S6 E22: Muse

Torres has crash-landed in ancient Greece (well, close enough to it), and awakes days later to find that a poet has been using the logs on the Delta Flyer to inspire his plays. Now that she's up and about she needs his assistance in order to get what she needs to send out a distress call, so she helps him to find inspiration for the rest of the story. His patron is about to go to war with a neighboring area, and the poet wants to use the play to convince him to seek peace. On the night of the final performance, Kim, who had been jettisoned in an escape pod, miraculously shows up with a missing part, but Torres feels obligated to help make the poet's show special. She arrives just in time to be the star of the play about her, and beams out at the end to reveal that their gods are "real."

So, writing about writers and how important writing is. It is tough to do the topic justice. You may recall my annoyance at this particular trope's appearance in Worst Case Scenario; it is even more central to the plot here. That's not to say that it can't be done well - I'm not about to say that Hamlet sucks because of those themes, and it is also a critical component to one of my favorite books of all time. At its worst, it is very easy to allow those themes to appear self-serving and self-congratulatory, while at its best it can make the story more intensely personal. This episode does not walk that line particularly gracefully.

It is very heavy-handed about the overall importance of writing; there is a lot of exposition about how great writing can change minds and even shape the direction of cultures, but there is nothing particularly compelling in the actual writing of the play. Not to harp on last episode's rant again (though they do it again here) but you can say that Janeway is great all you want, but that won't miraculously change my mind. If anything, the play is a commentary on Voyager in that the thing that "saves" the play without an ending is essentially a big old special effect - not any spectacular writing ability.

It is also rife with little bits of metahumor; the actors complain that playing an emotionless character will make them look like a bad actor, or that the ideas are too far-fetched for the audience so no one will appreciate it. Good work writers, way to cushion your own egos there. The time-table demands on the part of the Patron also echo writer sentiment about "rushing inspiration," and Torres' complaint about the poet's romances (particularly between Janeway and Chakotay) as being pointless is particularly suspicious in a world where many Voyager fans were crushed when the two never got together.

So, I hated it, right? Well, not really. It wasn't painful to watch most of the time, and even if the writers couldn't come up with anything good for the writer to write, the point that stirring rhetoric can change minds still holds water. Torres was definitely the right choice for the lead character here for a couple of reasons. First, it allowed her to not care that she was crushing the prime directive into little pieces, burning them, and vaporizing the ashes. Second, Torres is not really the touchy-feely type to start out with, not one to advocate for literature and flowery prose, so it gave her character somewhere to go in the story.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Very preachy, and definitely self-congratulatory, but not bad. A solidly average episode.