2x09 Tattoo

[3.0/10] Star Trek has been shit when it comes to representing Indigenous peoples. The less said about “The Paradise Syndrome”, where Captain Kirk loses his memory and joins a relocated tribe, the better. The Next Generation’s attempt had better intentions, but still fell flat on its face with a vision-questing “medicine man” who turned out to be The Traveler, and a group of Indians who seem to believe Picard is guilty of inherited sin. Taken charitably, Chakotay’s presence on Voyager is an attempt to correct for that.

Somehow, it made things much worse. I’ve mentioned before how the show’s advisor on Native American practices was a total fraud, which doesn’t help in any instance Chakotay starts a sentence with, “My people...” But in episodes like “Tattoo”, which attempt to delve into the commander’s past and heritage, the franchise keeps digging itself a deeper and deeper hole of painfully bad representation.

The generic, ill-sourced attempts at representing Indigenous practices would be bad enough. But “Tattoo” goes one baffling step further. It proposes that Chakotay’s ancient ancestors were “without culture” which, hoo boy, is a loaded way to start off talking about Indigenous folks to begin with).

But it’s okay, you see, because they had a deep respect for life and the land! I want to be sympathetic to showrunner/screenwriter Michael Piller on this one, because it’s a well-meaning description. It is also, however, utterly patronizing, falling into scads of uncomfortable “noble savage” tropes that should have gone the way of the dodo. And if you’ve seen Star Trek: Insurrection, you’ll also notice that this whole thing falls into some of Piller’s superficial, crunchy California take on getting back to “simpler ways”, which are a little silly and quaint on their own, but take on a more insidious quality when they are, however obliviously or positively, ascribed to Indigenous communities and their histories.

That's not enough though! Because these noble-but-simple ancestors needed a visit from caucasian-looking aliens to give them an “inheritance” before they could thrive and flourish. And ugh, that is such a misguided, borderline offensive choice. Again, for starters the whole “ancient aliens” thing is pretty silly on a nuts and bolts level. (Though in fairness, it’s a familiar trope for Trek, see: “The Chase” from TNG.) On a deeper cultural commentary level, it’s hard to know what’s more distasteful: trying to respect the spiritual traditions of a Native culture while deciding that their deities were just extraterrestrials, or declaring that their ancestors were so underdeveloped that without extra help they never would have become so industrious or successful.

You can feel Piller and company trying to honor, even elevate Indigenous people with this sort of thing. On his account, they are the inheritors of a great gift, granted for their compassionate spirits, that paved the way for great success. But the patronizing, diminishing way the show’s creative team goes about trying to bestow that honor makes it that much more insulting.

Once more, you can see the positive intentions here. There’s even one of those dimestore, surface-level takedowns of colonialism at play in the dialogue. But the efforts to tell a story elevating Indigenous peoples and their history ends up falling back into pernicious tropes and misguided-at-best, attempts to give their past a sci-fi flair.

Oh yeah, and the holographic Doctor catches the flu. I don’t mind this subplot, but it’s an odd fit. Mixing a mystical journey that involves uncovering your ancestors’ origins with a loony B-story about Doc thinking his patients are all lily-livered ninnies doesn’t do either story any favors with the shifting tones.

And the Doctor’s story is firmly in sitcom mode. After he fails to show enough bedside manner, he decides to give himself a bout of holographic cold/flu to prove everyone on board complaining about discomfort is just a complainer. There’s a fun “Got more than you bargained for” quality to his struggles to deal with the sniffles.

There’s also some good moments for Kes here. Shehopes the experience will give him a little more sympathy for his patients, and even screws with the flu program to take the certainty out of the equation. It’s fun to see her be a little devious, if only in service of her trademark push toward empathy. It’s a silly story, and top performer Robert Picardo goes a little overboard with the Doctor’s demeanor, but the story is brief, pleasant enough, and the least of “Tattoo”’s problems.

Instead, those fall purely on the shoulders of Chakotay and his part of the story. As I mentioned with “Initiations”, any episode that focuses on the ship’s commander is working at a disadvantage, because stolid Robert Beltran doesn’t give the show’s directors much to work with in terms of energy or personality as a performer. Unfortunately, that's still the case here, as his reactions to symbols and experiences on a distant alien planet that are uncannily similar to the ones he had as a teenager back on Earth is one of mild surprise and curiosity, as though he just found out his local grocery story just introduced a new kind of muffin.

The script packs on the whole ancient alien nonsense to his story of navigating the planet of the week, which has resources the ship needs, but where nature itself seems to be combatting our heroes. The premise is pretty thin, and the individual moments tend to play as flat or simply goofy.

The one smart choice Piller makes in the script is to try to tie this strange encounter about aliens and Indians to a piece about Chakotay’s relationship with his father. In flashback, Henry Darrow does a great job as Chakotay’s father, carrying a gravitas and twinkle that Beltran would do well to muster a tenth of. While steeped in this uncomfortable crud, the tale of a young kid who rejected his father’s beliefs and traditions, but now finds himself regretful and pulled back to them as an adult when his dad is gone, is an emotional and understandable one.

And hey, fair play to Beltran! He’s not much to write home about in this episode. But when Chakotay wordlessly remembers his father and thinks back on what meeting the real life “sky spirits” would mean to him, his subtle, clearly affected facial expressions are spectacular. He even delivers the “I hear them now, dad” line, a dopey bit of dialogue if there ever was one, like gangbusters. So credit where it’s due -- he gets the most important part right.

But that's a minor salve to a giant sore of an episode. The source of the title here is that Chakotay’s tattoo is a tribute to his father’s, and that his father’s was a tribute to the Native “cousins” with whom they share common ancestors, and those ancestors have forehead features that resemble those markings because they’re partly descended from aliens. That's a metonym for the whole episode.

The small good elements here are a son trying to honor his father, and what he represented. The massive bad ones are a tone deaf attempt to honor Indigenous cultures, and a head-scratching decision to neuter their history by attributing it, and their religious beliefs, to aliens who look fresh from the country club. Unfortunately, Star Trek has a long history of screwing this up, and with episodes like “Tattoo”, there’s no end to the indignities in sight.