3x01 Basics (2)

[6.0/10] There’s a reason I could never bring myself to write off Voyager completely. Even after two seasons to carve out its own identity, the complaints that it’s just “TNG-lite” ring true. Half the characters are still big nothings, and life far from home while forced to bunk with the Maqusi still seems too easy for all involved. But even when the show is ridiculous, or overfamiliar, or even outright bad, it will still occasionally graze something profound and transcendent, in a way that leaves you sticking around to mine the next gem.

The second half of the “Basics” duology, which doubles as the premiere of the show’s third season, is a perfect example. Much. if not most, of this episode is about the Kazon-Nistrim stranding Voyager’s crew on a planet with none of the technology they’re so used to depending on. In theory, that could be great fodder for an episode of Star Trek. In a franchise that defaults to solving the crisis of the week with elaborate technobabble, forcing our heroes to make due with rocks and spears could teach us something about them that couldn't be learned if they still had their nigh-magical tools and creature comforts.

There’s a few problems with their primitive exploits though. The keenest one is that it never really feels like they’re in much danger. There’s an imposing tribe of cavemen and some kind of giant snake creature and the perils of survival afoot. But despite the setting, it never really feels like more than our heroes can handle, or even something they really have to stretch to figure out. The show tries to up the stakes with an elevated redshirt dying, Ensign Wildman’s baby developing a fever, and if that weren’t enough, a volcano erupting. But even these all feel like perfunctory obstacles until the inevitable rescue, where the good guys’ success and survival never feels in doubt psychologically.

(As an aside, pour one out for poor Ensign Hogan! I like having non-main but recurring crewmembers like him and Ensign Wildman around, to help show there’s life on this vessel beyond the senior staff. Plus, the interchangeable extras are less forgivable on Voyager than they were on The Next Generation given the circumstances.)

Another big issue, though, is the simple fact that so much of this feels downright silly. Good lord the alien cavemen are the definition of cringe. The group of primitive humanoids who seem downright rapey toward Kes, but then are kind to our heroes after Chakotay helps one of their own is somewhere on the spectrum between uncomfortable and cheesy. And the performances are just so goofy, with frantic, wildly gesturing hominids going back-and-forth the main characters. Hell, even the “noble people living a simpler life” tropes that this one falls into eventually feels of a piece with similar pitfalls that writer/former TNG showrunner Michael Pilller stumbled into with Star Trek: Insurrection.

And look, I don’t want to fault a television show from 1996 for chintzy effects, but from modern eyes, the “land eel” that attacks our heroes is downright ridiculous. The effect isn’t so bad in and of itself, but the way they’re clearly directing around the effect, with Chakotay and company shooting and stabbing at nothing, ruins any sense of danger or immersiveness in the moment.

It’s a shame because it’s clear what Piller and Voyager’s creative team means to accomplish with this. (Beyond anticipating the “cavemen vs. astronauts” debate from Angel, another genre show from the same era.) Maje Culluh aimed to prove that that the Voyager crew was useless without their technology. Instead, Janeway and company face their bumps in the road, but are able to start fires, make weapons, find food, and otherwise survive in harsh conditions regardless of whether they have their transporters or replicators. They even hang onto their ideals in the process, with Chakotay going out of his way to save one of the primitive people, earning their trust.

The message is a good one. What makes a Starfleet officer isn’t the fancy starship or the science-as-magic tech at their disposal. It’s the teamwork, trust, and resourcefulness that would see them through any situation. But the dramatization of that idea is self-defeating, since our heroes never feel out of control or overmatched, and the threats they face feel cornball or silly, to the point that their success seems like a foregone conclusion rather than something earned through grit and cleverness.

Contrast that with the goings on aboard the ship. You basically have two characters (two and a half if you count a couple of scenes from Tom Paris) working to take back the ship, and it’s leagues better than anything we get on the planet.

The reasons are simple: there’s a greater focus on character with the exploits of The Doctor and Crewman Suder, and because despite the same fait accompli of their success, they seem in genuine peril, requiring genuine cleverness, to be able to figure their way out of a desperate situation.

That extends to The Doctor who has to use his limited provenance to mislead Seksa, help Suder, enact plans from Tom, and include a little subterfuge of its own. It’s a delight to watch him go toe-to-toe with Seska, feigning the disinterested Doc of the show’s earliest days, when he’s secretly working to undermine her and sabotage the ship so they can rescue the crew. It’s part and parcel with The Doctor’s continued development and adaptation, and also his devotion to his colleagues.

As much as I love the Doc, holy hell, Brad Douriff blows just about everyone else out of the water with a bravura performance as Suder. Star Trek as a franchise is no stranger to vulnerable performances. (William Windom as Matt Decker in TOS’s “The Doomsday Machine” and Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard suffering Cardassian torture in “Chain of Command” come to mind.) But nothing may top Douriff having to commit a murder once more, for the good of the crew he’s so desperate to contribute to and help, only to crumple on the floor in the aftermath as a man who’s as wounded and devastated by his actions as anyone.

What a redemption! What a transformation! What a performance! The fear from all involved is that freed from his captivity, Suder will revert to his old ways. (Candidly, I expected this to turn into a near-gleeful, “You mean I can use my killing abilities for good?!” turn of events.) Instead, it’s the story of an addict who loathes the idea of returning to what he’s worked so hard to abstain from, only to force himself to give in for the greater good, at a terrible personal cost.

The story of a troubled man redeeming himself wouldn’t work nearly as well without a virtuoso performance from Brad Douriff. The rawness with which he plays someone who desperately wants to avoid the horrible thing he’s called upon to do, the sheer woundedness in his tone when circumstances dictate he must, the inner wince and yet honorable determination when he takes some lives to save more, makes him one of Voyager’s most memorable and most piercing characters in just three episodes.

That's the strange yin and yang of Voyager. On the one hand you have this big, silly, plot-heavy A-story about spacemen surviving in a primitive environment, with lava flows, gesticulating cavemen, and CGI serpents that all evoke the sense of an episode going big, but also feeling hollow. Even when Tom capitalizes on Suder and The Doctor’s heroism, and the salvation of Voyager bursts onto the horizon once more, it seems empty and preordained, in a way that makes you wonder if the series is capable of wringing the emotion from these big moments.

And yet, wrapped in this bombast, is a story of a disturbed individual learning how to get better, sacrificing their own mental health and ability to find peace for the good of others, and ultimately giving their lives to save the crew he once thought nothing of acting to kill. If there’s a pithier story of deep problems that build to poignant and harrowing, yet heartening results in all of Star Trek, I can't recall it.

As Voyager embarked on its third season, there would be more of the bombast and less of the deep and rich personal material. And nonetheless, there was enough of that goodness, and in the show and in its darkest characters, to keep us coming back.