Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Living Witness

"Be good, little boys and girls, or Janeway's gonna get ya!"

Or how about...

"Mommy, there's a Chakotay in my closet!"

One more?

"And then Kim pulled himself out of the swamp, and instead of a hand, there was only a giant metal hook!"

Hee hee hee.

Hello there and welcome to my review of Star Trek Voyager's episode, "Living Witness." Ahead you will find multitudinous spoilers, a plethora of opinions, some nervous talk about race, and naked Voyager-lovin'. This is all meant expressly for the enjoyment of Voyager fans (of which there are far many more than many reviewers on the Internet would like you to believe). So if legends and holograms and fun social morals aren't your thing, why don't you head on over to:

Mars Mission Updates

Still with me? Aaaaallllll righty then!

INITIAL VIEWER RESPONSE
Hmmm. Something seems to be a bit odd here. I can't quite put my finger on it, but...Oh! I've got it! Yes! Paris has lost some weight!

HAHAHAHAHAHA

All right. All right. Everyone looks funny. They're wearing black gloves and talking like they've all had testosterone boosters. What's going on? Ah, I see...Hey, that's cool...You know, that history professor guy is just askin' for it...You tell 'em, Doc!...Oh dear...Oh, that makes me wanna cry, but in a good way.

PLOT
In the ready room, Janeway...kind of...is talking to some alien dude with a funny nose and forehead. Yes, the Latex Department has been working hard again.

Far more interesting than Delta Quadrant forehead #1876, Janeway really does look weird. Her hair is really short, her Starfleet combadge is gone, her turtleneck is black, and she's wearing black leather gloves. Except for the gloves, it's a definite fashion emergency.

When she speaks, there almost seems to be blood dripping from her fangs:

"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative: violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way."

Hm. Yup. That doesn't seem right.

Evil Janeway and the alien, who turns out to be the Vaskan Ambassador, make an agreement to have Voyager destroy the Vaskans' enemies, the Kyrians, in return for being led to a nearby cyclic wormhole.

On the bridge, thing really look strange. There's a Kazon security guy, a super-aggressive Neelix at ops, and a smarmy Tuvok at tactical, who leers a lot. Chakokay has a tattoo the size of Cleveland on his face. Everyone has the black turtlenecks, no badges, and is wearing nice black gloves.

The ship is under attack by Kyrian fighters, and Janeway is mowing them down. She asks "Chekotay" if he's tracked down the Kyrian leader, Tedran, yet, and says they need to flush him out. Janeway has the Doctor, who looks like a yellow-eyed android, finish working on biogenic weapons with which she'll infect the most populated Kyrian territories.

The Vaskan Ambassador objects to this slaughter of the populace, but she sneers that this is "no time for half-measures." The Doctor says the weapon is ready to go, and she has the ship fire.

And then suddenly we realize we're watching a simulation. A man, Quarren, stands before a small crowd of people, lecturing about the simulation they're watching in some sort of alien museum. He describes Voyager as a powerful warship capable of destroying an entire civilization within hours. As he goes on we learn that Captain Janeway continued to attacke them, leaving an impression on their world which has lasted until this day, 700 years later.

Bummer!

The professor offers a little Q&A, and we learn that the Kyrians believe Voyager had 300 soldiers aboard and went around attacking people. They had Borg drones on their ship, and likde to assimilate other species, including the Kazon and Talaxian.

He resumes the simulation (seen through a window) a few hours later, and Janeway isn't pleased with the mortality rate of her bio-weapon. Only 3,000 Kyrians are dead, with a grand total coming up of a mere 300,000. She has Tuvok fire again.

The Vaskan Ambassador thinks this is excessive, so Janeway sneers about quibbling over the difference between genocide and defeat and has him locked up in the brig.

Paris reports that more ships are approaching, Janeway orders him to evade them, and he says "Aye, aye, sir," and for once it's not just a glitch in the script. Anyone who called this version of Janeway "ma'am" would be eviscerated.

Kim's having fun in Sickbay, beating up a Kyrian soldier while "Chekotay" questions him, making comments about how his people are peaceful and he's saddened to have to torture the guy like this. Kim's hands are getting sore, so he grabs a hyperspanner, but the Doctor has a pain drug to use instead, which dissolves the guy's optic nerves.

Ouch!

"Chekotay" asks him again where Tedran is, and soon is reporting the information to Janeway. She orders him to bring the leader to the ship.

Meanwhile, four Kyrians have beamed into engineering and erected forcefields. Janeway looks quietly pleased and calls up Seven of Nine.

Down in the cargo bay, Seven, who looks fully Borgified again, opens her eyes with "State your instructions."

Janeway tells her to stop the Kyrians in engineering. Seven activates her Borg underlings, marches down to the engine room and quickly takes care of the intruders. Two of the Kyrians survive, and Janeway gives her permission to assimilate them.

Chakotay gets Tedran, and she orders the leader and the Vaskan Ambassador taken to "Chamber 19," which turns out to be the mess hall. There, Janeway taunts Tedran about being a martyr, kills the Kyrian woman at his side, then kills him by shooting him in the back with a compression phaser rifle.

"Don't look so shocked, Ambassador," Janeway drawls. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" She tosses the rifle to a security brute, and saunters out.

We're back with the professor now. Two million Kyrians were slaughtered in days, and the "warship Voyager" continued on its way, "leaving the Kyrian dynasty in ruins." The Vaskans took the Kyrians over, and the Kyrians are still struggling for equality.

A ha.

The museum is a heritage museum, trying to tell the story of an oppressed people.

Naturally, a Vaskan quickly objects to the portrayal of his people as the villainous oppressors, and demands to know how Quarren can prove that it's true. He doesn't hold the relics around him as proof of anything but the Kyrian desire to blame the Vaskans for their problems.

"I don't have a problem with your species," he sneers. "I have Kyrian friends, but I don't appreciate seeing my people being portrayed as villains in your little simulation, and I certainly don't want your history taught to my children."

Quarren says he'd better get used to the Kyrian view of history, because they've recently discovered an artifact, a date-storage device, which is going to confirm everything with Voyager's own words.

"And what if those words tell a different story?" the Vaskan asks skeptically, and is less than convinced when Quarren says that his people will accordingly change their views.

Poor Quarren. Would you like to meet some Saurian friends of mine?

Later on, the museum is closed, and Quarren is working on the Voyager artifact, which looks like a glass ball in a small black frame. He enters into the simulation room, which has taken the form of the Voyager engine room. He tries using equipment from the simulation to work on the data-storage device, and quickly makes progress, finding that the device is actually a holographic program.

Gee. Who could be in there? Professor Moriarty? Leah Brahms? Itchy and Scratchy?

A fuzzy shape comes into view. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

Quarren recognizes the Doctor, but is flummoxed that he's not an android, but a hologram. The Doctor is flummoxed that he's in engineering without his mobile emitter. When he realizes Quarren is a Kyrian, he runs to his desk, calling "intruder alert." Quarren explains that this is a simulation, and he's in the Museum of Kyrian Heritage.

The Doctor demands to know how he's stolen his program. Quarren tries to explain, but only comes out with: "You...are a hologram."

"That I know," the Doctor points out, he then identifies the data-storage device as his EMH back-up module.

Quarren tells him it's been 700 years since he was last activated.

The Doctor looks flummoxed again. "What about my ship? What happened to my crew?"

Quarren doesn't know, but "It's safe to say they're long dead."

The Doctor looks lost. "And I'm some sort of fossil?"

"No, not a fossil," says Kyrian, "a witness, a living witness [Hence the title!] to history." He explains that he wants the Doctor to tell them all about what happened in "those times."

The Doctor freaks a bit and runs out in the museum, only then starting to believe. He looks around the museum with something of a curled lip, and wonders what's going to happen to him. He wants to contact Starfleet, if it still exists, but Quarren warns that first he will be held accountable for his war crimes in creating the bio-weapons. Seems that in this world holograms and androids are considered sentient and are held responsible for their actions.

The Doctor denies that he's any sort of criminal, and points to the obvious mistakes in the museum's displays to show that Quarren doesn't know what he's talking about.

"Voyager wasn't a warship," he insists. "We were explorers."

"Yes, I know: trying to get home, to Mars."

"Earth!" the Doctor corrects. "You see, you couldn't even get that right!"

Quarren warns that if the Doctor is found guilty he could be decompiled, and the Doctor wants to set the record straight. First, he has Quarren show him the current prevailing version and watches a simulation inside the conference room. Paris is sneering at Tuvok's firing ability, Tuvok sneers at Paris' skirt-chasing, Paris calls Neelix and hedgehog, then taunts "Chekotay," who lunges at him. Janeway fires a phaser to restore order and says they're going to start targeting the general population. It's here, evidently, that the Doctor comes up with his idea for bio-weaponry.

"Pure fiction," the real Doctor scoffs.

Quarren halts the simulation and asks him to point out any inconsistencies.

"Inconsistencies?" he asks. "I don't know where to begin. Granted, this looks like the briefing room, but these aren't the people I knew. No one behaved like this. Well...aside from Mr. Paris."

While Quarren gets more and more disbelieving, the Doctor explains that they were an enlightened crew and only got dragged into the conflict against their will. He says they were negotiating a trade agreement with the Vaskan Ambassador when the Kyrians attacked them. Quarren pooh-poohs this and shows him the simulation with Janeway killing Tedran in the messhall.

When Janeway has tossed her rifle to the security brute and sauntered out, the Doctor says, very quietly, "Somewhere -- halfway across the galaxy, I hope -- Captain Janeway is spinning in her grave." He can't believe the simulation has them all being villains. He does recognize Tedran, though, as the man who led the Kyrian attack against Voyager.

"You're lying," Quarren accuses.

"I was there."

"You're trying to protect yourself."

"And so are you," says the Doctor. "From the truth. Isn't it a coincidence that the Kyrians are being portrayed in the best possible light? Martyrs, heroes, saviors. Obviously, events have been reinterpreted to make your people feel better about themselves. Revisionist history. It's such a comfort."

Quarren insists that the Kyrians were the victims here, and that they're still being oppressed. The Doctor replies that his people's socials problems aren't his business. He's only telling it like it was. He can prove it, too, with the medical tricorder.

Quarren deactivates him in mid-sentence.

*Snap!*

Oh, God.

"No, no, my dear. It is I!"

What do you want, Q?

"How friendly."

"I'm in the middle of a review here."

*Snap!*

Ribbit.

"That's much better."

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!!! Ribbit ribbit &*%^* ribbit!

"Language!"

Ribbit ribbit.

"What was that?"

Ribbit. ::sniff:: Ribbit.

"I've never seen a frog sniff before. Am I to take that as a promise to be good?"

Ribbit.

*Snap!*

Ahem. Yes. Well, is there something I can do for you, Q?

"Much better, my dear."

Grumble.

"Well, actually, I have several issues. First, I want to know why Angry Fem gets her own color text and I don't."

You get quote marks.

"Everyone gets quote marks. No no no. I want something special. You're to work on it."

All right.

"Next issue: you haven't made enough of an issue out of Kathy's perfectly hideous hairstyle in this episode."

"Yes. It's perfectly hideous. An absolute atrocity. The Kyrians should be tried for the war crime of depicting her that way."

"Next issue: Don't you think I would look great in this episode?"

You're lovely, as always, Q. The mustache is a particularly nice touch.

"Yes, I thought so. So, I want to know why I wasn't in it."

In what? The episode?

"Yes. We haven't seen me on Voyager since that silliness with trying to get Janeway pregnant. I used to get to guest star on TNG once a season. It's four seasons now and only two shows with me. Does this seem right to you?"

Not remotely. But I do hear they're having trouble getting a good script together.

"They always say that. It's bad enough I'm not in the movie. To think, I'm reduced to begging for a spot on Voyager. It's enough to make me read Babylon 5 scripts."

Q?

"Uh? Yes?"

Can I get back to my review now, please?

"That's it? You're not going to help me?"

What the heck could I do?"

"Well, you could pretend I'm in the episode. I have given you a visual aid for your puny Human brain, after all."

Pretend? Isn't that a little...pathetic?

"What?"

Nothing. Nothing. Right, pretend. Got it.

"Hmm. Remember, I'll be watching."

*Snap!*

Okay, Quarren has been thinking about what the Doctor says, and he's not been able to dismiss it. For one thing, the Doctor is a hologram, not an android. If they could be wrong about that, what else could they be wrong about?

He calls up a simulation of Sickbay and reactivates the Doctor, who's none too pleased. Quarren apologizes. The Doctor says he doesn't like being deactivated in the middle of a sentence, as "it brings back unpleasant memories."

Quarren says he'll treat him better, and that he wants to know what happened. The Doctor agrees to make a simulation of the "truth."

And now we're watching the Janeway we all know and love, who easily (perhaps a little too easily, but it's subtle) makes a trade agreement with the Vaskan Ambassador: dilithium for medical supplies. The ambassador warns that the Kyrians are on the warpath and, despite diplomatic efforts, are determined to fight them.

And, right on cue, Kyrian ships attack and they have four intruders in engineering.

Tedran and his squad are ransacking engineering, stealing what technology they can, and have Seven and a couple others as hostages. Janeway, the Doctor, and the Ambassador join with Tuvok to corner the intruders, and finally do so in the messhall. Tedran accuses Janeway of forming an alliance with the Vaskans, she tries to talk, and the Vaskan ambassador guns down Tedran, much to Janeway's disgust.

The Doctor ends the simulation, and we see that he is talking not only to Quarren, but to the arbiters, all of them Vaskan save one Kyrian woman with an attitude about being the "token" Kyrian. When the Doctor says he can support his version of events by using the medical tricorder to prove that it was a Vaskan weapon which killed Tedran, she accuses him of being a lying war criminal, and turns on Quarren for listening to the hologram.

When the Vaskan arbiter says the new evidence casts doubts on everything, she sneers, "It doesn't change the fact my children can't attend the same academies as yours or that we are forced to live outside of the city center."

"This isn't about race," the arbiter objects.

"It's always about race," she declares, but the arbiters tell Quarren to continue his work.

Later, the Doctor and Quarren are working on the tricorder as the Doctor laments being caught in the middle of their "little dispute" even after 700 years. He also wishes they had a recreation of B'Elanna Torres to help them out with the tricorder. Quarren asks what she was like, and an affectionate smile settles on the Doctor's face as he lists her attributes:

"Intelligent, beautiful, and with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Horsehead Nebula. She also had a kind of vulnerability that made her quite endearing."

"You miss her," Quarren notes. "And the others."

The Doctor notes sadly that it seems to him like only yesterday that he knew them, and now he'll never see them again. He wonders if they made it home.

Quarren reveals that even though Voyager's crew were the "bad guys," he admired them and their adventure as a child. The Doctor tells him that if it means anything to him, he would have made a fine member of the crew.

The tender moment is interrupted by a race riot. It seems people are none too happy with the whole "lie" of the museum and/or the Doctor, and it's become the catalyst. They take cover (causing the Doctor to misplace the tricorder) until the riot gets partially contained, then start looking through the ravaged museum for the tricorder. Quarren says no one knows what's going to happen, but another war may begin.

The Doctor says there's only one solution, Quarren must delete his program and allow his people to keep the cultural fantasy they've so carefully constructed and which they need for their cultural identity.

"But what about the facts?" Quarren objects.

"Facts be damned! Names, dates, places: it's all open to interpretation. Who's to say what really happened? And ultimately, what difference does it make? What matters is today and the future of your people...Tedran was a martyr for your people, a hero a symbol of your struggle for freedom. Who am I to wander in 700 years later and take that away from you?"

But Quarren won't do it.

"History has been abused. We keep blaming each other for what happened in the past. If you don't help us now, it could be another 700 years."

"Let's find that tricorder," the Doctor says.

And -- surprise! This too is a simulation. A new Kyrian historian, speaking sometime in the distant future, is explaining that this was a "pivotal moment" in their history. The Doctor's testimony led the way to a cultural dialogue which began a new age of harmony.

And as for the players?

"Quarren died six years later but he lived long enough to witness the dawn of harmony, and the Doctor, well, he served as our Surgical Chancellor for many years until he decided to leave. He took a small craft and set a course for the Alpha Quadrant, attempting to trace the path of Voyager. He said he had a longing...for home."

She shepherds the tour on through the new museum, and we're left with a picture of the Doctor on the wall, arms crossed, looking heroic.

Off-camera, but very much there, Q nods his head. Yes, it's fitting that the puny little Kyrians revere a hologram as a hero. It's not nearly as interesting as the portrait of Jean-Luc Picard in the Borg Hall of Perfection, but it's not bad. With a sigh of satisfaction, he snaps out, only then allowing the credits to roll.

CHARACTER
I hang around the Star Trek creative newsgroups a lot, and not long ago there was a string of "legend" stories, which tell about the Trek characters from an alien and much-into-the-future perspective. I thought at the time that such an approach would make a great episode, and I was right.

It only works, of course, if we like the characters involved, because that sort of perspective -- where everyone is dead and they're being remembered by people we don't know -- relies on our caring about the characters' reputations, about the difference they made in the world.

One of the main problems I had with DS9 when it first started was that, compared to Kirk and Picard's top-of-the-line crews and important missions, Sisko's band seemed second-rate and in a not-very-important position near some wormhole to which nothing very interesting happened.

Of course, that's all changed now, with Sisko being a religious figure, Bajor and the wormhole being key to the Dominion War, Bashir turning out to be genetically engineered, and even Quark's family being central to the future of Feringinar.

[Somebody, anybody, tell me what the point of "Profit and Old Lace" was. And did it have overt but ultimately chaotic homosexual overtones, or what?]

Anyway, Voyager side-stepped that problem by being in the Delta Quadrant. There, everything they do can have enormous significance. Even Hogan's bones changed history. They're touching so many lives and cultures they can't help but be important. It might give the framers of the Prime Directive fits, but it's great drama.

So it's appropriate that our legend story go to Voyager. We can easily extrapolate "Living Witness" to wonder what the Sacarians are like now, after having read all those stories in Voyager's database, or the Vidiians, who must have continued working on the Klingon DNA approach to the phage. Do the Kazon remember Janeway and crew? How about those Hirogen? The Borg? Voyager really didn't do anything more with the Vaskans and Kyrians than fight a few battles and lose some technology, and look at what happened.

As for actual character development in this episode, however, cosidering that everyone else is a dead or only gets a few lines, we must concentrate on the Doctor and Quarren.

The Doctor acts very true-to-form, sardonically commenting on Paris (who I think he is constantly and unfavorably comparing to Kes), affectionately recalling Torres, and defending the memory of his crew, then turning a 180 to offer himself and the memory of his crew as a sacrifice to peace. Saving lives is, after all, his top priority. It's nicely consistent and well-played.

We get a couple deeper glances into him with his version of the simulation. I can't help but wonder whether the Vaskan Ambassador really called him a hero when he drew the Kyrians' fire, or whether he deflected the compliment so modestly. However, he does keep his preening to a minimum through the show, which is a nice change from his early days. (His comments about being turned off in mid-sentence and "unhappy memories" is a nice reminder of what sort of hologram he used to be, and how much he owes the crew for helping him develop into the more personable artificial lifeform he is now.)

But my favorite thing is the idealized way he portrays Janeway. She's magnanimous, courteous, decisive, calm in the face of danger -- the works. It's not out of character for Janeway, just Janeway On High, and nicely contrasts with the evil Janeway we get in Quarren's simulation. The Doctor usually only gets to show his respect for and gratitude to the captain by fussing at her to eat something or rest. His paragon version of her -- and his indignation at the way she's portrayed in Quarren's scenario -- display his feelings well, without taking up center stage.

However, the crowning moment of the episode is the part that relies on my established affection for the Doctor. Somehow, that bit at the end about him going off alone, trying to find his way back home, making me wonder what he might have found there, just chokes me up. It reminds me of the first time I was really touched by him, when he was sitting behind his desk in "Eye of the Needle." Kes had just promised to make sure he was turned off if they all had to leave the ship, and he looked so small and lonely. I found myself imagining his existence if they left and he was left on. Remember the hologram from "Revulsion?"

Personally, I'm going to think that the back-up Doc made it home and lived out a good holographic existence. Hm. Maybe he even got to meet his original self. Considering the way Doc feels about himself, maybe they even got married.

Ew. There's a piece of fanfic I don't want to read.

Quarren's characterization also fares well. He seems realistic to me, a man of historical science who refuses to listen to the truth at first, then opens his ears, and is called, basically, a traitor to his race for doing so. I really like that he dies only six years after his adventures with the Doctor, since it suggests that he continued to have a stressful life, defending his point of view and trying to get people to understand the truth he himself had so much difficulty accepting. Furthermore, his ability to put aside his prejudices and listen the Doctor's story establish him believably as the sort of person who could then go through that sort of stress and hardship conveying the Doctor's message to his people. I didn't think for a second he was going to take the Doctor's offer to sacrifice himself for the "good" of the Kyrians, and his final judgment on the issue, that his people needed to deal with the truth sooner rather than later, makes sense and isn't too preachy.

It doesn't really add to character development, but I do love the fun the episode has with showing bad versions of all our familiar characters. Janeway is top-notch, an amoral warrior woman who takes sadistic delight in killing others in the name of military efficiency. The relish with which she calls upon Seven of Nine to take care of her engineering problem, the casual way she calls for the deaths of hundred of thousands, and her sneering collaboration with the Vaskan Ambassador all make her delightfully villainous.

Tuvok is also great, especially with that smirk he sends Janeway before he fires on the Kyrians again. Kim is a hoot, acting as "Chekotay's" bad little sadist, and that tattoo on Chuckle's face reminds me of the one Q wore to show that his was bigger.

But the best part, perhaps, is that there were so many subtle little changes in addition to the big gaffs. Kim's hair is a little slicker, and he kneels down under the railing in a way the real Kim never would (at least as far as I know) to report to Janeway. Paris is a little more strident, and the whole attitude of the crew much more butch.

And it's good that we've known the Voyager crew long enough now that we can pick up on and have fun with these subtle differences. TNG made a mistake, I think, wasting "The Naked Now" on its second episode. We hadn't gotten to know anyone yet, so we only had the script's word for it that they were acting out of character. It would have been more fun to have that episode a little later, after we knew that Picard would never normally call Crusher "Bev" and that Tasha wasn't one for wearing a spit curl.

As a final CHARACTER note, I love that the Doctor has his little ode to Torres especially because we're all missing Dawson, who's out with her pregnancy. I wonder if Torres might help the Doctor by taking Kes' place a bit more, offering him the occasional emotional support as well as technical.

THOUGHT
One of these days, I have got to go back and add to my review of "Remember," which I didn't care for, and point out the analogies in the episode to the holocaust. I'll need to note that I didn't personally pick up on them, being too focused on the personal story, but when others pointed them out, they were readily apparent.

The similarities to war and other social problems work better for me on this one, I suppose because it deals with a perspective which is a bit more life-like than alien telepathy. The questions of race memory and history fascinate me, and I think they get a good workout here.

Angry Fem claimed in the "Retrospect" review that if a show deals with a social issue, it has to pick a side people can readily understand, but that's somewhat simplistic. "Living Witness" is similar to "Retrospect" in that it explores a side of an issue which our PC-paranoid entertainment industry doesn't usually give us, but unlike in "Retrospect," "Living Witness" actually has something worthwhile to say.

Heritage museums and arguing who's to blame for wars and other social ills are very popular activities right now. The whole Vaskan/Kyrian conflict is so generally defined that we can compare it to a broad range of historical conflicts, but "heritage museum" is such a buzzword that I'm going to take up the conflict between American expansionism and the Native American cultures, if you'll indulge me.

We all know, I think, that the old viewpoint of the American pioneer "discovering" the West and having a great old time except for those pesky Injuns who, for no other reason than being savages, kept attacking peaceful wagon trains and scalping everyone is bogus. I remember once actually seeing some movie on TV that had an "urban" American Indian working as a police officer. The bad guys grabbed him and forced him to drink some alcohol, and since Indians can't take "firewater," the guy freaked out. I hope and pray that if that movie showed today the audience would assume it was a parody.

Heritage museums and other venues of cultural awareness have done a great deal of work to allow people to realize that America had already been "discovered" when the European settlers showed up. We've learned that it was the French who taught the Indians to scalp people, the pioneers who often attacked Indian settlements (a la Wounded Knee), and so on. Political correctness has made people more sensitive in their view of the past, and made people understand that it wasn't just a matter of nice settlers and dangerous savages.

However, there is a danger to too much political correctness, and a danger to being unable to let go of racial anger, and a danger to making "everything" a question of race.

The Kyrians (whom I'm having stand in for the Indians) have definitely been wronged by the Vaskans. In fact, I think it's great that the Doctor's version of the Vaskan Ambassador is ultimately more evil than the Kyrian version of him. Moreover, the Kyrians are being treated as second-rate citizens, not being allowed to live in the good part of town or to go to the same schools. Just to make sure we get the point, the script talks about "token" Kyrians, and that Vaskan trouble-maker says he has "Kyrian friends." Perhaps some of them are his "best friends."

But the Kyrians, for all that they are victims, were not innocent, helpless or hapless victims. They shared in the responsibility of their fate. That does not mean that they are getting what they deserved -- far from it. But in wanting to see themselves as victims, they forgot part of their own cultural identity. I personally like Tedran the Fighter better than Tedran the Martyr. And in blaming someone else for all their troubles, the Kyrians seem to forget that they can (and thus have lost the ability to) change their lives for the better, to work towards making their lives and situations more equal to the Vaskans'.

Please don't infer from that that I'm saying Native Americans have forgotten how to work towards making their lives better. The analogy isn't that complete or complicated. I'm saying that *any* group of people who'd rather wallow in hate than create some constructive action isn't going to get very far, whether it's a racial, social, economic or even incidental group.

Moreover, the Vaskan trouble-maker shows what happens when people (in quite understandable fashion) resist being forced into liberal guilt. When history is used solely as a way of blaming and being blamed, it cannot teach us anything. If someone wants to see nothing in history but a glorification of their martyrdom or the vilification of their enemies, they have no way of seeing the future as anything but either a continuation of that martyrdom, or a punishment of the bad guys.

Now, the episode fortunately does not try to show us how the age of "harmony" actually got started. And if I knew how to improve relations between Native Americans and the rest of the world, I don't think I'd have time to be writing Voyager reviews. All we learn is the simple but essential ingredient: a dialogue was opened. People started to talk. Talking is not the cure, of course, but it's hard to make progress without it.

So, let me back up a minute to make my point clear. [Yeesh, can you tell I'm struggling here? Talking about race these days is so *hard.* It's so easy to piss off people (Angry Fem included) or offend them by saying one wrong thing. But precisely because talking is so important I'm resisting the urge to allow political correctness to shut me up. If anyone reading this gets mad, please remember that I'm *trying* to be racially sensitive.]

My point is that the Kyrian museum as we see it in the beginning, with its inaccurate and one-sided simulation and vilification of Voyager, is not trying to open up a dialogue with the Vaskans. It's a shrine to the Kyrians' martyrdom, meant to educate only in the sense of wanting everyone to swallow everything it's saying as the gospel.

Moreover, it doesn't have the distinction one finds in, say, a Holocaust museum, where a *movement* is being targeted as having been the villain. The Nazis (who themselves rose to power in a country which had been overly vilified and punished for WW I) are not The Germans, they are a German movement which became powerful in the 1930's and continues today in a small number of German and non-German people. The Kyrian museum doesn't point to a moment in Vaskan history and say "This was a bad time." It vilifies Vaskans indiscriminately.

That sort of "heritage museum" reminds me of T-shirts I've seen that read "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand," academic environments which discourage male students from women's studies, gay studies which vilify all heterosexual writers for creating "inaccurate" homosexual characters, and someone who emailed me once to complain that Voyager has only one non-white character on it. When I responded that the show has some rather important Hispanics and Asians, she responded that the whole "Hispanic and Asian thing" was a "White issue."

While I try to understand other people's racial viewpoints, such attitudes seem to me to discourage "harmony." Not only does such absolutism irritate the people who are being excluded or vilified, it encourages narrow thinking which in turn weakens one's own own position. Not long ago I was reading about the Cherokee Nation (I have a Cherokee woman in my family tree and wish I knew more about her), and eventually I had to put the recently written book down. Not only was I told in every other sentence that White People are the devil, it had historical inaccuracies in it, such as saying that white settlers introduced smallpox into North America (when in fact it's been known for some time now that the disease was here already, just not in such high concentration) which made me believe the author really didn't care about her subject as much as she cared about enjoying her anger and hate. Sure, she has every right to feel that way, but I had a sandwich and reread Love Medicine.

Dealing with racial issues now in any other way than not saying bad words and leaving people to exclude themselves from others so they can explore their culture free of contaminants (PC philosophy in a nutshell) is risky as hell. When race in any context comes up in the classroom, my students shift in their seats and don't meet each others' eyes. With the exception of a lecture I've worked out on "I Have a Dream," I can never get them to consider the concept of race as something exciting or fun.

So I have a double kudo to offer "Living Witness" for managing to say something which, while a truism, one doesn't get to hear often in our race-paranoid society: both sides must let go of their anger and hate, even the victims, if relations are to improve. Since forgiveness must be genuine, it can't be quick. I would never believe a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp should just "get over it" and love Wagner. But I sure hope that a hundred years from now Israel and Germany enjoy good relations. I hope that Native Americans will be better off. I even hope that one day we will live in a world where people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

So, certainly, it's a sign of poor progress for the Kyrians still to be so absolute in their belief in their victimization and martyrdom 700 years later. That the Vaskans are still treating them poorly is also obvious wrong. But the show nicely makes the point that there is a connection betweem the Kyrians' insistence that they were innocent and all their problems are someone else's fault and the Vaskans' refusal to make reparation for their actual crimes. Hatred doesn't heal; anger cannot make restitution.

Moreover, the show does a good job showing a way out of the deadlock. The Doctor provides a means of seeing through the revisionist history and Quarren insists that he and his people bite the bullet. Since this is a TV show, the threat to the Doctor's life and Quarren's career is ultimately not carried out, but at least the threat is apparent. Going against popular opinion is a great way to get assassinated.

Hm, let's see, have I covered my butt enough? I suppose I should deal with my comment about the danger of "making everything race." I suppose the best way to explain myself is simply to assert that life is never that simple. If I allow *any* one viewpoint to dominate everything -- a religious, racial, gender, economic, social, cynical, optimistic or *whatever* viewpoint -- then I subject myself to the necessity of eventually being inaccurate. The "token" Kyrian arbiter has a point about her race, but she allows that point to be more important than the historical evidence, and in doing so looks irrational and weakens her own argument.

Pretty much everything in life, however much it may be "proven," is subject to personal interpretation, and if my dominating viewpoint causes me to create interpretations which are so far off from the general population's that other people feel they can't communicate with me, I ruin my own ability to influence others. It's my right to do so, of course, and there's nothing "wrong" in such an action. But it is dangerous. It does have a cost. For the Kyrian arbiter, that cost is a race riot.

So, a touchy issue dealt with with some sensitivity in something other than PC clichés. Bravo!

Whew.

Okay, other THOUGHTS.

I've heard some people complaining that the Doctor doesn't have a back-up module. But the Doctor told Kes that he couldn't be downloaded back in Season One, and they've had multiple instances since then which should warn them that the Doctor needs a back-up. I don't see why they shouldn't have made him a module. It doesn't look like standard Starfleet equipment.

Can they really afford to lose three engineering people? That's a major loss.

The Kazon was fun, and I'm sure it was a trip down memory lane to use that make-up again.

Considering how close to Borg space the Vaskans and Kyrians are, it's nice to know they haven't been assimilated. They obviously know what the Borg are (or were?). Their view of Voyager is quite Borg-like, assimilating races left and right. I enjoy the way Seven is remembered as Janeway's Borg lackey.

What's most fun, though, is that the Kyrian version of events has such interesting grains of truth in it. Humans do tend to "assimilate" other races into their beliefs and systems (which may explain why the Q and the Borg are so interested in Humans -- other than the fact that it's a Human show, of course). Chakotay's little speech about how his people are so peaceful is both wonderfully ironic, but also shows how at least part of his characterization has survived, though mangled. The Doctor is right, though. Paris fares best.

SPECTACLE
Visually, this one is a hoot, what with the evil versions of everyone. The museum looked spot-on to me as well, though I do wonder how they managed to get an intact photon torpedo and then not use it in the war.

DICTION
Good lines in this one include:

"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative: violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." -- Evil Janeway.

"Voyager wasn't a warship. We were explorers." -- the Doctor. "Yes, I know: trying to get home, to Mars." -- Quarren. "Earth! You see, you couldn't even get that right!" -- the Doctor.

"Inconsistencies? I don't know where to begin. Granted, this looks like the briefing room, but these aren't the people I knew. No one behaved like this. Well...aside from Mr. Paris." -- the Doctor.

SONG
Great job, as per usual. One day, perhaps the orchestra itself will pass on into...legend.

Or at least get a nice round of raises.

And now for the baggage...

STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) LOVE
Endings that really touch me and themes I have to think about, even if they get me into trouble.

STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) HATE
Janeway's hair! Why can't we get the French twist back? Do you think I should start up a campaign? I swear, she better not shave it off a la Sisko.

That's it for this one!

Star Trek Voyager Reviews

Or go back to ST Voyager Reviews -- Unforgettable.