OVEG: Non Sequitur

Description: Non Sequitur, from the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth Edition), is defined as: "a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from anything previously said." You know, I think this could be the most aptly titled episode in television history.

We see Harry lying in bed, hearing Janeway's voice, which tells you one important thing: that we already know far too much more about Harry than we ever wanted. It turns out, however, that things are not the way they are supposed to be. Harry awakens to discover he's not alone in bed; he's with a woman, with like boobs and everything. Natrually Harry responds to this alien situation with complete shock. In fact, he soon begins wondering if this is a dream or if he's been put into some kind of alien simulation; surely no woman would willingly share his bed with him... they've got all those girl parts and stuff.

Harry seems to be back on Earth in San Francisco. Libby, the girl with the vagina and all that, tells him he has to get dressed for a big meeting, so he puts on his Starfleet uniform, but he can't accept that he's really here. He finally walks up to Libby, stands at attention, and announces who his is and what ship he's from as if he were performing some neophyte attempt at first contact. Watching Harry just plain hurts, and Libby was especially annoyed with him. She leaves, announcing that she's had enough bullshit and that he should get his stupid ass to work. He walks outside and it seems that San Francisco hasn't changed in the next four hundred years. Manholes, sewer grates, detritus, broken curbs (how do you explain that when Harry thinks a '36 pickup is a hovercar?); Earth looks less utopian than my neighborhood.

Harry is greeted by a coffee shop owner who comes out with a fresh cup of whatever Harry's favorite is and asks if he's ready for the big meeting. Harry's designing a new ship for Starfleet, and apparently he's got to go explain how it works. He gets grabbed by some lieutenant and brought to Starfleet headquarters to brief Admiral Lardass.

And this is where everything goes stupid. Harry and he are here giving this briefing on this Yellowstone-class runabout they've designed. The admiral has looked over the specifications and wonders how they intend to deal with the bullshit bullshit bullshit that will destabilize subspace when the bullshit bullshit happens. Fortunately Harry has worked out a solution to this problem, but of course our Harry hasn't got the faintest idea, since instead of spending the last eight months designing these engines, he's spent them being Janeway's bitch. So Harry can't explain about the engines he's made, so he asks for them to postpone the meeting, pissing the lieutenant off something awful.

Now, why is this where everything goes stupid? Because the Yellowstone has already been built; we're going to see Harry steal it later in the episode. So, what's this oh so important meeting all about? Why is there a design meeting about a ship that exists? Are they designing the engines afterwards? If so, why didn't they just put an engine that works on it? Folks, I'm sure you're thinking of some kind of explanation, but trust me, they cut off every possible way of weaseling out of this. The ship's even supposed to be a prototype... with no f*cking engine in it? No, because it can even fly, as they use the bullshit bullshit to cause the bullshit that the admiral was talking about later on, so there really is only one explanation: this is a design meeting for a ship that's done. This is just plain stupid, and I honestly can't believe that no one caught that.

(Incidentally, since this involves comparing shit from the beginning and end of the episode, I had to look at a transcript of the episode to make sure I had all the facts straight. Sadly, my search wound up finding said transcript on a website dedicated to Harry/Paris slash fiction... it was even all in pink. After I was done I went and looked at some topless women. It wasn't that my sexuality had been threatened, I just felt that after pushing through and doing the job I had earned the right to look at some double-d ta-ta's.)

Anyway, Harry comes into his office and we see he has a small model of a Galaxy-class starship sitting on a desk - he's got a meeting on the design for that later this week, I'm sure. He looks at his service record - turns out he won the Cochrane Medal for his breakthroughs in warp theory. This is within eight months of his graduation. Either that's the Starfleet equivalent of getting a ribbon that says "Participant" or Harry should be such a prodigy the admiral should have known him on sight. Harry decides to look for the cause of what happened, so he asks the computer if there has been "any temporal anomalies in the space-time continuum." Nice Trek redundancy just to throw out technobabble; where else are you going to find temporal anomalies, in your soup?

Harry eventually heads back home, but has to ask the coffee guy where he lives because he forgot to check when he left. The coffee guy helps him out and offers encouragement to Harry, reminding him that he's got a great job and a beautiful fiancee, that his life is perfect. Oh, and the coffee guy's name is Cosimo. Gee, where do you think this is going? So Harry heads upstairs and Libby's there waiting for him wrapped in a bath towel. That's a sight that would perk me right up, but Harry's still in a funk, possibly because there's a chance she'll be showing her hoo-ha or something and he won't know what to do. However, eventually she manages to overcome his defenses so that he successfully enters Spacedock.

Later after Harry's apologies have no doubt been uttered we see him crawl out of bed from his sleeping girlfriend and engage in acting! Harry wanders about looking out the window, playing with his clarinet... what's particularly amusing is that the music the composer chose sounds like a minor key version of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory ("If you want to view paradise/simply look around and view it"), which would obviously be somewhat fitting, but a doubtful reference. Eventually Harry goes over to the computer and starts looking at the crew manifest for Voyager, which he reads in alphabetical order... I guess he must think he knows everyone on board, rather than trying to remember and check (especially considering all the ones who died that he knew for what, three hours?). Well, he discovers that Tom Paris never made it on the trip that took Voyager; he's on Earth. Libby gets up and asks what the hell Harry's up to, so Harry explains what's happening. However, because he's written to be a complete moron he phrases it so ambiguously it sounds like he doesn't think he's ready to be in a relationship. Or maybe in the wake of his brush with feminine goodies he's subconsciously trying to run away, I honestly don't know. Frankly, this episode is People's Exhibit A for the Paris/Harry fans. Anyway, he's going to leave his hot, horny, nubile girl to go to the French pool hall and see Tom Paris - make of it what you will.

Incidentally, when they made the French pool hall I knew there was going to be a joke about Paris being in France. It was inevitable, because it's a truly stupid joke, and Voyager has shown that stupid jokes are always on tap. Well, now it's happened between Libby and Harry. Sigh. Well, hopefully having the pin pulled on that grenade means we won't ever see it again.

Anyway, Harry shows up in the pool hall and there's Tom Paris, who seems to be wasting away again in Margaritaville, searchin' for his lost shaker of salt. It turns out that because Harry wasn't there on DS9 Tom wound up getting into a fight with Quark and tossed in jail by Odo - frankly, I'm surprised this didn't happen in the real universe. Well, because of that, Tom was sent back to the penal colony to serve out his sentence and Voyager had to go on to get lost without him. Harry tries to convince him to come back with him to San Francisco... Hrm. Harry tries to convince Tom Paris his way-hetero friend to come to Starfleet Headquarters to engage in the manly art of running a shuttle simulation which has absolutely no sexual overtones of any kind. Tom thinks he's trying to use him in some kind of game with his father, so Harry decides the best way to deal with a drunk is provoke them. Fortunately Tom Paris is so drunk that he throws a punch so obviously telegraphed and so uncoordinated Jar Jar Binks could block it. Harry drops him face down on the pool table and leaves him there, which is about the worst insult you could get. I doubt Harry could beat Gary Coleman in a fight.

So Harry goes back home and discovers the lieutenant and some Starfleet security officers waiting for him. They want to ask Harry some questions down at headquarters, which is how these things always go. Admiral Lardass is there, repeating everything we already know again because I think the teleplay ran short this week. Lord knows it never gets old hearing the premise constantly repeatedly. The admiral is very skeptical about this, even though such things are old hat in the Trek universe. The lieutenant feels that it's far more likely that Harry's under some kind of mind control or has been possessed by an alien lifeform. I suppose that's technically valid.

It's quickly implied that they think Harry was meeting with Tom as part of some Maquis plot, and Harry says he won't say anything more until he talks to legal counsel. An anklet is put on him to monitor his whereabouts, and if he tries to tamper with it he'll be arrested and formally charged... of what, they don't say, but you can bet he'll be charged, by God. Right now his crimes consist of entering a valid access code and speaking with a Federation citizen; I'm not really sure what that would qualify as. Conspiracy to encourage an abetment, I guess.

So Harry walks back home looking kind of grim, what with this huge frickin' ankle bracelet announcing he's a suspected criminal. Cosimo the coffee guy stops him to explain the plot. Cosimo's people live in a different sort of state of time (there's a bunch of bullshit dialogue I'm not going to copy down because it's so much nonsense). Turns out Harry the poor sexually-confused dope flew right into one of their timestreams and made reality his bitch, so that wound up with this altered realm. The aliens don't know exactly how to send him back, but Cosimo can tell him how to find one and suggests he recreates the events of the accident to bring himself back. Always nice when someone shows up and hands the solution to the protagonist. Then again, this is Harry we're talking about; I'm unsure he could figure out a way to stop small children from pelting him with balloons. Cosimo warns him, however, that there are no guarantees; he could wind up anywhere in history, past or future, but Harry believes he must take that chance. Cosimo points out that life here isn't so bad, but Harry says that this wasn't the way things were supposed to be, thus he must go back.

So far we have had one episode centered around Harry, which was Emanations, also by Braga. That episode was about Harry being taken away and needing to get back to Voyager. Close to that -showing the place of Harry in the lives of the crew- was Heroes And Demons, which was about Harry being taken away and needing to get back to Voyager; the difference this time was that he wasn't in the episode until the last scene. And so we come to another episode centered around Harry, but this time it's about Harry being taken away and needing to get back to Voyager. I guess there wasn't any doubt that Harry wasn't going to be determined to do it, even though he has a woman actually willing to touch his cowardly form.

Let me diverge for a moment, if I may. Season 2 Braga scripts are essentially repackaging his old ideas from TNG. Projections was a different take on Frame Of Mind, Threshold was a different take on Genesis, and this one is a different take on Parallels. I don't say this to be critical, but rather to show where the hits and misses come in. Genesis was bad, thus Threshold was a whole new kind of bad. Frame Of Mind was intriguing, and the different spin of Projections made it work as well. Parallels is flawed but is still enjoyable because it explored the roads untraveled and showed us how close some things came to being or not being; it succeeded on the strength of the concept, because the plot and characterization themselves were rather weak. Which brings us to this episode. The concept here is a good one: what if Harry hadn't been asigned to Voyager? And it starts great, with us dropped in just like Harry, not knowing what's going on. Unfortunately, unlike Parallels, that concept alone isn't enough to carry the episode, and without a strong plot and characterization, there's nothing left to prop the story up. Like so many other of Braga's episodes so far, it feels cranked out on an assembly line, not like a story that was well thought out. It started with a good idea, but now its taken the simplest and most direct path towards its conclusion: Harry must get back. What compounds this is that Harry getting back is almost entirely a technobabble solution to the problem that was handed to him by an alien. Look at Star Trek IV, the story of which required time traveling. There was no big pile of technobabble explaining what was going on, the entire thing was limited to Bones' comment along the lines of "slingshot around the sun, do it right and you're in time warp, do it wrong and you fry." And why was it done that way? Because the story wasn't about time travel, the story was about the crew of the Enterprise who were wandering around the alien landscape of twentieth century Earth. And when they were stranded and needing to find a way back, the technobabble solution is worked up quickly and simply beforehand and quickly deposited into the simple "stick this thing on the side of a nuclear reactor and we can fix the ship" idea, but even that was simply a background issue to the overall story. We don't send the crew back in time to spout gobbledygook, nor do we do it to get whales (which really ranks as one of the silliest Trek ideas ever), but to see them in this world. Likewise, you don't drop Harry into a parallel universe so he can technobabble his way out, you drop Harry in to learn more about who Harry is.

Think about it for a moment: Harry has wanted nothing more than to get back home, to see his family and the girlfriend he's been longing for. Now he's got it, and we don't see him really acting like someone who's had their wishes finally come true. We don't see any sign that Harry is tempted to stay (remember that this isn't a parallel universe, but an alteration of his own reality, so these are truly the same people he knew). Oh sure, there's some sweettalking with his Libby and all, but there's no sign that he even considers the possibility. He would have become so much more human if he'd wanted to stay. In fact, just off the top of my head, I'd have Harry show up at the meeting at the beginning, tell them everything, let them run their tests and stuff, and then later on when they show up announcing they know he's telling the truth and have devised a way to reverse it, have him say he doesn't want to. Then after a while have a bunch of rogue Starfleet goons kidnap him and try to send him back, only to be rescued by other Starfleet guys and reveal that Admiral Paris was behind it because his son died in that penal colony. Now Harry actually has a reason to think about going back. Let he and Libby have a heart-to-heart about it. And then after he's gone back, he's clearly going to be a different person, less green and naive, and we'll know him a little better. This is Harry's only story this season, and it does nothing to make him any less the ship's whipping boy than when it started; all it did was allow Garrett Wang to have a little more screen time.

So we're back in Harry's apartment, because he's decided that the first thing to do is to tamper with the anklet he's not supposed to tamper with, so that if anything goes wrong he won't be able to make a quick getaway, I think. Incidentally, the tamper device perfectly matches the anklet, as if the whole thing was assembled as part of a kit, "here's the anklet, and here's the quick and easy way to bypass it." Libby comes in and Harry leaves the delicate operation half done because the plot depends on it, I mean, because... because he's a f*cking idiot I guess. There's an attempt at emotion here, but it falls flat because Harry is insisting that he wants to stay but that he can't, but he won't say why! His reasons are far too insubstantial for us to believe there's any real legitimacy in his remarks; his actions really only make sense if you assume he's lying.

Incidentally, Harry says, "Once I make up my mind about something, I can't let it go." BWAHAHAHAHA! Please. I refuse to even comment on this line, as it's not even sporting; it'd be like shooting a deer with no legs.

Oh, and now the tampering alarm goes off; security will be there any second, so naturally Harry still stands there to say a long -and I do mean long- goodbye, until literally the moment security beams into his apartment. A chase scene begins, with Harry Kim as the fugitive, until finally he gets tackled by a security officer. However, it just so happens that the chase ends within six feet of Tom Paris so that Tom can instantly punch the guard in the face and knock him out with one punch, complete with a pre-punch and post-punch remark. This scene could not be more hackneye if you tried.

So Tom and Harry duck down a nearby alley and have a little heart-to-heart. After all, it's not as if Harry still is wearing a tracking device on his ankle. Tom is helping out because Harry's the only person who gives a damn about him, blah blah, and then we get to that stupid part of Harry and Tom stealing a ship he's still designing. I guess that, in fact, his name is Simon, and the things he draws comes true, 'cause the pictures take him, take him over, climb the ladder with you.

A slightly more realistic take on this week's episode.

Tom uses a site-to-site transporter he just happened to have in his ass and beams into Harry's office. They get the launch codes for the runabout from the land of chalk drawings; since Harry's suspected of being a Maquis sympathizer, there's no reason to change the codes or lock out his work station. With that they beam up to the runabout (wow, you'd think those little transporters would be standard issue if they can do everything one drunk ex-con can think of with just a few button pushes). They escape with the runabout, but another ship is blasting at them. Harry uses the bullshit bullshit the admiral warned about earlier to slow down the other ship. Then the expected cliches happen with the ship being ready to blow itself up and Harry needing to beam off the ship to recreate the accident, with Tom's noble sacrifice, etc.

Then we get back to Voyager and a completely pointless bridge scene that probably just fills out the teleplay. They technobabble Harry out of his failing shuttle, and he and Tom share one last homoerotic moment on the bridge before Voyager flies off, always chasing that rainbow.

dance!

Everybody dance now!

Rating: 3

Stupid Neelix Moment: Neelix doesn't appear, giving this the automatic +1 from 2 to 3.

Burn, Baby, Burn: One shuttlecraft lost, due to temporal anomaly.

Lazarus Of The Week: Tom Paris, blew himself up in a runabout but reality was reset.

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