Star Trek has always found great strength in the episodic format. Sure, the classic shows all dabbled in serialized elements, and some of them excelled in those elements the further they played with them, like Deep Space Nine did in its back half. There’s a reason that, when Trek was revitalized for the streaming age in a predominantly serialized form, fans bristled (and then turned to point at modern examples that leaned into bucking that trend, like Strange New Worlds, as a “return to form”). For generations, Trek has prided itself on that episodic nature, that you can tune in at any point in a season, in a series, watch an adventure, and get out, and you’ve had everything you’ve needed—and hopefully got a killer story along the way.
It might be fair for many people to say, then, that episodic storytelling is where Star Trek is at its best. But sometimes those disparate selves, even in the classic heyday of the franchise, could brush up against each other and create interesting, and occasionally frustrating, friction, and Voyager was perhaps one of the greatest examples of that in the ’90s ouevre. Its broader premise of a ship and crew stranded on the other side of the galaxy, 70 years’ travel away from Earth, creates fascinating questions that thrive in serialized elements—the impact on the crew and their relationship with each other, the scarcity of resources, the very act of sustaining a starship in a landscape where technology and attitudes might be radically different to what is known in Federation space.
But it was also a show about getting in, more often than not in the early days scanning an anomaly of the week, and getting out, just in time for it all to happen again next time. Even with those serialized elements hanging over its scenario and setting, Voyager, perhaps even more than TNG and DS9, was staunch in its championing of the episodic format that Trek had always embraced—even if it ultimately meant it’s a show where quality could veer wildly from week to week. Sometimes, however, it too could have its cake and eat it, like it did 30 years ago today with the broadcast of “Prime Factors,” the ninth episode of its first season.
The episode at large has an intriguing premise. Voyager finds itself crossing paths with an amicable advanced civilization, the Sikarians, who crave pleasure, and rejoice at the opportunity to lavish strange new travelers with gifts and samples of their idyllic society. But when the crew discovers the Sikarians have space-folding transporter technology that could either significantly reduce their journey home, or eliminate it entirely—as well as strict laws that forbid the sharing of such technology, not unlike an equivalent of the Prime Directive—friction begins to emerge, not just between Voyager and Sikarian leadership, but between parties on Voyager itself and elements of Sikarian society who think a deal could be made to trade for the technology regardless of their leader’s wishes.
This all climaxes when, as Voyager prepares to leave the Sikarians behind, a group of the crew decide to go rogue and make the trade: Voyager‘s library, full of new stories the Sikarians crave, in exchange for a sample of the transporter device. At first, the ideological divide is unsurprising; the effort is spearheaded by B’Elanna Torres and a group of other ex-Maquis crew, who protest that Janeway’s Starfleet standards are getting in the way of a chance to get home. But they and the audience alike are surprised when they are aided in the trade by Tuvok, Voyager‘s staunchest rules-stickler and Captain Janeway’s closest confidant.
But again, this is an episodic story, and it’s nine episodes into Voyager‘s journey. They’re not going to get home, and “Prime Factors” knows it, but it plays with the idea. Tuvok makes the trade, but the tech doesn’t fully integrate into Voyager‘s systems, and it nearly destroys the ship in the process of trying to use it. Things don’t just go bad, they go about as near to catastrophic as they could be. That’s not surprising. But what is, is what’s next: an absolutely incredible scene, when Janeway orders Tuvok and Torres into her office to see who claims responsibility for disobeying her orders. First, Torres attempts to fall on the sword, but Tuvok won’t allow it, revealing to a stunned Janeway that it was he who made the trade, operating on the Vulcan logic that he could take on the ethical and moral quandary instead of leaving Janeway herself to be plagued by it.
And Kate Mulgrew just kills it in response. The expected fury is there when she dresses down B’Elanna, filled with a bitter disappointment that builds on their burgeoning relationship, so soon after she’d just made the controversial decision to have Torres be Chief Engineer. Although Janeway doesn’t ever break out into full-on shouting, she practically growls every word she can in Torres’ direction, raising her voice just enough to let you know she means business. It’s arguably the most fearsome she’s been in the show so far, and yet it’s just as equally arguable that what comes next is even more fearsome, when she dismisses Torres and turns to Tuvok.
The anger is no longer there on the surface, trading a melancholy softness to extoll the lengths to which she feels the betrayal of not just her most trusted senior officer, but one of her only true friends on Voyager. The look on Janeway’s face as Tuvok explains his logical view of the situation to here, as well as his frank estimation of the punishment he should face, is absolute heartbreak, even if Mulgrew never goes as far to allow her voice to do more than emit a tremble to show the grief Janeway feels. The scene ends—the whole episode ends—in this uneasy space where both Janeway and Tuvok alike feel like their relationship has been irrevocably changed by this moment, that their trust has been broken, and could one day be rebuilt, but is in this moment raw and volatile. They can carry on with a reprimand as Captain and Security Chief, but whether or not they can carry on as confidants, as friends, is up in the air?
It’s so good, but again, the next time we see them in the very next episode, everything is fine. Everything has to be. Star Trek: Voyager is an episodic show, after all. All that tension, that heartbreak, those questions, it has to fade into nothing so we can pick ourselves up and carry on with the status quo. There’s a frustration there, to be sure—that the show had something with so much potential, that it executed on so well, and it ultimately can’t matter. There’s a fascinating thought experiment to imagine what it would’ve been like if we had been allowed to see the ramifications of this relationship’s breakdown play out over weeks of stories, seasons even. But that is just not what kind of show Voyager is.
And yet maybe there’s something in that, that allowed us to get a moment as great as the final scene in “Prime Factors” is. Would a serialized show as early in its run as Voyager was here threaten to radically alter one of the most important relationships on the series so soon? Were the choices made here emboldened by the fact that this divide, this emotional rift, only had to exist within the context of this one scene, and the performances could go all out knowing that it was all going to dissipate off-screen?
Whatever the reason for it, we got it anyway—and in getting it we saw a glimpse of what Voyager could be at its very best.
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