Voyager Flashback: Fair Haven

In the previous episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the crew finally established regular contact with Earth -- as important a moment for the overall story of the show as possible. Naturally, you'd want to follow that up with... a story with the lowest stakes imaginable? That's "Fair Haven."

Tom Paris has created a quaint Irish town on the holodeck. And now that a space phenomenon is going to stall Voyager's progress for days, crewmembers will be using that program to lift their spirits in the off time. For Captain Janeway, the program becomes more than a diversion when she falls in love with the owner of the local pub. But can she really have a romantic relationship with a holographic character?

Because of the budgetary realities of television production, the holodeck can never really be what a Star Trek character might really use a holodeck for; it would simply be too expensive to show too grandiose a setting. Still, it compromises the fiction a bit that they're always running programs of contemporary Earth. This would be something like a modern-day human wanting to spend all their vacation time at a Renaissance festival. It's about as historically accurate too. Fair Haven (the town, not the epsiode) is loaded with cultural stereotypes and broad caricatures.

According to staff writer Bryan Fuller, the writers considered other settings for this episode, including a "futuristic aircraft carrier, an Agatha Christie-type drawing room, a haunted castle, a movie studio" and others. Would that we had gotten one of those more interesting options. But no, of course, we get the one that can be filmed on a generic "Europe" backlot set over at Universal Studios.

Adding to the lack of excitement, it's clear right out of the gate that basically nothing is going to happen in this episode. The teaser before the credits, by definition meant to tease us with what interesting story is to come, shows Paris getting hit up for money by the town drunk, Harry flirting with a local girl, and the Doctor dressed up as a priest. Ooo, I can hardly wait for this one! We go on to equally exciting "come back after the commercial" moments like the bartender goading Janeway into a spirited game of ring toss.

After a lot of aimless scenes (highlighting the guest characters we don't care much about, rather than the recurring characters of Voyager), the episode finally stumbles into something at least a little interesting: Janeway's romantic plight. In several ways, we learn that the writers have categorically ruled out any kind of relationship with Chakotay, no matter what chemistry they may have seemed to have in the past. (For one thing, Chakotay tells her to go for it, strongly implying that he himself has slept with a hologram before.)

This does lead to a few nice scenes. The Doctor (an appropriate choice) advocates that a holographic love interest is real enough for the feelings they can make you feel. There's still deeper talk about how "the little, annoying things" can actually make a relationship, because Janeway's ability to simply erase any such things from her bartender boyfriend only underscores how unreal he is. There are also some light comedic moments throughout that do work. A scene featuring Tuvok's space-sickness -- and Neelix's story about gross food, which aggravates the condition -- is quite funny. Seven of Nine has a fun interaction with that town drunk.

But you also have to overlook a lot of things that don't make sense. Janeway is pursuing her romance in a public holodeck program, the equivalent of screwing in a dorm room without putting a sock on the doorknob. If she's so concerned with maintaining an appropriate relationship with her crew, she'd never do this (not when all she has to do is lock the holodeck door). When a big bar fight breaks out, crewmembers are sent to Sickbay with injuries; wouldn't the safety protocols have to be off for that to happen? In the end, when Janeway orders the computer to deny her access to edit the Fair Haven characters, couldn't she just countermand her own order if she wants to later?

Other observations:

• The "space tidal wave" that rocks Voyager is toilet water blue.

• Tom Paris totally knows what's going on with Janeway; he seems to be specifically needling her about "which 10% of the program to save" at the end of the episode.

This episode may be something of a test to the viewer: is it better to try something big and be memorably bad, or (as this episode does) to just be thoroughly boring and forgettable? When it comes to grading "Fair Haven," I feel like the episode would have to be worse than just "boring" to get a truly terrible mark. So I'll give it a C-.