Voyager Flashback: Bride of Chaotica!

There's a Star Trek tradition that goes back to the original series, of occasionally throwing in a purposefully over-the-top, campy, comedy episode. Voyager got in on it with the holodeck romp "Bride of Chaotica!"

Voyager becomes stuck in space at the site of a rift between universes. Photonic based life-forms are coming to the ship... where they encounter Tom Paris' Captain Proton holodeck program and take it for reality. To get Voyager "out of the mud," the crew must reach an accord with the aliens by playing along with the scenario.

This episode reportedly came about after a fire broke out on the sets at Paramount Studios. The Voyager bridge sustained minor damage and needed repairs, so an episode was needed -- fast! -- with virtually no bridge scenes. Seizing on the Captain Proton holodeck program that had seemed to go over well this season, staff writer Bryan Fuller pitched a story that would put it center stage.

Clearly, this was fun for everyone involved. For the writers, it was an opportunity for self-mockery. ("Why are the recaps always inaccurate?" "Doesn't this planet look familiar?") For the actors, it was a chance to cut loose and behave out of character. (Tuvok gets a lot more sarcastic humor than usual, though of course the biggest camp comes when Janeway dons the Arachnia costume.) Post-production is in on the fun too, with an old-timey musical score, Warner Brothers-style animation of drifting "pheromones," and an edit that includes wipes and irises.

There's a lot of mileage here in lampooning a bygone era of ridiculous science fiction. (Careful though -- Voyager will one day soon be as old as Flash Gordon was at the time this episode was made!) Guest star Kirsten Turner ruptures eardrums with her terrified shrieks. Names like "Satan's Robot," the "Death Ray," and "the President of Earth" are made to laugh at.

I actually appreciate the restraint here of doing a holodeck story in which the ever-malfunctioning "safety protocols" are never compromised. Voyager and its crew are only briefly in real jeopardy here -- a good choice for an episode setting out to be "just for fun." (Well, maybe there only being four functioning bathrooms on the ship is a true threat. But hey... one of the rare confirmations that there are indeed bathrooms in Star Trek.)

With all that to like here, I must confess that there's an unfair ceiling on how much I can truly enjoy this episode: the fact that in the very same year, the movie Galaxy Quest was released. Galaxy Quest is all of this: aliens mistaking science fiction for reality, loving send-up of classic science fiction tropes, lots of great jokes. But Galaxy Quest is also itself surprisingly heartfelt at times, and actually an amazing incarnation of the very thing it's sending up. (Count me in the crowd that says Galaxy Quest is actually the best Star Trek movie that's ever been made.)

Other observations:

• There's an implication early on that the music we here in the Captain Proton scenario is actually audible in the holodeck itself.

• Tom reads a message on his ship's ticker tape device at one point... backwards from the direction in which it would actually be printed.

There might have been a few months in 1999 where I might have regarded "Bride of Chaotica!" as grade A or A- Star Trek... and then Galaxy Quest came to knock it off the pedestal. Hard. It's not that there's room for only one up top; it's just that Galaxy Quest does everything this episode does (and more) so well that it makes me rethink whether this was really that good in the first place. So I wind up giving "Bride of Chaotica!" a B. Maybe unfairly... but there it is.