Star Trek Voyager: Nemesis

"Sometimes people say terrible things about their enemies, to make them seem worse than they really are."

Chakotay crashes yet another shuttlecraft and once again gets dragged into an existing conflict on an alien planet.

All of our TV reviews are full of spoilers, but this episode does revolve around a twist ending so just as a reminder – spoilers ahead!

Nemesis is an Ancient Greek goddess and she was in charge of making sure people got what they deserved. You know when people say "have the day you deserve"? That was her job! So, just like that phrase, she could in theory be a positive force, but more often brought negative consequences or took vengeance alongside the Eumenides, or Furies, the goddesses of vengeance. Nemesis is also the title of a very good episode of Miss Marple (the 1980s/1990s version, not the newer one) and, naturally, the book it's based on, which is where I first heard of the concept!

This episode uses the word for "enemy," which doesn't really match the concept, but it sort of works. This is also part of something I absolutely love about this episode; the way the writer Kenneth Biller (who wrote 35 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager as well as 'Eve,' one of my favourite episodes of The X-Files) uses unusual vocabulary choices to convey the idea of an alien language being automatically translated. Everything is comprehensible as English, but using word choices that don't reflect idiomatic English language uses in any of the countries where English is the dominant language – for example, "fathom" instead of "understand," "glimpse" instead of "see" or "look," "nullifed" instead of "dead" or "killed," "new light" instead of "dawn," and so on. This beautifully reflects real life languages and the way the literal meaning of a common expression changes across languages (for example, in ancient Greek and Latin, you would say you "saw" a dream rather than you "had" a dream). It totally makes sense that an AI translation programme like a universal translator would translate phrases like this a bit more literally than a human who understands their context better – the only problem is that it makes you realise the translator should in theory be doing that all the time, including between crew members on the ship speaking different languages like Neelix or Kes!

This episode basically revolves around the final reveal, or rather the two-thirds-of-the-way-through reveal; the terrible enemy Voyager's crew have been worried about in their search for Chakotay is, in fact, the human-looking people Chakotay has been fighting for, and the monstrous-looking "nemesis" Chakotay has been fighting are the ones helping Voyager find him. Another kick in the teeth for Chakotay is added at the end, when it turns out almost none of what happened to him was real. The moment when Tuvok leads him back into the village and he sees people who were supposedly massacred back in place and repeating the same lines they fed to him the first time is properly chilling.

This episode has a lot to say about important issues, and is one of several Star Trek episodes that has only become more scary with the rise of generative AI in the real world. The episode touches on at least four key themes at once – the Othering, as academics would call it, of the enemy in propaganda (making out that the enemy is a monster and focusing on physical difference); the tendency to side with people who look like us and be automatically more suspicious of people who don't; brain-washing, the deliberate manipulation of someone to serve one's own ends, and (perhaps accidentally) the very serious threat posed by convincing deepfakes.

The problem with this episode is that it's just... kinda dull! Like, yes, the climax is quite something, and it's carefully and thoughtfully put together. But it's so busy being about Big Important Themes that it's not all that entertaining, and it's especially dull on a re-watch, when you know that none of what Chakotay is experiencing is real, anyway. Unlike some other episodes of Star Trek in which characters experience other culture's memories, this isn't an echo of something real, it's pure propaganda, so once you've seen the episode once, it's pretty much impossible to feel invested in it. There's nothing bad about the episode exactly, it's just not one I ever feel particularly inclined to re-watch.

Bits and pieces

– It's absolutely ages before we see anyone except Chakotay and the Aliens of the Week in this episode, which is quite an effective choice, as it makes us feel his isolation without regular check-ins with the ship.

– Chakotay nearly shooting Tuvok is a pretty good scene too, and showing him literally seeing and hearing Tuvok as an alien because he's been so brainwashed is a cool visual.

– Chakotay's visceral reaction to the alien on Voyager and his final line about how hard it is to stop hating is well done as well.

– Shuttlecraft count: Chakotay crashes yet another shuttle, and given it's lost somewhere in the middle of a war zone, although they can locate it, it doesn't look like it gets recovered.

Shuttlecraft lost: 8
Shuttlecraft count: -6

Quotes

The Doctor: They had you so mixed up, they could have convinced you your own mother was a turnip.

Chakotay: I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start.

There's so much that's really *good* about this episode, and yet, the experience of watching it is just a bit... dull. Three out of four really cool bits of alien vocabulary.

Juliette Harrisson is a writer and content creator. Check out her books here, or her Patreon here.

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