3x17 Unity

[7.4/10] You find a ship from your most fearsome enemy, figuratively dead in the water. It’s filled with drones who could be brought back to life at a moment’s notice. They might turn their attention to you, attack you, or alert their friends. But this might also be the rare opportunity to study your enemy up close, better understand how they work, maybe even figure out how to stop them. How do you balance the risk versus reward there, especially when you’re one ship and don’t have a fleet at the ready to back you up?

Or, you find a community of ex-Borg. Through chance and circumstances they’ve been freed from the hold of the Collective and formed a community. But these are different species from different places who’ve been kidnapped and thrown together. Some of them have formed a mutual cooperative, and others are stuck in old grudges. How do you engage with their society? Is it right to intervene in their problems? Does helping to solve their issues risk alerting the Borg to their, or your presence in this region of space?

Which is all to say that “Unity” is one of the most exciting Voyager episodes in some time, not just because it reengages with one of the franchise’s most noteworthy foes in a post-First Contact storytelling universe, but because it’s founded on some truly intriguing thought experiments, that challenge the characters and the audience to consider what’s ethical, what’s practical, and what they’d want in a complicated and nuanced situation.

Instead, we spend a solid half of the episode more squarely focused on the fact that Chakotay is horny for xB Elsa in the cooperative, and my god it’s a waste.

I don’t want to belabor my gripes with Chakotay as a character again, but suffice it to say, he’s not necessarily the best choice for the fulcrum of a story founded on emotional connection. But even if you threw in Janeway or The Doctor in there instead, it’s the least interesting entry point for these thrilling/terrifying scenarios.

Being the most generous, Chakotay falling in instalove with Riley, the former Borg who welcomes him to their community, helps give the xB Cooperative someone who understands their plight and could advocate for them to Janeway and who might be more protective and understanding of them than the average Starfleet officer. It also lets Voyager add something steamier in a season that’s clearly aimed to up the sex and violence quotient.

And I’ll admit, the idea of relations between two people who are effectively telepathically linked, such that they can feel one another’s sensations, is interesting from a sci-fi concept perspective, however limited by the bounds of network television the execution might be. Seeing Chakotay and Riley touch their own skin to elicit a reaction from the other is one of the more legitimately sensuous moments in the show to date, which is something.

Still, I found myself saying, “Yes, yes, let’s get past the inevitably disposable love interest of the week, and get on to exploring the contours of this engrossing thought experiment.”

The idea of a group of former Borg trying to start a new life for themselves, fearing bigotry based on what they used to be, is an idea so strong that later Star Trek shows would pick it up. The fact that they come from different cultures, and must set aside old grudges and ethnic strife to build a functioning community, only adds to the unique Model U.N. (or “The Time Trap” from The Animated Series)-like considerations at play. The notion that their technological psychic bond has both mental and physical healing qualities is particularly intriguing.

But the real thought experiment comes to the fore when Riley makes a theoretically simple but, in reality, momentous request. With Chakotay’s assurance that the request is sincere and well-intentioned, she asks for Janeway’s help in temporarily reactivating the Borg node that would link her and her countrymen, with the idea that it would allow her cooperative to peacefully stop the unsavory ruffians who are threatening their way of life.

As usual, Janeway is sympathetic, but ultimately makes the right call. The show does well to use The Doctor’s autopsy on a preserved Borg drone that one false move might reawaken the whole hive. So the Captain is right to rebuff the request, if only because reactivating Borg technology, however briefly, could turn on a whole cube’s worth of a dangerous threat, or at a minimum, let them signal for reinforcements. Whatever the cooperative’s desires, there’s good practical reasons for Janeway to reject the request.

At the same time, though, there’s good moral reasons to do the same. I don’t know how a group of former Borg who are from a cross-section of various species fit into the Prime Directive. But regardless, there’s an argument that this is an internal matter between the inhabitants of the planet, and it’s not Voyager’s place to interfere. More to the point, what Riley is talking about is overriding the autonomy of her combative counterparts. As Janeway notes, reinstituting the link would be making a serious choice for them without hearing their voice. However noble or genuine Riley may be, what she’s asking just doesn’t fit into Federation principles, and is frankly a little concerning.

To the point, when she doesn’t get what she wants, she and her allies use the remnants of their link with Chakotay to take over his mind and force him to become their agent to do what Janeway refused to do. They compel him to fire on his friends, take the risks that the Captain refused, and restart the Cube despite the threat it poses to Voyager. That is troubling, and suggests something darker despite the cheery, communal spirit that a reluctant Chakotay found himself embracing.

From their perspective, it works. Chakotay does what is asked of him, with subliminal instructions that chill the blood when spoken in the Collective’s unified voice. And just when the reactivated Borg Cube seems ready to fire on Voyager, the “New Cooperative” sets it to self-destruct, ensuring that they can have their reestablished link without Janeway having to deal with a renewed cybernetic threat. They’re apologetic afterward, but explain that they did what needed to be done. There’s no malice in what they do, no guile, just a coldly efficient means to achieve their theoretically utopian ends.

But are they? There is no more war on the new home planet of these former Borg. But there is also no choice. The ruffians are made part of the hivemind, one that doesn’t want to ruthlessly conquer and consume as the normal Borg do, but which still consumes all individuality and agency into a single collective consciousness, whether its adherents want to be a part of that collective or not.

That is chilling in its own way, a story of how even when those touched by the Borg seek to forge something beautiful and new, it’s potentially tainted by the methods of those who once enslaved them. I find that parable, and the practicalities of the predicament before Captain Janeway, far more compelling than Chakotay’s latest soggy love story.

Still, if there’s a broader legacy to “Unity” it’s this. It picks up where The Next Generation’s “I, Borg” left off, with the suggestion that it may be possible to rescue someone from the Collective, to give them a new life, while they struggle with what they’ve lost and who they used to be. That idea will get its fullest exploration in Voyager itself, and the cybernetic seeds are planted here.