Voyager Flashback: Caretaker

As with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when I recently re-watched it, I haven't seen any episodes of Star Trek: Voyager since they were brand new. (Not counting scrubbing quickly through episodes for my work on the the Star Trek CCG.) Unlike with Deep Space Nine, though, I've never felt like I wanted to go back and watch them again. My memory of Voyager is that while you could cultivate perhaps a dozen or so "top shelf Star Trek" episodes from its seven season run, the "average score" of any given episode was far lower than that of Deep Space Nine or The Next Generation (even including The Next Generation's terrible hit rate in the first two seasons).

But the Star Trek podcast I listen to is now turning to Voyager, and my actual recall of most episodes is spotty at best. Glancing at a list of season one episode titles, for example, I could only give you a "one sentence summary" of less than half. Twenty years is plenty of time for me to have changed. Maybe I'll think differently about Voyager now if I start watching it, week to week, along with the podcast? And so I'm embarking on a new Star Trek "flashback" series of reviews, beginning with Voyager's two-hour pilot episode, "Caretaker."

The technologically advanced starship Voyager is dispatched to the Badlands to investigate the disappearance of a Maquis ship... and is suddenly whisked 70,000 light years across the galaxy by a mysterious alien entity. The two crews work together to find people who have been abducted and sent to a nearby planet, uncovering a strange relationship between the natives and the "Caretaker" who transported the ships. 

First episodes of television series are often a soul-sapping experience for those who write them, incorporating endless notes from countless people who somehow get a voice in the process. It's one reason a lot of shows don't "find themselves" until several episodes in (when many of those overseers have moved on to other projects). The stories surrounding the creation of Voyager sound worse than usual. Paramount was launching its own television network. It needed new shows to fill out its schedule, and this Star Trek show in particular to be the network's crown jewel. This show was going to be exactly what every single UPN executive wanted it to be.

"Caretaker" is hardly a disaster of a pilot. It's better than "Encounter at Farpoint" was for The Next Generation, and it does set some pieces up on a game board in interesting ways. But it also suggests and immediately forecloses a number of interesting possibilities, I think precisely because there were "too many cooks" in the kitchen -- and moreover, too many cooks trying to craft the most broadly appealing meal.

Voyager is clearly made in the shadow of two Star Treks before it, and everyone involved clearly wants it to be like The Next Generation and not like Deep Space Nine. They didn't want complex continuing story lines, so the whole show is premised on the ship constantly moving so that you can't revisit anything. They don't seem to want friction between characters like on Deep Space Nine, so even though they build in the compelling premise that two very different crews must learn to live and work together as one, everyone's in a Starfleet uniform by the end of these two hours -- and instantly united behind the captain who just consigned them all to being stranded decades from home. (It's kind of wild to think that the Maquis were created for this show, but created far more meaningful drama on DS9 than they ever do here.)

So much of this first episode seems to be about avoiding, mitigating, or undoing anything that would make this show stand out as distinct from either The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. We have the first female captain of the franchise in Kathryn Janeway... but rather than center this episode on her, it's framed as a redemptive arc for Tom Paris. And speaking of Paris, there was a real opportunity to explore what criminal justice means in Star Trek, to have an unrepentant rogue as a main character -- not just a scoundrel like Quark, but someone who actually turned his back on Starfleet. Instead, Paris is fully on the side of right by the end of the episode.

Then there are elements peppered in that feel like they're there to specifically appease one person somewhere... and it often turns out they were. "Bioneural technology" is a meaningless bit of technobabble here, but they probably figured they could do something with it later. A few guest characters get early scenes as though to sell what the Voyager crew might look like... but when no one shows any remorse over their deaths, it's impossible for the audience to feel much either. The Caretaker manifests a "comforting" farm to the crew, a deception serving no real purpose because one of the writers thought there needed to be a surreal element in the first episode (like Q's courtroom for TNG, or the wormhole for DS9). Talk of "another Caretaker" out there somewhere is never followed up on in the series (that I recall), but was reportedly suggested by an executive who wanted a sort of "escape hatch" to bring Voyager back if the "far from home" premise wasn't received well by fans.

Then there are the missed opportunities. Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres go through a major experience together, enough that you'd expect their relationship to be a significant ongoing thing for the show. Not as I recall. Kes expresses a progressive skepticism to the orthodoxy of her people's culture... but the episode doesn't really say much of anything about religion vs. science. Chakotay's heritage is ignored as a serious element and played for a couple of bigoted jokes. (There are some unsavory racial connotations to the behavior and appearance of the Kazon too.)

Egad... all those negatives. Sure, Encounter at Farpoint wasn't a great Star Trek episode, but did I really think this was better?

There is stuff here to like too. The friendship between Paris and Kim plays well right out of the gate. Janeway comes off as a different kind of captain who cares more about her crew than Kirk, Picard, or Sisko (at least, in the beginning for any of those characters). There's a lot of fun action compared to earlier, talkier Trek pilot episodes.

Plus, there are a few truly great elements. With just a couple of scenes and maybe 20 lines, Robert Picardo makes The Doctor a character you instantly need more of on your screen. The opening theme from Jerry Goldsmith threads the tiniest needle between mournful and hopeful, setting the perfect tone. The new sets look great, and lots of location shooting makes the episode feel big. (The only place they seem to have spared expenses is the cramped cockpit of what appears to be a tiny Maquis ship. Where were all those Maquis crew members we meet later actually working?)

Other observations:

• Harry Kim seems already consigned to the Chekov role of screaming when in jeopardy.

• Why does Janeway blow Tuvok's Maquis cover the moment he arrives on the bridge?

• The background Ocampa characters distract in a way they could never have anticipated when making this episode. The masks go over your nose, people!

• If Kes just snuck out of the Ocampa city and quickly got captured by the Kazon, when did she and Neelix meet?

• The Ocampa city is two miles underground and our heroes are climbing stairs to the surface? When I would sometimes take 10 flights of stairs in my office building (back when going to the office was a thing), I felt like I wanted to die. Some quick math extrapolating from the height of my building suggests these characters climb over 830 floors!

• The Ocampa are given five years of energy just before the Caretaker dies. Voyager ran for seven seasons, meaning the Ocampa run out before the series is over. I'm curious what happened to them -- like, more than I think I would have been if they'd arbitrarily said there was 10 years of banked energy or whatever.
  

• I'm not the first person to say this, but if only they had the ability to put a timer on a bomb, they could have avoided being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

• It's well known that Kate Mulgrew was not the first performer cast as Janeway. After many auditions (including a screen test with "Leah Brahms" performer Susan Gibney), French Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold won the role and filmed for a day-and-a-half before reportedly quitting. All parties involved were said to agree she wasn't a good fit -- stories range from her not realizing the pace of making television (compared to film), her desire to play more aloof and withdrawn than the production wanted, and many takes lost to flubbed dialogue. I've never seen footage of Bujold in the role, though I understand snippets of it were included in the Voyager Season 1 DVD set.
  

• Even after recasting Kate Mulgrew, there ended up being more reshoots (expensive, on-location), as Paramount executives reportedly hated the hairstyle she was given on her first days of filming. Is a woman's hairstyle really the thing that keeps any person from getting into a TV show, or is this just one more bit of scrutiny/indignity that the female star of a TV series must endure that a man doesn't? (There was early consternation over Picard's baldness, but contrary to an internet meme that circulates every now and then, they did not make Patrick Stewart ever screen test with a toupee.)
  

I give "Caretaker" a B-. It's neither the best Star Trek pilot nor the worst. For better and worse, it does set the stage for things good and bad about the series to come.