S4 E20: Vis à Vis

Voyager discovers a ship in distress that has an experimental warp drive that essentially folds space. Tom, who has been feeling angsty of late, hits it off with the loner pilot (Steth) - that is, until the pilot turns on him, steals his appearance, and maroons him in his shuttle. Steth masquerades as Paris with a variable degree of success, while Paris discovers that he is just the latest in a chain of people with stolen appearances/identities. When Janeway calls Steth/Paris in to reprimand him for juvenile behavior, he then swaps with her. Fortunately, rather than use her power as captain to prevent Paris/Steth from revealing him, he opts to steal a shuttle that had been refitted with the new fold-drive and gets caught. The Doctor reverses everything magically, Steth is brought to justice, and Paris learns that he was happy all along.

I think I've already made it clear how I feel about caught-in-a-lie awkwardness: if you don't recall from my Non Sequitur review, I hate it. At first, it isn't so bad. Steth seems to be pretty good at this game of his, so it isn't so awkward. The scene where he plays the Doctor's ego like a musical instrument is perfect, and is the only thing that is going to save this episode from a 1/5. However, the writers, halfway though Steth's visit, seem to have decided that instead he should be absolutely wretched at blending in, so that the crew can tell it isn't Paris.

But no one realizes anyways. He acts like a complete buffoon for a day and everyone assumes that Paris is just being a jerk. If anything, when Paris got back, he had more of a right to feel angsty because everyone figured that he was just being the loser they expected him to be after all. And why wouldn't they? This episode falls right back into the tired Voyager trope of character assassination at the beginning of an episode just so that the writers can "fix" it by the end. I am constantly whining about the lack of development for Paris, and this still isn't it. This is a whole episode about him, and the most depth we get is "Paris shuts people out." I've got a better character arc in the comic about a bee on the back of my Honey Nut Cheerios. Character development doesn't mean slap a cliche on his face and say done! Or maybe they really just felt that the angsty teen bit hasn't gotten its due, that maybe there really is some gold left in that fetid mine - at least give us some specifics. Tell us why he shuts people out.

But they're not going to do that, and I think I know why: Nicholas Locarno. Tom's outline from Caretaker seems to be pretty clearly lifted from his original Trek appearance - but in reading the early memory alpha annotations, it is clear that the writers desperately wanted to distance him from that role because they felt that Locarno was unredeemable. As a result, we get no specific back story instead, and probably never will. And it is a shame, because Locarno was a really interesting character, one I consider very redeemable. When The First Duty was written, the staff was pretty evenly divided about which way Wesley should go with the cover-up. Because of that disagreement, in the final script, both sides of the argument get a solid champion. Even though, in the end, the script sides with Picard and the Truth, Locarno and Loyalty aren't completely vilified. Because, in reality, Truth vs. Loyalty is a tough call. I don't think Locarno would be irredeemable, I just think that using him as a model would make for some hard but interesting writing decisions. And I think that they floundering Tom Paris character makes it pretty clear how the Voyager writers feel about those.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: Well, I guess I lied earlier. It still was a good scene with the Doctor. But I've got myself worked up enough about how disappointed I am in the direction (or lack thereof) that they're taking with Paris that I can only count to one.