Voyager Flashback: Twisted

When network executives held four season one episodes of Star Trek: Voyager for season two, rumors began swirling about one episode in particular, "Twisted." It was the worst of the lot, so bad that maybe it would never air. At least, so some of the actors were saying in summer convention appearances (which was pretty much the only way such rumors spread in those days). Seeming to confirm the reputation, "Twisted" was the last of the four delayed episodes to be broadcast.

Voyager passes through a strange interstellar phenomenon that "twists" the ship, reorganizing rooms and driving the main characters almost inexorably toward the holodeck at the center of the ship whenever they try to go somewhere else. Together, they struggle to escape while unable to reach the bridge or communicate with each other whenever they separate.

It's true that "Twisted" is not a particularly good episode. But it's not even the worst Voyager installment so far, and certainly not so bad it should have been locked up and never aired. (It's not even the worse of the "delayed four"; I'd give that distinction to "Elogium.") Still, you can see why the actors might have hated it so.

First, many characters aren't acting much like themselves. Tuvok illogically decides to leave the bridge in a crisis, hunting for others rather than taking charge himself. Paris claims he "chose this life" of exploring space when he most certainly did not; he's on Voyager only because it earned him an early parole from prison. B'Elanna is so rattled at the sight of a shirtless man that she's practically speechless. Janeway's encounter with the spatial distortion leaves her brain so scrambled that she sits up and spouts nonsense. (Poor Kate Mulgrew has to sell a line that sounds far too much like "doggy doo-doo.") No one is showing much urgency to get wherever they're trying to go, nor does their urgency increase when they find themselves lost on the way.

And yet there must have been some urgency on set, as the episode reportedly ended up a full eight minutes short, requiring additional material to be written and filmed to pad it out. The writers responded with a bunch of character moments... which sounds great in theory, except that the simplistic interactions expose how little the characters have been developed so far. Janeway is suddenly telling Kim that he's one of the best things about the mission so far? (How about a promotion, then?) Chakotay has to pull rank on a disobedient Tuvok (before mending fences with him later). There's a shallow exchange between B'Elanna and Chakotay over spirit guides. There's a line that rankled actor Tim Russ, where Tuvok claims to have always respected Janeway's decisions (after memorably defying her in an earlier episode).

That's just the material that might have been added later. What was probably there to begin with is pretty spotty too. The Doctor's subplot for the episode is being pursued by a horny hologram. For some reason, the minor character of Baxter is back, his one character trait still being that he works out a lot (even though his uniform has changed colors).

Then there's Neelix, who deserves his own paragraph. For the umpteenth time, Neelix is jealous of Tom Paris and unable to speak to Kes about it like an adult. (Mixing it up just a little, he's jealous of several random crew members too this time. And Paris is maybe being a little sketchy, spending two weeks of replicator rations to get Kes a weirdly personal birthday present.) Actually, Neelix is generally close to rock bottom as a character at this point: he comes very close to saying that "women are bad with directions," he wanders off and gets lost in a crisis, and worst of all, he bakes a birthday cake that looks to be almost all fondant. (Yuck.) He's so bad in this episode that Chakotay actually rolls his eyes at having to work with him -- and Chakotay is absolutely right.

The generic "Star Trek puzzle-solving" is pretty shoddy too. They decide to make a map of the twisted ship mere moments after concluding that the ship is continually rearranging itself. (How is that going to work?) And the ultimate solution, to "do nothing" and let it all happen, isn't very heroic or climactic. That it all turns out to be a strange form of alien information exchange is a cool idea, but the fact that the information never amounts to anything undermines that coolness.

Hmm.... maybe this episode really is that bad? Except, it honestly doesn't feel terrible while you're watching it. There is something effectively creepy in the idea that the only home these people have is being scrambled around them. Little moments do play well. Tuvok finds a logical way of letting Kim "leave work early" to go to Kes' birthday party. The debate between Chakotay and Tuvok on how to tackle the maze, only to split up and immediately reunite, is a fun scene. The doctor serves up another "I'm a doctor, not..." homage to classic Trek.

Other observations:

• The teaser ends with Tuvok's distorted voice repeating "phenomenon" over and over. Cue the Muppets.

• Not that this should have been turned into a two-parter, but given that no one else could understand Janeway after she passed through the phenomenon, I feel like there was an interesting story to be told after this encounter: what if now the Voyager crew could understand each other again... but no one else in the universe? What if they had to then find a way to undo the damage when they could not communicate with anyone beyond the ship?
  

Like I said, I don't find "Twisted" the worst even among the Voyager episodes so far, so I think I'll call it a C+. Not that that qualifies it for any "best of the series" compilation.