3x25 Worst Case Scenario

[8.1/10] Season 3 is a strange, interstitial year for Star Trek: Voyager. The Kazon were effectively dispensed with after the season premiere. The Vidians were basically in the rear-view mirror. So were the Starfleet vs. Maquis conflicts. There was no more mention of the Caretaker or his array. Even the prospect of getting back home didn’t seem like that big of a deal for much of the year. The recurring features and enemies that defined the show’s early period had more or less fallen by the wayside.

And yet, without spoiling anything still to come, the major players, the enemies new and old, the core conflicts that would come to define the latter half of the show haven't really arrived in earnest either. So what’s left is arguably Voyager’s most vanilla year. Coupled with many of the show’s lead creative voices gradually stepping away, season 3 plays like the awkward middle year between the show Voyager started as and the show it would become.

What I like about “Worst Case Scenario” is that, as the pre-cliffhanger capstone to this somewhat awkward season, it is a last hurrah for that early conception of the show that was soon to be left behind.

On a plot level, the core fakeout here is a Maquis mutiny, rendered via holonovel, that plays on tensions between the Starfleet officers and their rebellious chums that had long been smoothed over at this point. The episode brings back Martha Hackett as Seska, a reminder of the most notable recurring villain from those early years. And even in holographic form, it gives our heroes one last tet-a-tet with her, putting to bed the perils and betrayals that drove many of the show’s continuing storylines.

On a meta level, it’s about the characters themselves workshopping these stories. They love jumping into the holonovel and playing out its various scenarios, promoting the promise of the show’s original setup. When the work turns out to be an unfinished tactical simulation by Tuvok, everyone has an opinion on how to finish/improve it, reflecting debates in the fandom and presumably the writer’s room. And the ensuing rewrite battle between Janeway and Holo-Seska scans like a paeon to the writers, coming u; with creative ways to rectify narrative obstacles, made manifest in-universe.

In short, “Worst Case Scenario” plays like something of a tribute to the show’s early years, which, maybe everyone realized, were about to become more of a forgotten past than a meaningful prologue. The episode is a quasi series finale, something metatextual, reverent, and practical enough to work as a bookend to the show if it weren’t renewed. It’s fun, creative, high concept, and endeared to its characters and their world. Even as someone who’s cold on Voyager’s first few seasons, I can’t help but admire that, and feel the warmth and fond recollections of all that lead to this point before the next big sea change comes.

But I also enjoy the episode on its own merits. It has four mostly distinct phases, and each of them works on its own terms.

The feint involving a Chakotay-led mutiny is pretty obvious. Some of the smaller details feel wrong, which gives the audience clever hints that all is not what it seems. (As Neelix points out, him siding with the rebels feels out of character.) Plus hey, this is the most interesting and dynamic Chakotay’s ever seemed, so you know it can’t be the real him.

But I don’t mind, because as the characters acknowledge, the scenario is just plain fun. The flashback elements like Janeway’s hair and the arrival of Seska give this one a certain novelty. And more than that, it comes with the charge of the “What If?” question at play. The show rarely explored the Starfleet-Maquis tensions in earnest, so getting a glimpse, even if simulated form, of the two sides actively fighting one another with tensions boiling over, is a thrill.

Hell, Chakotay making his speech about forgoing Starfleet protocols and using any means necessary to get home, and not stopping at every wide anomaly in the road, is so compelling you wish the show leaned into it more in reality. Throw in the video game-like aspect of B’Elanna and Tom picking sides and trying to navigate games of secret loyalties and betrayals, and you have a premise that could have carried the hour on its own.

The meta part of the episode is just as enjoyable though. The holo-novel becoming a sensation, with everyone on the ship running the program and gossiping about who could have created it gives this a fun middle school fad feel. The desire to see how the story ends, the debates about different methods to progress through it and new strategies, is maybe the most relaxed and normal the Voyager crew has ever seemed. It’s nice to see them just having fun with something without the usual life or death stakes for once.

I’m also a sucker for shows riffing on their own fan reactions and behind-the-scenes shenanigans. (Hello fellow Simpsons fans!) Tuvok and Paris debating the merits of logical story structure versus wild twists, B’Elanna chiming in about adding some passion to the story, Neelix having thoughts about his character, and even The Doctor having a litany of improvements to offer (no need to thank him!) feels reflective of the kinds of writers’ room tug-of-wars, producer and fan suggestions, and even critics thinking they know best (perish the thought).

An incomplete holo-novel that’s enraptured the crew is a fun way to dramatize those backstage debates within the confines of the show. And using Tuvok as the hidden author who’s protective of his creation and wants to keep the characters consistent, versus Paris who just wants to make ti fun and exciting, creates nice avatars for the back-and-forth for the right way to tell a Voyager story.

But then, they discover that none other than Seska left a jack-in-the-box inTuvok’s program, one that overrides the safety protocols and leaves Tom and Tuvok’s lives under a very real threat.

Look, that part is a little silly. If you’ve been watching Star Trek this long, dangerous holodeck malfunctions or ploys gone wrong is a familiar trope. But there’s also something cool about it. It’s nice to see Seska as competent for once, not just a Lady MacBeth but a formidable opponent for our heroes. The fact that her holographic alter ego gives her a bit of a life after death, is a nice tribute to her and what she represented in the show’s early years. And Tuvok and Tom having to fight against their own creation/favorite toy makes for a cool setup.

There’s also tons of fun to having Janeway decide to rewrite the holonovel to help her crew just as the Seska algorithm is working to thwart them. The cat-and-mouse game there, with random fires being met with random extinguishers, allies having changes of heart, and the cavalry coming in being disrupted by a self-destruct sequence all have a neat quality to them in-universe from the anything-goes world of the holodeck. The fact that Tuvok uses Holo-Seska’s own malfunctioning phaser rifle trick against her is a nice case of the creator hoisting the interloper by her own petard.

The cleverness there speaks to the sense in which this storyline is a metaphor for the writers themselves, outsmarting their own creations, setting up mouse traps and then finding their way out of them, and even pushing back on one another to try to find a tale that works. The stakes are live and real, but it connects to something bigger than the crisis of the week, as all great Star Trek outings should.

Of course, it closes with a happy ending. And while most of the Voyager senior staff gathering in the mess hall and laughing over their successes and failures in the realm of close-to-home fiction isn’t quite to the level of Picard joining the poker game in TNG’s “All Good Things”, it’s a warm and happy final note for the characters after so much wild but enjoyable chicanery. Janeway calls it a happy ending, and I’d like to think of it that way for this era of the series.

Suffice it to say, big changes start to happen in the next episode. The version of Voyager that existed for the first three years doesn’t completely go away, but it shifts dramatically. And even if those years aren’t my favorite in the franchise, one cannot watch a show go through its growing pains, tinker with what works and what doesn't, and spend sixty-six episodes with its cast and their misadventures without developing at least some attachment.

So this is a bon voyage, something lighter, something friendlier, something affectionate toward what Voyager ws for the first three years of its mission before all of that changed. Whether Kenneth Biller and company knew it at the time or not, “Worst Case Scenario” is a pseudo ending to that period of the show, and it’s a lovely high note -- a tribute to what the show had been, and to the characters and storytellers who did their best to give us a happy ending, even when the route to get there was bumpier than we might like.