In the eighth episode of the fifth season of Voyager, I WAS NOT READY. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Voyager.
Trigger Warning: For extensive talk of genocide, Nazis, medical experimentation, nonconsensual medical procedures.Â
Simply put: I did not expect Voyager to go so hard, y’all. In hindsight, this is one of the most thoroughly executed premises in the show’s history. The writers ask a question – Can we use the research gained by the genocidal aims of a mass-murdering doctor? – and then finds a way to make it affect everyone on the ship. No one agrees with another except in passing moments, and as B’Elanna’s health gets worse, the moral objections the crew have are even more pointed and important.
And in the end, the writers pull no punches. Some of these people will be held accountable for their decisions, but everyone had to make a choice.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS EPISODE.
Horror
This might be the episode to escalate the quickest in this show, and I’m still in awe of the first eight minutes of “Nothing Human.” It’s a beautiful thing to experience because Jeri Taylor’s script wastes no time at all. Within a few minutes of being beamed on Voyager, the unnamed creature has latched on to B’Elanna, the music nearly made my heart explode, and EVERYTHING IS SO TENSE. IMMEDIATELY. It’s a fantastic bit of plotting and production because “Nothing Human” grabbed my attention immediately and then refused to let go. I thought this was going to be some sort of horror story focusing on the parasitic creatures, and… nope.
Companionship
Part of the brilliance of this script is how frequently it misdirected the audience. (Again, I love including all of you because it makes me feel better about falling for all the red herrings.) The Doctor’s solution to this strange creature’s attachment to B’Elanna comes in Crell Moset, a Cardassian scientist who was active during the Bajoran occupation. It’s got precedent within the Star Trek canon, as this wouldn’t be the first time a holodeck simulation of a person was used to solve a problem. As Crell aided the Doctor, provided him with expertise, and helped move their research towards a solution to the parasitic organism, I saw a friendship blossom. I saw a person who would absolutely have enjoyed the Doctor’s photo essays, and probably would have created one of their own in response. I saw someone who got the Doctor, who understood him on a level that no one else on the ship did.
Thus, I assumed “Nothing Human” was merely about that: the Doctor’s inevitable struggle with having to “give up” Crell. When B’Elanna objected to having Crell around, I thought there might be a tiny subplot about her discomfort, but to be honest? I didn’t give it that much credence. I was certain I knew what this episode would be about.
War Criminal
And then Ensign Tabor threw the entire episode in another direction.
It was hard for me to not see Moset as one giant reference to Josef Mengele, the man responsible for a great deal of the experimentation on people in the Nazi concentration camps. Indeed, the way Crell Moset was written (and how David Clennon) portrayed him) seemed to confirm this. Moset was charming and brilliant; his eagerness for knowledge overflowed out of him in every scene. Other doctors in the concentration camps said similar things of Mengele, that he whistled as he worked and that he had a knack for charming children.
Of course, this is in glaring contrast to the monstrous things he did, and Tabor’s accusation, once confirmed, turns Moset into an entirely different person. His charming behavior is evidence of something else, of a detachment and cruelty that’s hard to wrap one’s mind around. How could someone care so little for human life while claiming to save it? How can the science be celebrated if the cost is so demonstrably high?
Thus, “Nothing Human” transforms into an ethical nightmare. If Moset’s research can help B’Elanna live, is it ethical to use it? Is it a moral act? More so than perhaps any episode of this show, disagreement flourishes. I honestly can’t recall a script where the crew felt so viciously divided, and Taylor’s work here is as vital as ever. It’s not exactly the kind of story that’s unnecessary these days, you know? (Oh god, it’s becoming unnerving to watch Star Trek these days because I keep getting to episodes that are WAY TOO PRESCIENT.) I do have a bone to pick with one line in this script that felt out of place: the Doctor’s insistence that Earth only experimented on animals, not humans. Like… Crell Moset felt so similar to Mengele that it was glaring to state that there was no human experimentation. There was lots of it??? And let me take it a step further: American medical science has relied so heavily on unethical human experimentation that it’s practically impossible to separate it out. (I’d highly recommend Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington for a source on this.) So, the line felt completely out of place!
Plus, the ethical dilemma relies specifically on this context: Moset experimented on countless Bajorans. The ends justified the means, and the cost of human life is meaningless to him because he feels the knowledge he gained is so invaluable. That’s why Tabor’s presence is so important, especially that scene where he tells Chakotay why he’s so upset: by using Moset, they are validating the man’s use of Tabor’s family. They are validating the pain and terror he caused. They are telling him and everyone else that as long as they have a use for his work, then they can, on some level, excuse what he did.
Still, Taylor doesn’t give us a clean, morally sound ending. Janeway disobeys B’Elanna’s request for the Doctor to not use Moset, and then justifies it as her duty as a starship captain. And perhaps that’s all Janeway needed to feel better about the decision she’d made. But Taylor beautifully ends “Nothing Human” from the perspective of the Doctor, which does give this episode a definitive ending, one that states unequivocally that what Moset did was wrong. No matter how passionately Moset argued his point, the Doctor cannot ignore his own conscience. (Programmed, I should note! THIS IS SO FASCINATING, I LOVE IT.) There’s that moment where Moset tries to guilt the Doctor by claiming that his deletion will cause the Doctor to “harm” future crewmates.
The terrible irony is that Moset believed it. He can’t even see his own actions as harmful at all.
The video for “Nothing Human” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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