[5.8/10] There is a laudable impulse behind “Thirty Days”, as there so often is with Voyager. I understand the desire to want to mark how Tom Paris has changed over the course of the series. The notion that he remains a rulebreaker, but now one who violates regulations in the name of good causes rather than self-interest, is a good one. It puts him on the standard arc of the roguish, Han Solo-esque archetype he embodied when the show started.
There’s a few problems with the execution, though. The biggest of them is simple -- Tom hasn’t changed that much over the course of the show. The series’ first episode featured a lot of big talk about how he was an unreliable pariah and self-interested scamp, but like so much from that opening salvo, Voyager all but abandoned the idea surprisingly quickly.
Sure, Tom would make the occasional smart remark or get into some mild trouble. But almost immediately, he became a consummate officer who would be indistinguishable serving aboard the Enterprise. Sure, he had some lingering daddy issues and would occasionally engage in some untoward sidling up to Kes. But he readily became a sort of Riker Jr., sometimes a little bold or a little too flirtatious, but a diligent and reliable member of the crew.
So when “Thirty Days” tries to make a big deal about how Tom’s had this big change of heart under Janeway’s tutelage, to where now he’ll go big to do the right thing, it rings false. We’ve already seen that attitude from Paris ten times over. At best, it was put to bed in his faux-defection arc that culminated in season 2’s “Investigations”. So what’s meant to be a crowning achievement of his grand transformation seems like business as usual for Tom as we’ve known him for the past four and a half seasons, which weakens the point considerably.
Even taking the episode on its own merits, this is a peculiar story to dramatize that idea. It’s founded on a love of all things nautical from Tom that we (a.) have never heard from him before and (b.) doesn’t track with his existing hot rod and B-movie sensibilities. More to the point, the cause he’s willing to risk his life and career for is framed in a downright odd manner.
“Thirty Days” presents a pretty standard Star Trek story on environmentalism. The locals live on an ocean world, only the ocean is steadily dissipating. With Voyager’s help, they discover that the cause of the issue is the locals’ industrial operation. But to Tom’s dismay, they’re unlikely to make the adjustments necessary to avoid degradation and disaster, instead burying the findings in unread reports and useless committees.
Hey, that's a familiar real world story, which gives it some resonance! It’s downright sad that this episode is twenty-five years old and we’re dealing with the same problem today. The notion of Tom wanting to take direct action, to catalyze a necessary societal change that might otherwise be a sticking point politically could be engrossing and sympathetic.
Except, that material and motivation is kind of there, but instead, the script seems to focus on the idea that Tom isn’t as concerned about the well-being of these people so much as he just loves this big weird ocean planet. The supposed altruism doesn’t quite add up when Tom is more fixated on preserving the majesty of open water than he is on the lives and well-being of the individuals that live beneath it. And the premise also makes for a weird environmental parable since it turns out the ocean planet was artificially constructed in the first place, rather than a natural phenomena. It’s like risking your life to save somebody’s giant pool.
Oddly enough, the only truly compelling part of the episode is the neat sci-fi concept at the core of the ocean planet. Star Trek rarely deals with underwater species (they’re a lot less expensive to depict in, say, The Animated Series). So there’s an inherent thrill to seeing some alien ships emerge from beneath the waves and explain that their entire society exists down there. The design team does a superb job imagining what that type of civilization might look like, and to the episode’s credit, the notion of a planetoid that's nothing but ocean is cool. Throw in the standard, “It turns out some ancient people built this whole thing centuries ago” Star Trek twist, and a few giant electric eels for good measure, and you have a solid backdrop to get the audience’s attention with.
Unfortunately, the characters involved are flat and generic. The Monean leader, Burkus, is a standard politician type, and his scientific counterpart, Riga, is an almost comical nerdy cliche. The dialogue does no favors for them or Tom. The episode tries to give TOm all of these meaningful conversations reflecting on his life and hangups and choices, but almost all of them fall flat.
The structure of the episode doesn’t help either. I don’t necessarily mind story formats that mortgage drama from later in the plot. Starting off with Tom being demoted and sentenced to a month in the brig should add an inherent tension to the proceedings. What did he do to warrant such a punishment? What cause did he find so worthwhile that he was willing to risk this possibility?
But “Thirty Days” drags those answers out, and when we get them, they’re unsatisfying. When the thing Tom’s so worked up about doesn’t feel like an especially big deal, the whole mystery angle comes off like a cheap trick. The show does wring some tension from his attempted assault on the key mining operation or whatever, with the perfectly timed “depth charge” neutralization being a particular thrill. But even that doesn’t amount to much, especially since we already know Tom makes it out of the situation unscathed thanks to the frame story.
Worse yet, the script clunkily tries to convey that Tom is going stir crazy in confinement, but you never quite feel the passage of time or sense of his struggle in there, since most of our time is spent in flashback anyway. The frame story gives us a hook for Tom to write a letter to his dad and reflect on who he was before and who he’s become, which is good in principle. But when the personal epiphany he’s supposedly had is weak, and the underlying story that supports it is just as lackluster, the framing narrative comes off like a waste of time.
In a strange way, “Thirty Days” feels indebted to the version of Tom from the earliest stretch of the show. If you’d done this episode early in Voyager’s run, when Tom was still nominally rough around the edges, focused on himself, and an outsider to Starfleet values, it might carry weight. But despite being a cut-up sometimes, Tom has been a noble, dependable officer for several seasons now -- pretty much the whole show, frankly.
To have a sense of marking change, the audience has to see the change. Tom seems no more likely to make such a grand gesture in the name of the greater good now than he was four years ago. You can have various characters, including Paris himself, remark about how far he’s come, but we watch the episodes, you know! We’ve seen how he’s acted to date, and this is not remarkable behavior from him.
As with so much from Voyager’s original premise, there’s a great story to be told there -- about a screw-up son of an admiral finding his best self amid unexpected circumstances. Unfortunately, that's not really the story the series has been telling since the first few episodes, when Tom became a solid officer and never really flinched from there. The enforced stasis of Voyager in particular belies that sort of change over time. And if you want to tell that kind of story, you can't cram it all into a single episode, even one that takes place over thirty days.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2024-05-31T20:44:25Z
[5.8/10] There is a laudable impulse behind “Thirty Days”, as there so often is with Voyager. I understand the desire to want to mark how Tom Paris has changed over the course of the series. The notion that he remains a rulebreaker, but now one who violates regulations in the name of good causes rather than self-interest, is a good one. It puts him on the standard arc of the roguish, Han Solo-esque archetype he embodied when the show started.
There’s a few problems with the execution, though. The biggest of them is simple -- Tom hasn’t changed that much over the course of the show. The series’ first episode featured a lot of big talk about how he was an unreliable pariah and self-interested scamp, but like so much from that opening salvo, Voyager all but abandoned the idea surprisingly quickly.
Sure, Tom would make the occasional smart remark or get into some mild trouble. But almost immediately, he became a consummate officer who would be indistinguishable serving aboard the Enterprise. Sure, he had some lingering daddy issues and would occasionally engage in some untoward sidling up to Kes. But he readily became a sort of Riker Jr., sometimes a little bold or a little too flirtatious, but a diligent and reliable member of the crew.
So when “Thirty Days” tries to make a big deal about how Tom’s had this big change of heart under Janeway’s tutelage, to where now he’ll go big to do the right thing, it rings false. We’ve already seen that attitude from Paris ten times over. At best, it was put to bed in his faux-defection arc that culminated in season 2’s “Investigations”. So what’s meant to be a crowning achievement of his grand transformation seems like business as usual for Tom as we’ve known him for the past four and a half seasons, which weakens the point considerably.
Even taking the episode on its own merits, this is a peculiar story to dramatize that idea. It’s founded on a love of all things nautical from Tom that we (a.) have never heard from him before and (b.) doesn’t track with his existing hot rod and B-movie sensibilities. More to the point, the cause he’s willing to risk his life and career for is framed in a downright odd manner.
“Thirty Days” presents a pretty standard Star Trek story on environmentalism. The locals live on an ocean world, only the ocean is steadily dissipating. With Voyager’s help, they discover that the cause of the issue is the locals’ industrial operation. But to Tom’s dismay, they’re unlikely to make the adjustments necessary to avoid degradation and disaster, instead burying the findings in unread reports and useless committees.
Hey, that's a familiar real world story, which gives it some resonance! It’s downright sad that this episode is twenty-five years old and we’re dealing with the same problem today. The notion of Tom wanting to take direct action, to catalyze a necessary societal change that might otherwise be a sticking point politically could be engrossing and sympathetic.
Except, that material and motivation is kind of there, but instead, the script seems to focus on the idea that Tom isn’t as concerned about the well-being of these people so much as he just loves this big weird ocean planet. The supposed altruism doesn’t quite add up when Tom is more fixated on preserving the majesty of open water than he is on the lives and well-being of the individuals that live beneath it. And the premise also makes for a weird environmental parable since it turns out the ocean planet was artificially constructed in the first place, rather than a natural phenomena. It’s like risking your life to save somebody’s giant pool.
Oddly enough, the only truly compelling part of the episode is the neat sci-fi concept at the core of the ocean planet. Star Trek rarely deals with underwater species (they’re a lot less expensive to depict in, say, The Animated Series). So there’s an inherent thrill to seeing some alien ships emerge from beneath the waves and explain that their entire society exists down there. The design team does a superb job imagining what that type of civilization might look like, and to the episode’s credit, the notion of a planetoid that's nothing but ocean is cool. Throw in the standard, “It turns out some ancient people built this whole thing centuries ago” Star Trek twist, and a few giant electric eels for good measure, and you have a solid backdrop to get the audience’s attention with.
Unfortunately, the characters involved are flat and generic. The Monean leader, Burkus, is a standard politician type, and his scientific counterpart, Riga, is an almost comical nerdy cliche. The dialogue does no favors for them or Tom. The episode tries to give TOm all of these meaningful conversations reflecting on his life and hangups and choices, but almost all of them fall flat.
The structure of the episode doesn’t help either. I don’t necessarily mind story formats that mortgage drama from later in the plot. Starting off with Tom being demoted and sentenced to a month in the brig should add an inherent tension to the proceedings. What did he do to warrant such a punishment? What cause did he find so worthwhile that he was willing to risk this possibility?
But “Thirty Days” drags those answers out, and when we get them, they’re unsatisfying. When the thing Tom’s so worked up about doesn’t feel like an especially big deal, the whole mystery angle comes off like a cheap trick. The show does wring some tension from his attempted assault on the key mining operation or whatever, with the perfectly timed “depth charge” neutralization being a particular thrill. But even that doesn’t amount to much, especially since we already know Tom makes it out of the situation unscathed thanks to the frame story.
Worse yet, the script clunkily tries to convey that Tom is going stir crazy in confinement, but you never quite feel the passage of time or sense of his struggle in there, since most of our time is spent in flashback anyway. The frame story gives us a hook for Tom to write a letter to his dad and reflect on who he was before and who he’s become, which is good in principle. But when the personal epiphany he’s supposedly had is weak, and the underlying story that supports it is just as lackluster, the framing narrative comes off like a waste of time.
In a strange way, “Thirty Days” feels indebted to the version of Tom from the earliest stretch of the show. If you’d done this episode early in Voyager’s run, when Tom was still nominally rough around the edges, focused on himself, and an outsider to Starfleet values, it might carry weight. But despite being a cut-up sometimes, Tom has been a noble, dependable officer for several seasons now -- pretty much the whole show, frankly.
To have a sense of marking change, the audience has to see the change. Tom seems no more likely to make such a grand gesture in the name of the greater good now than he was four years ago. You can have various characters, including Paris himself, remark about how far he’s come, but we watch the episodes, you know! We’ve seen how he’s acted to date, and this is not remarkable behavior from him.
As with so much from Voyager’s original premise, there’s a great story to be told there -- about a screw-up son of an admiral finding his best self amid unexpected circumstances. Unfortunately, that's not really the story the series has been telling since the first few episodes, when Tom became a solid officer and never really flinched from there. The enforced stasis of Voyager in particular belies that sort of change over time. And if you want to tell that kind of story, you can't cram it all into a single episode, even one that takes place over thirty days.