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 BBS: Tesla's Tower 5 BBS
Date: 09-27-97 (13:03)             Number: 18
From: JAY P. HAILEY                Refer#: NONE
  To: ALL                           Recvd: NO
Subj: Nemesis Opinion                Conf: (18) Trek
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Spoiler for "Nemesis"
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        Summary:  Chakotay is stranded on a planet where a war is
 happening between human-like people and "predator" looking aliens.  At
 first resisting, Chakotay finds himself drawn into the conflict,
 identifying with the human like people.  Several incidents of violence
 and cruelty convince Chakotay that the "predator" looking aliens are
 really bad people.  Chakotay elects to fight along side the natives.
        Meanwhile Captain Janeway has made contact with the aliens who
 agree to help her find Chakotay.
        Tuvok develops a plan to find and recover Chakotay.
        During Chakotay's first battle as a willing participant against
 the aliens, Chakotay is approached by soldiers of the aliens who call
 him by name and ask him to surrender and be returned to Voyager.
 Chakotay, filled with hatred because of the cruel acts of the aliens
 keeps firing.
        One of the soldiers appraoches Chakotay and eventually manages
 to convince Chakotay to listen.  As the soldier talks before Chakotay
 he slowly fades into Tuvok.
        The punch line here is that the human-like people have brain
 washed Chakotay into hating the aliens.  None of what Chakotay
 experienced up until the final battle was real.  The rest was all the
 brainwashing techniques of the human-like people.  Chakotay begins to
 get free of their influence but still reacts with hatred to the alein
 ambassador who helped the Voyager recover him.
        My Take:  This episode was a wondeful set up.  The use of
 language for the human-like people was especially clever and neat.
        But the punch lime was a total, lame, weak cop-out.
        The analogy to Viet Nam is plain and clear at the outset.  An
 idea that might have been relevant:  In wartime, who the good guys and
 bad guys are is largely a matter of perspective.  It depends on where
 you are standing at the time.
        To use the viet nam analogy to question who Chakotay saw as good
 guys and bad guys would have made a wonderful story.  I.E.  give *both*
 sides a compelling reason to be fighting the war.
        In what we saw someone had to have a white hat and someone had
 to have a black hat.  It was just a matter of trying to fool us about
 who it was.
        I was terribly dissapointed by this episode.  It had some good
 stuff in it, but the end just didn't live up to it.
        That's my opinion anyway.
Jay 
 * OLX 2.1 TD * "Um, l-look, if we build this large wooden badger..."
 * OLX 2.1 TD * "Today is a good day to die." - An apache warrior proverb
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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