Voyager Flashback: Learning Curve

The writers of Star Trek: Voyager weren't planning for "Learning Curve" to be the finale of their first season. Four more episodes were filmed before the official break in production, but a decision was made above their heads to hold those episodes for season two. As a result, this decidedly non-finale-like episode became the finale.

Bad attitudes among some Maquis crew members are becoming a distraction on the ship, so Tuvok is assigned as their "Starfleet Academy teacher" to whip them into shape. Meanwhile, malfunctions in Voyager's bioneural gel packs are caused by an unexpected source.

This isn't a bad episode of Star Trek, but there sure were a lot of bad decisions in making it. First and foremost, this is the moment when Voyager once and for all resolved the idea of a split Starfleet and Maquis crew that could generate internal story friction. Even though the writers had realized that a contradictory character like Seska had been useful to have around, did they seize the opportunity to create more Seskas in their midst? No... they normalized them all in one fell swoop, for the sake of one Tuvok episode.

Another problem is how "Lower Decks"-y this episode is. You can't blame them for wanting their own version of one of the best episodes of Star Trek (made just one year earlier on The Next Generation). But on Voyager, it's hard to have a story based on previously-unknown characters when we don't even really know the main characters all that well yet. "Lower Decks" worked as an episode in large part because it touched on so many in the main cast, and the audience had an understanding of those people that the "grunts" on the ship did not. Here, Tuvok isn't well known -- and being Vulcan, is maybe unknowable to an extent. We don't even get the satisfaction of meeting new recurring faces here; not a single one of the Maquis characters in this episode ever appears again.

Yet another problem I have with this episode is admittedly more subjective, a matter of taste. Starfleet obviously is a military organization; every week, we're confronted with this fact in the form of ranks, barked orders, "yes, sir"s, and more. But their primary mission of exploration and diplomacy is decidedly not militaristic. Different fans watch Star Trek for different reasons, of course... but I for one could do with as few of the military trappings as possible. "Learning Curve" puts them all front and center.

This episode serves up all the "boot camp" cliches, repackaged in a sci-fi format: the 10-mile run, the "cleaning the floor with a toothbrush," the systematic dehumanization of recruits to build them into a fighting unit. And maybe, to achieve maximum military efficiency, this is the only way to do it. But I'd like to think that centuries in the future, there might be less humiliating ways to make a soldier. And of course, I personally don't want to think of Star Trek characters as soldiers.

Tuvok is frankly pretty dumb in this episode. His character arc, learning that he himself has things to learn from the Maquis, is premised on him not understanding a very simple problem. If he really has taught at the Academy for 16 years, as Janeway says, then surely he should recognize that the key difference here is that these people never wanted to join Starfleet Academy. Instead, it takes Neelix to open his eyes to this. Neelix. Not Chakotay, or B'Elanna Torres, or Tom Paris -- you know, the characters who actually understand the Maquis, yet who have learned to fit in on Voyager. It's a symptom of another problem that would grow on Voyager in the coming seasons: not knowing what to do with their characters even when it was staring them right in the face.

But even if the story arc doesn't quite make sense to me, it is a nice enough story as it unfolds. Tuvok learns to take advice from someone he would otherwise dismiss. He learns that sometimes, even the "tried and true" methods have to be changed to get results. This is all paired with a reasonably fun "problem of the week" for the ship. Having Voyager "get sick" is a fun way of actually doing something with the Macguffin of its "bioneural" technology. Sure, it comes at the expense of Neelix and his cooking almost destroying the ship -- but we already don't much like Neelix or his cooking anyway. (Neelix himself could learn the lesson of "try a different approach when you're not getting results.)

Other observations:

• More time wasted with Janeway and her Victorian holonovel. Are we supposed to be getting invested in an ongoing story line here? Is her conflict with this bratty child and his traumatized sister meant to reflect on the main plot in any way?

• The chatterbox character of Chell is written very much like Neelix. And performed rather like him too, by guest star Derek McGrath. When I saw this episode the first time it aired, part of me was convinced that Ethan Phillips had just put on different alien makeup to play the part.

• "Get the cheese to Sickbay" is, admittedly, one of the funniest lines of the entire series.

• In the climax to cure the ship, the sweat on all the characters is also funny... though unintentionally so. They really overdid it on Kes.

• There was apparently an ending, cut for time, in which Neelix shows Tuvok some kind of "trick" he learned from the Maquis, which was actually something Tuvok had been teaching them in his training regimen. It was meant to cement that they really had come around, and it's a shame it didn't make it into the final cut. But no, we couldn't leave out Janeway's holonovel!
  

I'd say that "Learning Curve" is a C+ episode. (Probably all the boot camp cliches just rubbed me the wrong way.)

So there you have it -- Star Trek: Voyager: Season One. My picks for the best five episodes of the season would be "Eye of the Needle," "Cathexis," "Phage," "Heroes and Demons," and "State of Flux." (Though I'd probably only curate "Eye of the Needle" -- along with the pilot episode -- into a package of "good and/or essential Voyager.")

Onward to season two...