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Posted:
08:22:01 on May 10 2001
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: Reviews - Voyager
Reviews Ex Deus
"Homestead"
Written for TrekWeb by O. Deus
Summary: Neelix is inserted into a standard Western of a surrogate
father, a family in risk of losing its homestead and a wandering man
finding his destiny.
Star Trek has often been tagged with the somewhat inaccurate "Wagon
Train to the Stars" label but generally the incidence of Western motifs has
dramatically decreased along with Roddenberry's presence in the franchise.
Janeway's gothic novel holodeck scenario was originally meant to be a
Western in order to reflect Voyager's dilemma, but apparently someone
thought Bronte would appeal to the viewers more. So Homestead is one of the
stronger reworked Voyager Westerns in some time. "Destiny" was even its
original title.
There's the insular community whose homes are about to be destroyed by
the greedy mining company; the woman he's attracted to and the child who
views him as a father figure, which makes this a not particularly
unpredictable story but LeVar Burton's clean and strong visual direction
and Ethan Phillips's heartfelt performance compensated for that. More
importantly, this Voyager episode had what few Voyager's possessed since the
early seasons, actual changes to the show resulting as a consequence of the
events in the episode. Namely Neelix's departure.
And the departure is managed far more smoothly and ably than one would
expect. Homestead manages to bring the interplay between Neelix and Tuvok as close as possible while bringing Tuvok as close to Spock as
he's ever been. It's no real coincidence that this episode begins with an
invocation of the original first contact (a nice piece of continuity and
development) between humans and vulcans. Or that it ends with Tuvok
acknowledging the affirmative value of the non-Vulcan and Neelix, Voyager's
Delta Quadrant alien, rejoining his people as a Federation ambassador.
Unlike Kes's departure, Neelix's departure is unforced and reasonable.
Every single scene from the tour with the aliens pointing out the ambiguous
nature of his position on Voyager, his candle-lit dinner with the Talaxian
female that causes him to realize how much he's missed the company of his
own people, and finally finding a child for whom he could be an actual
father, instead of a babysitter. One could complain that it's odd that these
issues haven't really been addressed before this, but that's a general
complaint about the show rather than this episode in particular.
The presence of the Talaxians all the way out here is questionable. It
took Voyager seven years to make it to this point with several super-human
assists. Even assuming that this generation of Talaxians left as children,
the Haakonian conquest occurred 15 years from Voyager's arrival at Talax
which means that considering their detours and attempts at colonization,
they would have had twenty years to make this trip. Considering that in that
time they probably couldn't have traveled more than 20,000 light years and
Kes's acceleration alone threw Voyager 10,000 LY ahead. Fan estimates placed
Voyager as having traveled over 50,000 light years by Season 5 alone.
Clearly the Talaxian presence is pretty hard to explain and some sort of
explanation for a Delta Quadrant species in the Beta Quadrant should have
been made.
For once, a Voyager episode manages to have a species' xenophobia
err on the side of caution, instead of being taken too far as in Friendship
One, to the point where the aliens become completely unsympathetic. The
Talaxian's story about the death of her husband is just complex and detailed
enough to serve as a nice touch. The details of the Talaxian's technology is
another nice touch, that kind of in-depth look at the technology of a
wandering group of starships and an asteroid colony instead of just
presenting CGI pictures is another nice departure from ordinary Voyager
procedure. It helps make the reality of the colony and Neelix's task more
plausible and effective.
It would have been nice, though, if Neelix had shown more leadership and
hadn't needed to be bailed out at the end by the Delta Flyer. We already
know the Voyager crew "can do anything", this scene was needed to establish
Neelix's capabilities. After all, Voyager won't be around when he has to deal
with the same aliens again. But then Voyager is still saddled with the same
paranoia of showing Janeway as being less than perfect at anything. The
entire discussion of the Prime Directive is again ridiculous and out of
place. The PD applies to pre-warp species. It does not apply to warp
civilizations out of their solar systems, otherwise the Federation would be
unable to do much of anything. Also the rights of ownership for the asteroid
belt were not established.
If the alien miners indeed had a claim on the property, then Voyager
might have been wrong to interfere once the aliens agreed to give the
Talaxians enough time to evacuate. The Talaxians insist it's their home but
they may just be squatters. Just because someone chooses to live in your
backyard, doesn't mean it's their property. We have two scenes that
highlight the casual brutality of the aliens in question and they're put in
makeup that makes them look like hideous evil monsters but that's just a
lazy way of establishing rights and wrongs. We might as well put them in
Dracula masks and have them chant "We are evil" over and over again to prove
the same point. This might not have been so much of a problem if Voyager
had only limited itself to mediation but once the Delta Flyer participates
in the battle it would seem that Janeway has used armed force to take a side
and it's unclear if the side is really right or not.
The special effects look pretty good again demonstrating that if nothing
else, Series V will probably have amazing visual effects. Tuvok's dance step
is played in just the right subtle way and so is Janeway's offer to allow
Neelix to leave and rejoin his people disguised as a practical
ambassadorship. And we're not burdened with a pointless B story about Paris
forgetting how to tie his shoes or Kim losing his stuffed bunny in a turbo
lift. Homestead may not be Voyager's greatest episode but unlike Natural Law,
it does belong as one of the series' final episodes. Neelix may not be
Voyager's best character, but he needed a sendoff and Homestead is about the
best one he could have gotten.
Next week: Another Doctor playing secret agent? Is this an occupational
hazard?
