Watching "In the Flesh" after a decade

[toughlittleship]

Like many people, I didn't like how Voyager basically destroyed the best villain species they had with "In the Flesh". However, watching it today having not seen it in a decade, I could (nearly) forgive that.

But do you know what kills that episode for me? The schamaltzy ending where Chakotay chats up "Commander Archer" (a surprisingly dull Kate Vernon) and Janeway is charmed when the 8472-Boothby gives her the flower.

It seems incredibly hard to believe that any discussion the Voyager crew had with the Species 8472 members could have convinced an amoral species who had been bent on genocide to change their mind and that Janeway would have believed that.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Wait, Kate Vernon was in that episode? And she played someone who wasn't who she appeared to be?

Oh man, consider me excited.

 

[froot]

The 8472 are kind of cool, but they are exactly like the Protoss from StarCraft and the Covenant from Halo. And the Protoss came first.

I dunno - you see one sweet-looking xenophobic planet-destroying race, you've seen 'em all, right? Seemed fine that they'd actually get a dialogue going with them - you can't show a race like that more than a few times and not peel away at least a little of the mystery - hence making them a little less scary each time. Both of the aforementioned races seemed amoral from an outsider's view, but they were a bit more more complex when seen from an insider's point of view.

Forgive me, as I haven't seen In The Flesh in a long time, myself, but weren't the ones they chatted with on VOY only a small faction, as well? I think that might have been the excuse they used in Star Trek Online to keep the Undine (8472) a major villain.

I was okay with the flower scene, but I also disliked the scene with Chakotay chatting up "Commander Archer" something fierce, so I'm with you on that one.

Leave it to Chakotay to flirt with an 8472.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

It was the second most absurd episode in all of Voyager only after "Threshold", and that's saying something

 

[Anwar]

It wasn't possible for VOY to do some big epic war with the 8472 due to budget, and it would've been irresponsible to leave things the way they were in "Scorpion" by not resolving anything. The 8472 had to be dealt with in a conclusive manner without resorting to war, and "In the Flesh" did that.

 

[DS9forever]

The ending actually made me laugh a little. The way its paced, it almost seems Voyager left Chuckles on the terrasphere. Oh, and the episode is pure garbage.

 

[TedShatner10]

I'm in the minority who quite liked "In the Flesh", it was a lot like TOS' "By Any Other Name", and there's twenty random other episodes off the top of my head that I disliked more.

 

[exodus]

Like many people, I didn't like how Voyager basically destroyed the best villain species they had with "In the Flesh". However, watching it today having not seen it in a decade, I could (nearly) forgive that.

But do you know what kills that episode for me? The schamaltzy ending where Chakotay chats up "Commander Archer" (a surprisingly dull Kate Vernon) and Janeway is charmed when the 8472-Boothby gives her the flower.

It seems incredibly hard to believe that any discussion the Voyager crew had with the Species 8472 members could have convinced an amoral species who had been bent on genocide to change their mind and that Janeway would have believed that.

I think the episode is passable for me because of two reasons.

The 8472 they bring onboard Voyager is played by Zack Gilligan. You know him better as "Billy" from "Gremlins".

... and the open ended conclusion.
Boothby says he "going to talk to his superiors." about the cease fire and ending the invasion. By "Endgame", we never know what the official word was. It leaves it open for them to return some day.

 

[kimc]

Wait, Kate Vernon was in that episode? And she played someone who wasn't who she appeared to be?

Oh man, consider me excited.

OMG, maybe it was the hair but I didn't make the connection between the two. She was much better in BSG, imo.

 

[The Borg Queen]

They obviously forgot "the weak will perish".

Unless they realised the modified Borg Nanoprobes made THEM the weak ones, and suddenly "the weak will perish" becomes a problem for them.

 

[Anwar]

The 8472 thing was just another one of VOY's no-win scenarios: They invented the 8472 for one story and one story alone, Scorpion. They were meant to simply be a plot device to keep the Borg off VOY's back. Problem was, the writers had no intention of keeping them around but needed a quick cheap way of getting rid of them. The result was "In the Flesh". Quite, cheap, no budget-gobbling space battle, and gets them out of the Trekverse.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But did Chuckles kiss her because they had a spiritual connection, because it was as close as he could get to tapping Jonathan Archer's great great great granddaughter, was he physically attracted to her, was he caught up in the roleplaying forgetting that he was human, or was she pressuring him with telepathic waves of persuasion?

 

[tomalak301]

They obviously forgot "the weak will perish".

Unless they realised the modified Borg Nanoprobes made THEM the weak ones, and suddenly "the weak will perish" becomes a problem for them.

This was really the only thing I didn't like about this episode. I actually did like that they made peace, but they almost ignore everything Kes said (Who was telepathically linked by the way) about the Galaxy being purged and the weak will parish. That doesn't sound like a war with just The Borg.

 

[Anwar]

"The Weak shall perish" implied that they were never going to want to make peace with anyone. Which means if they were going to wrap up the 8472 aliens in a quick story that WASN'T some big budget-gobbling battle (which would've been ineffective anyways since VOY was on its own) they had to ignore that.

 

[JarodRussell]

I believe the writing process for that episode started with:

"I had just this crazy idea on the toilet this morning! What if we see Chakotay at Starfleet Headquarters in the opening?!" - "How?" - "How the hell do I know? Think of something."

 

[Anwar]

It was more along the lines of "Aw crap, the audience liked those Cthulu aliens too much but we invented them for one story and one story alone and then did that story without killing all of them. Also it's too expensive to use them again because of CGI. How do we get rid of them in some low-key, inexpensive, one-episode way?"

 

[exodus]

Unless they realised the modified Borg Nanoprobes made THEM the weak ones, and suddenly "the weak will perish" becomes a problem for them.

That's how I saw it.
Where they come from they had no opposition and they were supposedly ripping throught the Borg it tissue paper. So to them, we all were weak.
Creating a weapon that kicked their ass, now made them the weak ones. So they had to alter their plans.

 

[RyuRoots]

we invented them for one story and one story alone

Funny how they used them for more than one story before In the Flesh then, huh?

 

[Anwar]

Which was likely testing the waters, and finding out how unusable they were which only further necessitated "In the Flesh".

 

[Saito S]

The 8472 are kind of cool, but they are exactly like the Protoss from StarCraft and the Covenant from Halo. And the Protoss came first.

I can't comment on the Protoss since I don't know StarCraft nearly well enough to do so, but saying that 8472 are "exactly" like the Covenant is not even in the ballpark. I don't even see any real similarities beyond their base concept, i.e. "powerful, xenophobic alien race that wants to destroy us". And the Protoss, 8472, and the Covenant are hardly the only three examples of that concept.

And 8472 came first, anyway (before the Covenant, that is, not the Protoss).

I dunno - you see one sweet-looking xenophobic planet-destroying race, you've seen 'em all, right? Seemed fine that they'd actually get a dialogue going with them - you can't show a race like that more than a few times and not peel away at least a little of the mystery - hence making them a little less scary each time. Both of the aforementioned races seemed amoral from an outsider's view, but they were a bit more more complex when seen from an insider's point of view.

8472's involvement with the Borg made them more interesting than just another "sweet-looking xenophobic planet-destroying race", at least to me. But I agree that they couldn't be sustained as straight-up enemies forever. Peeling away "a little bit" of the mystery and making them "a little less scary" over time would have been fine. Problem is, they ripped the mystery to shreads and sapped all the scariness away at once with "In the Flesh."

The 8472 thing was just another one of VOY's no-win scenarios: They invented the 8472 for one story and one story alone, Scorpion. They were meant to simply be a plot device to keep the Borg off VOY's back. Problem was, the writers had no intention of keeping them around but needed a quick cheap way of getting rid of them. The result was "In the Flesh". Quite, cheap, no budget-gobbling space battle, and gets them out of the Trekverse.

I don't see it as a no-win scenario. "No-win" implies that it was not of their own making, or in any way their own fault. It was the decision of the writers to introduce 8472 in the first place; if they really were THAT difficult to work with, it's a problem they made for themselves (the writers, that is, not Species 8472. )
Removing them as a threat force does not require literally removing them from the Trekverse entirely. It also does not require any budget-gobbling space battles.
I have no problem with doing an 8472 ep that does ultimately dial them back as threats. But they didn't have to just WRECK them. That's my problem with "In the Flesh." One ep is all it takes to comepletely sap them of any punch. The ep didn't have to end on this "We're all friends now. It was just a misunderstanding. Never mind that we are a fundamentally different species from a fundamentally different type of space; we've reachd an accord. Here's a flower." What would have made more sense is for the ep to have made it clear that a full-scale 8472 INVASION is no longer imminent, but that doesn't have to mean that everything is hunky-dory. The 8472 could have decided to reign in their aggression toward our galaxy, but in sort of a "probationary" sense; they're not going fly in with guns blazing for the moment, but that doesn't mean they're completely satisfied that our galaxy still couldn't represent a threat to them later.

It was more along the lines of "Aw crap, the audience liked those Cthulu aliens too much but we invented them for one story and one story alone and then did that story without killing all of them. Also it's too expensive to use them again because of CGI. How do we get rid of them in some low-key, inexpensive, one-episode way?"

You KNOW this for a fact, this bit about the writers having intended from the very beginning to use 8472 ONCE and ONLY ONCE? How?

And maybe I'm way off-base here, but were the 8472 THAT expensive to show on-screen? Significantly more expensive than all those space battles from DS9 season 4-7?

Unless they realised the modified Borg Nanoprobes made THEM the weak ones, and suddenly "the weak will perish" becomes a problem for them.

That's how I saw it.
Where they come from they had no opposition and they were supposedly ripping throught the Borg it tissue paper. So to them, we all were weak.
Creating a weapon that kicked their ass, now made them the weak ones. So they had to alter their plans.

That's an interesting thought, actually. Realizing that any aggressiveness would cost them (which wasn't true before) would give them pause, which could lead them to more closely examine some of the non-Borg residents of our galaxy, which could lead to something like "In the Flesh," I just think that the way it was presented in the ep, the 8472 "problem" was wrapped up far too neatly and far too quickly.