Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #24 — “Blink Of An Eye” And “Living Witness”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary approaches, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September 17th, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

Time is a funny thing. It can pass quickly or it can feel like it takes a lifetime just for days or months to pass by. It’s all relative, depending on so many factors.

With the two episodes chosen for this week, how time passes and how people perceive things long after they happened become the main focus. Civilizations rise and fall as a starship becomes trapped in orbit causing quite a generational stir while that same ship’s journey through space becomes a topic of hot contention.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“In The Blink Of An Eye”
Star Trek: Voyager – Season 6, Episode 12 (01/19/2000)

Synopsis: Discovering a new strange planet leaves the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager in a precarious position. Generations upon generations try to uncover the mystery of the sky object they revere, worship, and eventually fear.

Time travel is a constant staple of science fiction at this point. We’ve dove into various episodes in this very column that deal with the idea of moving through time to witness events and people of different times. In this case though, the time travel that occurs is just the natural evolution of a people whose planet moves differently than any other world discovered.

Over the course of the episode we’re treated to the various generations of people on this planet, one that is never named, reckoning with the ship in the sky and the quakes it seems to bring. Their perspective is given just as much weight as the scenes we get on Voyager of them assessing the situation and the world they are now stuck orbiting. Seeing both perspectives makes the episode so much richer than if it was just the standard “Voyager crew pontificating about the planet and doing their usual exploration” routines.

One of the most memorable parts of the episode is how two astronauts from the planet, played by Kat Sawyer-Young and Daniel Dae Kim, board the ship. Finding a crew seemingly trapped in stasis, they are ripped into another time frame, with one of them dying. It’s Kim’s character, Gotana-Retz, who becomes the voice of the people in many ways. He’s the first to learn of Voyager’s true origins, and the one that is able to eventually carry the information back to a world that left him behind in order to save the ship.

Kim plays this character so well. Giving us the heartbreak that comes from realizing that the world you left behind has moved on balanced with the knowledge that you are making a grand discovery. He’s a man out of time in many ways, losing those he loves while being able to see the future of his civilization and world beyond his prescribed years. Gotana is the time traveler in this space, rather than our main cast, and it gives a different emotional impact than the other way around.

What makes this episode so impactful is the the heart of the matter. Sure, there is a lot of science fiction stuff that is well done, but the characters and their different perspectives are what sell it. Again, I’m not just talking about the main characters or the guests like Kim who have significant roles. Even the small characters we meet briefly, their little arcs and moments inform so much about these people, this world, and the overarching emotional depth of the story.

No matter how unintentional it was, Voyager impacted a world for centuries. There were songs and stories created about their presence, buildings were fortified earlier than normal because of the quakes, and technological leaps were made to try and understand and reach the ship in the sky. Since the ship left and time has moved on naturally in the universe that we know, so much more has gone down on the unnamed world of the Kelemane people.

Perhaps they are all gone now. Maybe they became so advanced they were able to change the orbit of their world or left it behind. The possibilities, as they always can be, are endless.

“Living Witness”
Star Trek: Voyager – Season 4, Episode 23 (04/29/1998)

Synopsis: Centuries ago, the U.S.S. Voyager passed through a region of space, and had quite an impact. Seven hundred years after this moment, the Doctor must uncover the truth about history and war crimes that were supposedly committed by his crew and family.

We’ve all heard the saying about history being written by the victors, but that isn’t particularly accurate. History and how it is perceived is recorded, reported, edited, and manipulated by people both in the moment and long afterward. Every day we witness that in our own reality as bad actors try to erase history or twist it to suit their purposes or narrow world view.

“Living Witness” is an episode that confronts this situation head on.

“When diplomacy fails, there’s only one alternative: violence. Force must be applied, without apology. It’s the Starfleet way.” These grim words open the episode as we see a version of Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) with strangely short hair and black gloves. From there a picture is painted of the so-called warship Voyager being brutal in their handling of a people known as the Kyrians, on behalf of their neighbors the Vaskans. Pulling back, we learn it’s all a simulation within the Museum of Kyrian Heritage, as a Kryian man known as Quarren (Henry Woronicz) explains to Kryians and Vaskans the lasting impact that Voyager has had over 700 years later.

As the audience, we know the truth about Voyager, but must watch as this historian recites a version of history that is vastly untrue — claiming that Voyager’s crew was 300 soldiers who assimilated other species to serve them and brought war and pain upon the universe. Through the first few acts, it becomes clear how the actions of some and the choices they made can color how stories are told and moments are remembered for generations.

Change a few things in a textbook or simulation and suddenly a whole people become the villains, no matter what they were in reality. It’s a cold hard look in the mirror for a society such as ours where this continues to be a problem generation after generation after generation.

So much of what makes this episode what it is comes from the back and forth between Quarren and a reactivated copy of the Doctor (Robert Picardo). It’s such an ingenious way to handle time travel (of sorts), since this isn’t the version of the Doctor who continued on with Voyager but in essence a version of him stuck in a bottle. He is a mirror of the Doctor as he was during the ship’s time dealing with the Kyrians and Vaskans so many centuries before.

Reckoning with the truth and one’s own beliefs is never easy. Quarren has learned a version of history that the Doctor is trying to break, so naturally the Kyrian pushes back. It paints his people as the victims fully when the truth of the matter is far more complicated. Choosing Voyager as the outside agitator in their conflict gave both people space to craft a history more beneficial to themselves. While a singular person, Quarren, comes around, the idea that history was manipulated causes long simmering tensions between Kyrian and Vaskan to reach a boiling point once more.

In the end, we jump even further ahead to see the efforts of Quarren and the Doctor, to spread the truth, changed the world again. People eventually are willing to accept the truth and modify history for the right reasons. Unfortunately, that is the most fantastical part of this episode in many respects, because, again, we see how things work out in our own society.

Perhaps one day, maybe even hundreds of years from now, humans will reach the same levels of understanding and acceptance of our true history. Warts and all.

One can only hope at this point.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.