470. Prime FactorsFORMULA: Justice + When the Bough Breaks + Caretaker
WHY WE LIKE IT: The moral dilemmas.
WHY WE DON'T: Gilligan's Island Syndrome.
REVIEW: It's nice to see the crews bonding in this episode, even if they're still sitting at different tables. And it makes the moral choices ahead a lot grayer too because sympathies aren't dictated by the shape of the pips on one's collar. B'Elanna's principles seem to have grown perhaps through osmosis, while Starfleet characters might show surprising pragmatism. One thing is for sure, that Seska is a real rabble-rouser, even devious, and seems to be meant to show off the rule-breaking nature of most Maquis (but stay tuned).
The guest aliens are the Sikarians, a generous people constantly in danger of terminal boredom. Their leader, space gigolo Ganth, has an interesting accent no one else shares, which is too bad because I'd love to call the whole of this culture Space Euro Trash. At least, that seems to be the characterization they're going for. While he's wooing Janeway, Harry's met a musical weather girl who teleports him to the Orgasm planet, and so it goes. Seduction in progress - tell us all your stories.
And there lies a possible trade between these people and our Intrepid crew. They need our literature and Voyager needs their spatial trajector to boost them thousands of light-years in one go. For once, it's Starfleet that's on the other end of the Prime Directive, and they don't handle it any better than other cultures we've seen. Pretty frustrating, eh? A back-alley deal is made with "book rebels" (the Sikarians' own brand of Maquis, you could say), but Gilligan's Island Syndrome rears its ugly head and it doesn't work.
But what is more interesting is just who mutinied against Janeway's express orders not to violate Sikarian laws. It may be notable that both Starfleet conspirators are family men who had an extra bit of motivation (in addition to the means and opportunity) to get themselves home in time for dinner. Carey has accepted his place in engineering, that's clear. Tuvok's betrayal is harder for Janeway to take. Mulgrew's a fine actress, managing to show anger at, and disappointment in, her "only friend", but at the same time, you can tell she's touched by his gesture, his trying to spare her a difficult decision. However good the performance, you might question whether it's a good idea to make the captain so emotionally open and vulnerable. We've just come off a mutiny after all, so making her look weak isn't building the audience's trust.
One small note on a crew member who DIDN'T mutiny: Tom Paris. Though earmarked as the bad boy of the spaceways, he's quite the straight arrow here, telling the book dealers to go to the captain with their plan, etc. Though is seems to stray from the series bible, I don't dislike this. He's been given a second chance, and a fierce loyalty to Janeway isn't misplaced.
LESSON: This may be why Tuvok's rank seems to take a dip sometime in the first season.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Prime Factors offers good performances and a very Trekkish moral dilemma. A high point of the first season.
Comments
The best part of the episode was the device's incompatibility. Finally, we see a piece of alien tech on Star Trek that doesn't magically work with some tweaking by Starfleet engineers *cough*Romulan cloaking device*cough*
That is, if the writers are willing to either a) give up all of the local color they've established to date or b) have no sense of scale. This early in the first season they won't do a and haven't yet fully fallen to b so it's a no go, but if this episode were scheduled elsewhere there could have been genuine suspense.