In the eleventh episode of the seventh season of Voyager, Chakotay gets an interesting tour of the ship. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
This is gonna be a short one, but that’s not because I disliked it. As I noted at the close of the video for this episode, I generally don’t like stories where the conclusion erases everything that happened before. I tend to prefer consequences. Ramifications. Meaning and serialization. At the very least, “Shattered” lets Chakotay retain his memories of this experience, so that’s good. However, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this episode, even if it employed one of my least favorite tropes in speculative fiction.
This is an episode that fits only within season seven. (Though I’m curious why the show didn’t schedule it to air much later in the season than it did.) It’s a chance for reflection: for the writers to recall everything that’s come before. For the audience to appreciate the ridiculous and absurd journey that Voyager has been on. For Chakotay to realize that no matter the heartbreak and loss, he and his crew went through something he wouldn’t trade for the world. The premise of this episode is indeed one of the most overtly over-the-top ideas we’ve seen on this show. Like… the ship is “shattered” into thirty-seven different temporal locations, and Chakotay is, initially, the only person who can jump from one time frame to another. It’s a classic Star Trek conundrum in many ways, but the fun of it is in watching how frequently the show gives us different timelines from the previous six seasons of the show. That includes a couple of great jokes, like the point where Chakotay can’t even identify what’s knocked everyone unconscious on the ship because it’s happened more than once.
But it’s watching Janeway – the version of her just heading out to capture the Maquis in the pilot episode – observe the fractured and horrifying future of Voyager that is most compelling. She experiences visions of what is to come in bits and pieces, and without any context, these snippets seem monstrous. It feels like the trip Voyager is about to take is nothing but a non-stop nightmare full of strange creatures and… shit, I’ll steal Janeway’s phrasing: The Delta Quadrant comes across as one giant death trap. Why the fuck would she willingly allow herself to make the decision that set these people on the path to becoming part of a weekly horror movie? Who does that benefit?
Well, this journey benefitted a lot of people. At the very basic level, someone managed to find the Maquis characters who’d been stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Would they have even been able to return home in the first place? Yes, a lot of terrible shit happens along the way, but what of all the good? What of Seven’s struggle to find her humanity? Or the birth of Naomi Wildman? Or Icheb? (SERIOUSLY, THE FUTURE VERSIONS OF THOSE CHARACTERS WERE AMAZING.) Or the new technology they found or gained? Or all the people and races and cultures they helped? Should those experiences disappear, too?
No, and I loved that this episode made that so explicit. Even if this experience would be difficult, Janeway chose to let it play out unchanged. Well.. maybe they could change the whole refusal to explore a relationship. MAYBE.
The video for “Shattered” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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