 |
| Malon Controller Fesek (Ron Canada) and his crewman, Pelk (Lee Arenberg), leave a mess for Voyager to clean up... |
Original Air Date: Apr. 26, 1999. Written by: Bryan Fuller, Nick Sagan, Kenneth Biller. Directed by: Allan Kroeker.
THE PLOT
An automated distress call leads Voyager to a ruined Malon freighter. They rescue Controller Fesek (Ron Canada), the Malon captain, and bride officer Pelk (Lee Arenberg) from nearby escape pods, only to learn that the freighter is mere hours from exploding and destroying everything within three light years. Though Fesek urges Janeway to flee to safety, she insists on sending a team onto the Malon ship to stop the explosion.
The two Malon survivors beam over with Chakotay, Torres, and Neelix. They must vent the deadly radiation on each deck in order to reach the control room to stop the explosion. But they may not be alone, as one of the Malon fears that a mythical and malevolent beast known as a Vihaar may lurk within the radiation, waiting to strike at the intruders...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Her patience for the Malon seems to be pretty much exhausted by this point. When Fesek insists that he will not risk his life returning to the irradiated, self-destructing ship, Janeway flatly tells him that he can either assist or be returned to his escape pod. Her disdain for the Malon, well-earned in previous encounters, makes her absolute scorn of Fesek palpable, and he wisely does not try to call her bluff. Though she hopes for the Away Team's success, she is realistic enough about their dangerous and difficult mission to prepare a "Plan B."
Chakotay: He does a good job as commander of the Away Team, keeping the party moving but refusing to compromise safety. When one of the Malon claims to have seen a creature in the waste, Chakotay decrees that no member of the team will work alone from that point. When Torres becomes infected with radiation, Chakotay does not allow her to refuse immediate treatment.
Torres: This is a B'Elanna-centric episode - one which insists that her anger issues have her perpetually on the edge of violent outbursts. The script is credited to no less than three writers, none of whom apparently recall that she has been able to control her emotions and deal with crises even when kidnapped by robots or stalked by a psychotic hologram. In short, Juggernaut delivers my least favorite form of "character development": reducing B'Elanna to her single, worst trait so that we can pretend that it's "progress" when she returns to her normal self.
Neelix: Since I'm spending most of this review talking about things that don't work, I'll acknowledge one thing that works very well: The use of Neelix. It's entirely consistent with what we know of his background that he's worked with similar waste disposal systems. This allows him to be a genuine asset rather than the usual buffoonish comic relief. Even his one pure comedy scene, in which he cooks up a foul-tasting brew to protect himself from radiation poisoning, is used to reinforce both his experience in this type of situation and the seriousness of it, as he recalls how this wretched recipe kept himself and his shipmates alive.
MY ORIGINAL POINT OF ABANDONMENT:
This was the last episode of Voyager that I watched in full before stopping the series back in 2017. I emphasize that it did not, on its own, make me stop viewing/reviewing Voyager. Longtime visitors to this site likely noticed that I posted zero reviews for a 2 - 3 year period, mostly due to a combination of schedule and general burnout. If it hadn't been this episode that stalled my Voyager run, it would have been another one not far down the road.
That said, I have one and only one memory of my first viewing: Sitting down to write this review after the episode. I brought up my template and... proceeded to stare at the screen for several minutes. I genuinely could not think of even one interesting thing to say. Juggernaut is not hilariously dreadful in the manner of Favorite Son, The Fight, or The Disease. It just sort of... occupies space for 45 minutes and then ends.
THOUGHTS
Revisiting this episode now, without the burnout that plagued me at the time, I can see that Juggernaut is at least trying to take the previously one-note Malon and turn them into a society of actual individuals. In earlier episodes, they have simply been polluters and nothing more. This episode attempts to add some depth. It does not make them interesting on its own - but the cues of this script could potentially be used to create something worthwhile later.
Given that all three of the credited writers have penned good scripts, it is disappointing how much this episode relies on Idiot Plotting. The greatest immediate source of jeopardy for the Away Team is that they are working in a heavily irradiated environment. On the mission, however, they wear absolutely no protective gear, relying solely on an inoculation. We have seen crew members use gear in other Trek shows, so it's not like such things don't exist in this universe. Similarly, the transporter obviously functions, or else the crew wouldn't be able to retrieve Chakotay or contemplate sending Tuvok to replace him. So why aren't they beaming rotating overlapping shifts throughout this mission, thus limiting any one crew member's exposure?
These issues could have at least been papered over with a few lines of dialogue. The crew could have planned on using radiation suits, only for Fesek to tell them that the work was too delicate for bulky protective gear. Janeway could have intended to rotate crew, only for the transporter to be unable to penetrate the radiation (with Chakotay's emergency beam-out working, with difficulty, because of Technobabble). This script doesn't even expend that minimal amount of effort, however. There's one Away Team because there is; there's no protective gear because there isn't; and the transporters either work or don't depending on what is convenient for a given scene.
Complications are introduced in the middle, but most of them never build to anything. Each incident is just that - a bit of activity to fill airtime during the middle of the episode. There's a villain reveal at the end; save for some added gruesomeness, this scene would be perfectly at home in a Scooby-Doo episode. The entire finale is ridiculously poor. It's meant to show "character growth" that B'Elanna attempts to speechify... never mind that the urgency of the situation would actually make her (allegedly) normal aggression a more appropriate response.
OVERALL:
After a reasonably promising start, Juggernaut quickly devolves into being simultaneously tedious and stupid. It's not the worst of Voyager; it's not even the worst of the past five episodes (a group that included both The Disease and The Fight). But just because it's not rock bottom doesn't mean it isn't bad.
Overall Rating: 2/10.
Previous Episode: Think Tank
Next Episode: Someone to Watch Over Me
Review Index
To receive new review updates, follow me:
On Twitter:
On Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment