Seska Was Voyager’s Perfect, Messy Foil

Voyager and Deep Space Nine draw many intriguing parallels as sister series that aired in tandem for a good chunk of their airings. Voyager‘s more episodic format and tone struck an altogether different approach to DS9‘s increasing lens on the dark heart of Star Trek‘s ideas and universe, digging into wider and deeper interconnected storylines. But one little piece of Deep Space Nine energy that Voyager kept early on came from an unlikely figure: Ensign Seska.

The turncoat Bajoran ex-Maquis revealed her true identity as a Cardassian double agent 30 years ago today with the broadcast of “State of Flux,” setting off a rare little mini-arc for the early days of Star Trek: Voyager. Although by and large an episodic show, for better or worse, Voyager did occasionally experiment with short-form arcs here and there, and Seska’s was one of them, weaving in other plotlines across the rest of season one until her untimely death and defeat at the beginning of season three, like Tom Paris’ seeming discontent aboard the ship, and the associated leaker storyline with Michael Jonas. But she’s most interesting as a contrast to how Deep Space Nine portrayed the Cardassians.

Of course, DS9 had plenty, like the mischievously two-faced Garak, or the loud and audaciously hammy Gul Dukat. Seska leans more the latter than the former once the mask’s off, but while she is suitably duplicitous and scheming in the ways one might expect of a Cardassian infiltrator who finds herself suddenly going from leaking Maquis plans to serving on a Starfleet vessel 70,000 light years away from Cardassia Prime, one thing defines her in contrast to the Cardassians we’d been regularly seeing on Star Trek at that moment in time: she’s just kind of an absolute hot mess.

It’s fascinating revisiting “State of Flux” to see just how everything quickly falls apart for Seska. The episode largely deals with Voyager‘s discovery of a heavily damaged Kazon warship (a thorn in the crew’s side on and off since the pilot episode), only to reveal that the damage was caused by misuse of replicator technology surreptitiously acquired from Voyager. Almost the second the senior staff realize that there’s a traitor on board, Seska is terrible at covering up the fact that she was the one who had been trying to ally with the Kazon as everything falls apart around her, from the crew getting closer to her trail to the doctor’s discovery that her story about her Bajoran background was completely made up. Seska succeeds in getting away from Voyager to team up with Maje Culluh, but it’s a failing-upwards trend that persists throughout the rest of her appearances across Voyager‘s second season and into her death that reflects everything “State of Flux” laid out for her.

The idea of a turncoat who sees the strength in finding combative allies to exploit Voyager‘s situation is very Cardassian, but Seska finds herself immediately played when she’s thrust into the patriarchal society of the Kazon as her newfound besties. Her advice is largely only ever accepted under scorn and duress from Culluh and his subordinates; despite her perceived sense of superiority she’s constantly undermined, which is often the cause for the failure of her on-and-off attempts to get back at Voyager. She can only ever barely make the best of a bad situation, despite more often than not having most of the cards in play: her history with Chakotay gives her a deliciously personal angle of attack, her knowledge of Voyager‘s capabilities from her time under cover make her a more dangerous foe than most the show had thrown at the ship at this point.

But it’s kind of what makes Seska work as a character: despite all this, villainy or otherwise, nothing ever quite clicks for her. It’s a great mirror to uphold against Janeway’s decision to have the crew take the long way home in the first place, the idea that, if they did ultimately just go Seska’s route and exploit their advantageous power in an unknown quadrant, it would doom them. Seska is so often thwarted in her schemes by the simple act of Voyager‘s unity, something seeded through her time on the ship throughout the series’ first handful of episodes—always one of the crew to express dissatisfaction at being under the yoke of Starfleet ideals and rules, always one willing to go round people to try and get things done. In many ways Seska kind of has to be a disaster as much as a threat to further amplify our heroes’ burgeoning community.

Although Seska would go on to appear a couple more times after her death in the second part of “Basics,” it’s fitting that she perishes in a story that is inherently about the disruption of Voyager‘s community and a violation of their safe space aboard the ship, a two-parter where the Kazon successfully manage to briefly overtake Voyager and dump the Starfleet crew on an unknown barren planet.

Despite winning, Seska and the Kazon just cannot beat the crew’s resilience and unity, a reminder that, even so early on in this journey, that sticking together is what’s going to get Voyager through all this. It’s a shame we had to lose a very compelling antagonist in doing so, but that Seska at least gets to facilitate that solidarity is welcome.

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