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Like Phil Collins sang, “do you Remember?” Oh, we remember, don’t worry. Star trek: Voyager returns to a familiar trope of the franchise when Torres is forced to relive the painful memories of an alien species. It has some modern-day allegory and some incredibly silly alien design. And never hide behind the curtains! It’s the first place they look.
The Wikipedia plot summary for “Remember”:
The Federation starship Voyager is transporting members of a telepathic race, the Enarans, to their homeworld. Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres begins experiencing intense dreams in which she is a young Enaran woman named Korenna having a forbidden love affair with an Enaran youth, Dathan. The dreams seem real, more like memories, and they become increasingly disturbing and dangerous, forcing Torres to seek answers from the Enaran passengers.
She learns that her dreams are actual memories being projected to her by one of the visiting Enarans, Jora Mirell, formally named Korenna, now an old woman. The memories are of a lover of Korenna in her youth, who was a member of the “Regressives”, a group that preferred not to use technology but instead lived a simple life. The Regressives were deported and executed in a program of genocide. The Enarans, however, covered up the genocide by teaching succeeding generations that the Regressives brought about their own demise.
On Voyager, Torres visits Korenna’s quarters, and finds her dying from what she claims is a murder to continue the conspiracy. Before dying, she projects the ending of the story to Torres;— how she turned her lover over to the authorities and watched his execution.
Torres confronts the Enarans, but they deny wrongdoing. Though the Prime Directive forbids Captain Janeway from interfering, she casually remarks that the last of the Enaran engineers are packing their equipment. Torres rushes to engineering, where she confronts Jessen, an Enaran woman with whom she had become friends and bemoans the fact that she is unable to project the memories, and thus prove their validity. Jessen tells Torres that she is able to connect their minds—and proceeds to do so with Torres—and the episode closes with the first ‘dream’ of all, but now Jessen is the main character.
In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “Remember” and how COVID-19 has changed everything. Plus! The guys discuss playing with your balls, Japanese war crimes, and giving up your boyfriend very quickly.