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| Janeway deals with a Kazon attack. |
THE PLOT
Kazon attacks on Voyager have increased, to the point that the ship has been attacked four times within the past two weeks! The ship has only barely fought off the most recent raid, and sustained heavy damage in the process. After this latest attack, Chakotay proposes that Janeway consider bending the rules of Starfleet for the sake of survival. After much consideration, Janeway agrees to explore the idea of making an alliance with one or two Kazon sects.
The effort seems doomed from the start. An attempt to deal with Seska (Martha Hackett) and Culluh (Anthony De Longis) falls apart before the negotiations have hardly begun, with Culluh's refusal to deal on an equal basis with a woman making discussion impossible. Neelix's attempt to contact a Kazon acquaintance gets him imprisoned with the Trabe, sworn enemies of the Kazon. Neelix manages to escape with the Trabe, whose friendly and reasonable manner seem to offer another hope for an alliance. But will an alliance with the enemy of all Kazon make Voyager even more a target than it is already?
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: As with Prototype, this episode is designed to make Janeway's initial stance the correct one. But even the details of the episode don't fully support that. After taking a hard-line position that she would rather destroy Voyager than share anything with the Kazon, she modifies her stance and agrees to explore an alliance. But it takes less than two minutes for her to go from that to deciding to contact Seska - overruling Chakotay's worries that this is a bad idea by saying, "If you want to get in the mud with the Kazon, you can't start complaining that you might get dirty." As if making an alliance with one or two Kazon sects is automatically equivalent to trying to deal with someone they all know to be untrustworthy.
Any attempt to form alliances within an unstable region will, by necessity, be a process marked by at least as many failures as successes. Yet Janeway makes two (simultaneous) efforts to form alliances for Voyager's benefit. These fail, so she naturally decides that a good next step would be to call a council to create peace through the quadrant. Because that's likely to work, when she can't even make a successful alliance with one sect. After that falls apart, she (and the episode) present the failure as proof that such efforts were misguided to start with. Frankly, Culluh is right when he calls her a hypocrite, and Mabus (Charles O. Lucia) is right when he calls her naive. And if the show would recognize this, then it would instantly become a much more interesting series.
Chakotay: Does what a First Officer should do. He sees that the ship is in an untenable situation, and goes to the captain to make a proposal to fix this. He doesn't argue with her in front of the crew, saving his arguments for when they are in private. He also presents his case calmly and rationally.
Neelix: Attempts to create an alliance with a Kazon sect familiar to him. But (surprise!) Neelix managed to burn his bridges with his Kazon contact, and he is soon taken prisoner and marked for death. Neelix does manage to escape by allying himself with the Trabe, and he is genuinely useful in providing both Janeway and the viewers with some backstory that makes the Trabe/Kazon relationship halfway plausible. It's a pretty strong Neelix episode all-around, actually, and an example of how well this character can work when he's not being written as ham-handed comic relief.
Seska: Continues to guide and manipulate Culluh, but she's clearly becoming weary of his obstinance. She knows that there is real potential in forming an alliance with Voyager, and is frustrated when she can only watch as Culluh destroys this potential advantage. I suspect it won't be long before Culluh becomes too much of a liability to remain breathing.
THOUGHTS
Alliances presents a situation that should have been explored quite some time ago. Voyager is on its own, in unfamiliar territory, in a desperate situation. It shouldn't have taken this long for it to occur to somebody that it might be a good idea to seek allies. I do have issues with several aspects of the episode, but I applaud the series both for finally tackling such an obvious course of action and for making the results of the crew's efforts so messy.
Jeri Taylor wouldn't be my go-to writer for fast-paced or densely packed scripts. Both of these descriptors apply, however. The episode is packed with incident. The first Act is dominated by the argument between making an alliance or sticking rigidly to Starfleet regulations. Then we see two failed attempts at forming an alliance, one of which leads to the crew meeting a new race with its own backstory and its own relationship with the Kazon.
The Trabe have potential in themselves, and I hope we see them again. Their backstory also lends an extra dimension to the Kazon, who have been badly in need of some trait other than just "poor man's Klingons." Now we know that the Kazon are victims in their own way, with their tribal nature and their aggression both the result of their past circumstances. It doesn't quite make them interesting - but it makes them a lot less one-note than they were before.
Alliances is very good, but not quite great. The script is a bit too eager to make Janeway entirely right. What we actually see is Janeway making a token effort, then declaring its failure as proof that she's right to stick to rigid principles... and the script insists on agreeing with her.
Mind you, part of the reason for it coming across that way is that Alliances should not be just one episode. This material should be a 2-parter at a minimum, and ideally should be a 3 - 4 episode arc. That would allow some proper build, with a couple of failures (and Neelix's encounter and escape with the Trabe an episode in itself). Then maybe a success with one sect, leading to the attempted council as an episode entirely in itself. That would make the efforts feel a lot more committed, and would make the final failure that much more of a blow for both Janeway and the viewers. But Voyager's aversion to arc storytelling restricts this entire narrative to a single show. I'm frankly surprised that it works as well as it does, given that limitation.
It does work as a good piece of Star Trek, and in fact is probably the best of the season to date. Even better, the episode plants some seeds for the future. Voyager is not simply left back where it started; the ship is left in a worse position, having made more enemies. At least one member of the crew is acting against orders, leaving the ship more vulnerable to Seska and Culluh than it was before. Voyager is now on the run, something Janeway is obviously aware of as the episode ends. I'm hopeful this will lead to something interesting in the near future.
But first: Threshold. The infamous "Worst Star Trek Episode Ever!" I have to admit, I'm quite looking forward to it
Overall Rating: 8/10.
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I thought Janeway's last lines were truly classic Trek; I could imagine Kirk speaking those lines and meaning them just as sincerely.
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