In today’s episode, there’s repressed memories in that nebula, and they knock Tuvok on his whoopsy but good. To save himself, he’ll have to show Captain Janeway the life of the mind and bring the bad vibes front and center to put them down before they kill him. How is Kes affected by the false memory? Can Janeway handle Vulcan coffee? And what’s the actual deal with cordrazine? All this and more in Flashback, the book that stops for a fireside chat with Amelia Earhart.

Flashback
Author: Diane Carey
Pages: 279
Published: October 1996
Timeline: Beginning of season 3
Prerequisites: It’s not so important to have seen The Undiscovered Country to get what’s going on in the TV episode, but it will definitely enrich the reading experience if you have; also, “The 37’s” (2×01) for one scene near the end

“Flashback” is the second episode of Voyager‘s third season. It was one of four episodes filmed during the second season but held until the third, which in its case worked out nicely, since that allowed it to drop in time for the franchise’s thirtieth anniversary—right about time for a multi-series crossover, one might reckon. And that’s exactly what “Flashback” gives us, in the form of a window into the past of Lieutenant Tuvok, exploring his days on the USS Excelsior serving under Captain Sulu.

In case it’s been a hot minute since you last viewed it, “Flashback” is the episode where looking at a nebula dredges up a traumatic memory for Tuvok, in which as a child he failed to save a little girl from falling off a cliff to her death. Anyone else would just work it out in therapy, but Vulcans are built different: since their minds rely so much on order and control for their stability, such a memory—even one he knows never actually happened, like this one—can be fatal if untreated.

As the closest thing Tuvok has to family aboard the ship, Captain Janeway agrees to enter into a mind meld with Tuvok and guide him to the memory so he can bring it over to the conscious, where his Vulcan control can deal with it properly. But when they enter the meld, instead of going to the little girl, it deposits them in medias res, amid a heated space battle with the Klingons on the Excelsior. Tuvok and Janeway have to figure out how the false memory relates to that period of his life before both their minds break down under the strain.

To be honest, I wasn’t terribly taken with the episode. It failed to keep my attention, and as a result of dipping in and out, I sometimes found it mildly confusing on top of being boring. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of reliving it as a book. But I’m happy to report that that turned out to be not at all the case for Diane Carey’s take on the episode. As a televisual experience, “Trials and Tribble-ations”—Deep Space Nine‘s 30-year crossover tribute, which we’ll also be reading the novelized version of very soon—is more fun, more riveting, and overall a far superior episode. But its print counterpart may very well have to sweat a little to best Flashback.

Of course, any time we get to a novelized episode, what we’re really here for is the bonus scenes, and that’s where Flashback really delivers. Let me start, however, by saying that some of the new material doesn’t quite work, including what is probably the most major addition: a fully realized arc on how the memory affects Kes psychically. Although that’s a very valid consideration that creates some engaging drama at times, this is at heart an intimate story about how the normally taciturn Tuvok is forced to open up a little in order to save himself, and as such, I found her travails somewhat hard(er) to care about. Also, toward the end, the meld shifts more to Janeway’s mind, which mostly becomes an opportunity for Carey to work out her feelings about “The 37’s”, an exploration that reaches its nadir with a wildly self-indulgent conversation with Amelia Earhart that is plainly just Carey speaking through Janeway, and which brings the story to a screeching halt.

But the stuff that hits? Hits. Even better, she saved the best for last. The book version of Flashback ends with not one, but two new scenes, and both are absolutely killer. The first concerns Tuvok’s imminent departure from the Excelsior and from Starfleet; in it, Captain Sulu pays a visit to Tuvok in his quarters and brings in an old friend to offer some sage advice. Any author would deserve to be proud of themselves for ending a book with a scene of this one’s caliber, but then Carey manages to top herself. As the situation gets worse, Neelix eventually suggests essentially euthanizing Tuvok to mitigate further damage. Obviously he’s most concerned about Kes, with any other party tied for a distant second, but he’s trying to do what he thinks is the logical and right thing and feeling immensely guilty about it. In this final scene, Tuvok assuages Neelix’s guilt and then extends him an additional olive branch. I’d been feeling pretty good about the book all throughout, but this scene got me legitimately choked up and took it to the next level right at the buzzer.

Other extra bits fall between those two extremes of quality. Chakotay grapples with his responsibilities as acting captain, and Tom and B’Elanna get a mini-adventure collecting sirillium out in the nebula that sort of unintentionally presages their future chemistry. It’s also impressive how the book actually manages to be more chaotic than the TV episode. Overall, it all adds up to a fine time indeed. I’d put it in the same league as Relics, I liked it so much. There’s no doubt about it: the novel is the superior way to enjoy this story, hands down.

MVP & LVP

• Today’s MVP is Captain Janeway. It’s a difficult thing to help a closed-off friend through a rough patch, and she navigates it very well. Well, except when she slams on the brakes to chat with Amelia Earhart, but as I say, we know that’s not really her.
• The LVP for this one is Janice Rand. I didn’t cotton to her attitude in the TV show, and the book didn’t do anything to ameliorate that.

Stray Bits

• A scene that was supposed to feature Uhura gets restored here. Why didn’t it make it into the episode? Nichelle Nichols wasn’t impressed with the amount of screen time it gave her and declined to do it. I’ll grant that the thought process that makes an actor decide whether or not to leave the house for this or that part is something I might not fully understand, but it always comes across very ego-driven, and that’s doubly crushing when it comes to Star Trek, where the strength of one’s legacy tends to be directly proportional to how good one is at leaving that ego at the door.
• This time, when Janeway comes at Tuvok with “You never brought me tea”, Tuvok gets to clap back: “You prefer coffee. And Vulcan coffee would paralyze your nervous system and atrophy your pancreas. But I will make you some, if you wish.” Yowza! And you thought raktajino was strong! (p. 86)
• “Even to people who didn’t really know what it was, cordrazine caused a wince of intimidation and fear. Very touchy medication, this. Almost as dangerous as the things it cured.” — I’m not entirely sure what this means, but judging by what Memory Alpha has to say about it, Carey’s view of the stuff seems to be a largely TOS-centric one. While it is amusing to imagine cordrazine as some sort of poorly understood future version of mercury, it looks like they’ve got more of a handle on it by the time of Voyager than this description would suggest. (p. 105)
• “Neelix tried to understand, but these things were not his area of expertise. He was very much a person of the moment, satisfied if the next day or so went well and content not to think beyond it. The idea that one’s own mind could actually kill was frightening and foreign.” — Well, if he wasn’t so oF tHe MoMeNt, he might remember literally this exact thing coming up barely a few months prior… (p.115)
• “A dog barked in the near distance. ¶ Dog? On a starship? ¶ It sounded like her childhood pet, Bramble.” — Wow! Mosaic is already asserting itself as canon in other authors’ works? That quickly? Impressive! (p. 160)
• “At the podium, the president of the United Federation of Planets was being lifted to his feet. Janeway enjoyed a moment of awe for the tall, thin albino Deltan with long snowy hair and a Fu Manchu beard and mustache.” — Diane, you are doing the most. Why bother with “albino Deltan” when “Efrosian”—which is, y’know, what he is—is right there? (Caveat: I don’t know when “Efrosian” became the official designation, so I could be grumping for nothing here.) (p. 261)

Final Assessment

Excellent. Flashback maintains a reasonably high level of quality throughout, but then a pair of new scenes nestled at the very end bump it securely up to the highest echelon of episode novelizations. There are some Carey-added elements that don’t entirely work, but are nevertheless thoughtfully considered, and they don’t stand in the way of making this one that’s much better to read than watch on TV.

NEXT TIME: Data calls his shot in A Fury Scorned