[VOY] "Waking Moments": The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Ashley Edward Miller
WARNING: Spoilers lurk below. Proceed with caution.
[spoilers]
[VOY] "Waking Moments": The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Written by: Andre Bormanis
Directed by: Alexander Singer
"Waking Moments" is wafer-thin, but acceptably entertaining. While a real
opportunity to produce something mythic and meaningful is squandered on
sight gags and plot-winks, the story is constructed solidly enough to
prevent complete narrative failure. A middling effort overall.
The Good:
Okay, so "Waking Moments" will never go down as the most intensely
dramatic hour in Star Trek history. It would also be difficult to
describe it as particularly action-packed or humorous. But that's okay --
the episode is loaded with enough "little" character moments and memorable
images that watching it is more of a joy than a chore.
The plot conceit is straightforward: the Voyager comes under attack from
a race of aliens that moves more freely in the dreamworld than in "the
waking world". At first, the crew merely spies alien observers in their
dreams; but then they all settle down for a long winter's nap, induced
into comas by a technobabble field. Only Chakotay (our resident
lucid-dreaming, vision-questing Indian) and the Doctor (a man who never
sleeps...ever) have the ability to take on the bad guys and save the
crew.
As wierd as the premise seems at first blush (more on that later), it does
provide for some fairly neat moments. Most of these come toward the
beginning of the episode: Tuvok finding himself naked on the bridge; Seven
of Nine sexually assaulting Harry in a Jeffries Tube ("Resistance is
futile", indeed!); Neelix relating that he found himself in a boiling pot
of his own loyola-root stew. It also gives Chakotay an opportunity to do
something less silly than usual with his pseudo-Indian mysticism: engage
in lucid dreaming to seek out and confront the apparent enemy.
Lucid dreaming, for those who don't know it, is a real technique used by
real people. Although the application in this instance was clearly
outside the bounds of reality, the notion of a sleeper in control of his
dream-state is not. That the notion was employed with an eye toward the
bizarre nature of the circumstances is a credit to writer Andre Bormanis.
The fact that the lucid dreaming process was applied simply and
consistently kept the story uncluttered and allowed for powerful visual
cues for both Chakotay and the audience. Chakotay's "signal" moon went
from being a handy reference for both him and the audience to being
something far more ominous. The simple act of Chakotay tapping his hands
three times was imbued with clear tension.
The dream angle also allowed for a "Voyager is taken over by aliens" story
that (for once) didn't make Janeway look like a galactic idiot or strain
plot credibility. In fact, it led to a pretty darned good sequence where
Janeway realizes that she has become "impervious to anti-matter
explosions" and her crew is invulnerable to alien phaser blasts. In
addition, the uncertainty over what was real and what was not led to some
honest-to-God suspense during the end-game.
The tech credits were as solid as usual. Whoever did the matte painting
of the sleeping aliens deserves particular mention. Maybe its just me,
but I thought that was a great image -- Lovecraftian in its implications,
disturbing in its effects. On the acting front, Robert Beltran carried
the episode with surprising authority, while director Alexander Singer
pulled some amusingly ironic performances out of the rest of the cast.
The Bad:
If I were a betting man, I'd place my last dollar on the notion that
"Waking Moments" was inspired by a much (much-much!) older story.
(Fortunately for anyone foolish enough to take me up on this one, I am not
a betting man...) Which story, you ask? Well, I'll give you a hint: its
one of the adventures of a famous Greek hero, a hero who just happened to
have spent a long time wandering around looking for a way home. If you
guess that this hero is Armand Assante, you're almost right.
The story I'm thinking of is "The Lotus-Eaters", one of the pivotal events
of "The Odyssey". In a nutshell, "The Lotus-Eaters" featured Odysseus'
crew falling prey to strange and tasty flowers which lulled them into an
eternal sleep of pleasant dreams. Of them all, only Odysseus was able to
shake off the effects of the flowers; and then only because he was plagued
by nightmares of never reaching home -- failing his crew. Stirred back to
the waking world, Odysseus carried his men off of the island one by one
and released them from the spell. Once reconstituted, the crew set sail
once more for home.
The parallel here is obvious. It is also unfortunate. The point of "The
Lotus Eaters" is that dreams alone are not enough to secure happiness;
that leaders of men must bear the burden of helping those under their
command achieve their dreams in tangible ways. Odysseus' nightmare is a
perfect touchstone for Janeway's deep feelings of responsibility to her
crew, but the metaphor is completely ignored, its power untapped. As a
result, "Waking Moments" is simply interesting rather than wholly
compelling.
The Ugly:
The aliens-of-the-week. You know, that little tooth on their chin has got
to make some of the more exotic sexual positions *very* problematic.
My Score:
Watchable, but not particularly fun. Interesting, but not exactly
engaging. For what it's worth, the story is well-structured and little
intangibles help to elevate the episode above utter mediocrity. But I
can't shake the feeling that a truly great and powerful show was lost in
some story-break session somewhere.
WAKING MOMENTS: **1/2 (out of four)
NEXT WEEK:
The Doctor goes on a most unusual away mission...to the Alpha Quadrant.
"Why, I could...count myself King of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams..."
-- Hamlet (unquoted in this episode, but appropriate nonetheless)
©1998 Ashley Edward Miller. All rights reserved, and most of the lefts too.