The Thaw
StarDate: Unknown
Original Airdate: April 29, 1996
By Christina Luckings
The Story
Harry Kim is practising his oboe in his quarters, while his
best friend Tom Paris reads a PADD. There is a banging on the
wall. Voyager’s resident juggler, Pablo Baytart, does not
appreciate the sounds being amplified through the fluid conduits
in the walls. The only solutions to Harry’s dilemma are
either to practise in the Cargo Bay – bad acoustics- or
get Baytart transferred to the night shift. He has an important
performance coming up, with Lt. Susan Nicoletti on oboe. Tom
is jealous, how could Harry succeed with her where he failed?
Maybe he should take up the drums. Chakotay calls the two friends
to the bridge.
Tuvok is picking up non-functional communications satellites
in orbit of a planet. Janeway orders Kim to scan the surface,
and he concludes that a solar flare happened here 19 years ago,
which is about how long ago Neelix remembers this place being
a major trading place. The flare sent the planet into a glacial
freeze, and hit it with high levels of radiation, but now the
biosphere is recovering. The high-tech settlement is uninhabited,
and Tuvok believes that the disturbances would have stopped any
one of the 300,000 residents from leaving the planet. Kim’s
scans trigger an automated message, explaining that a few of
the people from the Kohl settlement have survived in a state
of hibernation which is programmed to end when the planet begins
to recover, 15 years after the recording was made. That should
have been four years ago, so what happened to them? Kim checks
below the surface for energy readings and finds three faint life
signs 2.3 kilometres down, and two dead bodies. Having checked
that there are no weapons systems to protect the sleepers, Tuvok
transports the hibernation unit to Cargo Bay One.
Kes, Janeway, Torres and Kim study the unit and it’s occupants.
One of them is the man who made the ‘do not disturb’ message
19 years earlier. Kim cannot see any reason why two of the people
should have died. There are no obvious faults with the mechanism,
and the minds of the survivors seem to be linked in with the
computer, creating an artificial environment for them to ‘live’ in
while they waited for the signal that the world was recovering
and they could wake up again.
Kim gives the briefing to all the senior staff. As far as he
can tell, the actual decision to wake up was left to the sleepers,
as the computer gave them information about the surface conditions.
The reason they are not awake now is that they have chosen to
remain in their artificial environment. The EMH comes in on the
monitor to counter Paris’s suggestion that maybe they like
it in there. The two corpses died of heart failure, preceded
by an extended period of extreme fear. Chakotay suggests that
they ‘unplug’ them straight away, but the EMH says
that this would be very dangerous, especially as they do not
understand how the interlinking computer system works. Tuvok
comes up with the answer – use the two empty pods to ‘send’ people
in to ask them why they haven’t come out yet.
The two messengers will be Torres and Kim. Kes puts monitors
on their foreheads, Janeway tells Torres that they have 5 minutes
and then the recall subroutine will be activated. The pods are
closed and the two slip into hibernation.
The virtual reality the Kohl settlement survivors have created
for themselves is a gaudy place, peopled by acrobats, dancers,
carnival characters and – in total contrast to the rest – a
clown in grey standing aloof, watching our two as they search
for the three residents. A papier-mache headed ‘Spectre’ asks
what they will do when they find them, and when Torres says they
want to talk, the grey clown grabs their arms and whirls them
off into a dance which finishes at the foot of a bright pink
fully functional guillotine. Torres and Kim try to fight their
way out, but their blows have no effect on the unreal characters.
Harry is manacled and placed in the guillotine, but before the
blade drops, the three Kohl residents arrive to point out that
if anything happens to the newcomers, their colleagues will shut
down the system. The clown orders Harry’s release, and
makes it very clear that he knows everything about Kim and Torres,
and their mission. If the three Kohl leave, all the characters
will disappear, and he will not allow that. Then the wake up
call appears on the wall, and Torres pushes the clown aside and
dashes towards it. The clown threatens to kill one of the Kohl
if they leave, and when Torres challenges him that non of this
is real, he retorts that this is as real as a nightmare, and
decapitation here would surely cause a fatal heart attack out
in the real world.
In the cargo bay, Kes notices the stress levels of the sleepers
is rising and Janeway decides to bring Torres and Kim back using
Voyager’s back up systems. Then the recall command is terminated
from inside the system. Harry is doing what the clown has ordered,
but he suggests that it might not be wise to get rid of the recall
system altogether. How else can the clown’s demands be
relayed to the outside world? The characters confer while the
Kohl woman explains that the clown developed slowly over time
from their hidden fears of not surviving, not recovering. Although
it knows their thoughts, there is a short delay while the system
processes them and the clown becomes aware of them. The decision
has been made. Torres is to go and tell the Captain that if she
tries to switch off the system, all the sleepers will die, including
Harry.
The senior staff assemble to discuss the clown’s demand
to live, and whether he can be accommodated. The consensus is
that the system would require one live brain to maintain the
environment. So now they have to find a way to reduce the number
of hostages and minimise the risk. How do you negotiate with
fear, the most primitive of emotions, persuade it to let you
go? Neelix’s suggestion of making it laugh is met with
stony stares, and they also need to find a way to communicate
without sending in another hostage.
The living inhabitants of this grotesque fantasy land are not
having fun like their computer generated companions are. Kim
is still upbeat about the prospects of the Voyager crew finding
a resolution to this situation, but the three Kohl have been
there too long, and their spirits are broken. The clown doesn’t
like Harry thinking about escape, and makes him old, grey and
helpless. Harry doesn’t like being helpless, just as he
doesn’t like being the ‘baby’ of the crew,
so the clown makes him into a babe in arms for a while, but quickly
bores of it. Kim tries to fight back with his mind. After all,
this is all an illusion, and the only thing they have to fear
is fear itself. The clown recreates the moment in Harry’s
childhood when he was truly scared, on a rescue mission to a
colony that has suffered a radiation disaster. He had wandered
off where he shouldn’t, and seen a young girl about to
undergo an operation without anaesthetic. Just as the clown is
about to plunge a scalpel into Harry, another hand takes it,
correcting the position of the forefinger for optimal dexterity
before throwing it away completely. Captain Janeway’s choice
of representative is the EMH.
The clown is not best pleased. He cannot sense the hologram
on the system, so how can he negotiate when he doesn’t
know what his opponent is thinking. The EMH retorts that he has
a trustworthy face, then goes on to make the Captain’s
offer of an artificial brain to provide the necessary stimulus
for the characters to continue. The clown knows that it cannot
work, although Viorsa (the Kohl who made the message) suggests
that a recalibration of the optronic pathways might be required.
This is a lie, and they all know it. The clown will not agree
to something that would leave him at the mercy of people outside
his environment. He is confident that Captain Janeway would never
risk Harry by turning off the system if he does not agree to
her terms. Kim retorts that she knows he would rather die than
spend the rest of his life like this. The clown will not allow
any hostages to go. Although the system only needs one brain,
he wants to keep the rest as backups in case of illness or death.
The EMH leaves to report his failure to the Captain in sickbay.
The rest of the senior crew assemble with them to discuss further
options. The EMH might be able to repair the brain damage caused
by arbitrarily shutting down the system, but Harry may not be
able to hold his clarinet afterwards. Torres tells Chakotay that
the clown was right to reject an artificial brain, it would not
be the same at all, and he would notice immediately if they tried
it. The EMH gives Viorsa’s message about the optronic pathways,
and Torres realises that he is telling them how to take the whole
artificial world apart, removing the environment from the hostages.
It will have to be done manually, and quickly, while the EMH
distracts the clown.
The clown is feeling sorry for himself, until the little woman
and the spectre suggest he takes it out on the residents rather
than the characters. Just as his mood lifts, the EMH appears
to put a damper back on it. He has come with a new offer of a
cloaking device, to ensure no other passing space ships detect
them and try to interfere. Meanwhile Torres is halfway through
disconnecting the 40 pathways in the system. But the characters
notice that the scenery is disappearing, and the clown orders
Viorsa taken to the guillotine. A forcefield blocks Torres’ progress.
The EMH tries to prevent Viorsa’s execution as Torres gets
back in, but he fails. The woman is next for the chop, and Janeway
orders the optronic pathways restored. The clown has won, and
Janeway does not like losing. What is it about fear that makes
people pursue the sensation, she muses? And what does fear seek
at the end of the roller coaster ride?
The EMH goes in to give the clown a final offer. Release all
the hostages and in return, Captain Janeway herself will come
and keep him company. He has 60 seconds to decide. The answer
is of course, yes. In Cargo Bay One, Janeway gets into a hibernation
pod with a cortical monitor on her forehead, while the clown
orders the characters to make their environment spick and span
for her arrival. Then he feels her presence on the system and
she appears in front of him. The three hostages are released
and they are alone together at last. Then, with the people safely
off the system and waking up, she drops the bombshell – she
is not Kathryn Janeway.
The woman in front of the clown is a hologram of the Captain,
and she got there just like the EMH did. Yes, the Captain is
on the system, but she is not in hibernation. She was just creating
a diversion until the hostages were safe. The holographic Janeway
points out some facts of life to the clown. Fear exists to be
conquered, and he allowed Janeway to come because he knew she
could defeat him, because Starfleet Captains don’t easily
succumb to fear. The gaudy environment fades to black as his
world ends and he begins to vanish. Fear is finally afraid.
Review:
‘Drat’, says the clown at the end of the show. And
so say us all. This show tries, but somehow doesn’t quite
succeed. Fear isn’t scary, and why are all those characters
still gaudy and circus like when the minds creating them are
depressed. The Kohl aren’t stupid, so why do they allow
themselves to be scared to death by a figment of their own imaginations?
The idea of exploring the nature of fear was a good one. The
execution as an episodic TV show with the minimum number of sets
misses the target.
Shall I list the other grips? The breaching of the Prime Directive
by beaming the hibernation pods aboard; sending Torres and Kim
into fantasyland in the first place when the EMH could have done
it right from the start. Whatever, would we have cared if it
was a rescue mission for 3 people we had never met before, instead
of dear sweet clarinet-playing Harry, unluckiest Ensign from
his Academy graduation class? Possibly not.
However, once the EMH does start confronting the clown, things
start to pick up. The two characters contrast wonderfully and
give us the better scenes of the show. The Captain, however,
only begins to think straight just before the end, when she finally
wakes, smells the coffee and starts asking questions about the
nature and purpose of fear. Then the twist ending comes without
any technobabble preamble, and finally the fade to black lifts
the piece to where it should have been all the time.
Too little, too late, sadly.
Trivia note – the teaser in Harry’s Quarters was
held over from Death Wish. It fitted a lot better here.
Grade: 5/10
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:
Tony Carlin as Kohl Physician
Thomas Kopache as Viorsa
Patty Maloney as Little Woman
Michael McKean as The Clown
Shannon O'Hurley as Kohl Programmer
Carel Struycken as Spectre
Creative Staff:
Director: Marvin V. Rush
Teleplay By: Joe Menosky
Story By: Richard Gadas
