2x07 Parturition

[5.4/10] I wish I could take the creative team of Star Trek:Voyager who decided to lean into a Neelix/Kes/Tom love triangle, shine a bright light in their eyes, and ask them what the hell they were thinking. It’s a dynamic that makes no one look good, and it undermines three of the show’s main cast members on an unpleasantly regular basis.

Tom seems like a cad for plainly flirting with and otherwise sidling up to someone who’s attached, and a prig for denying it when confronted by Neelix. Neelix is totally justified in his suspicions, but is a possessive or passive aggressive jerk to Kes over it, rather than handling the situation like an adult. And Kes either seems terribly naive about Tom’s intentions, belying an innocence that makes her Electra complex romance with Neelix that much more awkward, or as she herself suggests, might have been willfully blind because at some subconscious level she welcomed it.

Basically, everyone sucks here. These aren’t necessarily the show’s three strongest characters to begin with, and miring them in this middle school nonsense does no one any favors. The more Voyager lingers on the love triangle, the less likable each of them becomes.

So I’m already primed to hate “Parturition”, an episode founded on the love triangle and the tensions and affections in it frothing to a boil. Tom whines to Harry about realizing he’s in love with Kes. Neelix gets into a fight with Tom when recognizing his obvious advances. Kes learns from the Doctor that her boyfriend’s jealousy isn’t unfounded and her suitor’s feelings are real. And I literally said, “Oh Gooooooood,” out loud, to no one, once I realized where this was going.

This isn’t the mature, grown-up relationships of Jean-Luc and Beverly, or Will and Deanna, or even Odo’s hidden feelings for Kira that are buried in professional obligations and personal insecurities. It is instead, a childish spat among idiots, each of whom comes off poorly for the romantic tangles.

And yet, I half-admire “Parturition” for at least trying to adapt a “Can’t go over it; can't go under it; gotta go through it” approach to the tripartite romance. It’s an old trope in stories writ large, not just Star Trek, to throw two people having personal issues with one another into some scrape together, and watch them work through their differences and come to some sort of understanding amid the crisis of the week. Sending Paris and Neelix on an away mission gone wrong, where they’re forced to stop their sniping, band together, and survive or else, is a canny choice. And trying to resolve these issues once and for all is an even better one.

There’s just a couple of problems. First, Neelix and Tom are insufferable when they’re griping and tweaking one another. Tom’s a bad pilot! Neelix is a bad cook! Tom’s a prick! Neelix is a ninny! We get it! I know you have to set up their mutual enmity so that their getting over it means something. But by god, it’s unpleasant to have to sit through all of the grousing when they get stranded on an inhospitable planet together.

Second, the mission that brings them together is...mostly unrelated to their problems? When searching for food, they find an egg hatching, and after some testy debate about whether to nurture or abandon it before its mother returns, resolve to look after it together. The act of caring for the little hatchling brings Neelix and Tom closer together.

Charitably, you could say that watching both of them in a caretaker role helps them see another side of one another. Suddenly Neelix isn’t a lousy cook; he’s a devoted “godmother.” Suddenly Paris isn’t a libertine on the prowl, he’s a resourceful uncle figuring out ways to feed a newborn. Less charitably, it’s not clear why having to take care of an alien infant would do much to resolve the central dispute between them, beyond some generic, “forced us to work as a team” esprit de corps.

Plus, it has to be said, the little alien hatchling is ugly as sin, as is its mother. I know cuteness isn’t everything, and hell, Talaxians may find little reptilian abominations cute by nature. In principle, I admire the effects and makeup teams for dreaming up a creature that doesn’t trigger our instinctual infant-protection impulses, while one of our heroes still declares that it’s a baby from a sentient species and deserves all the same protections and care a human baby would. In practice, though, the thing is an obvious, hideous puppet, and its humanoid reptilian mother is almost comical too. We’ve come along way since Sulu’s hand-flower, but still, the aliens of the week play like rejected designs from Dinosaurs.

The away mission does give Kes some time to reflect on the situation. While her exact conversation with the Doctor is a little on the nose (though still funny), and doesn’t necessarily feel believable, it does finally lay out the truth about Tom to Kes, which is a big step. More to the point, her scenes lean into the combination of anger and fear when someone you love is at risk but they’ve also made some stupid choices. It’s one of the few relatable things in the episode, and Jennifer Lien plays it well.

Still, apart from unrelated plot hurdles, awkward hand puppets, and a perfunctory search for the mission crew members by the rest of the team on Voyager, “Parturition” makes the smartest choice of the show so far when it comes to the love triangle du jour -- spur the two suitors to have (gasp) an adult conversation about their issues.

Neelix apologizes for being rough on Tom, admits he judged him harshly based on his reputation, and understands why Kes would gravitate toward someone like him who needed a friend. Tom admits Neelix’s suspicions aren’t wrong and that he is attracted to Kes, but promises not to act on his feelings and underscores how devoted Kes is to him. Again, their dialogue isn’t perfect, but it’s the most mature, grown-up approach to this whole thing we’ve seen yet, so I’ll take it.

Of course, in the end, they’re rescued, and Kes welcomes both back, and there’s even a budding friendship between Neelix and Tom after such a rough ride. The resolution is a little quick, but you know what? I’ll take a bond that forms a little quicker than it should if it emerges from two grown men who’ve been acting like lovestruck teenagers actually hashing out their problems like adults. Sadly, this would not be the end of the romantic entanglements between Tom, Kes, and Neelix, but at least it could have been.

When you think it can't get any worse they pull a rabbit out of the hat. Or should I say a dinosaur?

After displaying Neelix' jealousy time and again they decide to play into that by having Tom announcing he's falling in love with Kes. Well, he does tell it to Harry, anyway. Which later lead to Neelix throwing food at Tom and they both have a little fight. Like we needed to see that. They both then act childish by refusing to go on a mission together althought ordered to do so. For once I'm really on Janeway's who simply tells them to "solve it!"
The second half could have been out of a Disney movie. Let me just say as much as I appreciate this being possibly the beginning of a good friendship, and the both of them showing understanding and respect, I wish they could have come up with a different way of doing it.
Some thoughts on the production: Mulgrew's hair was initially open like we see here when they started shooting Voyager's pilot. You can see some scenes on the Bonus DVD. But the studio didn't like it and it was changed to the Janeway bun and there were several re-shots. To quote Micheal Piller:" The costs for hair were exceeding the cost for VFX."
I always thought it looked too much like a Granny Janeway and I am glad they went back to this version. She looks much better that way.