Friday, May 9, 2008

5.09 thirty days

Tom Paris is sent to the brig for 30 days of solitary confinement; why? He begins speaking a letter to his father to explain that…

Voyager encounters an ocean ‘sphere’ inhabited by 80,000 sea-dwelling people. Paris, who has Jules Verne fantasies, volunteers to modify and pilot the Delta Flyer, which can explore the deepest area of the ocean and discover why the ocean is losing containment. Besides a huge attacking electric eel, they also find an ancient generator that is drawing power away from containment because of all the oxygen that is being mined from the ocean to support the new inhabitants. But when Paris and the alien scientist Riga report these findings to the head politician, it is obvious that he isn’t going to make any changes. Paris gets emotionally involved, and prompts Riga to do something about it. Paris steals the Delta Flyer and he and Riga head for an oxygen processing plant – to blow it up. But Tuvok and Chakotay rig a proton torpedo and foil the plan. Paris is left to spend 30 days in the brig, and his rank is reduced to ensign.

This episode is another cool concept with more cool graphics; I particularly liked the shots of the Delta Flyer plunging into the water, and the underwater city looked like The Abyss.

Nit#1: Okay, you’re cruising through space, you see a really cool round thing that looks like a planet but is an ocean, three ships emerge as you get close and they start firing, and refuse to answer hails. What does Janeway do? She targets and knocks out the weapons system on the lead ship. Then the ship hails Voyager and says they are in violation of their space. Janeway says she could have destroyed the ship, but didn’t, that they are just curious explorers. Now wait a second. Does this sound like Starfleet policy to you? What if they had missed the weapons systems with those phaser blasts? What if the weapons systems had overloaded and destroyed the ship? Wouldn’t the more prudent and proper form of action to be to retreat and forego any curiosity, rather than fire and then gloat about how "we could have destroyed you, but we are so nice and friendly, we didn’t". Frankly, this sounds just like the type of bullying behavior that used to get Janeway really angry! Maybe she should sentence herself to 30 days in the brig for violating the prime directive.

Nit#2: I think Seven did much worse stuff – she not only violated a direct order and stole a ship, but she beamed a defenceless alien to the Hirogen and sentenced it to death – and she never spent a day in the brig.

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