When Voyager tries to help an alien world facing multiple cataclysmic meteor strikes, a shuttle carrying Neelix and Tuvok crashes on the surface with few prospects of rescue. But they have an escape: a nearby "space elevator" that runs up a long tether to orbit. Yet during that long ride, they'll have to contend with an unknown saboteur concealing a dark secret.
I've tried to put my finger on what makes Neelix such a grating character -- especially when you could easily argue that there are other Star Trek characters I and other fans like who are cast in a similar mold. (Quark probably most of all.) I feel like it partly has to do with the fact that the Voyager writers as a whole don't seem to be very good at comedy, yet they often try to write Neelix like a sitcom character. By all accounts, actor Ethan Phillips is himself a very funny and charming person, and I submit that the gap between those traits in the actor and in the character gave everyone involved with Voyager a huge blind spot when it came to Neelix. Either they truly didn't know how Neelix was coming off, truly didn't care, or earnestly believed that "just one more Neelix episode" would make all the fans see what they saw.
I suspect is that it's that last one, as that dovetails well with the other hard-to-enjoy flaw of Neelix's character -- one that's on full display in this episode: he's such an obnoxious blend of "try-hard" and "incapable." He forces himself on the other characters in much the same way the writers force him on the audience. I mean... if you're going to do a Star Trek take on Murder on the Orient Express, which character would you put in the center of that mystery? Surely not Neelix.
But that's sort of what we get here. The series' actual detective Tuvok is reduced largely to a bystander, while Neelix bulldozes his way through the plot while hardly acknowledging the mystery or the stakes. He exaggerates his history and skills (for the umpteenth time; why does anyone believe anything he says?), stokes fear and disobedience in the middle of a crisis, and gets to pretend in the end that all of that was OK just because things worked out.
Although... I do have to admit that a lot of the interplay between Tuvok and Neelix does work. Each does have a good point: Tuvok wanting to focus on survival, Neelix insisting that keeping morale up is part of survival where emotional beings are concerned. Tuvok's snide Vulcan quips are actually funny (where Neelix comedic moments aren't), and the way he must give a "pep talk" in the end is a nice resolution to their conflict. It's all a pretty good situation for the two characters... if you ignore that they probably should understand each other better than this after they spent weeks merged as a single person.
In fact, it's actually the guest stars that really bring this episode down more than anything I hate about Neelix. The suspects on this "train" with Tuvok and Neelix are largely devoid of personality (except that a couple of them are real whiners). You can't remember any of their names. They're so indistinct that they're interchangeable, and that's terrible for a mystery. Whodunit becomes Whoisdat? And the mystery wraps up in Scooby Doo fashion, with Neelix sitting down for a long exposition dump on what really happened.
Amid the weak storytelling are some unfortunate production issues. In 1997, television CG just wasn't up to what it's being asked to do here; the asteroids and the maglev carriage all look really hokey. Pacing is weird right from the opening moment, a long pan around a silent bridge with everyone staring at the viewscreen. The action isn't very exhilarating, and the staging is often awkward; for example, in a moment where Neelix is held at knifepoint, the camera points straight up his nose (revealing the actor's real nostrils inside of the prosthetic ones).
Other observations:
- This is a notable episode for the supposedly limited resources of Voyager. Detail-minded fans who track such things record this as the fifth shuttle they've lost, while the supply of 38 photon torpedoes (established in "The Cloud") is now depleted by half with the launch of #19.
- We're told that this Etanian Order regularly conquers planets by attacking them with seemingly natural disasters, then moving in when the inhabitants evacuate. This plan doesn't make a lick of sense. They have to find a planet in a technological sweet spot where their victims are actually capable of a global evacuation, but not advanced enough to figure out that their apocalypse isn't naturally occurring. And also, there will have to still be worthwhile resources on the planet after the natives consume anything and everything in a desperate last-ditch effort to flee.
- Neelix gets a Schwarzenegger pun: "Mr. Sklar returned to the surface." (This has real "I let him go" energy.)
Honestly, there have been worse Neelix episodes than this. But this one isn't any good either. I give "Rise" a C.
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