3x26 Scorpion (1)

[8.2/10] Despite being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager doesn’t have to struggle much. Sure, they go out of their way to get some obscure fuel component or gripe about having to eat Neelix’s cooking now and then. But for the most part, life on Voyager in the Delta Quadrant doesn’t seem that different from life on the Enterprise in the Alpha Quadrant.

I’ve long thought that’s kind of a waste of a premise. Yes, Voyager is supposed to be a top of the line ship. But it’s been years! They’re far away from resources and help! They don’t know the locals! They could be overmatched at every turn! Instead, the vast majority of what they face is pretty standard stuff. Things never feel that different, or desperate, or truly reflective of their different circumstances.

Until now.

“Scorpion” may as well be Voyager’s coming out party. I don’t want to pretend that all the show’s problems go away after this or anything. But it’s a clear turning point for the series, where what it centered on, and the stories it strove to tell, began to change. And nothing speaks to that better than the fact that Janeway and company face arguably their most existentially difficult problem yet, one with no easy answers that leaves them feeling gravely and truly desperate for once.

Part of that is the Borg, and I have to tell you, I’m kind of tired of the Borg. That is not Voyager’s fault (or at least, wasn’t the show’s fault at this stage). But so many Star Trek shows have gone back to the Borg over and over again since TNG hit a high water mark with “The Best of Both Worlds” and eventually Star Trek: First Contact. It’s been a constant string of diminishing returns, in the decades since then.

But this is the most interesting the Borg have seemed in a while because, for once, they’re on their back foot. “Scorpion” gets your attention from the get-go. In the teaser, a group of Borg Cubes, the most fearsome harbingers of death in the franchise this side of The Dominion, pop into view. And they’re just as soon unceremoniously destroyed.

Now we’ve played this game before. The Borg wrecked the Federation’s fleet in The Next Generation. The Dominion destroyed a galaxy class starship like it was nothing on Deep Space Nine. You can only play this game of escalation for so long before it ceases to have any meaning. But for the moment at least, it’s a thrill to see a species that can not only match the Borg, but best them.

They are...Species 8472, the psychic Xenomorph-looking baddies who hail from parts unknown and can wreck Borg cubes like they’re nothing. Credit where it’s due to Voyager’s writers. It’s not easy to come up with a new Big Bad-type species. (Recall that Gene Roddenberry originally wanted the codpiece-wearing, electrowhip-wielding Ferengi to be that for The Next Generation.) And yet, Species 8472 is sufficiently cool and different if for no other reason than they are the anti-Borg.

If the Borg are the peak of technology with their mechanical menace, Species 8472 are the peak of organic life, with a densely coded genome that cannot be stopped. The Borg absorb the distinctiveness of anything they encounter through their tech, but Species 8472’s biology is so complex that assimilation is useless against them. They have bioships, psychic connections, and a prowess that can throw even Star Trek’s biggest baddies for a loop like it’s nothing. You can only play the “bigger baddie” game for so long, but this is a hell of a coming out party for the new aliens on the block.

Which opens up the impossible danger for Voyager to respond to. There is something damn cool about Janeway and company gearing up to enter Borg space. The idea that our heroes have made it past the Kazon and the Vidians and other foes, but are now about to face the enemy that’s rocked Starfleet in the past, and have to go it alone, makes the crew feel like the plucky underdogs for, if not the first time, then certainly the most significant.

So it’s extra galling when the Voyager crew is loading for bear to fight the Borg, only to discover that there’s something worse and more dangerous waiting for them in this sector of space as well. I like the idea of the “Northwest Passage” -- a stretch of Borg space where they don’t seem to tread, which may provide a backroad through their territory. It gives Janeway and company something to shoot for, and a reasonable belief that with some pluck and gumption, they might make it through this danger unscathed. It makes the gut punch of discovering the Borg don’t go there because an ever more menacing and dangerous species lives there that much more acute.

“Scorpion” does a good job of establishing the prowess of Species 8472 early. I love the scenes set on the Borg cube after Species 8472 have attacked. Not only does it feel downright creepy, with a haunted house vibe to the whole thing that chills you (especially that weird Borg body clump), but it also sees a coldly efficient force thrown out of sync and out of whack. Drones stuck in walls, grunts trying and failing to assimilate SPecies 8472’s organic tissue, others swatted away like they’re ragdolls, all helps sell the audience on the fact that something new and that much scarier is in town, and not even the Federation’s fiercest enemy can stand up to it. And seeing poor Harry eaten alive by their genetic material helps sell what they’re capable of.

Which leads to the most interesting and worthwhile debate in the series to date -- is it really worth having this fight?

It’s a fair question. Voyager has held onto the hope of finding a way home for three years, but the truth is that it’s kind of a pipe dream in the first place. A seventy-year journey is a massive undertaking, and there’s no guarantee of finding a wormhole or godlike being to zap you back before some Delta Quadrant juggernaut comes to wreck you. Is it worth risking life and limb for something with a slim possibility in the first place?

I love that Janeway and Chakotay are the avatars for this debate, because it aligns and conflicts with their personal connection. I don’t know why, but the unspoken and lightly forbidden romantic attachment between the two of them is one of the best things about the show’s early years, if only because it forces layered performances, with characters who are feeling something significant but can only express it through their professionalism.

So the two of them discussing whether it’s worth it to go through Borg space, before they know about Species 8472, it comes laced with their personal attachments. Janeway’s concerned about what she's asking of her crew. Chakotay is reassuring though sympathetic to the cause of not diving into the fight. And in the midst of it all, he’s concerned for her personal well-being, and she says she can't imagine a day without him. It's two leaders who are dealing with a very difficult situation, but who are devoted to one another and to the mission.

That makes it that much more powerful when they’re in a very different posture just a few scenes later. When it turns out that Species 8472 is just as deadly and just as ready to wipe out anything that isn’t them, Janeway gets a half-brilliant/half-insane idea. What if they allied with the Borg? And Chakotay is low key aghast.

It’s a smart storytelling move from the writers. The idea of a Starfleet-Borg team-up is almost unthinkable, even as it’s unspeakably cool. But it's hard to imagine a situation in which it would ever make sense. Even here , it’s a bit of a stretch. But the idea that the Borg themselves are facing an existential threat, that the Doctor has found a way to use their nanoprobes to fight Species 8472, and that Voyager is willing to exchange that information for safe passage makes things downright plausible. It’s two desperate groups reaching to one another in an hour of need. Politics, and intergalactic warfare, makes strange bedfellows.

Granted, I don’t love everything about it. As much as I love John Rhys Davies from his turn Lord of the Rings, Janeway getting the no-win scenario epiphany from a Leonardo da Vinci hologram program is a little too cute. Likewise, it’s a little easy that Species 8472 are just murderous interlopers with no depth of their own beyond a convenient psychic delivery of “kill the weak.” (It’s no “resistance is futile”).

But I love the debate it spurs between Chakotay and Janeway. Janeway’s right that it’s likely their only option if they want to continue trying to make it home. She’s right to worry about taking away that hope from the crew who are stuck in the Delta Quadrant because of her choice. She’s right that she can take precautions to try to keep them safe despite this deal with the devil. She’s right that there’s no guarantee that turning away from this danger now will allow them to put it off forever.

But Chakotay is right that this is an incredible danger to put everyone in when they could just turn around and find some place safer to settle. He’s right that they’re interfering in the balance of power in the region without knowing what the consequences could be. He’s right that there’s little reason to think they can trust the Borg, even and especially when they’re desperate. And he’s right that this could all easily blow up in their faces on a multitude of levels.

Where they were onc allied in principle, they’re no in sharp disagreement Where they were practically about to kiss but for a well-timed comms interruption, now they look like they don’t even want to be in the same room with one another. Good drama is founded on hard choices. Nothing sells a good hard choice better than showing two people who care about one another, both making valid points that make sense based on who they are and where they stand, and both frustrated that the other won’t see the light of reason. There is a personal and professional cost to where they go from here, and that helps make this all meaningful.

So in the end, Janeway is the captain, and she makes the offer. This being a two-parter, of course we don’t get a full answer just yet, and there’s a deadly attack from the bad guys that totally won’t be brushed off in two minutes in part two. No way, no how!

Despite the schmuck bait, despite the teases, despite the dodgy mid-1990s CGI, this is the most intense and committed to its premise Voyager has ever been. For once, they feel like they’re overmatched with no good options. For once, they feel like a small ship in a vast galaxy far from home. For once, they feel like a vessel full of different people from different places with different ideas about how to proceed. In that, it’s nice to see Voyager become the show it always could have been, about struggle and resilience under impossible circumstances, if only for an episode.