S7 E08: Nightingale

Kim is the ranking officer on a Delta Flyer Survey MissionTM with Neelix and Seven, and he chooses to help a vessel that claims to be on a humanitarian mission and is under attack. Most of the ship's officers have been killed, leaving only the doctors, so he assumes command and pilots the ship back to Voyager. Voyager has set down for repairs, and some of the refugee's enemies are in orbit, bartering with Janeway. Once they leave, he tells Janeway what's up, and she allows him to continue his mission on his new ship, to which he has given the name Nightingale. Once the ship is underway, it is revealed that they aren't really doctors, they've designed a new cloaking device and are bringing it to their homeworld so that they can break the blockade that their enemies have set up. He is relieved of command when he orders them to turn around, but Seven gives him a pep talk and he resumes command. He helps them get their new technology to their homeworld, but decides he may not quite be command material yet.

This is a new kind of prime directive episode, and it feels like the writers are furiously trying to back-pedal away from the rabid prime directive thumping of the early seasons. Here's the problem though: at its heart, the prime directive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It forces characters to think long and hard about the ramifications of interfering in another faction's business, since that is something that is worth thinking through thoroughly. Look back at, say, Prototype. Janeway gets a meaningless prime directive speech, where the real problem is that you probably shouldn't get involved if you don't have all the facts, or at least enough to make an informed decision. Her take on it is that you just shouldn't get involved ever, and the plot goes on to back her up.

Here, Kim makes the call to help the guys because their enemies are behaving like jerks, and I'm pretty okay with that. But once he's out of the heat of the moment, he really needed to take some time and analyze the situation. He doesn't, and bizarrely Janeway doesn't, and even when the deception is revealed he still trusts them enough to go back to helping them. Maybe there's a good reason why they are being blockaded in the first place? Their new story doesn't quite add up either - why are they developing their technology off-world if they can't even get off world? Maybe that's just a plot hole, or maybe it is evidence of further deception. I can't shake the feeling that the writers decided that, because the fans don't like how they've used the prime directive in this show, the fans don't like the prime directive itself. And, as such, they're now offering plots that just ignore the directive mindlessly instead.

This whole thing about Kim's lack of promotion is weird. I mean, other people have gotten promotions. People like Tuvok, people who aren't driven by ambition. But for Kim, the one guy on the entire ship to whom a promotion would matter the most, nothing. There's really no reason not to. I guess the writers are worried that, if they promote him, they won't have the fuel for tired plots about how inexperienced he is? Like I said, absolutely no reason not to promote him.

Then there is the awful B-plot with Icheb and Torres. You see, Icheb, champion of the best episode in over two whole seasons worth of episodes, he has a crush on Torres, and thinks she's attracted to him too. These scenes came far too frequently, and made me long for another scene where Kim is showing how bad he is at command by micromanaging his crew. Really, he did that. And, even better, Seven implied that Janeway doesn't micromanage. There is no captain in all of Starfleet who is more likely to show off to her crew that she knows more about whatever they do by stepping in and telling them how to do their job or do it for them. She is micromanagement incarnate, a physical manifestation of all the arrogant meddling in every universe. And just like that, I got out of talking about Icheb's plot.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: Kim will never get to be the belle of the ball as long as he is on this show. Even when he finally gets an episode to himself, it is doomed to failure.

Side Note: This is probably the first time that, when Seven has been on an away mission with other characters, she is the one to become incapacitated. Usually everyone else is knocked out and she does her thing.