“Heroes and Demons”
Written by Naren Shankar
Directed by Les Landau
Season 1, Episode 11
Production episode 112
Original air date: April 24, 1995
Stardate: 48693.2
Captain’s log. Voyager is investigating a protostar that has unusually intense photonic energy. Torres beams two samples on board, but one sample doesn’t materialize due to a gap in the annular confinement beam. She tries again, and this time it works. She says it’ll take six hours to analyze. Janeway suggests conscripting Kim to help out to cut that time down, but he’s off duty. She contacts him—but the computer says that Kim isn’t on board.
There has been no unauthorized transporter use and all the shuttles are empty. (Tuvok doesn’t mention this, but presumably no airlocks were used, either.) He was last seen going into the holodeck, but Tuvok’s attempts to get sensor readings from the holodeck are subject to interference.
Chakotay and Tuvok go to the holodeck only to find that they can’t end the program or find anyone in it. Kim was doing an interactive holonovel program in which he is the title character in Beowulf. With no other choice, Tuvok and Chakotay enter, and are menaced by Freya, a shield-maiden and daughter of King Hrothgar. Tuvok is unable to delete the character, and he assumes that the safeties are likely malfunctioning, so her sword could conceivably kill them. Chakotay says they are kinsmen to Beowulf, and Freya brings them to the king.
Hrothgar, however, is depressed. They continually are menaced by Grendel, and Beowulf is the latest in a long line of would-be heroes the monster has killed. Tuvok is concerned that Kim may really be dead, but Freya says that Grendel took Kim away, and there is no body to examine.
After reporting to Janeway, and after being bitched at by Hrothgar’s aide-de-camp, Unferth, they stand guard that night in the hopes of encountering Grendel. An energy creature of some sort appears, and then the two officers also disappear.
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Janeway, Torres, and Paris brainstorm trying to figure out what’s happening. Before they disappeared, Tuvok and Chakotay’s tricorders picked up a massive amount of photonic energy. They believe that the photonic energy that escaped during the transporter malfunction damaged the holodeck and caused Kim, Tuvok, and Chakotay to be dematerialized. They need to send someone else in, someone who can’t be dematerialized. Paris suggests the EMH.
The EMH is apprehensive, but agrees to go along. Kes tries to encourage him, and generally succeeds, and also reminds him that he still hasn’t chosen a name—however, he has narrowed it down, and finally, in honor of his first away mission (indeed, first time outside sickbay), he chooses Albert Schweitzer.
He is transferred to the holodeck—the only other place on the ship he can go to, as it also has emitters that can create his form—and is confronted by Freya in exactly the same way Chakotay and Tuvok were (because, y’know, it’s a computer program). He, too, is brought to Hrothgar, who gives them the same maudlin speech, and Unferth complains in the same manner about him. However, while Chakotay and Tuvok were able to talk Unferth down from attacking them, the EMH goes ahead and lets Unferth attack, going insubstantial when the sword hits. Everyone assumes he’s a sorcerer, and will finally stop Grendel.
That night, the EMH stands guard, as Chakotay and Tuvok did (and, presumably, Kim did), waiting for Grendel. Freya sits with him a while, and smooches him, inviting him to her bed if he wishes.
Grendel attacks, grabbing the EMH’s arm. Frantically, the doctor asks to be returned to sickbay, which he is, albeit without the arm Grendel was holding.
Torres and Paris examine the tricorder readings while the EMH regrows a new arm. They’re seeing synaptic patterns that indicate it may be a life form—indeed, may be intelligent.
They run tests on the sample they have in engineering, adding a polarization field. This works a bit too well: the sample breaks free of its containment field, and then buggers about through the ship, avoiding the containment fields that Torres tries to capture it with.
The energy escapes the ship and enters a lattice of some sort, which is only detectable for a moment. However, Voyager’s sensors were able to scan the lattice for that brief instant, and Janeway says they found three distinct and unique energy patterns in the lattice. She theorizes that those three are Kim, Tuvok, and Chakotay, who were captured in this way in retaliation for Torres similarly capturing the photonic life forms.
The EMH returns to the holodeck with the other sample in a portable containment field. He describes it to Freya as a talisman that will defeat Grendel. Unferth shows up and accuses “Lord Schweitzer” of being in league with Grendel and fights him. Freya defends him and is killed, her final words being, “Farewell, Schweitzer.”
Heading to the castle, the EMH takes the talisman back from Unferth by threatening him with a lit torch, then calls for Grendel. He frees the photonic life form in the sample container, and in exchange, Tuvok, Chakotay, and a really really confused Kim are rematerialized.
Janeway tells the EMH that she’s going to give him a commendation for exemplary performance, and she’d like to put an actual name there. But he no longer wishes to use Schweitzer, as it being Freya’s last word is a painful memory.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Photonic energy can, apparently, make the energy processors on Voyager more efficient. Except when they’re actually life forms, at least, at which point, they fuck up the holodeck.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway has a different hairstyle this episode, one that would be abandoned soon thereafter as being too difficult to keep in place.
Half and half. Torres and Janeway both get to geeble about science together some more.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok is not at all familiar with Beowulf, which is kind of a relief, as I got real tired of Spock knowing all the Earth history instead of the people who were actually raised on Earth knowing it. (I’m looking at you, “Spectre of the Gun.”)
Forever an ensign. Kim has all of one line of dialogue at the very end of the episode, but at least he gets to wear a cool costume while he does so.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH gets to see something other than sickbay, and he enjoys smelling plants and eating food. He has a bit more trouble wielding a sword, and he’s very surprised when Freya smooches him and later gives her life for him.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Freya hits all over the EMH, and invites him to her bed. Wah-HEY!
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. The photonic energy creatures are able to take over the holodeck in a way that makes the plot work.
Do it.
“You are truly a man of many talents, Lord Schweitzer. Your people must value you greatly.”
“You would think so.”
–Freya praising the EMH, and the EMH enjoying the novelty.
Welcome aboard. Marjorie Monaghan, probably best known for her recurring role as “Number One” on Babylon 5, but who to me will always be Jojo on the tragically short-lived Space Rangers, plays Freya. Michael Keenen plays Hrothgar; he was also in TNG‘s “Sub Rosa” as Maturin and DS9‘s “Statistical Probabilities” and “Chrysalis” as Patrick, one of the “Jack Pack.” Christopher Neame plays Unferth; he’ll also appear in Enterprise‘s “Storm Front” two-parter as a German general.
Trivial matters: This is the only Voyager writing credit for Naren Shankar, who was the only member of the TNG writing staff in its seventh season who didn’t go to either DS9 (Ronald D. Moore, Rene Echevarria) or Voyager (Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga) or both (Michael Piller). It’s also his last Trek writing credit; he has since worked on dozens of TV shows, notably Farscape, CSI, Almost Human, Grimm, and The Expanse (for which he currently serves as an executive producer).
While Shankar tried to use as much of the actual poem of Beowulf as possible, he did add the character of Freya, who isn’t really in the poem (Hrothgar’s daughter is named Freawaru and is a minor character), so that the EMH would have a love interest. He also included an amusing in-joke, as in the poem, Beowulf cuts off Grendel’s arm, and in the episode, the photonic energy creature cuts off the EMH’s arm.
This episode was also a partial inspiration for one of the most wonderful Voyager comic books, a one-shot by Janine Ellen Young, Doselle Young, and David Roach called Avalon Rising that had the EMH in a fairy-tale-style setting, telling tales of the Voyager crew’s adventures through the lens of medieval European folk tales.
Set a course for home. “Speak as a friend or stand challenged!” On the one hand, this is a bog-standard Star Trek episode that we’ve seen versions of a dozen times before. I watched this with my wife, and the nanosecond that Torres beamed the photonic energy into a containment field, she turned to me and said, “They’re actually a life form, right?” This episode has two of Trek‘s most common tropes: the thing that turns out to unexpectedly be a life form, and the holodeck screwing up in some way.
And yet, I love this episode all to pieces, mostly because of the one element that makes it uniquely Voyager: the EMH. Robert Picardo shines like big giant shining thing in this one. The doctor’s usual crankiness and sarcasm is leavened by a combination of enthusiasm and dread, which both come from the same source: he’s on a non-medical mission outside sickbay. He’s at once thrilled at the notion of seeing trees and a sky and yet completely unsure if he’s even capable of doing what Janeway’s asking him to do.
What he gets is far more than expected, and I particularly love the little touches, from the EMH feeling and smelling plant life for the first time in its natural state to the tentative manner in which the doctor first eats food, as if he’s never done it before because, well, he hasn’t. Plus, his tale of derring-do is solving a measles epidemic on Voyager, and the looks of confusion on Hrothgar’s subjects is hilarious.
This mitigates the horrible predictability of the plot, not to mention the inexplicable use of Paris to help Torres out with the technobabble stuff, which makes nothing like sense. It doesn’t help that the scene in the meeting room where Janeway, Torres, and Paris are spitballing notions of how to save the trio, it’s blocked and written as if Paris was the one in charge.
No, seriously, look at these lines of dialogue:
CHARACTER #1: This is a scan of the holodeck just before we lost contact with Chakotay and Tuvok. The readings are pretty garbled, but I’m still inclined to think there is a malfunction in the holodeck’s matter conversion nodes.
CHARACTER #2: Photonic energy leaking into the subsystems could certainly damage the nodes, and it might have created a defect in the program that occurs when Grendel shows up.
CHARACTER #1: A defect that dematerialized our people.
CHARACTER #3: I’m not willing to accept the fact that Harry and the others are gone for good. Their molecular patterns might still be there. And if they are, we might be able to rematerialize them. The only thing we can do is go back into the holodeck, study this energy surge, find out what exactly happened.
CHARACTER #1: Anyone who goes back in there might wind up just like the others.
(Transcript thanks to chakoteya.net and Netflix.)
Looking at it that way, you’d assume that Characters #1 and 2 are two science officers or engineers—in a TNG script, Data and La Forge would have those lines, on DS9 it’d be Dax and O’Brien, on Discovery it’d be Stamets and Tilly—while Character #3 would be either the captain or first officer.
Character #1 is Torres and Character #3 is Paris. Character #2, whose sole contribution is a bit of technobabble, is Captain Kathryn Janeway, the ostensible main character, while Tom Paris is the one being all take-charge and making definitive statements about their course of action, since he’s the only person in the room with a penis. Les Landau’s direction exacerbates the problem, blocking it so that it looks like Janeway and Torres are reporting to Paris. What the ever-loving fuck?
To make matters worse, nothing Paris does has anything to do with his role as the ship’s pilot. Most of what he does would make more sense going to Joe Carey, in the absence of Kim and Tuvok, or Janeway herself, given her science background.
I’ve been a fan of Marjorie Monaghan’s since Space Rangers in 1993, and she’s a delight here as the shield-maiden who becomes smitten with the EMH. Michael Keenen and Christopher Neame are less compelling as the depressed Hrothgar and the tiresome Unferth, though at least the latter’s personality is an expected feature. Just in general, Naren Shankar’s script does a beautiful job of being aware that it’s a computer program, with Unferth set up repeatedly as an opponent for the person playing the holonovel has to deal with, and with the dialogue repeating every time someone else wanders in.
The EMH’s unwillingness to keep the name Schweitzer due to it being Freya’s final word before she died in his arms saving his life (not that he was really in danger as a hologram) is a sweet touch, and one that mitigates the doctor’s inability to ever settle on a name over seven years.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at Pensacon 2020 this weekend, spending most of his time at Bard’s Tower alongside fellow scribes Brian Anderson, Kevin J. Anderson, Jim Butcher, Michelle Cori, Phil Foglio, Charles E. Gannon, JB Garner, Andrew E. Gaska, Marion G. Harmon, Kevin Ikenberry, Megan Mackie, and Jody Lynn Nye.
I’m not saying we HAVE to make it ‘Fanon’ that The Doctor (no, not that one, the digital one) refused to choose an actual name because every time he settled on one and shared it the person he shared it with DIED … but wouldn’t it have made a darkly hilarious running joke?
On a more serious note, the only thing more hilarious than imagining Harry Kim playing Beowulf* is seeing The Doctor playing Beowulf’s back-up; it makes this episode rather delightful and consolidates Mr Robert Picardo as MVP for the Voyager crew for many, many episodes running.
*’Barbarian Hero’ and ‘Harry Kim’ are words that belong in the same sentence together only because, knowing poor old Ensign Kim’s luck, the line “That Barbarian Hero almost killed Harry Kim!” has come up at least once … (-;
Oh, and those protesting the identification of Beowulf as a Barbarian Hero are cordially invited to blame Mr Ray Winston; he’s just so very indelible, that old Ham!
A fun episode, notable for giving composer Dennis McCarthy a chance to go for a really big, swashbuckling score in an Erich Korngold vein. Contrived as hell, but a nice way to give Robert Picardo more to do than stand around in sickbay all the time.
I can’t help but note, by the way, that the Beowulf game is programmed to allow the player to have sex with the hot female lead. Harry, you naughty dog. I wonder if players inclined the other way would get to sleep with Unferth instead.
“Photonic energy can, apparently, make the energy processors on Voyager more efficient.”
Which is silly, because it’s literally just light.
“I’ve been a fan of Marjorie Monaghan’s since Space Rangers in 1993″
Me too, up to a point. I liked her in the show, but I wasn’t crazy about how her character was written — this was back when it was still often assumed that the only way a female character could be strong is if she were even more exaggeratedly macho, tough, and violent than the male characters, and I always found that a rather sexist way to try to be feminist.
‘Photonic energy’?
Star Trek’s troubles with technobabble steadily increased since the last days of TNG. This is a particularly awful example. I really, really wish they’d either settle on relatively consistent explanations for the phenomena they wish to study, or get someone to make up words with more taste and discernment.
I love this episode so much. It’s my favourite season 1 episode, and it was on the first Voyager videocassette I ever bought.
I was delighted when the doctor named himself after Albert Schweitzer, both because of the emphasis on helping and because he didn’t choose an American or English doctor as his role model, but a German/French one. I guess I felt honored. After he didn’t keep the name, I was glad that he never took another one.
I still hear “All hail the hero! All hail Schweitzer!” in my head whenever I think of this episode. It’s so wonderfully incongruous.
What’s especially hilarious about the use of photonic energy (which, as Christopher said, is pretty much just light, which is why I said “apparently” in the bit he quoted) in this script is that it was written by the guy who worked as TNG’s science advisor…….
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
What bothers me a bit, Keith, is that you say this, “Janeway has a different hairstyle this episode, one that would be abandoned soon thereafter as being too difficult to keep in place,” but then don’t include any screenshots of Janeway so we can see which hairstyle you are talking about. :-)
@2 / CLB:
Contrived as hell, but a nice way to give Robert Picardo more to do than stand around in sickbay all the time.
Yeah, the idea of the EMH was a great concept, but they essentially wrote themselves into a corner in the early Seasons by limiting his accessibility only to sickbay or the Holodeck.
In hindsight, the Doc’s Mobile Emitter was a justified necessary evil and one that I was fine with.
Ok, I just Googled it and I definitely do *not* like that hairstyle!
I’m getting the oddest impression that Paris was intended to be the main character in these early episodes.
Freya is a character in a holodeck scenario, she can’t die as in dead. Surely the Doctor understands that? No reason why he can’t run the program himself is there?
I dimly remember Space Rangers. Loved the concept, hated the scripts.
princessroxana: It’s worse than that. The problem is that Janeway was always supposed to be the main character, but the writers kept gravitating toward the dude. The scene I quoted is a particularly egregious example, but I’m seeing subtle bits of it everywhere. It’s irritating, but not surprising.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8, looks like a French twist. Isn’t that how Seven wore her hair? Mulgrew doesn’t seem to have the right kind of hair for it. It makes her head look a funny shape.
11,krad, I’m guessing a female lead was out of their comfort zone? Is that why Janeway’s characterization was all over the damn place? And it seems like they were gravitating towards the young white dude.
I haven’t watched Babylon 5, so I wasn’t familiar with Monaghan, but I have to say, I was quite taken with her, or at least her Freya character. “You know where I sleep”. Kim, you dirty dog, you…. (hi-fives). I though Monaghan was wonderful – she’s a holographic character from an ancient earth epic, and she hit exactly the right slightly stilted tone, yet one could completely understand how the Doctor, or anyone else for that matter, would be drawn to her. Perfect.
Agree with everyone else about the Doctor – this episode really brings him out, literally and figuratively, from the confines of sickbay. Picardo’s comic timing is impeccable, especially on the quoted line about “You would think so”.
Although I’d have to say if I was in his shoes, I’d insist on being called Schweitzer forever after – initially it would hurt, but I think I’d want to honor the memory of my first kiss and and a truly honorable and brave woman, hologram though she may be….
7 is about right – I’d give Picardo and Monaghan a 10 for some truly beautiful chemistry, then dock 3 points for the hackneyed storyline.
@krad
Who better to grasp just how little the producers or fans cared about the internal consistency of the technobabble?
Oh, the fans care. The producers seemingly don’t.
Hey, it’s Patrick from the Jack Pack! I found this episode a bit repetitive of other holodeck plots, but harmless and fun, mostly because of Picardo.
@5/krad: “What’s especially hilarious about the use of photonic energy… in this script is that it was written by the guy who worked as TNG’s science advisor…….”
Which just goes to show that advisors can only advise. VGR’s science advisor Andre Bormanis would write “Demon,” but the producers changed his scripted dilithium shortage to a nonsensical deuterium shortage for the sake of a stupid joke about “running out of gas.”
Also, sometimes scientist-writers like Shankar choose to compromise science for the sake of the story. Shankar worked on Farscape, which was pure space fantasy without a shred of good science, and on CSI, which often played fast and loose with science for the sake of the story. The Expanse is the hardest-SF thing he’s ever done, and even it has its fanciful elements (like those damn magnetic boots, which are an absolutely terrible idea for a gravity substitute but necessary as long as they can’t actually film in space).
@7/Mr. Magic: “Yeah, the idea of the EMH was a great concept, but they essentially wrote themselves into a corner in the early Seasons by limiting his accessibility only to sickbay or the Holodeck.”
I believe the intention was to have the crew eventually install holoemitters in other vital areas like the bridge and engineering, and there was some mention of this in a couple of episodes later on, though it was abandoned when they came up with the mobile emitter.
You’d think after all the energy life forms Federation ships have encountered they’d have protocols for recognizing them.
@13 I could see keeping the name to honor Freya despite the grief, but the Doctor is new to all this. He was never supposed to be on enough to feel love and grief. This is all new territory for him.
This summary really makes me want to see the Doctor in Picard just to see Stewart and Picardo acting together.
Poor Harry Kim. Butt monkey of the Trek-verse
@20, Yeah, I’ve always felt bad for Garrett Wang and how little was done with Harry’s character in the series run — though he arguably didn’t get with this as badly as Anthony Montomgery did on Enterprise.
Garrett Wang’s recounted his frustrations with that and his onflicts about this with Braga and Berman over the character’s lack of development and portrayal.
David Young: I don’t pick the pictures, so that’s on the Tor dot com folks. :)
princessroxana: Yes, it’s the same hairstyle Seven had after she was de-Borg’d.
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
@20 Does this count as another death for Harry?
noblehunter: Nah. He doesn’t really die, he’s just altered into energy temporarily, as are Chakotay and Tuvok.
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s also his last Trek writing credit;
@krad: For Shankar? Not quite. DS9’s The Quickening was still a year away at this point.
Heroes and Demons works mainly as a fluff piece. A fun little showcase for Picardo. I’d argue the writers haven’t quite nailed the character yet (which really won’t happen until season 3). But this is a good way to test his limits, doing a fun fish out of water adventure. Seeing the Doctor cope with being way over his head always makes for a fun hour. Seeing him work his way through these obstacles is enough to make it worthwhile.
But the actual plot itself gives me a headache. Voyager isn’t doing anyone any favors by committing this hard to technobabble. But the idea that flesh and blood people would dematerialize due to a holodeck malfunction is ludicrous. It didn’t work when they did The Big Goodbye in 1987, and it doesn’t work any better now. I understand the need for dramatlc and artistic license as well as a need to create peril and conflict, but this is just lazy. If there was a radiation surge or something like it that could cause irreparable damage to the solid characters, I’d understand. But that’s not the case.
I didn’t remember Monaghan doing Trek, let alone being the main guest in this one. Good bit of casting. I liked Number One back in the day. Now I feel like rewatching B5 all over again.
I know from reading the comments of others that we tend to get snagged by the lazy versions of something we know about: chemistry, biology, astronomy, whatever. For me, it was the fungi. Before Freya brings the EMH to Hrothgar, she begins gathering what he calls amanita muscaria—except that the things she’s picking up are just some kind of generic grey blobs the props department threw in there, not the stunningly recognizable fruiting body (mushroom) that was just named.
Gah! Can’t figure out how to insert photo from Wikipedia here.
@25/Eduardo: They didn’t actually dematerialize due to a malfunction, they were taken captive by the photonic beings. As for why the crew thought they might have been, it’s not out of the question, since holodecks do use replicators to create certain small items like props, food, and drink, and replicators are transporter-based.
@23 /noblehunter:
Does this count as another death for Harry?
Heh, as SF Debris put it, “You should eat Harry!”
@9: “Freya is a character in a holodeck scenario, she can’t die as in dead. Surely the Doctor understands that? No reason why he can’t run the program himself is there?”
To this point, I don’t think it’s established that the Doctor can physically (or incorporeally for that matter lol) access the holodeck at will, And assuming he could, I don’t know that he would be authorized to run programs on it. I mean, he’s technically the ship’s doctor, but outside of that arena otherwise he’s not really a crew member with crew member’s privileges. At least I don’t think so. Hell I don’t know. Suddenly I have a headache! :)
More importantly, though, even if he was able to run the program and make Freya “live” again, I’m thinking the Doctor would decline. Ironically (or perhaps fittingly), the Freya holograph elicited the deepest and most profound feelings the Doctor has yet experienced – and he himself is pseudo-sentient being at this point in the series. I think he would consider re-animating her somehow as to be unfaithful to the poignancy of his relationship with her.
Can we start a hairdo change count on Janeway? I think it shapeshifts more than Odo over the course of the series.
@12/Roxana: Was Janeway’s characterisation all over the place? I never noticed.
Riker’s characterisation, on the other hand…
@31:
Was Janeway’s characterisation all over the place? I never noticed.
Didn’t Kate Mulgrew say at one point that she thought her character was bipolar?
Anyway, I know the String Theory novel trilogy attempted to reconcile Janeway’s inconsistent characterization, or at least her characterization for Seasons 5-7.
I had forgotten all about this episode, even though it is a nice setup for my favorite Voyager episode ever, Bride of Chaotica. Since I also love sword & sorcery (and I consider Beowulf to fit in that subgenre every bit as much as the work of Robert E Howard), I will have to rewatch this episode sometime in the near future.
In the immortal words of Mr. Horse: “No Sir, I don’t like it.”
I also don’t like “Qpid,” or any other episode that relies on an existing property, including all the Data-as-Holmes ones. Dixon Hill, Captain Proton, and other metafictional worlds are fine with me. Even “A Fistful of Datas” works because it’s a generic western. But reusing a property is not my cup of tea and I don’t like this episode one bit.
@34
It is annoying to see Star Trek so flagrantly disrespect 10th century copyright law.
“Robert Picardo shines like big giant shining thing in this one.”
Greatest line of this re-watch.
@25. Edouardo: just maybe skip over the part where she moans “Oh, Stephen” offscreen, while Marcus opens and closes his fighting staff.
@roxana: “Poor Harry Kim” and @noblehunter: “Does this count as another death for Harry?”
Did a story yesterday in STO that riffed off the episode where a duplicate Voyager is created and then destroyed. (At least I think it’s an actual episode; don’t remember it, maybe didn’t see its original run, or it was invented for the game.) Harry falls into space thru a hull breach and dies (what, no secondary hull or force fields?). The duplicate Harry is beamed over as his replacement. He’s found in space by the Kobali, one of which is his dead best friend that he was crushing on. (I wasn’t sure if this was someone from Voyager or the “girlfriend” he kept talking about back home.)
The other races in the Delta Quadrant feel revulsion for the Kobali because they don’t reproduce normally. They recover corpses, including those of enemies, and put them thru a process of “rebirth,” where they are revived but their original genetic makeup is overwritten and they become Kobali. This is what happens to the other Harry when he’s awakened from stasis 30 years later, thinking he needs to get back to Voyager. He absolutely freaks when he’s told what’s happening to him, as would anyone in that situation. Trying to contact Admiral Tuvok on Voyager (still in service) would somehow put the ship in mortal danger. He put my character thru a maze that was nausea inducing to keep me from getting to him, plus electrocuting me a number of times. So that’s the final fate of the original Kim, while Other Harry went on to be a captain. Wang’s VO work may actually be better, and better performed, than what he got to do on the show.
This story does tie in thematically with some of the preoccupation with death, afterlife, and replacement parts we’ve seen so far in early episodes.
@26. srEdit: “Can’t figure out how to insert photo from Wikipedia here.”
Right click the source image, select copy source. In Tor editor choose “insert image,” then paste into “source” field.
Another contrived holodeck causes peril episode makes me reluctant to re-watch this one but KRAD’s mention of Janeway’s one-off hairstyle and Paris’ misplaced dialogue and the odd choice of blocking by the director in said scene makes me want to check it out!
@37/Sunspear: “Did a story yesterday in STO that riffed off the episode where a duplicate Voyager is created and then destroyed. (At least I think it’s an actual episode; don’t remember it, maybe didn’t see its original run, or it was invented for the game.) “
That’s “Deadlock” from late season 2.
I wonder if the show had at least started production by the time this one was conceived and they were beginning to work out that the Doctor was one of the main attractions, as having established early on that it was impossible for him to leave Sickbay (in “Eye of the Needle”, he stated there was no way to remove his programme from the sickbay systems), they now break that rule in order to give him a focus episode. (It takes a while to get there though: He doesn’t appear until nearly 15 minutes in, prior to which it looks as though Chakotay and Tuvok are going to get most of the action.) Robert Picardo brings out the Doctor’s vulnerable side again, especially when he expresses his doubts about his ability to carry out the mission and gets a pep-talk from Kes (who unfortunately promptly disappears for the rest of the episode). It feels like the camera angles are emphasising his lack of height a lot of the time, showing him sitting down or with the camera high up. He’s a fish out of water in the holonovel, with the scene of him telling the story of his “great victory” over an outbreak of measles to a bunch of bemused Vikings being a comedy highlight, then shows steel at the end as he faces down Unferth.
It wasn’t until the episode started that I remembered the plot point about Voyager accidentally imprisoning a bunch of aliens, I think the Doctor’s voyage of discovery must have had a bigger impact. I was slightly amused when we see Janeway, Paris and Torres in conference and realise that’s the whole senior staff. Paris contributes the idea of using the Doctor, but I think it’s kind of in character for Janeway and Torres to be focusing on the science stuff while Paris’ main preoccupation is a determination to get Harry back. (And maybe Chakotay and Tuvok too…) Neelix is nowhere to be seen again: He already seems pretty superfluous and yet they basically keep him on the show right to the end…
I noticed Janeway’s hair looks a bit odd here: It’s hard to tell because she’s got it tied up, but it seems shorter than usual. (An early attempt at using Kate Mulgrew’s own hair?) Ayala’s name gets mentioned, a couple of episodes earlier than I thought, although he’s only seen in the background. Christopher Neame, almost unrecognisable under a massive beard as Unferth, is one of the actors to have worked on both Doctor Who and Star Trek. (As already pointed out, he’ll turn up again in Enterprise. I seem to remember he also did a Babylon 5 as well as a ton of other stuff, notably being a regular on the first season of Secret Army.)
@37: The Kobali and Doomed Harry Kim Relationship No 337 are from Season 6’s “Ashes to Ashes”.
So, I don’t remember seeing this episode at all on first run, although considering I was nine at the time, maybe that’s not unusual. The first time I do remember watching it, I loved it immediately.
I’m a former English major, and one of my professors was a Beowulf buff, so the fact that they chose Beowulf for the holodeck program made my literature nerd senses tingle. You add the EMH, in my opinion the best character on the show, and it all makes for a really entertaining hour of television. The story’s framework may have been done a hundred times, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it.
@37 That’s definitely an episode of the show. I remember it distinctly. One of the Voyagers is attacked by Vidiians and then self-destructs to prevent them attacking the other. Also, as I recall, it’s the same episode in which Ensign Wildman gives birth to Naomi.
@41/cap-mjb: I doubt they would’ve conceived of the EMH without being aware of the possibility that he could be ported to the holodeck for a change-of-pace story. That potential is pretty much built into the character. In fact, the early concept notes for the character reprinted in A Vision of the Future: Star Trek Voyager referred to him existing on the holodeck — perhaps the idea was that a holographic sickbay would be simulated there? (They also suggested that he might be modeled on Barclay and played by Dwight Schultz. And the character that became Torres was originally proposed as a science officer who’d reprogram him and give him more personality.)
@43 / CLB:
And the character that became Torres was originally proposed as a science officer who’d reprogram him and give him more personality.
Sounds like they have reused that basic idea for Torres and “Dreadnought”.
A trifecta of good episodes.
I can watch this one a hundred times and still have a big doofy smile by the end. I’m always happy that the EMH got to get out of Sickbay and have an adventure.
That scene in the conference room was weird, though; it definitely felt like Janeway and B’Elanna were reporting to Paris, which was just…ugh. Stupid 90s sexism…
Still such a fun hour, all on Robert Picardo’s shoulders. Picardo gets to fully round out the EMH here as more than just the loveable curmudgeon, and it’s always a delight to see it this early on
@19, Picardo on Picard…now that I’d love to see.
@37: You might be thinking of Course: Oblivion.
The Doctor chooses a first name in the final episode of the series. I thought his choice of name was funny for a few reasons but I won’t tell you unitl we get there. He never states a last name I just figured it was after his creator. This is one of my favorite season 1 episodes even though you can see the end coming a mile away.
So I got four different answers/possibilities for the Harry dies episode. Guess that fits the pattern.
Even though it’s not exactly the same hairstyle, I’m definitely reminded of Elizabeth Warren now when seeing Janeway in this episode!
@43: Possibly it was on their minds, but it’s not entirely compatible with the idea that he’d have to have been left behind on the ship if they’d all evacuated by transporter. If he’s not as integrated as he claimed, they could easily download his programme to an isolinear chip and stick him in someone’s pocket.
@48: Sorry if there’s any confusion: The one where Voyager is duplicated and one of the Harry Kims falls into space and dies is definitely “Deadlock”. But the dead best friend he was crushing on I assume is Lyndsay Ballard from “Ashes to Ashes”, who was left with the Kobali after being reanimated by them. (His girlfriend back home is Libby, who we meet in an alternate timeline in “Non-Sequitur”.)
Off-topic, but KRaD and others may be interested:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306701-upscaling-star-trek-deep-space-nine-using-topaz-video-enhance-ai-review
@37/Sunspear: I actually enjoy that scene, thanks in no small part to Marcus and his uncanny reaction. Carter was an actor with great comical timing. B5 wasn’t shy in attempting crass humor every now and then (and better than Trek’s own attempts, much of the time).
Plus, I like it that the show condones Number One’s actions and her willingness to engage in mutual casual sex without any of the moral baggage. She was leading a resistance cell after all. That was a way to relieve the pressure.
It’s kind of funny they randomly throw this in instead of having Kim not show up for his shift or something, because it’s not great for the captain to hassle crewmembers into giving up their off duty time in non-emergency situations. And this is fresh off of forcing him to take extra time off in Emanations. I guess she figured she built up a time bank and it was time to collect…
@cap-mjb: thank you. That contextualizes what I played thru very well.
@eduardo: that scene is funnier for me since I had the impression Marcus didn’t get much action, aside from playing with his staff. And then later, we get Ivanova crying over him, saying she “should have boffed him.”
As an avid computer rpg player, this is certainly among my favorite Star Trek episodes ever. Robert Picardo carries this episode like nobodies business. The scene where he takes his place at the dinner table and starts eating that giant drumstick cracks me up every time.
@Krad/Forever an ensign: I remember reading that Garret Wang was really disappointed that he got to wear that amazing costume, but was only on screen for a few seconds and only from the chest up.
@Janeway’s hairdo: Ironically, this was the same hairdo they gave Seven for her entire run on the show and it seemed to stay in place then. I guess maybe different hair types
I haven’t chimed in often on these, but thanks KRAD for all the work over multiple series.
I just wanted to mention that this episode was Voyager’s contribution to the The Best of Star Trek 30th Anniversary CD, along with orchestral versions of The Trouble with Tribbles, Heart of Glory, and The Visitor. It also has a beautiful arrangement of a suite based on The Inner Light. I’ve listened to the cues from this episode so many times, it is almost bizarre hearing them with the episode which I’ve only twice now (I had the same reaction to the Heart of Glory. The Visitor I’ve seen so many times they are intertwined). The CD came out when I was 13 and formed the soundtrack for much of my nerdy youth. I discovered it was on Spotify not too long ago.
The EMH and Freya make this episode. It does not matter that it contains typical trek tropes. Its fun and entertaining.
Tom Paris’ involvement in the discussion might seem out of place, but it did give motive to his later line in Sickbay, “Let me lend you a hand,” leaving the Doctor to ponder the hand that Tom had just given him.
In my semi-random Voyager rewatch for the first time since it aired, just came by to say, of course the Doctor would be more affected than you might at first expect – there really isn’t that much difference between himself and these characters. This is him with his people, in a sense. He’s much more advanced than they, which matches his sense of self, so that doesn’t really change much. But there’s something sweet about that, which the show doesn’t vocalize.
It’s similar to when he has a relationship with Doctor Pel in Lifesigns, where they got into this idea more, but I think that’s fascinating, for a guy who is figuring out who he is and what that means in an unforseeable, unknown realm. (Which of course matches the intended theme of the show.)
Kes is great here, and no Neelix stumbling around her, yay. In a related story, today I learned the term “Alien Scrappy”.
Kind of sorry I missed this rewatch to do my first watch, but glad I’m finding it now. During the period 6-10 years ago, I watched through TNG, DS9 and TOS while reading your rewatch articles. It’s just as fun now as it was then.
This episode was wonderful. As soon as I understood that the Doctor would be the protagonist and all that would entail I knew I was getting something I didn’t know I needed.