OVEG: Persistence of Vision

Description: Today's outing from Voyager is a little something from Jeri Taylor, and surprise surprise, it's a Janeway episode. If you think my Janeway bashing goes too far, turn back now. If you think my Janeway bashing doesn't go too far enough, read on, because there's a lesson in this episode. The lesson is probably supposed to be that Janeway pushes herself to hard. However, the real one is that Janeway sucks at her job.

We'll start at the beginning: Janeway marching up the corridor because she's checking out progress on setting up holo-projectors in key areas of the ship for the Doctor to use (like the ones that appeared in his delusion back in Projections). On the way, Paris contacts her, saying that he's plotted a course for them through this alien's space and would Janeway want to take a gander? She says she will soon, and that's good: where the ship is going is definitely something that she should always know, but deligating it to her top pilot to plan out is a good use of those below her. On the way she's ambushed by Neelix, who wants to brief her on said aliens. She's a little short with him, but then, this is Neelix we're talking about, so the fact that she doesn't pistol-whip him with her phaser is a sign of restraint in my book.

She shows up in Engineering where Torres and Harry are working on the holo project. The Doctor shows up, but he appears only a few inches tall. When he speaks, his voice is higher than normal because of narrative laws, even though it makes no real sense (his voice is computer generated, not the result of pushing air up his throat, so size would have no effect). Janeway responds by ripping Harry a new asshole, because she's very busy... and therein lies the problem. If she's so busy, why is she here for the testing? If she wants to use her science experience to assess the situation in case things don't work, then she should postpone the experiment until the other immediate matters have been addressed. If she's just there to see the experiment, then it's her own damn fault for deciding that it necessitated her presence, since they could have simply done the experiment and submitted her a report. If Janeway's too busy because she's a control freak, then why should I have any sympathy for her? What she needs to do is get her priorities straight, delegate, and manage her time properly, and if she's incapable of that, then what's she doing captaining a starship?

Incidentally, Tuvok then contacts her, wanting a half an hour to go over the security details for dealing with the aliens. This is supposed to show how overworked she is, but if she's overworked because she needs to micromanage everything, then watch me go from zero to apathy at speeds that would embarrass Dale Earnhardt Jr. So, the Doctor asks about Janeway's social life, and she's been overworked, so he orders her to spend some time on the holodeck, relaxing. So it's back to -yes, you guessed it- that stupid Victorian era holonovel. And what's worse, Captain Muttonchops rushes up and passionately kisses Janeway and announces his love for her, and that ends the teaser. So, what I wonder about this is... who thought that this was going to hook the audience? "Oh my God! A pre-programmed character on the holodeck with no free will or sentience has just said a line that shows his love for the character Janeway is playing!!! I've got to see where this is going!"

So, over six minutes into the episode, we finally arrive at the episode proper, to see how Janeway will react to this shocking development. But before anything can come of it, those two annoying little shits and the insufferable matron show up for more of the usual dull pantomime that supposedly relaxes Janeway. Frankly, five minutes of this and I'd even volunteer for the briefing by Neelix. There's some tired old shit about... you know what, I can't even find it in myself to tell you. The plot development of the holonovel should have jack and shit to do with what goes on on Voyager, and yet it's the closest to a story arc this pathetic series has seen. Voyager is bad enough when it's being science fiction, it doesn't need to compound the problem by being some cheeseball paperback romance ghost story Nancy Drew what the f*ck. What's more, we see this really isn't acting on Janeway's part, because when she's interrupted she still acts overcome by the emotion of the situation. I've never seen her bat an eye when someone gets sucked into the black hole of hell.

She has to come to the bridge to speak with a representative of those aliens, for which she is now completely unprepared because of her control freak approach to captaining. This means a quick briefing by *shudder* Neelix. He explains that in his contacts with other interstellar hobos like himself, he's learned that many ships that enter this area of space vanish without a trace. Also, apparently they won't respond with diplomacy. Janeway talks to one of the aliens, whose face is shrouded and mysterious and all that, and he says they'll rendezvous to see if Voyager meets the criteria to pass through their space. To bone up for the meeting Janeway figures she'll have to bite the bullet and talk with Neelix first, but he has even more nefarious plans: they should talk over lunch. Man, with this on one side and Jane Austen on the other, I understand how Odysseus must have felt.

Neelix takes her into the mess hall and goes on about the food. She's surprised, however, to see a tray of cucumber sandwiches, and a tea cup, just like the ones from her holoprogram. Heading up a hallway she hears Muttonchop Man's voice, and later sees the little girl running away from her. Is Janeway going insane? Of course not. Her little choo-choo went 'round the bend a long time ago; this is just adding delusions to her destructive manic Napolean complex. Janeway heads down to talk to Harry and Torres, to see if their experiments may be causing this, but there's nothing for it, she's just nutso. Still, Harry plans to go examine the holodeck systems, presumably because he's hoping that when she begins randomly executing members of the crew she might give him a quick end. Janeway heads into the program once again, and has another run-in with the grabby hologram. And she's clearly swept away by him, which is a grotesque picture into Janeway's fantasy life. Since the annoying holoprogram had to be stopped early, she has to hunt down Neelix to maintain the current level of irritation. Turns out Neelix didn't make cucumber sandwiches or have a special tea cup for her, thus proving that it was all in her head.

Still, apparently there's enough sanity left in Janeway to send her to Sickbay instead of the transporter room to begin randomly beaming crewmen into space. The Doctor can't find anything wrong with her, but plans to check for airborn pathogens and alien intruders. In fact, that latter one may be appropriate, since it seems some invisible creature just tickle-ambushed Kes or something, causing her to have some kind of full body heebie-jeebie dance. The Doctor sends her crazy ass off to get a subneural scanner, and while she's gone the little girl shows up again, bitching about her dead mom at Janeway (no doubt there are many wrathful dead that would like to echo those sentiments). Kes returns and she sees it to, then it guts sucked into Janeway, and she has her own little spaz attack. Janeway said she must have acted like a mirror, reflecting the delusion back into Janeway.

The Doctor sends Janeway to her quarters, where she gets some ice cream... coffee ice cream, no less. Apparently the caffeine is causing an overdose, because she starts hearing voices that aren't there... even a dog barking. This goes on for like three minutes, just Janeway walking around and voices... and then Janeway gets up to leave, only to find the matron waiting with a knife (there's a line so common to science fiction, isn't it?). Janeway mixes it up with the matron for a while, then it turns out she's in Sickbay, Tuvok once again forced to restrain her to stop her mad delusions from harming those around her. It's part of his job description, I think.

At this point it becomes clear Janeway is no longer able to command Voyager... well, I should say that it's obvious even to these brain donors that she's gone too far this time. She starts briefing Chakotay on everything, and I mean everything, given her micromanaging approach. Chakotay assures he can somehow manage to run the ship without her for a few days, and heads up to the bridge in time to meet with the aliens. The shadowed dude wants to talk with Janeway, but Chakotay insists she's not available and that he is handling things from now on, by God. The alien starts asking about their weapons systems and such, so Tuvok shuts down the communication. Seems there's some strange readings in the area too, which turn out to be cloaked ships. After some shots are fired, Janeway heads for the bridge, because there's no way in hell that there'll be killin' goin' on without her involvement!

Chakotay finally stops the ships in space to try to negotiate their way out, since their weapons are useless. The alien says he'll accept their surrender, but Janeway comes on the bridge; presumably this is a dramatic moment. However, given that Chakotay was supposed to have taught advanced tactics at the Academy, while Janeway is a former science officer, I'm really not seeing why she'll succeed where he failed, unless she's uses an inverse submagnetic resonance flux radiation cascade to accomplish whatever. However, seems the alien plays his trump card: he's really Mark, Janeway's boyfriend.

That is not a joke.

However, it seems that this is all an elaborate trick. Paris sees his father, Admiral Paris; Harry sees Libby; Tuvok sees his wife. Janeway tells Harry to shut down the viewscreen, but it won't respond. People begin falling into catatonic states where they stand... clearly the alien has mental abilities and is responsible for Janeway's insanity (well, her recent changes in her insanity). Except... why? We're going to find out that this one-shot alien of the week did it just because. Much like the Brannon Braga headgame plot can ignore inconsistencies because insanity doesn't have to make sense, so to does Jeri Taylor's "just to amuse myself" can ignore all motivation issues. Everything the alien does is simply because it's what he felt like, without having to make logical sense. Well, it fits, but it's a rather weak way to tell your story.

Torres contacts the bridge; seems this shit is happening all over the place. There's a bioelectric field operating on a delta wave frequency with psionic properties, and she's going to try to use a resonance burst to counteract it. Boy, it's sad that my technobabble sarcasm is so hard to distinguish from the real thing... Janeway sends Chakotay down to help her out, then starts giving orders to Harry, but Harry's not responding. The illusion of Libby and being in a perfect life is too much for him to want to escape.... um, what the hell? Maybe he finally realized "Boy, what a complete idiot I was!"

Chakotay shows up with Torres, but there's a problem - no one else is answering. Chakotay says the two of them should take an escape pod and run. Torres can't believe it, but Chakotay suddenly says he wants to f*ck her brains out, and Torres is suddenly all for it. If you're saying to yourself "I don't remember any Torres/Chakotay subplots or anything from Voyager," that's because there aren't any. Like the aliens, this too is a one-shot plot element (well, Jeri Taylor will later comment on it in her "canon to me and Scooter" novel Pathways, but by then Torres will already have spent a couple years bumping uglies with Tom, so no one really gave a rat's ass). In my opinion, though, leaving it alone would have been fine, without any attempt at explanation, because none is really needed. If a sudden hallucination involved Lara Croft coming up to me and saying we needed to escape to a tropical island and spend the day making love like sea otters, it doesn't mean I'm in love with this fictional character, it means there's a small part of me that may fantasize about that kind of sexual experience. Likewise, just because Torres may fantasize about Chakotay tapping her warp core doesn't mean she actually loves him.

Tom is still going about his business on the bridge, one of the last ones. It would figure that while the rest of the crew is having steamy sex, he's just getting belittled by his father. Old Man Paris really lays into him too; in fact, it prompted us to start singing the failure song from The Day The Earth Froze:

What a fail-ure! What a fail-ure!
He's a loser and a chump!
Fail-ure, fail-ure, to-tal fail-ure!
What a loser, la la la!

etcetera.

So Tom, like the failure he is, succumbs to the delusion, leaving Janeway alone (oh come on, it's a Jeri Taylor script, you knew even in an episode where Janeway's been going nuts she's going to have one of the strongest wills there is! Don't be silly!). When she's confronted, incidentally, it's all about how totally awesome she is, so strong in every possible way. "Last dance with Mary Sue/One more time without a clue-ue-ue/I feel Jeri creeping in and I'm/Tired of her script again-ain-ain."

Anyway, Janeway we see is the last that gives in, leaving only the Doctor and Kes. The Doctor, obviously, isn't a living thing, and thus is immune, and Kes has psychic powers. Of course, so do all the Vulcans, Betazoids, etc., but why should that matter? Remember: villain with no motivation means nothing has to make sense. To save the day Kes is to go to Engineer to finish the plan Torres concocted before she started fantasizing Chakotay was exploring her badlands. Out in the hall Kes comes across Tom who appears badly burned, but she figures out it's a hallucination and heads on to Engineering. They start technobabbling their way out, but then a hallucination of Neelix shows up. He starts using the exact same stuff Chakotay had used on Torres, but fortunately he's a hell of a lot uglier so she's able to resist him quite easily. She suddenly breaks out in a horribly painful skin disease, but she finally reflects it back at Neelix and he breaks out in the disease instead. He runs around spewing shaving cream until he turns into this wrinkly alien. Kes finished the technobabble solution and everyone's fine again.

Torres quickly takes the alien prisoner and Janeway shows up, so the alien can give his non-answer to why he does this. After she suggests ways of dealing with him, the alien says "I'm not really here," and he and all the ships disappear without explanation. Yeah, you know, I think this alien was a lot better realized when he was played by John de Lancie. Oh, and there's a coda of sorts involving Torres and Janeway that honestly I can't find it in myself to even finish, since it won't mean a damn thing anyway.

Rating: 4

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