2.26 — “Basics, Part I”
Plot: Voyager receives a threatening message from Seska the spy. She’s had Chakotay’s baby! But. It will be killed! If. He doesn’t rescue it! From the Kazon! Chakotay the shuttle-stealer is reluctant to respond to this provocation, but Janeway persuades him to throw caution to the wind and lead the crew enthusiastically into this obvious trap. Could this lead to the unthinkable–total loss of the ship?
Thoughts: It occurs to me that Voyager, dumb as it can be, has become fairly pleasant to watch. Maybe it just seems this way because this installment is well-directed, and for all its capacious faults of logic, keeps a sprightly pace while spinning several plates at once. If it stays cheerful and fast paced, I can find acceptance of_Voyager_ as the Star Trek show that cares the least about its own self-justification.
This is the obvious trap to end all obvious traps. To the point where the trap, even more than the child, is the McGuffin. Any suspense is dispelled early when the Kazon refugee claims that Seska has been killed without filming a single substantive scene. Nope! She’s the guest star, so she’s alive, the “refugee” is full of crap, and we’re just biding our time for the dramatic confrontations to come.
Is the baby sufficient bait to draw Voyager into this peril? This makes our mild argument in “Revelations” as to whether Tuvok should risk a parley with Vidiians to save Janeway and Chakotay seem quite minor. Look. This child sounds like it has a future with the Kazon. If that’s not what Chakotay would prefer, what should he do? Rescue every Kazon child? Not get his DNA stolen? They may be growing 12 of these babies. I would do a lot for a child, but it seems to me that this is a ward of the enemy and regret can change nothing. I hope the baby becomes more than just a plot football in Part Two, but somehow I don’t see it becoming a regular part of the show.
Is everyone in the universe the same species? Seska is Cardassian, formerly a pretend Bajoran, who has successfully mated with a human, and claims to have pretended to do so with a Kazon. There are half-Klingons and half-Vulcans. What a universe.
Now our crew is routed, captured, defeated, humiliated, powerless, and stranded. I guess it’s good more of them weren’t murdered or raped. Our heroes haven’t sunk this low since… TOS 2.22, “By Any Other Name?” The destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III? Kirk may have lost the ship in The Search for Spock, but he made even that moment into a victory. This is the most hapless Star Trek crew. I would be more prepared to see them lose to the Borg, but we spent so much time being told (and shown) how the Kazon (and earlier the Vidiians) were relative technological n00bs and incompetents. They can’t lose a fight to these yahoos without throwing it first. So convenient the Kazon are unexpectedly gracious in victory. I’m sure killing the defeated captain never occurred to them.
Janeway and crew have gotten off suspiciously light, yet they are marooned, and it will be interesting to see how they get out of it. Some combination of Paris’ shuttlecraft, EMH and Lon Suder left behind on the ship, and the natives on the planet. I guess the writer (Michael Piller) left himself a lot of ways out of this situation.
This script and Part II are Piller’s last telescripts for Star Trek. He would return to the Star Trek fold a final time to write the screenplay for Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). Piller put Star Trek back on the right track when he assumed the position as head writer for TNG during Season Three and wrote “The Best of Both Worlds.” He was the co-creator and chief architect of the plot, characters, and situations of Deep Space Nine before turning the reins over to Ira Stephen Behr during Season Two to help with the creation of Voyager. His television production career continued after his separation from Star Trek, but nine years after “Basics, Part I” he succumbed to cancer at the age of 57, in 2005.
We made it to the end of Voyager Season Two!
3.5 out of 5 toenail bombs.
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