75. The Raven

Seven, don't panic, but there's a Borg spider on your hand. Seriously, don't panic. 

75. The Raven, Voyager, Season 4, Episode 6

As you may have noticed, I've strayed from my initial mission statement of reviewing the Top 100 Star Trek Episodes of All Time, as compiled by io9. There is a very good reason for that. I took a job in Japan and one of the many, many differences between the United States and Japan is that Japanese Netflix doesn't have any of the series. In fact, the only two pieces of Trek available to me are Abram's Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. While, I'll get to reviewing those films later, because I cannot stand the vacuum of Trek in my life right now, I wanted to get back on track, with at least this review that I started before I began my journey to the Land of the Rising Sun.

And now, without further ado, let's set course for the Delta Quadrant.

It's a common belief that Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, 'saved' Voyager. I'm not sure that's consistent with fact. I would say that that's more to the presence of the Borg than that particular character. And though the first episode in which she appeared had relatively high ratings, it was the part two of a cliffhanger that found Voyager in the clutches of the Borg. I understand the ratings for the show went back to normal, yet Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, remained pretty much the focal point of the show from the moment she arrived until the series finale.

"Excuse me, my ocular implants are up here." — Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One

Up until she arrived, the show had steered away from cheesecake. The show had three prominent female characters and none of them were overly sexualized. Janeway was, for all intents and purposes, Picard with better hair. B'Elanna was portrayed as a smart, strong, if sometimes cartoonishly angry character. And while there was a certain manic-pixie-dreamgirl quality to Kes, she was never really presented as a sex symbol. But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, was front and center with her silver catsuit, Borg enhancements, and characters inexplicably falling for her despite her being a flat out horrible person. Seriously, Harry, Chakotay and the Doctor all fell hard for her despite her having nothing but contempt for pretty much anyone and everything that wasn't Borg.

I guess that I was supposed to find Seven of Nine sexy. I didn't. This is not because Jeri Ryan did not have a pleasing shape that was squeezed into a skintight catsuit. She did and it was. It was because the character was a terrible person. Arrogant. Rude. Entitled. Mean-spirited. Intentionally unlikable. She was interesting, but horribly unlikable.

Worst of all, her presence changed one of the greatest villains in all of Trek history into being a non-threat. Through her, the Borg became familiar. And that familiarity bred contempt. I'll dig into this a bit deeper when we get to episodes like, I, Borg or Best of Both Worlds, but the Borg were legitimately scary. They were partially scary in that their appearances were scarce. The were a shadow threat that loomed over the Next Generation crew. The creators of the show were wise to keep their appearances few and far between. That is, they were scary until Voyager defeated them left and right using their own technology as an intergalactic cure-all for seemingly every situation. I'd love to see how many episodes were resolved by modifying Borg nanoprobes, because there were a lot. The Borg went from being the embodiment of the loss of self through technology to an irksome nuisance.

While she may be an interesting character, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One,  pretty much guaranteed that any chance Voyager ever had from getting out of TNG's shadow was nil. They essentially assimilated the Borg into their cast. Don't get me wrong, I do like Voyager, and there are some great episodes on this list yet to explore. But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero One's addition to the cast was a fundamental shift in the show's dynamic, and I'd argue not for the better.  She became the show's new toy. Janeway was constantly trying to explore her humanity, and teach her about the importance of her free will outside the Borg Collective. I'll skip over the painful, painful irony of Janeway denying Seven's choice to rejoin the Collective because she's trying to get the former Borg to understand the concept of freewill. Over the next few seasons, their mentor-student relationship became tiresome and repetitive.

With the Raven, we get a little bit more about her backstory, and how as a child she was assimilated and raised by the Borg. A mysterious signal triggers something in her brain and she is driven to rejoin the Collective. As she traces the source of the signal what we find is the wreckage of her parent's ship, The Raven. This is where Anaka Hansen was filled with robot parts and had everything she was carved away and turned into a microscopic cog in the infinite machine that is the Borg Collective.

We're even robbed of the connection between Janeway and Seven in the resolution. And in the end, it's Tuvok, not Janeway, that shares the moment of her repressed memories of her assimilation being unleashed. Seven has a breakdown, and it reveals that Ryan's acting chops are far more suited to standing still and hating people while looking good doing it than trying to show a genuine emotion. She's clearly pushing herself as a performer, but the scene is awkward and forcing too much down our throats in terms of emotional connection to the character.

From her facial expression, I'm pretty sure Ryan can smell the clunkiness of this scene. 

This is supposed to make her sympathetic, but I felt it was too rushed. Like we're checking off a box with Seven's origin, rather than getting to a place where her origin mattered. I would have much preferred to see her explored a bit more and see a bit of her PTSD creep in over the course of a season before we rush to her origin story. This was just a few episodes after her debut, and if Janeway and crew had a better chance to care about her, her drive to rejoin the Borg would have had more weight. This would also have given the audience to better understand Janeway's drive to maintain Seven's humanity. If she cared about her as a person rather than as an intellectual and ethical exercise in preserving one's individuality. 'Assimilated as a child' is all we really needed to know about her backstory, and while this episode fills in the gaps to her tale, it doesn't have the emotional resonance that I would have expected from one of my favorite Trek and TV writers and personal heroes, Bryan Fuller.

As she evolves and develops her human side, there are great moments with Seven of Nine throughout Voyager. This is just felt too much too soon.

--

Next up, we take a trip to a museum dedicated to the most ruthless villain in Trek History, Katherine Janeway, with 'Living Witness.'

Star Worries

With the release of The Force Awakens, I've been thinking about Star Wars a lot. Because, I can. I've been riffing on some left-of-center questions about Luke, Ben, Vader and Jedi in general on social media, but I've collected my thoughts here.* These are the questions that keep me up at night and annoy my friends who wonder if I have something better to do with my free time. For the record I do, but I'd rather be doing this.



The Kenobi Conundrum

Was Ben Kenobi really Obi Wan? What if he's not? What if he was an imperfect clone of the original Jedi General? There has always been the speculation that Obi Wan was a code for a clone designation OB-1, but what if the opposite was true? If Ben's cloned memories weren't exact, it would explain a lot as to why he got many of the facts wrong about his past with Vader, Anakin, Yoda, and even Artoo. It would explain why he has to seemingly stop and think every time before he speaks, sometimes just making stuff up. Then he has to justify his inaccuracies with that 'certain point of view' nonsense later. 

An imperfect clone of Obi Wan would also explain why he seems somewhat confused about the amount of time the Jedi have been around (he says a thousand generations, and it's later established that the republic has only stood for a thousand years). And it would explain his incorrect information on the accuracy of Stormtrooper blaster fire at the Jawa massacre, as we all know they can't hit crap. Ben being a clone of Obi Wan would also explain why Vader is kind of taken aback to feel the presence of his old master again... Think about it...


Use the Force, Luke, Because I Said So

Was Luke mind controlled into becoming a Jedi? Before he sets off on his hero's journey, Ben Kenobi looks long and hard at Luke and says, "You must learn the ways of the Force, if you're to come with me to Alderaan." Watch that scene again. Was the old wizard using his Force powers on Luke to put that suggestion into his head? Kenobi knows he can't do the mission alone. His next line in that scene is that he's too old for this sort of thing. For the sake of the Rebellion, did he control Luke's mind? We've already established that Luke will cave to authority, when his aunt and uncle deny him his application to the Academy and his trip to Toshii station. Luke being under Kenobi's control might explain why Luke so quickly turned from seeing the people who raised him burned to a crisp by Stormtroopers and wanting to become a Jedi under Kenobi's guidance without so much as shedding a tear. It also might explain why he had a much stronger reaction to Kenobi's death than the death of Owen and Beru. From that moment on, Luke's driving need through the trilogy is to become a Jedi. Even at the Battle of Yavin, What if he didn't have a choice in the matter? What if Kenobi made that choice for him?



Dark Luke of the Sith

Which brings up the question, was Luke Skywalker really a Jedi? On Tatooine, he's a selfish, (sociopathic?) braggart who wanted to join the Imperial Academy, presumably to be a TIE Fighter pilot, instead of help his family farm. On Dagobah, he willfully and repeatedly ignores his master's instructions; a master with eight centuries of Jedi training experience, mind you. He gives into anger and fear on Cloud City when he confronts Vader, taking the quick and easy path. Gets mauled, maimed, and a cyborg hand, (most Sith we have seen seem to have some, if not all, of these qualities). Force chokes, threatens, and kills indiscriminately at Jabba's Palace while dressed in all black. Has zero qualms about murdering anyone who opposes him with the possible exception of his father. He taunts the Emperor, gleefully promising his death. He then gives into his hate in the presence of the Emperor, twice. 

Only in the final moments of his conflict with Vader does he really seem to understand that he's already lost the battle for his soul. In truth, he may only have one moment when he's not being truly evil, then the Emperor blasts him with wizard stuff. Afterwards, despite living in a universe with batca tanks and medical droids, just pulls the plug on his dying father. If he truly is a Jedi like his father before him, then the dark side will forever dominate his destiny.


Darth Until Death

What if at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke didn't save Anakin, but instead Vader completed Luke's turn to the Dark Side? I've already argued that maybe Luke wasn't really a Jedi. According to Yoda, a Jedi uses his powers for knowledge and defense, never for attack. By that criteria, Luke was far from being a Jedi. And in watching the films, it seems that all Sith ascend to power by turning on their master. Betrayal is a running theme with their Order. When Vader grabbed the Emperor and threw him down the shaft, maybe his motivations weren't to save his son, but he simply saw his shot and took it. 

Remember he had this grand vision of ruling the galaxy as father and son, and completing Luke's training. With the Emperor distracted, Vader finally had an opportunity that was just too good to pass up, a chance to destroy his mentor and finally graduate from apprentice to master. Maybe he was just seeking to fulfill his destiny of overthrowing the Emperor and ruling with his son at his side. I mean he was beaten, but his life support was still fully functional. Perhaps, he didn't anticipate the feedback from the force lightning, and was mortally wounded. His last chance to complete Luke's turn to the Dark Side was by manipulating Luke into being an active participant in his death. By asking Luke to remove his mask, he's essentially asking Luke to kill him before his body shuts down. Knowing that this is the way of the Sith, he's essentially fast-tracking Luke to Dark Lord status. 

Maybe that's why Lucas changed Anakin's force ghost vision at the end of RotJ to the younger Anakin, because that's the last time in is life that Anakin was a servant of the light. If we take Lucas at his word that the Special Editions were the way he always envisioned them, then I can only conclude that this change was because Vader was still a Sith at the time of his death. And maybe, just maybe, so was Luke.


The Frauds Will Be With You, Always

Did most people believe the Jedi were just fakes? In all of the billions of billions of sentient beings in this galaxy far, far away, there were only four known force-trained individuals in existence at the time of A New Hope -- Kenobi, Yoda, Vader and Palpatine. The latter two hadn't even been revealed yet. That's a hell of a small percentage of people. Mace Windu states two telling things in the prequels. There are not a lot of Jedi (at least not enough to fight an army), and their powers over the force have greatly diminished. Han claims to have traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other and have never seen anything that would make him a believer in the Force, yet the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Empire would have happened in his lifetime. Jabba is openly dismissive of Jedi powers, and he lived in a time when being a Jedi meant something. 

So, did the general populous just not believe that the Force was really a thing? Did years of Palpatine inspired propaganda turn the people against Jedi so much so that they had become just a footnote in history? Was 'may the force be with you,' just a polite thing that people said without any real spiritual weight behind it? Were the Jedi so rare as to be considered charlatans using magic tricks?

Until next time...

--

*While it's entirely possible others have reached similar conclusions about Star Wars, all of this was done from memory and not intentionally ripping anyone else off...