[VOY] Lynch's Spoiler Review: "Cathexis"
Timothy W. Lynch
Please concentrate very hard on that fact, and you might even be able
to avoid them if you so desire.
In brief: Not one of the stronger outings -- in fact, one of the series'
weakest.
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Brief summary: Chakotay is rendered brain-dead by an attack on his
and Tuvok's shuttle -- and evidence increasingly mounts that an alien
presence is inhabiting one of the crew, changing hosts at will.
======
Sigh. I was hoping "Voyager" could escape the curse of a "possessed
crewmembers" episode, but apparently it was not to be.
I suppose that that reaction's not entirely fair -- after all, a
"possession" plot can still lead to a very enjoyable show if done
correctly. However, "possession" stories tend to be fluff pieces,
since they rarely deal much with significant plotlines or with the
characters as themselves; and VOY is a series that has had entirely too
many fluff pieces in its first year of life already. If we don't entirely
know these characters well enough to know how they usually think
under normal circumstances, the impact of having them act "out of
character" is blunted -- we don't know what that means yet.
Some things, however, seemed a bit out of character that had nothing
to do with any alleged possession by "the alien", most of them
involving Janeway. Early on, we had her line to Paris, "Well, I'm
willing to rule out mutiny for the time being" -- which may not
necessarily have been a bad line, but certainly came off as such given
the moment and the expression on Kate Mulgrew's face. Later,
Janeway seemed possessed herself by the Character Stupidity Virus,
in that she was trusting Tuvok *long* after some suspicion would be
seriously warranted (such as any time after the attack on Kes). Even
after her suspicions began to be voiced, she went ahead with her plan
to divide command codes between herself and Tuvok to avoid
vulnerability, which is an incredibly silly move under the
circumstances. (Lisa's suggested that Janeway feigned that plan in
order to draw Tuvok out in the open, but given all the Spirit-Cam [tm]
shots we got of Chakotay's soul moving to Janeway and then Kim
during the bridge attack sequence, I strongly disagree.] Lastly, we
had the closing sequence, in which Janeway spends pretty much the
entire scene with her hands virtually caressing Chakotay's shoulder
and upper chest. Perhaps it's me, but that seems just a bit foreign to
the way Janeway and Chakotay have usually interacted. The first and
last situations above could be errors on almost anyone's part --
Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky (who wrote the story; Braga did the
script), Kim Friedman (who directed), or Mulgrew; but the middle
situation strikes me as an instance of "let's alter the character for the
sake of the plot", which rarely sits well.
Unfortunately, we were asked to believe a lot more than *that* for the
sake of the plot. We're intended to believe all of the following:
-- That no one could have come to the conclusion that Kes was neck-
pinched, despite the fact that it was a physical assault, that Tuvok was
the only one near her, *and* that Tuvok has had suspicion around him
already in the course of the show.
-- That Chakotay, *even after* having his "bio-neural energy"
removed, could exist as a disembodied spirit. In other words, we're
meant to believe mystical technobabble after hearing regular
technobabble arguing the contrary. Way too distant from me for me to
be interested, sorry. (I've no idea how close the "medicine wheel"
discussion was to the belief of any currently existing tribe, but it
certainly felt like the Hollywood tribe more than anything else...)
-- That Chakotay's "consciousness" has a memory engram unlike
anything the doctor's ever seen. He recognizes Paris's as human
(presumably :-) ); did something happen to change it after it left his
body?
-- That Chakotay's spirit knows a way out of the nebula, despite never
having been *IN* it.
-- That a warp core can be ejected without significant damage to the
ship, *and* that it can be retrieved and re-installed despite having been
ejected *while the ship was in the nebula*, which they left rather
hastily.
-- And, most ludicrous of all, that Torres, the chief engineer of the
ship, doesn't have clearance to eject the warp core on her own. That
strikes me as an absolutely insane rule -- suppose no one outranking
Torres is able to contact engineering, and that the situation has grown
critical. Torres can't do anything? This is totally absurd -- every chief
engineer we've ever seen has had virtually unlimited clearance to deal
with engineering matters, and this shouldn't be different without an
explanation.
As you can gather, I spent most of "Cathexis" feeling somewhat
distressed. In terms of basic plot contrivances necessary to "make the
story work", this was not that far an analogue from TNG's
"Genesis", which was a particularly glaring example of a bad show.
However, that isn't to say "Cathexis" was *entirely* bad. In fact,
there were moments scattered within the plot that were intelligent,
entertaining, or (ideally) both. The initial reaction to Chakotay's initial
moves (Paris's two "sabotage" acts and B'Elanna's deactivation of the
warp core) seemed reasonable enough; continue back to what you
were doing and try to figure out what the heck happened. Tuvok's
early detective work is sensible, even in light of the realization that he
was possessed all along -- he didn't know what the other presence
was, and clearly considered it an important issue. Even Janeway's
decision to divide command codes up was a sensible one -- not with
Tuvok in particular, but in general -- and the subsequent battle
between possessed entities was fairly well presented. There were
isolated incidents that tended to work, but not nearly enough to form
any sort of coherent whole.
On the whole, I have to consider "Cathexis" a failure. Too many
things, both in terms of plot and of character, grated on me, and the
few bright spots there were weren't nearly enough to get past that.
So, a few other short takes and then I'll wrap up:
-- Another nitpick: Janeway tells Paris to head out along "a line
connecting those three planetoids". Sorry; those three are visibly
*NOT* on a line at all, and can't be connected with a single line. I'm
not sure what's intended there, but it's not what came out.
-- Kes's note about sensing a presence prompted lots of "Star Wars"
responses; I'll leave them up to your imagination. :-)
-- Janeway's holonovel was benign enough given the circumstances,
but I hope we see it used somewhat periodically; otherwise, it ends up
as simple filler, and there's entirely too much of that already. [I'm
willing to deal with at least a little filler for the sake of watching
Carolyn Seymour, though, as I've always liked her performances.]
-- We apparently have a new supporting character to replace Seska,
namely Lieutenant Durst. He seemed to come out of nowhere,
though, and his style under the circumstances kept making me think of
Peter Lorre. :-) Here's hoping he improves from this.
-- The phrase "X, maybe Y time-units" is getting overused. Kim and
then Torres used it twice in the space of about sixty seconds, and it
was extremely jarring.
-- It seems that Brannon Braga episodes bear the distinction of being
the vocabulary-expanding ones. I didn't know until "Emanations"
that "cenotaph" was actually a word, and "Cathexis" itself means the
focusing of psychic energy on a place or individual, which is certainly
apt...
-- As a general issue, I don't understand the alleged appeal of this
"Voyager Q&A" being advertised all over the place. When they asked
at the end, "what do YOU want to know?", my immediate answer was
"Why are you DOING this?"
That should cover it. So, to close:
Writing: Not a high mark. The characters existed mostly for the sake
of the plot, and the plot was a combination of mystical
baggage and contrivances.
Directing: Some reasonable work at times, but on the whole nothing
much comes to mind.
Acting: Not the best. Tim Russ did what he could with what he had;
most of the rest floundered.
OVERALL: Call it a 3. Ow.
NEXT WEEK:
The Two Faces of Torres.
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
tly...@alumni.caltech.edu
"This is the ion trail."
-- Tuvok
"This is the ion trail on cordrazine. Any questions?"
-- us
--
Copyright 1995, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
This article is explicitly prohibited from being used in any off-net
compilation without due attribution and *express written consent of the
author*. Walnut Creek and other CD-ROM distributors, take note.
Victor W. Wong
In a previous posting, Timothy W. Lynch (tly...@alumni.caltech.edu) writes:
>
> -- As a general issue, I don't understand the alleged appeal of this
> "Voyager Q&A" being advertised all over the place. When they asked
> at the end, "what do YOU want to know?", my immediate answer was
> "Why are you DOING this?"
I don't count this as a spoiler, since it has NOTHING to do with the main
plot, but I strongly suspect that this is another UPN publicity gimmick.
I say strongly suspect, because in Ottawa VOY is available on stations
with first-run syndication rights and I didn't see any of this at all.
Now I might be wrong about this, but I would suspect that to the majority
of r.a.s.c. readers, VOY is watched on first-run rather than on UPN.
So I wonder if, in future reviews, Mr. Lynch might not precede comments
concerning UPN commercials or publicity with "To the UPN Complaints Dept."
or some such phrase, to distinguish it from the storyline in general.
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USS BLACK ADDER--Defiant Class "That horrid little ship!"
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\\____________________/ `-------------'
Victor Wong, commanding ah...@freenet.carleton.ca
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--
Copyright (C) 1995 Victor W. Wong. All rights reserved.
michael
>
> -- Janeway's holonovel was benign enough given the circumstances,
> but I hope we see it used somewhat periodically; otherwise, it ends up
> as simple filler, and there's entirely too much of that already. [I'm
> willing to deal with at least a little filler for the sake of watching
> Carolyn Seymour, though, as I've always liked her performances.]
>
I have a question about the holonovel at the beginning of the episode.
What novel from "ancient" England was it supposed to be? Was it a Dickens
novel or just some gothic trash? I almost doubt that it was Dickens, despite
the period of the costumes since he really didn't write anything in a
gothic style (melodramatic maybe, but not gothic). Anyway, the reason I'm
wondering is that I majored in British literature,18th and 19th century mostly,
and while I admit that I haven't read everything during those periods, I read most
of the major works. If the novel was an obscure work, the question then is why
would they include it in an episode, besides the fact that it really wouldn't
matter to most fans? But surely they realize by now the amount of scrutiny each
episode is put under by fans. It just doesn't make much sense to me, especially
since the holonovel didn't seem to have any good connection with the episode (unlike
similar holodeck beginning scenes in TNG).
--Michael (mka...@luc.edu)