Jetrel

The first season of Voyager, to me, was not bad...per se. Often times, it came across as just boring. Here is this crew stranded thousands of lightyears from home...and they're doing the same stuff the other shows have already done: temporal anomalies, murder investigations, etc. It had a couple good moments, like "Eye of the Needle" (which actually has a good reason for why they can't use the MacGuffin to get home). Mostly, this season came across as wasted potential. However, of all the episodes, there's one that I found to be the most wasted: "Jetrel".

"Jetrel" is seen by some as an equal to DS9's "Duet". Both episodes deal with a particularly dark element of WWII. "Duet" dealt with the nature of Nazi occupation and the concentration camps. This episode deals with what ended the war: the atomic bomb. Does this explore all sides of a highly complex issue with multiple shades of grey? Let's find out!

The episode opens with Neelix playing pool with Tom and Tuvok on the holodeck. Yes. A ship that is stranded thousands of lightyears from the years base has enough power to run the holodeck of all things. Look, I can buy that the holodecks draw so much energy that they need their own generators, but who would design a starship where one part of the ship is incompatible with another part? Over on DS9, they have Federation, Cardassian, and Bajoran tech working perfectly (mostly). Later on, Voyager gets Borg tech and who knows what else working just fine. Now, some might say "it's a TV show! You're supposed to enjoy it!" However, if you don't think when you watch it, you don't know why you like the show or why you think it's horrible.

Anyway, Neelix is called to the bridge. Voyager's getting hailed by a Haakonian ship, a race which Neelix exposits was involved in a war with the Talaxians that ended in the latter's surrender. The pilot messages Voyager and asks for Neelix. He says he's Dr. Jetrel, and upon hearing the name, Neelix storms off the bridge. Hmm. Interesting character moment...about something that hasn't been established.

I'M ACTING AS MUCH AS I CAN!!!

After the opening credits (dear God, every time the credits play, I just put on the BSG theme), Neelix exposits more. He says that Jetrel is a scientist who developed a superweapon which detonated on his home colony. This triggered the Talaxians' surrender and some things which aren't explained. Already, we have a problem. We're not told anything about this war, only that the Talaxians lost. I have several questions: did the Talaxians start this war? What were the reasons for fighting? And why was Neelix a part of the defense forces?

Jetrel comes aboard to meet with Janeway, marveling at the transporter (that also gets me; why are the Borg and a couple other races the only ones with teleportation in the Delta Quadrant?) and explains why he's there. He says that people who went to the Talaxian colony right after the attack were exposed to space radiation and have developed deadly diseases. He wants to verify if Neelix has this. Well, Neelix does have something of a reason for refusing treatment. After all, a superweapon wipes out your home and who wouldn't get mad? Of course, the episode demands it and he agrees to be examined.

I'm going to skip a bit to discuss my thoughts on Neelix himself. My dislike for him is not as extreme as some other fans; it takes a lot for me to outright completely hate a character. Rather, I just find him annoying, like that desk mate you have at work who talks constantly about all the places he's been to. Now, don't get me wrong, the concept for Neelix was pretty good: someone who's from the Delta Quadrant would be incredibly useful on a starship stranded there. However, I gotta say, the writing is incredibly inconsistent. In the next episode, he proves to be so bad a cook that he makes the ship itself sick! Then, a few episodes later, he is someone who knows every little trait about the Kazon (oh God, I had to mention the Kazon...).

Laundry day...see you there...under things...tumbling...

In a TV Guide article released just prior to the premiere of the show, it was said that Neelix was to be like Quark, a "meddling scavenger predicted to be Voyager's breakout character". Besides the fact that those plans fell through (the only talking would be about how much people hated him), it's completely ill-advised to compare Neelix to be like Quark. Quark was at least written consistently, the slimy bartender who did have a conscience that was capable of shining through (like when he helped his Cardassian lover and Major Kira). He had layers to him, whereas Neelix has layer after layer of lies and anecdotes (and unlike Garak, he has no charm).

So, after finding that Neelix has science cancer, Janeway decides to make a detour to the Talaxian system. Interesting how they are able to make this detour. Must be lucky they were heading in the direction of the Talaxian system. For all we know, it's on the other side of the Ocampa home world. Jetrel and Neelix get to talking while Jetrel looks for the isotope of the space radiation. This scene mostly serves to show Jetrel as a mad scientist, the most eeeeeeeevil man the galaxy has known. All because he invented a deadly weapon that killed 300,000 people!

Unless you've yet to take fourth grade history, it is clear that this is an allusion to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let's be clear that it was a very tragic event if you were in either city on the day of the attacks. Hell, the survivors are so revered in Japan that they have a new word for them: hibakusha (explosion-affected people). It really is sad to think about those thousands of people who were vaporized in an instant, then the tens of thousands more who would die a slow and painful death thanks to radiation sickness. Upon seeing the first blast, Robert Oppenheimer said that he had become the destroyer of worlds.

You know, I'd like to describe the socio-political causes...
Sorry, you're a guest star. You don't get backstory.

BUT...let's also point out that some good came from the bombs, which actually killed (depending on which estimates you use) fewer people combined than the firebombing of Dresden. If the bombs had failed in their shock value, the alternative would have been to land troops in Japan. Allied strategists predicted that some 500,000 troops would be killed or wounded during the initial assault. I'm not sure if they even bothered estimating Japanese casualties, as they would have been so horrifically high. The atomic bombings helped save millions of lives, whereas Dresden is remembered as a war crime committed by the Allies. So, in the long-run, which is better: launching an invasion with millions killed as the war drags on, or wipe out 150,000 people instantly and end the war through shock and awe?

That's one reason this episode fails. We only get snippets from Jetrel's side, how his wife saw him as a monster and how the military determined the target. We get the bombing almost entirely from Neelix's POV, the survivor who saw thousands of his people die. It would have been much better if Jetrel had said that if his people didn't use the cascade, the war would have dragged on with the invasion of Talax. All history has dozens, often hundreds of sides to it; this is partly why I read things from the German side of things, but that's another discussion.

So, they arrive at Talax, Neelix goes on to describe the night of the bombing, and the episode goes from mediocre to just bad. It turns out Jetrel was lying and was actually trying to restore the victims. Yeah, I have no idea what the writers (who were not Brannon Braga and Jeri Taylor) were smoking when they came up with this. Newsflash: the point of a weapon is to kill as many people as possible! They aren't supposed to be reversible! Anyway, they fail, Jetrel dies because he had the science cancer, and Neelix forgives him. It would be a heartfelt moment, but sadly we only got him admitting he was a monster without hearing anything about what his side thought.

I often enjoy it when Trek takes an historical event and puts a sci-fi spin on it. This episode just fails to do that. As I said, the atomic bombings performed good in the long term; an invasion became unnecessary and the Japanese could begin climbing out of their suicide weapons (seriously, you have no idea the kinds of suicide machines they were developing). This episode could have been a good send-up for DS9's duet, but it falls short by providing nothing of the other side. In the end, it's less than average and a pretty sloppy attempt to get us to like Neelix.

Final Score: 4/10