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| Chakotay and Kar (Aron Eisenberg) escape from the Kazon. |
THE PLOT
Chakotay secures the use of a shuttlecraft to perform a Native American Ritual (TM) which, for whatever reason, cannot be performed on the ship by simply shutting himself away in his quarters or engaging the use of the holodeck. Nevermind. Chakotay's shuttle draws the attention of the Kazon, who send an eager boy named Kar (Aron Eisenberg) to earn his name by destroying the shuttle.
Chakotay easily outmaneuvers the Kazon and disables his ship. But discovering that his opponent is little more than a child, he beams the boy to safety. When the Kazon catch up with him, Chakotay and Kar are both made prisoners: Chakotay for violating Kazon space, the boy for failing to either kill or die in battle. When Chakotay is told he must kill the boy to win his release, he instead turns the tables on the Kazon, escaping with Kar in his shuttlecraft, with the Kazon in pursuit!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: After repeatedly failing to leave Harry Kim to his death, Janeway now gets a chance to leave Chakotay behind. Sadly, she doesn't take it. She also is stupidly hasty about going down to the surface of the moon to search for Chakotay. When B'Elanna tells her that communications are unavailable due to interference, but she should be able to break through that interference within a few hours, Janeway replies, "I don't want to wait that long." Why? The Kazon ship hasn't arrived yet, so there hardly seems to be a great rush. Going down with no communications seems a stupid choice, given the situation at that moment. All it does is create a tiny bit of third act tension when the Kazon arrive with no prior warning for the Away Team (something that could have been prevented, had Janeway simply waited).
Chakotay: Is it me, or has Robert Beltran's performance actually gotten worse? In the first season, it seemed like the problem with Chakotay was bland character writing. In this episode, the character writing is still bland. It's a Chakotay-centric episode that basically tells us that Chakotay is fundamentally nonviolent and, oh yes, Native American. But Beltran makes weak characterization worse by being wooden on top of it all. Since the episode cuts between Chakotay and Voyager, it's very easy to contrast Beltran's stiff acting with Kate Mulgrew's more dynamic performance, and the difference between the two is palpable.
Neelix: I think the moment in which Neelix faces down the Kazon commander is meant to be a moment of competence for Neelix. Unfortunately, as scripted, Neelix gives away vital information that it's at least possible the Kazon didn't already have, and gains no new information in the process. When he smugs that, "At least we bought (Janeway) some time," I wanted to smack him through the screen. If that's all you got out of that, while giving away so very much, then Tom Paris was probably doing a better job of delaying the Kazon by simply playing dumb. To the credit of actor Robert Duncan McNeill, Tom looks just as unimpressed by Neelix as I was.
THOUGHTS
A dull filler episode that makes the Kazon seem even more ridiculous than they did before. The Kazon culture is basically "like Klingons, only weaker, shallower, and stupider." Given that one of this episode's goals was clearly to give them more depth, it backfires spectacularly. We have more information about them than we did before... and all that does is make them even less interesting. And this was after Michael Piller pushed Ken Biller to completely rewrite his script because the Kazon were too much "like warmed-over Klingons." I can only imagine how tedious they were in the first draft!
Initiations begins with Chakotay performing his Generic Native American Ritual alone on a shuttlecraft. As I noted above - Why? The episode ends with him performing it in his quarters on Voyager. Which means there was no special reason for him to be doing it alone on a shuttlecraft in the first place, other than to serve the needs of the plot. In the process, Chakotay manages to get one of Voyager's shuttlecraft destroyed. Not that I expect the series will make any special note of the ship being down one shuttlecraft, not after completely ignoring it being low on energy. Oh, and it's a Chakotay-centric episode that also stresses how important his Starfleet uniform is to him. Um, do the writers even remember at this point that Chakotay is Maquis?
A bright spot is the casting of Aron Eisenberg - Nog on Deep Space 9 - who invests a lot more credibility in Kar than the character actually deserves. Kar is proud and stubborn. He's annoying as hell, but unlike Neelix, he's annoying for reasons that are culturally clear as the episode goes along. Eisenberg balances the character's nature against a growing bond with Chakotay that is thankfully not overplayed, and his work goes a long way toward keeping this watchable.
Watchable, but far from good. Predictable and dull, the best thing I can say about Initiations is that at least we've had our Chakotay-centric episode for the next third of a season or so. Can he go back to being part of the furniture now?
Overall Rating: 3/10.
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