| Though Chakotay wants to focus on communicating with the aliens, Janeway is intent on bringing the Equinox crew to justice. They catch up and capture a couple crew members on an away mission, but Equinox slips through their fingers again. Ransom is stuck with the Voyager Doctor on his ship, and a belligerent Borg who has encrypted the controls on their alien-furnace warp core. So he deletes the Doctor's ethical subroutines, just as he did with his own EMH, and tasks him with extracting the codes from Seven, even though the process is likely to kill her. Janeway is also dipping into the crazy juice, and has decided to torture her new captives by subjecting them to alien attacks, a practice which Chakotay, for some reason, objects to. She relieves him of duty so she can get back to her crusade, and they catch up with the aliens who originally showed the Equinox crew how to meet the spirits who would become their fuel. In an audience with the spirits, Janeway agrees to their terms; deliver Equinox to them (so they can devour the crew), and they'll be satisfied. Once more Voyager bears down on the Equinox, but Ransom has had a change of heart, though he has been relieved of command by Burke. Ransom helps her beam some of the crew off, but he and Burke are left behind to be devoured/exploded. Then Janeway reinstates Chakotay for some reason. |
Conflict between Janeway and Chakotay is back, after a two season hiatus (and almost no other instances prior to that). While, in my Scorpion, Part II review I condemned the conflict, I'd like to be clear that the condemnation didn't come completely from a belief that there should be no internal conflicts. Certainly, I do appreciate the Roddenberry vision of a future in which people can actually behave professionally, and TNG gives us some convincing evidence that a compelling show could still be made without resorting to petty bickering amongst the characters we're supposed to like. But the whole starting premise of Voyager is that there are going to be internal conflicts between the two crews, and almost none have surfaced after some misfires in the first few seasons. I'm happy for there to be a difference in ideologies held by the top two officers, and I accept that sometimes that should lead to disputes.
Except that, for some reason, between these two, there is such a minimal difference in moral beliefs that conflict that pops up between them feels incredibly unnatural. It is that problem, in addition to the absolutely childish behavior on Janeway's part, that led me to decry the conflict in Scorpion. But it works here, and that's because the writers found a way to make something genuinely matter more to Janeway than it does to Chakotay; she hates it when people don't think the way she does, but it makes her even angrier when they do it with a Starfleet uniform with four pips on the collar. That fits her, and it fits Chakotay to pick up a phaser and save the Equinox guy from the spirit. What absolutely doesn't work is the tidy wrap up of the argument at the end of the episode. It makes Janeway look bad (which, at this point, is an incredible accomplishment - passing a box of kittens without flipping them off would make her look absolutely angelic) because it turns her crusade into just a passing whim. Ronald D. Moore, who just came to this show after DS9 ended, has quite a lot to say on the matter, and is considerably harsher than I am on this episode. It's all in the memory alpha annotations, I suggest checking it out.
I'd like to take a moment to register my disgruntlement with the whole concept of "shutting off the ethical subroutines." This isn't new to Voyager; it happened to Data a couple of times too. In the cases of both the Doctor and Data, the artificial intelligence philosopher in me finds it a little bit unsettling that even though their consciousnesses are so advanced, all it takes is deleting a couple of subroutines to make them behave in a manner that is outright cruel and malicious. I mean, these are intelligent, thinking beings. I was really hoping that, after five years of prolonged activation, and all this development and "evolution" that the characters are always saying have been happening to the Doctor, that Ransom would be unable to just flip our Doctor's switch. Now, sure, for a really simple artificial being, like an Asimov robot, simple rules will be enough. But the Doctor and Data have consistently demonstrated a capacity to think critically about moral and ethical situations, and while simply deleting the rules may unsettle them or confuse them, I find it very hard to believe that that action would completely change their personalities.
However, deleting the subroutines gives Ransom a chance for redemption, the opportunity to reflect on what he and his crew have become. Equinox doesn't have holodecks, but they have picked up a neural thingy that allows them to visualize a different landscape out before them. Ransom begins to hallucinate within these sessions, seeing Seven standing on the beach and acting as a part of his conscience. These scenes are highly reminiscent of the Baltar/Head Six scenes from Battlestar, and are similarly effective. While his flip is still somewhat sudden - especially considering that he shows absolutely no remorse in part I - I'm happy with his arc, and it might not have been as effective if he couldn't just order the Doctor to torture Seven.
Watchability: 4/5
Bottom Line: Flawed in different ways from the first part, but still an interesting piece.
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