1x13 Cathexis

[4.8/10] One of the many neat tricks of The Thing is that it puts the audience in the shoes of the characters. A shape-shifter with evil intent is about. How can you tell who’s really who? Who would you trust? What precautions would you take? The tension of the movie comes from those questions in almost every scene, where the characters are wondering the same things the viewers are.

“Cathexis” is essentially Voyager’s take on The Thing. There’s some alien presence floating around the ship and possessing people. It’s seemingly acting against the interests of those on board the ship, and there’s no reliable way to detect when someone’s been taken over. The precautions necessary to combat that sort of threat are tricky when the call is coming from inside the house.

But The Thing is a triumph and “Cathexis” is the pits, largely for one simple reason -- the latter barely tries to align the audience with the characters in the same way the former does. Every once in a while, the episode has you wondering if someone in the room is above board, or how to stop this possessive menace. But for the most part, this is just a weird threat without a lot of compelling decision points or character moments for the viewer to latch onto.

A few other things drag this one down even further. First, the answers to the episode’s mysteries are fairly predictable. The audience knowing more than the characters do can, in some circumstances, create good dramatic tension. But here, when it’s plain to the audience that someone or something is taking over the minds of crewmembers like Paris and B’Elanna, it becomes an act of tedium waiting for Janeway and company to catch up. Likewise, when Kes has injuries consistent with a Vulcan neck pinch after getting attacked in a turbolift with Tuvok, it’s not a far leap to guess that he’s not on the up-and-up, and the crew seem like idiots for not realizing sooner. This one would be much better if the writers put their cards on the table sooner rather than stalling in the shadow of the obvious.

Maybe stalling is appropriate, though, because the reveal here is so convoluted and opaque that it borders on the nonsensical. So Tuvok was possessed the whole time (I think?) whereas the alien presence possessing people was actually the free-floating consciousness of Chakotay trying to help his friends. I can appreciate the novelty on paper of a “possessing alien turns out to be the good guy, and the supposed ally is actually working against you” twist. But in practice, it’s just confusing and doesn’t really comport well with what the audience has seen to that point.

It doesn’t feel like fair play for a mystery, especially since the show has to put a fig leaf on why Chakotay can, for example, summon the wherewithal to eject the warp core, but can’t find the strength to say or write, “It’s me Chakotay! Tuvok has been taken over by an alien presence!” to anyone.

More than that, though, the atmosphere sinks this one. You can forgive some narrative convenience if a show gets the mood right. But this is supposed to be a horror-filled paranoid thriller, and the show just can’t evoke that sensibility. Imagery of Chakotay’s floating consciousness via blurry POV shots comes off as cheesy. The psycho string core doesn’t do any better. And most of the performers evoke a sense of calm professionalism, which may befit Starfleet officers who’ve already seen some wild stuff by this point, but which seems to contradict the dialogue which constantly has people suspicious of one another, to the point of alleged paranoia.

Only, the audience barely has a chance to join in that fun because there’s very few decisions or moments when the situation is in doubt. We know that people get possessed by this specter sometimes, but we rarely see it. And when we do, it tends to be people just blanking out, rather than acting sinister or suspicious. So there’s no suspense to it, nothing in the way of questioning or guessing the audience to guess who’s real and who’s faking, let alone the characters.

Hell, I thought for a minute this one was going to pivot to a really interesting Doctor storyline, like “Heroes and Demons” did. When Janeway transfers her command codes to The Doctor with the idea that he can act as a failsafe since he’s incapable of being possessed, that's one hell of a setup. How does The Doctor feel about making command decisions, not just medical decisions? Can he discern actively suspicious calls from his colleagues versus bold moves in a tough situation? And if he can, does he have the stones to overrule the captain or others in matters outside of his programming? These are tough questions that portend plenty of drama.

And they go nowhere. The bad guy (in this case, Tuvok) shuts down The Doctor immediately, so we never get to confront them. It’s just back to more unavailing off-the-shelf horror and a nebulous threat. There’s at least a little creative problem solving from Janeway here, between the effort with the Doctor, and her decision to split up command codes and functions among multiple officers so no one person has full control. But it’s not like it does much good.

I’m also not crazy about the solution. For one thing, every time we delve into Chakotay’s “heritage”, I’m reminded that the show’s advisor on indigenous culture was a charlatan, so it’s all junk anyway. Setting aside the feeble attempts to invoke indigenous practices, the implausible convenience of Chakotay’s two-dimensional medicine wheel mapping neatly onto a rendering of a three-dimensional galaxy strains credulity and plays like a narrative ass-pull.

In the end, the whole episode plays like a watered down, Trek-ified twist on The Thing that misunderstands what made that classic work. Tension, mystery, character, the stuff that makes up the core of good horror, is all but absent in “Cathexis”. Beyond its high concept premise, this installment has very little going for it when it comes to execution, and will leave viewers yearning for better takes on the same idea.