And as fate would have it....
1.1 "Caretaker"
Like most
Star Trek series, this begins with a two-part episode. After the Federation strike a treaty with the Cardassian Empire, certain territories settled by Federation citizens are ceded to the Cardassians. All Federaton colonists are told to leave, as they are now in breach of the new treaty. Many do leave, but unwilling to be uprooted from their homes, many band together and refuse to leave, defying the orders of both governments, and so becoming outlaws, wanted on both sides. They are the Maquis. One of their ships has on board a spy, a Vulcan called Tuvok who is working for Starfleet, and when the ship he is on disappears into the plasma fields of the area known as the Badlands, Starfleet's newest ship, the USS
Voyager, is tasked with locating it.
However, they get caught by some sort of tetrion warp wave or something and are hurled 70,000 light years from their destination. They see a huge array, apparently firing some sort of blast into space at regular intervals. Shortly afterwards, all the crew are transported off the ship and find themselves in some sort of rural setting, though Captain Janeway confirms they are in fact inside the array. Lots of people greet them. Hillbilly Hell indeed. Things of course are not what they seem though --- are they ever, in any
Star Trek? --- and the yokels soon turn nasty when Paris and Kim find evidence of the missing Maquis in a barn that seems to have a holographic projector. What? You don't have a holographic projector in
your barn? What century you livin' in boy? The twenty-first? Ah well that there explains it, don't it?
Of course, it then turns out that they're not on some rustic farm, but in some sort of laboratory. Sent back to the ship, they find they have a common goal with the Maquis, who have lost one of their crew, as has
Voyager. A truce is arranged as they begin to search for their missing crewmen. Turns out there's only one entity on the array, and he is searching for something, anxious to “honour a debt that can never be repaid”. He sends the crew back to their ship, and as Janeway tries to figure out what the entity is looking for, Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres, the missing crewmembers, seem to be undergoing some sort of medical procedure.
Voyager locates a ship in the debris field, which (rather sadly for them, and us) introduces them to Neelix, a Tellaxian who tells them that he knows of other people who have been pulled here against their will. He tells them the Ocampa, who live on the fifth planet, at which the pulses from the array are being directed, believe they are being watched over by a being called the Caretaker. As he knows the area well, they enlist Neelix's help to try to solve the mystery and retrieve their crewmembers. Meanwhile we learn that the very Ocampa of whom Neelix speaks are in fact looking after Kim and Torres, telling them that they have been asked to do so by the Caretaker. They are also not the first ones he has asked this favour for. Kim and Torres are told they are suffering from some disease, which may not be treatable. Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris and Neelix beam down to the Ocampa's planet, in search of their missing crew, and run afoul of the Kazon, who will become one of
Voyager's enemies in the first season. Basically, dumbed-down Klingons. Turns out ol' Neelix has not been quite truthful with the captain! The Ocampa live underground, and all he really wants to do is rescue his lover Kes, an Ocampa who has been taken prisoner by the Kazon. Janeway is
not happy!
Down below the planet, a sympathetic Ocampa helps Kim and Torres escape to the surface, while Janeway and co., with the help of Kes, beam down below the surface. Tuvok forms a hypothesis that the Caretaker is dying, and that the debt he owes is to the Ocampa. Janeway worries what will happen to her crew if the only entitly capable of sending them back kicks the bucket? With everyone back together and on
Voyager, they encounter two Kazon ships which attack the array, fearful that Janeway will gain access to the technology within. Janeway is therefore placed in the position of taking them on, as she and Tuvok beam over to the structure. There they again meet the Caretaker, who explains that he is responsible for the surface of the Ocampa's world being the desert it is. He is now trying to father a successor, who will carry on the work of caring for them when he is gone. Suddenly, one of the Kazon ships collides with the array, killing the Caretaker, who, before he dies, begs Janeway to destroy the array, lest it fall into the hands of the Kazon, who would use its power to destroy the Ocampa.
Janeway is now faced with a terrible decision. She can use the array to send them back, or destroy it and accept being stranded here, 70,000 light years from home. She decides to destroy it, making a permanent enemy of the Kazon, and enemies onboard her own ship, as she has taken away the only chance everyone had of getting home. Now they will have to find “another way”, as she says.
Houston, we have a problem!
Many, and large ones, as I will go into in minute and excruciating detail as I go through this series. But the first, and most pressing of these is the ease with which the Maquis and the Federation crews bond. Apologies if you're one of the ones who happens to have read this in the Voyager journal Batty and I started, but it's the same complaint: how can two opposing forces, trapped toegther by circumstance, suddenly become friends? A few days ago the Maquis were being hunted by
Voyager, one of its crew was spying on them and now, through the interference of Captain Janeway they are all trapped seventy thousand light-years from their homes. How is there no resentment? How is there no fu
cking rebellion? How can it be that, on Chakotay's edict, they all decide to “be a Federation crew”, and having done that, they all stayed in line? Nobody objected to the Federation taking over and nobody rebelled or even pulled a sulky face?
As I said before, this should have been a gilt-edged opportunity for ready-made conflict between the ex-Maquis and the Starfleet officers, with Janeway having to maintain some sort of order among the fighting factions, perhaps even putting down attempts at mutiny or sabotage. After all, she and her crew wanted to get home, but all that awaited the Maquis was a prison stockade, so maybe they preferred to take their chances, make a new life out here in the Delta Quadrant, where nobody had even heard of their so-called crimes and they could begin anew. Notions like that could have led to attempts to slow the progress home, alliances could have been made and broken, perhaps even those who had “gone over to the Starfleet side” might have been looked on as traitors... the possibilites were limitless, and would have provided for some edge-of-the-seat drama.
But no. The writers decided that everyone would be one big happy family and from episode two onwards, with a very odd bump along the road, there was no internal conflict. I mean, come on: surely a fiery half-Klingon like Torres should have been torn between her love for Chakotay and her loyalty to the cause she signed up for? Did Tuvok not think it illogical of his captain to sacrifice her people for an alien race she hardly knew? Why was there no backlash? But nothing happened, and all the potential for heartstopping betrayal, intrigue, murder and blackmail went out the window, along with any hope of this ever being a series anyone could take seriously.
The Prime Directive
Each captain in each series has approached this most prized and revered first tenet of the Federation in his or her own way. Kirk regularly found ways around it, Picard rigidly obeyed it, Sisko often danced on the head of its pin. Janeway made it suit her. When the occasion, in her opinion, warranted it, or when it served her purposes, she would blithely ignore the Prime Directive. I suppose in a way you can't blame her: who was going to report her, and to whom? Here I'll be tracking her use/misuse/abuse of this most sacred of Starfleet's laws.
And surely, in blowing up the array she right away breaks that law? For the Prime Directive states that, quote, “As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation” (Taken from Wiki article
Prime Directive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Captain Picard put it in more flowery language when he said, again quoted from the same article, "The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
So surely then, destroying the array which has been protecting the Ocampa is in itself a violation of the Prime Directive? Is Janeway not directly interfering in matters which do not concern her, have little or no impact upon her ship, her crew or her mission, and have nothing to do with the Federation, as they have no jurisdiction here? But that's Janeway: the Prime Directive may be sacred, but only when it suits her.
To be fair, most captains (Picard excepted) have tried to twist and turn to find a way to defeat the letter of the law with the spirit of the law, and have mosly been successful. It is not to my knowledge recorded that any captain we know of has been brought to trial or even reprimanded for breaking this Directive. I believe a tacit, unspoken agreement exists whereby Starfleet know that the Prime Directive is impossible to enforce literally and always, and are prepared to turn a blind eye if the ends justify the means.
The Doctor is in
Although
Voyager is a series that permits little if any character development, one does slip through the loop and here I'll be looking at how the only, to my mind, decent character, certainly in the first few seasons, changes and develops over the course of the show. When we first meet him, Teh Doctor (he never has any other name, perhaps in a nod to another famous sci-fi series with a doctor...) is irritating, irritated, curt, snobby, elitist and even downright rude. As the episodes go on and he gains more experience this will change vastly. He is of course not a real person; he is a hologram, a computer representation of a person. His actual designation is EMH for Emergency Medical Hologram; he is meant only to be called upon when or if the living doctor on the ship is killed or otherwise unable to carry out his duties. A backup system, essentially. But here in the depths of the Delta Quadrant there
is no doctor, no replacement, no person who can take over. Nobody on the ship has anything like the medical knowledge that has been programmed into him, and so he must serve as the primary physician, even though he's not really meant to be left running for any real length of time.
His extended periods of activity naturally become boring when there is no emergecy ---- he's meant to be turned off but cannot do it himself, so if someone forgets he has no choice but to remain active ---and so he becomes interested in things like reading, music and other pastimes, while also taking the opportunity to add to his knowledge of the humans and aliens with whom he serves, learning about them, learning from them, trying to be like them. In some ways, he is like Data in TNG, a not-quite-real person struggling to emulate humans and pass as one of them, knowing himself vastly superior but inwardly wishing he was as they are.
Aliens!
Well, there are aliens on board
Voyager if you include the likes of Neelix, Tuvok and Torres, but here I'm talking about the aliens they meet. After all, they're in a whole new quadrant of the galaxy: surely there are as yet undreamed of species here?
The Ocampa
The first ones they meet are the Ocampa, after Neelix has come aboard, he himself a Tellaxian. The Ocampa seem to be a simple, agrarian race with little to distinguish them from humans other than slightly pointed ears, rather like Vulcans but smaller. Oh, and they live for three years or something. Other than Kes, who accompanies Neelix to the ship and stays as part of the crew, they don't really figure in the story again.
The Kazon
But these guys do. Basically, as I noted in the Voyager journal, a poor man's Klingon (they even look like them), they are a warrior race who take what they want, and become the enemies of the Federation --- or at least,
Voyager --- when Janeway destroys the array. In case there's any doubt, the Kazon captain says as he turns away in anger, the debris of the destroyed array fading into space around him, “You have made an enemy today, Captain.” Again though, they're badly thought out and they don't last too long before they're replaced with more interesting and deadlier enemies.