Star Trek 462: Caretaker

462. Caretaker

FORMULA: The Maquis + (The Nth Degree x Schisms) + Emissary

WHY WE LIKE IT: Good set-up. The alien environments.

WHY WE DON'T: Janeway's voice.

REVIEW: With TNG in film land, there was room on Star Trek's slate for a new ship-based show (though theoretically, it might have been better to wait out a series before starting another). Voyager is that show. The premise is one that has potential if they can successfully pull it off, but having obviously seen the entire series before, I know it's a tale full of missed opportunities. Still, I look forward to re-evaluating Voyager, perhaps based on the fact that its pilot is actually very good. I remember the series promising at the time alien people and environments like none seen before as the ship lost in an unexplored quadrant tried to make its way back home, a promise they make fairly good on in the opening chapter.

In the Star Trek allegory, the Delta Quadrant might be seen as the Third World of the galaxy. The aliens we meet have no replicators or transporter technology, and even have trouble getting water! This will make Voyager a target for pirates, and the starring pirates here are the Kazon, a tribal race with elegant bronze ships, though they are superficially akin to Klingons. In the future, we'll see plague victims, hunter societies and polluters in this part of space, seemingly symptomatic of a more primitive and/or run-down area. Maybe the Borg have assimilated everything worthwhile, who knows? They're the only natives to the DQ we already know about. Certainly, the environments look good, with nice matte paintings, and location shooting that looks alien.

But Star Trek isn't really about having a universe to explore, it's about the characters. The Voyager crew has potential too, with built-in conflict à la DS9 thanks to half the crew being killed in the trip to the DQ and being replaced with the Maquis they were hunting. Janeway's first appearance originally surprised me. I wasn't expecting that raspy voice, and I know I wasn't the only one. But she comes off well once that's out of the way. Her science background is different from other captains', though it'll get us into technobabble territory a little too often for my tastes in the future, and she's compassionate and reasonable. She has a Kirk-Spock or Sisko-Dax relationship with Tuvok, a Vulcan oddly cast as a security officer, but Tim Russ has the perfect deadpan delivery for this no-nonsense character. Harry Kim is the wide-eyed ensign who almost gets fleeced by Quark. He's got a good heart, but is prone to making mistakes, and he may just be Tom Paris' only friend. Tom Paris, for his part, might as well be Nick Locarno. Not only is he being played by the same actor, but he's got the same kind of backstory - a maverick pilot who screwed up and got himself sent to the stockade. Better name though. The Starfleet characters are given relationships, families and pets that they are leaving behind or willingly running from, adding weight to their story.

Coming aboard to replace Janeway's more boring crew are... Chakotay, a Maquis leader who may just be the glue that holds the ship together if his conflict with Paris doesn't get in the way. His cod-American Indian heritage is intriguing, though a little non-specific. B'Elanna Torres, the half-Klingon engineer, is certainly a spitfire, sometimes in danger of being as grating as Kira was in DS9's first season. Still, she's a nice contrast to Harry Kim, and they are paired up here as the two young, rash turks coming from opposite sides of the street. Robert Picardo makes his first Trek appearance (if not the first in these reviews) as the Emergency Medical Hologram. He's efficient and oddly robotic at this point, though his acerbic personality is already apparent. He's cast in the explorer of humanity role, but offers different possibilities and comedy bits than did Data and Odo.

And then there's the aliens. Visually, I'm not enamored with them. One's designed to look like a troll, the other like an elf. It's all too "fantasy" for my tastes. Kes is a little ethereal and devoid of personality, which didn't work for either Troi or Dax, so I'm not sure about it here. Her paranormal mental abilities are hinted at, so that's something to look for, but one of the show's missed opportunities is using her 9-year life span (even though it is nonsense) to chart the progress of the series. Over 7 years, Kes could have grown progressively older and wiser. Sadly, that never happened, and she's already too wise for her own good here. Neelix is the obvious clown character (like Quark before him), and has some fun moments (singing in the tub, for example). He and Kes make an unlikely (and chaste?) couple, and his abilities as a guide may be hyperbole, but he's already got some good chemistry with Tuvok and other characters going.

As for the ship, I think the show's a bit smug about Voyager's advanced technology, but it looks good enough. The arrow-head saucer gives off a sense of speed and maneuverability. The moving nacelles look a little silly, but are no doubt a response to Force of Nature's warp speed limit thing (an episode that has much to answer for). Certainly, the ship looks great zooming around the opening credits in gorgeous special effects. The theme tune is in the DS9 mold, not unpleasant, but not particularly distinctive either. The same can be said of the interior sets. Voyager's color palette is on the gray side, with blocky play pens for Ops and Tactical. Nice enough engine room and a huge ready room for the captain to mix things up when blocking scenes in there. The conference room has too huge a table though. What's the point of that? Sickbay's ok, with some colorful highlights at least (because of the EMH, we're going to spend a fair bit of time in there). Oh, and I can't say I like the new transporter effect, with its bright blue ovals. Looks like a step back from TNG.

The story itself has things in common with other Star Trek pilots. An ambiguously benevolent god-like alien interferes in the crew's lives, creates surreal Earth-like environments as part of some puzzle or test, and so it goes. Nothing really new, but it does allow the characters and concepts to be introduced. Aside from getting everyone together, there's not much to the Caretaker. The disease he gives Harry and B'Elanna is pretty much waved away, for example, but he does give the crew their first taste of Gilligan's Island Syndrome. Since we know the premise of the show is "Lost in the Delta Quadrant", we also know there's no way an episode will end with Voyager getting home. The show will have to struggle with this throughout its run, trying to juggle just how many times success can be snatched away at the last minute without it becoming ridiculous.

LESSON: So what if a Maquis style would be better at flying by the seat of your pants? Voyager is a Starfleet ship, dammit! And it'll follow Starfleet rules.

REWATCHABILITY - High: Voyager starts out well, perhaps not as well as Emissary, but certainly more solidly than TNG. The cast has potential, as does the premise. I'd say Caretaker was good at setting the series up even if the story itself is nothing to write home about.