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| Capt. Ransom (John Savage), another Starfleet captain trapped in the Delta Quadrant, hides a secret from the Voyager crew. |
526 - 601. Equinox
Original Air Date: May 26, 1999, Sept. 22, 1999. Teleplay by: Brannon Braga, Joe Menosky. Story by: Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Joe Menosky. Directed by: David Livingston.
THE PLOT:
Voyager intercepts a distress signal from an impossible source: another Federation starship, the USS Equinox, under the command of Capt. Ransom (John Savage)! There's no time to question the situation. The Equinox is under attack by mysterious lifeforms, and it's at risk of being destroyed.
Janeway is able to stop the attack by extending Voyager's shields around the other ship. But by the time she arrives, the Equinox is in bad shape. Janeway's crew manages to rescue the survivors, and the united crews begin work on repairing the vessel while celebrating finding another Starfleet crew in the Delta Quadrant.
The celebration is short lived. Ransom and his crew have a secret that they're hiding from Janeway. By the time she discovers the truth, the Equinox crew have prepared a double-cross - a way to get themselves home while leaving Voyager at the creatures' mercy!
CHARACTERS:
Capt. Janeway: She's always wanted to meet Ransom. As a scientist, she admires him for having made contact with a species that had been previously believed extinct. I guess she missed the old adage about never meeting your heroes. When she uncovers the secret Ransom's been keeping, she is appalled. But that's nothing to the cold fury she displays after his betrayal. It turns out that making Janeway truly, deeply angry is not a good idea.
Chakotay: His best material comes in the second half. Janeway becomes fixated on capturing the Equinox, but Chakotay believes they should prioritize communicating with the creatures to stop the attacks. At first, he confines his disagreements to private conversations. But when he believes Janeway is crossing a fundamental line, he acts to stop her. These scenes see Robert Beltran waking up from his nap and doing some actual acting for the first time in about half a season.
The Doctor: Robert Picardo gets another chance to play evil as the Equinox EMH, who was transformed into a sadist after his ethical subroutines were deleted. This much is fine, and it even allows Picardo to show his range as he differentiates between the two Doctors with slight changes in vocal pitch and body language. Then Part Two sees Ransom disabling our Doctor's ethical subroutines, leading to a subplot that... just doesn't add up. I fully expected the Doctor to be just playing along with Ransom, particularly since his "evil" actions never yield anything more than some bad singing. But - nope, everything really is exactly as it seems, though a quick tag assures us that there will be no pesky consequences.
Seven of Nine: Tries to awkwardly comfort survivor Noah Lessing (Rick Worthy) while Harry Kim cuts him free from the rubble. When Seven tells him not to be frightened, Noah tells her that it's already two days too late for that. She is looking forward to getting to know the Equinox crew so that she can expand her knowledge of humanity. Though one crew member later apologizes for being such a bad example, Seven frostily replies that she actually learned quite a lot from them.
Torres: Her former lover is Max (Titus Welliver), the Equinox's first officer. This should give her a strong role in the episode... but somehow, it doesn't. Torres ends up being unable to counter Max's expertise, even though we're specifically told that he was always a bit lazy and that most of what he knows, she taught him. Beyond that and a brief bit with Tom expressing jealousy, she doesn't do much outside of reciting Technobabble.
Max Burke: In the first episode, he seems slightly conflicted after reuniting with Torres. That doesn't last long, though. Once he learns that B'Elanna has moved on with her life, he is downright eager to betray her. Titus Welliver is reliable as ever, but by Part Two the character has been flattened out to just being evil. Mind you, if you're going to cast someone to be "the really evil guy" among the villains, then Welliver is a solid go-to for that role.
Marla Gilmore: Seems the most torn about double-crossing Voyager. She actually tries to talk to Chakotay about permanently transferring to Janeway's ship, an idea that he shoots down given that Ransom already is working with a skeleton crew. She goes along with Max and Ransom, but she clearly feels guilty. Olivia Birkelund does reasonably well with what she's given, though it keeps feeling as if the character needs something more to do, and that "something more" never quite materializes.
Capt. Ransom: I actually like how his backstory is revealed in Part One. His vessel is less advanced than Voyager, and therefore has been less able to defend itself against hostile species. Given a chance to save what was left of his crew, Ransom took it. This doesn't make him less of a villain, and Seven rightly mocks his insistence that he had "no choice" in his actions. But at least his actions are understandable. Unfortunately, actor John Savage is in full "twitchy" mode. He's so busy playing "furtive" and "evil" in Part One that it flattens out the character, which further undercuts his role in the second half.
THOUGHTS:
Equinox opens well. The teaser is short and attention-grabbing, as Ransom's ship comes under what is the latest of obviously many attacks by an unknown force. The first Act then follows Voyager finding the ship, which by then is little more than a derelict.
David Livingston, almost certainly Voyager's best director, makes effective use of the lighting. The Equinox is dark, with the main light sources being the rescue crew's lights and the sparks from damaged systems. There's a fair bit of suspense throughout this sequence, even though the closest it comes to actual action is a rattled crew member holding a weapon on his rescuers. Best still is that it's dark enough to create atmosphere, but never so dark that I had to strain to see. That's a balance I wish more recent shows and films were able to strike. Yes, you can create atmosphere without simulating a sensory deprivation chamber, thank you.
This sequence raises mysteries, particularly the question of what these creatures are and why they are attacking. To the episode's credit, the answers come during Part One, with more plot complications spinning off from that reveal.
The cliffhanger is effective, though the resolution to it is rather limp (Janeway presses a button. No, really). After that, however, the second episode remains mostly pretty good. There's some decent tension in Voyager's pursuit of the Equinox, and even more in the escalating conflict between Janeway and Chakotay.
I liked the way the epilogue addresses their personal disagreement. They are back on the same side, but they aren't entirely comfortable with each other even as the episode ends. I'm sure everything will be back to normal in the next episode, because Voyager doesn't believe in consequences, but I'm also glad that it isn't completely airbrushed away within the confines of the actual episode.
The ending is weaker than the rest of the two parter, with the resolution seeming rushed and downright easy for the Voyager crew. It doesn't go so far as falling apart - what happens makes sense in context - but it feels like it needs about five more minutes to breathe, and maybe one more complication for the characters to overcome.
A GOOD EPISODE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN MORE:
Though it's a good two-parter overall, the most frustrating thing about Equinox is the glimpse it offers of the Voyager that might have been. The Equinox's desperate journey, in an increasingly run-down vessel with more than half the crew dead? That sounds like a much more interesting show.
It's also a Voyager episode, so it goes without saying that potentially thorny ethical questions are mostly handwaved away. For instance: Yes, what Ransom did was unquestionably wrong. Very wrong. And if he hadn't done it, the rest of his crew would almost certainly have ended up dead. Can the end justify the means? Would Janeway be at least tempted to do the same in the same situation? These are questions that the script has no real interest in asking. Which is a shame, because exploring that might have made a good action episode into something legitimately memorable.
Still, Equinox isn't really trying to be much more than a good action/suspense story. Judged on that basis, it's a good episode. Save for a rushed final Act, it's well-paced; it's very well acted, particularly by Kate Mulgrew and - surprisingly - Robert Beltran; and it is extremely well-directed.
It certainly could have been more. But Equinox does its job, which is more than can be said of a lot of other episodes. Most of all, it closes out the fifth season and opens the sixth on solid footing. I don't know that I'll even particularly remember it a month from now - but I had a good time watching it, and in the end that's good enough.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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