3x24 Displaced

[7.5/10] Sometimes a good premise is enough. There’s not really much in the way of depth to “Displaced.” There’s not a ton of philosophical development or characters arcs to speak of. The episode doesn’t really speak to some essential part of the human experience.

But it’s a neat problem and an exciting adventure. Members of Voyager keep disappearing, only to be replaced by members of an unknown group called the Nyrians who seem just as puzzled by the switch as our heroes. I’ll confess, I found that part kind of boring, because it suggested a standard issue spatial anomaly. When B’Elanna explained the possibility of the vessel having snagged on a baby wormhole, I rolled my eyes, because of course, right?

From there, though, things get much more exciting. The simple fact of the senior staff trying to keep the ship running with a dwindling crew has the thrill of testing the limits of what it takes to run a starship. Chakotay’s efforts at sabotage once he realizes the Nyrians have ill intentions sees him being gutsy and resourceful, and it may be the most I’ve ever liked the character.

Nonetheless, business really starts to pick up when you find out where they’re being beamed to. It turns out the Nyrians have inveigled them into a contained habitat on a biosphere meant to be their prison, while the aliens take over Voyager. The problem is unique. As I said for “Distant Origin”, we don’t meet enough Delta aliens who are outright more powerful and capable than Starfleet, so it’s always a bit of a thrill when someone can get the better of our heroes on technology alone. The Nyrians’ long distance transporter, and their ability to creates a variety of different environments side by side, makes them formidable opponents.

Frankly, I wish we got to know them a little better. Their motivations are a generic, “We use this as a means to gain territory and resources.” But there’s something interesting about the fact that they’ve found a fairly non-violent method of doing so. They don’t wage wars, exactly. And while they’ve undoubtedly imprisoned the Voyager crew, they’ve also aimed to make it as nice as possible. The Nyrians aren’t mustache-twirling villains. They have at least some scruples. And my one big complaint is that I wish we got see more of how that aligned and conflicted with Starfleet principles.

Regardless, it’s exciting to see Janeway and company tossed into a challenging survival situation and forced to adapt and improvise to find a way out of their captivity. “Displaced” easily one-ups “The Basics” on that account, since what cozy jail cell lacks in desperation, it makes up for with the Nyrians pulling the strings on the other side of the walls. It may not be the headiest plot Star Trek: Voyager has ever done, but the simple chance to contemplate what you’d do in a similar situation, and watch the crew think and improvise their way through, makes this one entertaining the whole way through.

The closest thing “Displaced” hits to a theme deeper than “ship wide Voyager jailbreak” is B’Elanna breaking down the walls of “hostility” she puts up to keep people from getting close to her. It’s fine, I guess. I’m probably too scarred from James Cameron’s The Abyss, where one of the key themes was a misogynistic “My ex-wife really needed to be less of a bitch” takeaway, so I’m a little leery of stories about how women need to be nicer, especially with Tom being a little pointed and insistent himself in ways I don’t love despite the pair’s slap-slap-kiss chemistry.

That said, story editor Lisa Klink is the writer for this one, and taken charitably, you can read her experiences here as a story of someone realizing that others care for them, and so it’s safe to drop your defenses and let them in. Candidly, I’m not sure if that’s dramatized as well as it could be. Tom shows his devotion to her in a desperate situation when the Nyrians are chasing them, which is good! You get the sense of the script trying to show that sometimes his insistence is a way of showing he cares.

The catch is that the dialogue is clumsy through all of this, and we kind of already did this in “Blood Fever”. It hasn’t been developed for that long, but I’ve reached the point where I’m ready for the show to stop dithering and just put the two of them together, especially if we’re already recycling certain beats. But in a status quo-reverting show like Voyager, I suppose it’s nice to have something that unspools steadily but gradually over time.

But the real fun is in Janeway and her allies breaking their way out of their idyllic cage and gaining the upper hand. You see some real cleverness at play here. Trading food for information with a neighboring prisoner who found a gap in the holonet shows Janeway’s shrewdness. That neighbor explaining how he found the gap, and B’Elanna adjusting The Doctor’s optical sensor to find another one shows real resourcefulness. The scene where Tuvok and Chakotay gab about the Vulcan’s ability to improvise when constructing a makeshift weapon feels like a late addition scene to fill out the runtime, but adds character to the escapades.

And Janeway and Tuvok finding the prison’s command center, using the programs downloaded from Voyager to take it over, and turning the tables on their captors is downright triumphant. The story even has a good setup and payoff, with the Nimirians constantly complaining about how cold it is on the Starfleet vessel, leading Janeway to beam them into a frozen tundra environment to negotiate so she can have the upper hand psychologically as well as physically.

It’s rare that you see what our heroes are capable of even when they don’t have all of Voyager’s resources at their disposal. While “The Basics” felt kind of cheap in its attempt to do the same sort of thing, “Displaced” sees them at their best even when they’re not in their element. This is competency done up to the nines, and it’s an engrossing part of pretty much every Star Trek show.

The episode also features some big set pieces. While there’s something inherently a bit comical with the crew getting into fights with the silly hat brigade, we get a lot of new sets and settings. The utopian habitat where the crew’s deposited isn’t that different, but comes with the juice of being a gilded cage. The backstage area that Janeway and Tuvok find feels appropriately alien in its script and color scheme. And even the brief glances we get at the different environments within the biosphere give this one a sense of place.

I don’t normally come to Star Trek for pure plot. I come for character, I come for big ideas, I come for chances to reflect our world back at us via the mirror of speculative fiction. But by god, sometimes it’s nice to just see a cool sci-fi idea done big and done right. “Displaced” is closer to the bombast of movie Trek than the typically more grounded confines of the television series. But it achieves exactly what it sets out to do and does so in a way that demonstrates what Janeway and company are truly capable of. That's well worth enjoying too.