S4 E17: Retrospect

Janeway is meeting with an arms dealer, and strikes a deal for some new weapons for the ship. However, the deal is soured after Seven slams him in the face when he got pushy at a console in engineering. The Doctor finds that Seven has a repressed memory surfacing because some memory repression chemical is fading in her brain. He helps her dig it up, and it is a memory of the arms dealer subduing her, stealing some nanoprobes from her, and using them to assimilate another guy. The Doctor is enraged on her behalf, though the rest of the crew is skeptical - but they insist on an investigation. The arms dealer is appaled, since even being investigated for ruining a diplomatic relationship can destroy a career on his world. When the evidence turns against him, he flees. In pursuit, further testing reveals that there isn't actually any conclusive evidence that the surfaced memory was real - but he no longer trusts the crew, and shoots at Voyager until his ship blows itself to pieces.

Any time there is an investigation or mystery in Voyager, I tend to need to just grimace and wait for the end. With all the technobabble that tends to fly around in these episodes, there's just no way to make a decision about what is really going on without just biding your time until the writers tell you at the end. It is especially frustrating here, when they tell us, through the Doctor, that his medibabble means of unearthing memories is 100% valid (unlike current repressed memory techniques), and the initial neurobabble indicates that the memories were being forcibly repressed with a chemical - only to have more jargon throw those findings into question later on. It's like the first half of Coda, where random stuff is just happening for no apparent reason, and I start watching the time on the DVD player so that I can count down until the time when the episode will get around to having a point.

I do have to give this episode some credit though: topics that are so taboo that even opening a dialogue about them is equivalent to a guilty verdict are a real problem. Penny Arcade, a favorite webcomic of mine, made a strip about the amorality of mmo characters - one which also happened to reference rape. There was a veritable firestorm of controversy surrounding it; a google search for "dickwolves controversy" will supply you with all the vitriol you could ever need. For this episode to even touch the issue of rape allegations is surprising, and for it to do so without obvious moralizing is commendable. While I may take issue with the story format and pacing, this is definitely a topic that still requires the sci-fi metaphor in order to broach it. I do have reservations though; given Braga's stated desire to avoid offending his target demographic, it is a little bit questionable that the story is sympathetic to the victim of the accusation. Even bringing that up makes me feel like I'm guilty of being the person who eyes suspiciously the person who brings up a taboo topic, but I do wonder if that is the only reason that this episode got the green light.

Seven's behavior here, particularly as it pertains to her awkward lines about exploring her emotions, is strange. She's not Data. It's not like she's unemotional, she's just detached. We can work on her reintegration into humanity without rehashing Data's angsty lines from Generations. I'm also not very pleased with the Doctor's desire to essentially commit suicide because he feels that he drove the arms dealer to do the same. If anything, that epilogue gives the impression that the episode is saying that a false accusation is the worst crime, especially since it is never made clear that it was a false accusation in the first place. Not only do I believe that it was out of character for the Doctor to behave that way, but it weakens the episode as a whole.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: This is an important topic, one that I'm glad that there is an episode for, but it is of enough gravity that it deserved better attention to the mechanics of the story and the characters.