In today’s episode, when Voyager’s latest grocery run puts them on holy ground, the natives are surprisingly chill about it. But when they make off with an ensign who gets their old-time religion, Janeway only has until the Rapture to get her back. How much weight do the needs of the many carry in the Delta Quadrant? When would Voyager need to start seriously considering a coupling regimen? And will Chakotay dare to tarnish his immaculate “being uninteresting” streak? All this and more in Chrysalis, the book that spills the Kazon tea.

Chrysalis
Author: David Niall Wilson
Pages: 279
Published: March 1997
Timeline: Late season 2, between “Death Wish” (2×18) and “Lifesigns” (2×19)
Prerequisites: None
Not to be confused with: “Chrysalis” (DS9 7×05)

The groceries Voyager picked up from the Kirse must not have stretched very far, because exactly one novel later, they find themselves having to make another pit stop. This time, they hit up Urrytha, which I had a hard time not reading as “Urethra”, because I am in fact a giant child. Neelix heard it’s a good place to stop for Blort roots1I promise this is the only time I will subject you to this term. without getting hassled. But there’s a low-level life sign blanketing the entire planet, and when pressed, you know what, come to think of it, Neelix’s grandfather did used to tell a story about some old jungle ruins that left no evidence of whoever built them. Probably just a wacky old coot though, that Grandpa Neelix, right? Ha ha!

While the away team convenes in a temple courtyard in said ruins, the natives appear out of virtually nowhere. Their leader, Vok, avails them of their gardens and explains that they don’t get out of their caves much except to tend the grounds of their ancestors, who have gone on to something called the Long Sleep, while they wait to enter the Long Sleep themselves so they can join them in the One Voice. (Italics are the book’s, not my own.) Not long after they leave, Ensign Kayla, a Bajoran officer, passes out without warning. There’s an organic compound in her system slowing her metabolism, causing a sort of hibernation, which one might perhaps also call a … uh … ahh, geez, it’s right on the tip of my tongue…

Vok confirms that Kayla has entered the Long Sleep, but when Janeway asks him to wake her up, he’s confused and even a little jelly. What do you mean, reverse it? She’s lucky! Vok’s been trying to get there for over 200 years, and no one has hit Long Sleep that fast in 500! Janeway is unimpressed by these statistics, but despite her protests that this is not part of Kayla’s religion and has been initiated without her consent, Vok and his followers scramble to fast-track Kayla’s Ascension. This makes Janeway so angry that she interrupts the ritual and tells them to GTFO out of their own garden, and we will be leaving and we will fix this ourselves, thank you very much.

Audacious? Plenty. Out of line? Arguably. Nevertheless, it gets Vok thinking: is she right? Am I the prophet meant to shepherd this benighted soul into the next phase of her existence? Or is it wrong to put someone who doesn’t know anything about our beliefs through this? Vok’s doubts lose him the youth vote; led by his disciple Ban, the rest of the less enlightened Urrythans infiltrate the base camp and abscond with her anyway to finish the job. And Janeway doesn’t have long to retrieve her; yet another italicized event, the Awakening, is due to occur soon, and the planet is already trembling in anticipation…

On one hand, Chrysalis is a story about religion. More specifically, it’s about each party learning to respect the finer points of the other’s beliefs.2I don’t feel as though this necessarily translates into a more general “both sides” argument. Which is good, because I’d have been annoyed if it had. It probably says something about my own projection that I generally expect Star Trek to naturally lean more atheistic, so it always catches me by surprise when it offers up a moderate or sympathetic take on religion. Rarer still is the Trek story that fully submits to the ecstasy of some of the more heightened experiences religion can offer. Without getting too deep in the spoiler weeds, I was pleasantly shocked by how uncritical the text was of the events of the climax. I’m pretty heavily critical of my old-school Pentecostal upbringing, but there were moments in Chrysalis that caused me to actually reflect fondly on some of the joy to be found in reaching for something beyond your self with a group of people all looking for the same thing.

But there’s another concept, one more specific to Star Trek itself, that I’d never considered in the context of Voyager, and which I think Wilson captures subtly, yet effectively: the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few (or the one). Chrysalis is essentially a novel-length effort to rescue a single lower-decker, which seems antithetical to that tenet, but actually makes a lot of sense. In a place as populous and known as the Alpha Quadrant, it’s one thing, but in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager is it. They are the many. And if they don’t emphasize doing everything they can for their few, then before long, they won’t have a many. It would have been easy to put a more familiar character in the Long Sleep role, but having it happen to someone lower on the chain is an inspired choice that gives Voyager a chance (which, thankfully, it jumps on) to visibly demonstrate a commitment to believing that every life aboard is critical to its success in getting home.

Chrysalis is David Niall Wilson’s only Star Trek novel. In Voyages of Imagination, he says he was simply “in the right place at the right time” to get the chance to write one, and the show had started airing by the time he finished writing it, so I think as a result he was able to get a good bead on the characters’ voices. Other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to being an ordained minister on Wikipedia, my cursory searching didn’t reveal any special attachment to or background in religion, which for me somehow makes his temperate treatment of the topic that much more impressive. He seems like a sharp cookie, with a mind capable of seeing things from fascinating angles. Too bad we won’t get to see any more of that brought to bear on other parts of the Star Trek universe.

MVP & LVP

• My pick for MVP this time is Tuvok. Many characters, psionically adept and not, experience the ecstasy of the Awakening for themselves, but his is the most moving, as he makes the decision to let go of logic for once and give himself over to the moment. He’s also the only one left in the thick of it when things start getting super seismic, so he pretty much handles the crucial final moments of the book entirely by himself.
• The week’s LVP is Chakotay. You would think this would be the perfect story for him to be a major part of, what with all that akoocheemoya baloney and whatnot. But he’s stuck on the bridge throughout, and except for one moment near the end, we don’t get much of his insight into everything going on around him. Don’t get me wrong: I generally find it a wiser move when authors choose not to engage with Chakotay’s spirituality. That whole subject is a massive minefield. On the other hand, wouldn’t want to risk letting him be interesting for once, would we? Runner-up to Neelix, who dutifully serves in his usual Cedric-the-owl capacity in finding a good food stop, but then quickly switches to his grindiest gear, i.e., wondering what anyone is going to do to help Kes.

Stray Bits

• Cover Art Corner: Another Voyager novel, another altered cover. Top right is the altered version, bottom right is the original. Unlike the past two, I think this time I like the original one better. Sure, she’s a little pale and her hair is defying Euclidean geometry, but that’s fairly minor compared to how big Janeway’s head looks in the “photorealistic” edit. No wonder Harry is giving her kind of a weird look. She looks like she might have to have him save her from tipping over at any minute.
• My copy of Chrysalis is an ex-library book, from the Coloma Public Library in, most likely, either Michigan or Wisconsin. Probably not California. Wherever it came from, it was last checked out as recently as 2005! I also like how someone helpfully wrote at the top of the page that it is “#12 in the STAR TRek Voyager series”, in case you managed to not glean that from the cover or the spine.

• Ensign Kayla has a touch of the hots for Harry, leading to some narrative speculation about the inevitability of people pairing off. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it’s never occurred to me before now. I tried to determine why, and ultimately I figured it’s because I’m used to contemplating Voyager in hindsight as a completed whole. I know what happens; I know they get home. At the time, however, it was less of a sure thing. I think on that score, Voyager was a little damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. If they don’t examine it at all, they appear unserious about the idea of extended deep-space travel (which a lot of people would argue it ended up being anyway). But if they harp too much on it, it just looks like Rick Berman being Rick Berman, which is rarely an unfair accusation. So it’s a tough spot to be in.
• Speaking of Kayla and Harry, one reason the “needs of the one” thing works out is that it seems like everyone is genuinely committed to rescuing her. Harry blames himself for her predicament because he specifically asks Tuvok to put her on another team so he isn’t tempted to reciprocate her feelings. (He has Libby at home to think about, after all.) But Janeway absolves him of that guilt, and no one else brings it up again. She’s in trouble, and she didn’t ask for this; that’s all there is to it.
• You’d think it would be fairly distracting to have a character named Vok in a story that’s part of a series that already has a character named Tuvok. Strangely, it’s not, really.
• After Vok explains the ruins to Janeway: “‘I see,’ said Janeway, seeing nothing.” Genuine LOL line. Also, I believe it’s what the kids call “a mood”. (p. 31)
• Neelix accidentally addresses Chakotay as “Captain”. This is clearly an oversight, but I am going to choose to be petty and headcanon it as a Freudian slip. (p. 145)
• Neelix serves a tea to the officers on the bridge, the recipe to which he stole from the Kazon. It’s “made from boiling the stomachs of a particular species of lizard which has first been fed on a healthy portion of several roots and herbs that render the toxins in their digestive systems neutral.” Bottoms up! (p. 261)

Final Assessment

Good. I’ll be completely honest—after The Garden, I found the prospect of reading another “Voyager stops at a seemingly uninhabited planet for food and it doesn’t go as planned” story so soon afterward to be so distasteful that I felt like I need to take a major detour first. And while I’m glad I did that, I’m also glad my apprehensions were unfounded. Chrysalis is a much better take on that concept. It’s the rare Star Trek story that’s sanguine about religion, and it has an intriguing take on another Star Trek precept as well (which, for once, thank God, isn’t the blasted Prime Directive). The writing itself isn’t the hottest, but there’s plenty good to chew on here.

NEXT TIME: The Intellivore is hungry for brains