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| Tuvok finds his patience tested. |
THE PLOT
The shuttle carrying Tuvok and Ensign Bennet (Richard Garon) has crashed on an apparently uninhabited moon. The badly-injured Bennet dies almost immediately, but Tuvok is not alone. Three children emerge from the vegetation. They tell Tuvok that they were the only survivors of another crash, one which killed their parents.
As Tuvok begins work on repairing the shuttle, they tell him something even more disturbing: The Drayan, the race the children belong to, sent them to this moon to die. When Drayan scouting parties land and begin searching the area, the children beg Tuvok for protection. If the scouts find them, then they will all be killed!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Eager at the prospect of making a successful first contact. Though the episode doesn't allude to it, the knowledge of how Voyager has come to be seen in the Delta Quadrant must be in her mind as she deals with the Drayans. She tries to reach some kind of diplomatic accord with their leader, First Prelate Alcia (Marnie McPhail), to allow them to land on the moon to recover Tuvok. But Janeway does priortize the welfare of her crew. When Alcia flatly refuses to allow any of the humans to land, Janeway decides to do so anyway. Despite Chakotay's objections, she insists on going herself, in hopes that she may still be able to salvage a peaceful solution.
Tuvok: Perhaps without even intending to, he finds the right words to comfort the dying ensign. He also does well with the children, though it soon becomes clear that one emotional response Tuvok hasn't purged is frustration. The weariness in Tim Russ' voice as Tuvok deals with the children's endless questions is quite amusing. Also funny is the split second in which he all but loses it, wheeling on the most ill-behaved of the children with a finger raised in warning (as pictured above).
Doctor/Kes: The Doctor's existence as a tangible, apparently sentient hologram seems to intrigue Alcia . He does fairly well in greeting the First Prelate. Even when he stumbles into talking about accidents, he manages to recover quickly. When Janeway congratulates him, he reveals that Kes has been training him on diplomacy - once again showing her effectively acting as a connection between him and humanity.
THOUGHTS
...And another crashed shuttle as the episode opens. Exactly how many shuttlecraft can be either lost or severely damaged before it poses a problem for Voyager? Maybe that's why we only ever see four rooms, a holodeck, and a corridor - The entire rest of the ship is where they keep the fleet of shuttles the starship was apparently equipped with!
Once I realized Innocence was going to be a "child" episode, I braced myself. I needn't have done so, as this episode is surprisingly watchable. Huge credit goes to Tim Russ, who keeps Tuvok within his Vulcan reserve while adding a dose of humanity in his scenes with the children. You can see the father in him speaking as he declares that he will do whatever is necessary to protect his three young charges.
The scene in which Tuvok tells the children a Vulcan story by the campfire feels like something ripped off wholesale from the Picard "Gilgamesh" scene in Darmok. But it works well enough as a scene in itself, and Russ' performance has a lot to do with that.
The story itself is pretty tepid stuff. The artifical "conflict" with the Drayans, there to generate some tension near the end, never seems convincing. And when the ending comes around, it feels even less so. All the Drayans needed to do was to explain the situation to Janeway, and this whole thing would have been wrapped up in about twenty minutes. Which could have been effective in itself, if the script had made a point of it... but as it stands, the characters just behaved stupidly in order to allow the story to happen.
As for the ending? Well, it wants to be a clever twist ala M. Night Shyamalan, making us re-evaluate everything we've seen. Unfortunately, Lisa Klink's script doesn't do what is necessary to make the ending work. There's no real groundwork laid, no hints dropped along the way. The "solution" is just told to us. It effectively drops from the sky - and crashes into the ground, much like a Voyager shuttlecraft.
(Also, I hope the Drayan reproductive process is very different from humans, otherwise... "Ouch.")
In the end, this is a watchable enough filler episode, given an extra boost by a terrific performance by Tim Russ. Between this and Meld, I find myself hoping the show expands his role in the future, as he clearly is up to carrying more and better material.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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This is one of my favorites for all of the reasons you give. I am really enjoying your website and hope you finish reviewing all 7 episodes. I will happily read them all!
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