Into The Wasteland
"Basics, Part I" Plot Summary
Seska sends a message to Voyager - specifically Chakotay - begging for help. She has given birth to a boy who appears to be Cardassian, which she says Kulluh is going to take to a remote system and kill. Chakotay tells Janeway to remain on course for the Alpha Quadrant, but Janeway tells Chakotay that if he wants to pursue the child, the crew will support him. After meditating and contacting his father, who tells him that a child he didn't want is still one of his own people, he decides to go after the baby even though the entire crew suspects a trap.
Occasional Kazon raids destroy nonessential computer components as they travel. One of Seska's men comes aboard to guide Voyager to her, but he commits suicide by blowing up an internal bomb, disabling the ship as Seska and Kulluh's people close in. The bomb destroys the restraining field keeping Suder locked in his quarters. Janeway calls for the self-destruct, but because of the damage by the raiders, the computer can't comply. The ship is boarded as Paris flees in a shuttle in search of help.
Janeway pleads for the life of her crew, and Kulluh slaps her across the face. As the command crew is led off the bridge, Seska sneers that she'll take good care of Chakotay's child - which she has told Kulluh is the result of Chakotay's raping her while she was under his command. The crew is sent to a cargo bay while Kulluh orders the ship to land on a remote planet, Hanan IV. Once there, he puts all of Voyager's personnel off the ship - except for Suder, who is hiding in a Jeffries tube, and the Doctor, who can't leave - and strips them of their comm badges. Then he and Seska take Voyager into space, leaving the crew on a planet with few resources, humanoid natives, active volcanoes, and some sort of dinosaur-like creature...
Analysis:
Part II better feature some monumental redemption of Janeway and Chakotay, because right now they look like the worst command team ever. At least they still look like a team, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. It was a really bad idea to run this episode right after "Resolutions," when Janeway and Chakotay were so emotionally involved with one another (and possibly physically involved as well). When Janeway offers to go after Chakotay's child, her reasons seem completely personal: not once does she bring up that child's rights as a Federation citizen or anything like that. All she worries about are Chakotay's feelings, and he chooses to put those feelings for one baby above the welfare of the entire crew.
Janeway didn't offer a word of intelligent strategy - that came from Kim and Torres, who seemed better-equipped to smell a trap than was the captain. When she took a Kazon aboard, she chose to trust someone from a species from which we have not seen one single example of a being worthy of trust, yet didn't place a twenty-four hour guard on him, nor subject him to the sort of detailed search which might have indicated that he was wired to blow. When her bridge was seized, by what looked like a handful of Kazon, she surrendered without pulling a phaser. When her crew was abandoned on Hanan IV, she didn't even march at the head of the line. Pretty much all she's good for is calling for the almighty mass suicide, and even that didn't work! The fact that Kulluh made cracks about women in charge and slapped her just emphasized her weakness, her vulnerability, her incompetence. I get the feeling the writers were deliberately trying to make her look as stupid as possible so they could redeem her in Part II, but it's going to take a LOT of work for that.
Chakotay showed almost no range of emotion - he seems to have two, anger/frustration and the usual placid, almost brain-dead state he exhibits most of the rest of the time. He does still have that soft spot for Janeway, and there was a nice scene when Voyager landed where he caught her arm to stop her from falling over as the two exchanged a look of concern. In general, he's most interesting when his focus is on her: looking at her to see if she smells a trap with Seska, helping her up after Kulluh's punch. His rage against the Kazon in sickbay who had tortured him and Seska for lying about how the baby was conceived came across as contrived, particularly his violence: it looked to me like they just wanted to show he's capable of landing a punch. His feelings are entirely reactive. This is a very easy man to manipulate.
The most interesting character was Suder. The show opened with him working with Tuvok and telling Janeway he wants to do something for the ship. I like seeing characters grow and change yet not be rehabilitated - something they failed to do with Paris and Torres, who are now goody-goody Starfleet. Seska was archly nasty, but it's hard to take her seriously when she kowtows to Kulluh all the time, even if we're supposed to believe that she really wears the pants. Considering that this show has a woman captain, it's done as much to make women look bad in command as to make them look good. I hope that changes next season.