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Star trek: Voyager 6.07b - Memorial

Stardate around 56000
Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities

Episode propaganda

Having returned from a two-week away mission of scanning planets and gathering dilithium ore, Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Tom (Robert Duncan McNeill), Harry (Garrett Wang) and Neelix (Ethan Phillips) begin experiencing strange visions. While Tom dreams he is engaged in an alien battle, Harry has an anxiety attack during a routine check of a plasma leak. Meanwhile, Chakotay suffers from violent dreams that put him in the middle of an offensive, and Neelix, reacting to the weapons fire he is hearing in his head, takes Naomi (Scarlett Pomers) hostage in the Mess Hall.

Persons of interest

Kate Mulgrew .... Captain Kathryn Janeway
Robert Beltran .... Commander Chakotay
Roxann Dawson .... Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres
Robert Duncan McNeill .... Lieutenant Tom Paris
Robert Picardo .... the Emergency Medical Hologram
Ethan Phillips .... Neelix
Tim Russ .... Lieutenant Tuvok
Jeri Ryan .... Seven of nine, tertiary adjunct to Unimatrix 01
Garrett Wang .... Ensign Harry Kim
Majel Barrett .... USS Voyager computer voice
Scarlett Pomers .... Naomi Wildman
LL Ginter .... Saavdra
Fleming Brooks .... soldier one
Joe Mellis .... young soldier
Susan Savage .... alien woman
Maria Spassoff .... female colonist
Robert Allen Colaizzi Junior .... dying colonist
David Keith Anderson .... Voyager crew-member
Brannon Braga .... Storywriter
Robin Burger .... Screenwriter
Allan Kroeker .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Studios and distributors:

Star trek official site

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Intelligence report

Ah, the old alien mind possession trick.

I will start this review by saying, "Enough with the alien mind possession thing, ok?!" Obi-Wan Kenobi would have a field day on Voyager with the Jedi mind trick. Do Starfleet pick the candidates most susceptible to foreign thoughts or something? What's worse is that Chakotay has already fought someone else's war after alien mind possession (for the Vori in Nemesis) and no-one mentioned anything about it!

*Sighs*

Things are starting to look a little slap-dash. Anti-war and anti-war-crime episodes are great. They educate and inform as well as entertain. But they need to be original! Voyager does way to much rehashing of old scripts (their own and from the other series) for me to be comfortable. There are also way to many technical errors like reinventing history (eg Janeway suddenly gaining the habit of twiddling her combadge, which no-one had seen before Dark frontier), altering characters' behaviour (eg Janeway, Queen of recyclers, abandoning the Equinox) and plain old plot mistakes (eg the EMH, an integrated ship's system which can't be replaced suddenly having a back-up module in Living witness). It's a sloppy way to run a series which is so dependent on its characters' limitations for the creation of drama. It's also disrespectful of its viewers.

Making a social comment on the "ethnic cleansing" tactics (ie localised genocide) which were practised by all sides during the Balkan conflict is Grand High Star trek: a no-holds-barred statement of what is right and what is wrong. The ultimate decision to repair the Memorial so that it will continue to broadcast its message is a testament to the evil futility of war (most instigators lose the war with a horrendous cost to both sides in lives, mutilations, psychological scarring, lost production and social disruption). The Great War of 1914-1918 was supposed to be the war to end all wars, now they are simply given numbers: WWI, WWII, WWIII...

Watch Memorial, appreciate it, but you'll need a bit of tolerance in the "haven't we seen this one before?" department (see also Ex post facto, Remember and Hard time).

FYI: This episode screened on Memorial Day in the USA, which is some sort of ANZAC "Lest we forget" commemoration.