Voyager Flashback: Ashes to Ashes

Star Trek: Voyager spent most of its time on the air at the same time as Deep Space Nine, and so it often zigged where its sibling show zagged. Deep Space Nine was all about continuity and ongoing story lines. So to be distinct, Voyager was generally episodic -- to a degree that I think hurt an episode like "Ashes to Ashes."

An alien contacts Voyager, saying she's really a fallen crewmember who was killed years ago and revived by a scavenger alien species. The crew welcomes her back with open arms... but she may soon learn that you "can't go home again." Meanwhile, Seven of Nine is growing into her new role as guardian to the ex-Borg children, but the kids are rebelling against her strict rules.

For roughly the first half of Star Trek: Voyager's seven-year run, alien species were "built to last"; the ship would travel for a while in Vidiian space, or Kazon space, or Hirogen space, and those aliens would recur for several episodes. But now, in the back half of the run, even aliens with interesting concepts (the Vaadwaur, for example) are "one and done." So it is here with Kobali, a people who revive the dead bodies of other races to procreate.

This episode does explore one interesting aspect of this concept... but it also leaves so much on the table. Not nearly enough is made of the violation here; they could easily have done a Kobali episode focused on how this sort of "graverobbing" and desecration analogizes to archaeological excavations of burial grounds. The transformative aspect of these aliens would be good fodder for another kind of story; Deep Space Nine found ways to use Jadzia Dax to get at transgender issues in a way "coded" enough for the times, and I feel like Voyager might have done something similar with the Kobali. Or how about a story sympathizing with someone rejected by the Kobali, but utterly unable to find a home with their original people, a sort of parallel for an American-raised child of immigrants forcibly expelled to a country that's never really been their home?

This one story that we do get is interesting enough... but I feel like we're getting a sort of compromised version of it. Put simply, we the audience don't actually know this character, Lyndsay Ballard. What it difference this would have made if Ballard had been an actual recurring character before this, who had been killed off on-screen and was now returning. It would have gone a long way toward making the audience feel the way the other characters do: glad to see an old friend return, and conflicted about how she's changed.

The episode also deflates the conflict a little too conveniently. Even before Harry Kim is put in an emotional vise, Ballard has already confronted Janeway about the circumstances of her human death (already making it clear she's not going to fit in). In the final act, "down sides" to staying on Voyager accumulate at breakneck speed as she increasingly slips into speaking alien language, forgets details about her human life, and more.

Ironically, the light B-plot of this episode is building exactly the sort of ongoing story that would have benefited the A-plot. Seven raising the Borg kids picks up on a previous episode and carries the story forward for future ones. There's not much to say here, since the story is so light. But it does give us humorous moments: Mezoti "answering the phone" just as children do (or did, back when there were land lines), and Seven's declaration that "fun will now commence." Though it also gives us one scene that to me really doesn't work: the final exchange between Harry Kim and Mezoti. Just two episodes ago, as a drone, Mezoti tried to assimilate Kim. I think he would need some time to feel so comfortable around her.

Other observations:

• The Kobali look to me a little like the Borg Queen. Which kind of works, since what they do is sort of like assimilation.

• Voyager has had a couple of "instant leaps across thousands of light years" since Ballard died. I don't think it would really be possible for her to locate and catch up with the ship.

• Janeway burns dinner while she's replicating it. Like... how is that even possible, short of a replicator malfunction?

I feel so many missed opportunities with this episode that it really brings down the rating for me. I give "Ashes to Ashes" a C+.