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| Seven beams over to the wreckage of a centuries-lost 21st century space module. |
Original Air Date: Nov. 17, 1999. Teleplay by: Mike Wollaeger, Jessica Scott, Bryan Fuller, Michael Taylor. Story by: Mike Wollaeger, Jessica Scott. Directed by: Robert Picardo.
THE PLOT:
When Voyager encounters a graviton ellipse, a rare spatial anomaly that only occasionally enters normal space, Janeway can't resist investigating. Scans reveal wreckage of Ares IV, a command module from a 21st century mission to Mars that disappeared along with its pilot, Lt. John Kelly (Phil Morris).
Janeway authorizes modifying the Delta Flyer to search for the remains of the module inside the ellipse. Chakotay, for whom Kelly was a personal hero, volunteers to lead the mission, with Tom Paris piloting. Janeway also strongly recommends that Seven join them.
They find Ares IV almost entirely intact - but the ellipse begins experiencing dangerous surges and Janeway orders them to abort. Chakotay pauses, activating a tractor beam in an effort to tow the module out. Those precious seconds are enough to trap the Flyer inside the ellipse, with the damage sustained leaving them practically dead in space!
CHARACTERS:
Capt. Janeway: She talks to Seven about the thrill of exploration, which becomes the central theme of this episode. "If scientific knowledge was all we were after, then the Federation would have built a fleet of probes, not starships. Exploration is about seeing things with your own eyes." She urges Seven to volunteer for the mission specifically so that she can experience that for herself.
Chakotay: His hero worship of Kelly feels a bit externally imposed, something to justify his decision to ignore Janeway's orders when he would normally know better. It doesn't help that Robert Beltran is at his most wooden when he's talking about John Kelly. Far more convincing is his talk with Seven about the samples they find inside the ellipse. By contrast with his earlier stiffness, Beltran is rather good when ruminating about a rock that dates back to billions of years before Earth's existence, and I think this single, quiet little scene is my favorite of the episode.
Seven of Nine: She gets legitimately (and understandably) angry at Chakotay for his decision to try to tow the command module out of the anomaly. When she discovers Lt. Kelly's logs, however, she is moved by his demeanor. I'm afraid that I was decidedly unmoved, as Seven has run through the "discovering her own humanity" arc too often at this point, but Jeri Ryan does well with what she's given.
Tom Paris: He also states that Lt. Kelly is a hero of his. Even so, he warns Chakotay that the attempt to tow the command module during the escape is slowing them down, his tone making it clear that he thinks this is a bad idea. Unlike Seven, he does not reproach Chakotay for his actions, instead focusing on the work of making the shuttle functional again.
THOUGHTS:
One Small Step is... fine. The story is better put together than most episodes with four credited writers tend to be. There are decent character moments for Chakotay and Seven, and the scenes in which Lt. Kelly's logs play are reasonably effective. I also liked the visual effects for the ellipse, particularly when the Delta Flyer is trapped inside it.
The episode strongly oversells its message about exploration, though. The Chakotay/Seven scene with the samples works. Most of the other scenes in which Janeway, or Chakoty, or Seven, or Lt. Kelly expound upon the virtues of exploring, though, just don't land for me. The script keeps telling me that what's being discovered is exciting, but it never does anything to make me feel that excitement. If I could have shared in that, I might have found Seven's closing speech to be emotional. Instead, since I felt nothing, the speech just came across as overkill.
That ends up being the big problem with One Small Step. Everything is competent here, but it utterly fails to involve me. I think the scenes with Lt. Kelly work as far as they go, and Phil Morris is quite good in his brief screen time... but even there, he's too much the perfect astronaut. There's little sense of him ever feeling the hopelessness of his situation. As a result, even this part of the episode leaves me at a distance from the action and the characters.
OVERALL:
I don't really have anything else to say about this episode. It's a perfectly unobjectionable 45 minutes of Star Trek. It's well-made and generally well-acted, and there are a couple rather good scenes.
But it just lacks the extra spark that it needs. I never share any of the excitement of exploration that the characters keep going on about, and I never feel properly connected to Lt. Kelly's lonely fate. As a result, One Small Step never quite escapes from being "just fine."
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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Next Episode: The Voyager Conspiracy (not yet reviewed)
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