Star Trek: Voyager Counterpoint (1995–2001) Online

If you haven't seen this episode, then don't read this until you have.

Voyager has fallen into a Dismal Routine. In traveling through "Devore" space they are subjected to unexpected and continuous "inspections" by huge Devore warships.

The Devore are your typical Cardassian-Style Xenophobic race, but with this added phobia: They don't like Telepaths. So the trick is, where do you hide Tuvok, Vorick and a bunch of "Brenari" house-guests?

The Transporter Pattern Buffers might be a good place to start. But continuous use of this trick has one unfortunate side-effect, it is killing Tuvok, Vorick and the Brenari guests.

Each Time the Devore visit Voyager, their commander "Kashyk" (Mark Harelik, "Dr Eric" from "Big Bang Theory") beams himself into Janeway's Waiting Room and starts playing Tchaikovsky or Mahler or some other piece of music. Alongside him is his trusty Stormtrooper "Prax" (J. Patrick McCormack- He was the Non-Female Romulan Commander in "Star Trek: Nemesis"). The two are a counterpoint in themselves, while Prax rigidly follows Devore protocol, Kashyk seems to be trying to be pleasant. Good cop, bad cop?

The idea was for Voyager to meet a Brenali Transport vessel, but the rendezvous points keep getting changed.

Then a remarkable thing happens, Kashyk shows up in a scout ship and asks asylum. claiming defection. He even knows all about Janeway hiding the Telepaths in the transporter buffer, he could have busted them previously but didn't - Does this mean he can be trusted?

With his help Janeway tracks down a scientist named "Torat" (Randy Lowell) who is a little reluctant to help them locate an Interspatial Flexure (ie, a Wormhole). Torat does great things with his nose when he gets frustrated.

Basically it's the interaction between Janeway and Kashyk that has this episode. Should this guy be trusted? I wouldn't. But Janeway seems to take him at his word, but puts Security guards on him just in case.

Torat gives them a clue to find the "Interspatial Flexure" and between Kashyk and Janeway they figure out how to find it, and open it to escape this crappy region of space with Brenali Telepaths in tow. Kashyk even tells Janeway how to find the Devore's Cloaked Ships, and even how they do it.

Unfortunately, when passing a Devore Scanning Beacon, their Warp Drive reacts, setting off the alarm. They now have 11 hours to get to where the Wormhole is supposed to show up next, before the Devore come inspecting.

True to form, Kashyk makes an excuse to go back to the Warships, but he had agreed to keep up the subterfuge and make a quick inspection.

This is not what happens at all when the warships arrive. For one thing, why was Prax on the Warship, unless this was all planned?

Who is fooling who and how and why?

In fact Kashyk plays along up to the point where Janeway reveals the location of the Flexure, and then all of his colors come back, that's what he was looking for in the first place, cos too many would be victims were escaping through it with the help of Torat.

Janeway changes her tune as well as the tune Kashyk had started playing in her Waiting Room. Even while Kashyk is "Destroying" the wormhole, Prax opens the pattern buffers. All he finds are crates full of bananas. I sure hope Tuvok and Vorick were hiding in one of them, because nobody explains exactly where he and Vorick were during this last inspection. And all Kashyk finds where the wormhole was supposed to be is nothing at all but some antimatter particles.

Needless to say, the Brenali (Not to be confused with the Brunali, the race of Icheb) escape to the Wormhole using the Devore's own cloaking tech, as well as two Voyager shuttles, a gift from Janeway.

This was in fact one of the best Season 5 episodes, less emphasis was put on gimmicks and effects and more on it's relational aspects. I had to dissect it to review it, due to its complexity.

What is shown here is exactly how Janeway's mind works, this is a Janeway episode pure in its form. And she's not so bad with this type of conundrum, this is what she excels at.

I still want to know where Tuvok and Vorick were hiding. And I saw one more female Vulcan Crewoman in season six or seven, she's not mentioned or shown here. Tsk Tsk!

In this episode Voyager and her crew are passing through space controlled by a race called the Devore, these people are highly suspicious of any race that has telepathic powers and stop Voyager and search it several times. This means those crew members with a degree of telepathy must hide in the transporter system while the searches take place. Not only are four crew members hiding there are also a group of telepathic refuges. Shortly after one of the inspections Voyager is approached by a single Devore ship with just one person aboard; the chief inspector. He tells Capt. Janeway that he knows that she has telepaths on board and how she is hiding them but he isn't trying to catch them but to defect. Of course it takes a while for the captain to come to trust him but eventually it appears she believes him and accepts his help in looking for a wormhole which appears at regular intervals but not always at the same point. When the ship is spotted by a Devore scanning array the inspector says he will return to his fleet and make sure any inspection is brief... now Janeway will learn whether she was right to trust him or not.

I found this to be a fairly gripping throughout and until the very end I hadn't determined whether Inspector Kashyk was genuine or just using Voyager to find the worm hole. His interest in classical music added to his character too and helped him get closer to the captain in a believable way.

This is one of my favorite episodes of the series!

An early scene starts off with Mahler's Symphony No. 1, a digression from the usual background music of Trek, rightly so - as it plays a key role in the unfolding story. We hear an example of "counterpoint": counter-melodies playing against one another. This sets the stage for the rest of the episode.

Voyager is ungraciously inspected by the Devore, a xenophobic race determined to eradicate the presence of telepaths in their territory. As Voyager inevitably needs to travel through their space en route home, they reluctantly submit to inspectors, while the pompous Devore commander, Kashyk, adds insult to injury by blasting Mahler through Voyager's communication system.

Breaking the Prime Directive yet following a moral compass, Voyager harbors fugitive telepaths (as well as their own telepathic crew members) in a suspended transport system. They disappear during each inspection, but cannot do this much longer due to health issues that result.

Following an inspection, Commander Kashyk returns alone and requests asylum from Voyager. He's had a change of heart, as his conscience cannot further handle the totalitarian eradication of telepaths.

Captain Janeway expresses great doubt at first, but her iciness gradually melts towards Kashyk as the two work intimately to find a wormhole where the telepaths can escape. As they try to solve the puzzle of locating the wormhole with Tchaikovsky playing in the background, the counterpoint of the music leads them to find the solution.

As the episode later reveals, Captain Janeway and Commander Kashyk are counterpoints themselves, two leaders who play against each other - not through phasers but through wits. Their tension occurs on multiple levels: sexuality, trust, and power. In the end, Kashyk is revealed to be untrustworthy after all, so they are destined to remain rival counterpoints. However, Janeway prevails in typical form: open-hearted yet cunning, and unafraid to bite with her humor.

As her victory is revealed, she has the computer play Mahler's Symphony No. 1, the same piece that Kashyk used at the beginning of the episode to display his power. Embarrassed and angry, yet with hints of softness and play, Kashyk lets the ship go and gives her the victory, saying, "Well played, Captain."

In a series filled with blasts and boobs that are larger than life, I appreciate this more subtle battle, with captains that mix enmity with intimacy and play. The music is used in a novel way and serves as a wonderful metaphor too.

The untrustworthiness of Kashyk also reflects upon the sadness of Devore culture. Unable to trust or be trusted, they see harmless telepaths as mortal enemies. The moments of Kashyk's humanity that peak through his manipulation and bombastic voice (PRAX!) give me a soft spot for the enemy. This is another nice touch to an overall enjoyable episode!

When the show begins, an incredibly obnoxious group of Devore inspectors are rooting about Voyager looking for something--but you aren't sure what. During this search, these people act a lot like bullies and it's obvious that they are jerks. After they leave, you learn that this race HATES telepaths and they hunt them down and put them in concentration camps. During this inspection, there were a group of these telepaths as well as some telepathic crew members (such as the Vulcans) and they hid them inside the transporter buffer. Once they were brought back, the plan was to get them to safety as soon as possible--but considering how nasty the Devore are, there are bound to be more inspections. But using the buffer repeatedly could end up killing these telepaths.

The solution to their problem MIGHT have just arrived as Inspector Kashyk (the man who had led the inspection) shows up bit later and says he wants to defect. He claims that he hates how his people persecute the telepaths. Additionally, he seems to have taken a real shine to the Captain. So what's next? See the show.

This is a pretty good episode. I do wish that Kashyk had become a recurring character or they'd expanded the romance more, but apart from that it's worth seeing.

Remember the movie, "The Sting," and what happens to those who get too cocky. Well, we are treated to a couple of strong characters who find themselves sparring, ducking and weaving. A group of space bullies stop ships and "inspect" them with the purpose of finding something amiss and confiscating the ship and putting the crew on a prison colony. They must acquiesce or they will not survive. Voyager has a group of refugees on board who are looking for a wormhole and they become a target. Well crafted episode. Quite entertaining.

It seems there's a planet of extreme xenophobes who feel duty-bound to capture them and do goodness what else to them. But one of the inspectors doesn't feel that way, and when he approaches Capt. Janeway and tells her he wishes to defect the two form an alliance, however uneasy, and the two work with the Voyager crew to find a wormhole through which two families, all of whom are telepathic, can escape. (These fugitives would probably find a warm welcome on Vulcan where just about everybody has this ability.) As the story progresses we find everything, including humor---there's a scene where an army of those xenophobes overrun several decks, including Cargo Bay #1, and open up a number of crates and barrels to find---vegetables! I had a good laugh about this. Finally the problem is resolved as the two families of telepaths escape through the wormhole, and the fraidy-cat Devorans have something to think about. Incidentally---the inspector who succeeds in defecting is named Kashyk, which sounds like a variant of a Vulcan word "kashek", which means "the mind"---as in the phrase "wuh tepul t'wuh kashek" which translates as "the power of the mind". I wonder if he was a closet telepath himself? Anyway, a good story---and again, a lesson to be learned.