Episode: "Fair Trade"
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Season 3, Episode 13
Original Air Date: January 8, 1997
Voyager arrives at the edge of the mysterious Nekrit Expanse. Our friends head to a nearby space station to trade for supplies and hopefully gather helpful information for navigating this difficult region of space. Meanwhile, Neelix is facing an existential crisis. Do Janeway and company even need him any more now that they've reached a part of the Delta Quadrant he doesn't know? His anxiety leads to trouble when he runs into Wixiban, an old friend and a connection to Neelix's shady past.
At this stage of the series, the search for Neelix's raison d'être extended to both sides of the camera. By mid-Season 3, both NextGen and DS9 were well-oiled machines. Voyager is still an awkward fledgling and unsettled characters are a major issue. Adding Worf to the DS9's cast was a matter of building on strengths. Similar bold changes await Voyager in its fourth season. With historical hindsight, we know what's coming. But I think even a viewer in January 1997 might have sensed that addition by subtraction was looming. Neelix has been mostly annoying to this point and I can't imagine that cutting him loose wasn't considered. If they were going to keep him, they'd better help him find a foothold fast.
Fortunately, "Fair Trade" is a pretty good episode - certainly the strongest Neelix story so far. Connecting back to his previous life is meaningful. Voyager is a well-established reform project for several characters: Tom, B'Elanna, Lon Suder, etc. Why not Neelix, too? And the way he manages to wiggle out of trouble is genuinely clever. The crisis point with the Captain in the final scene cuts to the chase: no, Neelsix, casting you off would be too easy. You need to live with the guilt and rebuild trust. And I, the viewer, will acknowledge, that's not just an episodic television convenience. It is genuinely the more interesting narrative choice.
Neelix is a nervous but loyal dog. He's eager to please, to impress, to love and be loved. He sees love as something he must earn, then guard jealously. He whines when threatened or neglected. He understands the shame he deserves. He is grateful for forgiveness.
21st Century Notes
We need to talk about the cancellation of Starfleet Academy. I'll put my cards on the table. It is the best Star Trek series of the streaming era - indeed, the finest Trek since Deep Space Nine ended. The stories are rich. The characters are amazing and refreshingly unpredictable. The concept is long overdue and the narrative possibilities enticing. Two separate Season 1 episodes brought me to tears. A four-season run was already mapped out.
And now, the trolls have killed it. Paramount will say it was the ratings and to be fair, plenty of amazing shows have met similar fates for crass commercial reasons. Firefly and Freaks and Geeks come to mind. Television producers want an adequate return on their considerable investments. Artistic quality doesn't always sell.
But good luck convincing me it doesn't run deeper with Starfleet Academy. The Internet trolls set their sights on the series from Day 1. And yes, it's well-documented that right-wing interest groups actually pay people to go on social media and be assholes. The objections are mainly two: a gay Klingon and unconventional women in positions of authority.
I'm not going to linger too long on the basics of representation because anyone who's actually paid attention knows it's been the whole point of Star Trek since 1966 If you have a problem with extending tolerance to LGBTQIA+ characters, you are not a Trekkie. You're also on the wrong blog. If anyone is going to spew any of that shit here, understand that I will not treat your "opinion" as valid. Your squeamishness harms people. Period. Grow up.
And heaven forbid the franchise should finally bring some dimension to Klingon society. Jay-Den is a pacifist in what has long been projected as a monolithic warrior civilization. He would rather heal others and watch birds than kill anyone. That alone would probably have been tough to swallow for the idiots but likely not enough to kill the show. The much greater sins: he's gay and he occasionally wears gender-nonconforming clothing. Even worse, no one in-story, his own Klingon family included, gives a shit. Where is the public shaming? We all know queer characters must be made to suffer, right? Hell, if the writers aren't going to do it, the MAGA fuckers sure better do it for them.
The women? Two of the faculty members, Jett Reno and Lura Thok, are open gay lovers. Lura Thok is also bi-racial (Spock, anyone?): Klingon and Jem'Hadar. "Is that even biologically possible for the Jem'Hadar?" the trolls whine. It's all fiction, dipshit, of course it's possible. But this sort of deviance is only to be expected in the horrible halls of academia, right? The trolls' most vehement objections are directed at the Academy Captain and Chancellor, Nahla Ake. Her crimes?
She walks around barefoot and won't sit properly in the Captain's chair.
No, seriously, that's it.
You see, the idiots don't mind a female leader as long as she still adheres to masculine expectations. Act like a man as much as possible while still looking pretty. Even a lesbian is borderline acceptable because, well, she wants to sleep with women and that's dude stuff, right? Now, to be fair, these standards extend deeply into the real world and across all fictional platforms. Ake is a challenge to the norms and that is exactly what Star Trek is supposed to be, folks. The entire mission from the beginning has been to push us all just that little bit further out of our comfort zones until it starts to feel normal. Then push us a little bit further again. Repeat. For 60 years.
Have there been missteps along the way? Of course. Have there been obvious opportunities for them to push harder that they didn't take? You're damn right there have. But the mission has always been there and it's exactly why so many of us care so deeply.
The fact that a woman who won't sit up straight is enough to kill an otherwise wonderful show says quite a lot about where we are as a society. It's not exactly an encouraging revelation.
I won't put all of this on the political/religious right just as I can't in the real world. Morally ambitious though it has been, Star Trek has always reflected the current anxieties of white liberalism. The color blindness we were taught in the '80s and '90s is mirrored by the attitudes toward "alien races" in the NextGen-era series. Indeed, the fact that they're still referred to as aliens is revealing.
21st century wokeness has its limits and gender - even more than sexuality at the moment - is a major test of those limits. Plenty of white "liberals" feel we have gone too far in advocating for transgender people, not because they don't think it's right to do so but because they worry it has made the Democratic Party vulnerable in elections. This is not my imagination. I've heard people say it. This anxiety is cowardly and it is 100% real.
The trolls know they can push on certain buttons and sow the seeds of doubt in white liberals. They know they can scare them away from a show like Starfleet Academy with suggestions that it might be going too far on gender. The ratings are what they are. But the trolls put a heavy thumb on the scale and it worked. And the current leadership at Paramount have made clear they're not inclined to stick their necks out in the present political climate.
Season 2 is already in the can so we will get a little more. There have been fan petitions to save Starfleet Academy but the set pieces have already been sold off. In the eyes of those with control of the funding, it's all over. Unfortunately, that's all that matters in the end.
I hope Star Trek survives this setback. Yes, I know there will eventually be more material. I mean that I hope the mission itself survives.
Acting Notes
James Nardini (Wixiban) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. His films include
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and voice dubbing in the English-language version of
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Television work includes
Night Court,
Cheers and
Criminal Minds.
