2x14 Alliances

[8.0/10] What I want more of from this series are stories that only Star Trek: Voyager could tell. At its weakest, the series feels like The Next Generation with the serial numbers filed off. Now certainly, any show focused on a ship of exploration is going to feel that way sometimes. Hell, even Deep Space Nine does on occasion. But Voyager has an incredible premise, about a Starfleet crew stranded a lifetime’s journey from home and forced to mix with people who rejected the Federation to survive. Too few episodes of the show take advantage of that.

“Alliances” does, and it’s a breath of fresh air! When we meet the Voyager crew here, they are beleaguered, overwhelmed, scraping by on a ship that gets attacked by the Kazon so often they’re not sure if they’ll be able to keep repairing it. People have died in these attacks, something driven home by the first funeral we witness in the series. Even the true believers are starting to wonder how long they can keep this up without making some major changes.

It sparks the most substantial dissent and dissatisfaction we’ve seen since Voyager began. Janeway is forced to manage morale and deal with objecting voices in the most committed way to date. Many of those voices come from the Maquis members of the crew, who aren’t ready to die for Federation principles, but are ready to trade Federation transporter and replicator technology if it means they can get out of Kazon space alive.

It tees up one of the big questions of the episode, and what should be the series -- how much should you hold onto Federation values, let alone Starfleet rules, in a different part of space with very different practical realities? Janeway doesn’t want to violate the Prime Directive, and certainly doesn’t want to lead through consensus rather than through the Starfleet chain of command. But Chakotay raises fair counterarguments that Starfleet protocol may not have been made for situations like this, and that whether she likes it or not, a ship full of Maquis who don’t buy into the rectitude of those values is a problem that can't be commanded away.

I love it. This is the proto-Battlestar Galactica material I’ve been asking for from Voyager since the show started. Even Starfleet’s top of the line ship can't handle constant attacks from enemy vessels. What compromises might you make to preserve the lives of the crew aboard her? Yes, the Prime Directive orders you not to interfere in the natural development or internal affairs of other civilizations, but what if it’s the only way for your people to survive? These are tough questions, at the intersection of the principled and the practical, with no easy answers. That's the place where great storytelling thrives.

So Janeway tries to compromise a bit. At Chakotay’s suggestion, she tries to form an alliance with one or more Kazon sects, in the hopes of gaining safe passage through their space. I can't say I’m thrilled to see Seska or First Maje Culluh or their cartoonish MacBeth routine after their last outing. But the fact that Janeway is willing to reach out to them and the Nistrim sect shows how much she’s going against her instincts to try to make this work.

Of course it falls apart from the beginning of negotiations, as do Neelix’s efforts to broker talks through a contact he has at another Kazon settlement. But watching the ship’s “morale officers” try to work back channels with their erstwhile enemies, or Janeway break bread with Voyager’s biggest traitor shows the kind of nose-holding pragmatism Voyager’s crew has to engage in to get by out here. It’s cool to see them exploring those gray areas, even entertaining violating the Prime Directive by effectively taking sides in internal Kazon struggles, for the good of surviving an impossible situation.

I honestly wish it had taken up the whole episode, not because what follows is bad, but because either half of “Alliances” would have been enough to sustain the episode and really go in depth. But when Neelix is captured by the Kazon Pommar, he meets none other than the surviving members of the Trabe, the species whom the Kazon rebelled against and expelled from their own homeworld. With a small armada and a less outwardly militant demeanor, the Trabe seem like natural allies to Janeway and company, and a more pleasant alternative to trying to ally with the people who’ve been trying to kill them for the last year or so.

Of course, this is Star Trek, so the answers aren't so simple and the potential allies aren’t so squeaky clean. But they seem that way, and “Alliances” uses that fact to sucker the audience in. Mabus, the Trabe’s leader, speaks with remorse about how his forebears marginalized the Kazon. He complains that he and his countrymen are being punished for the crime of inherited sin, since all the Trabe oppressors are elderly or dead now. He claims all they want is to be able to settle on a new homeworld without being swept away by the Kazon, and even seems to have a vision of peace and stability in the quadrant, rather than a temporary alliance of convenience with Voyager.

“Alliances” is playing with the optics here. The Kazon are heavily made up, seem reflexively belligerent, some of them are sexist, and not for nothing, they have darker complexions. The Trabe are the usual forehead aliens, more recognizably human, with a leader who seems like any number of the gentle, civilized folk Picard interacted with on a weekly basis. The show codes these two groups the way it’s often coded friendly recognizable guys and scary “other” guys all since 1966. Janeway wants to fall in with these people and their seemingly noble cause, and the audience is liable to be sympathetic, especially when the Trabe stand in opposition to the species that's been antagonizing Voyager for a season and a half.

So when a tip comes in that someone’s planning to sabotage the peace talks between the Voyager/Trabe contingent and the collective Majes of the Kazon, we assume it’s Culluh, the dimestore Dukat, who’s behind it. In fact, it turns out to be Mabus' doing, an attempt to use Janeway’s gestures of goodwill that got everyone to the bargaining table to wipe out the Kazon leadership and perpetuate the cycle of violence, rather than ending it.

There’s a lesson in that, in letting appearances and sympathetic stories affect who you’re open to and who you reflexively dismiss or fear. The producers of the show purportedly meant to model the Kazon on Los Angeles street gangs, and hoo boy, as much as I respect the efforts to make Star Trek timely as always, that's a problematic thing to attempt from a writing room so monochromatic.

But it has power as a metaphor here, arguably for the first time. It’s easy to mistake the Kazon as naturally combative, but Mabus admits that his people grossly mistreated the Kazon for ages, leaving them segregated in poverty and squalor. For all the problems Voyager’s had, the Kazon leaders seem to show up to the peace talks reluctantly, but in good faith, when it’s Starfleet’s “natural ally” who uses it as an opportunity to gain power and revenge. The subversion of Janeway’s sympathies and expectations, and her righteous anger when she realizes what’s been done in her name, makes this a winning twist, even if it comes late in an overstuffed episode. But again, it makes for a good lesson about bias toward those who seem like you, and mistaking that for a sign of who has noble values and is worthy of trust.

Only, that's not really the lesson Janeway seems to take here. She lands on something approaching “This whole quadrant is too fractious and duplicitous to trust anyone”, so we should just stick to Federation principles like I said in the first place!”

It’s an odd conclusion to draw from these events, and one that belies the tough questions and complicated situations the episode presented for the prior forty-four minutes. None of the problems Voyager started with have been solved. Ostensibly, they’re still going to have to make it through Kazon space for some time with no allies and potentially even more enemies than before. At best, you can chalk it up to a “interfering with other cultures, even in good faith, always leads to bad ends,” but that's pretty bold to declare after one mistake, especially when plenty of the Maquis on board will be no more satisfied with that answer now than they were before.

Instead, I like the lesson that Tuvok suggests, one that seems more in line with Star Trek’s own broader values of openness and acceptance. He notes Spock’s championing of a peace with the Klingons circa The Undiscovered Country. And TNG fans know he worked to reunify Vulcans and Romulans as well. Those efforts were bumpy on both counts, with plenty of detractors, but eventually helped forge closer relationships and even alliances between the Federation and its old enemies. His visions for peace reflected an acceptance of broader possibilities than what everyone knew and expected of each other after years of fighting.

A Voyager crew that decides to overlook past transgressions and form an alliance with their enemies of the past year; one that holds their nose about Federation principles and accepts the necessity of participating, however tangentially, in internal Kazon conflicts; one who realizes that the people they’ve been fighting have a grim sympathetic history of their own and the potential for more, is all fodder for great television. More to the point, it’s fodder for the type of stories only this show can tell, something we still don’t get enough of, before or after “Alliances”.

This episode is a prime example of my grouse with Janeway.

The speach at the end, about how Starfleet principle stand above everything and should be upheld, is so hypocrite. While arguing with Chakotay why she cannot form alliances, be it with the Kazon or else, she was willing to jump into bed with the Trabe at an instant because they told her what she wanted to hear. Where were her principles then? Sure, the Kazon have proven to not be trusted. But the Trabe were a complete unknown. Yet, she gave them the benefit of the doubt. She's contradicting her own points.

I like that Chakotay has the possibility to voice his opinion. Those moments are few and far between. We see that there are still Marquis elements that try to go behind Janeway's back. Even if it's only a few, they are clearly not a combined crew, yet.

Culluh shows again he is such a weak character. Everthing needs to be explained to him. I wonder if Seska is arranging his clothes in the morning, too. We do learn her child is not Chakotay's. Which is a relief in a way that it was an idiotic idea to begin with.

Lot's of writers conveniences. Voyager is at a ransom place in space but it just so happens there is a planet nearby where an aquaintance of Neelix is at. And how fortunate that he owes him a favor. That he stumbles upon the Trabe just there is another conincidence. And haven't there been eighteen Kazon factions?

I know you have only 45 min to present a story and that means corners have to be cut at times. But some things just need to be earned. And most of the time things just fall into place.

Overall, despite the Kazon involvement a good episode. That Trabe gunner was a lousy shot, though. Shooting energy weapons into an enclosed space and, by my account, not even hitting one Kazon.