This project, this attempt to give Voyager another chance, has been quite fruitful - I've enjoyed it a lot more than I've expected. Even still, Voyager is a show with a lot of baggage. It is the sequel to multiple loved TV series, and as such it is judged on a higher standard than many shows. When viewers go into a show with an expectation that the writers, producers, and actors will improve upon "awesome", there's a lot to live up to. This crew is representing the alpha quadrant, the home of everything the fans have come to love about Trek, to a whole new part of the galaxy.
Some complaints I've heard about Voyager don't carry as much weight as they used to. In particular, many early discontent with the show bemoaned the weakness of the initial villains. While I agree that the Kazon looked goofy, I ended up enjoying most of their stories. It made perfect sense to me to have one of the major villains that Voyager faced be deficient technologically, since Voyager's on their home turf and extremely outnumbered. The Vidiians had a fascinating concept, though their stories tended to be a bit too black-and-white for what could have been a very nuanced enemy. The Kazon and the Vidiians may not have been perfect, but they're hardly a major flaw in Voyager.
I've also heard it tossed around some that the Voyager writers were bad because they weren't Original Series fans. Well, I'd certainly prefer that the people who are making Star Trek spinoffs should be fans of the original, but that isn't exactly a prerequisite. I remember cringing when I read the article in which JJ Abrams said he liked Star Wars better than Star Trek - but the final product, whether you liked it or not, included a reverent re-imagining of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate. Like Voyager, it was not groundbreaking in the ways that TOS was, but it was a fresh take on Star Trek, one that excited new and old viewers alike.
I don't think Voyager's greatest sin was its poor continuity. Honestly, in the world of televised science fiction, I think there's room for both serial and episodic shows. From the alien-a-week of TNG, to the mixed format of DS9, and to the long form story of Babylon 5, I think there's merit in each approach. I loved all three of those shows, each for different reasons. It's hard to make room in a long-form story show for a one-off episode with the potency of Darmok, while a story like Sleeping in Light would not be nearly as powerful without the long character arcs to back it up. True, I found it very compelling each time Battlestar Galactica picked up and addressed one of the lost dramatic opportunities in Voyager, but I think that falls more under in-universe consistency rather than story and character continuity. I would have loved to see Voyager be more internally consistent, but on its own I don't think that is what diminished the series in comparison with its competitors.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of Voyager as a series of short-form stories by many authors, loosely held together in the framework of a show about a ship lost far from home. While it is true that Voyager didn't exactly embrace its own premise as a ship with limited resources and a divided crew, I don't think maintaining that consistency would necessarily have changed the fact that a great many Voyager episodes were simply unengaging. As it turned out, many of the attempts at maintaining continuity within Voyager led to some of my least favorite plots - I'm thinking specifically of things like the Tom Paris as a traitor plot or several of the botched Maquis episodes like Learning Curve. And most of my favorite Voyager plots were complete solo works, like Living Witness or Repentance.
I do think that Voyager's greatest weakness was the fact that it had Trek in the title, and not just because it raised everyone's expectations. Writing for Voyager has got to have been one of the cushiest jobs in the entire television writing industry. Considering the rate at which shows come and go, many shows of Voyagers quality would not have made it past seasons one or two. Yet Voyager, because it was a Trek, got all seven. That's my main theory - that Voyager was inconsistent because of complacency on the part of the writing staff. They didn't have to turn out excellent work in order to have a job. And even when they did, it never seemed to affect the ratings. Throughout Voyager's run, regardless as to what publicity stunts they tried, the ratings continued to slide steadily downward. This theory is supported in part due to the upturn in quality in the second third of season seven. At that point, they had to have known it was over. There was no way Voyager would last longer than TNG or DS9. With a light at the end of the tunnel, with a goal to work towards, the writing improved.
I think that's about it. Thanks for reading everyone - I appreciated having people out there to hear what I had to say, to bounce ideas off of, and to listen when I needed to vent. I had a good time with this project, saw some good and bad episodes, but it's nice to be done.
Well, done until I figure out what my next project will be.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Voyager Writer Evaluation
Yeesh, what a mess of data, right? The above tables list every episode that each of the major (wrote more than 6 episodes) authors in the show had story or screenplay credit or shared credit for. What I think is interesting is that no one writer has an abysmal score. Despite the bad rap that Brannon Braga gets, he still averages above a three, and was involved in the creation of several of the best episodes of the series. Piller's got the highest average, though it helps that he wrote so few, and that includes the double-length Caretaker and the two-part Basics.
An increasingly popular trend in television (in general) is to have a single creative vision for a show, whether it is Joss Whedon or Aaron Sorkin. The two sci-fi shows that have followed this model (Babylon 5 and Firefly) have both attained a great deal of popularity, which has in turn led to some to speculate that a single creative vision is the best way to do things. Well, if your only two data points are Voyager and Babylon 5, it would be tough to argue with that reasoning, but I'll give it a shot.
Looking at the above tables, giving the reins to any single one of the above authors probably wouldn't have yielded significantly better results than the product we have. Perhaps the show would have been more internally consistent, but we also would have lost some of what the other voices involved had to say about this crew and their situation. I don't think that the multiple visions model is a dinosaur just yet, just that Voyager may not be its greatest spokesperson. I think that Battlestar did a great job as a kind of hybrid show, with a two person creative team leading a focused crew of writers, but that's not necessarily the only way either.
A single-vision show may not have ever let Sacred Ground see screen time, but a multiple-vision show might've been able to save Babylon 5 season five. See, JMS wasn't sure he was going to get a fifth season, so he wrapped up his most important plot lines in season 4. As a result, once the fifth season was confirmed, several of the characters arcs were completed. Instead of giving those characters new challenges and ways to grow, the fifth season focused on new or background characters that the audience (read: me) had not become invested in.
Bottom Line: I look forward to new shows with interesting ideas, regardless as to how they were created. That's all. I crave ideas.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Janeway Evaluation
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The "standard format" simply isn't going to work for this one. I've got too much to say. I think I'll start here: one of the complaints about Janeway that I've heard most often from fans of the show is that the writers took her character in too many directions. Specifically, they dislike how the writers responded to some viewers' distaste for her with attempts to reshape her character in a variety of ways, which were disliked for a number of reasons. Well, there was a certain schizophrenia to Janeway, and while it was no more pronounced than Chakotay's, she was a much more central character to the show. Let's begin by looking at a couple of the Janeway archetypes.
Janeway as a Female Picard
Janeway's not the only one to face this syndrome; since, in the early seasons, the writers were reworking scripts from TNG, we got some other character crossovers. Kes is one of the bigger offenders, often being the Troi stand-in, while one of the reasons that Chakotay fit in too well is that he seemed to be playing the role of Riker more often than not. The part of Janeway had more baggage though - the ship's captain sets the tone for the show, and as Trek's first female, headline character captain, Janeway had to fill some big shoes and make those shoes her own at the same time.
In the early seasons, I found it pretty easy to picture Picard saying almost every line that was given to Janeway. Now, I love Picard, but I also love Sisko and Kirk and Adama and Roslin and Sheridan and even Sinclair - and each one was his or her own person. Personally, I think it was important to distinguish Janeway from the start, and help give this show its own unique feel. The main argument I can think of against my position on this matter is that maybe the writers were trying to show that Janeway didn't necessarily have to be any different from the male captains we loved just because she's a woman.
Here's the problem with that argument, and at the same time the reason why I said "almost every line": the Voyager writers did try to woman-ify this version of Picard. It started at the most surface level with Janeway's version of the Dixon Hill holoprogram, her "gothic holonovel." It was not only a stereotypically female interest, but even the type of program was a terrible choice. Instead of an interactive problem-solving program, Janeway seemed to be playing a passive, scripted junk romance story. Why would an Amelia Erhart-obsessed female captain fantasize about being a helpless governess, enraptured by the strong man in her life? Once that element drove me nuts, as early as Cathexis, it wasn't hard to look back at other things, like Janeway's treatment of the Vidiians in Phage, and see more sexism at work in the writing. From this vantage point, at the end of the series, I'm a little more comfortable citing Hanlon's razor again and blaming incompetence, but at the time it just fueled the fire of my disgust with the character.
Janeway, Determined to Get Her Crew Home at Any Cost
The other Janeway I want to talk about is professional-almost-to-the-point-of-cold-Janeway, because this is the Janeway I've heard the most complaints about, and is also the Janeway I like the best. This is the Janeway of Year of Hell, the one who will dress the Doctor down for trying to relieve her of duty, and solo-pilot her ship towards a certain death (well, certain as far as she knew) in order to protect the timeline. This is also the Janeway who will make tough choices, who will have meetings in order to hear some other points of view but then shut the meeting down when it's clear that further debate will get nowhere. I felt that this Janeway was refreshing and unique in the Trek world, but didn't show up nearly as often as I'd like.
On the other hand, this Janeway did clash with Janeway, Champion of the Prime Directive and Federation Ideals to a certain extent. Most of the time, when people don't like cold-Janeway, the complaint seems to be that she's being inconsistent. Well, yes, I guess she is, but champion-Janeway wasn't such a great fit for the show she was on. A significant chunk of her crew were non-Federation personnel, and it didn't make much sense for them to follow someone like her. I accept that her behavior sometimes was inconsistent, but I'm willing to overlook it when it made her into a character that I was more interested in watching.
Janeway Doesn't Have to Be Good at Everything to Be Awesome
Janeway had an annoying habit of being an expert in whatever technobabble was the flavor of the week. Even if she did know more about metaphysics than a phd in the field (I'm thinking here of Good Shepherd), having her always feel the need to show off became grating very quickly. Either it was one-upsmanship unbecoming of a captain, or it came across as micromanagement. Sisko must've had some pretty serious engineering chops to help design the Defiant, yet he still left the major engineering decisions to O'Brien. Worse, it made the more specialized crew members look incompetent when someone who forsook their field for the command track would still have the technobabble answer more often than they would.
Heroic Acts Wanted, Inquire Within
In my Good Shepherd review, I opined that Janeway had no heroic acts to her name. Looking back now, that's not exactly true. Her most heroic moment, the one I talked about earlier is Year of Hell is overshadowed by the fact that the Janeway in the rest of the series didn't even know that she sacrificed herself to restore the timeline. That's a disappointment to the viewer, and kind of a cheap resolution, but I'll give her that one.
The other captains though, they have lots of heroic moments, big and small. It can be Picard putting his career on the line fore a enlisted crewman who lied on his Starfleet application, or Picard sobbing quietly in his room while he bears the burden of Sarek's emotions. It can be Sisko encouraging his son to let him go and live his own life, or Sisko setting aside his own ideals in order to help win the war for the guys who will let others maintain their ideals. It can be Kirk watching a woman he came to love die in order to restore the timeline, or breaking Federation law for just a shot at bringing Spock back from the dead.
In the above list of Janeway-centric episodes, so many of the resolutions boil down to "Janeway had a trick, so she won." Sure, the story of the Kobayashi Maru is compelling, but it isn't the only story to tell. I'm happy for the good guys to win, even win a whole lot, but just winning on its own isn't heroic. There has to be some sacrifice, some way in which the person puts the good of others ahead of their own welfare; that just wasn't something that Janeway was very good at. Maybe that's at least something that made her unique, but it wasn't compelling for me.
Janeway, Always Right
An element of the previous issue is that the scripts very often took Janeway's side, no matter what her stance on the issue of the week was. If Janeway was championing Federation ideals, Federation ideals would be the key to saving the day. Alliances is a great example of an episode that was dragged down in the end due to this problem. Alliances was a great opportunity to look at a pragmatic approach to delta quadrant diplomacy fairly, but because Janeway didn't want alliances, in the end, every attempt at an alliance had to prove to be fruitless. Most of the episode is one of the better Voyager stories, but because of the lens that it was shown through, it turned sour by the end.
Well, there was one area in which Janeway could be wrong: the Doctor's rights. She was capable of being prejudiced against him, though she'd always learn her lesson every time and become a better person... which would make it that much more surreal the next time she'd act like he wasn't a full crew member. It's unfortunate that the one thing that Janeway could be wrong about was the sentience of the single most popular character on the show, though. Look at Pulaski, who was condescending towards Data, one of the big two on TNG, from day one. I consider that to be a large part of why there is so much Pulaski hatred out there; otherwise, aside from being a McCoy clone, she was a reasonably interesting character.
Condescension, a Janeway Problem or a Mulgrew Problem?
Janeway's belittling behavior, which was, in my opinion, her most aggravating asset, wasn't always in the script. An actor and/or director could have opted to play the lines differently, to give the characters some grace when they are being shown how right Janeway always is. Mulgrew's performances added a series of smirks and wan smiles that would have had half the crew submitting the transfer papers if they were in the alpha quadrant. Now, Mulgrew did routinely show that she couldn't make many other faces; any attempt to hold a look of genuine concern involved involuntary twitching due to the flexion of underused muscles. That's not a good defense, but it does kind of explain why she kept doing the same insulting routine over and over.
The Shakespearian-trained Trek actors (Stewart and, as it turns out, Shatner) brought a larger-than-life presence to their roles. We all know about the eccentricities of Shatner's acting, but even Stewart often (particularly in the early years) used his booming stage-voice at times when it was not strictly necessary. I often hear people complain about Brooks' over-acting as well, but all three were capable of lacing their performances with subtleties that shone all the more brightly due to their more bombastic baseline acting.
Mulgrew had none of the above. She had one tone (smarmy), one rhythm (flat), one stance (hands on hips), and no subtlety. Quiet, introspective moments were played the same way as tense negotiations. The way she would deliver what would otherwise be a poignant line could turn a Battlestar Galactica script into a Glee episode. At least grim, determined Janeway was often in the midst of action, and did not have the opportunity for bizarre poses and facial expressions. If the best praise I can muster is that sometimes she was too busy to try to act, then we've got big problems.
Final Thoughts
Janeway, as a character, is not the worst one in Voyager, but her importance to the show made her deficits much more visible. But while I'd rank Janeway above Chakotay and Beltran, I'd rank Mulgrew below them all. Mulgrew's acting alone brought more character assassination than any handful of poor writing decisions did. If she'd been cast differently, I imagine this evaluation would've gone a lot more smoothly.
I thought for a long time about including a section on whether or not a female captain was a bad idea in general. The idea that anyone could think that it was a faulty initial concept, least of all a Trek fan, is abhorrent to me, and I considered just leaving my thoughts on that as a footnote in my Cathexis review. However, considering that I've heard that line of thinking from multiple people, some even without the anonymity of the internet to protect them, I'll say it again here: women can lead. Janeway was poorly executed, for a number of reasons that I've gone into in this article, but that does not in any way prove that women are not suited for command or leadership roles.
I just wish I could point people to a number of other strong women leaders in science fiction. Roslin (of Battlestar) is the best I know of - distinctly feminine, and also a powerful and effective leader. Like all the other characters in the show, she has her flaws, but being a woman isn't one of them. Adair, of Earth 2, isn't bad. She's a reasonably effective leader, but the writers did use her motherhood to be the driving factor for the clouding of her judgment far too often. I've watched only a couple seasons of SG-1, so my knowledge of the Stargate universe is limited, so I cannot speak intelligently about the female leaders there. If we look to first officers, there are more options (including great ones like Kira and Zoe), but I'd still like to see some more women at the top in sci-fi.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Chakotay Evaluation
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Seized Opportunities
Chakotay's relationship with Seska is just about all that I can point to when I'm looking for things they did right with Chakotay. Unfortunately, this part works because of some of the elements of his character that don't make much sense. Seska infiltrated his crew and became romantically involved with him, betraying him on two fronts. Since she betrayed him personally so completely, she was able to get a rise out of him that no one else could, she could make him betray his own pacifist ideals.
Missed Opportunities
...pacifist ideals?!?!?! I've said this about six thousand times throughout the course of this project, in a number of different ways, but here it goes again: You can hardly tell that Chakotay was the captain of a ship that engaged in terrorist attacks against a hated enemy in an effort to win back their homes and their self-determination. That was essentially the Chakotay mission statement, and almost none of it was in the final product. A whole character could have been built around the self-determination element, and it even would have tied in neatly with his american indian background.
Basically, Chakotay had several of the same problems that Paris did. That's part of what pushes me towards believing that the reason Paris wasn't Locarno was that the party line was actually true: Locarno wasn't used because he was thought to be irredeemable. When the writers sat down with the concept of Chakotay, they must've decided that he was irredeemable, and opted to shift the character's motives from day one. I don't understand why they felt that way, but the model just fits the data.
A Chakotay that fits with his past would be so awesome though. Fighting for freedom, that's pretty noble. You know, captain of his own rebel ship, but now the fight's over for him. He's got to struggle to put aside his old ways to make a new life, but there are hints that he's not really over the things he went through in the war. Is this starting to sound familiar? Fiercely loyal to his crew, and though you wouldn't think it once you've heard his story, he's got a heart of gold. You picking up what I'm putting down? Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds. Only, unlike Mal, he's now without a ship, and needs to work with the people who caused his war in order to survive. That is one delicious recipe for compelling television.
But, no, instead Chakotay went in the direction of... well, in very little direction at all. He became a model Starfleet officer right from the start, and wiped his past clean immediately. Because of that, the Chakotay character wound up with very little definition, and you can see it in the episodes I've listed above. He got to be the central character a fair number of times, but in a good half of those episodes there was no reason that it had to be him. Nothing that happened to the main character in Unity or Distant Origin needed that character to be Chakotay in order for the plot to happen. Chakotay's personality was completely irrelevant to the proceeding in Waking Moments, The Fight, In the Flesh, and Unforgettable. Even episodes like Nemesis and Initiations, require the central character to be the pacifist that Chakotay simply shouldn't be. Chakotay's american indian heritage also suffered from vagueness syndrome. Pick a tribe, any tribe, and you can reference specific atrocities committed against them - details are key! Without them, Chakotay remained some amorphous blob of a character.
Chakotay was also exceptionally passive for the leader of a rebel ship. He was a captain of a non-military crew, he needed to have some charisma, some sort of ambition for leadership to get people to follow him. He had none of that, and here's where I'm going to get into the real speculation: I think that maybe the reason why Chakotay was so passive is the writers felt they had to make him that way in order to have a strong female captain. I think that's completely wrong-headed, and his lack of strength made Janeway look weaker too, but I cannot otherwise justify his behavior. It got even worse in episodes like Scorpion, Part II, where he did show some kind of backbone, and Janeway devolved into some passive-aggression monster. If Janeway routinely had to hold her crew together despite real opposition, that would have made her a stronger character, not a weaker one; just more fuel for the latent sexism fire that I'll be building more furiously in the next installment.
Battlestar Galactica did a lot of things that I'd characterize as a direct effort to do Voyager better than Voyager, but exhibit A has got to be the Roslin/Adama relationship as a reworking of Chakotay/Janeway. The way those two, born of completely different worlds and world-views, gradually built a grudging respect (and, eventually, romantic feelings) for each other after being put together by circumstance was flawless. The fact that Roslin was a complete invention of the re-imagined Battlestar only adds to my certainty that Moore was taking that opportunity to show what he'd have done at the helm of Voyager.
The Actor
Hoooo, Robert Beltran. Buddy, I respect your bravery when it came to insulting the show that you were currently working on, and you certainly had some insightful things to say. At the same time, it is absolutely no surprise at all that you've gotten so little work since Voyager. Even if some producer didn't think "gee, I want that guy to come on my show and insult my work," you brought bland to a whole new level. Sure, Chakotay's bland to start out with; I already spent a page and a half on how poorly defined he was. But Beltran, he brought absolutely nothing to the part. When looking for an image for this page, I spent a couple hours paging through screenshots on trekcore.com trying to find an image where he had some sort of interesting expression on his face. As you can see, I had to settle for him kind of curling up one side of his mouth.
Final Thoughts
Chakotay was one big missed opportunity. The guy he turned out to be and the guy he could have been are so at odds with each other that I don't even know why the writers bothered with the whole Maquis storyline in the first place. That's a topic for my end of series evaluation though, so I'll just end this one here.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Tom Paris Evaluation
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Seized Opportunities
Well, I already mentioned it in the Harry Kim review, but it bears mention here too: Paris' friendship with Kim worked. Whether it was for fun camaraderie in Survival Instinct or for dramatic camaraderie in Thirty Days or The Chute, it worked.
Paris as a soon-to-be father also worked. The writers used the well worn tropes about giving up pre-fatherhood activities without overusing them. I say that because their use highlighted his desire to leave his past behind - embracing fatherhood became a way of atoning for a troubled past.
Missed Opportunities
Paris as a womanizer - the modern Treks have backed off from Kirk's image as a man with a woman in every port at warp speed. Kirk's exploits were but a small part of the sexism of the original series, but they were a part nonetheless. It's not necessarily a bad thing that the writers of Voyager decided that Paris was not going to be a womanizer after all, but I think it may have been a decision made for the wrong reasons. His one fling, in Ex Post Facto, was admittedly over the top, but it became Piller's excuse to never give Paris a one-night-stand again. Why? Because it made him look bad.
I'm okay with the TNG characters being better than real life humans - that was the whole concept. That's part of what I love about TNG. Voyager was supposed to be different through, half the crew came from a terrorist ship. Paris was a former starfleet officer who broke the rules in some way. These people are going to make bad - or at least un-federationly - decisions some times. You have to let them, or the show won't make sense.
I mentioned a couple ideas for a subversion of the womanizer trope in the Kes evaluation, but I've got another one for Paris specifically: Captain Jack Harkness, of Doctor Who. Now, I've only seen him in his Doctor Who appearances, not his Torchwood ones, but he is spectacularly bisexual. Not in a cliched "gee, don't them gay folks act funny?" way, but in a "man, this guy just wants to have sex with a lot of attractive people, regardless of gender" way. Even if they wanted to be cowards and shy away from the bi/homosexuality element, Paris could have been an equal-opportunity sexer in terms of appearance. Big, little, scaly, liquid, gaseous, horned, whatever, as long as the entity was up for it. Just an idea - I'm sure a boardroom full of professional writers could have come up with something other than "oh, we let him do it that one time, but we didn't like it, so let's just never use him again."
Paris' relationship with Torres wasted lots of screen time on a couple of people who bitterly hate each other. This is again something that I've touched on in another character evaluation - but even unhappy couples sometimes have good days. Paris and Torres didn't have any. The whole thing felt like one big apology for Paris the womanizer of Ex Post Facto - "see, look, now he's only interested in one woman and he's gonna marry her!" which shifted into "drat, we don't know how to write for married people. Anyone have some old tapes of Married... with Children?"
Killing off everyone who didn't like Paris in Caretaker was a bad idea. It's funny, if you watch Caretaker, with the knowledge of who is going to live or die, one thing that stands out is that everyone who has something nasty to say about Paris dies when the ship is flung to the delta quadrant. Having all those people dead is not only annoyingly tidy, it limits the interesting character interactions you could use later. Of course, there's also some sort of feud between Paris and Chakotay that is also hinted at in that episode that we never see again, so even if they did keep someone else alive I'm sure we'd just never hear about it again too.
Those issues are all minor complaints really - there's one that overshadows all of them, and gives rise to a million other problems: Paris' past. I've got my Calvin and Hobbes tenth anniversary book here, with annotations from Bill Watterson. Underneath a strip wherein Calvin calls his dad at work and asks for a story, only to have his dad start dramatizing patent litigation jargon, he writes "I think it's funnier when things are specific, rather than generalized." I agree, even to the extent of replacing "funnier" with "more compelling," whether the goal is humor or drama. That's Paris' problem - his past is never really explored. I understand the value in leaving some things to the imagination - if we knew for sure if Hobbes were magical or imaginary, some bit of the fun would be gone. But without a foundation for Paris' guilt, how can we explore his redemption. They not only didn't tell us what he did, they didn't even give the overall genre of his crime.
There are a couple reasons out there as to why the writers simply didn't use Nick Locarno, who was the inspiration for Tom's character from The First Duty. The first, and most fan-accepted explanation, is that the producers would have had to pay the writers of this episode for every time they used the name Nick Locarno in Voyager. Though this explanation is consistent with the Trek model for guest writers, but of the people who got primary writing credit for The First Duty were Trek regulars or veterans. I have some difficulty imagining a situation in which the producers of Voyager really wanted to use Locarno but couldn't manage to cut some sort of deal with Moore or Shankar (whoever came up with the idea for the character).
The second explanation is the official party line: Locarno was an unredeemable character, and while they wanted someone similar, they needed him to be someone with whom the audience can identify. I disagree with that reasoning, but I do think it has the ring of truth based on the direction that the writers took with Chakotay (and the Maquis crew in general). Locarno was an interesting character; the thing that I love most about The First Duty is that, while the story took Picard's side, Locarno get to make some decent points. I think that it is hardly irredeemable that the character was dishonest only because he valued loyalty above all else. Loyalty is a good thing too! A more Locarno-y Paris could have been an interesting antihero, someone who would struggle with his desire for a second chance despite not truly believing that he was completely wrong to do what he did. However, the Maquis are the same: sure, they engaged in terrorist activities, but their actions were born from a love of their homes, and a belief that they should have some say in their self-determination. That doesn't sound irredeemable to me, but the writers abandoned their back-story as quickly as possible.
The Actor
As I've noted above, choosing Robert Duncan McNeill for this part brought a lot of baggage. The question for this section is: was it worth it? Well, it's somewhat tough to say - I think of McNeill as being bland and acting in a cardboard manner, but that's largely because his character was so uninteresting. He never had the opportunity to show much range, but one thing that kept the Doctor delightful is that he managed to show range, early on in the show, even when it wasn't necessarily there in the dialogue. Since so many of Paris' problems were caused by picking the same actor as the one who portrayed a similar-but-different character, and McNeill didn't do anything to fix it, I'm going to go with "no."
Final Thoughts
Whatever the reason was for making Tom Paris explicitly not Nick Locarno, it left a rift in his background that was never filled. Regardless as to the cause for the writer's reluctance to explore it, that reluctance led to Paris having very few episodes devoted to him - only two more than Kes, and he was on the show for four more seasons. He wasn't a character that had much that was interesting to do, and the things he did do did little to flesh out his identity. Eighth place is just about right for Paris.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Neelix Evaluation
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Seized Opportunities
Considering that we left Neelix on such a high note, it is a bit odd to see him so low in the overall rankings. Once the writers figured out what to do with him, his character arc flowed gracefully to the finish line. The first threads were found in the early episode Jetrel, which established a darker side for him, a reason for his bad behavior: he was wracked with guilt. Survivor guilt from hiding while his world was crushed in a war, from watching as his family was exterminated, from not being able to save them or even avenge their deaths. While his possessive behavior towards Kes was incredibly obnoxious, it made some amount of sense in that light; given all that he has lost, he did not want to lose any more.
Though Fair Trade was not exactly an excellent episode, it did mark a turning point in his maturation as a character. He realized that he truly had a second chance, and could live his life the way he wished he had before, while still keeping in mind the lessons of the past. He could be a father figure to Naomi, he could be resilient against challenges to his faith, he could be strong for a friend when he needed him the most. Despite his best efforts, he lost Kes in the end, and was still able to grow from it. Homestead brought closure to the whole thread, giving him an opportunity to use what he learned to help his people after all; he could be the leader he was too scared to be in his youth.
As for his relationship with Tuvok: early on, it seemed that the goal was something of the epic match between Odo and Quark. The problem was that the story always took Neelix's side, as if his constant pestering of Tuvok wasn't disrespectful of Tuvok's chosen way of life. I'd count this as a missed opportunity if it weren't for the recovery in Riddles and Homestead, which brought back a certain grudging respect between the two.
Missed Opportunities
There honestly weren't a whole lot of places that the writers could have gone with Neelix and hadn't, but I wished that they had. He was a background character for most of his better years, and that's okay - when he was used in seasons 4-7, he was used well. Certainly, he didn't need to be as intolerable as he was in the first three seasons in order to grow as much as he did, so I guess that's a missed opportunity, but that feels like it was so long ago that I can't really complain effectively about it now.
Neelix never really was quite as resourceful as the various bits of blatant exposition in the show often tried to paint him as, but that's more a problem of the weaker first three seasons. In those seasons, the writers often failed to show characters being good at something before showing them failing at it - and since they always failed at it on-screen, it never had the impact they were hoping for. He was never quite the rogue they wanted him to be either, since he latched on to Federation ideals too quickly. The Neelix of Caretaker, the guy willing to betray the people who were helping him in order to save Kes never showed up again - focusing on that Neelix would have been a better way to give room to grow than the petty, jealous Neelix of Parturition et al.
The effect that Kes' departure had on Neelix was never satisfactorily explored, let alone the effect that their breakup had on him. I guess I'll give the writers some credit in that they saw how poorly plots like Parturition were received and wanted to distance themselves and Neelix from that use as quickly and efficiently as possible, and we the viewers were probably spared some dull adolescent angst as a result, but it did feel abrupt overall.
The Actor
Part of the writers' early problems with Neelix may have been due to the casting choice. Ethan Phillips played the character too whimsically for all the angsty, petty, jealous, and cowardly behavior he displayed. But as the writers grew more comfortable with the character, so did Phillips - he toned everything down a notch to the point that it was no longer painful to see him on screen. By the end of it all, he brought an emotional gravity to Neelix that many of the other characters lacked.
Final Thoughts
Neelix has one of the most compelling, satisfying, and complete character arcs of all the characters on Voyager. He is an excellent example of how a character who is despised by the fan base can be put on life support and be rehabilitated. I know that for many viewers his redemption was "too little too late," and I can understand that, but for me I was sad to see him go by the end.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Harry Kim Evaluation
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Seized Opportunities
Harry Kim was Voyager's closest thing to an everyman, though he was more closely tuned to the writers' idea of their core audience: nerdy, shy, young adult males. As such, it is no mistake that the everymen of the three latter Trek series have been engineers - Kim, O'Brien, and Trip. Given the number of times that the fans who have been interviewed in Trek documentaries have said that Trek is one of the reasons that they went into an engineering field, this choice should not be a surprise. Well, though it may have been driven by Machiavellian marketing motives, I'm prepared to say that it was a good choice.
It is easy to identify with Kim. I think the thing that I find most compelling about him is that he's kind of a dark mirror of Torres. If she's the light side of Dilbert, wherein he gets recognized for his ability, Kim is the Dilbert that gets constantly overlooked by management despite his skills. I find it very interesting that the aggressive, Klingon Dilbert, the one with a complicated past, she's the one who ultimately has the brighter story to tell. Meanwhile, Kim languishes in obscurity, passed up for promotion time and again.
The peak of the "Kim's ambition" thread came in Warhead. I think that story effectively moved his character forward into making some command decisions, only to find out how hard they are. Every story after that one continued to retread old ground, continually erasing progress he's already made - I'm thinking of Nightingale in particular - but that's a topic best reserved for the next section.
The building of his friendship with Paris is probably my favorite part of Caretaker. Though the friendship waxed and waned over the series, when it was used, it was used well. The characters acted differently in each other's presence, each one showing facets that didn't come out normally. When a story that focused on one of them didn't work, it usually didn't work because it forgot about how it would affect their relationship. The pair also worked well on the basis of representing the two opposing views of returning to Earth. Kim had everything to look forward to: a family, friends, and career advancement. Paris had nothing: he hated the one family member we'd ever hear about (his dad), and on Voyager his career was much more alive than it ever was on Earth. Though this aspect was not as explored as fully as I'd like, it was central to my enjoyment of Endgame.
Missed Opportunities
I liked the "dark Dilbert" theme of Kim, but it got very old. He remained a very simple, one-note character throughout the show. They did get some good episodes out of that theme, but there's a point at which there's just no more milk in that udder: give the man a promotion. The stories would practically write themselves if they'd done so, particularly given Kim's relationship with Paris, one of the few guys on the show to get promoted... let alone promoted multiple times. That's got to put a strain on the relationship. I know the writers wanted to avoid continuity, and I respect that, but if they're going to promote and demote Paris then the box has been opened already. Paris and Torres got married, and Kim couldn't get an extra pip on his collar.
Kim's exuberance became very strained by the end of the run too, largely because Kim simply didn't have much to be exuberant about. This aspect of his character wound up very much at odds with his dark Dilbert side, and the fact that, in an O'Brien way, bad things keep happening to Kim. O'Brien carried his hardships in a way that an older, experienced character can, but Kim kept bubbling back up with youthful vim and vigor that seemed to have no source.
There's a sub-theme for Kim as "the guy who is so inexperienced that he does annoying stuff for no reason." I bet you can tell based on my name of the theme exactly how I feel about it. Resolutions? Kim is the "I love Janeway" puppet who mutinies against Tuvok and nearly gets everyone killed. Alter Ego? He practically drives the episode into the ground with his adolescent angst. The Disease... well, that brings us to another annoying sub-theme:
"Kim has this weird relationship with sexual behavior." Man, where do I start on this one? Well, The Disease, Prime Factors, and Favorite Son all have strange, conflicting plots that involve Kim having or not having sex for odd reasons, but I think I'll focus mainly on his relationship with Seven. What the hell was that? I mean, he's obsessed with her, then she's all like "okay, cool", then he's terrified... the cynic in me wants to tie together the fact that Kim was marketed as an everyman to the young adult males, while Seven was an obvious sex-driven ratings grab towards the same demographic. Maybe the writers were trying to insult their demographic subtly, saying "Ha! She'd even be out of your league if you were a super competent young ops officer!" Frankly though, I'm going to follow the Hanlon's razor interpretation here: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I think perhaps the writers simply couldn't figure out what they wanted to do with the two, and eventually dropped it. They weren't a particularly compelling pair, so I can't say as I blame them.
Kim's relationship with Torres, which also started in Caretaker, was fascinating and ultimately underused. As the two sides of the Dilbert coin, as well as a potential bridge between the Maquis and Federation crew, I think they worked well together. When they did show up together, their strengths meshed nicely: Kim brought the optimism and the even temper, while Torres brought the experience and the aggression necessary to get things done. I suppose that their relationship was not quite different enough from his friendship with Tom, which may have been the reason it wasn't pursued, but I still count it as a let down.
The Actor
If you know something about Garrett Wang, you probably know that he was up for getting dropped from the cast at the end of season three. He wasn't in the end, and it may have had something to do with being named one of People Magazine's 50 most beautiful people. Whether Kes got dumped instead or if she was going to go no matter what is up for debate, but I'm ready to say that getting named as being attractive in some some magazine is no reason to keep a character. Either kill him because it will help the story or keep him because it will help the story. The story, to me, is paramount.
As for Wang's acting, I'll give him a rating of good enough. He didn't elevate his material (bad lines were still bad), but his good lines were still good. No episodes were made or broken on the basis of his acting ability alone, but I was quite happy with his performances in The Thaw, The Chute, and Ashes to Ashes.
Final Thoughts
Kim is one of two characters who have occupied both the #1 and #9 positions on my end of season lists, and unfortunately he bowed out in the #9 slot. He was a reasonably interesting character that just went nowhere. Kim's frustrations eventually became my frustrations with him as a character, and eventually I didn't want to see him on the TV screen anymore.
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