Tom Paris' discontent aboard Voyager reaches the breaking point, and he makes arrangements to leave and join a Talaxian convoy. But as Neelix digs into Paris' departure (looking for content for his new daily "streaming show"), he uncovers evidence of a traitor on board the ship.
When it comes to Neelix at this point in the run of Voyager, I think there are basically three possibilities. One, the writers have no idea how annoying Neelix is; they think he's great, and they actually enjoy writing for him. Two, they know exactly how annoying he is, and they're making a writing exercise of trolling us. Three, most Voyager fans actually like Neelix?
Reading some of the background of this episode, I think it was probably "one." Executive producer Jeri Taylor felt that the "Tom Paris behaves badly" and "traitor aboard the ship" subplots hadn't been playing particularly well. (I think she was right about that.) In her own words, "bringing it to a conclusion felt obligatory rather than challenging." With the writers looking for a way to ignite their imaginations for a story line that wasn't doing it for them, they hit on the idea of Neelix starting a "newspaper."
That idea enchanted them so much that they actually wrote an episode entirely from the point of view of Neelix and his recordings. Nothing happened that Neelix himself wasn't there to see. And apparently they actually started filming the episode this way before a Paramount studio executive read the script and intervened, saying (as Taylor recounts): "You can't do this. We've got to have the action. We've got to see Tom be a hero." A rapid rewrite added the scenes of Tom Paris aboard the Kazon ship.
That no doubt helped. But a fundamental problem still can't really be solved. Neelix has been consistently written as so cloying, so bumbling, so unaware of how others see him, that any episode designed to make him look good almost by definition has to make everyone else look bad.
That Neelix ultimately cracks the case when Tuvok could not makes Tuvok look dumb. That Chakotay is left out of Janeway and Tuvok's plan to expose the traitor makes Chakotay look dumb. Jonas throwing up a force field but doing nothing to Neelix (who is already inside) makes Jonas look dumb. Not ordering all lifesigns beamed out of engineering (when we're shown that transporters can get through this force field) makes Janeway look dumb. Seska leaving Paris alone in a room with a fully functioning computer makes her look dumb. The Doctor wanting more desperately than anything to be on Neelix's video podcast makes him look dumb. Kim encouraging Neelix to dig up divisive material for his show among an already fractured Starfleet/Maquis crew makes Kim look dumb. Basically, everyone in this episode -- regular and guest star alike -- has a moment where they look unreasonably dumb. (And Neelix also usurps the "touching goodbye" scene with Tom Paris that should rightfully have been between Tom and his best friend Harry Kim!)
While the episode certainly could have been executed better (say, by centering it on almost any other character), the overall resolution of the traitor arc does still have its moments. Paris being the hero is sort of a restatement of his entire character thesis: he's a bad boy who's made a turn for good. There's some decent (if simple) action aboard the Kazon ship, and lots of dark and moody lighting over there too -- the production is really doing a lot with a little (and on short notice too, given that that material was all a late rewrite).
Other observations:
- "I'm a doctor, not a performer." While the Doctor says he doesn't have time for such nonsense, he certainly will later in the series.
- The camera lingers unusually long on a no-name, non-speaking character in the hall with Harry Kim. That was then-prince, now King Abdullah bin al-Hussein of Jordan. A set visit was apparently arranged for him, as he was a Star Trek fan; that turned into a cameo (non-speaking, as he was not a Screen Actors Guild member).
- The name "Jonas" has to have been deliberately meant to sound a bit like "Judas," right?
At this point, I think the writers need to seriously rethink their approach to Neelix. I don't think they're going to hear me from 25+ years ago, though. I give "Investigations" a C+.
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