2-09. Tattoo.

Chakotay experiences a case of deja vu.

THE PLOT

Chakotay leads an Away Team searching an uninhabited moon for a MacGuffin that's needed to keep the warp engines working (don't worry, it's not important - though at least the episode ends with them getting this needed thing, rather than having them fail but hoping we forget about their need by the next episode). They don't find any usable MacGuffinite, but Chakotay does discover a symbol - one that looks almost exactly like one he saw as a young man, exploring a Central American jungle with his father, Kolopak (Henry Darrow). The symbol belonged to a tribe from whom Chakotay and his father were descended, and they eventually made contact with the members of the tribe.  This was to the delight of Kolopak - but Chakotay chose to turn his back on his tribe, embracing a future in Starfleet and creating a permanent rift with his father.

In the present, Voyager detects a warp signature that leads from the moon to an "M" class planet. Chakotay leads another Away Team to the surface to investigate, hoping to make contact and gain some of the precious MacGuffin. On the surface, he finds one thing after another that reminds him of his trip with his father. But it soon becomes clear that the intelligence on the planet controls the weather. One after another, the Away Team are forced to beam out. Soon, Chakotay is left alone, to make contact with the alien - and confront his own past in the process.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Encourages Chakotay's curiosity about the warp signature and the tribal symbol that he discovered. She is quick to point out that they do need the MacGuffinite for their warp engines and that they are explorers, so that he can justify to himself the pursuit of his personal curiosity.

Chakotay: Without a doubt the character's best episode to date. Flashbacks show the young Chakotay (Douglas Spain) as a skeptic, someone who has turned his back on the values of his tribe. His enlistment in Starfleet is a disappointment to his father (Henry Darrow), whose spiritual nature informs the adult Chakotay. We learn the origin of his facial tattoo: done to honor his father, probably at the same point at which he joined the Maquis to fight the Cardassians. For all of his efforts to adpot his father's spiritual sense, the adult Chakotay retains a dose of his youthful skepticism. Michael Piller's script actually treats Chakotay as a proper character, rather than the generic cypher of other episodes, and Robert Beltran rises to the occasion with his best performance in the series thus far.

The Doctor: Challenged by Kes, he programs himself to emulate an illness so that he can experience what it is like to be sick. His goal is not to gain compassion, but rather to show the crew that one doesn't have to become whiny and needy when ill. With that setup, it's very obvious very quickly where this "B" plot is going. It's still amusing, thanks in large part to Robert Picardo's glee in emphasizing the more insufferable aspects of the holographic doctor's nature. This subplot would have fit better earlier, though, simply because the doctor has already been more humanized than this in previous installments.

Kes: When she challenges the doctor by telling him that he has never known what it is to be sick, it is doubtful that she expects him to turn this into an opportunity to become even more insufferable. After he programs his 29-hour illness and then uses it to berate the crew for "whining," Kes becomes quietly disgusted by his behavior - and shows an unexpectedly devious streak in pulling the rug out from under him. The subplot's a throwaway, but I hope Kes is given more opportunities to show a more ruthless side.


THOUGHTS

In case you didn't guess by the title, this is a Chakotay episode. Which, on the "oh joy" meter, is just a hair above a Harry Kim episode. Mix in that it's yet another Chakotay episode that's all about his mystical, magical Native American background - with flashbacks! - and there's every reason to expect this to be dire.

Thankfully, Michael Piller's script takes these elements and manages to fashion them into something genuinely engaging. It's not a great episode, so it may be a measure of how unimpressive Voyager's second season has been thus far that I say this: Tattoo becomes not only a pleasant surprise, but the best episode of Season Two up to this point... though I certainly hope it isn't long before something betters it!

The script does a good job of moving between the flashbacks and the main story, in such a way that the flashbacks actually help to advance the story's pace. Director Alexander Singer further helps this by some artful transitions. Present day scenes and flashback scenes cut in and out of each other in a way that creates a moment's disorientation. One scene doesn't end and the next begin; they flow right in and out of each other. The second of confusion doesn't throw the viewer out of the episode. It's done artfully, in a way that sucks you further in, with the steady flow in and out of past and present contributing to the organic feel.

Previous episodes have become nauseatingly tedious as Chakotay has gone on vision quests with animal guides and the like. Here, we get something more evocative of the feel of a vision, from the alternating flashbacks to the unexpected structure in the jungle to the face in the sky. And it's done visually, through story and editing, rather than through a character droning on tediously about it, which makes it work.

Nothing special, but it's enjoyable and well-realized. In a season of episodes like Twisted, Non Sequitur, and Initiations, the overall competence on display here comes as a great relief.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

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