How to Help A Damaged Friend

the time Star Trek: Voyager got everything right

Television shows are generally a bad place to get relationship modeling from, but Star Trek: Voyager has an episode that I’ve often encouraged people to watch. Season 5, episode 3, is called “Extreme Risk.” In it, the chief engineer of the starship Voyager, B’Elanna Torres, is engaging in a type of self-harm. She uses the holodeck, the 24th century’s uber-realistic virtual reality technology, to enact dangerous scenarios with all safety protocols turned off. This leaves her with serious injuries, so she’s always in physical pain.

Helping a friend—especially a friend who is badly damaged—can be a nightmare scenario, full of landmines. There are the landmines you know about, the landmines you don’t, the landmines they know about, the landmines that neither of you know about, and worst of all—the landmines that they think exist (and have convinced you to avoid), but actually don’t exist at all, so you both waste a lot of energy trying to tiptoe around them. No matter how much attention you’ve paid, at least some of what you think you know is wrong, a fact you’ll only be certain of when you—surprise! Set one of them off.

Sometimes a damaged person starts acting out in ways that their friends can’t ignore. There comes a point when the risk of hitting a landmine is worth taking.

If, reading this, you know what I mean—if you have, or have ever had, a loved one who’s damaged in some profound way and acting it out—you could do worse than watch this episode and think about it.

Episode Story and Context

The starship Voyager was lost in the Delta quadrant, a far-away part of the galaxy that the Federation doesn’t have technology sufficient to reach, when a being who did possess such technology sent them there. A ship of members of the Maquis, a splinter group that abandoned the Federation for well-founded reasons, was stranded in the Delta quadrant at the same time. As some of the Maquis were former Starfleet, the two joined forces. Chakotay, the first officer of Voyager, was the leader of the Maquis. He serves as de facto ship’s counselor—he’s the affable, listening ear and big brother figure to everyone on board. B’Elanna Torres, the half-Klingon chief engineer, is also a Maquis.

The two of them have a special, close, and complex friendship. It is entirely platonic, though there are some vaguely paternal elements—small and healthy, but obviously present. Chakotay is something of a mentor to Torres, and is deeply proud of her accomplishments and growth. He advocates for her when he can and seeks to help her maximize her talents. Torres respects Chakotay to a significant degree—he’s a contender for the person she respects the most of anyone in her life—and is more motivated not to disappoint him than she is other people, but not excessively so. She appreciates and benefits from, but is not driven to earn, his approval. The paternal elements of their relationship, while obvious, are minor and beneficial to both parties. They serve to bring out the best in both characters and create a special, meaningful friendship with genuine affection.

At the point in the Voyager timeline that this episode occurs, Torres and Chakotay have recently found out that their Maquis friends—all of their friends—back in the Alpha quadrant were slaughtered. This devastating news is the trauma that Torres isn’t facing, the pain she’s avoiding by running these holodeck programs where she gets hurt.

When her shipmates find out what’s been happening, they confront her. She lies, denies, minimizes. They relieve her of duty, talk about her in absentia, and then send Chakotay to talk to her, recognizing him as the one person who has the best chance to get through to her.

Chakotay As A Model Friend

Chakotay does everything—absolutely everything—right.

He brings her to the holodeck and forces her to see and admit her behavior. No more lies, no more denial. He has evidence of her behavior—a program she created that shows a cave in which the virtual reality technology re-enacts the deaths of their friends. With this undeniable evidence in front of both of them, he drags her into the holodeck. Then they have this conversation, which ends when Captain Janeway contacts him via the intercom. My commentary on their conversation is interspersed:

(Chakotay drags Torres into the caves. There are flashes of weapons fire, voices shouting and bodies on the ground.)
TORRES: Computer, freeze program.
CHAKOTAY: Computer, belay that command.
TORRES: Turn it off!
CHAKOTAY: Not until you tell me what it is!

This is perfect. No more denial. Oh, he’ll let her turn it off, but only when she’s acknowledged reality.

TORRES: You know what it is.
(Chakotay turns over one charred body.)
CHAKOTAY: Who's this?
TORRES: Li-Paz. Don't you recognise him?
CHAKOTAY: Oh, I recognise them all. Meyer. Nelson. Sahreen. You created a program to watch all our Maquis friends get slaughtered. What I want to know is why?
TORRES: I thought we came down here to talk about safety protocols. This has nothing to do with that.
CHAKOTAY: I'm not so sure. The logs show you only ran this program for forty seven seconds the day after I gave you the news about the massacre. Then you shut it down and started running the most dangerous programs you could find, with the safeties off. Why?!

Again, perfect question. He asserts the reality, lays out the evidence, refuses to let her ignore, minimize, or lie. Then asks why.

TORRES: This is ridiculous. I'm leaving.
CHAKOTAY: Computer, seal the doors.
TORRES: You can't do this!
CHAKOTAY: The hell I can't. You're not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on. B'Elanna, why are you intentionally trying to hurt yourself?

This is perfect. He has authority here on every level—as her friend, with the full power of the paternal elements of their relationship; as her superior officer; even as a male who can physically prevent her from leaving if that’s what it takes. Enough’s enough. She cannot leave until she admits the truth. Then he identifies the elephant in the room, and rather than ask if it’s there, acknowledges the plain fact that it is, and asks her why.

TORRES: I don't know.
CHAKOTAY: Are you trying to commit suicide?

Again, perfect. If someone is in enough trouble to warrant a confrontation, then give them the respect of acknowledging the real fear, the worst possible implication of whatever their behavior indicates or implies.

TORRES: No.
CHAKOTAY: Then why?
TORRES: Because. Because if I sprain my ankle, at least I feel something.
CHAKOTAY: What do you mean?

Exactly right question. He doesn’t assume he understands and he doesn’t pretend that he gets it. No “I know how you feel” when he doesn’t.

TORRES: I'm not trying to kill myself. I'm trying to see if I'm still alive.
CHAKOTAY: I don't understand.

Again, this is exactly perfect. He knows himself well enough to know he doesn’t understand, and has no problem admitting it.

TORRES: When you look at those corpses, how do you feel?
CHAKOTAY: Sad. Angry. Maybe a little guilty that I wasn't there to die with them.
TORRES: Not me. I don't feel anything at all.
CHAKOTAY: B'Elanna, the Maquis were like our adopted family. I can understand you trying to block out that kind of pain.
TORRES: You don't understand. It's not just the pain. I don't feel anything. Not about my dead friends, not about Tom, you, my job.

Chakotay easily admits to his own pain and complicated feelings, opening the door for her to do so in turn. And the actor playing Chakotay is marvelous here. Body language, facial expression, everything. She’s just admitted that she has stopped feeling anything about the people and activities she used to deeply love—their dead friends, her boyfriend Tom, him (her friend and mentor), her work. Rather than react to that with horror, judgment, shock, and the like, he just accepts it.

CHAKOTAY: Maybe you're afraid if you let yourself start to feel something, you might not be able to stop. You can't just shut off your emotions, B'Elanna. Sooner or later you're going to have to let yourself grieve.
TORRES: Why? Just so I can go through it all over again?
CHAKOTAY: What are you talking about?

Again, perfect question. There’s clearly something there, so he asks an open-ended question to draw it out.

A Master Class in Friendship

The end of their conversation is the most important part, the part that I wish everyone who has had a normal-range life could imbibe, integrate, and understand if they’re going to try to help a really damaged friend:

TORRES: When I was six, my father walked out on me. When I was nineteen, I got kicked out of Starfleet. A few years later, I got separated from the Maquis. And just when I start to feel safe, you tell me that all of our old friends have been slaughtered. The way I figure it, I've lost every family I've ever had.
CHAKOTAY: B'Elanna, you have a new family now, here on Voyager. You're not going to lose us. You're stuck with us.
TORRES: You can't promise me that.
CHAKOTAY: No, I suppose I can't. Losing people's inevitable, and sometimes it happens sooner than we expect. But I can promise you that the people on this ship aren't about to let you stop living your life or break your neck on the holodeck. You're going to have to find another way to deal with this.
TORRES: I don't know how.
CHAKOTAY: Then we'll figure it out. Together.

(here the Captain calls him on the intercom and he has to leave).

Chakotay does everything right here. He offers meaningful and authentic reassurance. He loves her enough to use the word “family,” a word that implies permanence, so he uses it. When she calls him on the fact that permanence is not something he can promise, he acknowledges this. Rather than make a promise he cannot keep, he defines exactly what he can promise, lays down the boundaries and expectations—which are multi-layered, given he’s both her friend and superior officer—and says exactly what he now expects of her. Crucially, this is on her terms and respects her autonomy. She doesn’t have to deal with it his way. She can deal with it her own way, just not this way. “You’re going to have to find another way to deal with this.” And he ends it by giving her exactly what she needs most—she is not being left alone to solve this difficult, painful, terrifying problem.

Her friend is with her. He loves her enough to have forced her to face the truth, and loves her enough to now help her cope with the truth she is no longer denying.

The Duties of Love

I have been on both sides of this paradigm. I have been the friend who scared the hell out of the people who cared about her. And I have been the friend who knew that someone I loved was in trouble, and that a difficult confrontation was the responsibility love demanded of me—even if it cost me my friend. It’s painful, scary, and complicated on both ends, but love isn’t always easy.

If you ever find yourself in a situation like the one Chakotay is in—if someone in your life is in real trouble, and it’s someone of whom love requires you to step up and say the hard thing that needs to be said—you could do a lot worse than to watch this episode before you take a deep breath and step up to the plate.

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