Voyager rewatch 6.17 – “Spirit Folk”

Janeway’s new sex toy develops sentience.

I’m going to be honest. Many weeks have passed since I last watched an episode of Voyager for this blog. Every time I thought, “I really need to get back to work,” I would remember that the next episode was “Spirit Folk”, and somehow my finger would slip and I’d end up watching an old episode of Law & Order: SVU instead.

Fortunately, there is Star Trek: Prodigy. Its second season is so good — truly remarkable Star Trek and remarkable television in its own right — that it left me wanting to spend more time with the Voyager characters. They made Chakotay into a complex, three-dimensional character. They made me like the Doctor. Imagine!

Nevertheless, I watched the teaser for “Spirit Folk” and, as I reached for the remote control to skip the credits, I thought, “I can just … tell people not to watch this. I don’t have to put myself through this. I’m a good person. I don’t deserve to suffer for no reason.”

Sadly, I am Catholic, which means that in addition to being personally targeted by this episode, I occasionally feel obligated to do things I don’t enjoy. And so, like Jesus dying for our sins, I watched “Spirit Folk” so you don’t have to.

Yes, I compared myself with Jesus. First of all, watching “Spirit Folk” is remarkably similar to being tortured and executed by Romans; second, I forgot what my second point was, but let’s assume it was hilarious. Much as this episode was probably meant to be.

Forget Tuvix

In the last decade, fandom (mostly the male end of fandom) has become obsessed with Tuvix. You cannot mention Janeway without someone popping out of the woodwork to ask how you feel about her treatment of Tuvix, or calling her a war criminal, as if male captains haven’t done far worse things that no one talks about.

You know my feelings about Tuvix: it’s a bad episode, but also Tuvix was an asshole who deserved to die.

Here’s my hot take: Janeway’s decisions in “Spirit Folk” are far worse and less justifiable than in “Tuvix”.

Faced with a situation where her living crew members, who are actual people, might die, or her holographic sex toy might be erased, she chooses to risk the lives of her officers — who, I cannot emphasise this enough, are people — rather than risk her talking vibrator.

Kathryn. What the fuck.

I’d call this a character-ruining moment, but fortunately this is Voyager, and in a few days no one will remember this incident, least of all the people who wrote it. (The script is credited to Bryan Fuller, and I think we can safely say this is the second-worst piece of writing credited to him across his entire career.)

Okay, but what if the sex toy is becoming sentient?

“Spirit Folk” toys with the idea that the Fair Haven program has been running for so long that the holodeck hardware is getting overheated and the characters are becoming self-aware.

“Liz,” you might say, if you are unlucky enough to have watched this episode, “that is literally the whole plot. How can you say it merely ‘toys with’ the idea.”

Well, my imaginary interlocutor, because the script is far more interested in puerile pranks and Irish stereotypes than interrogating that concept. Certainly the Voyager crew aren’t concerned that they may have accidentally created sentient life. Self-awareness doesn’t change Michael Sullivan’s sense of reality, or his relationship with Janeway.

Probably because, after a conversation with Chakotay where he suggests she simply tell the hologram the truth, Janeway instead creates an elaborate lie, letting the townsfolk believe that she and her crew are time travelers from the future.

Now, it is interesting that Janeway is so averse to emotional honesty and meaningful connection that she can’t even tell the truth to a man she effectively created. It would be even more interesting if this was an ongoing issue for her, rather than a trait which appears out of nowhere and contradicts everything we’ve seen in the past. Literally the whole point of “Fair Haven”, the episode, was that she craves that connection and fears she cannot have it with a member of her crew. If Janeway is dishonest with Michael, the script is dishonest with us, the viewers.

In fairness, this script hates all the characters

Tom, a man in his thirties who is allegedly in a long-term relationship with a woman he hypothetically likes, is spending his time pranking Harry, who is dating a very nice fictional lady. B’Elanna and Seven are barely there. The Doctor is a blowhard. Tuvok and Neelix are even less present than B’Elanna and Seven.

The only character who comes off well is Chakotay, mostly because he doesn’t have to do anything except listen to Janeway and give her advice which she ignores.

As for the residents of Fair Haven. Well.

With the exception of Michael and the town doctor — a man who only exists to help Michael think out loud — the residents of Fair Haven are such broad stereotypes, leaning so heavily on the stereotypical “stupidity” of the Irish (derived from anti-Irish propaganda developed by the English) that it’s impossible to engage with them on any level.

An episode from the point of view of non-sentient holodeck characters is not an intrinsically bad idea. In fact, I can think of several ways it could be executed well. There’s a profound horror in the idea that holodeck characters, who are treated as objects on every level, are in some way aware that their existence is broken. Star Trek has been hinting at this since the very first holodeck episode, “The Big Goodbye”, back in season 1 of The Next Generation. Both here and in DS9, we see that running a holodeck program for long enough causes at least some characters to become self aware.

(Here’s a new headcanon for you: when we see a holodeck in seasons 3-5 of Star Trek: Discovery, it is only being used to create landscapes, and when we see holographic beings, they are very clearly a long way from sentience. Will the 25th century see a taboo develop against the creation and use of realistic holograms?)

“Spirit Folk” isn’t interested in any of that. It’s a “comedy” (that isn’t funny) and a “romp” (that’s unspeakably dreary) which doesn’t respect its characters or audience enough to provide even a semblance of a good story.

Other observations

• the Doctor posing as the parish priest still gives me the ick, but it’s somewhat relieved by the fact that everything from the format of the “Mass” to the Doctor’s hellfire and brimstone routine is 100% pure Protestantism
• speaking of matters sectarian, I feel like a working class Catholic Irishman of the late 19th or early 20th century wouldn’t be terribly sorry at the passing of Tom’s “aristocratic” “uncle”
• I checked, and you will not be shocked to learn that very few of the actors playing Fair Haven townspeople are from Ireland

In conclusion

This is not the worst episode of Voyager, but it’s also a very long way from the best, or even a bare minimum of watchability. Love yourself. Do something else with your time. Zero cows out of five.