OVEG: Basics, Part II

Foreward: Well, Season Two is finally over. For me, it was not an easy climb - it's taken me a year and a half to do it, to cover every single episode, whether it was to the height of The Thaw or the low of Threshold, it all had to be done. Even the stuff that, in its own way, managed to outdo Threshold, like Twisted and Innocence, which compounded being bad with lots of nothing happening. Season Two, in my opinion, is the worst of Voyager. I'll tell you why I think that's the case.

TNG was stopped at the end of Season Seven. While we were told it was to move it into the theaters (that turned out well), it was also because, well, TNG was starting to suck. It had all been done, and they were straining to come up with stuff. So, they ended TNG on a relative high, with All Good Things and reversed a lot of the ill will that the last season was generating. So they started Voyager, which was supposed to be brand new with room for fresh ideas. Well, guess what, there was nothing fresh about them. That's why, in fact, I still use that original Trek numbering system, which started with Caretaker, not at 101, but 801. It was just TNG with a new crew. That was a major reason the series was failing, because it not only was TNG's ninth season, but they didn't even have the familiar characters of TNG to go with it.

Another significant problem was the lack of effective villains. The Kazon were so half-ass that they appeared in only two episodes of the first season, one of which was the pilot! They then emerged as a much more prominent villain of Season Two, but never stopped being ineffective. The only effective one among them wasn't a Kazon at all, it was Seska, who had backed the wrong pony for sure. The Vidiians also weren't panning out. They were better than the Kazon to be sure, but that's not saying much. They were visceral as a baddie of the week, but the more we meet them the more the premise gets stretched thin. If the Vidiians are so strong they are a threat to Voyager, why haven't they conquered the pathetic people we've already seen and set up regular harvesting? I mean, take the species of bloody pacifists that were nearly wiped out in Dreadnought; now that wasn't all that far from a major area of Vidiian space, so why wouldn't the Vidiians just conquer them and have millions of people instead of wasting resources on a ship of less than two hundred? Or why didn't they just clone organs or people, when we see how easily it's done in Trek? No, the villains just didn't have any staying power, short of Seska.

During this time, Voyager was failing. Many, like myself, left the series, disappointed or disgusted with the way the show was going. With Season Three, the creators of Voyager finally got the message: fix this shit, now. So with this season, Voyager begins trying to shed itself of the baggage of the first two seasons. You are looking at the last Kazon story, and you will not see the Vidiians again (well, I'm excluding time travel and fictitious realities). Season Three contains the first steps towards what will really define Voyager, for good and for bad. But to get there, first we've got to finish up Basics.

For those who like to lay the flaws of early Voyager at Jeri Taylor's feet (I limit myself mostly to her "Janeway is ZOMG awesome!" stuff), it should be noted that this movement away was done over the objections of Michael Piller, who felt the series as it was being established was getting ready to hit its stride, much the same way TNG's first two seasons were very weak but did better its third. Piller stopped working on Voyager directly and Jeri Taylor effectively directed things from then on. So the Kazon arc was ejected at the first opportunity.

If you watch the video reviews as well as read these text ones, then you might have noticed that I've been reviewing the pilot, Caretaker, finally. This is because we are going to follow through the Kazon story in its entirety in the video reviews, start to finish. It contains some good episodes, like State of Flux, and some bad ones, like Initiations. But what that means is that, as I write this now, the entire arc (which, yes, short of Basics I and II, are complete and ready for posting over the weeks to come) is fresh in my mind, all recently viewed back to back. So, honestly, I look at it all and say that, much as I like Piller's TNG work, dumping the Kazon was the right thing. They were just plain awful villains. Honestly, one thing that occurred to me as I watched Basics, and saw the Voyager crew shoved off onto a barren planet likely to die, was the sudden realization that the situation was serious. It was a damning idictment of the Kazon - that not for one second during the course of any of the previous story arc did I actually find them in any way threatening. I'm not joking when I say just looking at them makes me uncomfortable now, because they have been so sickening in their ineffectiveness. Seriously, just the sight of them is like that feeling you get on a mid-Sunday afternoon when there's just nothing to do and nowhere to go, when you're just slightly headachy, when the only thing worse than the fact that time is just creeping past is the fact that once it does you have a whole frickin' week of work/school that follows. That's what I always think of with the Kazon. I'm sorry, Michael Piller, but good riddance to bad rubbish.

Description: Okay, so we come back and the Voyager crew is picking their way over the scrubland trying to find water or shelter. Ens. Wildman's still got Naomi, and Chakotay helps her along, reminding everyone that sweating wastes water. I'm sure there was a lot of water wasted when they looked at last season's ratings.

Anyway, we see Neelix's team, of which one member is Hogan, who has discovered a pile of bones. He tells Hogan to gather them all up, though he doesn't bother to help even though he's standing right there - in fact, he picks up a bone, looks at it, and when he leaves, tosses it back down so that Hogan has to pick it up again - and some of you wonder why I call Neelix a shithead so often? Near as I can tell, "waste nothing" may be the first rule of survival for Neelix, but second is, "don't get the threads dirty." So Hogan begins gathering them up by himself, since Neelix is in charge and therefore doesn't have to do any actual work, which means that he's a perfect target for the land eel hiding in the cave. It slips out, grabs him, and drags him back - all we'll find is his bloody uniform. Well, that prediction didn't take long, did it: a member of Neelix's team got killed, AND because he was doing something Neelix said, AND because Neelix wouldn't bother helping him, AND all before the teaser. At least it does hold itself pretty well to what you actually think would happen, and once again proves how Neelix's "survival skills" are pure fantasy. The first casualty, and it's minutes after landing and thanks to the survival expert - the only way Neelix is going to keep the Voyager crew alive is if they eat him.

On the other end of the competence spectrum, we have Tom Paris. Yes, that's right, his shuttle wasn't destroyed, it's just badly damaged. A Kazon patrol ship comes at him, and finally, annoyed, he says that he doesn't have time for this and blows it away with one shot, then gets right back to work. That just kind of emphasizes how pathetic Neelix is - he can't keep his own people alive for five minutes, while Tom is winning dogfights in a broken shuttle.

Back on the planet, Kes tells Neelix not to feel guilty, which is her job for whenever Neelix should feel guilty. Janeway says to not worry about blame (otherwise it might get around to blaming her), and sets them back to work on survival. Chakotay plans to make a solar still using the bloody uniform, showing good survival skills. Showing bad survival skills again is Neelix, who says they haven't found any edible plants - it's Janeway that has to point out that there are bugs under rocks, which they can eat. As I pointed out back in Elogium, anyone with basic survival skills should know that. It all just keeps reminding us that no matter what the situation, Neelix is absolutely, totally, useless.

On Voyager, Seska heads down to sickbay, where the Doctor is already on line, but fools her into thinking he hasn't changed since she left. Unfortunately for her, she's dealing with the one character to actually develop, and so is fooled by the Doctor's blase attitude about the whole thing. We also find out that this is not Chakotay's child, but rather, Cullah's. [It's important to note that this was part of this termination of the Kazon plot; originally, the child was supposed to be Chakotay's, but the story was changed in a way that would make that impossible from a series perspective; we'll get into that more later] Seska leaves and the Doctor wonders what he can do to try to get them off the ship. He asks how many are on board and we're told eighty-nine Kazons and one Bajoran (Suder). Um, and what about Seska? Were we expected to forget there was a Cardassian on board when we had seen her in this scene thirty seconds ago? Christ. Anyway, the Doctor makes contact with Suder, and while Suder heads for Sickbay the Doctor hides his presence from sensors. I'm not sure if Jack the Ripper is the best counterinsurgent there is, but I suppose he's better than Neelix would be. Then again, Suder's new orchid would probably be better than Neelix.

On the planet, things are cold and the crew huddles together for warmth. Since Neelix is their survival expert, he's not working on the fire, another basic piece of survival information. I think the cat's out of the bag on him being a complete waste of flesh. Since he's out, that leads us to their first runner up, Chakotay. Chakotay's pretty pissed at himself. "Trapped on a barren planet and you're stuck with the only Indian in the universe who can't start a fire by rubbing two sticks together." Damn, just... damn. You know, if Piller leaving spared us more of this, well, good. Why not just have him start hopping around the sticks chanting "Mazola" while you're at it. Well, finally he decides to use kindling to start the fire, so they cut off some hair from a few of them, including Janeway, and with that he finally gets the fire going. If only it could burn away the shame of this scene.

Anyway, Neelix, no doubt feeling really useless after not finding food, not starting a fire, and getting somebody killed, says that rocks around the fire will reflect the heat better, and leaves to go get some. Of course, because he not only doesn't have survival skills, but rather, the opposite of survival skills, he just walks out of the camp instead of taking a torch with him to help him see any dangers, find his way back, and scare off any potential predators. Well, guess what will happen because of this? Eventually, someone will die. So yes, there will be two deaths on this planet, and both caused by Neelix, their survival expert. Are you really surprised?

Meanwhile, as Neelix is slowly getting the crew of Voyager killed, Tom Paris has not only singlehandedly destroyed a Kazon patrol with a broken shuttle, but repaired it and is gathering allies to help him in a counterstrike to take Voyager back from the Kazon. You can understand why Neelix hated him for so long.

Over on Voyager, Suder has finally made it to Sickbay and he and the Doctor discuss the situation. Suder's uneasy about the idea of killing again after trying so long to control the violent thoughts he's had. Doc points out the logic of the situation, but Suder says for him it doesn't work that way, and he makes sense. It's like a recovering alcoholic being told there's a time and place to drink, you can't do it without risking total failure - one drink is one too many.

Well, eventually it's revealed that Neelix and Kes (who went out after him) are missing, and Chakotay plans to head out after them (like Apache Chief, he's skilled with Indian Tracking Abilities). Tuvok has made a bow and arrow, and with this, the episode attempts to deflect some of the charges about stereotypes by having Chakotay say that his tribe didn't develop bows and arrows and he doesn't know how to use them - See! See! the episode cries, something stereotypical we aren't applying! Yeah, except, it's pretty damn presumptive that it was made because Chakotay was an Indian, considering that bows and arrows were invented independently on every continent except Australia, and that the oldest ones we know of were not in America, but northern Europe. The scene might as well have been Chakotay saying "I don't own a casino!" as its attempt to not be stereotypical.

Anyway, turns out the bow wasn't for Chakotay anyway, but for Tuvok, who was actually an Archery teacher on Vulcan. The rest get spears. So they find Kes and Neelix, who are busy being harassed by the locals. There's a bit of a confrontation because they can't understand the locals (which, actually, begs the question of how they understand each other if there's no universal translator working). Chakotay finally leads Neelix and Kes off, and they are quickly pursued (this makes use of the Teleporting Natives, when we see half of the group come rushing at them from the opposite direction even though the Voyager crew has the lead), so they decide to hide in one of the caves, reasoning that the natives won't follow them in. They're right, but the natives decide to start a fire inside the cave mouth and smoke them out. Janeway and her party show up outside and, well, remember that the real experts are all trapped, so she's stuck with Harry, Torres, and people who don't even have names, so she knows it's bad. So bad, in fact, that Extra-Man has to -after two years of silence- say a line. He says "yeah." But it's a good "yeah."

Anyway, the plan is that Torres, Extra-Man, and Nameless Woman, will create a diversion. Meanwhile, Chakotay and his group come across a sleeping land eel. However, there's a tremor and the eel wakes up while a blue shirt falls over the edge. The eel eats him in a rather lame and unfrightening manner, so much so that it's hard to be sure he's even eaten, it's that bad. This makes Lake Placid look like Cloverfield. Anyway, now to show us how unthreatening the monster is, Tuvok and Chakotay take care of it pretty much with a spear and the bow and arrow, stopping it from chasing them out (Janeway and company having removed the fire during the diversion). Yeah, nice work, you've pretty much failed to live up to the guy and two kids from Land of the Lost.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Suder have been sabotaging things on Voyager to stop the Kazon from getting too far. Paris now gets in touch with the Doctor to lay out the plan: he and the Talaxian fleet (*sigh*) will launch an attack, where Tom will disable Voyager's primary phaser couplings. The Doctor's job is to rig up the backup couplings so that when they switch in they'll overload. The Doctor's pleased, but a little less so when Suder comes back with a dead Kazon, which he drops on the floor. I used to have a cat that did the same thing. Suder's getting a little flaky now, and refuses drugs that will help calm him down. I guess the last thing you'd want is to silence the voices, huh?

On Planet Screwed, Tuvok points out that after what happened, there's a good chance they'll be attacked by the natives. Being the security officer, he suggests constructing weapons and training the crew in their use. Both Janeway and Chakotay balk at this, with Chakotay insisting he doesn't believe that the natives want them dead. Yeah, ya know Chakotay, that'd be a lot more convincing if we hadn't seen them cause someone to die a gruesome death five minutes ago. This is the Piller take on Chakotay: whenever he decides to do something extremely dangerous because of his Indian hunches, he's always right - it never, ever, backfires. Just like in Tattoo, Chakotay is so convinced he's right that he'll risk the lives of everyone else. Would this be any better if he suddenly declared he could stop the nearby volcano that was errupting with the power of prayer, or could divert the lava flow by focusing his chi? With the volcano, they take the prudent course, and leave. With the weapons, they do the exact opposite: screw prudency, I'm right! Don't make your dirty, dirty weapons! I can't believe these are the decisions of a leader of a guerilla army!

So, anyway, this volcano is errupting and they're getting the hell out of there. However, a native woman is trapped on a rock surrounded by lava. Voyager decides to base everything they know about lava from what they learned playing Super Mario Bros: so long as you don't touch the lava, it's harmless. Sure. So Chakotay (oh, you really didn't expect anyone else to save the native, did you?) jumps around until he gets her and brings her back to safety. His uniform isn't even damaged by standing over air heated to a thousand degrees. Knowing Piller, Chakotay was probably using some kind of magic Indian firewalking technique to protect himself.

On Voyager, Seska heads down and confronts the Doctor, who does a good job of providing her misinformation, and then finally says that he has been sabotaging the ship, but working alone. He reveals the dead Kazon as proof of how far he's willing to go. She shuts down his program and disables all starfleet commands just in case. Suder finally comes back and finds a message from the Doctor giving the Once More For The Gipper speech and telling him to do the backup sabotage thingie.

So Suder heads towards Engineering while the Talaxians lure Cullah into a trap, and then goes completely postal, blasting all the Kazon in the room shot by shot. Once there Tom does his thing and Suder does his thing, and when the Kazon switch over shit starts blowing up, and Cullah decides to haul ass. Paris and the Talaxians quickly retake the ship, but not Suder because he was killed completing his mission, tying up that loose end. Oh, and also, Seska died too. Based on her character arc, you shouldn't be surprised that it was in a final confrontation with Chakotay- Oh no, wait, I'm sorry, I figured this would actually make sense. Instead she suffers death by exploding console. We don't even see Chakotay's reaction to the news of Seska's death beyond him covering her body with a sheet. Meanwhile, everyone's going on about Suder, who appeared in one other story. Whatever.

Well, that wraps everything up. Paris and the Talaxians take Voyager back to pick up the crew, who have bonded with the locals. They're all back and ready to head for home, the end.

Afterword: Basics was Piller's last script for Voyager, apparently because it underwent a significant change at the insistence of Jeri Taylor, who was backed by Rick Berman. As I said at the beginning, the decision was to eject the Kazon story arc, so the story underwent a bit of a reversal. The intent was that the Cullah and the baby would perish, and Seska and Suder would survive. As you saw, the exact opposite happened. Seska had to go as she was the only real element to the Kazon that was actually a threat, and Suder... well, Jeri Taylor just didn't like Suder. I'm indifferent, myself. The real problem is the way Seska was taken out, it really didn't properly end the established conflict between her and Chakotay.

When I think about this, what comes to mind is the transition from seasons three to four of Enterprise. If you don't know (you lucky, lucky bastards), Berman and Braga effectively were removed from control of that series and the show was handed over to one Manny Coto. The situations were similar: the previous direction had caused the loss of viewers so that cancelation loomed, and the idea was to find a direction for the series. Manny Coto did that by getting away from the Xindi, the temporal cold war, and the other crap of the preceding years and instead focus on small story arcs, moves many who were actually still watching felt finally made the show worth watching, but was tragically cut short at the end of the season. Anyway, I bring this up because Berman and Braga, at the end of their final episode for their season, had Enterprise crash on an Earth conquered by Nazis and aliens in Nazi uniforms. This was a nice big pile of shit to hand to Coto and his team to try to sort out, especially when they didn't want to mess with the goddamn temporal cold war.

Now, what makes these situations similar is that both had the job of tying up the unpopular thread from the preceding season. The Enterprise approach was the two part story, Stormfront, which gave the story the proper time to tie up the loose end and close out the story arc for Silik and Archer. This approach, in my opinion, was commendable: they didn't want to do this stuff, but if they were going to do it, they were going to do it the best they felt they could (I'm not calling Stormfront anything great, mind you... the temporal cold war was such a mess that sorting that shit out wasn't going to be very satisfying no matter what, but at least they tried to put this whole thing to bed properly). Voyager, of course, did what Voyager always does: head straight for the finish line as fast as possible. One more episode dedicated, not to the Kazon, but to Seska and Chakotay, would have brought that story to a far more satisfying conclusion... actually, strike that, it would have brought it to a conclusion! It doesn't resolve, it just stops. That was the Voyager take: find a fast solution, and to hell with everything else.

The baby, incidentally, was supposed to be Chakotay's, but was changed again by Taylor and Berman. I'm not sure why they didn't allow the baby to die (they killed Naomi in Deadlock, after all). I mean, it's not as if they allowed Seska's death to affect Chakotay, so there was no need to prevent the baby from dying for that reason. It just seemed like such a silly thing to do, when they spent all that time establishing it was Chakotay's child, to suddenly do this about face at the last minute for no reason.

With the departure of Piller, Jeri Taylor's direction of Voyager led towards it developing into its final form. The Borg were starting to creep in, Neelix was shoved more into a minor ship role rather than being Janeway's advisor, the Doctor got his mobile emitter, and Torres and Paris begin moving towards each other. Also, under her would be the introduction of Seven of Nine, and between her, the effectiveness of Scorpion, and the fulfillment of the Paris-Torres relationship the show would be kept on the air for all seven seasons. She would remain on board until the end of season four, when she would hand it over to Brannon Braga (who is often credited with creating Seven) for five and six, and finally to Kenneth Biller for the last season (who is credited for producing tons and tons of bad episodes, so I've no idea what they were thinking here). Anyway, point is, Basics is the first step away from where Voyager was towards where it would manage to stay on the air.

Rating: 5

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