By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Star Trek: Voyager and Seinfeld couldn’t be more different. One is about a Starfleet vessel stranded halfway across the galaxy, trying to find its way home. The other is about a comedian and his neurotic friends navigating the trials and tribulations of New York City. Normally, the only thing these shows have in common is a few shared cast members. For example, Sarah Silverman once served as a love interest for both Kramer and Tom Paris. George Costanza actor Jason Alexander had his own memorable Voyager cameo. Oh, and George’s boss, Mr. Wilhelm, was played by Richard Herd, who went on to have an ongoing Trek role as Paris’ father.
However, one Star Trek: Voyager episode took its storytelling cues from Seinfeld rather than its actors. That episode is “Persistence of Vision,” in which Captain Janeway and her erstwhile crew have to deal with weird hallucinations being caused by a malicious alien with telepathic powers. It’s an episode that Paramount hated because it was so weird, but it ended up being surprisingly effective and popular. This is ironic because showrunner Michael Piller once pointed out that “Persistence of Vision” is a bit like any given Seinfeld episode; that is, it was a show about nothing!
Is Chakotay Spongeworthy?
“Persistence of Vision” begins with a fairly typical early Voyager plot. Captain Janeway must negotiate with some weird aliens for safe passage through their territory in the Delta Quadrant. However, things go sideways almost immediately when she and other crew members end up experiencing bizarre hallucinations. It’s a huge mystery that leads to a rather disappointing reveal: all of this mischief has been caused by a telepathic alien who did it for no reason and who isn’t even really there. Arguably, this resolution is frustrating because it emphasized how this loose episode was really just an excuse for some entertaining character acting.
Because of this, showrunner Michael Piller was pleasantly surprised by how the episode turned out, including how well fans received it. In an interview with Cinefantastique, he summed his feelings up by saying, “The show turned out particularly well, yet it’s not a show that is about anything.” As a lover of all things ‘90s, his phrasing here really tickled me. Piller seemed genuinely shocked that a show that’s not really about anything could resonate with audiences. However, that was Seinfeld’s claim to fame from the very beginning: that it was “a show about nothing.”
You Had To Replicate The Big Salad!
Seinfeld gained its “show about nothing” reputation early on for throwing out traditional sitcom storytelling in favor of weird (and sometimes, weirdly realistic) plots. A prime example of this is “The Chinese Restaurant,” an episode that takes place in real-time. Normally, sitting down for dinner would be the start of a story, or at least, just one element of it. However, this episode took place entirely at the restaurant and captured the hilarious frustration of simply waiting to be seated. According to Jason Alexander, the network thought this episode was “sacrilege,” but he sees it as “the defining beginning of the anarchy of Seinfeld.”
In its own way, “Persistence of Vision” was very similar. The network hated the script because it was so weird, and they wanted to add more aliens and more fight scenes. However, writer Jeri Taylor stuck to her guns and created an episode that arguably helped define the series’ creative legacy. In that same Cinefantastique interview, Michael Piller noted how desperately the show needed to start exploring new, buzzworthy ideas. He claimed this episode “marked the beginning of the turn” and that “We started building on that momentum, and I think if you look from that show on, we consistently started doing interesting things.”
They’re Real, And They’re Honorable
In other words, Star Trek: Voyager fans owe the improved quality of their favorite sci-fi show to an episode where B’elanna Torres wants to get down and dirty with Chakotay, her resident father figure. Paging Dr. Freud to the holodeck! With any luck, nobody on the ship started a bet with the chief about who’s really the master of their domain.
