[4.4/10] It’s a bad sign for any story when knowing the twist actively makes the plot worse. The big reveal in “Innocence” is that the young kids Tuvok has been protecting after crash-landing on an alien planet are, in fact, not children at all. They are ninety-six-year-old grandparents who are at the end of their lives, not the beginning.
This is normally where I say, “There’s value in that premise.” But there isn’t really. There’s a decent observation at the core of the story, one that “Innocence” tries to tease out a bit. The irony of aging is that as we age, many of us become less able to take care of ourselves, to where we loop back around to a state closer to childhood. It’s not much, but you could explore that in that trademark slanted, Star Trek way by examining a species who ages in reverse.
But “Innocence” never really pulls it off. It’s content to fall back on the “uptight Vulcan has to deal with unruly children” dynamic and call it a day. The twist that those children are, in fact, senior citizens on the verge of death might matter if we’d had even the slightest hint that this was the case beforehand, or saw some sign of their true age and experience in their behavior.
Instead, the episode offers the cheat that when the Drayans reach the end of their lifespans, they become confused and revert to a childlike state. In other words, it doesn’t matter that they’re actually nonagenarians. They would behave the same whether they were nine or ninety, so what difference does the twist make?
It doesn’t reveal much of anything to the audience beyond a, “Whoa, bet you didn’t see that coming!” moment. But of course we didn’t! You never gave us any reason to! And I can attest that knowing the truth doesn’t make Tuvok’s earlier interactions with them any more interesting, because they’re indistinguishable from him dealing with actual children.
There’s slightly, slightly more juice to the B-story, which sees Voyager doing a little bit more than the usual, “One of our people is lost/stranded/kidnapped, we have to find some sort of technobabble solution to retrieve them!” routine. Janeway and company are looking for Tuvok, and do have to come up with some sort of “dielectric field” for their shuttle to get through the local moon’s atmosphere to recover him. But for the most part, this is a more diplomatic concern about the Drayan prime minister not wanting Voyager crewmembers to set foot on sacred ground.
The diplomacy angle is the most interesting part of this one. I feel like I say this a lot, but I wish we got more first contact stories, where Janeway has to tiptoe around cultural differences and strive to find common ground, not just because of Starfleet regulations, but because Voyager needs some vital resource the aliens happen to have a supply of. It’s the sort of practical versus principled dichotomy that great Star Trek stories are made of, and we at least sort of get that here.
The Drayans are a private people who nonetheless are curious about Voyager’s story. Janeway wants to make a good impression because a Drayan moon has a rich vein of the MacGuffin sauce necessary to keep the ship running. The Captain not wanting to intrude on Drayan sovereignty or customs, while still hoping to get the resources they need, and refusing to back down on rescuing Tuvok, creates conflicting interests that give the episode some of the tension the Tuvok-on-the-planet material is missing.
Most of that material is simple Tuvok dealing with a trio of scared, mostly annoying kids who, naturally, don’t adhere to the strictures of Vulcan logic and emotional control. You can see what Voyager’s trying to do here. One of TNG’s finest moments came when Captain Picard was stuck in an elevator with three young children who didn't quite respond to crisis the way the seasoned officers Jean-Luc’s used to dealing with wood. There was humor in Picard’s obvious discomfort with the situation, and a heartwarming quality when they learn to work together. You can see how “Innocence” goes for a similar vibe with stoic Tuvok having to wrangle a trifecta of rambunctious kiddos.
It never goes beyond the surface, though, and the humor and observations of the interactions between stuffy adults and ungovernable children is tepid and broad. Tuvok basically puts them in time out, tries to get them to behave, and sings them to sleep. Little of the gags involved focus on character or a strong dynamic, and the kids understandably don’t offer much in the acting department, so there’s not much juice from the squeeze. The only thing worth holding onto here is a touching explanation from Tuvok that his bond with his children goes beyond emotion, to the sense that he is utterly incomplete without them.
The whole thing is ultimately meant as some sort of meditation on death. It turns out the Drayans are drawn to this moon like salmon returning to spawn. From the death of Tuvok’s shuttlemate in the beginning of the episode, to the kids’ fears about a boogeyman/grim reaper taking them away, to Tuvok’s own thoughts on what happens after we die, there’s a hodgepodge of thematic material on the end of life here. It just never amounts to much of anything beyond a trite “It’s a natural part of existence” conclusion.
Finding out that the kids are, in fact, elderly individuals doesn’t do much, if anything, to make that point. If you squint, you can glean the idea that the prospect of death when we’ve reached the end gives us back the same sort of fears we had as children, but even that's a stretch. The only good thing in the finish is the implication that Tuvok’s kindness to someone in need helped build a bridge between Janeway and the Drayan minister, and by extension their people.
But despite some thematic flotsam, “Innocence” is an episode built around nothing. Its points are either too nebulous or too cliche to have meaning. Its diplomatic merits are shifted to the background for most of the episode. And the twist, the big thing that's supposed to make you reconsider everything you saw, is a pointless reveal that doesn’t change much of anything. There are certainly episodes of Star Trek much worse than this, but few that feel like as big a waste of time, twist and all.
Essentially answers the question what happens when a Vulcan interacts with children. ILLOGICAL.
Tuvok with a bunch of kids is not particularly compelling, even though these aren't the worst child actors in the world. I did appreciate that this gave us a good look at Tuvok's character and more info on his background, but outside of that this did nothing for me. The alien race was also annoying.
"Depressurize the shuttle bay"? What happened to the atmospheric containment field they usually have across the shuttle bay door?
Tahj (oh hey, Tahj Mowry did something besides Sister, Sister and Smart Guy) and the First Prelate actually use the word "children", so there goes the assumption excuse for Tuvok thinking they're really young kids.
Much as I appreciate having "a Tuvok episode", this isn't a great episode outside of that. I refuse to believe that none of the "children" let slip a single hint to their true age at any point.
Alcia comes around a bit too easily. She goes from incensed to friendly in practically the blink of an eye. Her line saying that "their aging process is reversed" was a nice touch in a "look who's talking" kind of way, but the three kids were more developed than her character.
The concept of beings who are born "old" and "age" in reverse has been around at least since F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button",published in 1922. Unfortunately, there's no particularly good way to square that idea with the physical realities of birth, and this episode makes the reality bit even more difficult with the Drayans' assertion of a "powerful instinct" to return to the moon when they reach the end of their life. If they evolved on the planet, how would they reach this "source of all life" in the days before their culture developed space travel? It would be an odd instinct indeed if it compelled them to do something that was actually impossible. (Plenty of animal instincts compel various species to do difficult tasks, as with salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Doing the flat-out impossible isn't really instinct territory, though.)
Definitely worth the watch for a bit of Tuvok's character development. We are reminded of the Vulcan state of being - that it is not the lack of feeling but control to the point of suppression (also examined in the previous episode 'Meld'). Tuvok has a family he misses dearly, so the plight of these "children" affect him very much, despite his external appearance of calm.
Also, damn that meddlesome Prime Directive (ad infinitum). LOL!
So much for not interfering with other cultures' lifestyles.
This episode is not so good to watch on a re-run. The impact of the twist at the end is lessened if you know it already.
I find the idea of a race with a reversed aging process interesting and I was thinking all the time how a pregnancy would work. But at the end it is mentioned they are created out of the energy that's leaving them at death. I guess that works as I would have trouble imagining a grown humanoid being born. So, nice they adressed that.
Of course the main topic here is the fear of death, which is a human trait. From that point of view I like that they integrated that in a scifi story. Althought aside from the end they didn't really explore it.
Which is sadly one of Voyagers traits often and I wonder how much better the show could have been with only slight adjustments.
The crew of the Voyager encounter Orkans!
Shout by Alexander von LimbergBlockedParent2022-01-08T21:45:44Z
Hm. I don't know. The logician and the children... At the same time, that's silly, adorable and tells you surprisingly much about the Vulcan society. Problem: there's this other civilization and you really don't have any context. Are they somehow important in the sector? What role do they play? Or are they just generic baddies (or so it seems)? Well, in the end there's a twist and an interesting phenomenon is discovered. This philosophical part isn't bad but very shallow
This episode is totally inconsequential. Off they go and next week's episode starts as if nothing had happened.