[7.4/10] The knock on Voyager is that it is slavishly devoted to the reset button. By this point, savvy viewers can probably guess that the ship won’t make it home before the end of the series, if ever. Likewise, they can probably surmise that despite the grievous threat of the week, the ship will probably be fine and all of the main characters will probably survive. Maybe, in the final season, they’ll let a couple get married and even have a bun in the oven, but despite the endless possibilities of the premise, things mostly stay the same on Janeway’s ship.
Yet, if the setting is static, and the basic situation can't change, then the only thing that’s left to develop over time is the characters. Voyager is not exactly its sister show, Deep Space Nine, when it comes to character arcs, but there’s something there! The Captain loosens up a bit and becomes more daring and less doctrinaire. B’Elanna and Tom go from a hothead and a bad boy to a loving bastion of domesticity. Neelix goes from being an irksome tagalong to being a helpful ambassador and the heart of the crew. Even Harry the eternal ensign gets a little extra spunk and ambition over the years.
But the peak of change over time goes to the show’s two biggest outsiders to humanity: The Doctor and Seven. Doc has had a longer runway, but Voyager’s creative team is more devoted to Seven as a major player, charting her course over time and putting her at the center of the show’s bigger narratives. Her path from recovered drone who yearns to return to the Collective, to a critical member of the crew and vital part of its community, is one of the show’s best achievements.
Which is what gives an episode like “Human Error” power. For so long, we have seen Seven be a reluctant explorer of her own humanity. She slowly gives in to connection and acceptance and the sundry parts of being a n individual. But she holds on to her stoicism, her sense of order, her desire for perfection. The breakthroughs are meaningful because they don’t happen overnight. The show spoon-feeds them to it, a little at a time, with the scattered big moment to show how far she comes.
And then an episode like “Human error” comes along and we see something totally different, something that reflects how her perspective has changed in nearly four years board Voyager. Because now Seven is no longer a Borg drone who resents having to conform to Janeway’s “irrelevant” human mores. She’s an aspiring human who wishes she could jettison her Borg implants and yearns for the ease of manner and human connection she once had to be cajoled into even considering.
I love that idea. There is great pathos in Seven resenting the artifacts of her one time captivity. There is something relatable in her literally and figuratively aching for a bond with others that she struggles to make real. Seven is no longer a Borg forced into individuality, but an individual striving to shed the parts of her that are Borg.
I’m being a little glib there. Anyone who’s practiced a conversation in their head ahead of time, or pictured what they might do or say as their best selves at a social event can relate to Seven using the holodeck to conjure up a version of Voyager where she’s Borg implant-free and able to express herself as easily as she’d like to. The way she programs her appearance without any sign of her Borg past, and scenarios where she feels comfortable thanking the captain for her guidance or coming up with sincere-yet-ribbing toasts for B’Elanna’s baby shower is sympathetic.
Who among us hasn’t wanted to step into a world where we looked the way we wanted, and felt confident and charming enough to fit in perfectly in any social situation? It’s a beautiful thing, and the contrast between stoic, self-conscious Seven in the real world and charismatic, confident Seven in her imaginary one calls to mind a similar dichotomy with Lt. Barclay in season 6’s [“Pathfinder”] and TNG’s “Hollow Pursuits”. Shaky crewmembers using the holodeck as a safe space to try escape and try on different personas is well-established territory.
Where I struggle, naturally, is the romance element of it.
On the one hand, I like the idea here. Speaking of showing change over time through the characters, as much as “Unimatrix Zero” fell flat for me, I like the notion that, even though Seven’s heretofore unknown relationship with Axum felt random in the moment, it sparked something in her. She wanted that feeling, that sense of connection, once more, and has been chasing it ever since.
I tend to think of love -- romantic, platonic, or familial -- as an essential part of being human. It’s natural and understandable that once Seven began to accept her humanity, she would yearn for it, and maybe even have a sort of strange approximation of it at first. Seeing her take those first baby steps, play pretend to try the idea on for size, is fascinating from a sociological angle, and sympathetic from a personal one.
On the other, though -- why Chakotay? I’ve said my piece on the character before, so I won’t keep beating a dead targ. But geeze, at this point the only female main character who hasn’t nursed a crush on Chakotay is Kes (and hell, maybe she just ran out of time). To paraphrase 10 Things I Hate About You, “What is it with this guy? Does he have beer-flavored nipples?” Voyager tries to make him a romantic lead again, and again and again, and it just. never. works. Maybe I’m just the wrong audience for it.
The show uses every tool in its cinematic tool box to try to evoke a sense of passion between his holographic counterpart and Seven. They’re blocked close together with the usual “flirt around the kitchen” routine. The film shoots them in close-ups and low lighting, setting a mood and a sense of intimacy. And the score here really sells the relationship, from the way the music recedes after their first tenuous kiss only to swell back with a vengeance once they go for it again with more certainty. I can't deny there’s a certain charged energy between them in the right moments.
But for the most part, it feels like a crack ship between one of Voyager’s most interesting characters and its resident dead fish. “Human Error” raises interesting ideas about Seven struggling to sacrifice her perfection and order in the name of human improvisation and connection. But they’re undermined by Robert Beltran giving facile speeches that overly underline the point in an unconvincingly shout-y tone.
In principle, I can understand why, in a vacuum, Seven would look to a noble authority figure like Chakotay as an idealized romantic partner. But I never really buy this hinky pairing, which is tough since it takes up most of the episode.
But even if the chemistry could paper over those issues, there is something quietly creepy about Seven conjuring up a version of one of her colleagues to kiss and flirt with and be implied to sleep with. The episode never quite explores that, treating it as harmless fantasy, and I get why. You can understand the impulse, especially for a character who reads as having a teenage mentality much of the time. (Her conversation with Janeway has a real “Mom almost found the diary where I fantasize about the boys I like” quality to it.)
Still, as with Leah Brahms in TNG’s “Galaxy’s Chikd”, there is something uncomfortable about taking a real person and putting them in your romance sim. The episode tees up Seven’s awkwardness over being discovered, but never really the ethics of her actions.
Admittedly, the episode isn’t really about that. It’s more about that nascent desire to explore in Seven and, more to the point, how these daydreams and “experiments” take her away from her usual steady performance of her duties. Voyager flying through an interstellar munitions range is mostly a perfunctory hurdle in a more character-focused episode. But it provides just enough risk and danger for Seven to need to tear herself away from her fantasies, nearly let her colleagues down because of her new fascinations, and ultimately decide to put her heart back into it.
There’s something softly tragic about that. The idea that Seven’s cortical implant specifically prevents her from being able to experience human emotion, lest her body be shut down by it, is a little too mechanical an excuse for what should be a personal issue to resolve. But her skipping regeneration sessions because she’s trying to be more human, only to reflexively return to them because she’s seen the impact love has on her work and self and would rather retreat to the comforts of what she knows is heartbreaking.
As heartening and interesting as it is to see Seven try to stretch her wings and become more human -- with her hair, her friends, her personal life -- it’s just as tragic to see her decide to clip them because it’s all too hard.
It puts her in line with another of the franchise’s great outsiders, Odo from Deep Space Nine, who similarly closed himself off from romance in the name of it being too difficult and too painful in “Crossfire”. “Human Error” doesn’t quite hit those heights. It’s slower, clumsier, less convincing in its central romance. But its heart is in the same place, and so is its heartbreak.
As much as I enjoy the way a great television show develops a character over time, I love it even more when the character’s arc is not a straight line. Life is messy. We rarely progress neatly from one piece of who we are to another. Acknowledging that, letting the internal path from here to there be an elliptical and uncertain one, is part of what elevates great series like Better Call Saul from their simpler brethren.
But sometimes it's painful. Seven changes, but not quite enough, or maybe too much, until she tries to go back to who she was before. The episode’s final moments suggest the attempted reversion might not fully take. Even so, there’s a way to make dramatic, character-focused hay from the enforced stasis of this era of network television. Make the return to the status quo a tragedy. Seeing Seven come so close, grab a piece of the humanity she wants in heart of hearts, only to let it go when it’s too hard to hold onto, is sad in the way it shows how far she’s come, and how far she still has left to go.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2024-09-21T06:44:01Z
[7.4/10] The knock on Voyager is that it is slavishly devoted to the reset button. By this point, savvy viewers can probably guess that the ship won’t make it home before the end of the series, if ever. Likewise, they can probably surmise that despite the grievous threat of the week, the ship will probably be fine and all of the main characters will probably survive. Maybe, in the final season, they’ll let a couple get married and even have a bun in the oven, but despite the endless possibilities of the premise, things mostly stay the same on Janeway’s ship.
Yet, if the setting is static, and the basic situation can't change, then the only thing that’s left to develop over time is the characters. Voyager is not exactly its sister show, Deep Space Nine, when it comes to character arcs, but there’s something there! The Captain loosens up a bit and becomes more daring and less doctrinaire. B’Elanna and Tom go from a hothead and a bad boy to a loving bastion of domesticity. Neelix goes from being an irksome tagalong to being a helpful ambassador and the heart of the crew. Even Harry the eternal ensign gets a little extra spunk and ambition over the years.
But the peak of change over time goes to the show’s two biggest outsiders to humanity: The Doctor and Seven. Doc has had a longer runway, but Voyager’s creative team is more devoted to Seven as a major player, charting her course over time and putting her at the center of the show’s bigger narratives. Her path from recovered drone who yearns to return to the Collective, to a critical member of the crew and vital part of its community, is one of the show’s best achievements.
Which is what gives an episode like “Human Error” power. For so long, we have seen Seven be a reluctant explorer of her own humanity. She slowly gives in to connection and acceptance and the sundry parts of being a n individual. But she holds on to her stoicism, her sense of order, her desire for perfection. The breakthroughs are meaningful because they don’t happen overnight. The show spoon-feeds them to it, a little at a time, with the scattered big moment to show how far she comes.
And then an episode like “Human error” comes along and we see something totally different, something that reflects how her perspective has changed in nearly four years board Voyager. Because now Seven is no longer a Borg drone who resents having to conform to Janeway’s “irrelevant” human mores. She’s an aspiring human who wishes she could jettison her Borg implants and yearns for the ease of manner and human connection she once had to be cajoled into even considering.
I love that idea. There is great pathos in Seven resenting the artifacts of her one time captivity. There is something relatable in her literally and figuratively aching for a bond with others that she struggles to make real. Seven is no longer a Borg forced into individuality, but an individual striving to shed the parts of her that are Borg.
And she does it through erotic friend fiction.
I’m being a little glib there. Anyone who’s practiced a conversation in their head ahead of time, or pictured what they might do or say as their best selves at a social event can relate to Seven using the holodeck to conjure up a version of Voyager where she’s Borg implant-free and able to express herself as easily as she’d like to. The way she programs her appearance without any sign of her Borg past, and scenarios where she feels comfortable thanking the captain for her guidance or coming up with sincere-yet-ribbing toasts for B’Elanna’s baby shower is sympathetic.
Who among us hasn’t wanted to step into a world where we looked the way we wanted, and felt confident and charming enough to fit in perfectly in any social situation? It’s a beautiful thing, and the contrast between stoic, self-conscious Seven in the real world and charismatic, confident Seven in her imaginary one calls to mind a similar dichotomy with Lt. Barclay in season 6’s [“Pathfinder”] and TNG’s “Hollow Pursuits”. Shaky crewmembers using the holodeck as a safe space to try escape and try on different personas is well-established territory.
Where I struggle, naturally, is the romance element of it.
On the one hand, I like the idea here. Speaking of showing change over time through the characters, as much as “Unimatrix Zero” fell flat for me, I like the notion that, even though Seven’s heretofore unknown relationship with Axum felt random in the moment, it sparked something in her. She wanted that feeling, that sense of connection, once more, and has been chasing it ever since.
I tend to think of love -- romantic, platonic, or familial -- as an essential part of being human. It’s natural and understandable that once Seven began to accept her humanity, she would yearn for it, and maybe even have a sort of strange approximation of it at first. Seeing her take those first baby steps, play pretend to try the idea on for size, is fascinating from a sociological angle, and sympathetic from a personal one.
On the other, though -- why Chakotay? I’ve said my piece on the character before, so I won’t keep beating a dead targ. But geeze, at this point the only female main character who hasn’t nursed a crush on Chakotay is Kes (and hell, maybe she just ran out of time). To paraphrase 10 Things I Hate About You, “What is it with this guy? Does he have beer-flavored nipples?” Voyager tries to make him a romantic lead again, and again and again, and it just. never. works. Maybe I’m just the wrong audience for it.
The show uses every tool in its cinematic tool box to try to evoke a sense of passion between his holographic counterpart and Seven. They’re blocked close together with the usual “flirt around the kitchen” routine. The film shoots them in close-ups and low lighting, setting a mood and a sense of intimacy. And the score here really sells the relationship, from the way the music recedes after their first tenuous kiss only to swell back with a vengeance once they go for it again with more certainty. I can't deny there’s a certain charged energy between them in the right moments.
But for the most part, it feels like a crack ship between one of Voyager’s most interesting characters and its resident dead fish. “Human Error” raises interesting ideas about Seven struggling to sacrifice her perfection and order in the name of human improvisation and connection. But they’re undermined by Robert Beltran giving facile speeches that overly underline the point in an unconvincingly shout-y tone.
In principle, I can understand why, in a vacuum, Seven would look to a noble authority figure like Chakotay as an idealized romantic partner. But I never really buy this hinky pairing, which is tough since it takes up most of the episode.
But even if the chemistry could paper over those issues, there is something quietly creepy about Seven conjuring up a version of one of her colleagues to kiss and flirt with and be implied to sleep with. The episode never quite explores that, treating it as harmless fantasy, and I get why. You can understand the impulse, especially for a character who reads as having a teenage mentality much of the time. (Her conversation with Janeway has a real “Mom almost found the diary where I fantasize about the boys I like” quality to it.)
Still, as with Leah Brahms in TNG’s “Galaxy’s Chikd”, there is something uncomfortable about taking a real person and putting them in your romance sim. The episode tees up Seven’s awkwardness over being discovered, but never really the ethics of her actions.
Admittedly, the episode isn’t really about that. It’s more about that nascent desire to explore in Seven and, more to the point, how these daydreams and “experiments” take her away from her usual steady performance of her duties. Voyager flying through an interstellar munitions range is mostly a perfunctory hurdle in a more character-focused episode. But it provides just enough risk and danger for Seven to need to tear herself away from her fantasies, nearly let her colleagues down because of her new fascinations, and ultimately decide to put her heart back into it.
There’s something softly tragic about that. The idea that Seven’s cortical implant specifically prevents her from being able to experience human emotion, lest her body be shut down by it, is a little too mechanical an excuse for what should be a personal issue to resolve. But her skipping regeneration sessions because she’s trying to be more human, only to reflexively return to them because she’s seen the impact love has on her work and self and would rather retreat to the comforts of what she knows is heartbreaking.
As heartening and interesting as it is to see Seven try to stretch her wings and become more human -- with her hair, her friends, her personal life -- it’s just as tragic to see her decide to clip them because it’s all too hard.
It puts her in line with another of the franchise’s great outsiders, Odo from Deep Space Nine, who similarly closed himself off from romance in the name of it being too difficult and too painful in “Crossfire”. “Human Error” doesn’t quite hit those heights. It’s slower, clumsier, less convincing in its central romance. But its heart is in the same place, and so is its heartbreak.
As much as I enjoy the way a great television show develops a character over time, I love it even more when the character’s arc is not a straight line. Life is messy. We rarely progress neatly from one piece of who we are to another. Acknowledging that, letting the internal path from here to there be an elliptical and uncertain one, is part of what elevates great series like Better Call Saul from their simpler brethren.
But sometimes it's painful. Seven changes, but not quite enough, or maybe too much, until she tries to go back to who she was before. The episode’s final moments suggest the attempted reversion might not fully take. Even so, there’s a way to make dramatic, character-focused hay from the enforced stasis of this era of network television. Make the return to the status quo a tragedy. Seeing Seven come so close, grab a piece of the humanity she wants in heart of hearts, only to let it go when it’s too hard to hold onto, is sad in the way it shows how far she’s come, and how far she still has left to go.