2.20 — “Investigations”

2.20 — “Investigations”

Plot: Neelix starts a daily briefing program to communicate with the crew, and finds some big stories to cover: the departure of Tom Paris from the ship, having resigned and accepted a commission on a freighter, and the resolution of the Seska sabotage plot.

Thoughts: This is a good one to lightly skim over the surface of. The more you think about it, the more it falls apart.

I don’t believe that best way to determine who is actively sending secret messages off the ship–after the messages have been detected!–is to spend two months hatching a half-baked plan to get Paris captured by the Kazon, while keeping the information from Chakotay and everyone else in the crew. Think of the bank shot required here! They need Seska to discover Paris is leaving, decide to capture him, preferably without murdering a lot of innocent space merchants, and bring him on her ship. All this in the nick of time before she decides to launch her own attack on Voyager! Once she does this, there appears to be no further plan besides “Paris will improvise.” Luckily, the spacefaring Kazon do not seem to believe in using tools, or they might put Paris in handcuffs, ruining everything. Fortuitously, instead of throwing him in a brig, they leave him unsupervised in a room with a live computer terminal to rifle through the ship logs. From which the only useful information gained is the name “Jonas,” which is still no good to him unless he can improvise an escape plan involving besting two Kazon warriors (who we previously learned train for fighting their whole lives) in hand to hand combat so he can steal a shuttle. This is just pure fudge. The waxy kind, made with cheap ingredients shot full of chemical preservatives.

What would have been more interesting? Maybe to explore why the traitor Jonas is willing to help Seska, and how he feels about being drawn deeper into activities that betray his crewmates, likely to death, and go against Starfleet principles. Why is he doing any of this? I don’t remember if he is Maquis, but he doesn’t seem like much of a rebel. Maybe develop Seska’s motivations, other than having Chakotay’s revenge baby, and at least clarify whether she is aboard the Kazon ship that can’t shoot straight which is pursuing Paris’ shuttle, which is ultimately destroyed.

Neelix continues to lack credibility as the ship’s morale officer. Increasingly I see him as a dark goblin whose purpose is to spread negativity and cause trouble. The writers make his apparently sincere effort to start a news program into a joke, because that’s how they veiw Neelix. Why keep him aboard? Neelix and The Doctor are the butt of the jokes in their scenes.

Tossing Jonas over a low railing into the unshielded open maw of the warp core is Galaxy Quest level silly. As +SunnyJim said when we were watching, “It’s chompy crushy things!” I’m looking forward to Galaxy Quest, which was released on Christmas Day in 1999, during Voyager’s sixth season. We are still in March 1996.

The relief, for now, is that we’re done with two tedous recurring subplots, and one episode closer to the end of Voyager Season Two. It gets better, right? Hopefully?

1.5 of 5 video recorders.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Investigations_(episode)