OVEG: Parturition

Description: This is the seventh episode of Voyager's second season, and the trend continues - it's bad. Not mediocre, like The 37's, but genuinely bad, the good overpowered by the usual crap: cliche, triteness, and Neelix. I'm not being cruel or prejudiced here; I gave the best rating of the season to Brannon Braga for crying out loud, I call 'em like I see 'em. And the fact is that of those seven episodes, five have been awful. That's a lousy batting record, folks.

Kes is involved in a shuttle simulation with Tom Paris. We know it's a simulation because despite the seriousness of the situation it's so obviously telegraphed to be a simulation that it's about as shocking of a reveal as finding out that Richard Simmons is gay. For good measure, the shuttle is attacked by Jem'hadar fighters, definitely a good thing to practice when they're forty thousand light-years or so away. The two emerge laughing and exchanging in banter, and we see Neelix pressed up against the wall watching them. Wow, you've reached a new low when you're stalking your own girlfriend.

Cut away! Chakotay comes into Janeway's ready room to discuss their food reserves, 'cause it seems they're down to thirty percent capacity. They've found a planet, but it doesn't seem very hospitable, with lots of cloud cover and lots of EM activity, earning it the nickname "planet hell." This is an in-joke; the place where they shoot every single goddamn planet has been nicknamed planet hell (Frakes, who directed this episode, once said it was because it tended to be very hot and uncomfortable for shooting). Chakotay says he doesn't know if they'll even find anything there, and whether or not there will be danger or something. "If we knew we'd find another M-class planet soon I'd..." Janeway says in defeat. Yeah, if only some spatially f*cked up alien lifeform had dumped a pile of data into your computers you might know some more about the area.

We come back from the opening credits and find Harry playing a clarinet (like the one he'd admired back on Earth before he decided to alter reality for no damn reason). You know, I think this might be an attempt at character development. I realize that sounds stupid, but if you watch as much Voyager as I do, you discover how the creators on this show think, as well as discovering that you fear death only slightly more than you hate your own life. He's interrupted and opens the door revealing Tom, who is impressed, quickly taking hold of Harry's instrument... I mean, complimenting Harry on his... show his appreciation of... Tom has a clarinet. Tom gives it back and wants to hear something. Harry's a little hesitant, but Tom insists that Harry slip the instrument between his lips and... using proper tongue techniques... supplemented by careful finger manipulation along the long shaft of hard wood... to make beautiful music. I give up, I award this scene the Congressional Medal Of Gay.

After a little while it becomes clear that Tom is bothered, so Harry drops down on the couch next to him. Tom says that he thinks he might be in love. Then he announces it's Kes, and Harry reacts with surprise and a bit of outrage... make of that what you will. Tom says "I never saw it coming; I just thought we were good buddies." Don't misread that, he's still talking about Kes, not Harry. Tom wonders aloud why he does this to himself, and Harry effectively says that Tom's a bit of a masochist, that he makes this happen because he likes screwing up his life. Not a bad bit of insight, maybe the clarinet is helping him develop his character.

Incidentally, if you ignore the unintended homoerotic undertones, this is actually a very well crafted scene. The dialogue is rather snappy, Frakes' direction is good, and the performances are natural. It's a pity it's stuck in this shitty episode.

And speaking of which, we get back to Neelix. As you can see by that rodent's picture at the top of the page, this is a Neelix-centered episode again, and since Kes is involved, you know what that means: Neelix is going to be jealous (as if the stalking didn't already give that away). And believe me, we are getting a faceful of that. You see, any progress he might have made was unwittingly undone by Chakotay in Twisted, who empathized with Neelix, saying we all feel jealous sometimes. "It's a perfectly natural response!" Neelix says with joy, having reached this conclusion from their conversation. However, that was where it stopped, showing that what Neelix really needed was probably a talk with Wilson from Home Improvement. Yes, jealousy is a perfectly natural response. However, wanting to fondle the breasts of a buxom girl is also a perfectly natural response in many males - does that make it okay to just grope her? If someone pisses me off, wanting to smack them is a perfectly natural response. We live in a civilized society, which means that our natural responses are often obsolete, because they were there to help us spread our DNA and crush rivals. Since Voyager is not a hunter-gatherer society ten thousand years ago, indulging in jealousy is a sign of total selfishness, but then, we've already seen how selfish Neelix is.

The scene repeats what we saw at the beginning, because we just can't get enough repetition. Neelix stops to go get the peas and take a moment to grimace in his jealousy. Tick tick tick.... But he returns with the peas and manages to drag a black cloud over the meal. Also, if you check the background it turns out that Neelix wound up with the idol from the beginning of Raiders Of The Lost Arc... so that's who Belloq sold it to!

Voyager arrives over Planet Hell, and the Doctor contacts the bridge. Seems the atmosphere has some bad mojo in it that'll require putting a cream on to avoid severe skin irritation. Knowing that this was a Neelix-Paris episode, I cringed in horror, my mind's eye tormenting me with visions of a revised version of the scene involving T'Pol and Tucker in Broken Bow slathering the goo on one another. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?!!! Ah, but it turned out that the Divine was indeed merciful, and spared me that horror. I know that there was only one set of footprints in the sand at that moment.

Anyway, this issue dealt with, Janeway takes some time to chew out the Doctor for eavesdropping on the bridge, even though he's programmed to. He protests it wouldn't be necessary if he would be properly informed (remember, Janeway was supposed to tie the Doctor in to that information back in the second episode, when Voyager was over the singularity and it led to medical complications - we see what kind of learning curve Janeway has), but Janeway's having none of it. You let him do that, next thing you know there might be actual competence on this ship. After shutting him up, Torres tells Janeway that the EM disturbances are going to stop the transporters and the comm badges. Hmm, and it turns out that flying a shuttle in is going to be dangerous too... looks like we'll have to land the ship. Oh, nope, guess not. That would not only put us over on the effects budget, but also completely remove the entire plot of the episode. Looks like it's going to depend on a completely unnecessary risk at a shuttle flight.

Meanwhile, Harry and Paris head into the mess hall, and it turns out Kes is there. She waves like a kid at Tom, but Tom has already decided that he's not going to spend any more time around her to avoid doing something bad, so he tells Harry they'll have to sit elsewhere to pretend to discuss bridge operations. As if things couldn't get any worse, they go to get their food. Neelix has made hair pasta, which is hair that looks like pasta. He goes on about it, that it's shed by some critter and gathered for eating, all in all proving how absolutely unnecessary it is. Real pasta is made from flour, eggs, and water; harvesting the hair off some creature to serve in its place sounds, well, just think about which costs more: processed wool, or Ramen Noodles?

Anyway, Tom and Harry take a seat at a different table, but then Harry is called to the bridge to try to figure out how to work around the EM crap, leaving Tom alone with his back to Kes. Naturally, this infuriates Neelix, because he's a paranoid psychopath and everything infuriates paranoid psychopaths. If there was a reason, he wouldn't be a paranoid psychopath, now would he? Duh. Kes gets up and leaves, and Neelix slowly stalks over to Tom like... well, you get the idea by now. "You subclass genus," he says to Tom. "Sitting with your backs to each other like two strangers waiting for a transport. That's supposed to fool me?" Tom protests his innocence, so then Neelix slams the tray full of food into Tom's chest; when Tom reciprocates, Neelix physically attacks him. "I'll kill you!" Neelix cries as he grapples with Tom. Now, how many of you thought I was using hyperbole when I called him a paranoid psychopath?

Right in the middle of the fight, Janeway contacts them on the comm system; she wants them to report immediately to her ready room. Uh oh. She takes a look at them and wants to know what's going on, but Tom says it'll take too long to explain. She accepts that, and then announces that the two of them are going down to the planet together. I was half expecting this to be her way to force them to try to get along (or just torment them, there's always that when you have a Janeway order), but there's actually a logical reason behind it. Tom is, of course, their best pilot, so he has the best chance of flying down and returning again. Neelix is supposedly their expert on foodstuffs in this quadrant, so he has the best chance (allegedly) of finding edible stuff for them to eat. Tom suggests that someone else might be better suited to pilot for this mission, and Janeway asks if there's a personal problem; Neelix admits that there is. And then, to my amazement, she turns to her WWCAD bracelet (What Would Commander Adama Do?) and tells them, "Solve it." Wow, she's actually captainly for once... who knew?

Before heading down they head into the magic meeting room. Turns out Harry's found a pattern in the EM disturbances that could allow them to use the transporters and comm systems during brief windows of opportunity. A plan is developed to gather food and beam it up quickly. Shockingly, the scene is very brief, coming in in the middle and cutting out early, a rather shocking departure. Again, if it were in a good episode, I'd actually appreciate it more. After they're done Kes asks Neelix about the fight, but he keeps brushing her off, even irritated after a while that she'd want to comment on his perfectly understandable manic rampage. She storms off... gee, you sure have made sure she won't be looking at any man besides you, shithead. Kes and the Doctor talk it over a while. The Doctor does point out that Tom's behavior does show his affection for Kes, explaining Neelix's jealousy. Too bad, that doesn't excuse his behavior.

Incidentally, Kes talks about how simple it is among her people - she says they pick a mate and it's for life, and none of this kind of thing happens. Well of course not, you people only f*ck once! What kind of relationship problems are you going to see in a pair of eunuchs for crying out loud?!

And we cut to Neelix and Tom flying in on the shuttle. Tom announces the initiation of some procedure, the status of the engines, and then the particle density of the bad mojo vapor. Neelix follows up with a flopped in-joke, telling Tom he doesn't need to impress him with his technobabble. This would be cute if, a) Neelix wasn't a complete dick, and b) that it qualified as technobabble. This is Voyager; if this were a compensated phased flux in the space-time continuum, that's technobabble, this is actually fairly reasonable for once. Then again, we are dealing with Neelix here; the mere mention of anything scientific probably makes him think it runs on voodoo. Tom finally says that they should just put their problems aside for the duration of the mission. Neelix announces smugly that he left his problems back on the ship, meaning of course that Neelix is a very brazen and bad liar. Incidentally, I figure by now you understand why I haven't yet announced the stupid Neelix moment, as this truly does qualify as a stupid Neelix episode. Determining the worst one now would require a team of men in labcoats with very precise and expensive instruments that we wouldn't allow Tom and Harry anywhere near to ensure they'll remain sterile. The instruments, not Tom and Harry.

To show what I mean, there's warning alarms going off, and Tom asks if Neelix has been trained on shuttle emergencies and -I swear I'm not making this up- Neelix decides the best thing to do is to use this to heap more scorn at Tom instead of trying to figure out how to avoid rapidly approaching death. That's what I call nursing a grudge. Finally Tom convinces Neelix that death is something fairly serious, and Neelix finally helps him out. The shuttle crashes (for those keeping score, we have had three lost shuttles in the last six episodes). The ship has been breached so the bad vapors are leaking in, causing our survival expert to panic. It is a credit to Tom's patience that he's tolerated. To me, it seems that a "perfectly natural response" would be to cave Neelix's skull in and say he died in the crash.

Tom decides the best thing to do is to get out and find some shelter from the vapors. Neelix disagrees vehemently, and complains the entire time; I'm starting to get the feeling that "survival skills" means "I've managed not to kill myself do to my own personal stupidity." As we go on, Neelix continues to try to mock Tom as they wander in a life-threatening situation (yes, he's definitely left his personal problems on the ship). The big problem is that this is like a battle of wits with Carrot Top trying to take down Norm MacDonald, Neelix just gets slammed back even harder every time he tries to insult Tom.

Back on Voyager, Harry shows up in Kes' quarters ("Now that those two are out of the picture it's time to make my move!"). Kes and Harry talk things over, and then the ship lurches - turns out they're under attack. That's so Voyager; only they can be under attack over an uninhabited planet whose sole product is a gas that makes you itch.

Back on the surface Tom and Neelix find a cave and seal themselves in. Now begins the standard "we're stuck together and thus need to bond to find out way out" crap that begins the descent of the episode into crap. The dialogue isn't bad as far as these things go, but this cliche situation just sucks the wind out of it. It's also not helped because after all that's happened, no one in the audience is going to be interested in Neelix's point of view because he's been a self-centered whining prick the entire episode - no amount of backstory is going to change that fact.

Back in orbit, the enemy ship refuses to answer hails and adopts a pattern to defend the planet. Perhaps it has something to do with the new lifeforms Neelix and Tom have suddenly detected in the cave. Turns out they're coming from reptillian eggs, and naturally one of them hatches... and you know what's going to happen, of course. Yes, Tom and Neelix are going to have to care for the little lizard. Ugh. See, if it wasn't for the stupid directions of the plot the episode maybe could have managed mediocrity despite being Neelix-centric, but instead we have a plot right out of Sesame Street.

Now's probably the best time to get into the logic vaccum for this episode, which turns out to be centered on this unnamed reptillian species. See, the species lays their eggs on this planet so that the young can absorb the nasty vapors, because they're high in amino acids. Except, isn't this the most dangerous possible way to go about this? Since this is obviously not their planet of origin, logically they must have discovered it and found the vapors to be superior to whatever other method they had previously used... it's a stretch, but let's take it rather that crushing the whole thing now. That still doesn't explain why they would leave the eggs unattended -either on the surface or in orbit- nor why they wouldn't put up some kind of beacon telling others to stay away. If you say they don't have a beacon to avoid attracting attention that may harm the eggs, then why is no one left behind to protect them? See, the positions are self-contradicting. Factor in the question then of just how much better the atmosphere on this planet is over the previous method to see whether or not it justifies the effort and risk, and it becomes harder to understand how any species so reckless and stupid could have weapon systems on par with Voyager.

Tom takes some readings with his tricorder. It's reptilian, cold-blooded, has a brain that suggests it's sentient. Guess they're not gonna eat it then. Neelix starts going on about how they have to take care of it (you knew it was going to be Neelix's idea to head in this stupid direction, right?), you can't just abandon a newborn. Except, that's apparently what this species does, since they're not here. Thus the creature must be capable of caring for itself in some capacity, or else it would be terminally stupid for the parents not to be present at the time of hatching. But, of course, we never let terminal stupidity stand in the way of the plot; just observe. "It's shivering..." Tom says. "That's normal, right? Newborn lifeforms shiver, don't they?" No, they don't. Neelix wraps it up in his vest, and it stops shivering. Except, this creature is cold-blooded, so what good is wrapping it up going to do; its body temperature is whatever the surroundings are, it doesn't make it's own heat to need an insulator to keep it in. And that, by the way, is why the shivering is really ridiculous, because cold-blooded creatures don't shiver; they don't make their own heat, remember, which is all shivering does.

On Voyager, Tuvok's figured out a way to disable the other ship's weapons, and there's a window, so Voyager heads down to try and get them out. They only have seventeen minutes to pull them out. The other ship heads down to land on the surface - a little late, dummy. Tom and Neelix are trying to feed the creature but it won't eat, and Tom finally figures out that it eats the vapors, so they head out. The creature's too weak to take any in, so Neelix begins spazzing, trying to get Tom to use a powerful stimulant without knowing anything about how it'll work in its body. Tom hits on the idea of using the hypospray to take some vapors in and put it down its mouth like an eyedropper, and that seems to work. If I sound bored, that's only because I am.

Back on the planet we begin the make up part of the episode. It could be worse, but given the trite nature of the whole thing it just doesn't work. Anyway, Neelix apologizes for, you know, the insane attack in the mess hall and his general behavior for the past eight months. Tom states that he respects Neelix, showing that he is a much, much better liar. Voyager finally reaches them, but Neelix doesn't want to leave until they know for sure the alien won't abandon the little one, so Tom and Neelix have to hide while the reunion takes place, which would be much more touching if the alien hadn't abandon the creature in the first place. There's some more Tom-Neelix bonding back on the ship, but who really gives a shit. I'm just grateful the episode's finally over.

Rating: 3

Burn, Baby, Burn: One shuttlecraft lost, crashed onto the planet.

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