Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Emanations

At its best, Star Trek inspires us. It takes a complex issue that we wrestle with in our world and points us toward a solution, sheering away the struggles and conflicts of our time and presenting us a utopian vision of the future.

This is not one of those episodes.

But at its second-best Star Trek illuminates an aspect of humanity, using the medium of science-fiction to explore it to a degree quite impossible in a more realistic literary style. And Emanations does this beautifully. So beautifully that I am at a loss. How do you rewrite something that is good? I mean really, really good. The best episode I have yet covered in Voyager.

Two ways. First, you nitpick. And I will be doing a bit of that at the end. Second, you hold it up as a template for how Voyager should have been, if it had been a better show. I have been saying all along that Voyager had the potential to be a fantastic series, and no episode thus far reveals that better than Emanations.

As always, this rewrite will be thematic rather than chronological, so you may want to re-familiarize yourself with the plot over at the Memory Alpha Wiki.

Let's get one thing out of the way right up front. According to behind-the-scenes chatter, this was Brannon Braga's episode. And Brannon Braga wanted to do an episode against euthanasia. He was against euthanasia, he thought people in the moment were often incapable of making proper decisions about whether or not they should die, and the whole sub-plot with Hatil Garan, the man pressured into dying by his family for their own convenience, was supposed to be his slam against euthanasia.

Just pretend he's like all the other bodies

It can be tricky to advocate the "Death of the Author" idea, but in this case the author is Brannon Braga, and his idea of what the episode is about is terrible, so I'm just going to jettison it like a faulty warp core and charge ahead like he knew what he had created. While attitudes about death and dying do factor heavily into the show, it's not about euthanasia. Instead, it's about faith and skepticism, with some nice bits about respect for other cultures, and seeking redemption for failures.

The Vhnori, this week's rubber-forehead aliens, believe they know all about the afterlife. They believe they know where they go, and what happens to them after death. But the arrival of Harry Kim, and to a lesser extent the adventures of Ptera after she is revived on Voyager, prove that they are wrong. And they are wrong. The end of the episode brings up a possibility that they do have some kind of afterlife, but Ptera makes very clear that the specific afterlife they believe in does not exist.

This creates a perfect opportunity to explore the consequences of blind faith. Every member of the Vhnori, it seems, has blind faith in their version of the afterlife, and that causes them to drastically alter the way that they live their lives. Believing death to be a mere transition, they have created a painless euthanasia system. The sick, the dying, or the depressed can end their lives painlessly rather than suffer. After all, they have an afterlife waiting for them.

Traditional family values

Even without an afterlife there might be value in ending suffering, and that would make for an actual debate about euthanasia. But the Vhnori take it one step further into truly disturbing territory. Hatil Garan is a cripple, and a burden to his family. He wishes to live out his life, even as a cripple, but his family wish him to die. After all, they all believe that he is passing on to an afterlife. A painless transition, and he will be in a new life without his crippling injury. So why shouldn't they pressure him to die? He's a burden. Won't he be happier not being a burden?

How horrific this is when we learn that their concept of an afterlife is a lie, and that they might not get an afterlife at all.

And this is the beauty of the episode. It forces us to consider the consequences of blind faith, and the consequences of living for the next life instead of this one. It would have been so easy for the episode to have Harry Kim be chased by pitchforks and torches as the persecuted man of science (and there is a nod to this when the Thanatologist mentions that some Vhnori see him as a threat, but it is not explored further). It would have been so easy for the episode to have the Thanatologist be a corrupt and greedy man trying to dispose of the truth to maintain his own power. But that would have made this a very different episode.

Welcome to the afterlife...

Instead, the Vhnori are entirely sincere. The Thanatologist sincerely wants to learn about Harry. He is a visitor from their afterlife, of course he wants to learn about Harry, even if what he discovers flies in the face of their cultural beliefs. So rather than a polemical retelling of the church persecuting Galileo, we are left with a truly thoughtful piece about what happens when blind faith is shattered, and what that does to sincere believers like Hatil Garan, Ptera, and the Thanatologist. Instead of faith being the province of the villains, it is the province of the protagonists, who each have to wrestle with their faith in the face of new data that seems to contradict it.

How does Hatil Garan deal with it? He has become a skeptic. He no longer believes there is an afterlife waiting for him. But his family still believes. He loves his family, he cares for them, and he does not want to disrupt something so important to their lives. This is a scenario that anyone who has broken with their family on any major religious or ideological issue can empathize with. The resolution is a bit too neat, serving as a resolution to Harry's own problem, but the dilemma itself is a fascinating one with some excellent scenes exploring it.

How does the Thanatologist deal with it? He is still a true believer, but neither does he completely reject Harry Kim's words. Instead, he tries to seek a synthesis between what he believes is right, and the revelation of Harry. This, too, is resolved a bit too neatly as Harry Kim has to deny his explorations in order to escape, but once again the dilemma is the important part, and fascinating.

And maybe what I said at the beginning is not quite accurate. Maybe this episode does point towards a utopian future as well. Consider Voyager's reactions to encountering a graveyard. Chakotay, being Chakotay (and for once excellently characterized), demands that the bodies not be disturbed. Janeway agrees. Why? Because even if they do not share the cultural beliefs of these aliens, they respect them. The idea of graverobbing - the very basis for a lot of modern archaeology - is unacceptable to the Federation.

It's okay. Humans don't have souls.

Compare this with Harry's treatment among the Vhnori. He wants to focus his efforts on returning home, but the Thanatologist does not listen. Harry is too valuable to his people. His people's scientific and, more importantly, philosophical and theological understanding comes first, even at the expense of Harry's well being. This carries subtle shadows of the Tuskegee experiments or even the work of Mengele, but more directly it calls into question the ethics of how we gain scientific knowledge (which Voyager will explore again).

Another subplot is Voyager's reaction to bringing Ptera back from the dead. First there is a question of if they should bring her back. She is clearly dead, clearly prepared for burial. Do they have the right to simply bring her back? Deciding that reviving her is necessary to learn what has happened to Harry, they soon discover they have wronged her, possibly blocking her from an afterlife, even if it is not the afterlife she sought. The crew attempt to return her, only for their attempts to kill her, rendering her beyond recovery. Their decision to beam her down to an asteroid in an attempt to bury her as her people would have wanted is a punctuation on the fact that some wrongs cannot easily be righted, but it is the effort of righting them that makes us good humans.

And speaking of good humans, the characterization in this episode is excellent. Let's start with Chakotay.

Alas, tis but a taste before they snatch it away

Finally someone uses Chakotay properly! Chakotay leads the away team while Janeway is on the ship, because of course he does, because it's reasonable given his skill set. Chakotay, the empathetic leader, requests that they show respect for what is clearly a burial ground. His demand that they not even use passive tricorder scans is odd, because vision is just another form of passive scan, and passive scans by their very nature would disturb nothing, but this is a mangled science issue rather than a moral one. Besides, his characterization is too good for me to care. He then proceeds to give a lesson on anthropology, detailing what they can learn about the culture just from how they prepare their dead, which is fantastic and shows off yet more of Chakotay's skill set. Then, when he has to decide whether or not to revive Ptera's corpse, he truly does consider his options and weighs the life of Harry against the possible desecration of a body. There's even a somewhat humorous moment as the Doctor is describing the revival process in very clinical terms, and you can see on Chakotay's face that he is disturbed by the idea. This is the Chakotay we should be seeing. A strong first officer with his own virtues and skills, who makes the tough calls when he needs to, but who has a more empathetic and understanding style than the authoritarian Janeway.

I will not apologize for the Dumbing of Age reference

Which leads us to Janeway, who is also excellently characterized. No trace of the Star Tyrant here, oh no. She is Captain Janeway at her most admirable, from her scientific enthusiasm at discovering a new element, to her efforts to save Harry, to the look on her face as B'Elanna tells her they have run out of time which shows all the pain of a captain who truly cares about her missing crewman. And nowhere is this better Janeway exemplified than in her dealings with Ptera. Chakotay would understand Ptera and empathize with her. That is not Janeway. Janeway does not understand what Ptera is going through, but she does understand that Ptera is frightened, and in pain. And Janeway protects her. Janeway is the motherly captain, and in this episode she shows that maternal behavior is not weakness or softness, but a tremendous source of strength. She is at once comforting and caring, but also she steers Ptera the way she needs to go. There is also her excellent scene with Harry at the end of the episode, where she is precisely the captain she should be. Her demand that Harry take some time off to consider his experiences, and the speech she gives to him, shows her wisdom, her authority, and her maternal nature all in one, as well as reflecting her career path through the science section. Perfect Janeway.

Kes has only a few scenes, but she shines in them. If Janeway is the mother, then Kes is the eldest daughter following in the mother's footsteps. The way she tries to help Ptera adjust to both a new dimension and her questions about her faith show that she is learning from Janeway. They also fit very well toward the idea that Kes is a leader, which she is in my rewrite.

And he rocks modern fashion

Harry Kim is likewise well characterized. He seems a bit stiff in his portrayal, but I think that actually serves his character. He is the by-the-book ensign with little field experience, but suddenly he is off on his own and, worse yet, in a first contact situation. You can see his natural instincts and biases toward his own culture warring with the Federation's protocols on first contact throughout the entire episode. He has his own opinions on the value of life, but he tries to sublimate that beneath the Federation's policy of respect for alien cultures. Yet even though he carefully qualifies his opinion and tries to undo the cultural damage his initial statements cause, he is still a naive ensign. He grows during the course of this episode, and it is for the better. His final decision to risk death in order to return to Voyager, a weighty decision considering his clear beliefs in the value of life, shows that he is developing the decision-making skills and heroism that will lead him to be a great leader himself one day.

Indeed, about the only character I have a problem with is B'Elanna, and that's only because she is so marginalized. Once again Janeway does the engineering work, including taking over a console in engineering. This is somewhat justified due to the crisis facing the ship, and since engineering is the focal point of the crisis it makes some sense that Janeway would be there. But come on, Janeway, let B'Elanna do her job. Let B'Elanna be the one to come up with an engineering solution to things. Stop hogging all the science spotlight.

So what would I change? Well, besides letting B'Elanna shine a little more in the few scenes she's in...

Right after Janeway's magnificent speech about Harry needing time to process and appreciate what he went through, they almost ruin the whole episode with the ham-handed "Well, their afterlife was wrong." "Was it? There's crazy energy coming from them. Maybe we don't know. Maybe it's a mystery. Death is a mystery."

You'd think Picard would have asked Q about this.

Yes. We know death is a mystery. But it's probably not as much of a mystery in the 24th century. Come on, Voyager, take a chance. Also the energy that comes off the Vhnori at the moment of death is a huge deal! No such energy comes off of humans. There's rumors about a mysterious loss of weight at the moment of death, the "weight of a soul", but that's highly dubious to put it mildly. If there is a human soul, it seems to be entirely spiritual and utterly undetectable to science. But the Vhnori actually give off detectable energy at the moment of death. Mysterious energy that then gravitates to a field of energy around a planet. That's huge. That's a whole episode of Star Trek right there. And yet they shoehorn it in at the last moment so they can pull a "we don't really know" ending? Weak. Very weak.

Here's a better ending. After Harry says they were wrong about the afterlife, Janeway says, "Our dimension was not what they expected it to be, that is true, but that is not the same thing as there being no afterlife. The only thing we can truly say about the afterlife is we have not discovered evidence of one... yet." And just get rid of the whole energy coming from the corpses thing. If this was a two-parter and they had time to explore the full implications of an alien race that has evidence of energy leaving the body at death, that would be one thing. But they do not, it's only there to let the writers throw a bone to viewers who believe in heaven, and it hurts the story.

I also have four minor nitpicks.

Batman can breathe in space

1.) Isn't it convenient that there's air on these asteroids? Come on, they are asteroids that are part of a planetary ring. How do they have enough gravity to support an atmosphere? This makes no sense. The away team should have been in vac suits, or at least breather masks or something.

2.) They keep talking about subspace "vacuoles". That's a word I've only ever used to describe something biological, and the online dictionaries I browsed confirmed that for me. A vacuole is a chamber within a biological cell. It makes no real sense to use this word to describe a gateway between dimensions.

3.) Chakotay makes a point of noting that the bodies are naked. Harry Kim is still wearing his uniform the first time he passes through the dimensional barrier, so presumably clothes go through fine. And yet Hatil Garan is wrapping himself in a burial shroud, and Harry wears a shroud to conceal his identity as he's killed in the cenotaph. Is the shroud just made of a special material that doesn't go through the dimensional barrier? How does that even work?

4.) Speaking of the burial shroud, it conforms pretty tightly to the body, and Harry Kim's body type is definitely different than Hatil Garan. How exactly did his family fail to notice the difference in size and weight? Maybe they just honestly didn't care enough about Hatil. After all, they were pressuring him into dying.

But those are pretty minor. Indeed, all of my rewrites are pretty minor. The episode is really good as is. It's easy to find flaws with anything when you are armchair quarterbacking, as I am, but if all Voyager episodes were up to Emanations's standard it would have been a fantastic series.

Next time, we'll see Voyager utterly fail to live up to Emanations's standard.