Remember
Stardate: 50203.1
Original Airdate: Oct 9, 1996
By Chakoteya
The Story
‘Captain's log, stardate 50203.1. We're three days away
from Enara Prime, home of the passengers we picked up from a colony
in the Fima system. Our high warp capability has greatly reduced
the time it takes them to make the journey home. In return, the
Enarans have shared their energy conservation technology with
us and, perhaps more importantly, their friendship.’
In engineering, Torres and Kim are working with Jessen, when
MirelI, an old frail woman comes over to tell her about the beauties
of Enara which the young woman has yet to see. They detect a minor
flow problem in the modified relays and B’Elanna predicts,
Harry says he will be happy to help Jessen go through them all
to track it down in the morning, then invites the three women
to join him for dinner. Mirell decides to retire instead and when
Torres demurs too the young couple go off together.
Next morning, Torres is woken by Commander Chakotay telling her
that she is half an hour late for her duty shift. This makes two
days running that she has overslept, and her friend and former
Captain is concerned about her. Finally she confesses that she
is having vivid, sensual dreams in which she is an Enaran girl
in love. It is liberating for her, but if Chakotay breaths a word
about it, she’ll rip his heart out and eat it raw.
The mess hall has been out of bounds all afternoon as Neelix
converted it into a little piece of Enara, with a blue and green
colour scheme, Enaran music, cuisine and furniture - or lack of
it. There is not a uniform to be seen as Captain Janeway sits
entranced by Jor Brel’s playing of one of Jora Mirell’s
compositions. She expresses regret at never having learnt an instrument
and accepts his offer to teach her. He hands over the musical
device and stands behind her, hand close to her spine. She begins
to play like an expert then breaks off wilt a gasp. Tuvok is concerned
and interested in the way the Enarans can share their memories
and experiences telepathically with other people. Jor Brel apologises
if he had misunderstood her request to learn to play.
One member of the senior staff is absent. B’Elanna is continuing
her vivid dreams and tonight’s episode is a confrontation
between Korenna and her father about Dathan, an unsuitable boy
in his opinion. After he leaves the room, it turns out that Dathan
is hiding in the bathroom. They kiss, and then the dream takes
an unpleasant turn, as he is suddenly a burnt corpse in her arms.
Torres reports to Chakotay in his office with the latest status
of the upgrades. They will need to work longer shifts to get it
done by the time they arrive at Enara in two days time, but that
shouldn’t be a problem. Then she tells him about the latest
development in her dreams, how vivid the whole experience is,
and neither think it is any co-incidence that all this is happening
while they have telepaths on board. B’Elanna goes to talk
to Jessen in engineering while Chakotay informs the Captain about
the situation. On her way along a corridor, she is suddenly Korenna
again, in a town square receiving a Citizenship award from her
father before going to a shady colonnade to talk with Dathan.
A bell tolls and he has to leave. All the people like Dathan,
dressed in fabrics, show their ID cards at a gate and are ushered
out of the town by guards, and the gates firmly shut behind them.
Kes finds B’Elanna unconscious in the corridor and has
her rushed to sickbay where she wakes with a start to see the
concerned face of her Captain. The EMH informs her that her dreams
are actually implanted memories placed in her unconscious, and
only surfacing when she is asleep. A problem between the memories
and Torres’ own brain caused her to black out, but he has
fixed it now, and prepared an inhibitor for her to wear to stop
any further dreaming. B’Elanna isn’t sure that she
wants to stop the dreams yet. She is caught up in the narrative
and wants to know how it will develop and end. The EMH says that
she shouldn’t risk brain damage and puts the inhibitor on
her anyway, while Janeway gives her two days off to rest.
Torres sits in on Captain Janeway’s meeting with Jor Brel
about the situation, and he cannot believe that anyone of his
group is doing it deliberately. He suggests that she is picking
up stray thoughts and memories, and organising them into a narrative
to make sense of it all. When Captain Janeway assures him that
the memories are being suppressed now, Jor Brel is relieved to
hear it, and leaves the room. Tuvok considers his explanation
plausible, and the group will be gone in a day or so anyway, but
Captain Janeway intends to continue investigating, which does
not surprise Tuvok at all. Torres offers to talk to Jessen and
Mirell but Janeway overrules her. She needs to rest, and that’s
an order.
‘Captain's log, stardate 50211.4. We're approaching Enara
and preparing to host a farewell party for our guests. They've
made every effort to help us understand their telepathic abilities
but it's still a mystery why they've affected Lt. Torres so strongly.’
In her quarters, Torres comes to a decision and takes off the
inhibitor. Korenna gets a lecture from her father about the Regressives,
how different they are in refusing to live with technology. He
assures her that their voluntary resettlement to a new colony
is for the common good, as they live in such dirty conditions
that they could start a plague. By the town gate Korenna and her
father are checking off names of resettlement volunteers when
the is questioned by a woman who wants to know where they are
going. She is startled to see Dathan’s name on the list,
but he has not turned up. Another man tries to run and Korenna
is knocked over, her cheek cut. B’Elanna wakes and touches
her face. That wound would leave a scar – just like the
one on the face or Jora Mirell. She hurries to the old woman’s
quarters to find her lying on the floor, dying, but before she
does, Jora/Korenna gives B’Elanna the final chapter of her
story.
Dathan comes to ask Korenna to leave with him. He tells her the
rumours about no one ever hearing from relatives who are supposed
to have gone to this new colony. It is said that there is no colony,
that the Regressives are killed on the transport ship. Korenna’s
father comes to her room and she challenges him over the resettlement.
He refutes the stories of course, and challenges her to choose
between believing that her family are involved in genocide, or
that the Regressives are lying to try and hold the rest of the
population back. Then he suggests that Dathan is unfaithful, talking
to many young women just as he has talked to her. Korenna’s
gaze lifts to the curtain at the end of her room, and Dathan is
discovered. In the town square he and several other Regressives
are denounced as criminals, fastened to columns and executed in
front of a baying crowd that includes Korenna. The scene shifts
to years later, and Korenna is explaining the fate of the Regressives
to a group of children. They all died in their colony from a disease
they brought upon themselves by living in unhygienic conditions.
The lesson the Enarans must take from their fate is not to fight
technological progress.
At the farewell party, Jor Brel is proposing a toast to the Captain
and her crew when Torres bursts in to tell them what she has seen
about the Regressives. She accuses the Enarans of being murderers
and hiding the truth of what happened, killing Mirell when they
discovered that she was passing on her memories. Tuvok says that
Mirell had denied doing any such thing just the day before. Jor
Brel suggests that the dying woman’s illness had changed
the memories in some way. Jessen refuses to believe that her people
were capable of doing any such thing. Torres persists, but the
Enarans leave and Janeway tells B’Elanna to be in her ready
room in one hour, after she has talked to the Doctor.
Calmer, Torres apologises for her behaviour, and the Captain
tells her that she believes her story, but it is not their place
to bring the Enarans to justice. There is no evidence of murder
being committed on board Voyager and they have no excuse to act.
The trade negotiations and shore leave have been cancelled but
that is as far as they can go. Janeway suggests that Torres go
to engineering while the Enarans are still there, collecting their
equipment. Jessen does not want to talk with her, but she does
listen. Torres challenges her to prove her wrong, to find the
colony and learn the truth about their fate for themselves. When
she wishes that she could share Korenna’s memories with
Jessen, freely and openly, the young Enaran offers to make the
connection herself, and does so.
Review:
This is Voyager’s Holocaust story, told in a fairly interesting
way but with very little intensity other than from Torres, who
gets so wrapped up in the narrative that she is willing to risk
brain damage to see how it all ends. How it all ends is pretty
much up in the air, with questions, and Trek taking a different
attitude to the 21st century in how it regards such acts. Here
and now we have international courts trying the leaders of countries
who have committed genocide, there we have Captain Janeway saying
it’s not our place to get involved with what they did. How
the Enarans, who can share memories between each other, have managed
to totally expunge these events from their history is baffling
too. Mirell may have been living on a remote colony, but she cannot
have been the only one of her generation to have survived into
old age, can she?
The strange attitude towards telepathy gets me too. Here is this
potentially potent means of communication once again hedged about
with taboos and protocol to the point where the population would
really be better off without it altogether. I cannot help but
feel that a society whose members are open to each other’s
thoughts like that should have no secrets, no concept of privacy
at all, and therefore completely be alien to us.
As Korenna, Roxann plays the part much more girlishly, with a
slightly higher pitched voice, slightly shy yet giggly when in
the company of her first love. A good contrast to the confident,
contained Torres we have come to know. It really is a good showcase
for her.
So, all in all, subject matter notwithstanding, this is an average
to good show, with the dual role for Torres raising it slightly
above par.
Grade: 7/10
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:
Eve Brenner as Jora Mirell
Bruce Davison as Jareth
Charles Esten as Dathan
Athena Massey as Jessen
Eugene Roche as Jor Brel
Creative Staff:
Director: Winrich Kolbe
Teleplay By: Lisa Klink
Story By: Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky
