Janeway and Chakotay are stricken with a lethal virus that remains dormant only so long as they remain on the surface of the planet where they contracted it. So reluctantly, Voyager leaves them behind to survive on their own. As the two set about making a life and learning to live outside a command structure, the Voyager crew must cope with the loss of their leaders. And some of them are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with the Vidiians in search of a cure.
As Voyager season two is winding down here, I've found that it was much more daring than I remembered. This episode showcases several of the ways it played with format: this is another episode that opens with "the problem" already in progress, it's one of several late season episodes to unfold over a period of weeks, and it also dares to weave in continuity as it references multiple past confrontations with the Vidiians.
But "daring" and "good" don't always go hand in hand. This isn't a particularly "good" episode of Voyager, in large part because it lacks the courage of its convictions. The romance here between Janeway and Chakotay is extremely chaste, and the question of how far it gets is left entirely to the audience's imagination. Worse, it's all just put back in the box at the end of the episode, with no exploration of what it's like for the two to go back to business as usual, captain and first officer, after... whatever they had here. (Even if they had nothing more than a "closer friendship" after this experience, some examination of that was certainly in order.)
Actor Robert Beltran felt pretty much the same way about this episode as I do, saying in one interview "It's Star Trek romance, which means we touch hands and it's supposed to be thrilling." Beltran was never reluctant to criticize weak aspects of the show. And by my memory, at least, this might have been the last straw. I don't recall Chakotay getting many meaningful episodes after this one; it's understandable that the writers didn't feel much like giving him stuff to do when he called them out publicly so often. And yet... every one of the Chakotay-centric episodes he groused about deserved some measure of scorn.
So much of the planet-side story here feels incomplete. We're told the two have been left with a shuttle... but we never see it, and it doesn't figure into Janeway's obsession to find a cure (even after losing all her other equipment). The emotional resonance of the "alien" monkey Janeway keeps seeing is vague and ill-defined. The fact that Janeway's fiance Mark is never even mentioned seems an egregious oversight. The mostly bland civilian costumes seem off the rack from Little House on the Prairie. The mix of filming on set and on location doesn't quite blend credibly.
But the ship-side half of the story does save the episode from being a total loss. Tuvok has a nice arc, learning that whatever his own emotional control might be, he is leading an emotional crew. The crew processes Janeway and Chakotay's experience more than the two themselves do; in particular, we see how Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres are affected (including more scenes between the two of them, showing that they're a good character pairing). Also, Kes gets another solid scene, when she approaches Tuvok with just the right blend of emotion and logic to actually change his mind.
Other observations:
- They really have to start this episode in the middle of the problem, not just because they have a lot of story to tell, but because it glosses over the fact that this situation should be impossible in the first place. There are few plausible scenarios in which both Janeway and Chakotay would be down on a planet surface together, and I dare say none where they'd be there without other crew members -- at least one of whom surely would also have been bitten by this virus-carrying insect.
- There sure are a lot of extras around the ship during Janeway's "farewell to the crew" speech. Maybe they could have gone with the normal amount of background crew and made more futuristic civilian clothes for Janeway and Chakotay?
- It's amusing that Chakotay tells another "my people have this legend" story that smells like bullshit -- and admits it is when Janeway calls him on it.
Perhaps it's unfair to penalize this episode for the fact that later episodes never picked up on the dangling plot threads. Then again, maybe they never wanted to revisit it because this episode itself wasn't very successful. I give "Resolutions" a C+.
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