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.

Voyager and the crew of the Delta Flyer end up in a dangerous situation following the discovery of a graviton eclipse containing a command module from an old Mars exploration mission.

The theme of exploration is the focus of the story, and it is tackled with a great deal of passion. Seven of Nine's comparison between human exploration and the Borg's search for perfection is one of my favourite parts.

I did struggle with two aspects of the episode. Firstly, Chakotay's actions serve the plot but damage his credibility as a senior officer aboard Voyager. I have no doubt that in the next episode, we are expected to take him seriously again as the second in command.

Secondly, I think it goes a bit over the top with sentiment toward. I did not really invest enough in the John Kelly character for this to work. However, this will not be a problem for everyone; this is merely a result of the show's passion for its subject matter.

This is a misunderstood episode. One reviewer has said it would be expected if Tom acted irrationally but not Chakotay. It was explained that the Mars missions were a passion of his so yes he would be wanting the module and put it ahead of their well being. Meribor another reviewer says "And Seven brings the body back all for them to bury him in space. I think Kelly would've rather stayed with his ship, his dream." Anyone who has been in the service will know that the burial at the end is a high honor. The speech shows that seven is growing as an individual and connected with someone else. This episode is deep on many levels. You have to have some sort of analytic mind rather than "oh it's a show that makes you think. I won't like it." These people are explorers and will put their lives in danger to gain knowledge.

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 opening segment says it all: Sharkjump-of-Nine has done nothing but cause trouble, always refusing to follow the rules of the ship. Then the captain calls all senior staff to a meeting. And Sharkjump-of-Nine gets up and goes to that meeting. Imagine working on this ship for years, following all of the rules, never causing a bit of trouble, and the captain picks up a random borg and instantly makes her senior staff, and for years that borg is rude, breaks ships' rules, and does nothing but cause trouble and whine "boo-hoo I don't understand humans." That's what we get in this episode. More of that.

The story would be an awesome Tom Paris story, but somebody behind the scenes decided that Sharkjump-of-Nine had to be inserted into the story to hijack what would've been a perfect story for Tom on his Delta Flyer. Sharkjump-of-Nine's part doesn't fit at all into this story, but she hijacks it entirely, moving all attention off of the story and onto more of Sharkjump-of-Nine's whining about being a borg and demanding that she WILL do what she wants to do no matter who says she can't and she doesn't care how much trouble it causes for everyone else. If I were Captain Janeway I would've pushed Sharkjump-of-Nine out the shuttlebay doors long ago.

If you enjoy listening to someone WHINE about the same thing over and over, you'll love this episode.