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| Janeway wrestles with her past choices in Night. |
THOUGHTS ON SEASON FIVE:
This is a tricky overview for me to write, given that I burned out on writing reviews and took an extended break about three quarters of the way through Season Five. I rewatched a handful of episodes before moving forward (not all, because life is far, far too short for me to ever rewatch The Disease or The Fight). Even so, some of this is going to be based on memory and on re-reading my years-old reviews from the first part of the season.
That disclaimer out of the way, what follows are my general impressions of Season Five of Star Trek: Voyager.
SEASON FOUR, CONTINUED:
As the season opens, Voyager feels the most confident it has ever been. And why not? Season Four was generally well-received. The addition of Seven of Nine to the cast worked well; and though the odd clunker is baked in with a 26-episode season, overall episode quality was higher than had previously been the case.
For its first two thirds, I'd say that the best description of Season Five is "Season Four, Continued." Seven of Nine remains prominent, with major episodes centered around her backstory. Other episodes follow up on the Borg and Species 8472. Most importantly, up through Dark Frontier, the overall quality remains high. Extreme Risk is pretty bad, and Gravity is rather middling, but most installments are well-made and entertaining. There are even a few standouts, notably Timeless and Latent Image.
Unfortunately, the season doesn't manage to sustain that level to the end...
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| The Borg Queen tempts Seven in Dark Frontier. It feels like a season finale - and it probably should have been... |
AN UNEVEN FINAL THIRD:
Dark Frontier is to Season Five of Voyager what Q Who? was to Season Two of TNG. It's a strong episode (involving the Borg, no less), and everything about the production indicates that it was the season's big spectacle. But once it's done, there are still several episodes to go - and, as was true of Season Two of TNG, the writers don't seem to know what to do with those episodes.
There are bright spots throughout this final stretch. I enjoyed Course: Oblivion and Think Tank, even if the latter suffers from a weak ending. 11:59 shows off Kate Mulgrew's acting range, and Relativity is a lot of fun.
But this marks the point at which there's a bad (or at least mediocre) episode for every good one. In rapid succession, we get a few dire offerings: In The Disease, Harry Kim has sex... without permission! (From Janeway, I mean. He had permission from his partner). The Fight combines boxing with one of Chakotay's Vision Quests. Juggernaut focuses on a very grumpy B'Elanna Torres...grumpy, I'm assuming, because she read the script first. All we need is a planet of Irish stereotypes and a clip show, and it would basically be late Season Two of TNG!
It's a pity. As of Dark Frontier, I was ready to label this as Voyager's best season thus far. But that last batch of episodes moves it well below Season Four in my rankings (though still above Season Two and Three).
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| Torres grapples with trauma in Extreme Risk. Believe it or not, this is the better of her two Season Five episodes. |
TWO TIERS OF CHARACTERS:
It's been evident for a while that Voyager has separated its regular cast into two tiers. Janeway, the Doctor, Seven, and Tuvok regularly get the best material. This makes sense, given that Kate Mulgrew, Robert Picardo, Jeri Ryan, and Tim Russ are the show's most consistently strong actors. But the remaining characters... mostly get to fight over scraps.
Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres are the oddest characters to have been shunted to the lower tier, given that they actually got a lot of focus early in the series. Despite the characters being interesting on the page, and despite solid performances from Robert Duncan McNeill and Roxann Dawson, Seasons Four and Five have seen both increasingly relegated to "scraps."
At least Tom gets one good spotlight episode, along with some decent material in other episodes. Bride of Chaotica is a particularly entertaining show, one that I included in my partial season rewatch for no reason other than wanting to see it again. But the writers don't seem to have any clue what to do with B'Elanna - which is strange, since she was one of the better characters in the early seasons.
There were two Torres-centric Season Five episodes, and both were... well, bad. Extreme Risk had an interesting idea, as B'Elanna suffered survivor's guilt after learning about the deaths of her friends in the Maquis. Unfortunately, it dealt with the subject in a painfully superficial manner, with her cured of all problems by having a chat with Chakotay. I'd make a crack about '80s After School Specials, but most of those were frankly better written.
Juggernaut saves time by not even bothering with an interesting idea. Instead, the bad TV writer's trick is employed of regressing B'Elanna into the walking personification of anger. Why is she angry? Don't ask questions that might lead to anything interesting. She's just angry and foul tempered because that way, it feels like progress when she starts behaving like herself again at the end. The episode itself is bad; its treatment of B'Elanna as a character is awful.
Though at least, unlike Harry, she doesn't have an episode that sees her getting into trouble for having sex with another consenting adult...
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| Neelix argues with Janeway in Once Upon a Time. |
THE MOST IMPROVED CHARACTER - NEELIX:
The last few seasons, the writers seem to have made a habit of taking one failed character and putting some real focus on them to prove that the character can work. Chakotay got good material in late Season Three and early Season Four. Harry Kim was made actively compelling in Timeless, my pick as Season Five's best episode (and yes, my favorite episode this season was a Harry Kim episode. Hell has frozen over).
For the bulk of this season, though, the designated "improved" character has been Neelix. Yes, the usually insufferable Talaxian is transformed into someone sympathetic and even likable. I began to consciously notice this while watching the late Season Five episodes. When putting this overview together, I reviewed my Season Five posts in which I used the tag, "Neelix," just to make sure. And yes, in every case, I have remarked that Season Five Neelix has been well-portrayed as a character.
This includes episodes that show his faults. Once Upon a Time carries forward Neelix's friendship with young Naomi Wildman (Scarlett Pomers), first seen in Season Four's Mortal Coil. The plot revolves around Neelix trying to distract Naomi while her mother is in mortal danger. It reaches a point where it's obvious to all that the girl needs to be told that her mother might not come home; but Neelix digs in, desperate to shield Naomi for as long as possible, even shouting at Janeway at one point. He's in the wrong, completely in the wrong... but given the situation and given his backstory, we can fully empathize with him even as we see that he's wrong. And, good writing for Neelix aside, that one's not even that great an episode!
Other episodes use him sparingly, but to good effect. In Drone, he's the one crew member who is open in his interactions with the Borg drone. In Counterpoint, his good cheer helps to keep the telepathic children calm and quiet during the Devore inspections. In 11:59, he provides a sympathetic ear to Janeway's story about her ancestor and spends his free time digging up additional information. These are all good uses of the character, as opposed to the annoying comic relief that's so often been his default mode in the past.
But, if past "improved characters" are any indication, Season Six will likely return Neelix to his previous state of bad comedy relief, just like Chakotay returned to being cardboard and Harry returned to being... well, Harry. It's as if the writers have some sort of cap on how many well-written characters can exist at any one time.
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| The Doctor uncovers a past decision that he can't live with in Latent Image, one of the season's best episodes. |
SEASON SIX WISHLIST:
A couple of the items from my earlier "Season Five Wishlist" actually came to pass. Seven of Nine has remained one of the show's most prominent characters, but she has been pared back. As good as she was in Season Four, it felt as if other characters suffered for her success. In Season Five, she fits within the ensemble.
That leads me to my primary wish list item for Season Six... and really, for the remainder of the series. I would really like to see the show balance its cast better. I already mentioned that Voyager's regulars are divided into two tiers. And yes, Janeway and Seven and Tuvok and the Doctor are fine characters well-portrayed by fine actors. But the "B" tier characters can also work, as has been proved in past episodes. B'Elanna used to be one of the most interesting members of the cast, and I'm confident that she could be again if anyone bothered to actually write for her.
Past that... Well, I've long since given up on Voyager ever being a show that's consistently interesting to me. That said, Season Four, and at least the first two thirds of Season Five, show that it's capable of being a pretty good version of itself. I'd like to see more of that: more compelling episodes like Latent Image and Timeless, more bonkers fun like Bride of Chaotica! and Relativity, more decent character pieces like Counterpoint... and far, far fewer piles of sludge like Juggernaut that seem to exist solely to burn off an episode slot.
Right now, Voyager is my least favorite Star Trek series. But it has a pretty good cast; and for all the wasted potential, it has a capable team of writers. There's still 51 episodes left, which is longer than full runs of several series. That's more than enough time for Voyager to make me change my opinion of it. I'd love to see that happen... though at the same time, I'm not holding my breath.
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| Janeway plays an Evil Overlord. It seems to come naturally to her. |
IN CONCLUSION:
Voyager is not, and has never been, a bad show on an episode-by-episode basis. The best episodes of Voyager are as good as those of any Trek series, and the worst episodes are no worse than the dregs of TNG and Deep Space 9, both of which I like much better as series.
Its big problem is that, unlike those shows, there doesn't seem to be any real focus. It's set in a new section of space, but it doesn't expand the Trek universe the way TNG did. The crew is confined to one ship and has no support, but there's precious little in the way of developing plot and character arcs like DS9 had.
In the end, it's mostly a collection of episodes: some good, some bad, and a lot that fall in between. More than anything else, I think that's what keeps me at arm's length. There are individual episodes that I love... but even when I watch a great one, I can't summon up any excitement for the next one.
Previous: Season Four
Next: Season Six (not yet reviewed)
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