3-15. Coda.

Janeway is visited by her dead father (Len Cariou)

THE PLOT

Janeway and Chakotay are on a shuttlecraft when apparent elecrical interference forces them onto a nearby planet. Janeway is injured, but Chakotay is able to revive her - just in time for them to find themselves evading a large group of Vidiians. Despite their best efforts, they are quickly overwhelmed by the Vidiians...

...Only to find themselves back in the shuttle, just before the accident. As Janeway scans for temporal anomalies to explain this, Chakotay takes the more practical approach of scanning for Vidiians. He picks up an approaching ship and attempts evasive maneuvers. But it takes no time at all for the Vidiians to catch up with them and obliterate the shuttle.

Leading to them once again in the shuttle, at the same point in space and time, with apparently mere minutes to find a way to avoid dying. Again!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Coda is a completely Janeway-centered episode. As with all Janeway-heavy episodes, it benefits from Mulgrew's fine performance. This is particularly true in one variant of the loop in which Janeway is infected with the Vidiian phage. Mulgrew makes Janeway's confusion and fear very believable, particularly as that loop reaches its endpoint.   The episode also yet again shows her protectiveness of her crew, searching for any way to help them even when she herself appears to be in a hopeless situation.

Chakotay: Has grown close enough to Janeway that, when she is injured, he gasps, "Kathryn!" instead of "Captain!" A nice bit of character continuity. Taken with their comfort together in Future's End, it indicates that the time he and Janeway shared in Resolutions hasn't actually been forgotten. He is also quick to take charge in a survival situation, after the shuttle crash, nor does Janeway argue at him doing so.

Vice Admiral Janeway: Veteran character actor Len Cariou appears as Janeway's father, who drowned long ago when she was very young. Cariou projects a kindly presence as he chats with Janeway about life and death and about the difficulty of moving on. He also does a good job with a very fast (too fast) transition to a very different portrayal at the end. One could only wish that Jeri Taylor's script was less shallow, so that he had something meatier to work with.

Vidiians: The first Season Three episode to use the Vidiians at all, though this isn't a Vidiian episode. They are simply a plot device, an external threat to push Janeway and Chakotay into the repeating time loop. The Vidiian phage is used to good effect, however, with Janeway becoming infected with the disease in one loop.


THOUGHTS

Coda starts out seeming much more intriguing than it ends up being. The multiple variants of the time loop are the focus of the episode's first half, and this portion of the show is enjoyably off-center. By the end of the episode, however, we find out that these loops are entirely irrelevant to the actual plot.  Aside from the teaser, the entire first half of the episode could be considered padding.  At least the set pieces within the loops are fun.  During this phase of the episode, I was all set for a good, nutty ride. 

Actually, I enjoyed the almost irrelevant first half far more than the second half, when writer Jeri Taylor finally gets to the heart of her story.  For about ten minutes or so, it's enjoyable enough: A Voyager ghost story is a novelty, and Len Cariou, who portrays Janeway's dead father, is a welcome presence in any show that features him. But once he appears and begins chatting with her, the end twist becomes incredibly easy to see coming.  Leaving about 15 minutes of us sitting around, waiting for the plot to catch up with what we know is going to happen.

A big problem with Coda is that these two halves simply don't belong together. The talk-heavy second half seems all the slower for coming after the bizarre, endlessly changing loops of the first half. Meanwhile, the ideas a more ambitious script might have explored during Janeway's conversations with her father are given short shrift, because there's only twenty minutes of show (minus the tag) by the time we get through the time loops. 

It's a shame to see this second half, in particular, fail so badly. The actors are good, and both are capable of doing very fine work with good writing. Unfortunately, there is nothing surprising nor insightful here. We don't get to look at Janeway's character in any different a light, and Mulgrew and Cariou are mostly left to exchange platitudes and cliches. They deliver them well, but that doesn't make the words they're speaking any more interesting.

A character episode that fails to advance the character it spotlights and runs out of gas around the midpoint, Coda ends up being all too representative of Voyager at its worst: Recycled ideas competently presented, but with no real spark behind them. It's acceptable enough time filler, but sadly nothing more.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Episode: Alter Ego
Next Episode: Blood Fever 


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