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Fair Trade (episode)

  • View history
  • 1.2 Act One
  • 1.3 Act Two
  • 1.4 Act Three
  • 1.5 Act Four
  • 1.6 Act Five
  • 2 Log entries
  • 3 Memorable Quotes
  • 4.2 Story and script
  • 4.3 Deleted scene
  • 4.4 Cast and characters
  • 4.5 Production
  • 4.6 Continuity
  • 4.7 Reception
  • 4.8 Apocrypha
  • 4.9 Video and DVD releases
  • 5.1 Starring
  • 5.2 Also starring
  • 5.3 Guest Stars
  • 5.4 Co-Star
  • 5.5 Uncredited Co-Stars
  • 5.6 Stunt doubles
  • 5.7 References
  • 5.8 External links

Summary [ ]

USS Voyager near the Nekrit Expanse

The USS Voyager near a station in the Nekrit Expanse

For some time, Neelix has been trying to expand his usefulness; he has been considering roles as an engineer , or a security officer , or some other more official job. With Janeway's assertion that the ship is full of opportunity, he goes to Lieutenants Tuvok and B'Elanna Torres directly and starts to pester them with questions, though neither has the time.

As the crew of the USS Voyager arrives at a dense, menacing cloud barrier, Captain Kathryn Janeway asks Neelix to come to the bridge . He's able to identify the looming barrier as the Nekrit Expanse .

Act One [ ]

Neelix admits not much is known about the Expanse, and advises caution. Tuvok notes it is too wide to go around. Neelix also points out there is a space station at the border, though doesn't remember the coordinates. Commander Chakotay finds it and Janeway orders a heading for it. Neelix appears to be apprehensive about it. When they get there, they meet the administer, Bahrat , who agrees to discuss their efforts to take on supplies. Interestingly, he insists on monitoring them on the station as well as any communications, and also demands 20% commission on any trades.

While Lieutenant Thomas Paris and Chakotay visit the main trading post, Janeway arrives to Bahrat's office with a list of supplies she wants. He's obviously busy, but takes a few minutes. He promises to compile a list of potential suppliers. Neelix, meanwhile, meets up with an old friend, Wixiban ("Wix"), who was in a smuggling operation with him a long time ago, which ended in a run-in with the Ubeans and landed Wix in prison . After the jovial reunion, Wix and Neelix get to talking. While Neelix impresses his old friend with the tales of Voyager , he finally admits that he thinks he may not be needed anymore. His knowledge of space goes only as far as the Nekrit Expanse and he is no longer useful as a guide. As a result, he has been trying to acquire a map of the area on this station. This piques Wix's interest.

Act Two [ ]

On board Voyager , Wix visits Neelix while Neelix was working in his kitchen. Wix was able to help Voyager to get some magnetic spindle bearings. In private, Wix tells Neelix that he knows where to get pergium (a rare commodity that Voyager needs) and a map. He also tells a different story, one of great difficulty and burdensome debts. He is unable to leave the station because his shuttle is being impounded by the station master. Playing upon Neelix's sympathies for him, he asks for a favor: he wants Neelix to get a Voyager shuttlecraft which he and Wix will use to complete a secret transaction in exchange for the pergium and the map. He explains that he is selling medical supplies to get back his shuttle and wants to do it in secret to avoid the station master's twenty percent cut of the profits. All Neelix has to do is hide this information from the crew. Neelix agrees.

They're successful in obtaining the supplies and come back to the station. Unfortunately, the true nature of the transaction gradually becomes apparent when Wix grabs a phaser and they meet the potential buyer. He is Sutok , the same man who tried to sell drugs to Chakotay and Paris when Voyager first docked with the station. From Wix's and Sutok's interaction, Neelix deduces that the medical supplies can actually be used as a narcotic, making this trip not only highly dangerous but highly illegal. Sutok attempts to get the drugs for nothing by trying to kill both Talaxians . This results in a firefight and Wix kills Sutok in self-defense. Several unseen aliens appear, an alarm sounds, and Neelix is knocked down, but the two of them beam out.

Act Three [ ]

Neelix flies the shuttle back to Voyager – leaving the dead body to be found by Bahrat's men. Neelix is furious at being betrayed but Wix soothes him with more emotional manipulation and convinces him to cover it up and not tell anyone on the ship.

Bahrat informs Janeway that a murder has occurred on the station, and a Federation phaser's energy signature was detected at the scene. Janeway briefs the senior officers with Bahrat present, promising that Voyager will give full co-operation during the investigation. Neelix, who is present at the briefing, feels uneasy as Bahrat reveals what he knows so far, which is a lot already.

As part of the investigation, Tuvok questions Neelix about Wix. He distances himself, and doesn't give a lot of information about him. Neelix accompanies Tuvok to the station to interview Wix. Wix gives a cover story of him being asleep at the time of the shootings. After Tuvok has left, Wix tells Neelix that he was acting as an agent for some Kolaati suppliers in the drug trade. The suppliers, not at all happy with the loss of their drugs, agree to let them live if Wix can get some warp plasma from Voyager . Neelix immediately says it has gone too far, but Wix appeals to his situation in nearing the end of his time on the ship. He persuades Neelix to help him once again.

Act Four [ ]

On Voyager , Neelix finds Paris in a supply room. While helping to locate a special container for him, he engages him in asking him about why he was in prison. Paris obliges and admits that what got him into trouble in the first place was that he lied after making a mistake and how if he'd told the truth in the beginning things wouldn't have been as bad as they got. The container is found and he leaves, still thinking about his task and leaving Paris a bit confused. He then goes to engineering to complete the task. Torres is not there, but Ensign Vorik is and so Neelix explains he's just poking around. Still contemplating his situation, he asks Vorik about how he feels about how things turned out on Voyager generally, and he replies he's found it a good challenge. Neelix then leaves him to get the plasma, but he can't bring himself to do it.

When Neelix and Wix meet at the station at the arranged time, Neelix tells Wix that he couldn't steal from his friends. They are interrupted by Bahrat arresting Chakotay and Paris, who are nearby, charging them with murder and dealing illegal drugs, because they were seen talking with Sutok hours before he was killed. Janeway is furious that Chakotay and Paris were arrested based on circumstantial evidence that does not prove any connection to the crime, but Bahrat is adamant that someone be punished for the crimes by fifty years of cryostatic suspension . Janeway insists Tuvok be present at the interrogation and promises Bahrat she will not let her officers pay the price for a crime they didn't commit.

However, to save Chakotay and Paris, Neelix devises a plan, which Wix reluctantly agrees to.

Act Five [ ]

He and Wix tell the truth about the incident to Bahrat, who is furious. They are then able to talk their way out of being put into cryostasis by explaining that these smugglers are defeating internal security and that they will help Bahrat and his men catch the criminals when they return for the plasma. Expecting their attempt to be futile, the station master agrees.

Neelix gets a canister from Bahrat with tainted warp plasma and deactivates the safeties. The suppliers, led by Tosin , arrive to meet with Neelix and Wix. When Tosin accepts the canister he realizes that it is worthless but Neelix quickly tells him the canister has been leaking plasma into the room and any energy discharge from his weapon will ignite the entire section. Bahrat arrives and attempts to arrest them but one of the suppliers fires anyways and the ensuing plasma fire knocks Neelix unconscious.

When he reawakens in sickbay , he is told by Tuvok that one of the criminals has been killed and the rest have been taken in to custody by Bahrat, and Wix has gotten his shuttle back and has gone on his way. Janeway arrives and after dismissing the others, demands an explanation from Neelix. Only then does Neelix come clean to the captain as to how the situation arose: he knows nothing about space from this point, so wanted a map and got caught in a cover-up. After a stern lecture from the Captain, Neelix is prepared to accept his fate, which he presumes to be compelled to leave the ship permanently. To his relief (in fact, he is barely able to contain his excitement) the captain explains to him the fact he can no longer be their guide doesn't matter; the crew is a family, and he cannot simply walk away from his responsibilities. He gladly accepts his sentence of two weeks of cleaning out the ship's exhaust manifolds.

Log entries [ ]

  • " Captain's log, supplemental. I have called a meeting of the senior staff to inform them of some very disturbing news I have just received. "

Memorable Quotes [ ]

" Well, do you have anything to say for yourself? " " Only that I'm terribly sorry. " " Oh, you're sorry? Is that supposed to make everything better? I don't really care whether you're sorry or not, Neelix. At this point, it doesn't matter. I can't imagine what could have made you behave the way you did: lying to us, sneaking around behind our backs, covering up criminal activity. Did you have some misguided reason to think that this was acceptable behavior? " " No, ma'am. " " You've been one of my most trusted advisors since we began this journey. How can I ever trust you again? How can I ever listen to you without wondering whether you're telling the truth or not? " " I've never been dishonest to you before, I swear, Captain! I just took one step, a step that seemed perfectly reasonable, and that step led to another and another and then before I knew it, I was involved in something I didn't know how to handle. " " What was it? What was so important that you were willing to throw away your principles? " " I needed a map. " " A map? " " Captain, my usefulness to you was at an end. I don't know anything about space beyond this point. I couldn't let you go into the Nekrit Expanse without knowing what you faced. " " You've been on this ship for two years. I'd think by now you'd have learned that the first duty of any Starfleet officer is the truth. You violated that duty, Neelix. And there will be consequences. " " I'm prepared to leave the ship, Captain. " " Oh, no. It's not that easy. You can't just walk away from your responsibilities because you made a mistake. You're part of a family now, and you have obligations. " " But...I can't guide you. I can't advise you. I don't know what's coming. " " But that's not the point, is it? None of us knows what's coming. That's what Starfleet is all about. We are all in this together, Neelix, and we have to be able to count on each other no matter how hard it gets. Do you understand? " " Yes. Yes, I do. " " Well, that's good. Report to deuterium maintenance at oh four hundred tomorrow morning. You're going to spend the next two weeks scrubbing the exhaust manifolds. That should give you time to think about what I've said. Dismissed. "

Background information [ ]

  • In the UK, this episode was advertised as the beginning of a "new series" ("series" being the British eqivalent for "season"), as the show had been off the air for several months after " Macrocosm ".

Story and script [ ]

  • This episode had the working title "Old Scores". [1] (X)
  • The story for this episode, conceived by freelance writing partners Ron Wilkerson and Jean Louise Matthias , began development in Star Trek: Voyager 's first season and was originally intended to be included in that season but was kept back so that the episode " Jetrel " could be produced instead. Commenting on the idea at a point prior to its development into this episode, Ron Wilkerson said, " [It] would have established Neelix as a much more substantial character. The story was essentially like Carlito's Way in the sense that this guy comes on the ship and Neelix pretends he doesn't know him, but in fact they were in jail together and he helped Neelix escape and they split up afterward, and now he's looking to get Neelix to do something for him or he'll reveal his past to everyone. " Wilkerson was particularly fond of the concept, describing it as "a nice episode" and expressing much disappointment that it had not been made. ( Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages ) Executive producer Jeri Taylor later said of this episode, " It's actually a story that we had lying around since the very first season. We thought that it had a kernel of something in it for Neelix, but we had never been able to develop it to our satisfaction. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7)
  • The key, according to Jeri Taylor, was the concept of Neelix becoming less familiar with the space surrounding the starship Voyager . Speaking at the end of the series' third season , Taylor explained, " This last season, I started thinking that if we are going at high warp speed toward home, we would be covering a great deal of distance. That would mean that at some point we would probably run out of the space that Neelix understands. I thought, here is exactly the take for that story we've been trying to do. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7) Indeed, Jeri Taylor was highly pleased that the plot concept from the first season could be revived, as the writing staff of Star Trek: Voyager had unsuccessfully tried to come up with a workable Neelix story for the third season of the series. " We hadn't found a good story for Neelix yet this season, " Taylor said at the time, " so I was really delighted to do this one. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 24 , p. 15)
  • The writer of the episode's teleplay was long-time Star Trek science consultant André Bormanis ; this installment was his first writing contribution to the series. He had previously pitched some Star Trek story ideas that had not been entirely successful. " I sold two to ST:VOY last year, and we didn't go to teleplay on either of those, " he revealed, during Voyager 's third season. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 25 , p. 39) He later noted, " I sold a couple of stories to Voyager and then had the opportunity to write a teleplay. " [2] Additionally, Bormanis recalled, " They asked me if I was interested in writing a script for season three of Voyager , and of course I said, 'Yes.' " Bormanis found that making the transition between serving as science consultant on Star Trek and contributing as a writer was "very natural", having read "every draft of every script for TNG, DS9 and Voyager " in his capacity as science consultant. [3] He also enjoyed writing and imagining ideas himself. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 25 , p. 39)
  • André Bormanis introduced the Nekrit Expanse during the script-writing process. He explained, " The Nekrit Expanse is something that I came up with, for my first script for Voyager . We wanted to suggest a region of space that was rather dangerous, that was difficult to navigate. It was too big to go around, we had to figure out a way to go through it. And the Expanse itself, I kind of modeled after some of the regions that we've identified, in telescopes, in our galaxy that you probably wouldn't want to send a space probe into, at least not very far […] So that was the basic idea. You know, sort of a dark and spooky place that would be very difficult to navigate, very dangerous, and we have no idea what's on the other side because it's sufficiently opaque that our sensors can't penetrate very far into it. " ( Real Science With Andre Bormanis , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)
  • The episode's final script draft was submitted on 7 October 1996 . [4]
  • Ultimately, the producers were extremely pleased with André Bormanis' work on this episode's script. He later recollected, " They thought I did a good job with it, and had me do a few more. " [5] In fact, this was the first of seven Star Trek: Voyager episodes that Bormanis was involved in writing. He was later granted a place on the writing staff of Star Trek: Enterprise .

Deleted scene [ ]

  • Although a long-running romantic relationship between Kes and Neelix apparently ends in the earlier third season episode " Warlord ", their break-up was never shown, so a scene was written for this episode to give the relationship some closure. The character moment, set in Voyager 's science lab, was scripted as scene 48 and starts with a scene description that – referring to Kes and Neelix – includes the significant sentence, " She has no way of knowing that he believes this is the last time he will ever see her. " ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. ? )) The scene was filmed, in the set for Voyager 's science laboratory. ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 179 , p. 78) Neelix actor Ethan Phillips said of the scene, " I go into the science lab and I see Kes, and I haven't talked to Kes since 'Warlord,' which was several episodes back. And I talk to her and I say, 'You know, I know we've drifted apart, and I know that we're no longer a pair, but I want you to know that I still love you and that you'll always be my best friend.' And she receives that information, she hears it and tells me back the same thing, basically. And we have a kind of a closure, and it was a lovely little scene. " (Voyager Time Capsule: Kes , VOY Season 3 DVD special features) Phillips also thought the scene, which was approximately five minutes long, was "very beautiful." ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 179 , p. 78) He added, " It's right before I'm about to go on this trip where I might get killed, where I present the leaking warp plasma canister to the crazy alien. I wanted her to know that I relished what we had and that I still loved her as a friend. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 14 , pp. 43-44)
  • The scene was deleted from the episode due to time constraints. ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. ? ); The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 14 , p. 44) Ethan Phillips specified that the scene's removal was "because they had to trim." (Voyager Time Capsule: Kes , VOY Season 3 DVD special features) He regretted that the scene was edited out of this installment. Shortly after completing work on the episode, the actor remarked, " It really was a key scene. I felt we needed an on-camera moment to recognize the fact that this three-year relationship had ended. We certainly didn't get to see them break up on screen in a satisfying way, and we also didn't see them at least have some sort of conversation about what occurred. As it was, there was no real resolution, and I don't think the fans like not having some sense of closure. The producers know my feelings about this and they must have their reasons for doing it the way they did. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , pp. 60 & 62) In a later interview, Phillips expressed, " I think it gave the characters – and certainly would have given the fans – a sense that, 'Well, it's over, but at least we know how it ended.' Then they never included that scene because, I guess, the writers didn't think the arc was important enough to warrant it. I always thought that was a mistake. " ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 179 , p. 78) The scripted version of the scene can be found, in its entirety, in the Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. ? ).

Cast and characters [ ]

  • Jeri Taylor was very pleased with Ethan Phillips' performance as Neelix in this episode. " Ethan Phillips was wonderful, " she enthused. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7)
  • Ethan Phillips himself thoroughly enjoyed this episode, aside from his disappointment at the scene deletion. He remarked, " Overall, I thought it was a very good show for me. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , pp. 60 & 62) In fact, Phillips cited this episode (in common with " Rise ") as a Neelix-related highlight of the third season, remembering, " I was very happy with 'Fair Trade'. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 33 , p. 38) He also noted, " I liked 'Fair Trade' a lot. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7)
  • In particular, Ethan Phillips liked how this episode portrays his character of Neelix; the actor cited the installment, for example, as one of several episodes whose scripts excited him, upon first reading them and discovering that they revealed facets of his character that he hadn't known about before. Phillips explained, " There was an awful lot we learned about Neelix. I learned that he did have a shady past; that he was willing to sacrifice his life for the USS Voyager crew; and, in the middle of the show, we also saw that he was willing to jeopardize his position on the ship for the sake of what he felt he owed his friend. We saw that Neelix could be loyal and brave and have a lot of integrity, which are all very important qualities […] I also thought they set the stage for some interesting stuff with Neelix – the ship is now out of his range of knowledge of space, he's as lost as everybody else and he can't serve Janeway as guide any more. At the end of the episode, Captain Janeway tells Neelix that he is a vital member of the crew. I think he needed to hear that, because he needs to feel wanted. That's a big part of who he is. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , pp. 60 & 62) Further considering the episode's conclusion, Phillips elaborated, " When the captain said, 'You're a member of the crew and you're not leaving,' it was a really good thing for him to hear. He needed to hear it. He really had nowhere to go but back to his old life. For him to have his value to the ship and to Janeway reiterated to him was wonderful. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 14 , p. 43)
  • Ethan Phillips was proud of his own acting herein. " I'm my own hardest critic, " he declared, " and I'm pleased with my performance. I liked about 50 percent of it. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , p. 62)
  • Ethan Phillips was also thrilled by the performance that Wixiban actor James Nardini delivered for this installment. Phillips noted, " I thought James gave a very good performance as Wixiban. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , p. 62)
  • Director Jesús Salvador Treviño enjoyed working with both Ethan Phillips and James Nardini, despite the experience being somewhat surreal for Treviño. The director enthused, " Ethan Phillips was great to work with. We were fortunate because he and James Nardini had a great chemistry. It was quite exciting to see them work together because James immediately understood the whole Talaxian thing. I actually forgot I was dealing with actors, because I met James only at the audition before he came onto the set in makeup. I had only met Ethan once as well and then he was on the set as Mr. Talaxian. I was giving direction to two Talaxians. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 15 )
  • Garrett Wang ( Harry Kim ) does not appear in this episode, being one of only two occasions when Wang does not appear, the other being the later third season episode " Blood Fever ". In his podcast with Robert Duncan McNeill , Wang revealed that his absence was due to depression, which was making him late for work. Wang said that the producers, including Rick Berman , mistakenly believed he was "partying too hard" and gave him two episodes leave to see a counsellor. (The Delta Flyers podcast, episode 313, 17 May 2021)
  • Prior to portraying Tosin in this installment, actor James Horan appeared as Jo'Bril and Lieutenant Barnaby in TNG : " Suspicions " and " Descent, Part II " respectively. He would go on to play First Ikat'ika in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes " In Purgatory's Shadow " and " By Inferno's Light ", as well as the recurring character of the Humanoid Figure during the first two seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise . This is his only appearance in Star Trek: Voyager .

Jesús Salvador Treviño and Carlos Carrasco

Actor Carlos Carrasco and director Jesús Salvador Treviño, during production of this episode

  • This is the only appearance of Carlos Carrasco ( Bahrat ) in Star Trek: Voyager . He previously played D'Ghor in DS9 : " The House of Quark " and a mirror universe Klingon in DS9 : " Shattered Mirror ". His next and last Star Trek role was as Krole in DS9 : " Honor Among Thieves ".
  • Ultimately, Jesús Treviño was generally pleased with all the acting in this episode. He noted, " The performances came out so nicely. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 15 )

Production [ ]

  • This was the first Star Trek episode ever directed by Jesús Treviño. Having previously directed episodes of other television series, a meeting with Jeri Taylor had subsequently led Treviño to helm this episode, prior to being invited to direct both other episodes of Voyager as well as episodes of DS9. One preparation method that Treviño utilized was watching many previous Voyager episodes. He recalled, " Before I did my first episode of Voyager , I had spent several weeks viewing almost every episode that they had done. So when I did 'Fair Trade,' I was pretty clear on the back stories of a lot of the people. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 119 , pp. 65 & 69)
  • James Horan was unprepared for the experience of wearing the makeup created for Tosin. " The Kolaati was interesting, " Horan recalled, " because, as they're putting it on me, they go, 'You don't have a problem not breathing through your nose, do you?' " After laughing, Horan continued by recounting, " 'No, I guess not.' But fourteen hours later, of course, I'm going [ in an extremely nasally voice ], 'I've a problem in this.' " [6] Horan also cited his role in this episode as the worst make-up he ever had to wear for Star Trek , commenting, " In an almost all of them I've had a nosehole, but in this one, because of the way the nose was shaped, as they're putting it on they're saying, 'You don't have a problem not breathing through your nose, do you?' And I'm saying, 'Errr… well, I guess not!' And then 14 hours later I'm gasping. " ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 10 , p. 45)
  • According to James Horan, the scenes of this installment that involve his character of Tosin constituted "a couple of days' work." ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 10 , p. 45)
  • The weapon that Tosin levels at Neelix during the warp plasma undercover bust resembles the Varon-T disruptor prop from TNG : " The Most Toys ". According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 160), all of the Kolaati weapons were stock weapon props from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .
  • Also according to the book Delta Quadrant (p. 160), the space station set in this episode was a redress of the Akritirian maximum security detention facility from the earlier third season installment " The Chute ".
  • The station set was artificially extended via blue screen. Jesús Treviño remembered, "Voyager was to visit a space station out in a different sector of space, and we wanted it to look like a place that would house a lot of different aliens. Of course, we had a limited set. Richard James , the production designer, had built this set and working with him we devised a way in which I could shoot the same set using blue screen… giving our story a much grander looking production scale. What I wound up doing was I shot a plate looking back in the other direction, and then I put that plate of the same environment with different people and I popped it into the blue screen, so in effect it doubled the distance of the set. And I did that three times. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 119 , p. 66) Treviño also noted, at one point, that this episode included a good example of him working "with the art director to make it seem as if a set is far larger than it is." ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 15 )
  • Ethan Phillips liked working with Jesús Treviño on this installment. Phillips recalled, " I was especially fond of the director, Jesús Treviño. It was the first time we'd worked with him, and he was very inventive and very easy and fun to work with. I think he did a terrific job. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7) Phillips also commented, " Jesus Trevino did a nice job of directing the show – I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of him. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , p. 62)
  • In summation of this episode, Jesús Treviño remarked, " I had a great deal of fun doing it. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 119 , p. 65)

Continuity [ ]

  • In airing order, this episode marks the debut of the recurring character of Ensign Vorik (although he also appears in " Alter Ego ", which was produced first). This male Vulcan character was introduced prior to his central role in " Blood Fever " so that audiences would be familiar with him by then. Vorik subsequently reappears at least once a season, right up until the end of the series run. The character was played by Alexander Enberg , the son of Jeri Taylor. On Star Trek: The Next Generation , Enberg once played a character similar to Vorik, appearing as a Vulcan engineer named Taurik in the episode " Lower Decks ". Jeri Taylor once suggested that Taurik and Vorik were twin brothers.
  • This is the first episode in which a Vulcan crew member other than Tuvok appears. Tuvok had previously implied that there were other Vulcans serving on board in " Flashback ".
  • Paris ' arrest in this episode, on suspicion of murder and illegal drug dealing, represents the third time he has found himself on the wrong side of local laws since arriving in the Delta Quadrant, after being wrongly found guilty of murder in " Ex Post Facto " and being wrongly imprisoned for a terrorist bombing in " The Chute ".
  • In the later third season episode " Distant Origin ", a group of Voth scientists visit the Nekrit Expanse station while tracking down Voyager . A canister of warp plasma they acquire at the space station is an acknowledgment of the events of this episode, providing good continuity links between the episodes. However, the writers apparently forgot that the warp plasma was not from Voyager , but a "lower grade substitute" provided by Bahrat.
  • At the end of this episode, Janeway tells Neelix, "The first duty of every Starfleet officer is the truth." This is what Captain Picard tells Wesley Crusher in TNG : " The First Duty ".
  • This was the first Star Trek: Voyager episode whose original airing followed the first broadcast of DS9 : " Rapture ", in which the DS9 crew switched to a new uniform style that audiences had already seen in Star Trek: First Contact . Thus, this episode is at the point in Star Trek: Voyager 's run when the old Starfleet uniforms worn by the Voyager crew became outdated, due to being stranded in the Delta Quadrant .

Reception [ ]

  • Both Jeri Taylor and Jesús Salvador Treviño found this episode to be intriguing. " The story was pretty interesting, " Treviño noted. ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 15 ) Jeri Taylor remarked, " This was a very questionable show. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7)
  • Both Jesús Treviño and Jeri Taylor were also highly satisfied with this episode in general. Taylor once described this installment as "a very strong Neelix story." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 24 , p. 15) Similarly, Treviño referred to the installment as "an excellent show." ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 119 , p. 65) He also noted, " I was very pleased with the episode […] and we were able to attain [a] sense of wonder. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 15 )
  • This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 4.2 million homes, and a 7% share. [7] (X)
  • Ethan Phillips believed that this episode's revelations about Neelix were not only news to him but also, possibly, to Star Trek fandom . Regarding the qualities that this episode shows Neelix to have – including loyalty and bravery – Phillips stated, " I don't know that the fans had seen much of those things in him before or perceived him that way until they got to see 'Fair Trade'. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , p. 60) The actor also said that the episode "allowed Neelix to share some of his past with his audience". ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 33 , p. 38)
  • Cinefantastique rated this episode 3 out of 4 stars. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 100)
  • Star Trek Magazine scored this episode 3 out of 5 stars, defined as "Warp Speed". ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , p. 57)
  • The unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 161) gives this installment a rating of 2 out of 10.
  • This episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Hairstyling for a Series. It beat out DS9 : " Trials and Tribble-ations ", which was nominated in the same category.
  • This episode was also nominated by the Art Designer's Society as one of their five finalists in the category of television.
  • Following his work on this episode, Ethan Phillips held onto hope that the dissolution of Neelix's relationship with Kes would be addressed elsewhere in the future, in lieu of this episode's scene deletion. Phillips noted, " I'm still hopeful that we'll address it somehow in a future episode. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 28 , p. 62) He would later express satisfaction with Kes and Neelix's final scene together, in " The Gift ". ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 33 , p. 39)
  • At the start of Star Trek: Voyager 's fourth season, Ethan Phillips related that the suggestions, in this episode, of Neelix acting as Ambassador for the starship Voyager "I believe is something they're going to explore in this season." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 33 , p. 38)
  • When Ethan Phillips watched this episode years after its production, he found that he was very proud of the episode. On 25 November, 2003 , Phillips remarked, " About six months ago, this guy asked me to speak at a college about the business of acting. They showed a bunch of stuff I had done. One thing they showed was an episode of Star Trek – 'Fair Trade,' where Neelix deals with these intergalactic drug dealers. I hadn't seen the show. I don't think I ever saw it. And we all sat down and watched it, and I was just blown away. It was such a good show. The acting, the lighting, the music; the whole production. It was great television, and I was really proud of it. " (Voyager Time Capsule: Neelix , VOY Season 3 DVD special features)

Apocrypha [ ]

  • This episode influenced Jeri Taylor to include the character of Wixiban into her novel Pathways , as part of Neelix's backstory. ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 1, Issue 6 , p. 92)

Video and DVD releases [ ]

  • UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 3.7, 2 June 1997
  • As part of the VOY Season 3 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

  • Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

  • Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay
  • Roxann Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres
  • Jennifer Lien as Kes
  • Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris
  • Ethan Phillips as Neelix
  • Robert Picardo as The Doctor
  • Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok
  • Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim

Guest Stars [ ]

  • James Nardini as Wixiban
  • Carlos Carrasco as Bahrat
  • Alexander Enberg as Vorik
  • Steve Kehela as Sutok
  • James Horan as Tosin

Co-Star [ ]

  • Eric Sharp as Map Vendor

Uncredited Co-Stars [ ]

  • R. Armstead as alien customer
  • John Austin as alien customer
  • N. Berman as alien vendor
  • T. Brace as Garan vendor
  • Michael Braveheart as alien customer
  • Tracee Lee Cocco as Tak Tak customer
  • A. Craig as alien vendor
  • C. Engh as alien vendor
  • Heather Ferguson as alien customer
  • Kevin Grover as alien customer
  • Ken Gruz as Tak Tak customer
  • Grace Harrell as alien customer
  • S. Hawkins as alien vendor
  • Sue Henley as Brooks
  • Peter Horak as Sutok's henchman
  • Steve Hudis as Tosin's henchman
  • Donald R. Jankiewicz as Bahrat's guard
  • Patrick Jankiewicz as Bahrat's guard
  • Irving Lewis as Sutok's henchman
  • Mark Major as Tak Tak customer
  • Julie Plum as alien customer
  • Irving Ross as Garan vendor
  • Shepard Ross as alien customer
  • E. Shin as alien customer
  • Pablo Soriano as alien vendor
  • Scott Strozier as Tosin's henchman
  • Adrian Tafoya as alien vendor

Stunt doubles [ ]

  • George Colucci as stunt double for Ethan Phillips
  • Dennis Madalone as stunt double for Steve Kehela

References [ ]

47 ; 2370 ; 2371 ; advisor ; ambassador ; anarchy ; associate ; astrometric chart ; bartering ; bio-mimetic gel ; commission ; concussion ; conspiracy ; contraband ; control interface ; cook ; coordinate chart ; cryostatic suspension ; cryostatic prison ( cryostatic imprisonment ); database ; death sentence ; decade ; Delta Quadrant ; deterrent ; deuterium maintenance ; dilithium matrix ; docking port ; duotronic probe ; duty shift ; engineering protocols ; engineering systems ; environmental control ; exhaust manifold ; family ; Federation ; fire snake ; food replicator ; freighter ; gagh ; gram ; gravitic caliper ; guide ; henchman ; impounded ; impulse response filters ; interrogation ; interstellar dust cloud ; isonucleic residue ; Jefferies tube ; junior grade ; Kes ; kilogram ; Klingon ; Klingon Breakfast Buffet ; Kolaati ; L647X7 ; L647Y6 ; learn the ropes ; lie ; lung disease ; M34 ; magnetic spindle bearing ; manifold ; map dealer ; mess room ; mining ship ; murder ; narcotic ; narcotics dealer (aka drug trafficker ); Nekrit Expanse ; Orillian lung maggot ; parts per million ; Paxau Resort ; percentage ; pergium ; phase lock ; phaser signature ; physician ; plasma burn ; plasma canister ; plasma flow ; plasma injectors ; plasma storm ; prime suspect ; prison ; promotion ; reaction control assembly ; rhuludian crystal ; safety nodes ; security officer ; security protocol ; security rounds ; security scanner ; self defense ; senior staff ; smuggler ; spectral analysis ; standard issue ; Starfleet ; Station Code 4279, Subsection Beta 325 ; station manager ; supply depot ; surveillance records ; suspect ; Talaxian ; Talaxian colony ; tavern ; toffa ale ; trader ; trading ship ; trafficking ; transporter beam ; transporter buffer ; transport device ( container ); transporter range ; Transporter Room 2 ; transporter system ; transporter technology ; tube ; type 2 phaser ; Type 6 shuttlecraft ( unnamed ); Ubean ; vermin ; visual signal ; volunteer ; Vulcans ; warp plasma ; warp plasma canister ; warp plasma particle ; warp propulsion ; " Wix "; Wixiban's ship / Wixiban's shuttle ; work detail ; worm

External links [ ]

  • "Fair Trade" at StarTrek.com
  • " Fair Trade " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
  • " Fair Trade " at Wikipedia
  • " "Fair Trade" " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
  • 2 Hoshi Sato
  • 3 Broken Bow (episode)
  • The Original Series
  • The Next Generation
  • Deep Space Nine
  • Strange New Worlds

An Obol for Charon

Battle at the binary stars.

Star Trek Series Episodes

The crew of the U.S.S. Voyager come across a small ship on the outer edges of the Delta Quadrant. Upon identifying the ship, the crew realize it is captained by Neelix’s old friend Wixiban, a Trabe. Neelix has not seen his old friend since the Trabe and Kazon conflict, and Wixiban’s presence raises suspicions amongst the crew of the Voyager.

The crew invite Wixiban aboard the Voyager and allow him to stay as Neelix’s guest. During their time together, Wixiban and Neelix remind each other of their old adventures, and Wixiban shares with the Voyager crew some of the technologies used by the Trabe. The Trabe technology, while old, is still valuable, and the crew debate whether or not they should accept it as a trade.

When Voyager’s security chief, Tuvok, learns of Wixiban’s intentions, he is wary of the Trabe’s true motives and investigates further. He discovers that the Trabe technology is being used to power a cloaked Kazon vessel, making it invisible to long-range scans. Suspicious of the Kazon’s presence in the Delta Quadrant, Tuvok confronts Wixiban, only to discover that the Trabe is only trying to broker a deal between two warring factions – the Trabe and the Kazon.

Wixiban explains that the Trabe are in desperate need of supplies and technology, and they have struck a deal with the Kazon in exchange for the Trabe technology. As the Kazon have been attacking innocent ships, Wixiban has taken the initiative to broker a deal so that the Trabe can acquire weapons and supplies from the Kazon without violence.

Wanting nothing to do with war, the Voyager crew agree to help broker the deal, as long as the Kazon are willing to provide supplies without any violence. They arrange for a trade exchange at a Kazon outpost, with the Voyager providing security for the trade. Though the exchange is successful, tensions run high as the Kazon attempt to sabotage the exchange and steal the Trabe technology.

In the end, the crew of the Voyager and Wixiban manage to broker a successful trade between the Trabe and the Kazon, thus ending the potential conflict between the two races. As a token of appreciation for their help, Wixiban provides the Voyager crew with some of the Trabe technology. With the Trabe and the Kazon pacified, the Voyager crew head off on their journey in search of the Alpha Quadrant.

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Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 12 "Fair Trade"

Edit locked, contains examples of:.

  • Action Survivor : Neelix is burned badly by the plasma explosion, but thanks to The Doctor he survives.
  • Bait-and-Switch : When Neelix is meeting with Wix, Bahrat turns up with a squad off guards to arrest...Chakotay and Tom.
  • Camera Spoofing : The Kolaati are shown to be doing this when Bahrat's view of Neelix and Wix suddenly changes to an empty corridor.
  • Character Development : This episode establishes that Neelix will transition out of his role from being the ship's local guide. He's now a part of the crew no matter what unique skill he can provide.
  • Chekhov's Gunman : Vorik (not mentioned since the pilot episode) is reintroduced here, due to his role in the upcoming "Blood Fever".
  • Clear Their Name : Neelix attempts to do this for Chakotay and Paris after they're accused of murdering the drug dealer by snaring a group of Kolaati smugglers. Unfortunately for the head Kolaati, one of his mooks gets a little trigger-happy; BOOM! Fortunately, Neelix survives and Chakotay and Paris are released.
  • One of the items that Voyager needs is pergium, the substance that was being mined on Janus VI .
  • After Neelix's misadventure lands him in Sickbay, Janeway angrily reminds him that " the first duty of any Starfleet officer is the truth ".
  • Cryo-Prison : Bahrat is determined to throw the murderer in one for fifty years. Fortunately Neelix and Wix are able to offer him a bigger fish.
  • Neelix's as a contraband smuggler comes back to haunt him, as does his old 'friend' Wix.
  • Tom shares a bit about his own with Neelix, about not telling the truth almost ruining his life .
  • Despair Event Horizon : During the climax, Neelix openly remarks, "Go ahead and shoot. I have nothing to lose!" It might sound like a bluff, but by this point, things have really gone south for him, and he's prepared to suffer the absolute worst outcome.
  • Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life : The episode opens with Neelix badgering Tuvok, then B'Elanna, about taking on a role in their departments. Their attitude is basically Not Now, Kiddo , which doesn't improve his confidence.
  • Drugs Are Bad : Turns out Wix is selling science fiction crystal meth, which really gets them into trouble.
  • When Janeway asks for details on the trading station, Neelix waffles vaguely, foreshadowing The Reveal that he's passed out of the area he knows.
  • The Nekrit Expanse looks rather ominous to Janeway. And so it should, as it marks the boundaries of Borg space.
  • From Bad to Worse : Wix is forced to kill his buyer, and Outpost Master Bahrat's eagle eye misses nothing, but that doesn't mean it's infallible...
  • Here Be Dragons : Neelix approaches a map dealer who informs him that the Expanse is too unstable to chart, hence there are no maps.
  • Innocuously Important Episode : For the most part, this story is essentially a minor crime caper that provides Neelix with some Character Development , but the entry into the Nekrit Expanse proves to represent a very significant watershed for the series as a whole. Hitherto, Voyager 's enemies have either been technologically inferior to them or crippled by some other disadvantage such as the Vidiian Phage; they've only been threats at all due to strength of numbers. From here on, they'll be up against far more dangerous opponents, such as the Malon, the Hirogen, the Krenim and, of course, the Borg.
  • It's a Long Story : And fortunately Wix is entirely willing to hear how Neelix joined the crew of a highly advanced starship over a glass of ale.
  • Jumping Off the Slippery Slope : This episode is all about showing the dangers of doing this, leading to a Broken Pedestal reaction from Janeway.
  • The Load : Neelix admits Voyager doesn't really need a cook, and Captain Janeway is a better ambassador than him. Now he's becoming obsolete as a guide as well.
  • Lovable Rogue : Neelix's friend Wix seems to be this, right down to the 'good at getting into trouble' part. At least he gets his shuttle back and can go on his way at the end, though his friendship with Neelix is at an end too.
  • Meaningful Echo : Janeway says the very same thing to Neelix that Picard said to Wesley about the truth...
  • Mexican Standoff : Between Neelix and Tosin, who's holding a leaking cannister of warp plasma that will blow them all up if he fires.
  • Noodle Incident : Wix helped Neelix out of a very tough spot involving the Ubeans, a race we don't see.
  • Not Afraid to Die : Neelix challenges Tosin to fire and blow them all up, as he has nothing left to live for. Wix isn't happy, as he's standing right next to him.
  • A jealous Wix really lets Neelix know what a sweet gig he's got, oblivious to Neelix's feeling that his position is at risk.
  • Captain Janeway tells Neelix that they'll be relying on his knowledge of the Delta Quadrant more than usual.
  • When Voyager first approaches the Nekrit Expanse.
  • When he realizes that Wix dragged him into a drug deal.
  • When Bahrat and Janeway reveal that a Starfleet phaser was used for murder on the station — the one that Neelix saw Wix commit.
  • Pet the Dog : When Neelix finally decides to come clean, and offers a reckless plan to avert prison that will likely get them both killed, Wix agrees to face his fate alongside his old friend.
  • Poor Communication Kills : If Neelix had gone to Janeway right away, she would have given him the "We're family now" speech and he wouldn't have been so hellbent on finding a map.
  • Punishment Detail : Scrubbing the exhaust manifolds! Neelix is so excited not to be put off the ship that he doesn't feel bad about such a mundane job.
  • Rest-and-Resupply Stop : The 'supplies' and 'directions' version.
  • Serious Business : Neelix becomes fixated on getting a map of the Expanse, because he believes he's outlived his usefulness, as Voyager is moving out of the region he knows.
  • Shadow Archetype : Wix is essentially what Neelix would be without Voyager (and very likely was before the start of the series): a guy who lives from one sordid deal to the next and who is constantly struggling to avoid suffering for any misdeeds. After his time on Voyager , Neelix can barely handle doing even a fraction of what's required in their adventure, but Wix presses on and ignores pesky morality issues.
  • A Shared Suffering : When Neelix comes clean about his inability to guide Voyager further, Janeway points out they're all lost in the Delta Quadrant with no idea of what's ahead.
  • Space Clouds : It even has Dramatic Thunder !
  • Space Station : Essentially a pit stop for travelers through the Nekrit Expanse.
  • Stuff Blowing Up : Neelix wasn't kidding about how explosive warp plasma is.
  • Title Drop Wix: Do you begrudge me the opportunity to make a fair trade?
  • True Companions : Janeway reminds Neelix that he's part of a family now, which means he doesn't get to just walk away like nothing happened and skate from punishment for his actions.
  • Understatement : When the drug dealer asks if they've got a long voyage ahead of them, Tom and Chakotay find it Actually Pretty Funny .
  • What the Hell, Hero? : Janeway gives one to Neelix at the end, including the Meaningful Echo above.
  • With Friends Like These... : Neelix needs the map from Wix and feels somewhat indebted to him, due to their history together. As such, he gets roped into assorted actions that ultimately turn his stomach. Though Neelix manages to convince him to confess, Wix ultimately leaves the station without finding out if his old friend will be okay.
  • With or Without You : Neelix tells Wix that he'll go to Bahrat with his plan, whether or not Wix agrees.
  • Wretched Hive : The outpost looks like this. It's a shady place with an active Black Market , and the station master Bahrat rules with an iron fist, taking a 20% cut from every transaction. Bahrat does enforce laws, but he's oblivious to crimes happening right under his nose, and his judgment runs pretty close to a Kangaroo Court .
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness : With Voyager about to enter space that Neelix knows nothing about, he fears that his usefulness to his friends is coming to an end and he'll be cut loose.
  • You Owe Me : Wix plays on this when Neelix talks of confessing everything.
  • Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 11 "Macrocosm"
  • Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
  • Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 13 "Alter Ego"

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Star Trek: Voyager – Fair Trade (Review)

In theory, Fair Trade is precisely the episode that Star Trek: Voyager needs right now.

From the outset, the show has struggled with several major problems. Superficially, Voyager has struggled to distinguish the Delta Quadrant from the Alpha Quadrant, to the point that the Kazon felt like low-rent Klingons and the various aliens-of-the-week seemed largely indistinguishable from the aliens-of-the-week featured on the sibling shows. More fundamentally, the show failed to conjure an air of mystery and intrigue about the region. Everything about the show felt too safe, right down to the characters. This was a show where terrorists became model officers.

Venting plasma...

Venting plasma…

Fair Trade feels like it should offer the perfect remedy to all of this. The opening scenes find Voyager brushing up against “the Nekrit Expanse.” It is a region of space that is pointedly different and alien. Neelix has no idea what lies beyond. The sensors cannot penetrate it. Voyager is forced to dock at a local space station to take supplies, one crowded with aliens of multiple species engaged in shady dealings. More than that, the episode hinges on the neglected character of Neelix. It returns to early undeveloped suggestions the Neelix is not all he claims to be.

However, in practice, Fair Trade is disappointing. The episode lacks the courage of its convictions, both as a script of itself and as clear demarcation within the third season. It is a show rich with promise that offers up any number of intriguing ideas, but lacks the courage necessary to follow through on them.

In a bit of a Wix.

In a bit of a Wix.

One of the big issues facing Voyager has been the sense that it is not actually going anywhere new, boldly or otherwise. Too many episodes, too many aliens, evoke iconic Star Trek moments. Despite the fact that the crew are stranded in the Delta Quadrant, they have frequent contact with aliens that look and feel familiar. A Romulan appeared in Eye of the Needle . Two Ferengi made a guest appearance in False Profits . Q turned up in Death Wish . A Cardassian missile popped up in Dreadnaught .

Even outside of the alien species literally recycled from past shows, too many episodes felt derivative. The euthanasia debate in Emanations had already been handled by Half a Life . The romantic comedy leading to a costumed run around with Q in The Q and the Grey recalled Q Pid . The “badass captain versus weird science mutants” plot in Macrocosm evoked Genesis . Even the Kazon themselves felt like reheated Klingons, a brutal warrior culture that were awkwardly racially coded.

"Congratulations, Ensign. You'll go pon'farr."

“Congratulations, Ensign. You’ll go pon’farr.”

There was very little to distinguish the Delta Quadrant from the Alpha Quadrant. The aliens looked largely the same, falling back on the classic “forehead of the week” make-up designs that could begin to feel a little repetitive after a while. Perhaps the biggest difference between Voyager and its sibling shows was the recurring sense that Voyager was travelling through a post-Cold War landscape that was not populated by rival empires but by developing nations. Voyager tended to stumble across primitive cultures, or those in desperate need of aid or support.

With all of that in mind, the Nekrit Expanse feels like a step in the right direction. It feels like Voyager is continuing the efforts to draw a line under the first two seasons that began with Future’s End, Part I and Future’s End, Part II . The big purple cloud introduced in the teaser to Fair Trade serves as a literal representation of that threshold, representing a very literal frontier for Voyager to cross. It represents the end of Neelix’s knowledge of the region, and so serves to close the book on a chapter of the show that began with Caretaker .

Cloudy with a chance of noir.

Cloudy with a chance of noir.

In the documentary Real Science , writer and science advisor André Bormanis outlines his inspiration for the Nekrit Expanse as something unique within the Star Trek mythos:

The Nekrit Expanse is something that I came up with, for my first script for Voyager. We wanted to suggest a region of space that was rather dangerous, that was difficult to navigate. It was too big to go around, we had to figure out a way to go through it. And the Expanse itself, I’d kind of modelled after some of the regions that we’ve identified, in telescopes, in our galaxy that you probably wouldn’t want to send a space probe into, at least not very far. There are regions of space that, contrary to popular belief, are not just sort of empty. Not pure vacuum. They are filled with subatomic particles – gas and dust, radiation of various forms. One example of this is a supernova remnant. When massive stars explode in these gigantic fireballs called supernovae, they will send at of material out into space. The outer layers of the star’s atmosphere will expand at incredible velocities into what is called the interstellar medium, the space between the stars. And this will actually sometimes create shockwaves and secondary effects that could be real trouble for a space craft trying to navigate through the denser portions of such a phenomenon. So that was the basic idea. You know, sort of a dark and spooky place that would be very difficult to navigate, very dangerous, and we have no idea what’s on the other side because it’s sufficiently opaque that our sensors can’t penetrate very far into it.

It is certainly an intriguing concept, and something markedly different than the obstacles that have blocked Voyager’s course to this point. It is not something as simple as enemy space like that presented in The Swarm .

His knowledge of warp core plasma is expansive.

His knowledge of warp core plasma is expansive.

Indeed, the production team seemed to like the idea of the Nekrit Expanse so much that they latched on to it for future story opportunities on Star Trek: Enterprise . When the fourth spin-off series ran into difficulty during its second year, and when the studio demanded a retool of the franchise, the production team returned to the idea of a region of space that was uncharted and opaque to sensors with the Delphic Expanse. Tellingly, the episode introducing the Delphic Expanse placed such emphasis on the concept that it was actually titled The Expanse .

Of course, the fact that the production team working on Enterprise felt comfortable revisiting the premise suggests that it was not executed particularly effectively on Voyager . The Nekrit Expanse as presented in Fair Trade is a great idea, but the show never follows through on the potential of this storytelling opportunity. The Nekrit Expanse is supposed to represent something new and exciting, something that exists beyond the crew’s (and the audience’s) frame of reference. However, that promise never actually materialises.

Once more unto the expanse...

Once more unto the expanse…

What actually happens once Voyager ventures into the Nekrit Expanse at the end of Fair Trade ? What surprises do the next few stories hold? Sadly, Voyager leans even more heavily upon the familiar. Alter Ego is a typical “holodeck runs amok” story. Coda features another appearance from the Vidiians. Blood Fever is a pon’farr story, and so references one of the most iconic Star Trek episodes ever produced. Unity brings the Borg back into the frame and sets up the cybernetic aliens as a recurring threat across the rest of the run of the show.

Still, it’s hard not see the Nekrit Expanse as proposed by Fair Trade as an intriguing idea and a step in the right direction. Given that Voyager is exploring space that is literally uncharted, there is something exciting about the ship and crew pushing beyond the confines of what they know. Fair Trade seems very much like a story that should have happened much earlier in the run, as a clear signalling of a desire to push beyond the safe and the familiar. It is also an episode that should have had a much bigger impact on the rest of the show.

Janeway can't Bahrat any longer.

Janeway can’t Bahrat any longer.

Even the space station depicted in Fair Trade makes for an interesting departure for Voyager . One of the few ways in which the Delta Quadrant felt tangibly different from the Alpha Quadrant was the recurring sense the it existed as a “used future” , a sense that the species inhabiting this region of space lacked the same industrial production apparatus that defined so many of the Alpha Quadrant species. There had been elements of this in the other franchise shows, most notably Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , but never to the same extent.

The Kazon are the most obvious examples, their ships stolen from the Trabe by a species not necessarily prepared for the technology. The Vidiians are an empire in a state of decline, where even their bodies are cobbled together from bits and pieces of other species. Later in the run, the Hirogen and Malon will also fit this template of alien species that lack the sort of clean production design associated with aliens like the Romulans or the Dominion or the Andorians. In a way, even the Borg would fit the template, as a species literally assembled from countless worlds.

"I run a nice clean cantina... I mean trading post."

“I run a nice clean cantina… I mean trading post.”

This is a design choice that stands very much at odds with the clean minimalism that the original Star Trek established for its alien worlds, sets built in bright colours and in straight lines. This was generally the case with science-fiction. Many critics would point to Star Wars as the point of transition, with the production design eschewing that sterility for something more “lived in.” As Charles Champlin argues in The Creative Impulse :

Lucas’s emphasis on the idea of a used future, a future that was meant to be experienced as reality rather than fantasy. The Star Wars future was not showroom shiny but dented and rusty, as if it had hard use on the back roads on innumerable galaxies. Lucas told an interviewer during production in England that the Apollo capsules may have looked brand new when they soared away, but it was clear when they returned that the interior was littered with candy wrappers, empty Tang cans, and other trash, just like the family station wagon.

Toward the end of the seventies and into the eighties, cinema embraced the idea of a grotty future populated with rusty metal and dim lighting. The cleanliness of Logan’s Run gave way to the industrial horror of Alien . The sterility of 2001: A Space Odyssey made room for the dreary urban landscape of Bladerunner . It was a transition that Star Trek largely avoided. Even Deep Space Nine cleaned up rather nicely after Emissary .

Market place of ideas.

Market place of ideas.

The alien station in Fair Trade plays into this idea of the Delta Quadrant as dilapidated and decayed. The station is nominally an interstellar marketplace, in which representatives of all species come together to trade. However, it is clearly not a state-of-the-art institution and is most definitely not designed for the comfort of its visitors. The lighting is poor. There are no windows. The colour scheme is very grey. The design recalls the architecture of the Soviet Union, cold and efficient more than warm and welcoming. It looks more like a shanty town than a shopping centre.

The aliens inhabiting the trading post all seem to be shady dealers. More than that, the production design veers away from the standard Star Trek template of forehead ridges and funny noses. Fair Trade features a number of different alien species, and all of them look much more alien than the Akritirians from The Chute or the Ilari in Warlord . Indeed, the station is overseen by Bahrat, who looks rather like a cross between a bear and a rat. Bahrat looks like an alien who belongs in the cantina scenes from the Star Wars franchise, especially with his furry coat.

"Yes, this is a stylish coat. I'm glad you noticed."

“Yes, this is a stylish coat. I’m glad you noticed.”

In fact, it feels like Star Wars had a fairly considerable impact on the portrayal of the trading outpost and its inhabitants in Fair Trade . The station is certainly presented as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” , with Chakotay and Paris hassled by a drug dealer within minutes of setting foot on the trading floor. The casualness with which Fair Trade embraces ideas like drug trafficking underscores just how creepy this environment actually is. When Symbiosis wanted to tackle drug addiction, it made it the centrepoint of an episode. Fair Trade treats it as a fact of life.

The obvious comparisons between the space station in Fair Trade and the locales featured in Star Wars make a certain amount of sense. After all, Fair Trade was broadcast less than a month before the much-hyped theatrical re-release of Star Wars in late January 1997. Of course, Star Trek and Star Wars had always had an interesting and complicated relationship with one another. Deep Space Nine was in many ways embracing the pulpy themes of space conflict and mysticism more firmly associated with Star Wars . It makes sense Voyager would take its own inspiration.

Love is the drug. Also, drugs are the drug.

Love is the drug. Also, drugs are the drug.

The space station is a very effective piece of production design, one that demonstrates the level of skill and care taken by the staff working on the design aspects of Voyager . Quoted in Science Fiction Television Series, 1990-2004 , director Jesús Salvador Treviño outlined the work involved in bringing the environment to life :

That was my initiation into the Star Trek family and unlike most episodes, where one or two alien races are featured, here we created an interstellar marketplace where many races came to trade. We created more than a dozen different alien races for the scenes in the marketplace and that proved to be a challenge. I wanted to give the sense that the marketplace was big but since it was on Paramount’s Stage 16, it was rather limited. I had the idea of creating a greenscreen arcade at one end of the marketplace. I first plugged this window and shot a marketplace plate shot full of aliens. Then I took the plug out of the greenscreen area, thus doubling the size and depth of the marketplace. I did this again (tripling the apparent depth of the market place) and had Paris and Chakotay enter into the scene and look down the centre of the scene to emphasise the size of the marketplace. It was great fun to use these technical tricks to help sell the sense of wonder.

The marketplace featured in Fair Trade is an exciting and compelling setting, populated by memorable species. Michael Westmore does excellent work on supporting characters like Sutok or Tosin, the skill evident in their design all the more effective for the fact that they only appear briefly in a single episode. This recalls the fascinating texture of the background players in the Star Wars universe , bit players who look interesting enough to inspire the imagination .

Business as unusual.

Business as unusual.

Once again, the influence of Fair Trade would be felt on the development of Enterprise . The portrayal of the trading outpost in Fair Trade , with its diverse aliens and questionable moral character, feels very much like a spiritual predecessor to the depiction of Rigel X on Enterprise . That particular trading post would become one of the few locations that the crew would visit on multiple separate occasions over the course of the four-season run, bookending the series with appearances in Broken Bow and These Are the Voyages… , with an appearance in The Seventh .

However, the scruffiness of the trading outpost in Fair Trade exists very much in opposition to the tidiness and cleanliness of Voyager . To be fair, this is not a problem with the individual episode so much as with the show around it. The scrappy used aesthetic of the Delta Quadrant stands in sharp contrast to the immaculate appearance of Voyager itself. Despite being stranded half way across the galaxy without any support, Voyager never loses that “new starship” smell. No matter how many beatings the vessel may take, the ship always returns to pristine condition.

Ah, the Delta Quadrant. Where you can't even trust your local drug dealer.

Ah, the Delta Quadrant. Where you can’t even trust your local drug dealer.

This is one of the show’s original sins, and it has become quite clear that the production team are not interested in taking the steps necessary to remedy it. As such, Voyager itself seems almost out of place when it arrives at the trading post claiming to be in dire need of supplies. When Janeway visits Bahrat, she insists that Voyager needs peregium “to regenerate the filters on our environmental control system.” That certainly sounds important. However, the show has never convincing generated a sense of peril or threat.

In many ways, this is incidental to the plot at hand. Voyager needs the peregium because the episode needs there to be a reason for the ship to stop at the trading episode and it would also be nice for Neelix and Wixiban to be able to source something important for the crew. However, this has never been mentioned before and will never be mentioned again. It never feels as though Voyager might actually be in trouble if it can’t acquire any peregium from the trading outpost. As such, Voyager stands out against the scruffy rag-tag nature of the traders.

Face off.

Fair Trade is a story about Neelix, which is interesting of itself. Voyager has a habit of completely abandoning about half its cast, slotting characters like Chakotay, Tuvok and Kim into generic narratives once or twice a year. This transition was already taking place in the third season, and would be cemented with the arrival of Seven of Nine into the cast in Scorpion, Part II . From the fourth season onwards, the series was clearly dominated by the trio of Janeway, Seven and the EMH.

However, Neelix was never quite abandoned. Like Torres and Paris, Neelix fell into the middle-ground of the ensemble. The character could generally be counted upon to be given something to do, even if he never dominated the series to the same extent as Janeway, Seven or the EMH. Neelix could anchor stories as diverse as  Jetrel , Mortal Coil ,  Once Upon a Time or The Haunting of Deck Twelve . It was too much to suggest that Neelix was a well-rounded and fully-fleshed-out character, but he certainly held the production team’s interest more than Chakotay or Tuvok.

Warp core values.

Warp core values.

At the same time, there is a clear sense that Voyager struggled with Neelix. The character did not really work in a practical sense. This is strange, given that Neelix has perhaps the strongest sense of purpose of any character introduced in Caretaker . Once Voyager finds itself stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Neelix is the local alien who is drafted on to the crew so that he might serve as a guide. More than that, Neelix is introduced firmly outside the established Starfleet hierarchy. While Chakotay, Paris and Torres all at least attended Starfleet Academy, Neelix is something else.

As established in Caretaker , Neelix is a rogue. Operating out of a broken-down old ship, Neelix is  introduced as a character who is not entirely trustworthy. He brings Janeway to meet the Kazon, neglecting to mention that he is not on the best of terms with the Ogla; it is implied that Neelix stole water from the Ogla. He also involves the Starfleet away team in a plan to rescue Kes, declining to inform Janeway that she is being made party to a haphazard plot to spring his girlfriend from the clutches of the Kazon.

"Please! As far as they know, I'm just the plucky comic relief!"

“Please! As far as they know, I’m just the plucky comic relief!”

Ethan Phillips acknowledged as much, reflecting on how the concept of Neelix changed dramatically from his introduction :

“Neelix began life on Voyager as sort of a roustabout,” notes Phillips. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that he was a nefarious guy, but he certainly was involved in his share of shady dealings, as we found out when he met up with his old pal Wixiban [James Nardini] in the episode Fair Trade. However, in the show’s seven years he changed and became somebody who wanted to take more pride in his accomplishments.”

However, this aspect of Neelix was never actually addressed on-screen at any point in the first season. He was just presented as a lovable toyetic alien.

"So... you still dating that two-year-old?"

“So… you still dating that two-year-old?”

Even Neelix’s relationship with Kes is something of a red flag. Even on a conceptual level, there is something disconcerting of a sexual relationship between a fully-grown man and a two-year-old girl, regardless of how vocally Voyager might protest that Kes is mentally and physically around the age of twenty. For what it’s worth, Neelix seems decidedly older than that and it is left ambiguous to precisely how long the pair have known one another when Janeway rescues Kes from the Ogla.

More than that, the particulars of the relationship are far from healthy. Neelix is consistently and repeatedly portrayed as abusive towards Kes, something that seems especially creepy given her own lack of life experience beyond being captured and chained by the Ogla. In Phage , Neelix emotionally manipulates Kes to ensure that she would not consider leaving him following the removal of his lungs. In Twisted , Neelix brutally lays into Kes for the simple fact of knowing where some of her (male) colleagues live. This is to say nothing of Parturition .

"We come bearing gifts. In exchange for other gifts. So... more trade goods."

“We come bearing gifts. In exchange for other gifts. So… more trade goods.”

These elements do not make Neelix a poor character, per se . Indeed, they quite consciously mirror the characterisation and definition of Quark on Deep Space Nine . In many ways, Neelix seems like something of analogue for Quark. They are both rogues who exist outside the two competing organisational hierarchies in their respective shows, they both operate out of dining establishments, they are both latex-heavy aliens. In fact, both Shimerman and Philips had established themselves within the franchise by playing Ferengi on Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Like Neelix, Quark was a troublesome character over the first few seasons of Deep Space Nine . In those early episodes, it frequently seemed like Quark only existed to bring terrible or dangerous objects on to the station to threaten the rest of the cast; he is responsible for the dangerous game in Move Along Home , the energy vibrations in Q-Less , and the terrorist attack in Invasive Procedures . However, the writers made a point to develop Quark as a character to the point that he retained that unique premise and grew so that he could support episodes like House of Quark or Body Parts .

"You know, when I ordered twin bodyguards, I thought they'd be creepier and more intimidating."

“You know, when I ordered twin bodyguards, I thought they’d be creepier and more intimidating.”

In contrast, Neelix suffered from the big recurring problem with Voyager as a whole, a strong resistance to anything resembling conflict or ambiguity. Neelix was an interesting character, but a lot of what was interesting about him lay in how he didn’t fit in with this crew. As with the incorporation of the Maquis into the crew, there was a lot of potential for interesting contrasts and debate. Unfortunately, also as with the incorporation of the Maquis into the crew, any possibility of conflict was quick abandoned in favour of the appearance of harmony.

As such, Voyager took the edges off Neelix. The show never acknowledged his roguish tendencies. His attitude towards Kes was treated as overly-protective rather than simply abusive. In fact, the show famously ended the relationship between Neelix and Kes in the episode Warlord , in which an evil alien despot took over the Ocampan’s body for the twin purposes of chewing scenery and breaking hearts. This is Voyager , where even toxic and poisonous relationships evaporate without a hint of conflict and without acknowledging the unpleasantness.

Neelix needs to vent.

Neelix needs to vent.

In an interview with Star Trek: Monthly , Ethan Phillips alluded to a scene that was shot for Fair Trade , but cut from the broadcast episode, that would have dealt with this idea:

Neelix never said goodbye to Kes. So now we’ve got that closure that I missed. We’d actually filmed a scene for the episode Fair Trade, way back in the third season, where I did say goodbye to her, but the scene was never aired, for whatever reason. I think it was because the show was running long and the scene wasn’t integral to the plot.

Indeed, this particular cut reveals a lot about how the production team approached writing and editing on the series. Voyager was always a plot-driven show, seldom making room for the little character beats that made Deep Space Nine so effective.

"You two look just like my target market..."

“You two look just like my target market…”

With all of this in mind, Fair Trade feels very much like a long-overdue Neelix episode. It is an episode built around several ideas about Neelix as a character that have been bubbling away in the background since Caretaker , but which have never been properly elucidated. The first of these ideas is that Neelix has misrepresented himself to Janeway, that he does not know as much as he claims about the Delta Quadrant and that he is invested in the comforts that Voyager affords him.

After all, working on Voyager is like living in a holiday resort compared to life in the rest of the Delta Quadrant. It is certainly questionable how much Neelix materially provides to the crew. What use is a morale officer when the holodeck exists? What is the point of a cook when the replicators function? Neelix makes much of his skills as a guide, but he still manages to get attacked by the Vidiians in Phage and even aligns the ship with a bunch of former slavers in Alliances . Kes at least works in sickbay. Neelix seems somewhat less essential.

"This certainly looks like a reputable establishment."

“This certainly looks like a reputable establishment.”

In Fair Trade , the crew brush up against the limits of Neelix’s knowledge. It turns out that Neelix only has encyclopedic knowledge of three-years’-worth of Delta Quadrant travel, which is quite remarkable given that Voyager is portrayed as a much fast ship than his own beat-up little ship. Then again, given that the crew encounter a colony of Talaxians half-way back to the Alpha Quadrant in Homestead , perhaps it is surprising that Neelix’s knowledge doesn’t extend even further . Still, Neelix refuses to own up to the fact that he has no idea what lies ahead, afraid of losing his status.

This is something that runs quite counter to Gene Roddenberry’s romantic notion of idealised characters who serve as paragons of virtue. After all, Neelix runs the risk of putting the crew in danger if he refuses to tell Janeway that he has no knowledge of the galaxy beyond the Nekrit Expanse. A more straight-laced character would acknowledge this, and realise that it isn’t such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Instead, Neelix is so worried about Janeway’s perception of him that he makes a series of bad decisions that lead to murder and carnage.

"Well, with a face like this, I couldn't really go into hospitality."

“Well, with a face like this, I couldn’t really go into hospitality.”

It is a rather interesting take on Neelix as a character, on that plays into the episode’s second big idea about who Neelix is as a character. Fair Trade draws attention to Neelix’s shady past, not the breakfast-show-hosting mess-hall-running morale officer that Janeway knows and loves, but the wheeler-dealer who thought it might be a good idea to steal water from the Kazon. At the trading post, Neelix stumbles upon an old associate. Wixiban is a fellow Talaxian and former business partner. He also spent several years in prison for crimes that he and Neelix committed together.

This is an interesting set-up, particularly as Neelix tries to conceal his past from Janeway. The most interesting moments in the episode come during the scenes where Wixiban is interacting with the Starfleet crew, and Neelix is tangibly worried that his old friend will let something slip about the man that Neelix used to be. It is a delightful tension, if only because it is willing to make Neelix a more complicated character. Given how Wix has suffered for Neelix’s sins, it is hard to feel too worried about Neelix’s embarrassment. However, Neelix’s reaction is understandable in its own right.

Manning his station.

Manning his station.

This is an interesting approach to characterisation for Voyager , a show that typically frames its leads in unambiguous terms. It is difficult to imagine a character like Worf or Odo or Kira or Quark existing on Voyager . The series insists that Janeway exist as the paragon of virtue or the embodiment of wrath from one episode to the next, but seldom anything in between. Fair Trade is perfectly willing to let Neelix behave in a manner that is both unpleasant and reckless, yet entire sympathetic. Voyager should adopt this approach to characterisation more often.

Fair Trade borrows heavily from the conventions of film noir . The shady and dimly-lit location that serves as a point of intersection and last chance saloon for the lost and the desperate. The old friend from the past who harbours a dark secret. The chain of bad decisions that compound, driven by desperation and culminating in murder. The seemingly good man who turns out to be anything but. A world where law enforcement are ineffective at best and indifferent at worst. Fair Trade might not have a femme fatale , but it does hit a lot of the checkboxes.

The space bet-Wix them.

The space bet-Wix them.

(Arguably Wix himself comes closest to fulfilling the role of femme fatale , in that he arrives into Neelix’s life out of nowhere and causes nothing but trouble. The episode even has some fun with this idea. “Where were you at the time of the shooting?” Tuvok asks Wixiban at one point. Wix doesn’t miss a beat, “In bed, asleep.” Tuvok presses the point. “Can anyone corroborate that?” Wix cheekily responds, “Alas, Mister Tuvok, I sleep alone.” It is some decidedly pulpy dialogue for Voyager . Wix might as well be puffing on a cigarette.)

While Fair Trade cannot measure up to the pulpy noir aesthetic (and production design) of Necessary Evil , it is certainly a more convincing effort than Ex Post Facto . There is something quite appealing in the ambiguity and shadiness that runs through Fair Trade , a grottiness that stands in sharp contrast to the sterile aesthetic associated with Voyager . In many ways, Fair Trade is a show about the balance between compromise and integrity. Given the basic premise of Voyager , it seems strange that so few episodes tackle those ideas.

"Nothing unusual or irreputable about what's going on here."

“Nothing unusual or irreputable about what’s going on here.”

In Captain’s Logs Supplemental , Ron Wilkerson cites a classic gangster movie as the inspiration for his original pitch:

The story was essentially like Carlito’s Way in the sense that this guy comes on the ship and Neelix pretends he doesn’t know him, but in fact they were in jail together and he helped Neelix escape and they split up afterward, and now he’s looking to get Neelix to do something for him or he’ll reveal his past to everyone.

There is more ambiguity in the finished episode. It is to the credit of Fair Trade that Wix never seems like an antagonist or villain. He’s just desperate.

"You'd think being an accomplice to drug dealing and murder would convince Captain Janeway to keep you off my security team, but apparently not."

“You’d think being an accomplice to drug dealing and murder would convince Captain Janeway to keep you off my security team, but apparently not.”

However, Fair Trade never quite commits to that interesting tension between Wix’s justifiable anger at a former partner who happily left him rotting in prison and Neelix’s desire to reinvent himself as something better. Fair Trade falls back into the familiar Voyager patterns, consciously playing down any hint of conflict between its characters to insist that there is no disagreement that cannot be resolved through something as simple as friendship. It is an endearing idea, but one very much at odds with all those film noir tropes littering the narrative.

This reluctance to commit to character conflict is most apparent in how Neelix and Wixiban choose to respond to the murder of Sutok. Initially, it seems like Neelix wants to come clean while Wix wants to hide the truth. These are logical positions, given what we know of these two characters. Inevitably, the conflict comes to a head when Bahrat arrests Chakotay and Paris for the crime. Wix had been trying to resolve the issue quietly, but Neelix refuses to let his two friends go to prison for a crime that he committed.

"I... have a cunning plan."

“I… have a cunning plan.”

Now, there are a number of interesting directions that the story could take from that point. Wix could point out that Neelix was perfectly happy at one stage to abandon his old friend to prison rather than face the consequences of his actions. Wix could insist that Chakotay and Paris will be exonerated. Wix could threaten to expose Neelix to Janeway and Bahrat as payback. After all, Wix really doesn’t want to go back to prison. Although “cryostatic suspension” may not be exactly like an Ubean prison, it still sounds very unpleasant.

“Your plan is crazy,” Wix insists when Neelix formulates his plan. “It’s worse than prison, it’s a death sentence.” Neelix responds, “That would be better than living a lie. I’m going whether you do or not.” Neelix marches towards Bahrat’s office. Wixiban hesitates, and then makes a move to stop him. How far is Wix willing to go to save his own neck? Not that far, it turns out. “Neelix!” he shouts. “We’ve been through too much together. I can’t let you do this alone.” It’s a touching moment, but one that never feels earned.

"Oh, there is going to be some serious venting about the quality of this warp plasma on Yelp."

“Oh, there is going to be some serious venting about the quality of this warp plasma on Yelp.”

Indeed, it could be argued that Wixiban is the far more heroic of the two characters here. Neelix has spent more than two years on a state-of-the-art ship after skipping out on his best friend. If anything, this reckoning is long overdue, and Neelix has no idea what it actually means to pay for the consequences of his actions. Wix decides to join Neelix, despite the fact that he has actually served time in prison. Wix has a better understanding of what is at stake, which almost makes his decision to go along more heroic than Neelix’s decision to turn himself in.

(All of this makes Wix’s strange disappearance at the end of the episode rather surreal. When Neelix wakes up, Tuvok informs the disgraced morale officer that Wix “sent [Neelix] his thanks before making a hasty departure.” This seems rather strange. If the production team weren’t interested in reconciling the two characters at the end of the episode, it might have made more sense (narratively and thematically) to have Neelix face Tosin alone. After all, that would have neatly reversed Neelix’s original sin of leaving Wix to face the music.)

Morale's that ends well.

Morale’s that ends well.

Fair Trade also avoids any hint of conflict in the closing scene once Neelix confesses to Janeway. Janeway is justifiably angry at Neelix for lying to her, for getting the ship embroiled in a murder investigation, for getting Paris and Chakotay arrested and for almost getting himself killed. However, Janeway’s justifiable anger is tempered by the insistence that everybody on Voyager get along. As such, it never feels like Neelix is held fully accountable for the decision that he made.

It is a sequence that underscores how ineffective Voyager renders Janeway during these scenes. Picard and Sisko get much more convincing sequences laying into subordinates, if only because the scripts seldom feel the need for them to hold back. There is no doubt about how disappointed Picard is with Worf in The Enemy or Wesley in The First Duty . Sisko similarly voices his righteous anger at Worf in both Sons of Mogh . In contrast, Janeway comes across as rather toothless in how she deals with behaviour that is not just disappointing but outright mutinous.

"So... how was prison?"

“So… how was prison?”

When Neelix complains that he is of no use to Janeway because he doesn’t know what lies ahead of the ship, Janeway even comforts him. “Well, that’s not the point, is it?” she responds. “None of us knows what’s coming. That’s what Starfleet is all about. We are all in this together, Neelix, and we have to be able to count on each other no matter how hard it gets. Do you understand?” It is a very sweet moment, and might even have been touching if Neelix had confessed earlier in the episode. However, Janeway is coddling an accomplice to murder.

Of course, Janeway punishes Neelix, at least in theory. “Report to deuterium maintenance at oh-four-hundred tomorrow morning,” she orders. “You’re going to spend the next two weeks scrubbing the exhaust manifolds. That should give you time to think about what I’ve said.” That sounds like an inconvenience rather than a particularly harsh punishment, but it does not matter. The next time that the audience sees Neelix in Alter Ego or Blood Fever , there is no hint of any shame or tension. There are no material consequences for his actions.

"I mean, c'mon. It's not like Janeway will actually punish you."

“I mean, c’mon. It’s not like Janeway will actually punish you.”

This is not an exceptional case. Voyager has a long history of putting Janeway in an impossible position when it comes to disciplining her crew. In Prime Factors , she declines to punish the mutineers for conspiring behind her back to violate the Prime Directive. In Manoeuvres , she explains that she cannot punish Chakotay for hijacking a shuttlecraft and violating orders. No wonder Janeway pursues Ransom so aggressively in Equinox, Part II . Finally there is a Starfleet officer that she can punish.

Even leaving aside the ways in which Fair Trade fails to live up to its potential by falling back on familiar Voyager storytelling, the episode is a great example of how weak the writing on Voyager is on a simple technical level. There are points at which, even leaving aside the content of the scripts, it feels like the writing staff on Voyager have forgotten how to structure a forty-five minute episode of television. The result is a collection of story beats that feel out of place, almost “off rhythm.”

Shooting off.

Shooting off.

Fair Trade is notable as the first teleplay credited to veteran Star Trek science advisor André Bormanis. Bormanis would go on to serve as a member of the writing staff on Enterprise . For Bormanis, this was very much a logical development :

As science consultant, I had to read every draft of every script of every episode of TNG, DS9 and Voyager that we produced. That in and of itself was a very good education, seeing the stories and scripts unfold step by step, learning the rhythms of the shows, the voices of the characters and so on. I had the opportunity to start pitching story ideas about a year after I started, and eventually they bought a couple for Voyager. They (later) asked me if I was interested in writing a script for season three of Voyager, and of course I said yes (the script was Fair Trade). They thought I did a good job with it, and had me do a few more. So by the time I was brought on staff as a full-time writer for Enterprise, I felt well prepared.

Bormanis never quite managed to get the rhythm sown. Even when working on Enterprise , some of his episodes have that strange dissonance to them; most notably the weird pairing of a science-fiction horror story about monstrous aliens with a comedy story about Reed’s birthday in Silent Enemy .

No big deal.

No big deal.

There are similar structural and rhythmic issues with Fair Trade . Most notably, this is the second Voyager script in as many episodes that has absolutely no idea about how to structure a teaser. Warlord for some reason decided that the crew’s new holodeck programme made for viewing so riveting that it could segue directly into the opening credits without anything actually happening. The teaser to that episode faded out on Neelix’s feet, panning down from a shot of the character dancing with three holographic ladies. It certainly didn’t scream “watch Voyager!”

Fair Trade has a similar issue. The teaser does a half-decent job setting up the theme of the episode, establishing Neelix’s sense of insecurity as the ship approaches the limits of his knowledge. He is introduced hassling Tuvok and then decides to bother Torres. Finally, he is summoned to the bridge. An ominous purple cloud appears on screen. “Neelix, we seem to be approaching some kind of interstellar dust clouds,” she states. “Can you tell us anything about them? They look rather ominous to me.”

"So is this really where we're ending the teaser?" "Looks like it."

“So is this really where we’re ending the teaser?” “Looks like it.”

Neelix responds, “I believe this is a region of space known as the Nekrit Expanse.” The music rises. The scene fades out. The opening credits sound. However, nobody has explained what exactly the “Nekrit Expanse” is at this stage. Those words mean nothing to the audience. More than that, there is no confirmation yet that Neelix has no idea what he is talking about. Indeed, viewers might reasonably wonder what Janeway finds so “ominous” about those “interstellar dust clouds.” All the audience has to go on is the music cue.

Much like it would have made more sense to close the teaser to Warlord on the encounter with Tieran’s damaged ship or even on his death, it would have made more sense to extend the teaser of Fair Trade for about thirty more seconds. The opening minute of the first act does a much better job of establishing the mystery and intrigue than Janeway’s one line of dialogue about the region in the teaser. In fact, Janeway’s “then we’ll have to go through it” would be much more effective closing line for the teaser, establishing stakes and setting the characters in motion.

You have to play the hand you're delta.

You have to play the handa you’re delta.

There are other strange writing choices as well. Most notably, Fair Trade seems to muddle Tom Paris’ back story. “Do you, would you, tell me how you got in trouble?” Neelix asks Tom Paris at one point. Paris offers a summary of the events of  The First Duty , advising Neelix, “I’ve thought a lot about that, and it comes down to one simple fact. I didn’t tell the truth. I made a mistake, which happens to people, but if I’d admitted that mistake it would have been a lot better. But I lied about it, and it nearly ruined my life.”

Now, this is very much in keeping with the themes of the episode. It is something that Neelix desperately needs to hear at this point in the story. In fact, the episode to which Paris alludes even gets a title drop in the closing scene between Janeway and Neelix. “You’ve been on this ship for two years,” Janeway states. “I’d think by now you’d have learned that the first duty of any Starfleet officer is the truth.” This is not a bad touch. After all, The First Duty is a great episode. There is just one small problem. Tom Paris was not in The First Duty .

Trading place.

Trading place.

Robert Duncan McNeill appeared in The First Duty , playing the role of Nicholas Locarno. Locarno was very much the inspiration for Paris, although the production team eventually backed away from that idea because it was felt that Locarno was beyond redemption. (Even conceptually, Voyager lacked the courage of its convictions.) Although  Caretaker introduced Tom Paris as a prisoner in need of redemption, he was a prisoner who was serving time for his membership of the Maquis.

There is a considerable difference between “I didn’t tell the truth” and “I joined a terrorist organisation.” The former is Nick Locarno’s original sin, while the latter landed Tom Paris in prison. To be fair, Paris could easily be alluding to the event that led to him enlisting in the Maquis which in turn led to him ending up in prison, but it feels like a rather convoluted chain of logic. In fact, Neelix explicitly asks about Tom’s time in prison. ( “I’ve heard you were in some trouble in the past. Spent time in prison.” )

Stationary orbit.

Stationary orbit.

It is a strange piece of writing, and it is remarkable that nobody on staff seemed to catch the confusion between the character who inspired Tom Paris and the character of Tom Paris himself. Much like the weird structuring of the teaser, it serves as a reminder of how casual the writers were on Voyager about things like character continuity and script structure. Voyager was an incredibly frustrating piece of television, and a large part of that was down to how frustratingly lazy it could be at times. Even as it flirts with great ideas, Fair Trade is a reminder of that.

Fair Trade is an interesting episode. In theory, it is exactly what Voyager needs at this point in time. In practice, it feels like more of the same.

You might be interested in our other reviews from the third season of Star Trek: Voyager :

  • Basics, Part II
  • False Profits
  • Sacred Ground
  • Future’s End, Part I
  • Future’s End, Part II
  • The Q and the Grey
  • Blood Fever
  • Favourite Son
  • Before and After
  • Distant Origin
  • Worst Case Scenario
  • Scorpion, Part I

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: consequences , fair trade , Film noir , neelix , star trek , star trek: voyager , star wars , used future , voyager |

8 Responses

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“Like Neelix, Quark was a troublesome character over the first few seasons of Deep Space Nine.” The problem with Neelix as a character is that he never seems to have a purpose. I mean Quark may have been a bother in the early seasons of DS9, but he also has that great scene in “the Maquis part II” in which he gets the Vulcan to see the lack of logic in her position. With Quark, the viewer always got a sense of cunning about him even though he was not as cunning as he possibly thought he was. In contrast what does Neelix do? He dates a two year old, nearly gets the crew killed by Kazon in the pilot, nearly destroys the ship with cheese, introduces Voyager to slavers as possible allies, has a childish fight with Tom Paris, and nearly blows a covert operation by Janeway and Tuvok to flush out a spy. Neelix was so incredibly irritating that in the scene in “Meld” where Tuvok kills the holographic Neelix, I didn’t realize it wasn’t the real Neelix until he died.

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Oh, that would have made Meld something truly spectacular, if Neelix had died then and there.

I still think that there’s a lot to be said of Neelix’s potential as a Quark-like character, and the show’s reluctance to explore that potential is indicative of its central flaws. Which seems to be a recurring theme of the Voyager reviews. “Here’s the flaw this week, and here’s how it all ties back to the decisions made in Parallax and Time and Again.”

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The big difference between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek’ for me was that ‘Star Wars’ ran with the idea of a galactic society where thousands of species live together in one larger society. Sure you have species homeworlds (ie. Jawas are native to Tatooine), planetary cultures (ie. Corellian) and some are less intergrated (ie. the primitive, newly discovered Ewoks) but your next door neighbour, your girlfriend or your boss might be one of a hundred different species. I know the Prequels are much maligned but Coruscant looks wonderfully diverse, like intergalactic New York or London.

In contrast ‘Star Trek’ always felt like there was suprisingly little contact between the different species. Even the Federation which should be diverse often felt like an organisation built for humans akwardly trying to fit in the odd alien.

Yep, that’s a very valid point. And it’s something that I love whenever it comes up as a criticism of the Federation. I think the “homo sapiens only club” line in The Undiscovered Country bumped that movie several places up my “favourite Star Trek films” list.

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“Perhaps the biggest difference between Voyager and its sibling shows was the recurring sense that Voyager was travelling through a post-Cold War landscape that was not populated by rival empires but by developing nations. Voyager tended to stumble across primitive cultures, or those in desperate need of aid or support.”

You make an interesting point about the differences about the Alpha Quadrant and the Delta Quadrant that I hadn’t really considered. When I look back at TNG, I never really saw the crew as explorers, despite Picard’s desperate assertions in Peak Performance. The Federation and Enterprise was always involved with border conflicts with the Romulans and Cardassians, the Klingon Empire were the neighbors, and the Ferengi were stealing stuff along the Federation Border, that it gave the impression the Federation was boxed in. For the majority of the TNG era, there felt this feeling of claustrophobia, that there wasn’t enough space for everyone, causing the majority of conflicts. Sometimes I wonder how the TNG even got to explore the unknown, it felt like was there a narrow corridor somewhere on the Federation border that lead to unclaimed space so that could travel to the unknown region. When I think about TNG as a whole, the most memorable episodes happened within the Federation itself. Even in the movies, I think the only time they weren’t in Federation space, it was to visit Romulus. In fact, the Enterprise spent much of its time acting like a glorified taxi, shuttling a diplomat or Admiral around Federation territory or hosting some sort of conference on the ship. Exploration seemed like a niche hobby for the ship.

Contrast that with Delta Quadrant, which seems to lack major powers controlling it. When I think of the big villains that fought Voyager, it was the Borg, the Krenim Imperium, the Hirogen, the Viidians and the Kazon. Of those five, only one of those could be considered a major power, the Borg. When it comes to world buildings, I thought it was interesting that the writers put the Borg in the Delta Quadrant, and surrounded their territory with minor powers that had no shadow of a hope of curbing the Borg’s assimilation and expansion. It always felt like the Borg would have been an ever-growing menace. The next greatest villain/major power was a large empire, the Krenim Imperium which managed to kick around Voyager due to mucking around with time travel. But the big villain from the Year of Hell, Annorax, was from a timeline when the Krenim Imperium was previously conquered and a joke of a power. Viidians were probably a major power at one point, but the phage rotted out their Fallen Empire and I doubt the cure could undo the damage to them. And the Kazon and Hirogen were nomadic powers, perhaps powerful as a whole, but they didn’t work together and probably controlled no official territory, only squatting on planets when they needed to. In a way, this better sold the Voyager crew as explorers, since most of the space they flew through were either independent or unclaimed. There were people to meet, planets to explore, anomalies to poke at, and no Federation disputes to halt their mission. The Delta Quadrant never felt as claustrophobic as the Alpha Quadrant.

As for the Gamma Quadrant, I never felt like we got a feel for what that part of the Galaxy was like. A lot of inhabitants there never knew what a Founder was, even though it appeared the Dominion controlled what I assume was most of the Gamma Quadrant with an iron fist. It’s possible that the Dominion was only the size of the Federation, but once they seized the wormhole, it seemed like the Dominion WAS the Gamma Quadrant, even the founder homeworld seemed like a few hours’ drive from the wormhole in the The Die is Cast, along with their asteroid prison facility.

Yeah, the Gamma Quadrant doesn’t really have a character. In the first two seasons, there are hints that it is like the Delta Quadrant, lawless and populated by minor powers. But once the Dominion comes along, that is pretty much all that the Gamma Quadrant will ever be. At the same time, that makes a great deal of sense. If Voyager was going to be the “exploring” show, it made sense to let it take on the “post-Cold War Star Trek” vibe, and for Deep Space Nine to concentrate on the already-established Alpha Quadrant.

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Star Trek: Voyager has not exactly been good to Neelix up until now, with the odd exception of Jetrel, but Fair Trade works well as a nice analysis of his character even though it falls a little too much in the shadow of Jetrel, and it’s founded on a misconception on Neelix’s part.

The day Neelix has been dreading for two years has finally arrived – Voyager is about to move beyond the areas of space he’s familiar with. It’s perhaps the first episode where Voyager is about to take a true leap into the unknown and to prove he’s still useful, Neelix allows an old friend to drag him into all sorts of problems.

Fair Trade is a bit too dependent on Neelix’s stupidity in order to set the whole plot in motion, but I quite liked it for the way it explores Neelix’s insecurities which are gradually revealed through his friendship with Wixiban. Although Neelix puts on a cheerful front, he’s not quite as confident as he makes out (all of his job descriptions on Voyager are self-appointed) and it’s telling that he reveals the reality of his predicament to Wixiban.

I think Wixiban is the man Neelix could have been had he never encountered the Voyager crew. The Neelix we met in Caretaker would probably have had no qualms about letting Tom and Chakotay take the fall for his and Wixiban’s crimes and perhaps in time, he might have wound up in a place like the station at the edge of the Nekrit Expanse, or worse, languishing in prison, just like poor Wixiban.

I wonder if Ethan Phillips was thinking he would be replaced with the upcoming inclusion of Jeri Ryan to the cast (Neelix was never that popular a character) before they settled on Jennifer Lien. And that adds much to the episode as Neelix’s desperation digs him into a deeper and deeper hole while trying to prove his worth to the Voyager crew. It’s a shame that the episode’s resolution hinges on the cast telling instead of showing (just like Warlord and Macrocosm) us what happened but Fair Trade works at showing us more of what makes Neelix tick.

You likened Bharat to a rate (rat?) Darren, it was The Haunting of Deck Twelve, Neelix endangered the ship in Learning Curve much as Quark used to do in the early days of DS9, Neelix danced with three holographic girls in Warlord and it was Tieran’s damaged ship, not shop.

Thanks! Those are corrected now.

Yeah, I like the idea of Fair Trade a lot more than I like the execution of it, if that made sense. I’d certainly have much preferred “more episodes like Fair Trade” to “more episodes like Alter Ego”, for example.

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A meeting with an old friend lands Neelix in an ever-deepening hole of trouble.

In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “Fair Trade” and the value-add of keeping Neelix on the ship. Plus! The guys chat about yet another Expanse, learning a lesson very quickly, and forgotten break-ups.

  • Post author By Wes
  • Post date 06/27/2023

fair trade star trek

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More

Welcome to “The Pensky Podcast,” where I, Wes, and my co-host Clay, explore the vast Star Trek universe. In each episode, we dissect various elements from the Star Trek series, ranging from character arcs to underlying themes. This time, we get to the episode called, “Fair Trade”.

fair trade star trek

Our podcast aims to strike a balance, offering insightful commentary while encouraging listeners to delve into the material. Whether you’re a seasoned Trekkie or new to Star Trek, we cater to all levels of fandom.

In our latest installment, Clay and I discuss the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Fair Trade.” This episode originally aired on January 8, 1997, and is set at the stardate 50537.2. “Fair Trade” is the 13th episode of the third season , and it follows Neelix, who faces a moral quandary as he questions his value to the crew when the Voyager reaches a region of space he’s unfamiliar with. We discuss Neelix’s character development in this episode and how it ties into the larger Voyager narrative.

fair trade star trek

While we touch on several aspects of the episode, we keep the conversation open-ended and welcome interpretations and thoughts (hello, patrons). We also discuss certain production aspects and how “Fair Trade” meshes with Voyager’s broader themes and its continuing evolution as a television show.

By subscribing to “ The Pensky Podcast ” on Patreon, you’ll gain access to our extra content! We revisit old episodes and discuss a variety of sci-fi films. If you want to support the podcast, please check out our Patreon site.

fair trade star trek

Thanks for joining Clay and me as we journey through the Star Trek universe, sharing engaging and thought-provoking insights for all fans. This podcast has been quite a journey!

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Neelix meet's up with Wiiban, a fellow Telaxian who he used to work with in the past and is conned into using a Federation shuttlecraft to traffic in narcotics.

fair trade star trek

Alexander Enberg

Carlos Carrasco

Carlos Carrasco

Steve Kehela

Steve Kehela

James Horan

James Horan

James Nardini

James Nardini

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Cast Appearances

Captain Kathryn Janeway

Kate Mulgrew

Commander Chakotay

Robert Beltran

Lt. B'Elanna Torres

Roxann Dawson

Kes

Jennifer Lien

Lt. Thomas Eugene "Tom" Paris

Robert Duncan McNeill

Neelix

Ethan Phillips

The Doctor

Robert Picardo

Lt. Commander Tuvok

Garrett Wang

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A friendly reminder regarding spoilers ! At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the finale of Picard and the continuations of Discovery , Lower Decks , Prodigy and Strange New Worlds , the advent of new eras in Star Trek Online gaming , as well as other post-56th Anniversary publications such as the new ongoing IDW comic . Therefore, please be courteous to other users who may not be aware of current developments by using the {{ spoiler }}, {{ spoilers }} or {{ majorspoiler }} tags when adding new information from sources less than six months old . Also, please do not include details in the summary bar when editing pages and do not anticipate making additions relating to sources not yet in release. ' Thank You

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Voyager reaches the Nekrit Expanse - and the furthest reaches of Neelix's knowledge of the Delta Quadrant. In order to reinforce his usefulness to the crew, the Talaxian allies himself with his old friend Wixiban in a criminal endeavor.

  • 2.1 Characters
  • 2.2 Starships
  • 2.3 Races and cultures
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Summary [ ]

References [ ], characters [ ], starships [ ], races and cultures [ ], locations [ ], non-canon links [ ].

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The Oscars 2024 ceremony itself was only the beginning. Once the Oscars 2024 show ended, the real fun began at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party , where film stars, athletes, fashion fixtures, politicians, royalty, musicians, billionaires and more celebrated deep into the night. Though it goes without saying that an Oscar statuette and the brand-new title of Academy Award winner made for the most enviable plus-ones, just scoring an invite to our storied bash—which has counted a myriad of stars among its guests, including Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Meryl Streep —was a win in its own right.

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Sons of Star Trek #1

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‘sons of star trek’ #1 unites the scions of starfleet.

Sons of Star Trek #1 uses its unique setup to tell a different kind of Star Trek story.

fair trade star trek

I love Star Trek . It’s the first big piece of pop culture that my dad introduced me to, the 2009 reboot was the first time I brought my own movie ticket, and years later I’ve been tuning in to the new crop of Trek shows. IDW Publishing has been turning in its fair share of Star Trek stories as well, with Sons of Star Trek #1 from Morgan Hampton, Angel Hernandez, Nick Filardi, & Clayton Cowles being the latest – and most intriguing – entry.

True to its title, Sons of Star Trek focuses on Jake Sisko and Nog, son of Commander Benjamin Sisko and nephew of Quark respectively. Jake is struggling to find his place in the universe following his father’s return, while Nog is eager to make the most of his time in Starfleet. Both of them, alongside Alexander, Worf’s son, encounter the mysterious being known as “QJ”…or “Q Junior”. QJ teleports the trio to an alternate universe, proclaiming that it holds the answer to all their problems. He forgot to mention that it’s smack-dab in the middle of an interstellar war.

Hampton did amazing work on the Cyborg series for DC, where he fleshed out the Teen Titans’ cybernetic powerhouse into a stronger character. He looks to do the same with this motley crew of characters, digging deep into what drives them. Alexander resents his father for supposedly prioritizing Starfleet over him, Jake feels that he isn’t doing enough as a journalist, and Nog struggles to fit into Starfleet. This level of character work not only speaks to Hampton’s skills as a writer, but it also makes each character in Sons of Star Trek layered enough to engage readers’ interest.

So does the artwork. Hernandez’s illustrations capture the pure wonder that is Star Trek ; one full page showcases Deep Space Nine in its entirety, with ships flying to and from the massive space station as it hangs like an obsidian jewel in the depths of space. He also draws the characters within the book so that they resemble their real life counterparts (or close to it) without making things look fake or plastic – Jake, Nog and Alexander show a genuine range of expression. Since this comic deals with alternate universes Hernandez even gets the chance to draw characters from a variety of Star Trek series; one of these is a major surprise no one, not even the most seasoned Trekkie, will see coming but it works.

Finally, Filardi utilizes colors both bright and dark to set the scene. Starfleet uniforms are resplendent in a brilliant glow of red, blue and yellow; Alexander is first seen shrouded in shadows, his Klingon features creating a terrifying portrait. It works hand in hand with Cowles’ lettering – Alexander cursing in Klingon is depicted in a bold, bloody font, for example.

Sons of Star Trek #1 uses its unique setup to tell a different kind of Star Trek story, exploring questions of legacy and belonging along the way. If you’ve been enjoying the current Star Trek ongoing and/or Star Trek: Defiant , this is another series to add to your pull list. If you’re a Trek fan, particularly of Deep Space Nine , then you’ll definitely want to give this a read.

Sons of Star Trek #1

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Fair Trade

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  1. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

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  2. Addicted to Star Trek: Episode Review

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  3. Let's Watch Star Trek Voyager "Fair Trade"

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  4. Star Trek Voyager Ruminations: S3E13 Fair Trade

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  5. Fair Trade

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  1. #fair trade#@

COMMENTS

  1. Fair Trade (episode)

    Regarding the qualities that this episode shows Neelix to have - including loyalty and bravery - Phillips stated, "I don't know that the fans had seen much of those things in him before or perceived him that way until they got to see 'Fair Trade'." (Star Trek Monthly issue 28, p. 60) The actor also said that the episode "allowed Neelix to ...

  2. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

    Fair Trade: Directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño. With Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Jennifer Lien. Voyager heads into a section of space that Neelix has no knowledge of, so he tries to obtain a map of it from a less-than-reputable friend.

  3. Fair Trade (Star Trek: Voyager)

    "Fair Trade" is the 55th episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the 13th episode of the third season. This is a science fiction television show, and in this episode it focuses on the character Neelix.The Federation starship USS Voyager has reached a trade outpost station at the edge of a new region of space. Neelix, a Delta quadrant native that has been working as a guide and liaison for the spaceship ...

  4. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

    "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Menu. Movies. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight.

  5. Fair Trade

    Fair Trade. The crew of the U.S.S. Voyager come across a small ship on the outer edges of the Delta Quadrant. Upon identifying the ship, the crew realize it is captained by Neelix's old friend Wixiban, a Trabe. ... We are a Star Trek fan site, dedicated to providing exciting synopses and plot summaries for our favorite episodes. Latest ...

  6. Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 12 "Fair Trade" / Recap

    Recap /. Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 12 "Fair Trade". Voyager approaches the Nekrit Expanse, a highly volatile, chaotic region of space plagued by plasma storms. No one knows much about it, not even Neelix, the resident Delta Quadrant expert, so Voyager stops at a trading outpost on the border of the Expanse for resupply as well as a map...

  7. Star Trek: Voyager

    In theory, Fair Trade is precisely the episode that Star Trek: Voyager needs right now. From the outset, the show has struggled with several major problems. Superficially, Voyager has struggled to distinguish the Delta Quadrant from the Alpha Quadrant, to the point that the Kazon felt like low-rent Klingons and the various aliens-of-the-week seemed largely indistinguishable from the aliens-of ...

  8. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

    Star Trek: Voyager - Fair Trade Scarecrow-88 19 January 2017. Warning: Spoilers. Neelix feeling his worth to the Voyager has met its end as the ship approaches the Nekrit Expanse hopes to gain a map to further help provide knowledge to those on board and remain useful. This simple desire leads to a confluence of unexpected consequences built on ...

  9. The Coffee Nebula

    The station is managed by Bahrat. Or perhaps monitored would be a better word, since he seems to devote his every waking minute to watching what its inhabitants do. He gives Voyager permission to trade there, provided they pay his 20% commission, but warns that he may monitor their movements and communications. He almost forgets his meeting ...

  10. Star Trek: Voyager 313

    Original UPN trailer for "Fair Trade" of Star Trek: Voyager.08 JAN 1997 - 9:00 PM ON UPN28 MAY 1997 - 9:00 PM ON UPN

  11. Episode Preview: Fair Trade

    © 2023 CBS Studios Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, and CBS Interactive Inc., Paramount companies. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

  12. Watch Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 Episode 13: Fair Trade

    Fair Trade. S3 E13 46M TV-PG. Voyager encounters a region of space named the Nekrit Expanse. Since Neelix has no knowledge about the space after this point, he tries to make himself useful to the crew by trying to obtain a map from an old friend named Wixiban, who in exchange, asks for Neelix's help with some less-than-reputable dealings.

  13. Fair Trade

    In our latest installment, Clay and I discuss the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Fair Trade." This episode originally aired on January 8, 1997, and is set at the stardate 50537.2. "Fair Trade" is the 13th episode of the third season , and it follows Neelix, who faces a moral quandary as he questions his value to the crew when the Voyager ...

  14. Fair Trade

    Fair Trade. May 16. Fair Trade. With Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week's episode is Fair Trade.

  15. The Voyager Transcripts

    CHAKOTAY: I have the station on sensors, Captain. Three point four light years away, heading oh seven one mark one seven. JANEWAY: You heard him, Tom. PARIS: On our way. (Later -) TUVOK: We're being hailed, Captain. JANEWAY: On screen. I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager.

  16. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

    Summaries. Voyager heads into a section of space that Neelix has no knowledge of, so he tries to obtain a map of it from a less-than-reputable friend. As Voyager prepares to cross a treacherous expanse of which Neelix knows absolutely nothing, Neelix runs across an old friend (of dubious trust) - fellow Telaxian "Wix" - at a trading outpost.

  17. Fair Trade

    Episode Guide for Star Trek: Voyager 3x13: Fair Trade. Episode summary, trailer and screencaps; guest stars and main cast list; and more.

  18. Fair Trade

    A friendly reminder regarding spoilers!At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the finale of Picard and the continuations of Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds, the advent of new eras in Star Trek Online gaming, as well as other post-56th Anniversary publications such as the new ongoing IDW comic.

  19. Fair Trade

    Neelix meets up with Wixiban, who cons Neelix into using Federation shuttlecraft to traffic in narcotics.

  20. Fair Trade (Star Trek: Voyager)

    "Fair Trade" is the 55th episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the 13th episode of the third season. This is a science fiction television show, and in this episode it focuses on the character Neelix.The Federation starship USS Voyager has reached a trade outpost station at the edge of a new region of space. Neelix, a Delta quadrant native that has been working as a guide and liaison for the spaceship ...

  21. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

    Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series) Fair Trade (1997) Kate Mulgrew: Capt. Kathryn Janeway. Showing all 6 items Jump to: Photos (1) Quotes (5) Photos . Quotes . Captain Kathryn Janeway : [at Neelix's suggestion to leave Voyager] You can't just walk away from your responsibilities because you made a mistake. You're part of a family now, and you have ...

  22. See Every Outfit From the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party

    March 10, 2024. From Getty Images. The Oscars 2024 ceremony itself was only the beginning. Once the Oscars 2024 show ended, the real fun began at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, where film stars ...

  23. Coming Soon

    © 2023 CBS Studios Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, and CBS Interactive Inc., Paramount companies. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

  24. Sons of Star Trek #1 review

    I love Star Trek.It's the first big piece of pop culture that my dad introduced me to, the 2009 reboot was the first time I brought my own movie ticket, and years later I've been tuning in to the new crop of Trek shows.IDW Publishing has been turning in its fair share of Star Trek stories as well, with Sons of Star Trek #1 from Morgan Hampton, Angel Hernandez, Nick Filardi, & Clayton ...

  25. "Star Trek: Voyager" Fair Trade (TV Episode 1997)

    James Horan has appeared in all four Star Trek spin-off television series. He played Jo'Bril in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Suspicions (1993), Lt. Barnaby in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Descent (1993), Tosin in Voyager "Fair Trade," Ikat'ika in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In Purgatory's Shadow (1997)/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: By Inferno's Light (1997), and the recurring "Humanoid ...