadrant" - interviews with Kate Mulgrew, Robert Picardo, Dan Curry and Brannon Braga. There`s also a Photo Gallery, and trailers for the Star Trek Deep Space Nine DVD Set and the Star Trek The Next Generation DVD Set.

Conclusion

It takes most modern tv series two seasons to get into any kind of stride. More if they`re part of the Star Trek canon. Star Trek: Voyager was supposed to be a return to the out-there ethic of the original series, this time with a woman at the helm. Star Trek: The Next Generation had revitalised the franchise for the 1980s, but that had faced three rocky years to find its own feet in the shadow of Kirk`s show. Towards the end of its run, it was joined on television by a sister show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an adventure on a space station serving an interstellar crossroads. DS9 had been the first part of the franchise not to be developed by Gene Roddenberry, and saw the Star Trek universe pass into the keeping of Rick Berman and Michael Piller. In 1994, the fourth iteration of the Star Trek universe debuted on Paramount`s fledgling tv network UPN under the title Star Trek: Voyager. From a personal viewpoint, it wasn`t the franchise`s finest hour.