I was watching Voyager’s season 6 Halloween episode The Haunting Of Deck Twelve again the other day. Okay, so it aired in May originally… but it sure felt like a Halloween episode.
It’s a good little episode too, a neatly told story-within-a-story where Neelix comforts those wacky Borg kids when the lights go out. He tells them a fairy tale that’s true: Voyager entered a nebula and accidentally destroyed it. But they also picked up a stowaway while they were there, an energy creature that lived in the nebula and proceeded to take over the ship since it needed a new home.
Like most fairy tales, it’s really a bit of a horror story that Neelix tells these kids. The kids get a little scared before he tucks them back into their regeneration chambers that night, but they may have pleasant dreams regardless. It’s cute, fun, and while it may not be a standout episode, it’s still a good one. It also features Voyager screwing up by destroying a creature’s habitat. At least they sort it out in the end, partly because it’s the right thing to do, although mainly because their lives are at stake. Regardless, they fixed the problem and the story has a happy ending.
But this isn’t about that episode, or at least not really. It’s about Harry Kim, Wesley Crusher… and me.
Harry Kim gives the evacuation order in the mess hall at one stage of that episode, clearly showing the command capabilities that made him get promoted time and time again… wait, hang on… what? He was on board Voyager for seven years, was almost always on duty and took part in most of the away missions. We saw others get promoted, so why not him? Honestly, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t really matter here anyway. I’m just amazed that with a mess hall full of other crewmembers, many probably senior in rank, that he’s the one who gave the orders. Whatever happened to the chain of command?
A little later on, he drops an even bigger verbal bomb, and it’s one that many characters have made in one way or another at some point. He bumps into Bajoran officer Tal Celes, who’s as cute as a button and should have featured in far more episodes than she did. She’s jumpy by nature, and freaks out about what’s happening on board the ship. Then Kim drops his bomb: “Trust me… there are no aliens roaming the corridors.”
Is it just me or does that sound a little wrong? He’s chatting to a Bajoran. A Vulcan and a Talaxian are on board, B’Elanna is half-Klingon, Naomi Wildman is half-Ktarian, there are those Borg kids… actually, the crew is full of aliens. There are lots of aliens, especially if you consider that, to another species, humans are aliens too. Hmm. I know he didn’t really mean it in a weird way, and saying, “Trust me… there are no peculiar foreign lifeforms that snuck aboard the ship now roaming the corridors” would have taken too long.
But Harry, Harry, Harry… didn’t you learn anything from your run-in with Quark on Deep Space Nine? You’ve got to figure out a better way to say things. Chekov got a fair tongue-lashing
from the Klingons about his use of the term inalienable human rights. Why, the way Harry said it, it almost sounds like he views aliens as evil in general. I know he doesn’t, of course it wasn’t meant in that way, but sometimes words are misinterpreted easily.
Then there’s Wesley Crusher.
I have a confession to make: I like Wesley Crusher. Yes, I know, you can get out your torches and pitchforks later, but hear me out first. Wesley evolved as a character probably more than any other on The Next Generation. I’m not kidding. He grew up before our eyes, from the kid who could do no wrong to the young man who made mistakes, learned from them, and finally took a stand for something he believed in. Picard became a nicer guy over the years, Worf figured out his place in the universe, and Data figured out those pesky emotions… but Wesley, he really grew up, both in age and as a person.
The problem is that he started out as that kid, the know-it-all, Cousin Oliver with a Mensa I.Q. He was a nerd. Hey, I’m a nerd and even I didn’t like him early on. I’ve heard him referred to as the Jar-Jar Binks of the Star Trek universe but that’s not true. Maybe he was at first, but over time I really began to appreciate him. Back in those early days though, he was a nerd in a bad way, and that’s just wrong. No, being a nerd isn’t wrong… but my thinking like that is.
Like I said, I’m a nerd. A large part of my life revolves around books and movies, TV shows and pop culture. I’m the guy who complains when comic book movies veer off too much from the source material. I’m the guy who says “Live long and prosper” and makes the Vulcan hand salute. I’m the guy who had a bobble-head Darth Vader on my bookcase, right next to my TARDIS, my cardboard cut-out Spock and my toy DeLorean with a licence plate that reads OUTATIME. I’m a nerd, so who am I to pass judgment on Wesley?
The bigger irony is that he’s on board a ship full of nerds. Even the most junior officers on board the Enterprise have degrees in astrophysics, engineering or quantum mechanics. When Wesley invents a tractor beam for a science project and Geordi doesn’t find it all that impressive, you know you’re on a ship full of brainiacs. Since Geordi covered basic warp theory back in high school, that means even the average kid in the future is… well, probably smarter than us. Odds are, even Mister Mott the barber could probably fix a faulty replicator.
Why, those characters in Star Trek, they’re all nerds! But that’s okay, because we’re nerds too. Wesley was definitely a nerd roaming the corridors, yet I and others have picked on him a bit for being one. Why would we pick him out as being different? Suddenly, Harry Kim picking on an alien when surrounded by aliens, and being one himself… well, maybe it’s something many of us do all the time without even realising it.
I’m not a fan of political correctness, because it can easily go too far. Like I said, some things can be misinterpreted. But I do like tact, and I like it when people think before they speak. Sometimes I don’t think though, and I’ll say something I maybe should have phrased better. I’m not alone in that. Harry Kim certainly makes that mistake, several times. So does Chekov. And Kirk. And… well, just about everyone in Star Trek, and in real life too.
That’s not to say we can’t try just a little bit harder though, by watching what we say… and maybe being a bit more understanding when someone says something they really didn’t mean.
