Voyager, Muse  review:

Roll over Sophocles.   April 27, 2000  

Overt metafiction tonight, all ye English majors, as B'Elanna Torres crash lands on an Earthlike planet that's just a stand-in for Classical Greece and its dramatic tradition, right down to the ungainly robes, tragicomic masks, and circular stone benches.   Torres' wrecked flyer is found by an earnest young playwright, and as he nurses her back to health he becomes inspired by our noble engineer and her heroic shipmates. She becomes his Muse, quite literally, hence the title of the show.   His first play based on the deeds of the Voyager gets a standing ovation (obviously these chaps haven't discovered TV yet) and so the local Tyrant orders him to whip up another episode, pronto. Like in a week. Just like the cast and crew of Voyager, get it? They have to come up with a new episode every week too! Get it?!    

The play's the thing.    Many of these scenes can be read as glimpses of the inner workings of Voyager. For example, the actor portraying Tuvok complains to the playwright that the audience isn't going to like his emotionless character and so write him off as a bad actor. Subtext: Tim Russ (who plays Tuvok) is probably worried about the same thing. (Not to worry Tim, you were awesome in "Meld.") Similar kind of thing with Seven of Nine: the actress who plays her can't decide if her character should be passionate or controlled, evil or heroic, dating the playwright or? Well read into it that what you will.    

Neelix Watch The important senior officers, and Neelix, are gathered in the ready room to discuss the disappearance of Torres and Kim. What can Neelix contribute? Coffee?   No, only tea, as we see in a later scene when the dreaded Tellaxian serves a bleary-eyed Tuvok a refill of the weak stuff with a side of bad advice. "Coffee, Mr. Neelix!" Tuvok should have said, "and hold the chatter."   Heaven forbid that a network that earns its bread off of bare-chested trolls pounding each other with folding chairs promote the drinking of the wicked demon coffee!    

This metafiction theme (that is, a story about the process of making a story) runs straight through the episode like a spine and it either works for you or it doesn't. Me, I didn't like it because it didn't go far enough. Sure, it was almost Seinfeldian at times in being a show that was ultimately about nothing, but if it really was supposed to be a show about making a show then they should have interrupted the Greek play with something along the lines of Berman and Braga themselves walking out onto the stage and speaking directly into the cameras and to the fans. Now that would be metafiction TV!   Otherwise Voyager needs to ditch the self-indulgent writing exercises and get back to science fiction. That means send Voyager to interesting new worlds, meet interesting new people, and kill them -- or sleep with them -- as the case may be.   Or, as the wise old playwright character tried to tell Torres and her scribal beau, "Find the truth of your story, and you won't need those tricks." Unintentionally ironic bit of advice, that, all things considered.