Season 1 Episode 6: “The Cloud”

Plot synopsis: A few weeks into its long homeward journey, Voyager pauses to investigate and gather fuel from what appears to be a massive nebula. But after entering the nebula and coming under attack by mysterious elements within it, the crew discovers that the nebula is actually a giant life form, and Voyager’s passage has wounded it. Being the goody-two-shoes Federation heroes that they are, Janeway and crew (particularly Torres and the Doctor) hatch a zany scheme to heal the wound by creating a technobabbly energy “suture” for it.

While this riveting episode of Space Doctors plays out, Janeway sets out to get to know her crew a bit more personally, leading to: a Native American religious experience, more appearances by Neelix than any episode needs, and a trip to that classic Star Trek hangout, the holodeck.

This is a subpar episode by any standard, but by Grabthar’s Hammer, we’re going to dive in and find some things to appreciate about it.

Cosmic Boy (and Girl) Scouts: The basic premise of this episode is that Voyager is out exploring when it probably ought to be making a beeline for home. Shouldn’t they be taking their situation more seriously? These are good questions, and happily, this episode of Voyager asks them.

Watching Voyager now, it is impossible not to compare it to the 2004 Battlestar Galactica remake, which shares several major themes with Voyager: space travelers in truly desperate straits, fumbling toward a promised land while constantly hounded by enemies and plagued with resource shortages. Battlestar Galactica fully embraces this premise, centering many grim and gritty episodes around the brutal quest to stay alive while scrounging for fuel and supplies (and making painful moral compromises to do so).

Voyager, by contrast, regularly makes note of its dire circumstances but is nonetheless bright-eyed and even playful in tone. “The Cloud” is an episode in which, informed that Voyager has just lost 11% of its precious energy reserves, Janeway smirks at the camera and jokes that she might have to give up (replicated) coffee—and the credits roll. What gives?

One possibility is that Voyager is simply poorly executed, unable to commit to its central premise; and continually defaulting back to Next Generation-style stories. I suspect there is at least some truth in this. But “The Cloud” gives us another possible answer: you just can’t keep the Federation’s cheerful inquisitiveness down. Not even by stranding them on the other side of the galaxy.

In “The Cloud,” Janeway diverts Voyager from its homeward coarse to investigate the nebula because it’s there, and exploring cool space stuff is just what Federation ships do. Neelix, the voice of reason and audience-stand-in, demands to know why. Kes sums up the Federation in response:

“These people are natural born explorers, Neelix…. I think it’s wonderful. If I were captain, I’d open every crack in the universe and peek inside, just like Captain Janeway does.”

This is Star Trek, after all; and it’s worth noting that Voyager, following Deep Space Nine’s foray into the grittier corners of the Star Trek setting, is making an obvious effort to return to the franchise’s bold-space-explorers roots. And I’m actually glad “The Cloud” establishes this, because it will keep me from grumping too much in future episodes every time Voyager doesn’t seem to be trying that hard to get home. They’re 50% lost and desperate, and 50% having the time of their lives exploring uncharted territory.

The holodeck: the holodeck makes an appearance here, and in true Star Trek fashion, it’s used (by Paris) to recreate a dimly-lit bar populated by characters out of a Raymond Chandler novel. While this is not unexpected—Star Trek writers can’t get enough of this kind of setting, and to be sure, it’s fun—one can’t help but wonder why somebody doesn’t try using the holodeck to create more exotic settings and scenarios. At any rate, the holodeck scenes in “The Cloud” are pretty excrutiating, but it’s the holodeck. The holodeck is fun, and besides, we can’t be more than a few episodes away from the holodeck malfunctioning and trapping Tuvok and Paris in pretend 1943 Chicago and meeting FDR or something. That’s going to be great!

Star Trek and religion: I won’t go into all of the encounters Janeway has while trying to get to know the crew better, but there’s one I want to point out: Chakotay introduces Janeway to Native American religious practices by encouraging her to perform a ritual to seek out a spirit animal guide. I was genuinely unsure what to make of this scene in which Janeway sits down—with schoolgirlish excitement and none of the excessive gravitas that usually accompanies religious experience in sci-fi television—to experience the ritual.

There are some interesting things here, particularly Chakotay’s mention that modern science has figured out how to induce religious visions in the way that hallucinogenic substances once did. I’m not going to try and delve into Star Trek’s approach to religion in this episode recap. But let’s reserve this topic for a future conversation: Star Trek is kind of weird about religion. I am 100% certain future episodes will be weird about religion, so we’ll just look forward to exploring this subject more later.

Final verdict: Eh. Like many Star Trek plots, the main story of “The Cloud” has the core of a neat idea but winds up being a bit silly (the “let’s heal this nebula with some space stitches” sequence is not a high point in Star Trek storytelling). The rest of the episode is scattered, cheery filler material, with some scenes working and others not. But “The Cloud” does succeed in communicating the general timbre of Voyager.