One Small Step

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".

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 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.

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.