Ensign Kim finds himself
making the hard choices of mission commander when he agrees to help the
crew of a ship in need.
IN BRIEF
A nigh-perfect example of
too little, too late.
(originally aired November
22, 2000)
Teleplay by Andre Bormanis
Story by Robert Lederman
& Dave Long
Directed by LeVar Burton
GUEST CAST
Ron Glass -- Loken
Manu Intiraymi -- Icheb
Beverly Leech -- Dayla
Paul F. O'Brien -- Geral
Scott Miles -- Terek
Alan Brooks -- Annari Commander
Bob Rudd -- Brell
RATING (OUT OF 4)
**
ANALYSIS
Warning: This review
contains significant spoilers for Voyager's "Nightingale". If you
haven't seen the episode yet, beware.
"Nightingale" didn't do much
for me. I'm not entirely sure whether to blame the episode or the series
as a whole, so I'll do the honorable thing and blame both.
But in all seriousness, an
episode like "Nightingale" suffers all the more because it's an example
of the adage "too little, too late."
Ensign Harry Kim, as many
people undoubtedly know, is by far not my favorite Voyager character.
In my view, he's the best candidate for ripping apart and making fun. The
writers apparently share that view, and frequently give him episodes where
he's the butt of the joke. (The story break meetings must boil down to:
"That darn Harry! He's such a funny, naive kid! How green can we make him
this week?")
Witness the very end of "Inside
Man", for example, and you see Harry as the victim of a joke that seems
to reinforce the fact that he hasn't advanced a step forward since day
one. Besides, when the character is saddled with episodes like "Favorite
Son" or "The Disease", how can we possibly believe the writers see him
as anything more than the lovable goofball who gets some of the worst storylines?
Now we get "Nightingale",
which seems to be a last-ditch effort by the writing staff to redeem themselves
for years of Harry non-growth. Does it work? Not really. Could it have?
I'm honestly not sure. The show wants us to accept Harry as a starship
captain. That's sort of like asking us to accept Tuvok as a stand-up comedian.
Harry ends up in command
of a ship by complete accident, which is perhaps a telling sign. While
on a Delta Flyer mission with Seven and Neelix, Harry wanders into an alien
conflict by chance and decides to stop one ship from firing on another.
Strictly speaking, the conflict is not his concern, but humanitarian instincts
tell him that saving the crippled ship under attack is the right thing
to do.
The decision he makes is
not a bad one, though it will raise complications later. When the Delta
Flyer crew boards the vessel to tend to survivors, Harry finds that the
captain and senior officers have all been killed (how convenient!), and
this crippled ship -- they're called the Kraylor and say they're on a mission
of mercy to deliver medicine to their world -- needs the help of experienced
personnel to make repairs.
Unfortunately, they need
protection from the Annari -- the people who were attacking them when the
Flyer arrived. They are particularly vulnerable until their cloaking device
is repaired.
~
Harry offers them help, after
which they ask if he would be willing to take command of their ship until
they get to safety. He routes them to Voyager's position and asks Janeway
for an opportunity to see this mission through. There's a speech here where
Harry makes a case for getting his first "real command" -- which is a relevant
idea after all these years -- and he even makes mention of the fact he's
been an ensign for the past six years ("If we were back home, I'd be a
lieutenant by now -- maybe even a lieutenant commander"). Not that Janeway
couldn't have given him a field promotion at any time; she gave rank to
the Maquis officers and promoted Tuvok (and Paris, after demoting him),
but never mind.
So Janeway gives Harry his
chance to sit in the big chair of this Kraylor vessel. Harry takes command
and quickly renames the ship the Nightingale, hence the episode's title.
There's a complication here: The Annari, the Kraylor's enemies, are in
the middle of some trade negotiations with Voyager, so Harry's mission
must be conducted outside their knowledge.
The problem with "Nightingale"
is that the crises are far too obvious and the story is not subtle enough.
Harry takes command, and it's almost as if the power of the captain's chair
instantly rushes straight to his head and turns him into a magnified version
of his already blatantly naive self. As captain, he's an annoying micromanager,
giving an order to his officer and then practically shoving the officer
out of the way to do it himself, so it's done right.
Also, Harry carries an air
of arrogance that practically snuffs out our sympathy for him. He doesn't
gain the respect of those under him and instead assumes he has it because
he sits in the captain's chair. Frankly, if I were serving under him, he
wouldn't have my respect either. (Does Harry have a single character trait
besides being green?)
The best scenes are probably
the ones where Seven kicks Harry in the rear with her direct opinions ("There
is a malfunction in one of the ship's systems -- it's captain.") whenever
he makes a mistake. But he should already be realizing these mistakes if
he ever commanded Voyager during the night shift. By throwing us such ham-fisted
Harry actions, the story doesn't really give us a sampling of Harry's abilities
but instead examples of why he shouldn't even be in the chair in the first
place.
There's some extra plot involving
the Kraylor's hidden motives, as mostly filtered through the mysterious
character of Dr. Loken. They aren't trying to deliver medical supplies
but instead the ship's prototype cloaking device and, once exposed, this
deception leads Harry to abandon the mission -- at which point the crew
answers in mutiny by refusing to follow his order to turn around.
Harry decides it best to
flee the ship in an escape pod rather than be a party to delivering military
equipment, only to change his mind and decide to see the mission through
anyway after getting dressed down by Seven, at which point I wondered if
a crew would really accept him back. (The show's portrayal of Harry as
heroic for coming to this decision is somewhat self-indulgent, especially
by making so much of his return to the bridge.)
Where was everyone else?
There's a B-story in "Nightingale"
that goes down as one of the most disposable filler B-stories in some time.
It involves Icheb
coming to terms with an unexpected crush on B'Elanna. Being unfamiliar
with romantic signals, he perceives simple friendliness as signs that B'Elanna
has an interest in him.
While not offensive, this
subplot is the lightest of lightweight and not one bit necessary or interesting.
The comic "twist" is when Icheb confuses the facts until he's telling
B'Elanna they must "stop seeing each other." The story misses its lighthearted
payoff moment by showing B'Elanna annoyed after the strange misunderstanding
instead of smiling at the absurdity of it. C'mon, 'Lanna -- lighten up!
Now that I think about it,
I don't know that this show could've actually succeeded.
It's probably unfair that
"Nightingale" suffers from the mistakes that were made before -- and perhaps
it reveals my bias against a character long reduced to a single joke. But
this is an episode that can't really work as entertainment unless we feel
the central dilemma about Harry is worth our time.
All the alien conflicts and
hidden agendas are just stock McGuffin material (and too mediocre to be
compelling); the real story is about Harry. And I can't really say that
story is anything but mediocre either. The ending in particularly doesn't
ring true, because it shows that Harry seems to think he's captain material.
He's not. But the episode seems to want us to think he is, or at least
might that he might be someday down the road.
I dunno. By the end of the
episode I didn't get the sense that Harry learned much of anything. What's
more, I didn't really care.
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK
Doc is pulled into the plight
of a group of sentient holograms. "Flesh and Blood", a two-hour Voyager
event!
Copyright 2000 Jamahl
Epsicokhan. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution
of this article is prohibited.
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