Jammersreviews

Foreword: My apologies for the lateness of these reviews. I spent my last
two weekends out of town (and nowhere near a word processor) and I got
pretty busy during the week. Once I knew I'd be really late (I didn't get
back to writing until midway through last week), I decided I'd just hold off
and post all three reviews at once--that way I'd at least have plenty to
offer with my return. As you can see, I'm back on track. Enjoy!

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Warning: This review contains significant spoilers for Voyager's "Ashes to
Ashes." If you haven't seen the episode yet, beware.


Nutshell: Not a bad yarn, but not a great one either. And continuity is the
most lost of lost virtues.

Plot description: An alien woman seeks refuge on Voyager, claiming she was a
member of the Voyager crew who was killed three years ago and later revived
by an alien society.

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Star Trek: Voyager -- "Ashes to Ashes"

Airdate: 3/1/2000 (USA)
Teleplay by Robert Doherty
Story by Ronald Wilkerson
Directed by Terry Windell

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
Rating out of 4: **1/2

"Fun will now commence." -- Seven
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"Ashes to Ashes" is another perfect example of the quandary that this series
builds around me. How in the world can I review this episode objectively
without wanting to review the series in the process? And how can I be fair
to this episode for what it intends to be while also scanning my
scrutinizing eye across the larger scope of the series, something that I've
always considered to be part of my job?

I vote that "Ashes to Ashes" is an okay show if accepted on its terms. But
what about those terms? They require complete suspension of memory of
continuity, or, better yet, practically mandate that you have no idea what
came before this episode. If you're a person who cares deeply about
continuity, you will probably not like "Ashes to Ashes."

I certainly don't consider continuity to be the end-all-be-all of Trek. But
I do appreciate continuity and I think it's an important aspect of
television writing. If you're not going to use continuity, then don't use
it. But don't blatantly contradict it and pretend we aren't going to notice
when history is being rewritten on the fly. Maybe I'm just too close to the
series; the casual viewer probably wouldn't know or care, and I'm guessing
the casual viewer is the intended audience.

That said, "Ashes to Ashes" is simultaneously a stand-alone show, a
reset-button show, a stew of continuity contradiction, a show that has a
subplot that hints at a future evolving storyline, and a decent (albeit
unrealized) human drama. What we have here is a story that works reasonably
if you accept it at face value. But this is also an episode that helps the
credibility of Voyager as a series cave in upon itself. If Voyager is
supposed to be a believable fictional universe, this isn't helpful to the
bigger cause. (What bigger cause?)

The premise is actually a pretty good science fiction concept: What if you
died, but were only dead enough that you could still be revived by an alien
society with the ability to reanimate the dead? If you remembered your past
life, would you want to regain it?

That premise brings Ensign Lyndsay Ballard (Kim Rhodes) back to the starship
Voyager, having been revived by a race called the Kobali, who subsequently
transformed her into one of their own. The Kobali propagate their species by
collecting and reusing the dead (or, I suppose, the
just-dead-enough-to-be-revived). Ballard was killed by a Hirogen weapon
three years ago on an away mission. Of course, we hadn't even met the
Hirogen three years ago, but who's counting? (One might assume *not* the
Voyager creators, but co-executive producer Joe Menosky was quoted recently
as saying the writers are aware when they break continuity and do so simply
to suit their needs.) Really, if you want to nitpick, there's a much bigger
plausibility issue here for you: How would Ballard catch up with or even
find Voyager? In the past three years, Voyager has jumped through the
quadrant to the tune of 40,000 light-years. Are you telling me that Ballard
took her shuttle and found Voyager half a quadrant away in only six months?
Please.

Never mind. If you want this story to work, you'd better forget the past.
That might also be helpful since Ballard is a character invented via
"retrocontinuity"--filling in past blanks with new made-up material (played
as if we had never seen Ballard because her presence was simply all
off-screen). Major invented characters are a mild annoyance, but nothing I'm
not willing to look past. Ballard has a history with Ensign Kim that grounds
the story in terms of one of our regulars: Ballard and Kim were close
friends before her death--and we sense that Harry had hoped their friendship
would've been more. (More broken continuity, by the way--Harry had a
girlfriend named Libby that took him the first couple seasons to get over.
Knowing that, his retroscripted interest in Lyndsay as presented here seems
improbable.)

Ballard's dilemma turns somewhat interesting as Doc is able to make her look
more human, although he's unable to restore her DNA structure on the account
it has been too extensively altered. (This is the same doctor who was able
to change Janeway and Paris back into humans from salamanders? Okay, sorry I
brought it up.) Much of "Ashes to Ashes" is about Lyndsay's attempt to
regain her former life. We follow her through a series of little adventures
as she tries to settle into her old routine. There are some nice touches,
like the idea of Ballard's "list"--things she vowed to do when she finally
tracked down Voyager. And the character's backstory and her friendship with
Harry is sensibly written. Kim Rhodes creates a likable character in
Ballard, though the actress pushes a tad hard at times.

There's also the omnipresent sense of Second Chances and the New Lease on
Life, which are filtered not only through Lyndsay's experiences but also
Harry's. Harry seems to get precious few chances for good human interest
stories (usually he's stuck spouting technobabble or, more rarely, having
sex with the wrong aliens), but here he gets some nice scenes. Nothing
remotely groundbreaking, but pleasant. He finds that his long-held feelings
for Lyndsay (which go all the way back to the academy days) are suddenly no
longer rendered useless by her death. She's back, and he has the rarest of
second chances. Is this the newest story under the sun? No, but it works
okay.

Probably the most interesting issue in "Ashes to Ashes" is the question of
where Lyndsay believes she belongs. She clearly has changed. She thinks in
Kobali terms and language, can't remember facts of her human life, and food
doesn't taste the way she remembers. And her body doesn't take too well to
the treatments Doc administers to make her look human. The issue is forced
when her Kobali "father" (Kevin Lowe) comes looking for her (he too
apparently crossed 40,000 light-years of space) and tries to convince her to
return. He also says that he doesn't intend to give up his daughter so
easily, and promises to return with reinforcements. (This will inevitably
lead to the week's action quota, which exists for the sake of gratuitous
phaser fire, despite characterization being what the story is about.) The
father's appeal to Lyndsay works because the guest actor delivers the lines
with conviction, further proving that guest actors can easily make or break
scenes.

Ballard's dinner with the captain is ... kind of strange. The idea was
interesting, I suppose, but it didn't seem to go anywhere with a real
confidence. The sense of seeing the captain from a different perspective
from a lower-ranking officer (like the central idea of TNG's "Lower Decks")
is a fresh perspective, but it's hard to understand that perspective because
the series on the whole completely ignores that anyone outside the regular
cast even exists--and puts everyone in that regular cast (even the ensigns
and cook) on virtually the same level. The dinner scene ends just when it's
getting interesting, as Ballard asks Janeway why *she* was sent on that
deadly mission. Then Ballard suddenly runs out of the room distraught and
confused.

I'm a sucker for the identity crisis storyline, and I liked elements of this
story, but I also think what was attempted here was carried to full
realization (and with one of the regular characters) earlier this season in
"Barge of the Dead." The reset-button ending where Ballard chooses her
Kobali existence over her previous human life isn't handled too badly, but
it's hard to get particularly excited about it. (Would someone in Ballard's
position search six months for Voyager only to change her mind in the course
of what seems like 15 minutes? I'm not so sure, but the treatment isn't
exactly the deepest as to make me care one way or the other.)

There's also a B-story here, involving the latest adventures of the Borg
children. While I'm glad to see these children will be a new evolving
storyline (actual continuity?), I must also point out that this B-story is
generally handled with the depth of a sitcom. I liked it--not because it was
particularly interesting, but because it was often downright funny. The
moments that are played for laughs work, even if some moments played for
seriousness are inept. A perfect example is the scene where Seven brings all
four Borg children to play a game with Naomi Wildman, and informs them with
classic Seven-ness that "Fun will now commence." And when the twin kids,
Azan and Rebi (Kurt and Cody Wetherill), cheat by using their neural
connection, Seven orders "punishment protocol nine-alpha"--a "time-out."
This is outright comedy. But when Icheb (Manu Intiraymi) rebels by dumping
the game pieces to the floor, the music comes in with far too much
seriousness, while the idea itself is predictable and ham-handed, hardly
dramatic. (And the mystery of the week: What happened to the Borg infant
from "Collective"?)

Still, this subplot is mostly enjoyable, and reveals a few interesting
naunces, like the fact that the little Borg girl, Mezoti (Marley McClean),
has some creative impulses. While the other kids are molding cubes and
polyhedrons out of clay, she's going against her instructions and modeling
Seven's face. Upon inspecting the work, Seven tells her, "Resume your
disorder." Cute.

Perhaps the final scene underlines this show's overall sense of decency that
doesn't add up to much of anything important: Harry, having lost Lyndsay a
second time, bonds with the young Borg girl for reasons that aren't really
realized to any point of viewer satisfaction. Okay, so he's a nice guy and
will accompany her to play in the holodeck. So, is this telling me something
relevant, or is it a desperate last-minute attempt to link the A-story and
B-story in a way that pretends to add up to something greater than the sum
of two parts? One could maybe argue that the characters in both plots are
searching for their places in life, and that's the connection. But let's
face it--that's a stretch.

--
Next week: More Borg. Apparently the writers' resistance of the Borg, if
any, is futile.

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Copyright (c) 2000 by Jamahl Epsicokhan, all rights reserved. Unauthorized
reproduction or distribution of this article is prohibited.

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