Book Review – Taylor, Jeri. “Pathways” (1998)
Overall 4.0 / 5.0 (recommended for fans of the series)
Gay Content 2.0 / 5.0 (three minor gay characters)
Gay Positivity 4.0 / 5.0
Welcome to The Canterbury Tales meets Star Trek: Voyager. The central story posits that aliens capture the Voyager command crew (with the exception of Captain Janeway and the Doctor – must be lonely on the Voyager bridge) while on an away mission. The aliens take the crew to a prison camp.
Through the process of planning their escape, Chakotay, Tuvok, Tom Paris, B’Elanna, Neelix, and even Kes tell their personal stories leading up to their involvement with the initial Voyager mission, before the ship got lost in the Delta Quadrant.
Quick note – the story is set after Kes’s departure from the ship, and shortly after Seven of Nine’s arrival.
The individual stories make for fascinating and illuminating reads. Taylor enjoys a clever and engaging writing style. It would be easy to lose momentum in a novel like this, but the author manages a brisk pace through a series of unique stories that range from moving to revealing to amusing. The individual stories certainly outshine the more prosaic and implausible imprisonment/escape plot.
A word of warning – these stories will probably hold little interest for anyone who doesn’t know the characters from the TV series.
The book includes three minor gay characters. George Mathers is Harry Kim’s roommate from Starfleet Academy. He has an unrequited crush on Harry, who responds to the situation with grace and compassion: “An immense wave of friendship, of caring and concern and, yes, of love, swept over Harry†(115). It’s mildly disappointing to see a gay character fall in love with an unavailable straight guy (I’d much rather see a successful gay romance), but I’m thrilled with both the inclusion and Harry’s response.
Meanwhile, Noah Mannick and Brad Harrison are part of the Voyager crew stranded in the alien prison camp. They have “only recently become a couple†(176). One frustrating aspect of their relationship: at one point Noah suffers from severe cramps, probably the result of contaminated drinking water. Then we never hear about him again.
So was Noah okay? Did he and Brad make it back to the ship? The novel doesn’t tell us either way. Unfortunately, Noah and Brad are very minor characters, present more to flesh out the situation and, perhaps, demonstrate some gay inclusiveness. To that end, once again, I am delighted to find them present in the novel. I just wish we had seen more of them.
On the whole, could she have done better by the gay characters? Sure: they could have enjoyed beefed up roles, with more compelling subplots of their own, or at least a bigger role to play in the overarching story, and positive endings. Nevertheless, I’m happy to find them at all. Star Trek: Voyager has been one of the least gay-inclusive iterations of the Star Trek franchise, so I’m glad that gay people are represented somewhere in the Voyager universe.
As an interesting side-note, fictional Star Trek novels are not usually considered canon, or official. But Jeri Taylor wrote Pathways (along with Mosaic, which details Captain Janeway’s personal back-story) to provide reference material for the show’s main characters. She specifically intended the books to be canon. We never see Noah or Brad on the show, but presumably they’re in there somewhere. IMDB.com does indicate a Crewman Noah Lessing (played by Rick Worthy).
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For more posts on all things gay in the Star Trek universe, check out my Gay Star Trek Main Page.
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Tags: Gay Science Fiction, Gay Star Trek, Jeri Taylor, Star Trek, Voyager
