[VOY] Aaron's Review: "Riddles" (spoilers)
ASP 7485
Aaron's Review:
Star Trek: Voyager
"Riddles"
Story by: Andre Bormanis
Teleplay by: Robert Doherty
Music by: Jay Chattaway
Directed by: Roxann Dawson
A-plot: After an accident on the Delta Flyer, Tuvok loses his abilities.
Neelix helps him recover.
B-plot: Voyager searches for the people who did this to Tuvok, the Beneth, with
some help from alien who's been looking for them a long time.
"Riddles" had potential to be a very strong Tuvok and Neelix show. However,
it wasn't. The A-plot just didn't get enough of my interest to be good. The
B-plot is a very standard "Voyager" encounter with xenophobes.
But, "Riddles" does have some very good moments, all of them in the Neelix
plot. The scenes in sickbay were generally good, the standouts being the one
where Tuvok is scanned with the tricorder and the one where Tuvok sees his
personnel file. Ethan Phillips did a respectable job with his material this
week; I felt I could sympathize (to a point) with what Neelix was going
through.
The question, "When is a Vulcan no longer a Vulcan?" is a good one. Seven got
some very interesting character dialogue in that scene that rang true,
"When I was separated from the collective, I too was damaged. I was no longer
connected to the hive mind. I had lost many abilities I had acquired as a
drone. But I adapted."
"Because Captain Janeway didn't give up on you. She kept trying to help you."
"But not by restoring me to what I'd been, by helping me discover what I could
become."
..
But do these few good moments warrant an episode? Unlike "Phage" (which I
have to mention because it was recently aired and I loved it), that I am saving
mainly for the few lines right before Neelix's operation, "Riddles" falls apart
in execution.
It wasn't the direction that did it; Dawson did a nice job for her first time.
Nothing too flashy, she just kept it simple (the shot of Tuvok of getting on
the bio-bed was striking, however). The uneven script, Jay Chattaway's
dreadful score, and Tim Russ are this show's failings.
First of all, the idea of "main character has amnesia" is not a clichÈ to
Trek, although it has been done once or twice (TNG's "Thine Own Self," for
example), is a clichÈ to the rest of the drama world. It also didn't help that
a good reason is never given to explain why Tuvok must undergo the operation to
return him to his old self. Of course, his role on "Voyager" would change
greatly if he didn't, which would be way to ambitious for Braga, but it would
provide a fresh new angle to explore for a character who severely underused.
Tuvok said flat out he didn't want to do it, and the Doctor has go by his
patients wishes, so why does he make Tuvok do it?
Second, I felt the story couldn't find its focus. It wasn't sure whether to
focus on the attempts to find the Beneth, or to examine Neelix's attempts to
help Tuvok recover, or to link both plots. It tried to do all three, and
failed. There was no need for the Beneth plot at all; it could've been some
random explosion that caused Tuvok's amnesia (it would've been more contrived,
though). As a result the B-plot comes off as filler. It was also very one
note, it was too concerned with finding the cloaking frequency. Once it did,
things didn't improve. Nerok's willingness to give up his Beneth-finding-beam
came out of nowhere, and it isn't very believable that the guy who's been
searching for the Beneth for quite some time is just going to give up his only
way of finding them.
Tuvok also didn't do very much for me. Tim Russ has done some wonderful work
before, "Meld" being a prime example, but here he came off as being stilted.
And, as I said above, his story didn't take us anywhere new.
That about does it. "Riddles" is not a complete disappointment, but it's not
all it should've been.
GRADE: C+
Next Week: November sweeps kick off with "Dragon's Teeth." From the teaser it
looks FX packed. I hope it doesn't forget its characters, but the cynical side
of me thinks it will. Time will tell.
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