Nemesis (episode)

Chakotay is trapped on a planet where two species are fighting a genocidal war against each other.

Summary
Commander Chakotay is captured by the Vori when his shuttle is shot down during a scouting mission. They quickly decide he is not a threat to them and integrate him into their team. They tell Chakotay of the "Beast".

The Vori speak an odd language which Chakotay easily picks up. He also learns about their culture, specifically their burial rituals.

Meanwhile, the crew of USS Voyager is concerned about the fate of Chakotay on the planet's surface. They contact an ambassador and invite him to beam onto the ship in order to discuss how they can find Chakotay. When the ambassador arrives, it is revealed that the Voyager crew has been negotiating with the Kradin, not the Vori.

Chakotay goes through some basic training and his group sets off to meet a second group. When they arrive at the rendezvous point, they discover that the other group has been slaughtered and desecrated. The Kradin arrive and quickly kill most of Chakotay's group but he manages to escape to a nearby village. There he is greeted and treated as a hero by some Vori. He becomes friends with a young Vori girl named Karya.

Lieutenant Tuvok suggests that he should go down to the planet to search for Chakotay on his own, despite Lt. jg Tom Paris's objections. Tuvok will join a commando group from the Kradin to expedite his search for Chakotay.

The next day the Vori village is attacked by the Kradin and most of the villagers, including Penno (the grandfather of Karya), are marched off to extermination centers. This enrages Chakotay and he attacks the Kradin Commandant but is easily overpowered. The villagers seem doomed.

After managing to escape, Chakotay is approached by a single Kradin and almost shoots him but he discovers that the Kradin is actually Tuvok. Tuvok then leads him back to the village, where Chakotay is greeted by the people who should have been exterminated earlier that day and in a scene that was nearly identical to his first experience there.

Back on Voyager, The Doctor reveals that Chakotay has undergone extensive psychological conditioning and training to hate the Kradin. Everything he had experienced up to that day had been an illusion as part of the training. Apparently, risking his life to attack a Kradin officer was enough to promote him to active duty in the Vori's conditioning. One of the Kradin ambassadors enters sickbay to talk to Chakotay, but Chakotay says nothing and after a tense, angry silence storms out of the room. In the hallway Chakotay remarks to Janeway, "I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start."

Log Entries

 * Captain's log, stardate 51082.4. After searching for more than two days, we finally located what's left of Commander Chakotay's shuttle. I can only hope the commander has fared better than his vessel. 


 * Captain's log, stardate 51096.5. Although Lieutenant Tuvok has managed to bring Commander Chakotay safely back to the ship, it may be some time before his psychological wounds are fully healed. 

Memorable Quotes
"How is he?"

"Nullified."
 * - Chakotay and Rafin, after Namon was shot

"Don't make me kill you!"
 * - Chakotay, while holding a rifle aimed at a Kradin

"If we greet the nemesis in the trunks, you'll fire like the rest. As long as you're with us, you do my tellings. Fathom?"

"Fathom."
 * - Brone and Chakotay

"Motherless beast!"
 * - Chakotay, as he repeatedly punches the Kradin Commandant

"From the condition of your hypothalamus, I'd say they had you so mixed up they could have convinced you your own mother was a turnip."
 * - The Doctor, to Chakotay

"I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start."
 * - Chakotay

"You are a scientist, an explorer. You are not a killer."
 * - Tuvok, to Chakotay

Title, Story and Language

 * This episode had the working title "The Recruit". The episode's ultimately-used title (along with ) would later serve as the subtitle of one of the Next Generation motion pictures (namely, ).
 * During the first day of production on this episode, executive producer Jeri Taylor stated, "It's a story about how people can be taught to hate, about propaganda, and about how wars can come out of a conscious attempt to impose hate in people. It's one of those stories that is supposed to make you think a little bit." (Star Trek Monthly issue 31, p. 14) Writer Kenneth Biller himself remarked, "We set out to explore the whole nature of propaganda." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)
 * The Vori language seems strange, but it merely substitutes various words with lesser-known synonyms (e.g., "glimpses" instead of "sees" or "eyes"). Referencing the medieval author, Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew commented about the Vori's vernacular, "Almost Chaucerian, they speak in what is like Old English." (Star Trek Monthly issue 32, p. 9) Regarding the creation of this communication style, Ken Biller commented, "I tried to create an interesting language for the aliens. Our aliens either sound too human or they sound kind of hokey, and it's tough to find a balance. I decided to try to do something that was more stylized, where the language itself became part of the indoctrination, so that they spoke differently than our people do, and Chakotay began to speak with their language as he became more and more indoctrinated into this culture." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)
 * This episode's final draft script was submitted on.

Cast and Characters

 * In the interview that Jeri Taylor gave on the first day of this episode's production period, Taylor noted that the installment presented an opportunity to remedy a feeling that the character of Chakotay (as played by Robert Beltran) was not utilized enough at the end of the previous season: "Chakotay is a wonderful character played by a wonderful actor and, in the second half of the [third] season, we didn't find enough good stuff for him to do. So we are addressing that early on this season with a very strong episode for him." (Star Trek Monthly issue 31, p. 14) Indeed, the episode so centrally features the character of Chakotay that Kate Mulgrew once described the installment (referring indirectly to the Vori) by stating, "'Nemesis' is just Robert Beltran alone, with a very bizarre species." (Star Trek Monthly issue 32, p. 9)
 * Kate Mulgrew had high hopes for this episode. She predicted, "It should be interesting." (Star Trek Monthly issue 32, p. 9)
 * Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) does not appear in this episode. It is the only episode, after she joined the cast of Star Trek: Voyager, in which she does not appear.

Production

 * This episode entered production early on a Thursday morning in June 1997. (Star Trek Monthly issue 31, p. 14)
 * Director Alexander Singer spent hours thinking about how to depict the episode's elaborate planet setting and how to overcome the related limitations. "We had to create a wooded forest that had many different aspects in both day and night," he recalled. "There were many scenes that each had to look special and different. I spent many hours studying the possibilities." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 119, p. 64)
 * Ultimately, Ken Biller was pleased with the creation of the planet's jungle environment. "We did two location days on that show (on the Warner Brothers backlot), and then built a great jungle set," Biller explained, "so you can't really tell what's on the stage and what's on location. (Production designer) Richard James did a really great job." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)
 * Make-up supervisor Michael Westmore was conscious of making the Kradin physically similar to Nausicaans (first seen in ). "The bad-looking good guys of ST:VOY's 'Nemesis', the Kradin, resembled the Nausicaans from ST:TNG but in a nastier way," Westmore commented, "with the mouth opened a little more and the hair not quite as beaded and braided." (Star Trek Monthly issue 42, pp. 82-83)
 * The Kradin uniforms were reuses of Mokra uniforms from the second season installment . (Delta Quadrant, p. 200)
 * The PADD that Karya gives to Chakotay, with a letter for her brother, Daryo, is a reuse of a PADD containing schematics for the Etanian Order starship, from the third season episode.
 * The Kradin and the Vori are armed with contemporary weapons. (Delta Quadrant, p. 200)
 * According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 200), the Kradin aircraft were s modified with CGI.

Continuity and Trivia

 * The makeup of the Kradin resembles not only that of the Nausicaans but also that of Fek'lhr (from ), as well as the aliens from the  movies, giving the Kradin an archetypal vicious and untrustworthy appearance despite their good intentions.
 * This is the third episode in a row wherein a Voyager shuttlecraft is lost. In, a shuttle is lost when Kes evolves; in , the Cochrane is destroyed by the Caatati; and here, Chakotay loses a third.

Reception

 * Jeri Taylor once enthusiastically described this episode as "a script by Kenneth Biller that I love." Taylor then said, "He's written it in a very interesting and original fashion." (Star Trek Monthly issue 31, p. 14) She also cited this episode as "one of the strongest" of "some very interesting [Chakotay] shows" in the series and went on to say, "I was terribly pleased with that." (Star Trek Monthly issue 36, pp. 12 & 13)
 * Ken Biller himself was very proud of this episode. Regarding the task of setting out to explore the issue of propaganda, Biller enthused, "[We] did it fairly successfully." Speaking more generally about the installment, he continued, "Disappointments with it were [that] I think we shouldn't have said at the end that everything was a simulation. It should have been clear that some of these other young soldiers were also being recruited in the same way that Chakotay was. 'Nemesis' was probably, of what I did, my favorite of the year. It came out really pretty well, and it had a good twist." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)
 * This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 4.5 million homes, and a 7% share.
 * Cinefantastique rated this episode 2 and a half out of 4 stars. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 80)
 * Star Trek Monthly scored this episode 3 out of 5 stars. (Star Trek Monthly issue 37, p. 61)
 * The unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 201) gives this installment a rating of 7 out of 10.

Video and DVD releases

 * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 4.2,.
 * As part of the VOY Season 4 DVD collection.

Main cast

 * Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway
 * Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay
 * Roxann Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres
 * Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris
 * Ethan Phillips as Neelix
 * Robert Picardo as The Doctor
 * Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok
 * Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim

Guest stars

 * Michael Mahonen as Brone
 * Matt E. Levin as Rafin
 * Nathan Anderson as Namon
 * Peter Vogt as Kradin Commandant
 * Booth Colman as Penno
 * Meghan Murphy as Karya

Co-stars

 * Terrence Evans as Treen
 * Marilyn Fox as Marna
 * Pancho Demmings as Kradin Soldier

Uncredited co-stars

 * Chuck Borden as a Kradin
 * George Cambio as a Vori soldier
 * Glenn Goldstein as a Vori soldier
 * Tom Morga as a Kradin
 * Brooke Stephens as Naomi Wildman (voice)
 * Egypt Thompson as a Vori soldier
 * Unknown performers as Vori villagers

Stunt double

 * David Balcorta as stunt double for Robert Beltran

Stand-ins

 * June Jordan - stand-in for Meghan Murphy