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Posted:
07:07:50 on May 24 2001
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: Reviews - Voyager
Reviews Ex Deus
"Endgame"
Written for TrekWeb by O. Deus
Summary: Voyager goes off the air with a finale that isn't quite a bang
but is a fitting farewell in keeping with its themes and tone.
Despite heading for a fifth series, Star Trek has only done two series
finales before Endgame. That means there really isn't a template
enstablished for the series finale just yet. On the one hand, we have TNG's
All Good Things..., which was a poignant look ahead at the future combined with
a brillant celebration of Star Trek's ideals and a complex intellectual
puzzle. On the other hand, we had DS9's What You Leave Behind choose to do a
conventional episode, wrapping the messy arcs and plot threads it had
accumulated. Voyager's finale Endgame on the other hand falls somewhere in
between.
Unlike TNG, Voyager's writers know this is their show's last hurrah and
that there will never be any further extension of the story. But unlike DS9,
Voyager wasn't overloaded with arcs that had to be wrapped up or apocalyptic
struggles to be fought. So Endgame is a combination of the two styles. On
the one hand there is a time warping premise to Endgame and a poignant look
ahead at what time and history will do to its charachters as on TNG. On the
other hand the actual episode is less about time travel, than it is about
using it as a vehicle to examine the characters and resolve the series and
various character issues like DS9. The result is a finale that doesn't aim
high like TNG's but also one that doesn't overshoot and crash and burn like
DS9's. It's an average finale that encompasses all the good and bad that was
Voyager and by doing so serves as a valid representation of what the show
was all about.
Endgame's opening takes less of a page from TNG or DS9 than it does from
the TOS films. Specifically Wrath of Khan. A scene of Voyager's joyous
celebration cuts to a falsely cheerful retrospective on a TV monitor and a
bitter-aged Captain Janeway pacing the room. These are scenes that call up
the TOS Genesis trilogy both visually and emotionally. Janeway and the
Doctor chat in her apartment in a scene strongly reminscent of Kirk and
McCoy sans glasses. The Genesis comparisons only deepen as Janeway searches
for a way to break Starfleet regulations to save former friends and crew
members. Janeway herself no longer pilots a starship but has been bumped up
to Admiral and looks forwards to teaching cadets. The crew has their
reunions like an old group of Korean War vets who don't seem to have that
much in common anymore and Voyager is a museum from whose ready room you can
see Alcatraz. Tuvok is in a mental asylum raving to himself and Chakotay and
Seven are dead. And it took Voyager nearly two decades to get home.
Fans and viewers might have expected a long journey home ending with
Voyager's return, but the episode instead chooses to throw a splendid
reunion at them and then turn it into ashes. It's a scene that takes a
certain amount of guts. Voyager might have easily gone the conventional
route, or at least closed with the return scene as a payoff. Instead the
payoff shot shows Voyager returning to Earth in the company of the fleet.
We've already seen the return home and we know it won't solve all the
problems or too many problems for that matter. Janeway's real problem
remains unspoken and it isn't Tuvok's disease or Seven's death. Her real
problem is only stated openly by Paris, that she was only satisfied
when she was on Voyager. Voyager was home. Time stood still on Voyager.
Janeway has always been obssessed with doing the best job possible of
getting her crew home. And so she decides to go back in time and risk the
past, not for any particularly compelling reasons, but because she wants to
do a better job if it than she did last time. She wants to see if she can
get the floor cleaner and the cabinets shininer and the crew home in seven
years instead of twenty-something years. Janeway has always been a
perfectionist and obsessed with her performance. She's lost plenty of
crewmembers before, so why not prevent Voyager from entering the Delta Quadrant period? The device on her shuttle allows her to choose any point in
space or time. Presumabely because it would eliminate important parts of
history, which Voyager changed. Captain Braxton and Q have said as much. Janeway herself states that these sixteen years featured major confrontations
with the Borg Queen which helped them develop weapons and tactics that in
the future allows the Federation to hold the Borg at bay. Is she throwing
all this way just to rescue some friends? So are we to really believe that
Voyager's first seven years in the Delta Quadrant were important to galactic
history but the succeeding sixteen years weren't?
And here is at once the greatest strength of Endgame and its greatest
weakness. Its strength lies in its depiction of Voyager's future, but a
future that is merely used to engineer a bit of time travel that occurs at this
point in time for no particular reason, except that Voyager's seven years
are up. Worse yet, Admiral Janeway seems to have no idea how to bring Voyager
home except by taking them through the worst the Borg have to offer.
Couldn't she have found an easier way to bring Voyager home? If Voyager
could get home by breaking the rules, who not ask Q to do it? The entire
Borg plot becomes tacked on as a means of resolving the Borg, even though
they have little relation to the basic plot. Which means we're asked to
swallow two gigantic whoppers. The first being Admiral Janeway's choice and
the second being the involvement of the Borg.
Despite the All Good Things... "flashbacks" like Janeway's shuttle being
pursued by Klingon warships, Janeway convincing aged crew members to let her
go on one final mission, and Tuvok suffering from a degenerative mental
disease, future Voyager worked. So does present day Voyager. Given plenty of
time, Endgame showcases a "5 minutes from now" future of Voyager that has
Tuvok realizing his disease is getting worse when he loses a game, Torres
expecting her baby and Paris finally settling down and abandoning his last
desire for adventure. Both the past and the future are rife with neat
continuity referrences from Barclay missing a golf game with the EMH, Kim's
desire to be Captain and Torres's daughter turning out to be a bigger
Klingon than her mother and involved in Klingon politics to boot. The future
isn't detailed but Janeway shopping around for technology with a renegade
Klingon noble in exchange for a seat on the high council is plausible and
rings true. So do the lecture halls and reunions, a Voyager version of
Veterans of Foreign Wars. Or Veterans of Delta Quadrant Attritions.
The failure happens when Endgame does what All Good Things... and Voyager's
own Timeless knew not to do, combine the past and the future. On board
Voyager, Admiral Janeway is just a pest and her motivations are bizarre. Her
claims that "family comes before strangers" is completely bizarre and
un-Starfleet even if it's nice to see Janeway finally come out and admit the
philosophy that's been behind criminal actions such as Tuvix and Scorpion.
Her technology gifts make things too easy. Sure the Borg have become a bit
too soft but the cheesy armor-all effect and super torpedoes that blow up
entire cubes are just ridiculous. Meanwhile Present Janeway demonstrates
that she can't even stand or work with herself, let alone anyone else. Her
desire to blow up the Borg transwarp conduit is noble, but wouldn't it make
more sense to escape first and get the technology back to Starfleet which
can outfit a hundred ships with it and do the job better?
People may make noises about the Temporal Prime Directive, but I note
the TPD hasn't kept the EMH from wearing a piece of 27th century technology
and trying to donate it to the Daystrom Institute. Why is this any
different? Janeway is ready to throw away the TPD when it's a question of
Tuvok's well-being and when it's a question of the welfare of her crew, and
this is a question of the survival of thousands of entire species.
Essentially, then, both Janeways have irrational agendas that have more to do
with their own personal psychological problems, than with Starfleet
regulations and the greater good. Kirk in ST3 and Picard in All Good Things...
broke the rules but Kirk didn't care about Genesis. He was simply trying to
rescue Spock and that meant violating the No Trespassing sign. Picard had
evidence that if he didn't act the universe would be destroyed. Janeway
wanted to save 22 people and possibly doom billions and wipe out portions of
galactic history doing it. It just doesn't add up.
And that is Voyager's legacy, pettiness. Even when taking on the Borg
and challenging all space and time, Janeway seems petty. And she manages to
make the Borg seem petty too. It's family versus family. Janeway's family on
Voyager which has come to a fractured old age in the future and the Borg
Queen's collapsing collective family. Both believe Seven of Nine is part of
their family. And more than anything this episode seems to come down to
Seven of Nine again. She dies. Her death devastates Chakotay. Her death is
the unique thing that causes Janeway to go back. The other 22 crew members
are nameless and Janeway has already lost quite a few people before this.
But by choosing to develop the actual Chakotay/Seven romance only at this
late date, the entire notion that Chakotay was so devastated by her loss
that he pined away for longing is simply implausible. And fans who follow
the inside news will note Beltran's attacks against the producers and that
actors the producers don't like often meet unfortunate ends.
But then if the producers had decided to kill off the character they
might have gotten some mileage from it by killing him off during the attempt
to return to Earth. As it is there is little carnage and little real trial and risk. Future Janeway may die but that is to be expected. But
to the crew, it is an episode that seems to carry less danger and risk than
episodes like Dark Frontier or Year of Hell. You would think that the process
of returning to Earth would be epic, but instead it seems very ordinary. It
doesn't even compare to Borg Voyager episodes like Scorpion or Unimatrix
Zero. Eliminate the time travel and return-to-Earth element and you simply
have a fairly conventional Voyager two-parter. The Borg Queen even falls for
a variation of the same trick Janeway used on her in Unimatrix Zero. The
collective must have a really poor memory to keep making the same mistake
over and over again.
So what we have in Endgame is the fusion of a strong future episode, a
strong view of Voyager 5 minutes from now and their clumsy combination in a
weak and hackeneyd plot that results in them getting home. But this is only
fitting for a show that has suffered from poor plots and rushed resolutions
throughout its run. Endgame has many of the same successes and failures as
Voyager in general has had. With Endgame it attempts to produce a linear
resolution and a character arc wrap-up and while it does a better job of
this than the muddled DS9 series finale, it suffers from many of the same
flaws. Confrontation for confrontation's sake, implausible actions and
behaviors and a finale that feels rushed to complete an artificial schedule
that wasn't properly planned for. But it also has gems that DS9's finale
lacks and those gems, those character moments, are what link Voyager's past and present.
Next week: Nothing. Now the wait for Star Trek Enterprise begins.
