Hello and welcome aboard, Markira.
You're just in time for me to talk about...
"Living Witness"
The episode opens with what I'm sure is an iconic shot of a leather glove-wearing, close-cropped Janeway standing with her back to the camera, making an emphatic statement in favor of the proposition that might makes right. They didn't put "mirror" in the title, so this isn't a Mirror Universe episode. What gives?
Oh, and I've decided the start my own Voyager drinking game. First rule: when someone says something like "Voyager's reputation precedes it," you have to drink.
Second rule: if Janeway does that little head shake thing before the other person's even done talking, drink (it's one of my favorite Janeway mannerisms).
There will be more to come, I'm sure.
We find out its a "recreation" of an event that happened 700 years ago. This is the most interesting tease in a long time.
When we get back on "Voyager," I'm struck by evil Tuvok's demeanor. And it's funny because, just like Leonard Nimoy, Tim Russ actually has a very nice smile. And it's interesting seeing everyone's body language, especially Janeway, who just casually lounges against the rail on the bridge.
And Russ directed this episode as well. Fun stuff.
It's one of the best ideas I've seen on Voyager yet--the ship's interaction with a planet is (mis)interpreted through the generations. Throw in some interesting questions about historical objectivity, and I'm hooked. To explain, I'm a historian, so this is like a Trek episode tailored just for me.
Very interesting points about how the historical legend of Voyager plays out in the "present," though if anything I'd say the Vaskans should be glad the Kyrians made such a big deal out of Voyager, since it shifts a lot of the blame to them. I didn't notice it when I was first watching, but thinking about it now it makes sense that the Vaskans would want to deflect responsibility for the war on Voyager, not the Kyrians, who would want to blame the Vaskans for everything.
Android Doctor=cool.
Chakotay with the tattoo covering half his face=biggest laugh I've had with Voyager for a while. Total lulz.
So the historian gets to meet a living witness from the past face to face, and doesn't like what he has to say. Great concept. Then, he comes around to accept that the Doctor might be telling the truth. Also great.
Then, after the riot, the episode takes an ideological nosedive. At first, they're all about getting the truth out there, but then the Doctor offers to sacrifice himself, and history, for the sake of the status quo. The words that come out of his mouth sound dangerously Orwellian, and could be used to justify any kind of revisionist history. I'm fine with the show having a character talk like this--in academia, you'll hear this kind of blather quite often--but having the "hero" of the show say it really left a bad taste in my mouth.
Thankfully, the Doctor's refuted, and we get a bittersweet final scene where we learn the historian and the Doctor's final fates.
Until the historical relativism stuff, this was shaping up to be my favorite episode of Voyager yet--that one knocks it down a little, as do the not-well-thought-out motivations of the Kyrians. But I've found that, throughout Trek, when the actors get to play their characters as evil they seem to have a lot more fun, and that holds true here.
So it was a great episode, but it could have been a fantastic episode with a little bit up (gulp) revision.
But it was funny.
