Tattoo

A Voyager away team discovers a symbol on a planet that Chakotay recognises.

This is a reasonably good episode with some interesting concepts.

I like how the story unfolds seamlessly between flashbacks and the present time period. This is down to good editing, transitions, and selection of a young actor who bares a plausible resemblance to what a young Chakotay would look like.

I think there are a few aspects you must overcome for it to be enjoyable. Firstly, of all the gin joints, in all the quadrants, in all the galaxy, Chakotay beams into this one. If you can accept this premise you are halfway there.

Secondly you need to get past the stereotypes. Compared to other representations I do not think this one is hideously bad, but it has problems, such as showing no distinction between indigenous groups and generalising all Native Americans as peaceful, respectful of the land, and heavily spiritual.

Naturally this culture could not have evolved without the help of the 'sky-spirits', which feels quite patronising. It is the type of concept seen before in Star Trek episodes like 'Who Mourns For Adonais' and 'Requiem For Mathusela', but 'Tattoo' does it slightly better.

When the crew on board Voyager gets into a bit of jeopardy towards the end, it feels a bit tacked on to increase the excitement level, but it's fairly well executed nonetheless.

The b-plot involving the Doctor contracting a holovirus is good fun and feels like a parody of the type of unsympathetic male who goes to pieces when given a dose of what the ladies call "man-flu" where I come from.

Roberts Beltran, Katie Mulgrew, and Robert Picardo stand out in this one.

In short: This is a typical sci-fi episode where the protagonist encounters an alien race that once travelled to earth and helped our ancient ancestors to evolve while becoming gods or spiritual beings in their stories and beliefs afterwards.

Unlike other Star Trek series, Voyager has lots of boring, bland, uninteresting or even annoying characters that cannot carry a whole episode without boring the viewer to death. Paris is one of those characters, Kim, Neelix, Torres and Chakotay as well. Chakotay is uninteresting and in this episode we learn why. As a young boy he refused to accept his native heritage and left home to join Starfleet. Later he joined the Maquis to protect his home. His father died and Chakotay got his tattoo as a remembrance to his father - although he never had any connection to his heritage. So basically the whole tribal and mystic mumbo jumbo we saw so far in other episodes was just a big eyewash. Chakotay isn't really a spiritual man.

We also see some dumb decissions again. Obviously this alien race is able to control the weather and starts a storm whenever they try to beam to the planet or land with a runabout. The idea from Janeway? Just take the whole Voyager spaceship and land it on the planet! And why? To rescue Chakotay! So Janeway not only risks like 150 other lives on board to save just one, she also risks to lose the Voyager in this attempt and with it the only hope to ever return home! What is it with Star Trek captains always coming up with stupid decissions?

Perhaps I am a mean old cuss, but I always thought that the character Chakotay was a bit silly. After all, all of his pseudo-American Indian talk of spirit guides and the like sounded to me more like some white person's idea of what a native sounded like than anything else. Here, the away team lands on a planet and Chakotay recognizes symbols from a spirit journey. Does this REALLY sound like good sci-fi or just evidence that the show really had trouble coming up with good plots? I would say the latter.

What follows are a bunch of flashbacks where Chakotay remembers his childhood and his father. All of it seems to have nothing to do with sci-fi and comes off as silly filler. Overall, a rather terrible episode and one I don't ever want to see again.

The adviser the production hired to develop the Chakotay character was a faaaake. Jamake Highwater.

Reportedly, Beltran was infuriated with the stereotypical way his character was written, and it's not hard to see why.

His "spiritual" episodes tended to come across like the notorious TNG "Code of Honor". But TNG was well aware that episode was an embarrassing disaster. In that case, it stemmed from the director being a flat out racist who was fired for that reason.

Unfortunately Voyager never realized this adviser was a faaake, so the show has multiple "Codes of Honor".