1x03 Parallax

[7.7/10] There should be more episodes like “Parallax” on Voyager. That is both a compliment and a dig from yours truly. It’s a compliment because, of course, this is a good episode. B’Elanna and Captain Janeway learning to respect one another, and moving just a little toward the other’s point of view, is good character-focused storytelling. Emphasizing the continued conflicts between the legacy Starfleet officers and the new Maquis recruit elevates the natural friction the two groups would experience. And weaving those two threads together serves the purposes of both plot and character development, allowing the crisis of the week to help solve the continuing crisis of how to meld two crews together.

But it’s a dig because Voyager never did enough of this sort of thing. This isn’t the last Starfleet vs. Maquis conflict the show will ever engage with, but it’s one of the most committed and significant. It’s not the last time the show would grapple with how people who rebelled against the Federation would acclimate to rejoining a Starfleet crew, but it’s rare and rarely done with this level of conviction. The fact that the series so often glossed over the inevitable differences and friction this blended crew would have makes the moments when it doesn’t that much more notable.

What I appreciate most is the way everyone’s perspective here makes sense. Chakotay in particular has to balance a ton of competing interests. As a commander who defected, he has a unique foot in both worlds, which makes him a useful bridge between the two centers of conflicting interest, but also an inflection point between them. So he has to convince the rank-and-file Maquis now donning Starfleet uniforms not to mutiny and install him as captain. He has to convince the actual captain to promote Maquis members as senior officers if she wants to retain their loyalty and trust. And he has to both calm down the fiery but gifted engineer who’s been by his side since we first met him, and persuade his commanding officer that she’s prepared to be chief engineer.

For her part, Janeway recognizes that the Starfleet officers and the Maquis need each other whilst so far from home. But she also can’t imagine promoting Maquis amateurs, with little experience on Starfleet vessels, let alone the requisite training in protocol and the Starfleet way, over officers who’ve devoted their whole careers and lives to meeting that standard. It’s a nice mix of the principled and the pragmatic, with each leader wanting to look out for their own, while also trying to recognize the social and practical needs of the U.S.S. Voyager on its long journey home.

The source of tension, but eventual connection between them is B’Elanna. On the one hand, she is a creative engineer and someone who’s had at least some Starfleet training. On the other, she struggles to control her temper, washed out of the Academy, and butts heads with Lt. Carey, the Starfleet officer next in line for the post. And, as Janeway herself points out, for as much as B’Elanna may be fit for the technical aspects of the job, being a chief also means leading people. Between the resentment that will come from perceptions that she jumped line to get the assignment, and her innate struggles to get along with her Starfleet colleagues, the captain rightly suggests that it might not do B’Elanna any favors to take Chakotay’s recommendation and promote her to the big job.

Thankfully, shock of shocks, there’s a unique spatial anomaly that not only demonstrates the mutual talents of Janeway and B’Elanna, but also proves how well they could work together. The anomaly itself isn’t especially high stakes by Star Trek standards. And yet, it has enough of a new spin in the form of an event horizon that reflects the near-future back at whatever’s near it to provide some intrigue. More importantly, it’s a good excuse for the captain and her prospective chief engineer to exchange excited bits of technobabble and realize that, whatever their differences and disagreements, in the thick of solving a problem, they’re on the same page.

Unfortunately, the anomaly also has an effect on The Doctor, who’s as testy as ever about it. It’s the only part of this episode I really don’t like. I thought I had a bead on where they were going with this one. The Doctor’s problem is that, because he’s a hologram, everyone effectively treats him like an appliance. So when the strange spatial phenomena affects sickbay’s holo emitters, with the effect of shrinking the photonic physician, nobody cares. His requests for repairs are put off and the fact that he may no longer be able to reach his patients go unheeded. It’s a direct appeal to the call for empathy that fuels many of the best Star Trek stories.

Except the only one who recognizes him is Kes. Candidly, I’d kind of written off Kes from my watch of Voyager during its original run. But I’d forgotten the pairing between her and The Doctor and how well it paid dividends. I love the idea that, however naive she may be about technology, that frees her from the hang-ups and pretense that affects the more seasoned space-farers, and leads her to treat The Doctor as a real person. It’s a lovely beat between the two of them, showing how such a naif can still bring something to the table, and how The Doctor’s bedside manner improves when he feels seen.

I thought it was going to be the key to the A-story too. It’s B’Elanna recognizing that placing a dampening field around the holo emitters that helps her realize the same approach could give them the info they need to solve the larger problem. I thought this was going to be a means to show that despite her prickliness, she too has empathy for overlooked or underestimated people, in a way that could make her an effective and considerate leader. Instead, she and the captain just breeze past the issue and move on to other things, while the incredible shrinking doctor is played for comic relief. I low-key hate the way it resolves.

Still, the conclusion to the B’Elanna/Janeway story makes up for it. The two both geeking out and showing bravery in the face of a desperate situation puts each of them at their best. Janeway provides a confidence boost for her future senior engineer by revealing that the Academy instructors who B’Elanna thought hated her, in fact, thought she could make a terrific officer. In exchange, B’Elanna shares some vulnerability: a belief that she couldn't hack it in Starfleet and a feeling of being unwanted that led her to quit. It helps the two meet in the middle, and B’Elanna’s willingness to defer to Janeway over which version of the Voyager is the real one shows her willingness to bend, if only a little.

The hunky dory finish is a little too easy. After all of this, B’Elanna gets the promotion, and makes an earnest and humble plea to her rival for the job to help her with the quirks of the warp core and intricacies of Starfleet protocol. In return, Lt. Carey congratulates her and promises to give her his best, despite resenting and undermining her just a few scenes prior. But the wholesomeness of it, and the extraordinary events that earn B’Elanna’s buy-in in between, make it enough to pass muster.

There’s a fabulous array of stories to be told in the same vein. How do people who hate Starfleet and love Starfleet learn to live together? What do they experience as a joint crew that helps them see one another as allies, and people, not just the strange bedfellows of circumstance? These questions could have been the lifeblood of Voyager’s early seasons, if not its whole run. Instead, it makes these early outings, that take the ideas seriously, an all-too-rare aberration for a show that reverted to Starfleet business as usual all too quickly.