A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[Praetor]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Interesting for me - in many threads and posts fans are always saying that Chakotay centred episodes are bad ones. But you rated two of them with high points- Unity and Distant origin.

He seemed like a character that the writers never got a handle on. He starts off as a man of great moral integrity, of peace, thoughtfulness and deep spirituality - admirable qualities, yet TV drama kryptonite.

I suppose they undermined the character from the outset. He's a terrorist, yet by the end of the pilot, he's in uniform, smiling as Janeway extols the virtues of the Starfleet way. With the Maquis elements more or less relegated to Torres and minor characters, he only really had his soporific spirituality as a hook.

There were good episodes here and there - Scorpion is arguably his finest hour, and he does well in Year of Hell and Equinox (though anyone to the left of Mussolini would look reasonable compared with the Janeway in that one) - but he fades into the background in the last couple of years. The excerable romance with Seven of Nine was a case of desperate measures to try and get him involved in the last few episodes.

Good assessment, Tomalak. I agree that it's not so much that Chakotay episodes are bad, but that as you suggest, the 'desperate measures' to get Chakotay involved in the later seasons were often painful to watch. 'The Fight' comes to mind.

I'll add that I think TPTB's desire to not nail down a specific real-world people for Chakotay hurt him in the long run, too, and is in many ways emblematic of the problem with the character: they wanted someone who could challenge Janeway when they wanted him to, but who would smile and say 'yes ma'am' without question when they didn't. Ultimately, it made him seem rather... whipped.

As GodBen suggests, I think letting Seska's kid be Chakotay's and letting him raise it would have done his character a lot of good. Given him purpose, at least, and likely a different perspective from Janeway that would have generated more conflict.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

hahahah.

And all the Actresses that played Namoi thereafter, would be placed to ask: "Why isn't the baby growing up? I'm the Captains assistant already and he's just learning to walk!"

That would have been a damn interesting relationship to track as Naomi shot away from Chuckles Jr as Neelix reflects that this must have been how Kes felt, and then Tuvok mentions that he's a century away from middle age and they all seemed to be aging super rappidly to his keen stoic perceptions,

I must have said this before but at he rate Naomi was aging she would have been/seemed old enough to date Harry Kim by the time she was 10, which would have made her three times the age of Glinnis Kim.

A Maquis comes home smiling with a Cardie Ankle biter? hells bells that's a symbol that can cool a lot of blood and bury a few phaser rifles.

 

[Tomalak]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Good assessment, Tomalak. I agree that it's not so much that Chakotay episodes are bad, but that as you suggest, the 'desperate measures' to get Chakotay involved in the later seasons were often painful to watch. 'The Fight' comes to mind.

The boxing one? I never made it through that. There's also the ironically named "Unforgettable", and the one with him going undercover in a 8472 version of Starfleet Academy, which I really didn't get. I can't really remember any other latter-day Chakotay episodes. There was "Shattered", but that was just one of those "wouldn't it be cool if..." episodes that meant nothing.

I do feel sorry for Robert Beltran, as I thought he was a pretty capable actor and a smart guy. I suppose the character suffered because they needed to make him distinct from Spock, Kira, and particularly Riker, but that didn't leave much space to go. Have a look at the character description in the Voyager Bible. Even here there is very little to go on. There's the idea of him being "contrary", but that's about it. Interestingly, the Kim relationship never really panned out.

I'll add that I think TPTB's desire to not nail down a specific real-world people for Chakotay hurt him in the long run, too, and is in many ways emblematic of the problem with the character: they wanted someone who could challenge Janeway when they wanted him to, but who would smile and say 'yes ma'am' without question when they didn't. Ultimately, it made him seem rather... whipped.

Yeah, I'd go with that. The Janeway/Chakotay relationship they built up over the first three and a bit years could have gone either way, but at least it was something. After the forth season, they just seemed to drop it like a stone, which was probably a mistake. I didn't necessarily want to see them get together, but continuing the Mulder and Scully dynamic would have been preferable to the... nothing... we actually got in the later years.

As GodBen suggests, I think letting Seska's kid be Chakotay's and letting him raise it would have done his character a lot of good. Given him purpose, at least, and likely a different perspective from Janeway that would have generated more conflict.

The trouble with that is the inherent problem of TV babies. They aren't much fun unless they can speak, so you get accelerated growth syndrome. Fortunately, since this kid would have been the first (to my knowledge) Cardassian/Human hybrid, it would have inevitably have ended up as a fully cogent ten year old by the forth season.

Though the alternative is to keep the kid around for a year or two, then kill it, which would have been new ground for Star Trek. Either way, it's something that involves the character, and it's a shame they just abandoned it in "Basics".



On a slight tangent, I'm rewatching DS9 at the moment, and just finished the Circle trilogy at the start of the second season. There's a scene at the beginning of the middle part in Kira's quarters, which plays like an extended Marx Brothers farce. It's complex and ambitious, yet the writing is pin-sharp, and the actors can pull it off. I can't think of anything like that on Voyager, and there's still the best part of six seasons of DS9 to go. Why was there such a disparity in the overall quality of the two shows?

 

[apenpaap]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

The main problem with Chakotay, IMO, was that he had a huge charcter development, which they completed in the first episode: in Caretaker he goes from a Maquis traitor to an examplory starfleet officer. They should have stretched that out.

 

[Praetor]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Good assessment, Tomalak. I agree that it's not so much that Chakotay episodes are bad, but that as you suggest, the 'desperate measures' to get Chakotay involved in the later seasons were often painful to watch. 'The Fight' comes to mind.

The boxing one? I never made it through that. There's also the ironically named "Unforgettable", and the one with him going undercover in a 8472 version of Starfleet Academy, which I really didn't get. I can't really remember any other latter-day Chakotay episodes. There was "Shattered", but that was just one of those "wouldn't it be cool if..." episodes that meant nothing.

Yep, 'the boxing one.' Trust me, you missed very little. And I always forget 'Unforgettable.' Always. And yeah, 'In the Flesh' was 'meh.' I like 'Shattered' for what it was. It could have been a lot better, and also wasn't really Chakotay-centric to my mind, even though he had a lot to do in it. (I mean, he is the first officer. )

I do feel sorry for Robert Beltran, as I thought he was a pretty capable actor and a smart guy. I suppose the character suffered because they needed to make him distinct from Spock, Kira, and particularly Riker, but that didn't leave much space to go. Have a look at the character description in the Voyager Bible. Even here there is very little to go on. There's the idea of him being "contrary", but that's about it. Interestingly, the Kim relationship never really panned out.

Yeah, totally agreed on that front for Beltran.

To a degree, I think they preserved the image of Chakotay as a 'contrary' before his time on Voyager, in the flashbacks, but they clearly dropped the ball so they could have him behave however plot required. And the 'big brother' thing with Kim was yet another bible idea that was dropped and could have been very good for both, IMO.

I'll add that I think TPTB's desire to not nail down a specific real-world people for Chakotay hurt him in the long run, too, and is in many ways emblematic of the problem with the character: they wanted someone who could challenge Janeway when they wanted him to, but who would smile and say 'yes ma'am' without question when they didn't. Ultimately, it made him seem rather... whipped.

Yeah, I'd go with that. The Janeway/Chakotay relationship they built up over the first three and a bit years could have gone either way, but at least it was something. After the forth season, they just seemed to drop it like a stone, which was probably a mistake. I didn't necessarily want to see them get together, but continuing the Mulder and Scully dynamic would have been preferable to the... nothing... we actually got in the later years.

Indeed and agreed.

As GodBen suggests, I think letting Seska's kid be Chakotay's and letting him raise it would have done his character a lot of good. Given him purpose, at least, and likely a different perspective from Janeway that would have generated more conflict.

The trouble with that is the inherent problem of TV babies. They aren't much fun unless they can speak, so you get accelerated growth syndrome. Fortunately, since this kid would have been the first (to my knowledge) Cardassian/Human hybrid, it would have inevitably have ended up as a fully cogent ten year old by the forth season.

Though the alternative is to keep the kid around for a year or two, then kill it, which would have been new ground for Star Trek. Either way, it's something that involves the character, and it's a shame they just abandoned it in "Basics".

I think killing the kid and letting Chakotay deal with it would have been excellent. We've never really had to deal with a character grieving like that.

The main problem with Chakotay, IMO, was that he had a huge charcter development, which they completed in the first episode: in Caretaker he goes from a Maquis traitor to an examplory starfleet officer. They should have stretched that out.

Agreed totally.

 

[JustKate]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

The main problem with Chakotay, IMO, was that he had a huge charcter development, which they completed in the first episode: in Caretaker he goes from a Maquis traitor to an examplory starfleet officer. They should have stretched that out.

Agreed totally.

Mere text cannot convey how much I agree with this. Absolutely.

Though the alternative is to keep the kid around for a year or two, then kill it, which would have been new ground for Star Trek. Either way, it's something that involves the character, and it's a shame they just abandoned it in "Basics".

I think killing the kid and letting Chakotay deal with it would have been excellent. We've never really had to deal with a character grieving like that.

Here mere text cannot convey how much I disagree. Yes, it would be different...but no. Dearest God in heaven, no.

It's just too sad. It goes beyond depressing and beyond sad and beyond even tragic. It's the kind of thing that just about kills a parent, from the inside out.

Don't worry - I'm not speaking from first-hand experience here (at least not exactly) so you've not reopened any wounds or anything. Doing justice to something like the death of a child would take a LOT more than you're bargaining for, I think.

I don't know if you guys (I don't know how old you - some of you, anyway - are or if you have kids or whatever) can even guess how horrible a thought that is. Watching a character deal with grief is one thing - it can really make a show transcend itself and bring a character to life. But what I don't think you realize that what happens to a parent when a child dies goes so far beyond grief. In a movie, it might be possible, but an entire TV show? Watching a character we care for, going through this grinding, debilitating, soul-shattering internal torture week after week? No.

Yes, it happens in life. But it shouldn't. It shouldn't happen to anybody.

And I am not going to watch anybody go through it as part of my entertainment.

 

[Silvercrest]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

The main problem with Chakotay, IMO, was that he had a huge charcter development, which they completed in the first episode: in Caretaker he goes from a Maquis traitor to an examplory starfleet officer. They should have stretched that out.

Agreed totally.

Mere text cannot convey how much I agree with this. Absolutely.

Though the alternative is to keep the kid around for a year or two, then kill it, which would have been new ground for Star Trek. Either way, it's something that involves the character, and it's a shame they just abandoned it in "Basics".

I think killing the kid and letting Chakotay deal with it would have been excellent. We've never really had to deal with a character grieving like that.

Here mere text cannot convey how much I disagree. Yes, it would be different...but no. Dearest God in heaven, no.

It's just too sad. It goes beyond depressing and beyond sad and beyond even tragic. It's the kind of thing that just about kills a parent, from the inside out.

Don't worry - I'm not speaking from personal experience here so you've not reopened any wounds or anything. The thing is that doing justice to something like that would take a LOT more than you're bargaining for, I think.

I'm confused. If it's too gut-wrenching a subject for you to want to watch, that's perfectly understandable. But "doing justice to something like that" sounds like an analysis of the writers' capabilities, and that's only a concern if it was okay to broadcast the topic in the first place. Which one do you have a problem with?

The episode "Real Life" featured the subject. How did you feel about that?

 

[JustKate]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I think killing the kid and letting Chakotay deal with it would have been excellent. We've never really had to deal with a character grieving like that.

Here mere text cannot convey how much I disagree. Yes, it would be different...but no. Dearest God in heaven, no.

It's just too sad. It goes beyond depressing and beyond sad and beyond even tragic. It's the kind of thing that just about kills a parent, from the inside out.

Don't worry - I'm not speaking from personal experience here so you've not reopened any wounds or anything. The thing is that doing justice to something like that would take a LOT more than you're bargaining for, I think.

I'm confused. If it's too gut-wrenching a subject for you to want to watch, that's perfectly understandable. But "doing justice to something like that" sounds like an analysis of the writers' capabilities, and that's only a concern if it was okay to broadcast the topic in the first place. Which one do you have a problem with?

The episode "Real Life" featured the subject. How did you feel about that?

"Doing justice" to the death of a child means that the character, and therefore the viewers, have to deal with it long-term. How long-term? Well, in real life, it's forever. People will tell you that they never get over the death of a child, and they seem to be absolutely right. When an 80-year-old woman talks about the time 50 years ago when her 6-year-old drowned in a pool, she still cries. Her whole life, she cries. Her heart is still broken. And those people who don't literally cry want to. That's reality.

In TV reality, presumably it wouldn't have to be forever, but if you really want to see a character deal with it in anything approximating a realistic manner, we are talking about many episodes' worth of grieving.

As for "Real Life"...well, it kind of dealt with it...but not really. I mean, it was an experiment. And unsettling experiment for the Doctor, and saddening, too, but still just an experiment. I don't see it as being comparable to the real thing. That's why it could be dealth with pretty much (as far as I can recall) in one episode. (And even there...well, let's just say that VOY wasn't good at long-term plotting, OK?)

If Chakotay lost a son, one episode or two or three...wouldn't be enough. Out here in Realityville, anyway, he would in fact still be dealing with it when they reached the DQ and for the rest of his life.

I as a viewer, while I can understand and appreciate that the death of a character and the grieving that follows that death can add something to the show and to the characters, don't think this is the kind of grief a TV show can handle well. And if it did handle it well, it would just not be something I could watch. So I am questioning my own ability to deal with it, but I am also questioning the ability of the writers of ANY television show to deal with it.

 

[Silvercrest]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Okay, I can see that.

And I sure don't think the Voyager writers would have handled it well.

 

[Tomalak]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I think you are probably right, on balance. I still think it's an interesting idea, but I have severe doubts at the ability of the Voyager writing team to carry it off. A few episodes later, he would have been laughing in the holodeck, and all will have been forgotten. Voyager just wasn't the show to do that sort of deeply hard-hitting story.

I just don't get the "no writer should try it because it's too hard" attitude though. Where would we be if all writers took that attitude?

 

[JustKate]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

^ I really do think this is a subject that's just too...deep, too wrenching, too all-encompassing to be handled by a TV show. A movie? Sure. A book? Sure. A TV special? Sure. And it's been done by all those sorts of writers.

But a TV show is special because it comes into your house every week and the characters are right there in your living room. I could be wrong, of course, but I can't imagine hardly any viewers being able to cope with seeing this level of grief in a regular character. It wouldn't be like seeing a friend go through it, but it would be closer to that than to the usual TV Tragedy of the Week or tear-jerker movie.

So it could be done, even on Trek, but in order to keep it down to a bearable level, I think it would have to be a short-term character who goes through it - I don't know, maybe an alien who travels with them for three episodes or something.

 

[Praetor]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Yeah, in retrospect JustKate, I think you're right. He'd just have to live on and end up Naomi Wildman's playpal.

 

[Tomalak]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

But a TV show is special because it comes into your house every week and the characters are right there in your living room. I could be wrong, of course, but I can't imagine hardly any viewers being able to cope with seeing this level of grief in a regular character. It wouldn't be like seeing a friend go through it, but it would be closer to that than to the usual TV Tragedy of the Week or tear-jerker movie.

I just don't understand that; plenty of television programmes do hard-hitting stories. Drug addiction, alcoholism, abortion, miscarriage, rape and deaths are staples of successful television dramas.

There's a market for light escapism, which Voyager certainly is, but the idea that viewers "can't cope" with serious stories just isn't borne out by reality. It is simply television, an artifice, and people can divorce reality from the television screen. I can watch something like Prime Suspect, be deeply moved, yet shrug it off and return to normality. The "Genocide" episode of The World At War? That's real grief.

 

[JustKate]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

^ I am apparently not being very clear today - or perhaps you simply disagree. I'll try one more time and then let it go.

How many TV shows that are episodic and character-driven realistically deal with massive overwhelming grief in one of the main characters? Many? Any?

I would guess the answer would be "not very many if any at all," and there is a reason for this. Episodic TV doesn't do this very well - not with its main characters. And the reason is just what I've said earlier: writers might be capable of dealing with it adequately (that is, they are talented enough to deal with it adequately), but TV shows aren't good at it, and viewers aren't either. Some of us can cope with seeing our favorite characters saddened but then made stronger by grief; we would not cope well with seeing them devastated and broken by grief.

I don't really think you would cope with it that well either, Tomalak. I could be wrong since I know you not at all, but it's hard for me to imagine myself or anybody else wanting to watch a character they know and care about being grief-striken week after week. And that's what it would take to deal in anything like a realistic manner with the death of a child, the rape of oneself or one's spouse, etc. I don't personally think that episodic television deals very well with the death of a spouse, either - but they do try that from time to time.

Examining deep, overwhelming grief is a subject that works in some forms of fiction, but I really don't think it works on a weekly TV show whose characters we get to know intimately. Shows, as far as I can recall (and my memory isn't perfect) that have dealt with such issues use non-regular characters, or they are shows where the characters aren't deeply explored (I'm thinking of police dramas here, which often do touch on major issues, but only as the B- or C-plot) or they deal with it very badly.

Voyager, or any Trek, for that matter - or BSG - could not have the child of one of its major characters die and then coinveniently wrap it up in a few episodes. Well, OK, they could, but what would be the point?

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

There's a reason why the "Chakotay has a child and it dies" idea wouldn't fly. Remember JustKate, this is Star Trek. We wouldn't have had to see Chakotay struggle with this problem for months or years. Everyone in Star Trek gets over any tragedy that happens to them in 1 episode, maybe 2 at the most. Then it is usually never mentioned again. Even DS9 suffers horribly from this. How many times is O'Brien put through hell and then he's perfectly normal one ep. later?

So I actually agree with JustKate that it wouldn't be a good idea, but for a different reason. Chakotay would quickly get over it cause it's Trek and that would have made it seem cheap and meaningles and actually hurt his character. But if Trek actually had the guts to do something like this the right way I think it would be interesting.

 

[teya]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I dunno, I thought that BSG dealt with the aftermath of the death of a child quite well.

Both with Adama and with Sharon & Helo when they thought their daughter was dead.

It didn't go away, but their lives did continue.

 

[Lynx]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I see no point in having Chakotay showing grief over someone in episode after episode.

The child wasn't even Chakotay's. Culluh was the father. So why would Chakotay show any grief over the child?

 

[Praetor]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

GodBen suggested that it would have been better had the child actually been Chakotay's.

 

[plague]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I think in most cases you're going to see anger and shock, not grief, immediately after death, and then in general people grieve in private. Unless the camera was following chakotay into his quarters at night, how do we know he wasn't grieving?

Additionally, in general, after a funeral, people are able to get closure and move past the death of a family member unless they actually miss them daily. I don't see how chakotay would miss a baby he never met.

 

[JustKate]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

^ We're not talking about "a baby he never met," Plague - at least that wasn't the original idea. Tomalak suggested having Seska's baby actually turn out to be his, join the crew for a while, and then die. The idea was for a crew member, along with the rest of the crew and us viewers, to deal with the death of a child.