One Small Step

This episode is a tribute to all the explorers who paid with their lives ushering the dawn of a new era, but also paved the way for other explorers who came after them. Explorers who wrote history and were or still are role models for entire generations.

The Voyager crew discovers an old spacecraft from the 21st century inside a space anomaly, which was swallowed and dragged along by this anomaly during an early mission to Mars. For Chakotay, Janeway, and everyone else except Seven, it is clear that this piece of history must be recovered to honor the memory of the shining hero of this mission, whose life was swept away by this space anomaly. While the crew feels the touch of nostalgia under their fingertips and is thrilled to have made such a once in a lifetime discovery, Seven cannot get excited about recovering a pile of ancient technology and putting her own life in danger to do so. However, Janeway convinces her to "volunteer" for this salvage mission because it might teach her how important history and its heroes are to the human species - something she never learned as a Borg Drone.

While the episode is certainly appealing as an example of how much the stories of a few heroes determine both the future of a civilization and the careers of individual people, it also gets very pompous at times. Chakotay is willing to risk not only his life but also those of Paris and Seven just to get the spacecraft back to Voyager. Despite all the nostalgia, the here and now should still be the focus when in doubt. Especially since memories and legends continue to exist, even without material memorabilia being archived.

In any case, Seven has her character development moment when she realizes how important the knowledge of bygone days can be for today's spirit of discovery and that the human species in particular needs role models to guide them on their own journey of discovery.

Technobabble, technobabble, technobabble. Zero regard for history, with no mention of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Utter ignorant US tripe.

I guess one has to constantly look past the careless actions of the leadership of this vessel or we'd be angry all the time. Voyager finds herself perpetually in deep doodoo because chances are taken that are unnecessary. This time it is Chakotay who pushes this venture and then insubordinately threatens the lives of everyone else. I suppose sentimentality is part of our humanity. Still, survival is a lot more important. The writers worked it all out, but how many times does one play with fire before being scorched. It was a bit touching, however.

One aspect of Voyager I appreciate is that episodes focusing on one character are just as likely to focus on that character's foibles as on their heroism, and I find this to be realistic and relatable.

But here, attempts to flesh out Chakotay's back story and Seven's emotional development fall flat. Chakotay is suddenly a Mars exploration aficionado, even though he said nothing of the sort when presented with the opportunity on a recent episode entirely about the Mars missions, 11:59 (1999).

He also suddenly has a passion for paleontology, despite never having mentioned this in past discussions of his early life and time in Starfleet. We already knew he left Starfleet after his father's death caused him to re-evaluate his priorities, and here he states that joining the Maquis derailed his pursuit of paleontology. Yet one would assume at that point he would already have taken major steps toward this career--there has never been any indication Starfleet expects its scientists to delay their advanced training. These new interests felt contrived, and it would have helped if Chakotay directly connected them--such as stating he was interested in the history of space exploration specifically because it can lead to exobiological or paleontological study of life on other planets; but since he didn't draw this connection his new passions were odd.

Disobeying orders isn't exactly out of character for Chakotay, as some of his best episodes involved his decision to pursue his own course, like in Maneuvers (1995). The problematic aspect of his behavior here that felt out of character is that he kept stopping other characters to chat even though they were facing a major time crunch to save their lives, like when he waylaid Seven on her way to the Mars module in order to slowly explain his regrets about the mission and ask her to look around the module for sentimentality's sake.

Captain Janeway also irked a little, acting arrogant and condescending when Seven questioned the wisdom of entering the anomaly and even pulling rank on her in such an unnecessary way ("I appreciate your concern, but this is my call"). I'm a historian, and even I got frustrated with the crew's repeated insistences that recovering historical artifacts would allow them to be part of history, and thus was worth risking their lives. This is one of many episodes where Seven has to learn a lesson, yet here, her objections were always reasonable and the crew's responses to her were not lessons I would have her learn.

The show begins in the early 21 century. A space flight from Earth to Mars is interrupted when a 'gravatron ellipse' appears and sucks the ship out of known existence. Now, centuries later, Voyager comes upon the wreckage of this old ship and Chakotay is determined to salvage the craft--or at least what's left of it. However, when the ellipse appears once again, Chakotay might just get himself and others killed.

This is a bittersweet and enjoyable type of episode with a lot of sad nostalgia associated with it. Phillip Morris stars as the fated captain of the old Nasa ship.

By the way, early in the show the Doctor talks about Arakkis Prime. Arakkis is an inside joke, as it's from Frank Herbert's classic sci- fi novel, "Dune".