[VOY] "Repentance": My Two Cents Review
Laurie Russell
(Spoilers Below)
In it's first few minutes "Repentance" seemed like it was going to be a
thinly disguised polemic against the death penalty, with remonstrance
against harsh prison conditions thrown in. Subtlety was nonexistent.
Warden Yediq, for example, was a stereotypical brutal, jaded, yet
self-righteous prison warden obsessed with control, a completely
unsympathetic character.
In answering a distress call, the crew of Voyager found themselves
custodians of men that were being sent to their execution. Once they
discovered this, everyone turned icy. Captain Janeway refused to take them
to their destination, saying, icicles dripping from her tongue, "Actually,
we were headed in the opposite direction." When Yediq said he could arrange
for a rendezvous with another ship, Janeway didn't even look at him when
she said, "Commander Tuvok will help you make arrangements."
Now that was just silly. Even in the Alpha Quadrant, and among the
Federation's allies (the Klingons, for example), there are species that
practice the death penalty, so it's not as if this practice was completely
unheard of. There was no need to depict Janeway as being barely civil. It's
well established Star Trek tradition that the Federation doesn't practice
or condone killing except in self-defense or warfare. So there was no need
for the Frosty the Snowman act by Janeway. The brief exchange between her
and Chakotay after the warden left would have been plenty to establish
their objections to the practice.
The conversation in sick bay between Seven and the doctor seemed like a
relatively balanced discussion of the issue though it seemed more
appropriate to "Nightline" than "Voyager." But at the argument's end, Seven
admitted she was merely practicing her objectivity by arguing the other
side of the issue, implying that she really didn't disagree with the doctor
personally.
It's completely consistent with the doctor's character that he would object
to the death penalty. He even refused to separate Tuvok and Neelix in
"Tuvix," considering it tantamount to murder. But his arguments here were
inconsistent. First he said that life sentences were a practical
alternative to the death penalty, as both insured that the inmate would
never harm anyone again, but then he said, "Given a chance some of these
men might have become productive members of society one day." Say what? I
suppose it's possible, but it's kind of hard to become a productive member
of society in a prison cell. In most cases becoming "productive members of
society" would necessitate their release.
I won't get into the sticky political debate over the death penalty, but I
did object to the doctor's characterizing the quote "an eye for an eye"
this way: "It's not justice, it's revenge! Frankly I'm surprised you're not
troubled by such a barbaric system!"
"An eye for an eye" is a quotation from the Bible. And the law had nothing
to do with revenge. It had to do with the sanctity of life, its supreme
value in the eyes of God. The ultimate crime, murder, required the
ultimate price, the life of the murderer. If they're going to quote the
Bible on Star Trek, they should at least get their facts straight.
And I couldn't help thinking of the Constable Nimira in "Random Thoughts"
who thought that Voyager's brig was "barbaric" compared to their punishment
of choice, which was reconfiguring brain activity! I thought that Nimira
was being self-righteous and haughty then, and I felt the crew of Voyager
was being so now. After all, they knew nothing about the Nigean culture,
nothing about the nature of the crimes the men had committed, nothing, at
first, about their legal system. But the "tsk tsk" attitude was in full
force from Captain Janeway on down.
There also seemed to be a strong implication that a culture that supports
the death penalty would, by definition, also believe in beating and
starving their prisoners.
Then there was the issue of the Bencarans, an oppressed minority in the
Nigean system. They comprised 10% of the population in the sector, but 80%
of the prison population. They were also 10 times more likely to be executed.
If it hadn't been apparent that the Nigeans and their system were standing
in for the United States' controversial death penalty politics there was no
doubt now. Those statistics were an obvious parallel to the black
population in the United States (who comprise about 12% of the population),
and the disproportionate number of them in prison and on death row.
But the people on Voyager were largely preaching to the choir so all their
disapproving chatter seemed kind of pointless.
Fortunately, the death penalty debate soon went out the window and the
story became one of redemption and recovery. This part of the episode was
much more interesting, but it too fell short.
Iko, a sociopath and a murderer, was accidentally "cured" of his antisocial
tendencies by a dose of nannoprobes injected into his bloodstream by the
doctor to treat his injuries. Suddenly he was a "model patient" and truly
sorry for what he had done. Seven's nannoprobes had reattached his
conscience, which, in the Nigeans, resided in a mapable area of the brain.
Within a few days, the doctor and Seven were convinced he was no longer a
threat to society.
Naturally the warden was dubious. The Voyager crew had made no bones about
the fact that they disapproved of the way the Nigeans did things. They
insisted on feeding his inmates sufficient and palatable food and treating
them with dignity. They interrupted his perfectly routine beating of an
inmate nearly to death. Now they were trying to tell him that his worst
prisoner was now cured. They must have seemed, to him, like softhearted
idiots being manipulated by the prisoners.
But even if the warden hadn't been so thick-headed and hard-hearted, I
think the doctor's story would have been hard to swallow. Imagine if one of
our nation's most notorious criminals were suddenly said to have undergone
a fundamental chemical change which rendered him harmless. A serial
killer, for example, changed through medication or surgery or chemical
alteration, would now be allowed to leave jail. How many of us would feel
comfortable with that? How many of us would want him living in our
neighborhood?
Making the warden such a jerk obscured the fact that his reluctance to
believe the Voyager crew's assertions wasn't so ridiculous after all.
There were some legitimate questions to be asked, though no one ever did.
If the nannoprobes had cured his brain for the moment, how did they know
the cure would be permanent? Would Iko have to get regular doses of
nannoprobes for the rest of his life? Could the nannoprobes affect his
brain or his behavior in other ways? Who would keep tabs of Iko so that
these things could be regularly checked? Were Janeway and the doctor ready
to give their guarantee that Iko was now harmless?
The family of the man who was killed were a mute group whom we were never
allowed to know. We never knew the circumstances of the murder and how the
man's death had affected the family. Therefore, they appeared as unfeeling
and irrational, determined on revenge, instead of three-dimensional
characters who may have deserved at least as much pity as Iko.
To prove to us that Iko was truly repentant, he said things like "I hurt
people. I deserve to die." and "Death is what I deserve. You say I've
changed but I look at these hands every day and I see them squeezing that
man's throat and I hear the sounds he made. I'm disgusting."
He said these things to Seven of Nine, and it was what this episode taught
us about her that was the most intriguing part of it. We learned, for
example, contrary to her earlier assertion that she didn't remember, that
having her occipital implant inserted was "one of the most painful
experiences of my life."
"Why did you lie?" Iko asked.
"It's difficult for me to talk about. Because I forced others to undergo
the same procedure."
"Why?"
"I was compelled to do so by the Borg collective. I wasn't in control of my
actions. Just as you weren't in control when you took a life. My
nannoprobes have given you control. You're a different person now. You
don't deserve to be executed."
Later, Seven told Janeway, "I want to give him the same opportunity you
gave me . . . he should be given the chance to atone for his crimes."
"Atonement. Is that what this is about?" Janeway asked her.
"Yes."
"For him? Or for you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"I think part of you still feels responsible for the violent acts you
committed when you were a Borg . . . Maybe you believe if Iko is found 'not
guilty,' somehow you won't be guilty either. You've reclaimed your
humanity. It's time you stopped blaming yourself for the crimes of the
collective."
I didn't find Iko a particularly compelling character, but I did find
Seven's interaction with him compelling, how she came to care what happened
to him and how she saw herself in him. Her determination to help him was
much more moving than the same determination in Janeway and the doctor,
because their reasons seemed more political than personal.
Meanwhile there was another prisoner, a Bencaran, who claimed to be a
victim of bigotry. I knew that it was unlikely that there would be two
complete exonerations in one episode, and I knew one of them, either Iko or
the Bencaran, would likely be trying to trick Voyager's crew. Since Neelix
is more or less a comic character, I had a feeling he was being led by the
nose by this prisoner, who never actually claimed that he was innocent. If
anyone was going to be proven wrong, I knew it would be Neelix and not
Seven of Nine.
This was somewhat disturbing because after taking so much care to make a
connection between the Bencarans and African Americans, stereotypes seemed
to be perpetuated by the fact that the Bencaran turned out to be a liar
using Neelix's soft heart to stage a prison break.
This kind of thinking outside the story plagued me throughout the whole
episode, because the episode never really drew me in due to the
all-too-obvious political overtones.
We were supposed to think, I believe, that Iko's desire to talk to Seven of
Nine had nothing to do with the fact that she was a beautiful woman. In
fact, I got the distinct impression that he was supposed to be impervious
to her beauty, perhaps because she looked so different from females of his
race. His attachment to her was supposed to be because she was kind and
understanding, and because she wasn't afraid of him.
"Do you think I'm disgusting?"
"You've been nothing but kind." Iko said, ignoring the opportunity to make
a reference to her appearance.
Some people were annoyed that on TNG, men of all species considered Deanna
Troi beautiful. I can understand their objections, and perhaps they were
trying to avoid this with Seven. But it seemed kind of hard to believe that
Seven was standing there with her beautiful skin and gorgeous body and this
man who had spent perhaps several years in a gender segregated prison
didn't even notice. On the other hand, I have to admit, if he had made a
big issue of her beauty, I probably wouldn't have liked that, either, but
surely there's a middle ground, even if it was just something like, "It's
been so long since I've talked to a woman."
When Seven offered him the chance to stay on Voyager, it was apparent that
wasn't going to happen. He would be hard to hide, unlike previous Voyager
hitchikers (such as crew members from the Equinox), since he had developed
a close friendship with Seven. So it was apparent something was going to go
wrong even before Janeway and Yediq came in to tell him that the family had
denied his appeal. I knew he wasn't joining the cast.
The family really didn't have a very admirable choice. Either kill him or
set him completely free? What if his brain reverted to it's congenital
state? Wouldn't they feel responsible for any resulting acts of violence?
My preference would have been a comprehensive medical study to try and
determine the validity of the contention that he was now a changed man,
followed by some kind of limited custody, followed by supervised freedom.
But this option wasn't even considered. It was all or nothing.
We never knew why the family decided as they did. Was it, truly, a thirst
for revenge? Or did they just refuse to believe that Iko had really
changed? We'll never know.
The whole idea of victims determining the punishment for crime was unknown
to me, but since I saw this episode I found out that it is carried out in
some countries in the Middle East. So it wasn't only the United States that
was taking a political hit in this episode.
One pivotal scene was when Iko appeared to be ready to kill Warden Yediq
and then quickly handed him the phaser backward so he could stun the two
prisoners holding him hostage. But there was an inconsistency there. The
Bencaran was about to kill him, so presumably the phaser was on "kill." But
when Yediq used the phaser on the Bencaran and his accomplice, they were
merely stunned. This was never explained, though it's possible the Bencaran
was unaware of the stun setting. Something tells me the Nigeans don't have
such a setting on their weapons.
Some of the dialogue in this episode was painful ("Seven of Nine. Stay?
Talk to me?") but some of it was really quite enjoyable. For example, when
Neelix was doing research on the Nigean legal system rather than serving
dinner, he asked Tom and B'Elanna, "Did you know the Nigeans occupy a
sector of space occupied by several different humanoid species?"
"If we say yes, will you feed us?" Tom cracked. He warned Neelix against
being to softhearted. "When I was in the Federation penal colony, everybody
had a story. I never put much stock in them. Neither should you."
"How many of those people were sentenced to die?" Neelix said.
Good point.
When Seven of Nine was first called to sick bay by the doctor, she found
herself face to face with the man who had, at the beginning of the episode,
held her hostage.
"You remember Mr. Iko," the doctor said.
"Vividly." Seven replied.
I also liked the doctor's explanation of why he was asking Seven of Nine to
donate nannoprobes to save the life of a man scheduled to be executed.
"If the Nigeans insist on killing him there isn't much I can do about it.
But I won't let them to do it on Voyager."
When Iko discovered he was to be executed after all, Seven avoided his
eyes. Iko came over to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, "You
were the first person who wasn't afraid to look me in the eye. That's how
I'd like to remember you." Seven turned to meet his gaze, and then he
left. It was quite moving.
In the end, this was a personal story, not a political one. It was also the
second episode in a row that was more about human drama than action drama.
And the "repentance" of the title didn't merely refer to Iko.
At the end, Iko having been executed, Seven of Nine was dealing with her
pain by putting out an amazing quantity of work in a short period. "I
haven't felt the need to regenerate," she told Janeway.
"Everyone grieves in their own way." Janeway said. "If you want to talk you
know where to find me."
"It's unfair." Seven said.
"I think so, too, Seven. But we have to try not to judge their system."
(Though they'd been doing it all episode long).
"That's not what I meant. Iko was executed for taking a single life. As a
drone, I took thousands. But I was never punished."
Janeway came up behind her. "You lost 20 years of your life to the Borg.
I'd say that's punishment enough."
Despite the political haranguing and the thinly disguised commentaries, the
personal story behind this episode proved to be an interesting development
of Seven of Nine's character.
My score: 6.0
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