Attention on heck! Don’t try to adjust your viewscreens, person-hell and boo-tenants! What you’re seeing isn’t a creepy clone, a hellish hologram, or a strangely specific alternate universe! For the month of October, we’ll be taking a spine-chilling stroll through Trek’s most horror-iffic outings and spooky adventures! Now why don’t you sit back and try not to let that green blood of yours run cold! If things get a little too intense, don’t hesitate to ask Scotty to SCREAM you up! Hehehehehehehehehe!
Star Trek: Voyager – Season 4, Episode 7
They Live is a beloved sci-fi horror flick and cult classic based around a simple premise – there are aliens hiding all around us with a grand nefarious plan. “Scientific Method” goes more literal with that idea as the crew of Voyager is plagued by an invisible alien race performing invasive – and even disfiguring – scientific experiments on them. And like in They Live, a character is granted the ability to see their true nature which heightens the tension and horror in a compelling way.
While investigating a power outage in a Jeffries tube, Torres discovers that Seven is modifying the ship’s systems without permission in order to prepare for the new astrometrics lab under construction. Torres chastises her for not getting the proper authorization, but catches herself and shows more patience with Seven instead. It’s a good bit of characterization as Torres realizes how far she’s come from being a hot-headed academy dropout to an ardent rule-enforcer, so she backs off a little and adopts a more welcoming stance towards Seven, who apologizes in response.
Paris skips out on his medical assistance duties with the Doctor and beams into a Jeffries tube with some replicated flowers so he can make out with Torres. LOL, it’s like the dorkiest way to get some, but good for you, buddy. In true horror movie fashion, these horny youngsters sucking face are being watched by an unknown presence. The camera switches to a weird and gross x-ray scan of the two (the eyeballs are freaky), and Torres even gets the feeling that they’re being watched. But she dismisses it and continues applying tongual pressure to her Parisian partner.
The Doctor gives a vigorous massage to Captain Janeway, who isn’t feeling so hot. She’s been plagued by disturbed sleep and headaches, describing the sensation as needles being stuck into her skull. Hmm. It recalls the similarly frazzled and beaten down condition Riker was in at the start of “Schisms,” and is clear foreshadowing to a disturbing reality that is eventually revealed.
Chakotay reports that the ship is approaching a pair of powerful and destructive pulsars and that they should study them, but Janeway is too distracted from her pain to really care all that much and leaves it to him.
Paris and Torres get up to more sensual shenanigans in engineering but are embarrassingly caught by Tuvok. Tom is all “Don’t tell mom I was kissing girls, bro,” but Tuvok is like “…”
Paris and Torres are super worried and neurotic over anyone else finding out about them, which is a little odd. They’re acting like it’s such a potential SCANDAL, but I dunno, I’m not really getting it. Later in a staff meeting, Janeway asks Paris and Torres to stay behind after the rest of the class is dismissed. BUSTED. Paris grumbles “Thanks, bro,” under his breath to Tuvok as he leaves, and Tuvok is all “…” Janeway grouses about their hormonal behavior, and how Tuvok didn’t need to mention it since they’ve been so obvious about it. There’s something kind of adolescent about it all around that doesn’t really move the needle for me. Janeway is grouchy because of reasons, but why is everyone so uptight, man?
Chakotay is doing some thrilling work in his quarters and while drinking coffee, we see he’s being observed with the same x-ray vantage as before. I wish we got some more visuals like this, because they look pretty cool. His hands start trembling, and he notices his hair is just falling out. Later in sickbay, he seems to have aged a lot. Trek is normally all right with the old age makeup, but Chakotay just looks super bony more than anything. It reads as weird, but not necessarily “old.” The Doctor reports that his DNA has been stimulated to cause the changes, but he can’t figure out what is causing that stimulation.
Neelix experiences some tremendous pain and in sickbay, his appearance also becomes mutated. His spots are larger and cover his body and his pupils are super huge now. The Doctor realizes his DNA has been altered so that he’s turning into a Mylean, another species that apparently has a far back branch in Neelix’s family tree. In a somewhat amusing scene, Chakotay and Neelix start complaining about their physical ailments and proceed to have an old-off on who is more decrepit and feeble.
The Doctor and Torres go over their scans of Chakotay and Neelix and find bizarre little barcodes on their DNA molecules, which is way beyond their level of technology. Not only that, but the tags are even emitting signals. It’s such a weird and creepy thing to discover, that someone has tattooed your DNA without your knowledge.
Even more alarming: as the Doctor and Torres try to investigate those signals, the Doctor’s program starts to get deleted mysteriously by someone. Torres tries to save his program, but she seems to have some sort of attack and collapses, followed by the Doctor disappearing. Aw, shit.
Torres awakens in sickbay surrounded by the staff. Apparently her body temporarily lost the ability to process oxygen. Hey, it happens to the best of us. More people have showed up in sickbay with maladies, and the Doctor’s program can’t be found anywhere.
But Seven hears the Doctor’s voice, and he reveals that he’s tapped into her Borg implants to transmit a message to her. He’s hiding in Janeway’s Da Vinci holodeck program and asks her to come see him but not tell anyone else. Seven finds an excuse to leave the room and visits him, where he’s decked out in Renaissance gear and teaching an art class. It’s wacky. He thinks that someone aboard is responsible for altering the crew’s genes, and suspects that they tried to delete him and attacked Torres once they started getting wise to it.
He tells Seven she needs to investigate. Until they figure out what’s going on, they have to remain in secret and can’t tell anyone. And the fun part: he modifies Seven’s ocular implant so that she can see the same wavelength that the genetic tags were transmitting, basically turning her into a living tricorder. She leaves the holodeck to (literally) see if she can find anything weird happening.
And boy does she!
Using Seven in this way is a clever story choice not just because of her unique Borg abilities, but because she’s at this point a new character who hasn’t quite earned the trust of everyone yet. She’s still an outsider, and so her potentially suspicious activities here put her in danger on top of the danger that she and everyone else are already in. It creates some nice tension as she carries out her secret mission. It’s also a cool tribute to They Live, in which Rowdy Roddy Piper’s character finds a pair of sunglasses that grant him the ability to see through the alien invaders’ disguises.
Because that’s what Seven ends up seeing: aliens that are invisible to everyone else running experiments on the crew. Additionally, she sees weird and invasive equipment strapped to the crew’s bodies that they’re unaware of. It’s more literal and not as subversive than They Live, but it’s still a disturbing idea – people’s genetics and bodies aren’t being mangled from afar, but from aliens that are standing right over their shoulder.
Seven continues to walk about the ship and continues to see more unknowing crewmembers with equipment attached to them and aliens monitoring and adjusting it all. She enters a turbolift as an alien follows her in and whips out an instrument to do something to her face. It’s kind of a skin-crawling moment as she has to stare ahead and pretend she doesn’t see them. Seven quietly informs the Doctor what she’s found, and he tells her to inform Janeway immediately.
Janeway is still very irritable and rants to Tuvok about the lack of discipline in the crew – a.k.a. Tom and B’Elanna not-so-secretly boning it up. She suggests harsher discipline, and Tuvok asks if the crew should be flogged (Tuvok, you kinky devil…) in that wonderfully sardonic way he has. His uncharacteristic usage of humor causes Janeway to take a step back from her stance. She tries to sit down and relax, and says she’ll have to visit holo-Tuscany for some relaxation and wine. Tuvok sympathetically sits beside her and says he’ll join her for a glass. Knowing how he normally is, this is an incredibly affectionate gesture, like practically gushing emotion. She clasps his hands with hers in appreciation. As always, the friendship between these two is nice to see and in Trek it’s good to have characters that can challenge the captains’ way of thinking.
Seven comes to see Janeway, but is taken aback to discover that two aliens are pushing metal rods into both sides of her skull. It’s a gnarly image, and Seven is unable to inform the captain of what’s going on with these intruders there, which heightens the tension more.
Seven meets with the Doctor again and reports she’s found over 50 aliens aboard Voyager conducting cruel and invasive experiments. She suggests that a phaser set properly could disrupt the alien’s ability to remain out of phase and invisible. But the Doctor is worried that they would strike back at the entire crew like they did to him and Torres. They need a shipwide action that will disable all the genetic tags at once, and Seven comes up with a way to modify the EPS whatchamabobbers to emit a pulse thingie (actual dialogue).
Seven heads down to engineering to set that up, which is unfortunately buzzing with a bunch of aliens studying the crew. It’s not long before her meddling alerts Tuvok’s sensors, and he confronts her to stop what she’s doing. The episode really could’ve used a 15-minute long bloody fistfight between Seven and Tuvok in which she tries to get him to see the aliens, too. Alas!
As Tuvok questions Seven, several aliens approach to closely observe her. Backed into a corner, Seven grabs Tuvok’s phaser, quickly adjusts it, and shoots one of the aliens. It knocks her into phase with reality, upon which Seven grabs her and holds her hostage, threatening to kill her if any of her comrades makes a wrong move. It’s awesome.
Janeway visits the alien (named Alzen) in the brig. I’d say in the pantheon of “Dickish Trek Alien Species,” these fucks are easily in the top 3. Alzen explains that they’re conducting medical research on the Voyager crew for their own benefit. There’s some requisite attempts from her to rationalize experimenting on sentient beings, but they don’t hold any water at all.
Alzen has zero moral compunctions about what her people are doing and refuses to halt her mission. She casually tosses off how much they’ve been stimulating Janeway’s biology to maker her more aggressive and irritable for the past few weeks and smugly says how they’ve all been seeing how much more she can take. These absolute motherfuckers.
Now inside the holding cell with her, Janeway shoves this asshole up against the wall before composing her herself and vowing to break their control. Alzen simply says that the experiments will continue and they’ll keep casualties to a minimum, but there may be some deformities. Or if they decide to end the experiment everyone will die instead. Oh man, these dicks.
Tuvok, Seven, and (a now unhidden) Doctor report that their attempts to disable the genetic tags or reveal the aliens have failed – they believe their work is being sabotaged due to the constant surveillance. Janeway is called to the bridge, where an ensign is having a massive blood pressure attack and quickly dies.
An enraged Janeway, in one of my absolute favorite moments of hers, proclaims “This ends now!” and takes command of the helm. She plots a course right into the massive and dangerous pulsars they’ve been orbiting, plunging Voyager into the destructive gravity well they’ve been trying to avoid. Fuck yeah. As much as Trek heroes typically rely on their brains and smart planning to resolve crises, Janeway’s frayed nerves cause her to take the most reckless and destructive course of action and play a game of chicken with her dickish adversaries.
The ship immediately starts feeling the effects and the aliens’ leader appears on the bridge, ordering Janeway to reverse their course. Janeway refuses, and the alien tries to alter the course herself, only to be told that it’s locked in and only the captain can change it. She sneers that Janeway is only bluffing, who responds that maybe fucking with her sleep and head wasn’t the best idea?
The ship continues to careen towards destruction, and the aliens immediately evacuate, revealing that two of their ships have been attached to Voyager’s hull. One escapes, but the other is destroyed in a truly laugh-out-loud moment. I wish both ships and all the aliens had eaten it.
With the alien threat gone, Voyager is still in super hot water as it descends towards the stars. Janeway orders all power to engines so that they can build up enough momentum to escape the intense gravity on the other side. Miraculously, they escape intact. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m wondering how the other alien ship survives and am just going to happily assume that it doesn’t. Ha ha.
With everyone fixed and back to normal, Tom and B’Elanna can continue their scintillating courtship as they sit down to dinner in his quarters. They get interrupted a couple of times, including Kim, who hilariously gets the door shut on his face as he exclaims “Smells good!” as a way of fishing for an invite. It’s honestly one of the show’s funniest moments.
It’s an odd episode to officially start their relationship, but here we are. A lot of fans seemed to like them as a couple but I was always pretty meh on it. I don’t hate it and the shaking up of the status quo is temporarily interesting, but in the long run I don’t feel it adds much to the show or either character. It is nice that they get to actually stay together with minimal drama and no female fridging (unlike Worf and… pretty much everyone he’s tried to be with, really). Voyager didn’t have great dynamic character work in general, so it’s par for the course but inoffensive overall.
“Scientific Method” uses a lot of Trek tropes to craft an original and unsettling tale that pays homage to a classic cult film. The idea of a layered reality is a fascinating one, and a character being able to peer beyond the curtain that hides it makes for a fun time. In the case of this episode and They Live, it reveals an alien race that is unapologetically exploiting humanity for its own selfish gains. The complete lack of mercy and regard for life is perhaps the most disturbing part of the discovery.
Stray Observations:
- The episode is a good and memorable one, but it’s interesting how almost every single element appears elsewhere. It manages to be more than the sum of its parts, though.
– Invisible aliens out of phase like in the also spooky TNG episode “Phantasms.” As well as “Time’s Arrow” and “Distant Origin.”
– The Doctor communicating to Seven through her Borg tech from VOY’s “Timeless.”
– The Doctor was turned into a living tricorder so he could visually scan in “Displaced.”
– Random ensign dying from alien’s cruel experiment from TNG’s “Where Silence Has Lease.” Also the alien coldly willing to kill a certain amount of crewmembers for research.
– Doctor and Seven working in secret as in “The Killing Game.”
– The crew mistrusting Seven’s motives while she tries to save them like in “Relativity.”
– Bizarre genetic deformities/transformations a la “Genesis.”
– Someone losing the ability to breathe oxygen from “Threshold.”
- How exactly does the Doctor hide on the holodeck? It’s… just a room on the ship like any other the aliens could stroll into. I’d think the two holodecks on Voyager would pretty much be in constant use all the time. It would be more interesting (and effective) if the Doctor hid in the computer. Of course, it would take some creativity to depict that visually. The Doctor is essentially unconscious while his program is not running, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
- Presented without context:
- Oh hey, random medical people! I love how the show occasionally decides that the Doctor has medical personnel, when it’s always explicitly stated that it’s literally just him and Paris.
Well, I don’t know about you, my space-FEARing cadets, but I’m certainly beat! All this looking at the viewSCREAM has given me quite the headache. As much as I’ve enjoyed this month long trek-or-treat, I think I’ll head down to sickbay and see if Bones can do anything for my Guts. Until next time, Live as Long as you can and Prosper! Ahehehehehehehehe!