Voyager Flashback: Memorial

Not every episode of Star Trek can be wildly original -- certainly not with over 900 episodes of it across the entire franchise. But a few ideas seem to get remixed again and again, as they were with Star Trek: Voyager's "Memorial."

Harry Kim, Tom Paris, Chakotay, and Neelix return from a two-week mission on the Delta Flyer. They bring with them unsettling, fragmented memories of a war they became embroiled in on an alien world... and atrocities they may have been personally involved in. The rest of the crew is determined to seek the truth and fill in the gaps in their memories.

The "stew" that is this episode comes from ingredients well-stocked in the Star Trek pantry. Voyager itself has already done an episode specifically about "implanted memories of brutal war crimes," and another that entangled a character in an alien war. Meanwhile, The Next Generation did an alien abduction story that echoes the "what happened to us?" mystery of this episode in many ways. In short, the "been there, done that" meter pegs high for me on this episode.

That wouldn't be bad, in and of itself, if this episode had anything new to say, or remixed the ingredients in a compelling fashion. But this story isn't tailored to its characters in any way. Shouldn't Neelix be especially affected by the violence he experienced, given the loss of his family to a weapon of mass destruction? Perhaps Tom Paris might be impacted in a particular way relating to his past criminal incarceration? Maybe Harry Kim is hit especially hard because he's never been in a war zone before? But "general trauma" takes the place of any specificity here; it really could have been any four characters on the Delta Flyer, for all the difference it makes in this story.

Perhaps the episode could have been improved by going harder at making us (and/or the characters) really experience the atrocities involved. Maybe this simply wasn't possible on the UPN network in the year 2000, but the episode is so cowardly about avoiding controversy that it doesn't even make an act break out of the moment when a PTSD-addled Neelix endangers Naomi Wildman; Chakotay talks him down, gets Naomi out of danger, and then we get the commercial break.

Another problem may be that Voyager has established such a constrained acting style at this point that when someone breaks out of it, it feels out of place. Indeed, the show literally cannot contain it. In a scene where Tom Paris experiences his most intense war flashbacks, Robert Duncan McNeill gives such a loud, shouting performance that he spikes the audio and they don't even bother to replace it with something cleaner. (Perhaps looping the dialogue of such a big performance simply wasn't possible.)

Still, "Memorial" is not without merit. The production value is pretty good. The on-location filming of the monument in the meadow adds a lot of bang for the buck. The musical score gets a bit experimental, with more electronic elements than you usually hear in an episode. Footage from The Untouchables is cleared for use on Tom's television. Smart camera placement throughout emphasizes the PTSD.

And the final debate -- the ultimate point of the episode -- is good. Is the notion that one should "never forget" sufficient to justify inflicting a mental invasion on others? Is it right to repair the memorial in the end, or would it have been right to dismantle it? Even the characters don't agree on this, and I wish the episode had had more time to explore this at length, really digging into why each character might feel the way they do about it.

Other observations:

• One complaint about being stuck on the Delta Flyer for two weeks is that someone left their plate in the replicator. Seriously, who would do that? This isn't even as "hard" as loading a dishwasher. All you have left to do is say "computer, recycle."

• I don't attach any particular significance to this, but it does seem weird that two different people (Harry and Naomi) both burn their hands on a hot cooking pot in the same episode.

• The one character (predictably) who does get a tailored moment in the story is Seven of Nine, who, as a Borg, talks with Neelix about feelings of guilt over participating in atrocities.

• It feels like there's a Dune fan on the writing staff somewhere, adding a T to the front of a planet name to create "Tarrakis."

I wish this episode had said more specifically about the characters involved, enough to justify its similarity to other Trek episodes that have come before. "Rerun" that it is, I can only give "Memorial" a C+.