Voyager Re-Watch: Dreadnought

We're really getting into a good stretch of episodes here.

Dreadnought is all about how Past-B'Elanna (who was a genius) messed with some super deadly Cardassian junk and then sent it on its super deadly way and now that Cardassian junk is be-bopping around the Delta Quadrant and killing folks willy nilly because it's all confused and Current-B'Elanna (who is still a genius) has to smarty-pants her way out of it. This is B'Elanna literally facing the person she used to be. She even re-programmed that Cardassian junk with HER OWN voice.

Oh man. I don't have any deadly artificial intelligence torpedo ships wandering around (I hope) but I do occasionally have the unexpected memory of some variation of the person I used to be. Don't get me wrong. For the most part, I've always been me. Weird. I play too many video games, watch too many cartoons, and talk to myself in grocery stores. My favorite foods are pizza and ice cream. None of that stuff has changed from the time I was ten years old. But sometimes I think about conversations I had or mistakes I made and I think, "What an idiot." But, really, what I should be thinking is, "Hey, at least I didn't re-program a torpedo ship that's going around killing people now. Because that would be really embarrassing."

So I guess you could say that Dreadnought is really good for helping you put that really bad butterfly tattoo in perspective. But, even without all the added personal crap, Dreadnought is a great episode. It stands on its own as an example of Voyager doing something interesting, tense, and authentic with its existing story and characters. B'Elanna is a badass. She's tough, smart, strong, determined, and thoughtful. She recognizes when she's made a terrible mistake and she'll do anything, even put her life on the line, to remedy it. Good job, B'Elanna, when you look back at this episode, you can remember it fondly.

Voyager Re-Watch: Meld

So this is the episode wherein Crewman Suder (aka Luther Lee Boggs aka Brad Dourif) murders the crap out of some guy for no reason and Tuvok just can't wrap his Vulcan head around it so he goes and does an ill-advised mind meld with Suder and it's a whole bad scene. Suder's sociopathic, violent tendencies infect Tuvok's logical mind and suddenly Tuvok just doesn't feel like himself anymore. He knows what's going on yet he can't maintain control, can't ask for help, can't do anything much besides sit in his room and hope he can logic the darkness away.

I've always loved this episode. Brad Dourif (who plays a similarly disturbed killer in one of my very favorite X-Files episodes, "Beyond the Sea") is spot on. I love that we've always seen Betazoids who are sweet and kind and overtly open and empathic and now we get an individual with all the Betazoid capabilities and none of the empathy. He's Moriarty to Tuvok's Holmes and he brings a legitimately scary sense of darkness to a show that is typically fairly light. Tim Russ' performance is similarly great. It's basically Data playing Lore but I actually enjoy it more and find Russ' performance more nuanced than Spiner's. I'm always happy to re-watch this one but this time it was a little different. A little too timely for me, maybe.

About a year ago, I started to feel a subtle darkness creeping around the edges of my own thoughts. I was stressed out and rightly so and I chalked it up to that. Then, about six months ago, I started having nightmares. It was the same week every month. A week of nightmares. Bloody, gory, awful nightmares. It got to the point that I didn't want to go to sleep. Then it was little things. I was irrationally mad about stupid stuff. Irrationally crying about some little thing a friend might have said. I knew it was irrational, that I was upset for really no reason but I couldn't make it go away. Then someone close to me attempted suicide and it threw my whole world off balance. Granted, that's a crappy thing to deal with and it would be tough for anyone but I fell into a deep, obsessive depression for about a month. And then it just kept getting worse. My friends and family started to notice. "How is everything? You seem a little down lately." But I've conditioned them not to ask too many questions, not to be too clingy or to get too weird and up in my business. "I'm fine," I'd say, hoping that if I said it enough it might really be true.

You watch commercials where a woman is out playing catch with her kids or smelling flowers in a field or drinking tea on the sofa as a soft-voiced speaker glides through all the terrible side effects of the drug this commercial is inexplicably advertising. They say things like, 'May cause depression or suicidal thoughts..." And you think, "Who would take that? Why would you take that?" And you don't even realize that's exactly what you are doing. You are the woman on the sofa. That's how messed up your brain is. That you can't even recognize your chemistry has been altered beyond recognition. It's become impossible to gain any distance. You're trapped inside yourself and that's the last place you want to be.

Sometimes it takes someone who loves you saying, "What is going on? You aren't yourself!" before you realize what's happened, before you realize you've slipped so far down a rabbit hole you can't even see the light at the top anymore, before you realize that you really aren't yourself. That your brain has slowly been adjusted by a medicine you've been prescribed. That darkness has spread inside your head. And, that it's not your fault. That you aren't as broken as you were afraid you might be. That maybe you don't have to feel this way anymore.

I've always had a bad reaction to hormonal birth control--which I've been taking for another medical condition for over a year. Typically the reaction is obvious and comes fairly quickly. This time, the effects were more subtle and it took a long time for me to put it together. I had the physical symptoms of a bad reaction and I knew what was causing it but my brain was so messed up that I couldn't put it together with the depression and irrationality--the loss of myself. I was like Tuvok. My brain was infected and I wasn't ok and I just wanted to shut myself away and logic the problem into nothingness. But, in the end, that's not how Tuvok solved his problem. Tuvok needed Janeway's help. Kes' help. He needed The Doctor's help. By the end of the episode, he's on the shaky road to recovery. Suder's negativity has mostly been purged from his brain but he'll always be left with the knowledge of how easily and unknowingly he slipped into darkness. Still, he's getting better. As The Doctor says, "You're on your way back to being normal."

Voyager Re-Watch: Threshold (Generic Ensign's Log)

Generic Ensign's Log

Stardate 49372.99
9:05 AM- So I was in the mess hall last night and heard Neelix  giving B'Elanna, Tom, and Harry some advice about warp field theory. No good can come of this.

11:13 AM- Apparently Tom Paris achieved a simulated Warp 10 in the holodeck this morning. What is happening? I mean, I know B'Elanna's a brilliant engineer or whatever but really? Just the three of them? They managed to do what Starfleet's been trying and failing at for longer than I've even been alive? I just can't even.

1:26 PM- Well it's going around. The rumor is that the captain is going to let Paris take out the shuttle for a Warp 10 test flight. I know what I said earlier but I'm actually pretty excited about this. I mean... what if it really happens? If it works we can all go home!

5:17 PM- Holy Crap! He did it. He got Warp 10! There's a party in the holodeck later.


Stardate 49373.1
10:30 AM- I heard B'Elanna and Tom in the mess hall this morning talking about another test but then Tom suddenly keeled over and looked like he'd been poisoned. They took him to sickbay. I wonder what's going on.

2:20 PM- I ran into Kes in the hall and I guess Tom's turned into some kind of monster thing. I mean, she didn't say monster, obviously. But from the way she described him... gross.

5:43 PM- We're on Red Alert. I was in engineering when The Doctor decided to try some kind of treatment to fix Tom (he really is super gross) and he suddenly up and took off. He got to Deck Six and found the captain and I guess he just ran off with her. Now we're searching for both of them but who knows how long it'll take. He left our space going Warp 10.


Stardate 49373.4
12:00 PM- The captain and Tom are both back. Everything's pretty much back to normal. They're in sickbay recovering and no one has any idea what happened to them or how and why they're both alright now. It seems like, once we found them, it only took about five seconds for The Doctor to fix them and, I mean, I'm not saying I know how bad they were but I heard they were in a real bad way. Real bad. And, ok, I know this sounds completely crazy but I swear I heard it from Wildman who got it from Carey who overheard Chakotay telling B'Elanna that (and, believe me, I know how ridiculously impossible and insane this sounds) Tom and Janeway had turned into some kind of salamanders when our team found them. SALAMANDERS. Seriously. And not only that but apparently they had enough time to reproduce while they were down there for three days. I can't believe I'm even recording this log right now. There's no way this is what actually happened. Right?

I mean, honestly, if going to Warp 10 turns us all into salamanders but The Doctor can just turn us all back into humans, why not just use the tech to go back home? We might be salamanders for five minutes but isn't that worth the price of being home tomorrow?  I don't know. I guess I shouldn't even be asking these questions. This whole thing is clearly above my pay grade.

Science Ladies

So the VERY next episode I'm going to talk about is Threshold and I know we're all really excited about that. But... the last couple days what I did was just watch a bunch of X-Files because once I start it's like I'm a kid again and I just can't stop. Anyway, I've done so much writing work lately that I've been aching to do a little art (that's not work or commissioned... just stuff for myself) and I ended up spending some time in photoshop while Scully got kidnapped by aliens/the government.

I've been wanting to do a B'Elanna piece for a while now--especially one in a sciencey setting--so this is what I came up with:

And of course I had to do a Scully piece. I realize eating a sandwich in the morgue is a huge cliche but whatever, if anyone can pull that off, it's autopsy extraordinaire Doctor Dana Scully, FBI. 

I have almost no experience with animated gifs but I really wanted Scully to chew her sandwich while the entrails dripped blood so... I made it happen. Now I'm thinking about animating B'Elanna up there too.

Voyager Re-Watch: Alliances (A Comic)

Here's a complete transcript of Alliance (in comic form):

Voyager Re-Watch: Prototype

SITREP: B'Elanna has discovered an alien/robotic life form in the Delta Quadrant and fixed it up and now he's kidnapped her and wants her to help him make a bunch of new robots (not the old fashioned way) so his people can finally get back to killing the guys that look just like them.

On the surface, this one is pretty much an episode of The Original Series. Seriously, if you took the whole Robots V. Robots who straight up murdered their own creators and now they need the help of a super smart scientist to help get them back on the warpath plot and dropped it into TOS, you wouldn't bat an eye. Add to that the old timey robot costume and you have...

See what I mean? Apparently the people behind Voyager weren't too happy with the Pralor/Cravic design and I get it. These bots definitely just look like guys wearing some carpeting and a plastic mask over their heads. It's low rent. Whenever I see this one I alway end up spending a lot of time trying to figure out how the people in these masks managed to see and breathe and hit their marks. Voyager, like TOS and pretty much all of Trek, had a fairly small budget. They didn't have much money or time for production so I've always forgiven them when their costume design ends up looking a little half-baked. (Except in the case of the Kazon. I can't forgive Seashell Head. I just can't.) So this aspect of Prototype was never an issue for me.

There is greatness to be found in Prototype and it's all in B'Elanna's character and the way Roxann Dawson plays out the mother/creator plot. This part is pitch perfect. B'Elanna (at this early stage of the show) is not naturally mothering or tending toward the stereotype of nurturer but she is a brilliant scientist and engineer. She has a desire to observe, experiment, and create. She is at first elated with the re-construction of the found Pralor then she rails against being made to participate in building a prototype that would only lead to more war. And, finally, she is both relieved and devastated when she destroys her own creation. B'Elanna's journey here is profound yet believable but it's all mare more resonant when she finally has a chance to talk to Mamma Janeway about her experience. The captain and fellow scientist empathizes in a truly touching final scene.

Two lady scientists having a heart to heart? 

Not something from TOS.

Voyager Re-watch: Resistance

Welp, this one's never not hard to watch.

Resistance is a fairly non-traditional episode in that it takes place almost entirely off-Voyager and almost entirely with one cast member--Janeway. While Tuvok and B'Elanna are featured in the B-plot and the rest of the crew are briefly visible trying to retrieve the aforementioned characters, Janeway and this week's Delta Quadrant Guest, Caylem (played by Joel Gray), are more than capable of carrying this one all the way through. It begins with Janeway, Tuvok, Neelix and B'Elanna down on a planet where they're buying some much needed tellerium off the black market. Neelix heads out, some soldiers pick up Tuvok and B'Elanna and a nice little dude helps Janeway get away, though she's injured. She wakes up in his house and most of the rest of the episode is spent with Janeway trying understand her addled companion (who thinks she's his daughter) whilst forming a plan to free her officers from prison.

I actually remember the first time I saw this one and it wasn't in the show's original run. I was in college and happened to catch it in reruns on Spike TV and even then it made an impression on me. I may have cried into my ice cream. I've always liked stuff about Bad Dads and especially Bad Dads and daughters. In fact, just before I saw this one, I had started on my most recent novel which prominently features a Bad Dad and daughter combination so this re-watch really resonated with me.

I love that Janeway is out of her element in this one. She's stranded on an alien world she can't freely navigate and she's stuck with a person who is incapable of taking her orders because of his own mental state. Additionally, when Caylem identifies Janeway as his daughter, and she feels she must go along with it, we see a more tender side of her. This gentility is thrown into contrast when she ends up doing the ole' honey pot gag to get into the prison. While I sometimes balk and this plot move, I don't mind it too much here. It makes story sense and keeps with the whole Don Quixote feeling of the episode. Mulgrew and Gray are lovely together and their read of the subtle script makes this one a powerful (if painful) experience. Whenever this one comes on, I always sort of dread being put through Caylem's hardship all over again but, unlike a few wonky episodes (mostly involving the Kazon) I never change it or skip it or turn it off. I just watch these two fantastic actors carry out one of Voyager's first truly great episodes.