Star Trek 490: Alliances

490. Alliances

FORMULA: State of Flux + The Undiscovered Country + The Vengeance Factor

WHY WE LIKE IT: The Kazon step it up.

WHY WE DON'T: Janeway's justifications.

REVIEW: We're close enough to the last Kazon episode that it's believable Voyager hasn't left their space, but the multiple attacks and excessive damage Voyager has taken doesn't quite register visually. The ship looks as pristine as ever, and will continue to be so in episodes to come. Still, Chakotay feels an urgency to change the way things are done. Starfleet principles are all well and good, but maybe it's time to make some allies, and Tuvok agrees, name-checking Spock and ST VI's diplomatic overtures to the Klingons as an example. And yet, Janeway insists on interpreting the Prime Directive in the strictest possible way.

Sadly, while the plot of the episode is interesting, Janeway's hardline stance is a major flaw here. She makes it plain that Starfleet regulations are more important than the lives of her crew (never mind their safe return to the Alpha Quadrant) and though she attempts alliances with the Kazon and the Trabe, she uses that failure to ram her original opinion down everyone's throats. It's really passive-aggressive of her, and I'm not sure her arguments are at all logical at the end ("in a region with no rules, it's more important than ever to stick by them?" whaa?)

It's too bad, because the plot is really interesting. We meet the Trabe, the Kazon's former oppressors, who seem friendly enough until their contempt for the Kazon "lesser race" makes them show their true colors. The shuttle blasting the meeting of Kazon dons is a cool piece of business, even though it appears its firepower isn't much to speak of. We find out how the Kazon culture developped to be so brutish, and as brutes, they are still oblivious to the finer points of deception. That's what Seska's there for, now manipulating two men (Chakotay and Culluh) with her unborn child. The character of Michael Jonas is introduced, a new inside man aboard Voyager (and Hogan, but he's just a Maquis dissenter, not a traitor). And there's a sense that things are coming to a head and that the theat level is going up after this.

I'll try to throw in a head count when applicable so... Down to 147 crew and 44 torpedos.

LESSON: If there are no rules, write a rulebook.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Practically a Medium-High, but I find myself having deep misgivings about Janeway's behavior in this one. She's been surprisingly likeable up til now, but now I see how I formed an opposite opinion over the years.