469. EmanationsFORMULA: Who Watches the Watchers + Half a Life
WHY WE LIKE IT: Harry puts everything on the line.
WHY WE DON'T: The science of the after-life.
REVIEW: Discovering a graveyard in space, Chakotay gets a chance to flex his anthropological muscles, which I really like. Anthropology hasn't been featured as a Starfleet skill much in the past 18 reviewed seasons, so it's an interesting expertise to spotlight. Unfortunately, the episode quickly turns into a visit to an alternate dimension (you can tell because of the dutch angles) and the Voyager-based stuff becomes rather macabre as dead bodies start appearing all over the ship.
Kim's appearance in a world that considers ours to be the after-life is troubling for that society, naturally, but Chakotay's opening musings open us to the question of how this society evolved. How did they discover the subspace vacuoles and how did they come to the conclusion that they were gateways to the after-life? Why does the cenotaph have to kill them? Did no one just walk through and disappear originally? A suicide ritual is all well and good, but do you spend your life avoiding accidents? I know, I know, I should ask questions of an episode that just presented small asteroids able to sustain an atmosphere, but...
Discussing faith is perfectly doable in the usually atheistic Star Trek mindset, but should the show really be trying to explain the Mystical Experience in science-fiction tropes? Though dramatically ironic that the Vhnori, who don't believe in souls, should exist in their "next emanation" as non-corporeal beings, representing their souls as neural energy turns what should remain a Mystery with a capital M into technobabble. After all, the Defiant's sensors never picked up anyone's "pah" entering the Wormhole. If the Vhnori have souls, then don't we all? And if their souls are neural energy packets, isn't ours as well? It is silly to even attempt to answer these questions.
Though the presented explanations did make me wince, it's still not a bad episode for the featured characters. Kim shows courage by playing an all or nothing game, allowing himself to die to get back to Voyager. Janeway is unusually philosophical in forcing him to reflect on his near-death experience. The bit with Vhnori girl turns out to be a red herring that may remind you a heck of a lot of Who Watches the Watchers, but it's not without pathos.
LESSON: Doing this review on Good Friday is strange, but could have been stranger. This could have been Easter.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Wrong-headed explanations aside, a fairly good Harry Kim vehicle.
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