Flashback
Stardate: 50126.4
Original Airdate: September 11, 1996
By Christina Luckings
The Story
Neelix is trying to tempt Tuvok to try an experimental fruit
juice blend, by telling him that Ensign Golwat (a lady Bolian)
thinks it is delicious. This does not work, as Bolian tongues
can survive drinking corrosive acids. Nevertheless, persistence
prevails and Tuvok takes a sip. The rest of his breakfast is
going to be eggs, and Neelix follows the Talaxian custom of giving
the life story of every ingredient in the meal until a power
overload cremates the dish. Then Captain Janeway summons the
pair to the bridge.
‘Captain's log, Stardate 50126.4. We have detected a gaseous
anomaly that contains sirillium, a highly combustible and versatile
energy source. We've altered course to investigate.’
The plan is to gather and store as much of this substance as
possible, which will require Neelix giving up storage bay 3 – his
pantry. However, the thought of adding the stuff into his galley
systems to improve cooking times is a consolation to him. Torres
scoffs at the idea. She’s planning to use it as a warp
plasma catalyst, while Tuvok dreams of boosting deflector shield
efficiency. They arrive at the anomaly and prepare to gather
the gas with the bussard collectors when Tuvok suddenly feels
dizzy and takes himself off to sickbay. On the way he has a vision
of lying on a cliff edge trying to stop a girl from falling.
He relates the vision to the EMH as he conducts an examination,
describing feelings of anxiety, fear and anger at letting her
fall. Yet, although it seems like a memory, he has no knowledge
of the event ever happening in his lifetime. They take his word
for this, and speculate about parallel realities, the nearby
nebula, or telepathic contact from another race. In the meantime,
Tuvok is to wear a monitor in case it happens again.
In his quarters, Tuvok is building the Vulcan equivalent of
a house of cards whilst repeating a mantra about control and
structure. Just as it collapses, the doorbell chimes and Kes
comes in to adjust the monitor. He explains to her about the ‘keethara’,
how it’s final structure reflects the builder’s state
of mind. She realises that he is having a struggle with his controls,
and leaves him to it.
Next day, after 14 hours trying to find the source of the problem
within himself to no avail, Tuvok is rather curt with Chakotay
when he asks how he is. The first officer’s suggestion
to stop thinking about it and let the answer come on it’s
own is also pushed aside. In engineering, Kim reports that the
sensors have found nothing about the nebula to explain Tuvok’s
symptoms. It is a standard type 17. Tuvok’s suggestion
to scan it for cloaked ships raises eyebrows, especially when
he says that they are close to Klingon space and Torres has to
correct him. Then the Vulcan has another vision and collapses
on the floor, eyes wide and staring at something in horror.
The EMH has reached a diagnosis – t’lokan schism,
or a repressed memory which is re-emerging and causing actual
physical damage to the brain. The treatment is to mind-meld with
a family member in order to bring the repressed memory into the
conscious where it can be dealt with. That is why he has called
Captain Janeway to the sickbay. Tuvok has considered asking one
of the Vulcans on board Voyager, but decided that as it will
be a very intimate meld, he would rather do it with his closest
friend instead. Once they have established the meld, and Tuvok
has accessed the memory, she will act as his pyllora or guide
to help him reconstruct it and objectify the experience. In this
way, he will be able to come to terms with it. He will be aware
of her presence while she observes events and helps him. They
will begin in one hour.
Under close medical supervision, the meld begins, but instead
of the precipice, Janeway finds herself on a starship under attack.
This is his first deep space assignment, on the USS Excelsior
under the command of Captain Hikaru Sulu, stardate 9521. The
battle with the Klingons was the result of events 3 days earlier,
and suddenly they are in a group billet, with bunks and tables.
Commander Janice Rand summons gamma shift to defend the Federation
against gaseous anomalies and gives Tuvok a message from his
father on the Yorktown. Then she teases him about making tea
for the Captain in order to make Lieutenant in his first months
when it took her three years to make Ensign. Janeway comments
that he never made her tea, and leaves the room too. On the bridge,
Tuvok pours a cup of the beverage for Captain Sulu, and it is
pronounced outstanding, with a joke about giving him a promotion.
Typically Vulcan, Tuvok protests that he was not trying to curry
favour, and he is told to learn to recognise a joke, because
Sulu knows that his race does have a sense of humour. Janeway
comments that the Captain does not look like his official portrait
as they go over to Tuvok’s science station, and that none
of this is on his service record. That is because his current
record, beginning with the Wyoming, is his second career, whilst
this is his first. He is 29 years old and Praxis is about to
explode. The results will include the first Federation-Klingon
peace treaty, muses Janeway, just before the shockwave hits the
ship and throws everyone to the floor. Forward two days to the
moment when Sulu decides to try and rescue Kirk and McCoy from
Kronos, and Ensign Tuvok steps forward to express his objection
to this blatant disregard of official orders. Rand steps up to
relieve him of his duties and apologise to the Captain. Sulu
gives Tuvok a lecture on family and loyalty, says ‘Regulations
be damned’ and sets course, while Janeway tells him that
he did the right thing.
They move forward to the Excelsior’s approach to the Azure
nebula, which bears a striking physical similarity to the one
Voyager has encountered. As he stares at the viewscreen, the
vision of the girl reappears and Tuvok breaks the meld. The EMH
acts quickly to prevent him from going into a coma, and tells
Janeway that if this memory keeps surfacing on it’s own,
it will eventually kill Tuvok. He will be kept sedated for a
few hours so the Captain leaves sickbay.
In her ready room, Janeway is browsing old ship’s logs
when Kim comes in to report that the only thing the two nebula
have in common is trace amounts of sirillium. It may be only
the apparent visual similarity that has triggered this repressed
memory after all, but why they went back to the Excelsior instead
of his childhood is still a mystery. Captain Sulu chose not to
enter the journey to the Azure nebula in his logs, and they comment
on how different is was for that generation, with the Alpha quadrant
largely unexplored. ‘They were a little slower to invoke
the Prime Directive, and a little quicker to pull their phasers.
Of course, the whole bunch of them would be booted out of Starfleet
today. But I have to admit, I would have loved to ride shotgun
at least once with a group of officers like that.’ Janeway
confesses to her operations officer. The EMH calls to inform
her that he is ready to revive Tuvok.
Once again, Tuvok initiates a meld with Janeway, to take them
to that precipice, and once again they are at red alert on the
Excelsior while the Klingons attack. They go back a few hours
to when Dimitri Valtane wanted to discuss the situation with
Tuvok. Dimitri thinks it is courageous, while Tuvok considers
it reckless. He clearly expresses his dislike of the way humanity
thinks every other race should see things as they do, and announces
that he will resign his commission at the end of this assignment.
Then he tells Janeway that during the following fifty years he
tried the kohlinar, entered pon farr instead, married T’Pel
and raised a family. During this time he came to appreciate the
decisions his parents had made for him which he had originally
rebelled against, and eventually reenlisted in order to learn
from other species. Then a Klingon cruiser attacks them within
the nebula and they return to the Excelsior’s bridge.
On the viewscreen, Kang is exchanging ‘pleasantries’ with
Sulu who is claiming a navigational malfunction has taken them
across the border. He accepts the Klingon’s offer of an
escort back to Federation space, then asks Tuvok about the nebula.
On being told about the sirillium, he asks for ways to ignite
it. They modulate a positron beam and fire it just as they leave
the nebula, blinding the Klingon ship and disabling it. They
set off for Kronos only to be intercepted by three cruisers who
fire photon torpedoes at them. This causes an explosion at Valtane’s
console and Tuvok rushes to his colleagues aid only to experience
the moment at the precipice again.
The EMH is concerned about the readings he is getting, and tries
to end the meld but is unsuccessful. Tuvok has twenty minutes
before he suffers brain death, and in the meld, Sulu demands
to know who Janeway is. Something is going horribly wrong and
Tuvok offers to break the meld, but Janeway stops him. The death
of Valtane is a key to his problem and she wants him to discover
some detail about it that he isn’t yet aware of. He warns
her that her mind will be damaged if his neural structures collapse
while they are linked but she wants to take the risk, in which
case they will have to make her inconspicuous to the other players
in this drama. So they go back to Rand’s call to duty,
neck-pinch her and Janeway takes her uniform.
Meanwhile, the EMH decides to bombard Tuvok’s telepathic
cortex with thoron radiation to break the meld. The treatment
brings surprising results on the monitor. As the two brainwaves
begin to separate a third memory engram appears, which is impossible.
The EMH concludes that it must be a type of virus that disguises
itself in this way and that if the radiation has made it appear,
then a bigger burst should kill it. On the Excelsior, Valtane
dies again and Tuvok summons the last of his mental strength
to take them to the precipice as the virus migrates to the Captain’s
mind and she experiences the girl slipping from her grip to her
death. The EMH switches the treatment to Janeway. As it dies,
the virus shows Dimitri and other people at the precipice until
it is gone for good.
Afterwards, the EMH explains his understanding of this strange
parasitic life form. It lives on brain peptides and uses the ‘memory’ of
the falling girl to hide itself in the host’s brain, moving
on when they died.
Out in the corridor, Tuvok tells Janeway that the Excelsior
never rescued Kirk and McCoy. Instead, Kirk provided his own
means of escape, but they did play an important role at Khitomer.
He is pleased that he was a part of that era, and, as Janeway
also feels that she was there, she can be nostalgic for the pair
of them.
Review
While Voyager was playing with George Takei and a remake of
a small moment from ‘Undiscovered Country’, DS9 was
remaking ‘Trouble with Tribbles’ with a mix of the
original show and excellent special effects. They got the best
show for the 30th anniversary of Star Trek. Which is a shame,
as it was a fair idea, but centring such a show on just one (or
two) characters is a cheat when you are celebrating something
so important to the fans. Having got that out of the way, this
is a strange story about Vulcan mental disorders and weird viruses
that disguise themselves as repressed memories. Apart from the
movie connection and Tuvok’s back story, the whole thing
feels basically pointless.
Yet, if you go back and watch the film, you will notice that
apart from Sulu’s cup breaking, nothing in this story matches
what we saw back then on the screen. It makes you feel that the
Voyager episode was written as a second-best anniversary tribute,
without a lot of thought for context, just as an excuse to get
one of the original cast on the set somehow without breaking
the budget. It is nice to hear George’s deep rolling tones
again, and hear Grace whinge about Yeoman Rand taking 3 years
to make Ensign, but their performances feel a tad strained, apart
maybe from Sulu’s speech about family and loyalty.
Tim Russ does a good job to give Tuvok some stress and slips
seamlessly between narrating to us (and Janeway) as the older,
wiser Vulcan and interacting with the crew of Excelsior as the
young man just starting out in the universe. The differences
are subtle but there, especially in his attitude towards the
ego-centricity of humanity. I thought that was an excellent point.
Janeway’s wistful musings on the ‘old days’ to
Kim were just slightly off-key, especially the comments about
the Prime Directive and how Kirk and Co would be thrown out of
Starfleet in the 24th Century.
All in all, pretty average, with just a slight plus for reminding
us how much more rebellious the Original series attitude towards
higher authorities was than is currently the case (even 70 years
away from home)
Grade: 6/10
Cast:
Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway
Robert Beltran as Chakotay
Roxanne Biggs-Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
Jennifer Lien as Kes
Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
Ethan Phillips as Neelix
Robert Picardo as The Doctor
Tim Russ as Tuvok
Garrett Wang as Harry Kim
Guest Cast:
Michael Ansara as Kang
Boris Krutonog as Helmsman
Jeremy Roberts as Dmitri Valtane
George Takei as Captain Sulu
Grace Lee Whitney as Commander Janice Rand
Creative Staff:
Director: David Livingston
Teleplay By: Brannon Braga
