Hello again. So, now we come to the last trek series in the greatest moments of trek blog cycle, Star Trek Voyager. You know, I watched most of it when it aired and have all of it now, so naturally I've watched it since. But nothing will compare to how I actually saw the series' final episode. I was at the Tennessee School for the Blind, and I had my own set of rooms there. Long story, but suffice it to say, I and a few other people participated in a program there during which we lived in on-campus apartments, and I had one with no roommate. Rather nice. Anyway, I'd been following the series as it built up towards the last show, and on the night of the final episode, "Endgame," I barricaded myself in with a Papa John's double pepperoni pizza and a gallon of chocolate milk, unplugged the phone, locked the door, and sat back to watch. It was a great show. Though as far as finales go, I think "What You Leave Behind" takes the cake. And I don't just say that because I'm a DS9 fan; I felt that way even then. "Endgame" was certainly better than TNG's last show, but I digress. I'm not talking about the final episode of Voyager in this blog, so I won't spend any more time strolling down memory lane.
So, the first female captain. The first artificial life form serving as a doctor (and boy didn't we get a crap ton of good shows out of that), the first Klingon engineer, the first African-American to play a Vulcan character (great Job, Tim Russ), a Borg on the crew, lots and lots of firsts for Voyager. I wanted to tick those off before getting into the meat of things. You know, the interesting thing Voyager had going for it was the ship's isolation. In every other series, the characters had a Federation and a Starfleet to fall back on. Voyager was alone out there in the Delta Quadrant, and what strikes me as particularly admirable about it is how the show repeatedly sent the message that you should continue to obey your principles and stick to your rules of good conduct, even if nobody's looking. As Janeway told Ransom during Equinox, it's especially in those sorts of circumstances that your principles matter most, because without them, what are you? So I tell you, I had a really hard time picking out just two exemplary episodes from Voyager, but I have finally made my choices. They both come from the seventh season, but that in no way means that I think it was the best season or that the others are just chopped liver. Actually, if you asked me which season of Voyager was the best, I'd have a really hard time with that one. That being said, I doubt you'll be disappointed with my choices.
"Repentance"
Story by Mike Sussman
Wikipedia Summary:
Voyager responds to a distress call, beaming all the people off a Nygean ship that's about to explode. Most are sent to Voyager's cargo bay, but two of them are sent to sickbay, where one takes Seven of Nine hostage. It turns out that the ship Voyager rescued was carrying prisoners to a facility where they are scheduled to be executed. Since there is no capital punishment in the Federation, the crew are uncomfortable with the situation, but the Prime Directive forbids them from interfering. They provide makeshift cells for the prisoners, who are treated brutally by the Nygean guards. Neelix insists that the prisoners must be fed and The Doctor insists they must receive proper medical care. Seven considers this a waste of resources, since the prisoners are going to be killed anyway, but the guards agree to allow the prisoners to have meals.
After a particularly brutal beating by a guard, one of the prisoners, Iko, is seriously wounded. Captain Janeway subsequently orders that Voyager's security personnel take over guarding the prisoners. Iko undergoes a medical procedure in which Borg Nano probes are injected into his system; not only do the probes repair his injuries, they also seem to have restored the parts of his brain responsible for conscience and normal emotional response, and he begins to feel remorse for his crime. At first, Iko wants to be executed for all he has done, but he becomes close to Seven, who sees in him a reflection of her own struggles for atonement for all she did as a Borg. Since under Nygean law, the Victim's family decides the punishment for all crimes, Iko eventually appeals to his own victim's family for leniency. He tells them that he is cured, is sorry for what he has done, and that he is hoping to start a new life on Voyager. The family denies his request.
Meanwhile, Neelix becomes friendly with a Benkaran prisoner named Joleg, who explains that minority Benkarans are subjected to racial profiling by Nygeans. Joleg persuades Neelix to get a letter through to his brother, but this turns out to be a ruse - Joleg has hidden Voyager's coordinates inside the letter, and the ship is attacked by others of Joleg's race. Joleg has organized a prison break so that his co-conspirators can free him, but the plot is foiled by the Voyager crew. Neelix, who understands that he was being manipulated, turns his back on Joleg.
What a great commentary on the American system of capital punishment. What's interesting is how people see the show in whatever fashion they wish to. Some, for instance, see it as endorsing capital punishment, because Janeway delivers Iko over to be executed. Others see it as a vehement protest against the death penalty. What's most interesting to me is that it appears to be neither. It's a show that highlights the issue of capital punishment without telling us what to think about it. There are those in the show who have no particular objection to capital punishment in principle, while others object to it out of principles just as deeply held. I was born and raised in the American South, the part of the country most in favor of the death penalty and where it is most often used. Yet, I go to school in a state whose governor just signed a bill forever abolishing its death penalty. So, in art as in life, Americans are forever divided these days on the issue on moral, humanitarian, economic and judicial principles. And no, I'm not telling you what I think of capital punishment myself, nor will you be able to infer my opinions from reading this blog.
The other thing to note here is the element of racial profiling that comes up in this episode. Do Benkarans commit a disproportionately high number of violent crimes? Do Benkarans commit the same numbers of crimes as anyone else and get tougher sentences for them? We don't know. We're never told the whole story. What the show does suggest, however, is that we would do well to evaluate people as people, not as Benkarans or Nygeans or Blacks or Whites or whatever. Now it happens that this particular Benkaran was quite shameless in his manipulation of Neelix, and if Neelix is angry at the end of the show, it's not because the man's a Benkaran or even that he may be a murderer. Neelix just doesn't like being played for a sucker, which is what this particular Benkaran, regardless of any other Benkarans who may or may not be unjustly accused, did in this case.
Finally, recall what I said about Voyager's crew sticking to its principles. The Prime Directive is a good law. The principle of non-interference is, by and large, an honorable one and one that ought to be respected. We could do with a Prime Directive in this country. That's not to say that it is easy or that following it always coincides with your conscience. It's even been famously violated on several occasions. Yet, it is a Starfleet officer's highest duty when dealing with other races. And Janeway carries it out. I only mention it here, because Starfleet officers can sound rather moralistic and on their high horse when they throw that directive around, can't they. Yet in this case, Janeway likely wished it wasn't there and that it wasn't binding. Maybe another commander would've thrown it to the winds, but not Picard, not Sisko, probably not even Jim Kirk, and Not Kathrin Janeway.
"Critical Care"
Story by Robert Doherty
Summary: (again, I had to write my own.)
The Doctor's program is stolen from voyager and transferred to a medical facility orbiting an unknown world. When the Doctor is reactivated, he discovers that he's been sold to the medical facility for his services. As he reluctantly goes to work treating patients, the Doctor discovers that this society has imposed the ultimate in managed healthcare. Each patient has their own treatment coefficient, TC, a value assigned to them that measures the level of medical care they receive based on their current status in, and likely future abilities to contribute to, society. The Doctor is infuriated to discover that patients are dying in droves, while lifesaving medications are reallocated to patients with higher TC's and being used as preventative treatments rather than the desperate lifesavers they are. When a scheme of the Doctor's backfires and results in the death of a patient who had been given more drugs than his TC permitted, if not enough to actually save his life, the Doctor takes desperate action. He takes the hospital administrator hostage, poisons him, then alters the man's TC in the computers, so that the computer system will deny him the appropriate medical treatment. As the episode ends, the administrator gives in to the doctor's demands for drug allocation reform at the hospital, and the doctor is wondering whether he has behaved ethically at all.
On the bonus disk to the DVD collection of the seventh season, Robert Picardo, the Doctor, describes this episode as an indictment of HMO's. ... You know, how many of us have ever been afraid to go to the doctor, afraid that our insurance wouldn't pay? How many of us have hesitated at the thought of potentially life-prolonging surgeries because of the cost? I have. I can tell you that in this country, when a doctor tells me I need something, my first question is, "how much will I have to pay?" What does it say about the relationship between medicine and insurance if I have to ask that question, to actually ask it as the first thing out of my mouth?
Now, I'm not going to sit here and give my opinions on how to reform the American healthcare system. Like capital punishment, it's a topic that polarizes and gets people very hot under the collar very fast. However, that the system needs reform and needs it desperately, I don't think too many people would disagree. If you do disagree and think the American medical establishment's doing fine, you probably head an HMO. The fact of the matter is, you have to have money to get good medical care in this country. And if you have some form of cancer or cystic fibrosis, and if your insurance carrier decides to drop you, you're probably SOL. That is what happens when capitalism and medicine join hands, folks. I've seen it happen.
Now this episode shows us what the extreme would look like. Imagine your whole life being reduced to a number. Well actually it is, your insurance group number when you're admitted to the hospital. But imagine that this number was derived from a formula that took in your education, your occupation and what the lawyers like to call, your earnings potential. If you are, say, a high school dropout working two jobs to make ends meet, you'd better not get sick. If you're a teacher with a Bachelor's Degree, don't get too terribly sick. If you're an engineer working with NASA, get as sick as you like, because we've got you covered. That is what a TC would determine and that is what our society would look like. What does it say about us when our society already has those tendencies in it? Is it too hard to imagine that the events of "Critical Care," couldn't come to pass? I look at that episode and you know something? I can see it. I can't sit there and laugh it off or say, how preposterous. It's not funny, and they weren't being preposterous when they wrote that story.
Once again, star trek has done what Jean Roddenberry, four years in his grave when Voyager aired, meant for it to do. It strikes home, asking hard questions and making us look in a mirror and see ourselves. Sometimes what we see is very uplifting, and we want to become that type of human being. At other times, star trek is an indictment of the society we are and of the people who make it up. If the episode, "Repentance," tries not to state an opinion, "Critical Care" emphatically takes a stand on health care in our country. That sort of inquiring and probing is what star trek was best at. I say, was best, because with the advent of Star Trek Enterprise and especially of the Star Trek 2009 movie, it's turned away from those things, and what has replaced them, sadly, is no improvement. Well, that concludes the Greatest Moments in Trek series. I realize that once again I haven't picked someone's favorite episode, nor my own. But that's the beauty of star trek. There's always more to say. But the series is closed, and now this blog will go on to other trek-related things. Thanks for reading.
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