Does anybody remember the season 6 episode of Voyager called Alice? There had been several movie “homages” done in some of the episodes prior, from the clumsy Alien-style episode Juggernaut to the surprisingly beautiful My Fair Lady-inspired Someone To Watch Over Me, but let’s face it, Alice really pushed the boundaries as they ripped off Stephen King’s classic horror story Christine. Not that it was bad. It just wasn’t that great, and if you read King’s book or saw John Carpenter’s movie adaptation of it, then it was almost pointless.
The story involves Voyager finding a cosmic junkyard where Tom Paris finds a small single-seat ship that he takes a shine to. Voyager barters for other items, but Paris really wants this one. We know that he loves being a pilot, and indeed anything to do with ships in general. We know he likes to fix things too, like old classic cars. He wants this ship, although later it’s explained that he tends to obsess over things for a while before abandoning them. That’s just his nature.
Of course, it all goes horribly wrong and it turns out that the ship’s artificial intelligence system is crazier than a psycho-ex, and makes Tom go off the rails a bit. Before you know it he’s dressing like a boy-band member and growing a beard, both clear signs that he’s in need of a visit from the Doctor.
The weird thing during negotiations he convinces Chakotay to get Voyager to cough up some items to trade, and he also trades in his beloved jukebox. Of course, we saw him listening to his prized old Wurlitzer back in… hang on, what?! Maybe I missed an episode here and there, but I don’t remember actually seeing it before. We know that he didn’t have it when he came on board (I doubt he checked into the penal colony with it), and so the only logical answer is that he replicated it.
That’s what the Memory Alpha site says too. I don’t know how many replicator rations he saved to get it, but it must have cost a lot. It’s strange really, I can imagine Tom being many things, but thrifty isn’t one of them. Look at the amount of times we see him on the holodeck. Even before he spent his spare time playing Captain Proton or fixing holographic cars, he’d be spending countless hours at Sandrine’s Bar. He uses rations faster than a Ferengi with no lobes loses his gold-pressed latinum.
In the following episode, Riddles, Tuvok listens to some swing jazz that he got from Tom. We know that the ship has a pretty impressive database of music, and that Tom has some digital download compilations already negates the idea of him even needing a jukebox. Of course, it’s probably not about the music itself but instead that he has an actual, physical item of his own. His sense of loss at having to give it up is a little odd though, since he can simply replicate another given his apparently infinite rations.
I like that Tom has, or had, a jukebox. I like jukeboxes, they’re wonderful and nostalgic, and are both beautiful and functional. I just wish that we’d seen it before, so that we could have enjoyed the idea that he even owns one. I can understand Tom’s loss though, because we all have items that we feel sentimental about, regardless of their monetary worth. In Star Trek, it’s Sisko’s baseball, Kirk’s medals, Picard’s copy of Shakespeare or Data’s holographic crystal of Tasha Yar. That last item for me still points to Data’s emotional capacity even before he got his emotion chip.
For us in the real world it could be an old family photo, an item of jewellery, a book, even an old teddy bear. It may be something we use every day, or something we just keep on a shelf and mostly ignore until we spot it again and are instantly reminded of just how special it is. If we’re lucky, it may be some people in our lives, too. They’re all emotional touchstones that remind us of who we really are. In a way, Star Trek is like that. We all have our favourite episodes, ones that we like for a personal reason, even if to others it just seemed average.
Alice isn’t one of my favourites. There are hundreds of better episodes of Star Trek for me. Tom’s magic jukebox though, that’s the one moment in the show that I can relate to, and I hope that he replicated another one. He deserves it, we all do.
