Another one bites the dust.
Overall I think “Friendship One” is a good episode. It has an interesting premise — Starfleet sends Voyager after a long-lost pre-Starfleet probe, which is indirectly responsible for the destruction of a civilisation — and a solid script. Michael Taylor and Bryan Fuller are probably the best writers to have worked on Voyager in its seven seasons, and it would be strange for them to turn in bad work.
But maybe I expect more of Fuller and Taylor, because while I think “Friendship One” is overall good, I feel like with just a little more work, it could have been great.
Or maybe it’s easy play backseat showrunner with twenty-five years of hindsight.
RIP Joe Carey
Apparently Taylor and Fuller were given permission to kill a recurring character, and they had to decide between Joe Carey, Samantha Wildman, Tal Celes and Vorik. I’m not sure they made the right choice.
I mean, first of all, did we need to kill a recurring character at all? I know it raises the stakes, and gives Janeway a reason to not want to help the unnamed aliens — but she actually didn’t need a reason. Resettling them on a habitable world would add three years to Voyager’s travel time, and she has a series finale to get to.
But as far as victims go, there’s a problem with Carey: he was a fairly prominent supporting character in season 1, but we’ve seen him only twice since — and both in flashbacks to the beginning of Voyager’s mission. In fact, I have a vague recollection of reading that the writers thought they had already killed off Carey. That’s typical bad continuity for Voyager, but also lessens the impact of Carey’s death.
Sam Wildman has a similar problem — we haven’t seen her outside of a flashback since Voyager‘s fifth season. Also, she’s Naomi’s mother, and I feel like leaving that kid parentless (until she gets to the alpha quadrant and is united with the father she has never met) would be a little too dark for Voyager. Or maybe I simply don’t like the idea?
That brings us to Tal Celes and Vorik, and honestly, I think killing either of them would be fine. He hasn’t been seen since season 5 either, but he’s a character I actively dislike, so I wouldn’t have been sad if he had been brought back only to be killed off.
But narratively, Tal was the best choice: she was a popular character, she had been present as recently as season 6, and she had a relationship with Janeway which might provide a better justification for the script to wave at.
Killing carey is not my biggest issue with this episode, though
First, “Friendship One” raises a genuinely interesting quandary. Four hundred years ago, the people of Earth — fresh off first contact, and with their newly minted warp drive technology — launched a probe containing cultural artefacts and instructions on how to build your own warp drive. Three hundred years later, it crashed on this world, where those instructions inspired an arms race and a war fought with nuclear and antimatter weapons.
(I just realised that preventing this situation is also the premise of the first episode of Strange New Worlds.)
The aliens hold humanity responsible for their destruction, and no one really argues against it. But … maybe they should? Obviously that sort of careless tech sharing goes against Federation principles, but this feels like a missed opportunity to interrogate Star Trek‘s idea that some nebulous level of cultural development should be reached before you’re allowed to play with the big kid toys. If your scientists can decode an alien message and follow instructions to build an antimatter missile, they’re sophisticated enough to know what they’re doing and communicate the risks.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent the last few weeks arguing about biological determinism in Strange New Worlds, but Star Trek‘s technological determinism is also worth looking at.
Instead, what we get is yet another story where people need Voyager’s help, but they’re asking in the wrong way, or being insufficiently grateful, or it’s all just too inconvenient.
Stock characters
Truthfully, my actual big problem with “Friendship One”, what really lets it down, is that the guest characters are all familiar Star Trek tropes.
We have:
- the embattled scientist who just wants to do the right thing (and he will know what the right thing is, because he is a scientist)
- the paranoid politician who doesn’t trust science (or anyone else) and who is doomed because he’s unable to change
- the pregnant woman who doesn’t dare hope for a better world for her child, but Our Heroes persuade her to have faith
- an adorable child
You know how it will go. The scientist will save his planet; the newly hopeful pregnant woman will either persuade the politician or kill him; the adorable child will be winsome.
By this point we have nearly twenty-one seasons of 80s-90s Trek, and we’ve seen this play out so many times that there’s no surprise left. The guest characters are perfectly well written, the actors do good work, it’s simply no longer interesting anymore.
Other observations
- This is mostly an ensemble episode, but Tom has some particularly good moments
- (Telling B’Elanna she’s not allowed to go on the away mission is not one of them)
- I actually love the scene where Neelix talks about the destruction of his homeworld and the death of his family, and the alien politician goes, “Yeah, that sucks, but our pain is special.” Like, he’s very hateable, but in a familiar way
- “Friendship One” feels like another sign that the writers room was turning its attention to Enterprise and building out the history between first contact and the launch of the first Enterprise
In conclusion
I genuinely do think this is a good episode! But I also think it had the potential to be great, which makes its flaws more disappointing. Three irradiated babies out of five.