In the fifth episode of the sixth season of Voyager, THIS IS ONE HUGE NOPE. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
Trigger Warning: For issues of consent, mind control, and abuse.
Well, this was goddamn disturbing, y’all. The story itself isn’t exactly revolutionary grounds. I can’t count how many stories I’ve read or things I’ve watched that deal with a creepy entity controlling a person and getting them to do awful things. (It’s like a third of Supernatural‘s output, honestly.) Even within the Star Trek universe, we’ve seen this trope applied countless times. For what it’s worth, “Alice” plays things remarkably straight, which allowed for a ton of creepiness, but not a whole lot in terms of character development. I don’t need every episode to be a blockbuster emotional nightmare, but Alice herself is rather one-note throughout this.
Which is a shame, of course, because it leaves the viewer wondering what the hell she really was. In horror, the idea of a sentient object isn’t exactly strange territory, and plenty of times, the impetus for the possession or influence is just, “weird, supernatural shit.” That doesn’t always work when you transfer the same trope to science fiction, though. Alice is an artificial intelligence that cons pilots into working with her, only to connect them so fully to her systems that they are nearly unable to do anything she doesn’t want them to. So: where the hell did she come from??? A particle fountain??? Wouldn’t everyone – including Alice – have been destroyed the second that ship entered that particle fountain? Who created her? Did she develop into a nightmare, or was she always intended to work exactly in this way? These questions felt important to me, and I assumed that Mr. Abaddon would be able to provide some grounding for Alice. Instead, she’s been passed along like an urban legend, and… well, that’s it. That’s all we know of her.
It may seem like a strange thing to ask for from a story about a monstrous artificial intelligence. But I needed that grounding because so much of this story felt fantastical! Before Tom ever physically linked himself with Alice, he was behaving strangely. Was she influencing him right from the start? I assume so, given that he heard her “speak” to him after just one interaction with her interface. She’s given no understanding from the story itself; she is just here to be 100% evil all the time, and that’s not nearly as compelling as it sounds. Again: creepy as hell, but that’s not quite the same thing as intriguing.
I was also bothered by Janeway’s uncharacteristic reaction to B’Elanna reporting Tom’s behavior to her. Like, I get her being dismissive because they do argue frequently, but as soon as B’Elanna said that Tom “basically” assaulted her, the Janeway I have seen in this show would have taken B’Elanna seriously. That’s a really intense thing to accuse someone of!!!! COME ON, VOYAGER WRITERS, DON’T IGNORE STUFF LIKE THAT. My guess is that since Tom was always “controlled” by Alice, the writers didn’t feel the need to hold him personally accountable for what he did, so perhaps they didn’t have the script look upon him negatively. It’s true, though, that Alice fucked up Tom and viciously violated his consent. We shouldn’t ignore that! And when someone abuses and manipulates someone to any degree, we should be sympathetic to them, to offer them kindness and understanding about what they did while being hurt so badly. My point is that the interaction between Janeway and B’Elanna doesn’t include Tom in it directly, so it seemed a strange thing for Janeway to be reluctant about, you know?
Anyway, I consider this episode one of Voyager‘s forays into horror more than anything else, and in that vein, it’s quite effective. ALICE IS TERRIFYING. SO MUCH NOPE. Lord, that scene where Mr. Abaddon was revealed to also be a victim of Alice? SOMEHOW THE WORST PART. I still wonder what was in that particle fountain, though. THEORIES???
The video for “Alice” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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