In the third episode of the sixth season of Voyager, B’Elanna struggles with her culture and her religion after a harrowing experience. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
Trigger Warning: For talk of death, near-death experiences, and racism.
I retweeted a conversation on Twitter last month from Alyssa Wong about how frequent it is that the very idea of being biracial is the worst thing a person can be, and I admit that affected my view of this. I’d never thought of B’Elanna through that lens because I’m so used to the Star Trek universe doing stuff like this. Thus, it was easy to see stories like the one in “Barge of the Dead” as just another instance of Voyager invoking a study in humanity. However, I think it goes much deeper than that here, since it’s never been a secret that B’Elanna hates a certain part of her. (Hell, Tuvok even says so at one point!)
And it’s unfortunate that this part of B’Elanna is also the one that’s frequently coded as non-white. It feels weird once you think about it! Here, B’Elanna struggles with an upbringing of attempted indoctrination, which is a perfectly valid thing to resist against. Yet B’Elanna’s split nature is rarely seen in a positive light, and as someone who is a whole bunch of racial/cultural identities wrapped in one, I can see exactly why Wong spoke of the ills of this trope. Obviously, I wouldn’t say what happens in “Barge of the Dead” is the same thing that they speak of in their Twitter thread, but it’s tangentially related. Does this episode solve the existential crisis of B’Elanna’s identity? Does it exacerbate it?
I’m guessing that I’ll have to wait to fully answer that question because of where this episode ends. I would love if this show subverted the biracial trope Wong refers to by giving us a character who is happy with the whole, and I think that’s what this episode did. Well, let’s be honest: IT DID A LOT IN JUST FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. It’s an Inception-style pile of illusions and images, a Lynchian-nightmare, and a deeply uncomfortable examination of religious ceremony. That’s a great deal to cover in such a short amount of time, but I enjoyed this. The opening scenes were confusing and bewildering in a way that kept me interested, but they didn’t push me away. Instead, I had to know: how the hell was B’Elanna experiencing all these things? Why had Tuvok changed? (TIM RUSS IS SO AMAZING IN THIS EPISODE.) Why did she often seem to be the only person able to notice these changes?
Of course, once we got to the titular barge, this episode immediately abandoned a familiar trope of the Star Trek world. (You know, the whole thing where a device or artifact or planet affects only one character and no one else.) The artifact is a red herring, since B’Elanna’s near-death experience is the real story here. I’ll admit that I was delighted to see Deep Space Nine address religion and faith, and Voyager has done it a few times over the course of the show, too. If there’s anything to complain about here, I do wish we’d gotten more of an exploration of the clash between religion and science. That was my favorite part of this episode: watching Janeway and B’Elanna clash over what B’Elanna has a right to do onboard Voyager. It’s a tough question to answer, isn’t it? To everyone else, B’Elanna experienced something emotional and personal, but otherwise not a demonstrable phenomenon. Therefore, asking to be put back into a coma seems absurd to them. To B’Elanna, however, it is the only way to alleviate the guilt that she feels for turning her back on her mother and her Klingon culture. Janeway would be denying her – as B’Elanna put it – the chance for her mother to be proud of her in the same way that Janeway was.
YEAH, THAT’S HEAVY. You know, I’ll add another bit of nitpicking to this, too: the ending isn’t quite as impactful as everything else. The idea of the Barge of the Dead that ferries souls to the Klingon version of Hell was pretty creepy. (Particularly that scene where someone jumped off the ship. YIKES.) And getting to see B’Elanna’s mother???? YES YES YES. I didn’t even need the show to confirm whether or not the Barge was real or just part of B’Elanna’s mind. However, I feel real weird about the show saying that B’Elanna’s anger was the reason she brought dishonor on everyone, especially given that other Klingons are allowed to be angry all the time. It’s part of who they are! So why is it that B’Elanna is suddenly the exception to that? Sure, having a bad temper in the context of Voyager is a complicated thing, and I’m not saying that I don’t want B’Elanna to further her sessions with Tuvok to get a grip on her anger. But dishonor from anger? That felt like a step too far.
Regardless, I did enjoy this episode a lot. Roxann Dawson is so incredible every second she’s on screen, so y’all probably knew I’d enjoy this one even if it was terrible. LOOK, I LOVE B’ELANNA A LOT.
The video for “Barge of the Dead” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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