“Meridian Dance”
Original Premiere: June 22, 2001
Rating: «««««
This episode is essentially a trip on one of those insanely huge
roller coasters they have at Cedar Point—and for the uninformed, Cedar Point is
an amusement park in Ohio that has some of the most insane roller
coasters in the world. So just picture
the Mantis, or whatever, with all of its vomit-inducing twists and turns, and
you’ve basically got the plot for “Meridian Dance.” And there are a lot of twists and turns. Just when you think you know where the
episode is going, it veers off in another direction entirely—and just when you
think things can’t get any worse… oh yeah… they do…
The incident that sets the entire episode, and the brunt of the
Elorg War into motion was inspired by actual world events at the time. It was June 2001; a small Chinese plane had
recently approached a U.S. jet over international waters—and the encounter
ultimately ended with the U.S. jet being forced to make an emergency landing in
Chinese territory. The jet was
subsequently captured, and its crew “interviewed” by the Chinese. I thought it was an intriguing political situation—one
that had the potential to ramp up the Elorg War considerably… so I tried to
mirror that situation in this episode—albeit, with a few grimly ironic
differences.
Since I really wanted to heat the conflict up, instead of
simply having the Elorg fighters approach the Merrimac, I went so far as
to have one of the fighters ram the vessel to instigate hostilities. This was June 2001. A few months later, war would break out in Afghanistan
after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September
11. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it
was prophetic, but… in retrospect, it was morbidly ironic—a trend that would
continue with season three’s “Behind Enemy Lines,” when the Elorg rammed
Starbase 241 just a few days prior to 9.11.2001 (I think I actually finished
writing the episode on September 9).
And beneath all of these political overtones, there was an episode
about change. Everything is
changing. Erin is leaving the Starlight
to pursue a career on the Majestic.
Kendall is just plain leaving.
Rachael falls over dead. Talyere’s
little resistance cell is destroyed. Xi'Yor
finally achieves “truly evil” status.
And Ka’Tula prime is virtually destroyed. So yeah, there is a heck of a lot of change, and that really
appealed to me, because people don’t often react well to change, and it’s
interesting to see how they deal with it—both on the page and in the real
world.
Reader reaction to “Meridian Dance” was initially mixed, mainly
because of… well, changes. Some people
were upset because Erin was leaving.
Other people were upset because Angela died. And then, of course, there was a rather vocal group of people I
had not previously known about: the Rachael Meyer fan club. Now, when I wrote “Meridian Dance,” I
thought I had made it quite clear that Meyer was dead—I mean, Xi'Yor’s
disruptor beam went right through her abdomen in a bloody fury. But apparently, since I did not have Doctor
Hartman down on the planet to proclaim, “She’s dead, Alan,” many people were
left with a glimmer of hope that Rachael was still alive. In fact, the act of killing Rachael Meyer
generated more email than ANYTHING I had done with the previous 47
episodes—which is odd, since I always thought Rachael was the weakest, most
boring character on TFF. She was a bad
rehash of Voyager’s Kes, right down to her blossoming telepathy. Still, the death had the effect I
wanted. People were riled, and they
hated Xi'Yor (and me).
People also hated Admiral O’Connor. Everyone hates O’Connor.
When I created her back in “Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec,” I knew she was going
to be a very unpopular character—in a good way—but I had no idea that she would
grow to be so hated that people actually wanted her dead (the Rachael Meyer fan
club even suggested I resurrect Rachael and have O’Connor die instead). Of course, with this knowledge, I very
quickly resolved to make certain O’Connor lingered for a very, very long
time—and though her appearances were infrequent in season three, fear not… she
will return.
Continuing the trend started in “Pandora’s Box,” many of the
planets featured in the episode take their names from my most beloved video
games. This time around, the Cleyra
System is from Final Fantasy IX and the Kokiri System is from The Legend of
Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. This is a
trend that definitely continues into year three—and especially year four, with
dozens of little “Easter Eggs” appearing in the first few episodes alone.
Kendall Johnson’s storyline, which started in “The Long Road,”
sees some more attention here. In
retrospect, I wish I had handled Kendall differently between “The Long Road”
and “Meridian Dance.” Basically, I like
the end result, I just don’t like how I got to it. After his suicide attempt, I really didn’t know what to do
with him, so I just stuck him in his quarters and said he was sorting things
out. It would have been more
interesting to see some of that happening on the page… Still, at least I implied that
interesting things were going on. Better
luck next time, right?
One thing I wouldn’t change, of course, was Christopher’s journey
in this episode. Up until now, he’s had
things pretty easy. He’s the Captain,
he gets to sleep with the best-looking woman on the ship, and he gets a lot of
great lines. But in “Meridian Dance,” things
go downhill for him in a real hurry. Erin
is leaving him, Rachael is killed, and Ka’Tula Prime is virtually
destroyed. Suddenly, Christopher is in
a heap of trouble; he can no longer be the easy-going dude he once was—he is
confronted by this episode overall theme: change. He is going to have to adapt to all of these changes if he wants
to survive… but as we’ll see in the coming episodes, he doesn’t adapt well…