Star Trek: Voyager: Hope and Fear   Rewatch 
November 20, 2017 7:31 AM - Season 4, Episode 26 - Subscribe

@janewayornoway hey looks like were going home early SF sent us a new ship looks sharp and is hella fast im sure it isnt some sort of trick #loljk #AsIf #WasntBornYesterday #LucyCharlieBrownAndTheFootball

Memory Alpha used to play Phaser Frisbee on the quad at Starfleet Academy with a targ that had a bandanna tied around its neck:

- The ultimately-used storyline for this episode reuses the concept of ship-generated slipstreams, that idea having temporarily been considered for the third season finale "Scorpion". "I knew the slipstream idea would come in handy someday," Brannon Braga noted. Early in the story's development, Braga began to invent the USS Dauntless, conceiving of it as an unnamed, bullet-shaped and highly advanced craft. He also envisioned a clash between Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine. Joe Menosky recalled, "Brannon had an image of Seven at the helm of one ship, Janeway at the helm of the other, and them heading toward each other at breakneck speed, as if we were going to bring to a culmination the character arc that had been established between them [...] – the struggle, and Seven finding her identity, but it being not at all the identity that Janeway would have preferred. This was supposed to be an exploration of that."

- According to The Klingon Dictionary, a proper Klingonese rendering of Arturis' apology (with its translation into English being "my mistake") might be "jIQagh" or "jItlhIj".

- The Dauntless' registry is "NX-01A" (which is close to NX-01, the registry of the first warp five Earth starship, Enterprise).

- The events of this episode represent the seventh time (aside from the series premiere) that the Voyager crew has a possibility of returning home.

"Admiral Hayes; Good man, fine officer, bit of a windbag..."

- Janeway

"Any ideas?"
"Not presently."
"Well we'd better think of something. We come face to face with your former family in less than an hour and that's one reunion I'd like to miss."

- Janeway and Seven of Nine, in Arturis' brig

"I'm your captain. That means I can't always be your friend. Understand?"
"No. However, if we are assimilated, then our thoughts will become one, and I'm sure I will understand perfectly."

- Janeway and Seven of Nine

Poster's Log:

A fine episode, one that acknowledges the struggles that the show itself has gone through, in particular in incorporating Seven into the crew, and even in showing Janeway expressing skepticism regarding the too-good-to-be-true prototype starship that Starfleet allegedly managed to completely develop in four years and send to the Delta Quadrant completely uncrewed, in the middle of a war in which they could have used ships like that. To quote the theme song of the next installment in the franchise, it has been a long road, gettin' from there to here, and Arturis' scheme very nearly doesn't come off at all, despite the time he's spent stalking them and planning it, and of course, it's ultimately foiled by Janeway hacking Seven's implants. Speaking of which, I was impressed by a small bit during the phaser frisbeeVelocity game: their showing the implant on her arm as being larger and uglier than the ones on her face. It slightly mitigates the fanservicey aspect of Seven's appearance by reminding the watchers that this is someone who probably has a lot more hardware left inside her than is apparent from the catsuit. The episode also gets points from me by adding the bit about the Maquis maybe not getting a great reception when they get back.

The episode was aided by great performances all around. If the tension between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan has already reached toxic levels, they managed to use it in showing some of the tension between the characters, and overcame it in establishing that there was a decent relationship between Seven and Janeway regardless. And big props to Ray Wise, almost unrecognizable under the alien makeup, but conveying the despair and rage of the character as he tries to enact his revenge. I know Wise mostly from Twin Peaks, and although Arturis is a very different sort of character from Leland Palmer, he conveys that same mix of overwhelming grief and less appealing aspects.

Poster's Log, supplemental: I've been thinking for a while that I might want to let other people have a chance to take a turn with my half of the episode summaries, if anyone else wants to. I've done this and the earlier DS9 rewatches for a while, and although I'm not burnt out on it, I'm kind of interested to see how other people would approach it. It's not like the format that we've been using is set in stone or anything; we just sort of made it up as we went along. If no one else takes it up, I'd be perfectly happy to keep my end of it going through "Endgame", but I wanted other people to have a chance if they felt so inclined.
posted by Halloween Jack (8 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I didn't think much of this episode while I was watching it til it got to the reveal. Ray Wise really sold it.

It slightly mitigates the fanservicey aspect of Seven's appearance by reminding the watchers that this is someone who probably has a lot more hardware left inside her than is apparent from the catsuit.

This is really interesting. The borg mutilated her and twisted her body into another kind of life form. She's not ...disabled.... she's super-human. But her body isn't the same. And she'll never be the same as she was as a kid. This is something I've never thought about. Her body transformed. Her personality stripped away. Finally on Voyager she gets bodily and personal autonomy. The wannabe humans are the most interesting on Trek. Data, Spock, The Doctor, etc. This idea adds another level to Seven. For me anyway.
posted by hot_monster at 8:35 PM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


@janewayornoway hey looks like were going home early SF sent us a new ship looks sharp and is hella fast im sure it isnt some sort of trick #loljk #AsIf #WasntBornYesterday #LucyCharlieBrownAndTheFootball

Huh, don't see a checkmark. Twitter must've revoked it in response to all that anti-Nazi stuff she did in "The Killing Game."

If the tension between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan has already reached toxic levels

Now that I know about this bit of behind-the-scenes trivia, I can't stop looking for it either. And, if I hadn't already seen this series, I'd speculate that said tension might produce overall better-quality work, just as the best rock groups always seem to be the ones that hate each other, and then once they mature and have kids and kick out the troublemakers, their music turns anodyne and weaksauce. Now, my memory of VOY's overall quality is that it does not markedly improve from here on out (I'm about half a season ahead on this rewatch), but perhaps Mulgrew and/or Ryan's acting does, and perhaps I failed to perceive it the first time.

In any case, I agree that this episode thoroughly works. It's an interesting and exciting ship, it's a storyline that fits the show concept perfectly, and Arturis is fascinating. My gripes are minor: one, the closing shot of the episode is kind of corny, and two, how come Arturis doesn't off himself in his final scene, like that one woman tried to in Serenity right before the Reavers got to her?

The episode also gets points from me by adding the bit about the Maquis maybe not getting a great reception when they get back.

Yeah, they did well to spend time on various crewmembers' thoughts about returning to Earth. Especially since (SPOILERS, KIND OF) the actual final episode of the series is so bitterly disappointing on that score (END SPOILERS) but ANYway…

I know Wise mostly from Twin Peaks, and although Arturis is a very different sort of character from Leland Palmer, he conveys that same mix of overwhelming grief and less appealing aspects.

Ray Wise's finest hour: Part 1 | Part 2

it has been a long road, gettin' from there to here

no no no no NO NO NO NOOOOOO
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 2:36 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Particle of the Week: The unspecified particles used in Arturis' 'particle synthesis.'
Pointless STO Comparison of the Week: The Dauntless class science vessel is recently available to Federation faction members in Star Trek Online. The in-world justification is that Starfleet got around to reverse engineering the design thirty-odd years after the events of this episode. The real reason is that it's in the cash shop. Nobody says anything about it, but the 'real' one probably offers food replicators, a holodeck and a shuttle bay.

Ongoing Counts:
* Maximum Possible Photon Torpedoes: 17.
* Shuttles: Down 8.
* Crew: 135.
* Other: Dropping these counts after the events in One, unless numbers can be reestablished. Both the backup bio-neural gel packs and the escape pods may have been used up, and we don't know.
* Credulity Straining Alpha Quadrant Contacts: 9. No increase to the tally this week - as with Distant Origin, the encounter in this episode is the product of someone deliberately tracking them down.
* Janeway's Big Red Button: 2 aborted self-destructs, 1 successful, 1 game of chicken, 1 ramming speed.

Notes:
* Velocity looks awesome.

The last time I remember seeing a Starfleet-specific sport was right here, and it looks like an event rejected from American Gladiators for being too silly.

I would totally actually play Velocity though. I mean, I'm outta shape and I'd lose horribly, but the synthesis of phaser practice, dodgeball and squash? Who could resist?

* Arturis' plot was too implausible for me.

This was my impression at the time, and the rewatch didn't really change my mind. For starters, we just saw an experimental Starfleet vessel this same year. Starfleet must be acutely aware that it has a lot of enemies who would love to get their hands on any sort of experimental drive or ship technology they're working on after the incident with the Prometheus, and wouldn't send a ship out to just float if Voyager didn't get their message.

Worst case, the Dauntless should've been piloted by one or more holograms. The Prometheus had ship-wide emitters, and that seems like the logical compromise if they didn't want to send organic crew.

The Doctor should've thought of this, even if nobody else did.

I did appreciate Janeway being skeptical of this, so this isn't total failure like I sometimes go on about with these threads - her refusal to just trust anything about this was good, but (both with this and my next couple of complaints), wasn't really articulated enough. She acts like this is sort of hinky, when it's completely unbelievable, IMO.

* Particle synthesis offered us the 'perfect simulation' problem, but from the other side.

I've talked about how the holodeck can't possibly be getting every detail right. Like, when they talk to Socrates in there, it can't possibly even be an accurate sim of what the man looked like because there's no way for them to obtain that data.

Similarly, Arturis' simulation of the Dauntless is too perfect - it even uses the right voice for the main computer, the extrapolated registry is plausible... there's just a ton here he shouldn't know from viewing them externally. I suppose he could have gotten it if he obtained a full copy of their database, but it isn't established by him or mused about by the crew.

(Maybe he used an Omega-related security hole though.)

At the same time, it's also too vulnerable - Harry beat it by accident with a handheld tricorder, which Arturis probably should've been able to anticipate given how thorough his plan was overall.

* Nobody asked any questions about 'how'd Starfleet know where to send this?'

Voyager's been wildly off-course since the Doctor relayed their message to Starfleet - they were kidnapped by Hirogen for a considerable length of time, they had to rescue Tom Paris from that body-swapper, they ran out of deuterium awhile...

Figuring out where they were going to be is a problem Starfleet simply couldn't have solved, and yet the Dauntless was only 10 LY away when they found out about this.

* On a good note: the performances.

Everybody is indeed pretty great here: Ryan, Janeway and Arturis are particularly fun. Per the usual for Voyager, Ray Wise is a great casting choice - he always brings his A-game AFAIK, and this episode is no different.

Seems like everybody agrees with me, so I s'pose there's no reason to go on about that too long, but I did like all of that. I even feel like they did a great job foreshadowing his attitude about the Borg.

Like, I see why the rest of you liked this - if you're willing to suspend disbelief about how ridiculous this all is, the drama is solidly constructed and deftly performed.

* I wanted more of the moral argument.

Arturis is wrong, but he's believably wrong. His desire to punish Voyager, born out of grief and anger and loss, is something that I do buy. His basic desire to get them all assimilated so that they can't escape the consequences of their choice has a poetic justice to it that is compelling.

All the same, Janeway knows how obvious his mistake is, and doesn't talk about it much. 8472 was probably going to wipe out all life in the quadrant, maybe even the galaxy. Given the access Arturis has had to their computer systems, it seems like talking to him about this a little better would've been good. Like, 'hey did you see the part where the weak would perish?'

He probably wouldn't have cared, but it would've been nice to see it addressed.

(I suppose this is consistent characterization though - Janeway's not much of a talker when pressed. That just seems like a bad trait in a captain, so I keep complaining about it even though I believe it at this point.)

So... hm. When this originally aired, Hope and Fear was one of the final handful of straws that convinced me to quit watching. (I did finish them all up much later, but only once, unlike most of these shows.)

Upon rewatch, I've found more to like - Seven and Janeway finding common ground at the end was good and Arturis' scenery-chewing loathing of them was pretty fun. Rather than hating this episode, it falls into that 'c'mon guys you're so close!' category for me.
posted by mordax at 10:54 AM on November 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


I can forgive Arturis' improbable plot, because:

- Arturis is barely holding it together, so his plot isn't airtight. He's got almost nothing left but his innate abilities and this ship that can reach the Alpha Quadrant quickly, and he's got an obsessive hatred of these people that really want to reach the Alpha Quadrant quickly and have files that he can decrypt, and whatever intrinsic flaws his scheme had, on some level he probably couldn't not give it a shot. Besides, he may have depended on:

- The trauma that the Voyager crew had already endured. Having the ship boarded and/or taken over multiple times, some of the crew kidnapped for their organs, the war games that the Hirogen put them through, etc. Just as Arturis couldn't not try to take his revenge, Janeway couldn't simply say "Nope, not worth even a look at, too good to be true." And besides:

- They very nearly got the ship anyway. They had the drop on Arturis on the bridge; I'm not sure why they didn't just shoot him. (I'm not at a place right this instant where I can replay the scene, so maybe they didn't have a good angle on him, but flanking him from the front would have rendered that moot.) Arturis may have had some sort of trojan horse or dead man's switch set up so that they couldn't have taken full control of the ship in any circumstance, but he doesn't seem to have thought every little thing through; he even left Janeway and Seven their combadges, which almost everyone else who captures a Starfleet officer confiscates immediately. And getting a working quantum slipstream drive back to the Federation would have been a staggering coup; at this point in the Dominion War, the tide may have turned in favor of the Alliance--this is around the time of the Romulans joining the Alliance and the First Battle of Chin'Toka--but things were hardly wrapped up, and faced with the prospect of a Starfleet armada that could have reached the Gamma Quadrant in months, the Dominion may have surrendered immediately.

In general, there are a bunch of questions about Arturis and his people that the show didn't answer, such as why, with their level of technology, they ever succumbed to the Borg; at the very least, they should have been able to escape them entirely--if they could cross the entire Milky Way in three months with a quantum slipstream drive, they should be able to reach other galaxies in a relatively short time (about 133 years, if I'm doing the math right, for the Andromeda Galaxy)--or even be able to hack the Borg OS in the way that the Enterprise crew was able to in "I, Borg." There's something peculiar about Arturis' immediate forgiveness of Seven, and his refusal to even consider the possibility that Species 8472 was the greater of two evils. His people may simply think very differently from the way we do, which might explain why Voyager has such difficulty in duplicating the quantum slipstream drive, despite being able to for a few minutes here.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:02 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can forgive Arturis' improbable plot

Those are good points. I'm not sure they're enough for me, but I'll mull it over some more. :)

(They don't cover my problem with the whole notion of particle synthesis, but it's a divide we've all had before, repeatedly, about holodecks in general.)

They had the drop on Arturis on the bridge; I'm not sure why they didn't just shoot him.

Mm. They did take the shot, and he shrugged it off. (I would've shot him more, but I'm probably too interested in self-preservation to join Starfleet Security.)

In general, there are a bunch of questions about Arturis and his people that the show didn't answer, such as why, with their level of technology, they ever succumbed to the Borg; at the very least, they should have been able to escape them entirely

My read on that is that they didn't actually exceed the power and technology available to the Borg. Like, quantum slipstream technology isn't any faster than the drives we've seen the Borg using at this point, (Endgame will nerf them, but that was some typical Voyager 'wrap a bow on it' bullshit), and Arturis' particle synthesis tech resembles the capabilities of autonomous regeneration sequencers. I get the impression Arturis' people were right at the level of technological parity with them, which means a lot of stuff might have tipped the balance of power between their factions: shortage of key resources to make and power ships, blockade of some higher space, etc.

There's something peculiar about Arturis' immediate forgiveness of Seven, and his refusal to even consider the possibility that Species 8472 was the greater of two evils.

The forgiveness actually felt like a reasonable victim/PTSD response to me: Arturis has had to live with the knowledge of the Borg for probably his entire life. He's had a long time to process their existence, and to understand that drones aren't really responsible for their actions on an individual level. Like... Seven did participate in the enslavement of entire civilizations, but she was enslaved herself. Her moral culpability is a complex issue, IMO. (I'd argue that working with Gowron and Martok over on DS9 is probably less ethically defensible than recruiting Seven to a crew, personally - the Klingons will continue to raid/murder/etc. beyond Federation space, while Seven's modus operandi isn't very Borg-y on her own.)

Voyager was a wild card meddling in the scenario for personal gain though, so it makes sense for all that sublimated rage to immediately get directed their way. Like, he scapegoated them because there was literally nothing he'd ever be able to do against the Collective, but they were a target he could punish.

As for 8472: I think maybe he was banking on his people being able to escape them, or assuming they'd lose interest after taking down the Borg. Either is reasonable: while 8472 is at least as fast as either slipstream drives or Borg transwarp, their pursuit might not have been as tenacious as the Borg. This perspective might not even be wrong - we know the 8472 in Prey lost interest in its genocidal crusade after being beat down enough. (At the same time, there was no way for Janeway to know that during the events in Scorpion.)

I mostly wish they'd talked it out a little more though.

Oh, something I didn't have time to address yesterday:

The wannabe humans are the most interesting on Trek. Data, Spock, The Doctor, etc. This idea adds another level to Seven. For me anyway.

Characters like that are usually my favorites too, yeah. Having characters who are not properly human, but are interested in humans, is a good way to examine the human condition generally. (This is a space where they tried with Seven, but I don't feel like they were entirely up to the task - Janeway keeps handwaving discussions that could be fascinating. Like in this one, intuition is a topic near and dear to my heart, but she just leans on 'I used it to beat you, reconsider' instead of taking some space to explain how a person develops that capability through intense practice - something the Borg don't need to do, and therefore Seven probably wouldn't consider.)
posted by mordax at 12:06 PM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh, further thought:

I wonder what Seven's specific legal rights are, at this point? She wants to leave the ship, but it's clear Janeway won't let her.

Ethically, I feel like Janeway's in the wrong: Seven's pretty clearly reformed, and they would've had shuttles to spare if the Dauntless had panned out. Hell, she probably could've talked Neelix into giving her his ship if Janeway wasn't willing to do that.

What I'm curious about though is... is this legal? What sort of discretion does she have?

For that matter, how much protection can she offer the likes of Chakotay and B'Ellana, given that she was originally sent to arrest them all? I can see why none of them are stopping to ask a lot of questions at this point - a Starfleet penal colony is probably Club Med compared to being stuck in Borg/Hirogen/etc. space - but a couple of minutes on the topic couldn't have hurt.
posted by mordax at 12:16 PM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Janeway is Captain of the only Federation vessel in the Delta Quadrant and Seven is still a citizen of the Federation, kidnapping as a child wouldn't remove that status, and even if that wasn't definitive, Janeway would certainly have ample discretion to keep Seven on the ship for her own good and for that of the ship as the sole representative authority for the Federation.

I don't think Janeway's in the wrong because she understands the situation she sees, which is later proven by Seven's own actions. Seven's choices here aren't entirely free since she's on a quasi-military vessel and was a captive of the Borg for 20ish years after her abduction as a child. Janeway has ample reason to suspect Seven's decision making is compromised and she isn't yet able to make a rational decision on her fate. The questions Janeway asks Seven go to establishing that as Seven has no plan or rationale basis for her choice other than an incoherent concern over returning to Earth. Any close relative of Seven's who might still be alive would have likely cause to charge Janeway with neglect of duty had she simply let Seven go at this point would the evidence be fairly presented. Even if Seven wasn't a citizen, Janeway could be accused of allowing an enemy soldier to return to fighting should Seven choose to rejoin the Borg given their status with the Federation.

As to the notion Arturis should have given more consideration to Janeway's dilemma with species 8472, I don't think that makes much sense given the Borg have wiped out Arturis' entire race. Any other option would seem better than that. Even if Species 8472 did try to take over the Delta Quadrant and Arturis' people would eventually fall to them, they'd be virtually no worse off, so there is little reason Arturis would have for accepting any alternative as "better" given the results he's already faced. I find Arturis' plan an entirely reasonable reaction, if hard to believe in detail of how it was pulled off.

I liked this episode better on rewatch than I did on first viewing, not a ton since I liked it fine the first time, but enough to move it up another notch as the odd structure to the episode felt more sensible when I knew it was coming rather than it being unexpectedly anti-climatic in the actions/non-belief in his ruse. This episode differs from many of the "take over the ship" or deceive the crew episodes in the crew, other than poor Harry, never really entirely buying into the plot and uncovering the proof of the scheme well before the end. The drama isn't in the actions, but in the interpersonal conflict between Seven and Janeway, that goes back to Seven being taken from the Borg when we first meet her. Arturis' plot feeds off the same circumstance, the Scorpion decision, and adds another layer to it and the conflict between Seven and Janeway.

It's a clever choice for being a bit unexpected, as much a continuity episode in its way as a stand alone for adding some depth or cost to that earlier action in a manner that echoes that of Season of Hell a bit. Arturis is a sympathetic figure and not even "wrong" exactly in his charge, even as that doesn't make Janeway necessarily wrong either, since the cost of the choice fell so completely on Arturis' people. The episode deals with the collateral repercussions both physical and emotional that come from making difficult choices, and, to its credit, doesn't over state a case for there being a "right" solution. It leaves Janeway's choice open to further questioning regarding the Borg, even as it closes off part of the conflict Seven was facing on Voyager through Janeway's decisions involving her.

The tone of the episode isn't something they could do all the time, since it does rely on being "off" a bit from standard expectation, but adding episodes like this is a fine touch for the show that helps give more life to the universe outside the ship and more depth to the actions they undertake. it isn't the first time they've tried something like this, but its one of the better examples of it working out. Lot's of nice, albeit brief, character work for most of the cast adds to that, making the crew all seem involved in the action, even if not in exceptional detail.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:22 PM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I enjoyed this, though it did raise an ongoing question regarding Voyager's repeated encounters with various alien ships. Why didn't they try harder to take and keep control of Arturis' vessel? Building a fleet via piracy and privateering was clearly one of the more successful strategies employed by Earthbound resource-constrained long-durations n voyagers in the past, and surely Janeway knows this.

The answer must lie in Voyager's persistent need to keep the show's premise fundamentally the same. Ah well, missed opportunity.
posted by mwhybark at 10:29 AM on December 11, 2017


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