28 – Resistance

Grade: B+

Summary

Janeway, Tuvok, Torres and Neelix are on a planet, trying to purchase tellerium from a group of resistance fighters against the Mokra. However, they are quickly captured. Janeway is rescued by a senile old man who believes she is his daughter who has been lost for several years.

Commentary

This is one episode that really is a lot better than it deserves to be. Right off the bat, it bothered me that it starts in the middle of the crisis, and there is no setup for why they’re on the planet in the first place. The substance that they’re looking for, called tellerium, has never been mentioned before in Star Trek, and it will never be mentioned again after this episode either. For those two reasons, I didn’t think I would like this episode as much as I did.

One thing I really liked was finally being able to see Chakotay’s management style and his skill in commanding the ship. This was also a good episode for Harry Kim, for the same reason. Though Tuvok and Torres are on the planet together and have a good scene here or there, I thought they could have done better work in their roles.

But this episode does one thing especially well – it creates a very moving and engaging drama that was wonderful to watch. The acting is not stellar, but it’s good. The writing is much better than we have seen in previous episodes during this series. And the closing scene when the man rescues the woman he believes is his daughter is excellent.

I only wish there was a little less mystery about why they were on this planet in the first place and what their objective would be. If they had started the episode from the beginning of the story rather than in the middle of it, I would have liked it a great deal more. But then this might have prevented them from having enough scenes on the planet with Janeway and her “father”, which in my opinion are some of the best scenes of the series so far. In many ways, this episode reminds me of the TNG episode, “Inner Light”, when Picard lives out a lifetime on a dying planet in just 30 minutes. Indeed, the last episode here when Janeway keeps the necklace is very much like the end of Inner Light when Picard holds the flute that they recovered from the probe.

Of Note

The idea that Janeway would disguise herself as a “lady of the evening” was a cause for some considerable debate among the Voyager staff. I personally think it was handled tastefully and in character, so I thought it was done well. Rick Berman disagreed with how Paramount decided to preview this episode, putting a great deal of emphasis on Janeway’s deceptive role and on the violence and pain that the Mokra inflicted on Tuvok. It seems that by this time in the series, Paramount became worried about the lack of viewers that this series attracted, so they tried to play up some of this episode’s darker elements. It’s a shame that they didn’t think people would watch this show without those elements.