The Good: Works to develop Tuvok, Decent acting, Interesting enough plot
The Bad: Makes little sense for the character, Huge plot hole, Fundamentally goes nowhere.
The Basics: When all hope seems lost, Tuvok honestly considers a new romantic relationship in “Gravity.”
I like shows where the characters grow and develop. That is, of course, essential for keeping a series viable and worth watching. So, it is hard for me to gripe when a character develops, just in direction different from how I see reasonable. Then again, sometimes a show takes a risk that makes less sense for the character being “developed.” Tuvok, and other Vulcan characters in the Star Trek universe are tough characters to develop. After all, most of the Vulcans we see come to the series as fully-realized adults who are examples of their alien culture.
“Gravity” is one of the few episodes that focuses on Tuvok after the appearance of Seven Of Nine and loss of Kes. As much as I want to be thrilled by that and like that aspect of it, it has a fundamental character premise that is too difficult for me to buy into.
Opening in the past, a passionate young Tuvok visits a Vulcan elder who admits to having emotions, but not being controlled by them. Challenged by the elder, Tuvok begins his journey toward emotional control. Now, in the present, on a desert planet where a well-protected individual scavenges for food, a shuttle from Voyager crashes. Paris encounters the stranger, a woman, who takes his bag before she is attacked by two aliens. Tuvok rescues Noss and has Paris heal her wounds. They evade capture by the other aliens by traveling back to Noss’s ship and they manage to bring the EMH back online.
Able to communicate through the Doctor, Paris and Tuvok learn that Noss has been on the planet for fourteen seasons, surviving on spiders. Noss begins to develop an obvious attraction to Tuvok and Paris declares that he sees Tuvok reciprocates some of those feelings. Voyager, outside the anomaly, where the three crewmembers are stranded, encounters Supervisor Yost and his people who are working to close the anomaly. With time moving much faster on the planet inside the anomaly, Tuvok and Paris spend months on the planet, with Tuvok working hard to keep Noss from feeling love for him. As Voyager mounts a rescue effort, the Away Team finds themselves under siege by aliens on the planet.
On M*A*S*H, Captain B.J. Hunnicut was a married surgeon who, as the Korean War wore on, had his marriage challenged multiple times. In the early episodes, he kept the lines very clear. But, in the later seasons, there were virtually identical episodes where Hunnicut was tempted and did not give in and then another where he was tempted and quietly succumbed to the woman he was attracted to. “Gravity” is a similar concept for Star Trek: Voyager and with Tuvok, it is a significantly harder “sell.”
The story of Star Trek: Voyager so far has had Voyager lost, so far from home that it should take them seventy years to get home. Tuvok, as a full Vulcan, is one of the few officers who has a reasonable chance of still being alive when (if) Voyager makes it home. He, therefore, has every reason to believe he will see his wife again and remain faithful to her, especially as a Vulcan is trained not to express emotions. In the four years prior to “Gravity,” Voyager has lopped at least thirty years off its journey home, so Tuvok has a reasonable expectation that he will see his wife and sooner than he initially believed. In other words, it would take exceptional circumstances for Tuvok to stray.
“Gravity” makes the attempt to create those extraordinary circumstances. Tuvok and Paris quickly come to believe that Voyager has moved on and they stay on the planet. Paris slowly gets Tuvok to admit what the viewer sees in the interstitial scenes; that as a young man, he fell in love and had to study under a Vulcan elder to keep the emotions from destroying him. The circumstances seem only dire on the surface. The emotional attachment Noss develops is not made clear or developed enough and Tuvok’s willingness to sacrifice near the end of their stay does not seem as realistic as it ought to.
But “Gravity” suffers a fundamental plot flaw that is not satisfactorily explained. Yost is sealing the rift because his people have lost several ships in the area over the years. But the moment Voyager uses a probe and gets telemetry from it, it detects Vulcan and human life signs. Those scans should have also shown Yost’s people; the probe would have sent back telemetry on all life signs it detected. The “ticking clock” element of the episode where Voyager has to get the Away Team back before Yost closes the rift is entirely artificial as a result and it feels completely cheap when all Janeway has to do is tell Yost that his people are still alive and they will help him by beaming them out, too. (Even if the latter promise was not true, she could easily show him the telemetry that shows Yost his people are alive.)
Noss is played ably by Lori Petty. She is decent at presenting the character as an emotional being, though she and Tim Russ have no real on screen chemistry to play off the level of passion that both are supposedly feeling.
Ultimately, “Gravity” is a tease, another near-miss Tuvok emotional episode that continues to progress the idea that Vulcans have emotions, but suppress them (which is something we’ve known all along) and that Tuvok, for no particular reason, is slowly starting to let his control slip.
[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Voyager - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the season here!
Thanks!]
For other works with Joseph Ruskin, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Smokin’ Aces
Star Trek: Insurrection
“Looking For Par’mach In All The Wrong Places” - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
“Improbable Cause” – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
“The House Of Quark” – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
“The Gamesters Of Triskelion” - Star Trek
4.5/10
For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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