To The Journey 297: Super Extra Gravity

ChrisWelcome back to The Journey, everyone, our dedicated Star Trek Voyager podcast. I'm Christopher Jones, and with me, as he always is, is my esteemed co-host, Matthew Rushing. And Matthew, guess what? I've taken up a new hobby: cheese-making!

MatthewWow. So that's who moved my cheese.

ChrisYeah, yeah, it was me. I moved it because I'm going to replace it with some of the new cheese that I'm making.

MatthewOkay.

ChrisAnd I don't think you'll notice. I'm sure it's going to be totally safe to eat. I mean, how hard could it be to make cheese?

MatthewI don't know. Just make sure you don't cut it. So you just want to take a bite off of it, Chris.

ChrisYeah, just a nibble.

Alright everyone, we are going to continue our 30th anniversary rewatch of Voyager today with …

MatthewOh, wait, Chris, hold on. This just in. This is the end of season one. And we get to talk about cheese.

ChrisAt least in the United States, because as I understand it in the UK, they actually did air the next four episodes that got kicked over to season 2 as part of season 1.

MatthewInteresting. Those Brits always get the good stuff.

ChrisYeah, yeah, yeah, including cheese. They have much better cheese, right?

MatthewWensleydale! So sorry … I was doing a little Wallace and Gromit there.

ChrisYeah, exactly. Alright, so here's a quick rundown of "Learning Curve."

When four Maquis crew members refuse to adapt to Starfleet protocols, Tuvok is handed the unenviable task of whipping them into shape. But while he struggles to understand why his time-honored methods and Vulcan charm aren't working, a more immediate threat is taking hold in Neelix's kitchen: cheese. In his efforts to delight Ensign Ashmore with a taste from home, the self-proclaimed chef has been cultivating bacteria just below a vent that feeds into the ship's bio-neural circuitry. Now the gel packs have a cold and systems are failing one by one. It's time to get the cheese to sickbay!

ChrisBut Matthew, before we do that, we've got to go back to Janeway's Victorian holonovel and meet the Burleigh kids again. Aren't you excited about that?

MatthewYay! Oh, Chris, so excited.

ChrisSo tell me what you think about the Burleighs.

MatthewMan, Chris, I'm sorry, but I don't understand what they're trying to do here with Janeway in this holonovel. I think, in all honesty, it's one of those places where it's just entirely amiss all around.

ChrisMm-hmm.

MatthewLike, I don't think that any part of it really makes sense. It's not the right story to be telling.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAnd the problem is that it just doesn't connect with anything in the rest of the episode. It really only is there to be like, oh, her holonovel gets interrupted.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewDon't worry, we'll never return to this the rest of the episode. It's fine.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewSo it's just an incredibly strange thing to be doing.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewIt just doesn't really fit Janeway as a character, that's the thing. I think that it just doesn't seem to fit her as a character and that's what's really odd.

ChrisYeah. Yeah. Well, that's what we talked about before when they did it the first time. And here it really feels like they're just trying to force it. Like, okay, Janeway's got to have this holonovel that she escapes into. This is a thing that we're going to do. Like, we know it didn't work last time, but we're going to try again. And just like last time, we're going to tack it on to the beginning of an episode that it has no connection to whatsoever. So I actually wrote in my notes after they go to the credits and then they come back out. I wrote, Captain's log, forget everything you saw in the cold open. This is a different story.

MatthewYeah. I mean, look, I think it was interesting them trying to find—it felt like this. Look, we want to be more like TNG. That's their goal.

ChrisYeah, right.

MatthewSo we need Janeway to have some sort of holonovel thing the way Picard did, right?

ChrisYeah. Yup, that's exactly it.

MatthewWell, he had Sherlock Holmes, and we had that on TNG with Data, and then we had Dixon Hill novels with Picard. So what do we do with Janeway? I know. Let's put her in Victorian England. That'll work. And it's just an incredibly strange choice. It just doesn't really make any sense.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAnd I'm not really sure what they're trying to do other than I can see, I guess, in some ways, the idea that they're trying to give her an outlet for her mothering, I guess. I don't know.

ChrisI guess.

MatthewIt's just, it's a strange thing.

ChrisI think that's a strange thing to do though because if you're going to have a female captain for the first time on a series, then you want her to be this leader. You don't need to put her in a situation where she's going to be the mother to these little kids. To me, it just sounds like counterproductive to what you're trying to do by having this strong woman as a leader of the crew.

But the other thing about this that stood out to me, because later on in the episode, we end up in Chez Sandrine's with the pool table again. And I thought, okay, this is kind of odd. We have two separate holodeck simulations in one episode that have no connection to each other whatsoever. And has that happened before? So I really started trying to think about it. And the episodes I could think of, none of them fit this mold. There's "Hollow Pursuits" where Barclay has different simulations of different crew members for his little fantasy land. So those are different ones. Here on Voyager, there's "Worst Case Scenario" where Tuvok has a mutiny program and then Seska reprograms it. And that's the same program, but with different outcomes to it. And then there's "Emergence" at the end of The Next Generation where the ship's computer mixes all these elements of different programs together. But normally you don't have, you don't like jump from completely different holodeck simulations. And especially when they don't have any connection to each other, and then one of them has no connection to the story at all.

MatthewYeah, I think what's weird about this with Janeway's holonovel is the way in which it just never has any connection with anything, as you're mentioning. And that is just an incredibly odd choice to make.

ChrisYeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

MatthewAnd I'm not sure exactly why they continue to choose to make it and I think it's probably one of the reasons that it doesn't last.

ChrisWell, jumping into the real story here, let's go with the Maquis crew members and Tuvok's annoyance with them and all that stuff first, because that's what ends up being the A story for this. I think it's good that they did this story. The idea of Maquis crew members having trouble fitting in with Starfleet protocol, and maybe they need some training.

But I think it's odd that it doesn't happen until now, because I did the calculations for the stardates. And I think it's like from "Caretaker" to here, I believe it was 194 days that have passed. It's like six-and-a-half months that have passed. And you would think that during that time, there would have been this type of program where Tuvok is going to put Maquis crew members who need additional support through some kind of boot camp or training or something. And maybe that happened off screen and we don't know about it for some people and these people just can't fit in, but it's certainly not the way it's presented here. It's presented like, yeah, we've got this Dalby problem and I think we need to address it. And it feels like rather than this happening in the final episode of season 1, that's something that should have happened probably in like episode five or six—that would have made a lot more sense for the story.

MatthewI mean, absolutely. I think it would have made sense story-wise. It would have made sense for the chronology of the series. And I think it's one of those places where Voyager, because they made the decision that they were not going to focus really on this split between Maquis and Starfleet for too long, it felt weird—kind of like, I mean, you know, in the U.S. this is the end of the season and we are going to revisit this idea at the end of the season after supposedly we've been with these characters for like six months.

ChrisMm-hmm.

MatthewLike you said, it's a strange choice. And I don't get it. And so I think it's one of those things where it would have possibly worked then. It doesn't quite work in this episode because it just feels too little too late in the storytelling department.

ChrisMm-hmm.

MatthewAnd I think, you know, now that we're at—look, we're just going to say this is the end of season 1. Fans would have to wait another few months for you to get back in the episodes for season 2. And so the promise of Voyager here, I think the way in which this season was handled and ending on this episode with a storyline that should have taken place within three or four episodes of the first episode just feels like, to me, a big red flag of saying we don't know exactly what to do with this show.

ChrisYeah, or we knew what we wanted to do with it but we got cold feet and now we're trying to figure out …

MatthewExactly. I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah, we got cold feet. And it's very odd. Because, again, I don't think that this is a bad storyline, you know. Is it a unique storyline?

ChrisNo, it's not a bad storyline.

MatthewAbsolutely not, because we've kind of seen this type of thing play out in "Lower Decks."

ChrisYeah, yeah. Well there's a reason for that. These are the same writers who wrote "Lower Decks."

MatthewHow do you feel about it? Like when you rewatch it, do you feel like it's okay? Does it hold up enough or are you just kind of left in this spot where you're just like, I'm not quite sure what we're trying to accomplish with this episode at this point in the season?

ChrisWell, I guess there are two paths here. I remember watching it when it first aired and I thought it's kind of a fun episode, especially because of the cheese, which we'll talk about in a bit. You know, the cheese saves the episode. If the cheese B-story wasn't in here, I really think this episode would be forgettable. But it was fine as an episode at the time that it aired.

When I watch it now, especially because, over the years, my frustration with the way they handled the conflict that they had set up has grown. And like I said, they got cold feet and they didn't really explore what they had set up with Starfleet and the Maquis. I guess I get a little—I don't enjoy this story as much.

And there are a few reasons. I think that the Maquis crew members come off as a bit too whiny and indignant. You know, they say like, well, we understand the situation and we're going to do our best. But they also come off like, you know, if you had a company, they would be the four employees who just really don't want to follow the rules and don't want to do what the manager asks, don't care about corporate protocol at all. And I think that we'll talk about Chakotay a little bit more as well, but I feel a little bit like if these people served under Chakotay on his ship, I think they would not be quite as much like this, just because I don't think Chakotay is like this. And I think that there's an influence that comes to you from the person who's leading you.

MatthewYeah, absolutely.

ChrisAnd I mean, you get it a bit, you know. Seska's kind of indignant about this kind of stuff as well, but not to this level. This felt a little bit more like high school-ish behavior.

MatthewYeah, because they felt like children.

ChrisYeah, they come off like that, right?

MatthewThey just feel like children that are like … dude, just grow up, man. Gotta grow up.

ChrisI mentioned these are the same writers who wrote "Lower Decks" on The Next Generation, and I think you can see how much better they handled their characters in The Next Generation episode than they did here.

MatthewYeah, 100 percent.

ChrisAnd then Tuvok himself, I suppose that it feels true to who the character is, but I don't think Tuvok comes off well as a character in the way that he treats these crew members. And then the other thing about Tuvok that's really weird here is that the whole setup of the series is that Tuvok was a spy on Chakotay's ship.

MatthewRight.

ChrisAnd that means he was on this small ship for some period of time with all of Chakotay's crew. He doesn't seem to know these four people. He doesn't know anything about them. And I think that's weird that he seemed … these are like strangers to him. And then he's been assigned to whip these four Maquis into shape.

And I think that that's an obvious writing point that was missed here. He doesn't need to deliver a dossier about all of them, but it would come off more believable if he at least acknowledged that he knows these people. And it's kind of an odd bit of the story.

MatthewYeah, it almost feels too like a strange choice to have Tuvok do this when it probably should be Chakotay doing this. You know, Chakotay was in the Academy, so he knows what's required of himself and from Starfleet officers.

ChrisYeah. Yeah.

MatthewAnd I think it would have been interesting because it would have given us an opportunity to explore why Chakotay is making the choices that he is here. Why is Chakotay choosing to put himself under Janeway's command like this and make these decisions? And I think it would have been interesting to watch that push back and that push and pull you would have gotten with these characters as well as with Chakotay. I just think it would have been a lot more interesting as a story.

And I think Tuvok, who has experience with so many Starfleet cadets over his years, should understand human beings better than this. And he just comes off as kind of dense, which is not what you want from your character in this way. And it's a little frustrating that that's the case. You know, again, he should have experience. If we've had characters like this in "Lower Decks" previously who have made it through Starfleet protocols and training and in the Academy, he would have taught people like that and so therefore we should be able to have Tuvok not just be so odd in this episode that he can't understand these people.

ChrisYeah. Well, I think part of it might be that one thing we forget now, because it's been so long, is that this was the first case of them really writing a pure Vulcan as a lead bridge crew member in Star Trek. So we were used to Spock being half Vulcan and half human. And so here we've got Tuvok, he's purely Vulcan. So maybe you write him in this very rigid, inflexible way to set him apart from Spock. But you would think that as someone who had to go through Starfleet Academy and spent a lot of time around humans, that even a pure Vulcan would understand humans. And not just humans. I mean, we're dealing here with a human and a Bajoran and a Bolian. But at least understand how other species react to things emotionally and all.

MatthewYeah, I mean, again, if he's taught at the Academy for a long period of time, that would only make sense.

ChrisYeah. The origin of this, why is it Tuvok? From what I understand it is because we're dealing with Wilkerson and Matthias here who wrote "Lower Decks." They had Ensign Taurik there who's the Vulcan. And so they got this idea of what would it be like if we explored a Vulcan in more detail and a Vulcan instructor. And they pitched this idea for Voyager. And that was kind of like the seeds of it. And it made sense with Tuvok's role on the ship that he would do the training and all.

MatthewYeah.

ChrisBut yeah, so Chakotay—yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I think Chakotay would have been the right choice to do the training because I don't think that the crew members—and we see this in Dalby—I don't think that they would have listened to him the way that they would need to because they just feel like, oh, Chakotay, you know, he's going to have our back, we don't really have to take this too seriously. Which is why I like that Chakotay comes in and just decks Dalby.

MatthewYeah, that was great.

ChrisYou know, I mean, that was a great moment in the episode.

ChrisAnd I think it was a great character moment for Chakotay, too, because one thing that—it's not really a core part of the story at all—but I think that an important part of this episode for me is the character development for Chakotay in particular and for B'Elanna: that we see how they've assimilated into the crew and they understand their roles and they understand the importance of what they're doing.

MatthewYeah.

ChrisBut they're also the two who actually have Starfleet experience and who are at the Academy. So I think for him, it's easy for him to look at the situation, and say, okay, I have to be Janeway's first officer, we've got a mission here, we've got to get home, which is something that these other people who he had assembled for his Maquis crew can't really understand.

MatthewYeah. Yeah.

ChrisBut I think that having that moment where we get to see him just tell his former crew, look, you guys—like you said earlier—you guys have to grow up. You know, this is the situation we're in right now. I think that's a good character moment for Chakotay.

MatthewIt's interesting because I feel like one of the things that we're kind of coming to in this episode is that a lot of it feels like it's not working the way they intended, and that it almost feels as though this is an episode that needed to be put through another round of rewrites to really get it to be stronger.

ChrisMm-hmm.

MatthewBut at the same time, I think this is also a story that doesn't quite seem to fit again with where we are in the season, so it almost feels like they needed to find another B-story, or I guess they needed to find another A-story to go with the B-story, which is this cheese.

So, you know, Chris, say cheese and die. Because who knew that cheese could cause such horrible problems on a starship?

ChrisRight. Yeah. Well, interestingly, you say that the whole training thing was the B-story of the original pitch. I don't even know what the A-story was, but I know that it was the B-story. And then it got flipped around. And then they needed to find, like you said, something to go with it. And so they end up with the cheese. But the cheese is, you know, obviously it's the most memorable part. There are two things that are memorable for me in this episode. One, and I don't know why it's always stuck in my head, is Tuvok turning up the gravity when they do the running. And the other one is obviously the line everyone knows, "Get the cheese to sickbay."

MatthewYeah.

ChrisBut I thought this was a great storyline for Neelix because it's exactly the kind of thing that Neelix would do. He doesn't ask permission to do anything, just starts cultivating bacteria to make cheese and does it right underneath a vent where all the spores are going to go up and get into the system.

But the other thing I liked about it is that they introduced in "Caretaker" that this new class of starship has these bioneural gel packs in the circuitry and it gives the ship some new capabilities. And I liked the idea when they introduced it because it shows that as advanced as Starfleet technology is, they're still innovating, they're still advancing the technology and they're trying these experimental things.

And you do think like, okay, well, if the ship is somewhat alive, if it has biology in it, that opens up a lot of ideas for stories. But then they don't do anything with it for the whole season.

MatthewRight.

ChrisAnd then finally we get here and they actually do give us a story. And it's a fun one. It's just like, hey, you know, the ship is sick. It's kind of got a cold.

MatthewYeah, I mean, I think that I am way more critical of this than you are because you're really seeming to like it.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAnd I think that this episode, to me, proves—or it feels as though to me—that the series feels bankrupt right now.

ChrisI thought it was fine.

MatthewThey just don't know what to do that's interesting because this, to me personally, this is not interesting. I think it's incredibly silly, and I think on top of the other side of the episode, which is not working for me very well, I just don't like it. I'm sorry. I don't like the cheese aspect. I think the idea of playing around with the bio gel pack, I guess that's kind of interesting. But yeah, it almost just felt like we need a bottle episode. We need to figure out how we can save some money here at this point in the season. And we're going to do it in kind of the silliest way possible. And I just, yeah, I think everything about this is just, it feels so laughable that it's hard to take seriously.

ChrisMm-hmm.

MatthewI think that's what it is. It feels so laughable. It's just kind of hard to take the idea seriously. And therefore, it hurts the episode because the other side of the episode isn't strong enough to keep my interest. I think that's what it is for me.

ChrisMm-hmm. I see. Alright. Well, those sound like final thoughts, actually. So what's your rating for this one? And then I'll give you my final thoughts with a few answers to that.

MatthewI think this is an incredibly weak episode of Voyager, which is disappointing. It's one of those things—especially, and I remember watching Voyager right when it was airing, and this is the end of the season for us in the US, and it's just an incredibly bummer of an episode to end the season on because there's absolutely nothing that's happening.

ChrisMm-hmm. Yeah.

MatthewThere's nothing interesting about this. And it's like it kind of soured me at that point on Voyager a little bit just because, you know, this is the end of the season.

ChrisOh, really? Okay.

MatthewWe're used to at this point with Star Trek, you know, we've had all these years of TNG, we've had a couple of years now of DS9. They usually wrap up seasons interestingly, and this just kind of ends with a [raspberry]. And that's how I'm going to rate this episode.

ChrisThat's it?

MatthewYeah.

ChrisAlright. Well, you know, Jeri Taylor has said something similar about the end of the season. I had read that she said we basically just kind of disappeared because, you know, it wasn't a season-ending episode. It just kind of was there. And then we just kind of disappeared into the summer. So, yeah, the whole first season, the plotting of it and how they wrapped it up and all was just … I read something about how it was going to be difficult for UPN to set up and promote a two-part episode over that summer. And so they didn't want to do a cliffhanger like we were getting used to in The Next Generation, which just sounds … I guess it makes sense a little bit in that this was the first year of UPN. You know, UPN started with "Caretaker," and so they're not even one full year into being on the air yet as a network.

MatthewYeah.

ChrisAnd maybe they weren't prepared for stuff. But it's not like they didn't have plenty of experience dealing with Star Trek. And it's not like Paramount didn't have experience making entertainment. You'd think they could figure out their staffing and processing and procedures and all for that if that were really what happened.

But anyway, yeah, I mean, I guess my final thoughts on it is that I feel like the cheese part is fine. And I don't mind, you know, we've always had this kind of humor here and there in Star Trek. Especially, you know, I can see this kind of thing happening on The Original Series, where you've got some weird thing like this that's affecting the crew. Maybe it wouldn't affect the ship because it doesn't have gel packs. But I think it saves the episode. The cheese part does. I think the other part, the A-story of the episode, trying to get Maquis to understand how they need to function on a Starfleet ship, that's actually a serious thing that needs to be addressed. And the way that they go about it, I think, doesn't work.

MatthewMm-hmm.

ChrisYou know, it comes off, like I said earlier, they come off whiny. It's almost like it's some kind of high school thing going on. I don't think Janeway as the captain should have put Tuvok in charge of it because she should be able to—she knows him. That's part of the whole storyline, right, is that they've been friends for so long. And so she knows what Tuvok's like. She's got to know as a leader that this is not going to work, right?

MatthewRight.

ChrisHe's not going to be up for this task. So, yeah, I think it's an idea that the writers had and they just, yeah, didn't pull it off very well. And the other thing I wanted to mention to you and ask you, if you liked it, is did you like the afterschool-special ending? "Lieutenant, if you can learn to bend the rules, I guess we can learn to follow them." And I just felt like, oh, I learned a lesson today.

MatthewYeah, I was just wondering when, you know, somebody was going to be stuck on speed and they were just going to be so scared, you know? So, yeah, I think that's another place where, again, this episode just kind of feels like a wah-wah in every aspect, especially since we're ending the season.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAnd that just … like, I love the idea in the sense of, for that storyline, Tuvok is going to show that the prerogative of the commanding officer is what to do and their crew is valuable and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's just like, okay, alright. Yeah, it did really very much feel like an afterschool special, you know. On a very special episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

ChrisYeah. Well, yeah, exactly. And like you just said, not only are we ending the episode on that line, we're ending the season on that line. And then we're all going on summer break down to Panama City or whatever. So, yeah. And maybe we can learn to follow the rules together. Because, you know …

MatthewIs that when they create the holodeck program with the resort?

ChrisOh, right.

MatthewHa ha ha.

ChrisSo I'm going to give this episode six Circassian figs.

ChrisAlright everyone, we would love to hear your thoughts on "Learning Curve"—and cheese. There are many ways for you to share those with us. Perhaps the best way is to go to Facebook and join the Babel Conference. That is our listeners group. It's there to extend the conversations beyond the podcasts, so if you're joining for the first time, please do answer the questions and agree to the rules of the forum so that I can let you in. You'll find a post on the timeline for this episode and you can share your thoughts with Matthew and me and fellow listeners right there.

You can also send us email. Go to our website—our new website is actually online now, so the URL is https://tfm.fan/contact. Use the form you find there, choose to send to a show and choose To The Journey and that will come to us by email.

And of course, you can find us in social media. Our username everywhere is trekfm.

And if your podcast app of choice allows you to leave a rating and a review, we would love to get that from you as well.

Now, Matthew, when you're not training for your next marathon under super extra gravity, where can people find you?

MatthewWell, Chris, I could do that in my sleep.

So you can find me all over social media under the name mattrushing02. Of course, you can find me here on the network outside all this great Star Trek talk that you and I do, Chris, in The 602 Club, talking about all the franchises we love outside of Star Trek. So everybody can check me out there.

And over on The Nerd Party Network, I have a couple of shows. One is called Owl Post, about every single chapter of the Harry Potter series. And then I'm on Aggressive Negotiations with John Mills as we're talking about Star Wars each and every week.

But, Chris, when you're not trying to figure out just what's causing that smell. Oh, wait, it's just the Limburger cheese that you're eating. Where can people find you?

ChrisYeah, yeah. I should probably put that in the fridge, I think.

MatthewHow long has that been out again?

ChrisOh, you know, it's only like maybe four or five days.

MatthewI'm sure it's fine.

ChrisI'm sure it's fine. Yeah. So, yeah, when I'm not choking on that smell, you can find me elsewhere on the network doing all those shows with you. Larry Nemecek and I have some new Ready Rooms out, and you can also find me in the back catalog across many, many shows from the past 15 years talking about many topics in the Star Trek universe, so check those out if you want to hear my thoughts on other things.

You can also find me in social media. My username everywhere is cbryanjones—the letter C and Bryan with a Y. Bluesky is where I'm most active, but you can find me everywhere so please do drop me a note.

And if you'd like to help us keep this rewatch and everything we're doing on the network going, we could definitely use your support. To find out how to support the network, please visit patreon.com/trekfm. We would not be here without your help, so thank you to everyone who is supporting us now.

Well, Matthew, it's time for a summer break of sorts, I guess, before we come back into season 2. But when we kick off season 2, we will be solving some of the biggest mysteries in world history as we talk about "The '37s."

MatthewWell, Chris, that sounds great. So set course for home.