{"id":5668,"date":"2016-06-29T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=5668"},"modified":"2016-06-13T23:12:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T06:12:00","slug":"mark-watches-voyager-s02e12-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2016\/06\/mark-watches-voyager-s02e12-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Voyager’: S02E12 – Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the twelfth episode of the second season of\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>, I WASN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T READY FOR HOW SAD THIS WAS. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For talk of torture, mental illness, grief.\u00c2\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

There are a lot of powerful elements to the script for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Resistance,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and I am definitely going to spend time praising Joel Grey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Kate Mulgrew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performances in this episode. Without certain writing choices, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that this would have been nearly the same memorable episode. Indeed, this is not even close to the first time that a Starfleet crew has had to deal with the difficulty of getting embroiled in another culture\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s political problems. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a common motif across all four shows, and I get why that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the case. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inevitable; you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t travel the galaxy without getting entangled.<\/p>\n

Yet \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Resistance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d hits a lot harder than most of these episodes. The main conflict here is deceptively simple: the ship needs a specific chemical for the warp drives, so Neelix helps three other members of the crew go in disguise down to an unnamed planet to obtain it. They succeed at this mission and the warp drives are repaired by the fifteen-minute mark of the episode. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the personal nature of the escape that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Resistance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d becomes something else, and by gods, I WAS NOT READY FOR IT.<\/p>\n

It would be foolish not to address how Joel Grey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance, alongside Kate Mulgrew, carries this entire episode. These two portray characters dealing with desperation, but both approach this idea so differently. Janeway is desperate to find Tuvok and B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Elanna and return back to\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>. Caylem is desperate to find his wife, who was locked up in a Mokra prison long ago. Even worse, the despair and grief have affected him so strongly that his sense of reality has started to slip.<\/p>\n

He believes that Janeway is his daughter.<\/p>\n

From the first scene we get of Caylem, it was clear that his character was designed to break our hearts. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore it. He caresses Janeway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face with love in his hands, a frantic gesture that demonstrates his joy that his missing daughter has come back. The audience and Janeway know this is an impossibility, yet Janeway does her best to keep cruelty out of her actions. She recognizes instantly that Caylem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter has probably been gone a long time and that this man means well. At the same time, his presence seems to constantly pose a threat. She can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t control him, she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t escape him, and she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give him what he really wants or needs.<\/p>\n

And yet, a beautiful companionship grows between them. Caylem saves Janeway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, as well as the the life of Darod, the resistance member that Neelix was in contact with. He does so by playing up the perception others have of him, and YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT BROKE MY HEART EVEN MORE. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll touch on that more at the end, but Caylem proves to Janeway that he has a value to her. She comes to respect the painful journey he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been on and how guilt consumed his life, so much so that he is delusional about who Janeway is.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ending of their time together that messes me up the most. It would have been easy for this show to treat Caylem a lot more callously. But after Caylem sacrifices himself to take out Augris, Janeway gives Caylem what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always wanted. The supreme tragedy here is that Caylem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter and wife died years before and he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t accept it. SO HE KEPT TRYING TO BREAK INTO PRISON TO FREE THEM EVEN THOUGH THEY WEREN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T THERE AND MY HEART CANNOT HANDLE THIS. I adore\u00c2\u00a0so much<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0that Janeway allows Caylem to have peace before he dies. Caylem gets closure, but the show also demonstrates how empathetic and thoughtful Janeway is as a character. She could have just left. She could have let Caylem die alone, but she choose the opposite.<\/p>\n

Now, that story alone would have been enough to satisfy me, but WE MUST TALK ABOUT TUVOK AND B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ELANNA. If Caylem is unaware of truth about what the Mokra have done to him, then Tuvok is the opposite. B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Elanna listens in horror as Tuvok is tortured by the paranoid members of the Mokra, the occupying force on this planet, and the moment confuses her. How can Vulcans experience pain of that magnitude? It is through this that the script brings up the idea of resistance. Tuvok states that his refusal to give Augris what he wants\u00c2\u00a0was<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0the highest act of resistance, and that got me thinking about Caylem. Wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t his refusal to leave the Mokra alone a form of resistance? Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t every thorn in the side of repressive institutions a small act of resistance anyway?<\/p>\n

Aside from this, though, the scene establishes an amazing rapport between B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Elanna and Tuvok. She comes to understand him better, even if it is through heartbreak that this happens. And as much as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible, Tuvok is vulnerable here, certainly more so than I think we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen him before. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even need to know what it is the Mokra did to him; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bad enough that he\u00c2\u00a0screamed<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0repeatedly.<\/p>\n

The worldbuilding for this resistance force is never detailed, but in the end, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually bother me. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just the framework for\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to explore other issues, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a damn fine episode because of that.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Resistance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded\u00c2\u00a0here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards.<\/b>
\n– I\u00c2\u00a0will be at numerous conventions in 2016! Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0 Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"