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Posted:
07:10:37 on May 03 2001
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: Reviews - Voyager
Reviews Ex Deus
"Natural Law"
Written for TrekWeb by O. Deus
Summary: Another day, another shuttlecraft. Half the Voyager special
effects budget is blown on one of the worst episodes of the season.
The poet has said, "The saddest words of tongue or pen are these: 'It
might have been'." On Voyager the saddest words are, "What was the point of
making this episode in the first place?" And all too often when this
question is asked, there is no answer except another bad episode from a show
that already has far too many bad episodes to begin with.
The first half of Natural Law has all the dramatic and intellectual
excitement of a half hour of static and noise. For those few fans hoping for
a romance between Chakotay and 7 of 9, the opening classic fanfic
hurt/comfort scenario might have suggested some possibilities but as awful
as that possibility might have been, it's better than what we actually got;
which was nothing. Or technically speaking, worse than nothing. There are
plenty of FX dollars which might have been put to better use on "Void", but were expended on a B-story that has Paris going to alien driver's ed.
One could ask why we need this storyline. One could also ask why we need
the Ebola virus. It accomplishes nothing useful except for a weak attempt at
humor whose payoff only comes in the final few minutes of this episode.
After "Author, Author" had tried to make such a point of how Paris had
matured since we first met him, this storyline makes a strong case for Paris
being the same developmentally disabled adolescent he always was. The
instructor may not be particularly flexible but instead of approaching the
problem in a mature manner, Paris tried to lie to, wheedle and manipulate
the instructor thereby proving the instructor's worst notions about him to
be true.
You have to wonder if there isn't any character, any story on Voyager
that needed to be told more than this one. I could think of half a dozen and
so could most fans, especially considering that we're a few episodes away
from the finale which means this is all the character development we're
going to get. In light of this and in light of the fact that Paris has been
on a solid fatherhood character development path for a while now, what was the point?
But as bad as the "Paris goes to driver's ed" storyline may be, the
first half hour of the "Seven of Nine learns the value of other cultures"
story is even worse. Here, the writers attempt to avoid the possibility of
having a bad story, by having no story at all. Instead Chakotay hurts his
leg, Seven of Nine breaks a heel and loses her tricorder (why is she
wandering around a forest in high heels anyway?) and they discover some
friendly natives. Why are the natives so friendly and ready to give our
characters the shirts off their backs, literally?
Well, there are no explanations given except that for lazy writers this
is the cheapest and dirtiest way of shouting how wonderful and special a
people the natives are, from the highest tower. As with the Ba'ku in Star
Trek Insurrection, we're supposed to believe that these people have amazing
spiritual or cultural values that make them truly amazing. The writers fail
to specify what these values are but they seem to involve smiling a lot,
using sign language and giving lots of presents. And so of course Chakotay
soon trusts the aliens absolutely.
This is a bit odd considering that he doesn't know anything about their
culture, species or whether or not their gestures mean "stay for dinner and
we'll cook you a nice meal" or "stay for dinner and we'll cook you into a
nice meal." As friendly as they appear, leaving yourself at the mercy of a
primitive society can be a bad idea, yet none of them actually take any
precautions. But then the aliens aren't real and neither is their culture,
they're two dimensional caricatures intended to make a political point.
There's no complexity or contradictions here. It's not a primitive culture,
it's a primitive culture theme park courtesy of Disney where nothing can
actually hurt you.
But this "noble savage" aspect of the natives drives what little in the
way of a story this episode has. Which is that the natives are better off
being cut off by the barrier from the rest of the universe. The episode
denigrates the research team for arrogantly thinking they know what's best
for the natives and Chakotay challenges Seven demanding to know how she can
think she knows what's best for the natives. This is nice except that
Natural Law is dedicated to the premise that the Voyager crew know what's
better for the natives more than anyone elsem, including the natives'
advanced cousins and the natives themselves!
The barrier was a piece of alien artificial technology. The result was
to isolate the natives trapping them in a static, unchanging, primitive
society for centuries. After a surface encounter with the native culture,
Chakotay and Seven arrogantly assume that they have perfect knowledge of
them and can make decisions for them. They praise the wonders of the native
lifestyle ignoring the fact that this lifestyle is artificial and imposed by
the barrier. And one wonders what the average lifespan is for the natives
right now. Undoubtedly, a fraction of Chakotay's or that of the writers
so ready to praise such a lifestyle and so unready to adopt it. It's almost
amusing to see how many simple-living tales come out of Hollywood, a place
as synonymous with simple living as the People's Republic of China is with
human rights.
Janeway, then, bizarrely presents the aliens with an ultimatum-- ordering
them to leave a planet in their own solar system. Of course she expects them
to obey, as the Federation would no doubt obey if the Vulcans stopped by
Earth and ordered them to leave the American continent. Unsurprisingly, they
attack Voyager instead in a very restrained manner, indeed showing far more
restrain than Janeway has. She and Chakotay claim to be doing it in the best
interest of the natives but beyond a passing glance of their culture and a
few words of their language, they know nothing of that culture. The natives
themselves don't get consulted on the subject. Their curiosity, their desire
for knowledge and their fascination with Voyager's technology are dismissed
as aberrations that would interfere with their primitive way of life. Yet
just about every action of the aliens suggests that they want more, yet is ignored
as being counterproductive to maintaining their own primitive way of life; because the Voyager crew of course knows what is better for the natives than
the natives know themselves. This is the ultimate arrogance, the ultimate
colonialism, as the Voyager crew reduce the natives to children who can't
think or choose or decide for themselves.
Next week: Neelix finally goes to join his own people.
