Star Trek: Sacred Ground

Episode: "Sacred Ground"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 3, Episode 7

Original Air Date: October 30, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Granted shore leave on the Nechani homeworld, a few of the crew indulge in a guided tour of religious sites.  Curious Kes wanders into a cavern where she gets too close to what sure looks like a glowing sacred shrine.  It zaps her.  She is dying.  She and Neelix are beamed directly to sick bay on Voyager.  While the Doctor searches for medical solutions, Janeway and Company press the Nechani for answers.  The Nechani are plenty friendly and apologetic but unfortunately, they don't know how to help Kes either.  Perhaps the monks can help...

"Sacred Ground" starts off on the wrong foot for me.  Sadly, this sort of thing happens in the real world all the time: well-meaning but stupid travelers wander somewhere they're not supposed to, experience terrible mishap, then demand the locals fix it.  Let's not mince words, either.  It's typically white travelers treating the non-white world as their playground, shocked when they have to pay the price for ignoring very sensible warnings from the locals.  At best, it's obnoxious.  At worst, it's colonialist.  As such, I have little sympathy for the Voyager crew in their initial reaction to the predicament.  Sorry, but Kes should have known better.  Her stupidity or, more kindly, naïveté is not the Nechani's fault.

Fortunately, I felt better by the time the real point of the story became clear.  "Sacred Ground" is all about getting over yourself and accepting the fact that not all understanding comes from rational thought.  The episode gets mixed reviews, some saying it's among Voyager's worst.  Others are more charitable.  Despite my early annoyance, I'm inclined towards the latter.

At first, Janeway is all confidence and swagger: no problem, I'll knock out whatever silly tasks they have for me right after I finish my ninth cup of coffee.  But when doing that doesn't get her what she wants, she has to reconsider her own approach.  She must accept that science can't solve everything.  The answer she seeks is in the spiritual world.  She must take a leap of faith.

Yes, there's ultimately a scientific answer but that's not the deeper message here.  I'll admit to being science-first myself but we all know there are plenty of questions in the universe that have yet to be answered by empirical evidence and never will be.  Furthermore, humility often offers a path forward which the arrogant never find.

One more thing: frequent visitors may have noticed that I am always on the look out for connections between Star Trek and Star Wars.  Janeway's initial encounter with her guide was quite similar to Luke's introduction to Yoda, even involving fussing over a light fixture.  Of course, the trope of mistaking a sage - or even God - for an annoying commoner predates both franchises by thousands of years.  Grimm's fairy tales, for instance, offer numerous examples.  

Worth noting, Janeway's default attitude towards someone she did not at first consider worthy of her time did little to endear me to the story in its early stages.

LEGO

Our family Christmas present this year was LEGO's new USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D set along with the free accompanying Shuttlecraft set.  The big set is 3600 pieces and it took us several days.  In total, the two sets include ten NextGen characters - eleven if you count Data's cat, Spot.

Riker's trombone marks the first time the instrument has been included in any LEGO set.

The Enterprise-D crew

Data and Spot

The completed project

Ensign Ro and her shuttlecraft

An away mission to a planet with giant birds

Acting Notes

via Memory Alpha

Becky Ann Baker played the role of Janeway's guide.  Baker was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, February 17, 1953.  She graduated from Western Kentucky University.

For the more fortunate of my generation at least, Becky Ann Baker is probably best remembered as Jean Weir, mother to Lindsay and Sam, on Freaks and Geeks.  I say fortunate because despite only running for 18 episodes, F&G is considered by quite a lot of us to be one of the best shows in the history of television.  Seriously, do yourself a favor and go watch it now.  Imagine John Hughes movies, only better.  In the United States, it's available on several streaming services, including kanopy which you may be able to access for free through your local library.  Binge it all.  You'll thank me later.

Fortunately, several of the people involved, including producer Judd Apatow and actors Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Seth Rogan and Jason Segel went on to great success after the show was cancelled.  Getting back to Baker...

After F&G, Baker had a recurring role on Girls (also produced by Apatow) which earned her an Emmy nomination.  Guest appearances include L.A. Law, Frasier and Sex and the City.  Films include In & Out, Nights in Rodanthe and Hope Springs.