Harry Kim falls in love, with disastrous consequences, in “The Disease”, and the crew of Voyager try to get home to the Alpha Quadrant, with disastrous consequences, in “Course: Oblivion”.
Trekabout Episode 301: Star Trek: Voyager, The Disease/Course: Oblivion
Christopher Rollins
-Ah, I wanted to say something about this last week, but didn’t know how to start. We have an episode where Harry Kim gets laid and not only does he get sick, which if he didn’t check beforehand is totally on him, but gets reprimanded? For sleeping with some alien babe of the week? Even Chakotay, a terrorist is tilting his head at how silly it seems. And remember way back in Season 1, he brought up concerns about the Voyager crew getting intimate with each other and having kids.
Eric Brasure
-Voyager is… inconsistent.
Christopher Rollins
-I know, I was watching at the time.
Lev
-The other brilliant aspect of Course: Oblivion is that it’s perfectly targeted to fuck with sporadic watchers of the show (which I was, during its initial run). I’m sure the then-conventional wisdom that DS9 fans watched every episode while Voyager fans caught one of every four is oversimplifying but if you had missed a few, the changes to the status quo for this episode are exactly the sorts of changes that the show might have put in place the weeks you missed. They were always going after faster technologies and all that. Weekly watchers would know that something was up though.
Also, I forget who said this–somebody on the internet–but the devastating ending is appropriate because this is a stealth Prime Directive episode. Voyager interfered with the Demon Planet peoples’ natural development (though admittedly mostly at the request of the latter) and the tragic end was the result of that interference. If you look at it that way it couldn’t be otherwise–it’s the very sort of unanticipated consequence that the PD is there to prevent. Honestly, it’s probably the last good Prime Directive episode of Berman-run Star Trek, since most of the ones after this use my least favorite Star Trek trope, which is, should we do nothing to keep this people from being wiped out or not?
Eric Murphy
-I never thought about this as a Prime Directive episode but that’s spot-on.
Anon
-I know you both gave it a positive review, but the response was a bit tepid for Course: Oblivion. I was super surprised because this may be my favorite episode of Voyager. I love that they took a chance with it. I love how it didn’t have a happy Star Trek ending.
I love how goo Janeway still wanted to head for home despite understanding the situation–as if getting home were ingrained into her DNA at this point. I love how it made the universe feel bigger in a show that suffered from feeling small overall. Goo Voyager interacted with lots of civilizations and didn’t overlap on their journey toward Earth.
I also love the prime directive implications. One interpretation is that they killed these beings by breaking the prime directive and sharing technology with a species that wasn’t ready.
Anyway, I know you guys liked this episode. But I really loved this episode. A rare shining star in an otherwise lackluster version of Star Trek.
Eric Murphy
-It’s hard for us to get excited about Voyager. 😀