THE PLOT
Voyager detects a new element on an asteroid oribiting a ringed planet. Chakotay, Torres, and Harry beam over to investigate, only to discover that the asteroid is a burial chamber. When an emanation of energy is detected, Chakotay requests an emergency beam out. But the ship only successfully recovers chakotay and Torres, along with the most recently-arrived of the dead. Harry has been lost!
It turns out the transporter beam somehow (through means never explained) got, uh, tangled in the beam used to teleport the newest body to the asteroid. The result is that Ptera (Cecile Callan), a member of the afterlife-obsessed Vhnori, is transorted to Voyager, while Harry ends up being beamed to the Vhnori homeworld. Harry is taken to be an emissary from beyond, the first person to return from "the next emanation." He is immediately pressured to give information about the afterlife. But when Harry honestly says that all he saw was an asteroid filled with dead bodies, he creates a disruption in Vhnori society.
Meanwhile, Janeway pressures her crew to locate Harry using various methods of Technobabble. But now the transportation of the bodies is drawn to Voyager, with the energy increasingly affecting the ship's warp core. If they stay too long, the entire ship could be destroyed!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Very focused on recovering Harry, and only revives Ptera and interacts with her as a means to that end. And you know what? I actually don't have a problem with that. Harry is a member of her crew, and his safety is her responsibility. As captain, if she can reasonably recover him, then it is her duty to do so. Ptera is not a member of her crew, and as such is - and should be - a secondary concern. Kes has the luxury of taking a moment to grieve Ptera, because Kes truly can't do anything to aid in the search for Harry. Janeway doesn't have that luxury. So while I'll happily tear strips off Janeway in other episodes, this time out I really don't have much problem with her priorities.
Chakotay: Gets a decent scene early in the episode, in which he plays Sherlock Holmes to Torres' Watson by running down all the things he can conclude about the culture from simple visual observation of the dead. Other than that, Chakotay The Walking Native American Cliche continues, as he insists on absolute reverence for the dead.
Kes: Remains the most purely compassionate member of the crew. While everyone else on the crew looks at Ptera solely as a means to the end of recovering Harry, Kes actually takes the time to deal with Ptera as a person. She listens to the woman's worries about the afterlife and registers her desire to return home, and takes her directly to Janeway to see what chance exists of getting her back home. After the attempt fails, Janeway, Torres, and the rest of the crew move right on with focusing on Harry, with only Kes pausing to address Ptera as a legitimate loss in herself.
Harry Kim: Even in an episode that actually focuses on him, Harry's boring. He's very earnest, both with Chakotay and Torres on the asteroid and with the Vhnori on their homeworld. He does his best to observe the Prime Directive, but knows that even by being there he is interfering with their culture. He remains honest and honorable and nice at all times, and basically makes me very sleepy anytime he's on-screen. Watching this walking flap of cardboard blandness, I find myself starting to re-evaluate the merits of Enterprise's Mayweather, who - as it turns out - is not the worst-developed Trek regular of all time after all.
THOUGHTS
The questions of the afterlife have been pondered for as long as we've been aware of death. What happens to us when we die? Is this life all there is, or is there something more? Will we continue after death? Will we see our loved ones again?
These kinds of questions, treated in a thoughtful manner, could be and have been the fodder for some excellent drama. But in Emanations, they are just window dressing for a rather cheap and tiresome filler episode. The Vhnori are a typical Star Trek race, alien because they funny foreheads and extra nostrils, with a society that seems to be built entirely around a unified concept of an afterlife which nobody questions. And that's all there is to that society - a belief in a sparkly afterlife and nothing more. There are no Vhnori seen who doubt this afterlife, at least not until Harry Kim shows up, and no Vhnori who seem concerned about anything other than the afterlife. You start to wonder why they don't just all jump in one of their coffin devices and beam themselves to "the next Emanation." They don't appear to have any actual lives of their own, so why not?
There are a few things to like in the episode. I enjoyed Kes' conversation with Ptera. Jennifer Lien continues to get the most out of just a few minutes of screentime, and Kes' compassion makes her a very appealing character. She also has the knack of making dialogue that isn't really any less trite than the rest of the episode's sound just a bit more thoughtful. And though the tag scene with Janeway and Harry is a little too "New Age" for my tastes, I did like Kate Mulgrew's performance in this scene. In the midst of pap, her musing about the value of reflection actually does hit home.
Unfortunately, this is a very weak episode. The pace is slow. The "Voyager in danger" subplot seems tacked-on, with no real sense of threat emerging. There's a lot of technobabble, most of it unexplained. Why did Harry and Ptera switch places? If the script indicates why, I missed it. Why is the Vhnori beam endangering Voyager? Because there needs to be some artificial tension generated, so the beams are "drawn to the warp core," for reasons never elaborated on.
The alien culture is unconvincing, the guest characters are tedious. And, of course, it's a Harry Kim-centric episode, which guarantees a certain degree of boredom. I have genuinely liked several of Brannon Braga's episodes across the various series... but I'm afraid I'd have to rank this one as a "miss." Not quite a Night in Sickbay level miss, but quite weak just the same.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
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