“Alter Ego”
Written by Joe Menosky
Directed by Robert Picardo
Season 3, Episode 14
Production episode 155
Original air date: January 15, 1997
Stardate: 50460.3
Captain’s log. Voyager has encountered an inversion nebula, which no one from the Alpha Quadrant has ever seen up close. They’re supposed to burn out quickly, but the one they find has been around for centuries. They pause to investigate.
Kim is a bit out of sorts. It turns out he has fallen in love with one of the people in Neelix’s Paxau Resort program, a woman named Marayna. He goes to Tuvok to ask him to teach him how to suppress his emotions the way Vulcans do. Tuvok points out that that takes decades, and instead he psychoanalyzes Kim and gives him advice on how to deal with it without going through all that Kolinahr nonsense.
Tuvok accompanies Kim to the holodeck and observes Marayna flirting with Kim. He says that there are only two possibilities: a relationship or a tragic end. Since the former is impossible with a computer subroutine, Tuvok can only minimize the tragedy.
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Voyager sees a plasma strand ignite. This the phenomenon that usually leads to the nebula burning out—but instead, the plasma strands just fizzle out. Kim can’t determine why, but they continue to scan to try to figure it out.
Neelix is holding a luau in the Paxau Resort program. Kim initially decides not to come, preferring to stay in his quarters and do Vulcan meditation, but Paris talks him into coming.
Tuvok attends the luau only because Janeway implied that she expected the entire senior staff to attend. Marayna has had the holodeck provide her with the Vulcan game of kal-toh, and she and Tuvok begin to converse about the game and about his obvious lack of desire to be attending this shindig.
When Kim arrives to see Tuvok and Marayna talking animatedly, Kim seethes with jealousy and storms out of the holodeck.
Marayna and Tuvok continue to chat well past the luau’s end.
The next day, Janeway decides that they’ve learned all they can from observing the nebula and orders Paris to set course for the Alpha Quadrant. However, the helm is not responding. Torres, Kim, and Vorik try to figure out what’s wrong. But Torres realizes that Kim’s mind isn’t on his work and tells him to take a break. Kim heads to the holodeck, to find Marayna playing kal-toh with Tuvok. Kim explodes at Tuvok, accusing him of wanting Marayna all to himself. Tuvok points out the absurdity of that accusation and deletes the Marayna character, though that does little to assuage Kim’s hurt feelings.
After Voyager continues to not be able to move away from the nebula, Tuvok returns to his quarters to find Marayna there, with the EMH’s mobile emitter on her arm. She was able to rematerialize herself in sickbay and borrow the emitter. Tuvok calls an intruder alert and is surprised when Marayna is able to silence the resultant alarm. She then disappears as soon as security arrives.
The senior staff meets. Kim says that he didn’t see Marayna until they arrived at the nebula. They think the holodeck may have created a sentient being who has taken control of some of ship’s systems—likely she is also the cause of the helm malfunction, which they still can’t isolate.
Torres, Paris, and Tuvok go to the holodeck, where the Paxau Resort program is running. Torres finds a subspace uplink to the holodeck from somewhere in the nebula, but then the holodeck characters (servers and entertainment from the luau) start physically assaulting all three of them. (The servers continue to smile sweetly as they kick the crap out of the trio.) Tuvok tells Paris to shoot the holodeck control panel, which gets rid of the characters and they escape the holodeck.
Marayna’s next trick is to stop dampening the plasma streams, the burning of which threaten Voyager. She gets on the intercom and tells Janeway to have Tuvok meet her alone on the holodeck. Tuvok agrees—but Kim is able to trace the subspace signal and beam Tuvok directly to the source of the signal.
Marayna is revealed to be an alien who lives in a small station inside the nebula. Her job is to dampen the plasma streams so that the nebula can be intact for the viewing pleasure of her people and any other ships that come by. She occasionally taps into the computers of the passing ships to see what their lives are like.
Voyager’s holodeck, though, was technology she’d never seen before, and she found she could create an avatar of herself on it and interact with people. She found a kindred spirit in Tuvok, and wants to stay with him, as he will ameliorate the loneliness she feels stuck by herself in the nebula—loneliness she didn’t even realize she felt until she met Tuvok.
Tuvok explains that he can’t abandon his duty, his ship, or his wife back home on Vulcan. He urges her to ask her people for someone to take over this job. She lets him go.
As Voyager continues on course for home, Tuvok goes to the holodeck to apologize to Kim for not being more considerate of his feelings, and also offering to teach him how to play kal-toh.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Chakotay points out that, if they can harness the method by which the nebula dampens the plasma strands igniting, it might provide a method to stop warp core breaches and other disastrous phenomena. When it’s revealed that Marayna does it artificially, it never occurs to anyone to ask her how they do it and maybe trade for the technology.
Mr. Vulcan. Marayna very cannily observes that Tuvok draws attention to his outsider status. He refuses to wear a lei during the luau, which advertises his desire to not participate in the proceedings even as he is participating. Tuvok finds he can’t argue with her logic.
Forever an ensign. Kim is despondent that he has fallen in love with a holodeck character. Like many young people, he acts like this is a unique thing that has only happened to him and woe is him, but then Paris points out that everyone has fallen in love with holodeck characters at some point or another. (William Riker, Geordi La Forge, and Reginald Barclay, front and center!)
Half and half. Torres is the one who figured out that there’s a subspace signal coming into the holodeck, which finally puts the crew on the right track to discovering what Marayna actually is.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. The first clue that Marayna is more than she seems is when Kim asks Neelix where she is, and Neelix—who designed the Paxau Resort program—doesn’t recognize the name at first. (Though he does recall eventually that she’s taking Kes hydrosailing, but still…)
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Because Robert Picardo directed the episode, the EMH is only in one scene, though it involves him being kissed by pretty holodeck characters. That’s not creepy at all!
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Let’s see, Kim is in love with Marayna, Marayna is in love with Tuvok, and Tuvok at the very least is intrigued by Marayna.
In addition, Vorik has reserved a table for him and Torres with a lake view, based on an offhand comment Torres had made five days earlier that Torres doesn’t even remember making. This will probably be important later.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Marayna is able to create a holographic avatar of herself on the Paxau Resort program, and later puts that avatar in sickbay and borrows the EMH’s mobile emitter so she can go to Tuvok’s quarters.
Do it.
“Forget about her.”
“What did Tom say to you?”
“Not a single word. I saw the way you were looking at Marayna yesterday.”
“Hi, my name’s Harry ‘Read Me Like a Book’ Kim.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Apparently it is…”
–Torres and Kim summing up one of the episode’s themes.
Welcome aboard. Alexander Enberg is back in what was written as his first appearance as Vorik (this episode was produced before “Fair Trade“). He’ll be back in the episode he was created for, “Blood Fever.” Sandra Nelson plays both Marayna and her holographic avatar. Nelson will later play Tavana in DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire.”
Trivial matters: The game of kal-toh will continue to be seen throughout the rest of Voyager, all the way to the final episode, “Endgame.” It also showed up in the Picard episode “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2” and in the DS9 novel Mission: Gamma: This Gray Spirit by Heather Jarman.
Chakotay references the two times that the holographic Professor Moriarty took command of the Enterprise-D’s systems in the TNG episodes “Elementary, Dear Data” and “Ship in a Bottle,” just as Marayna does here.
This is Robert Picardo’s first time directing. He will also direct “One Small Step” in season six. They remain his only two directorial credits to date.
Garrett Wang was suffering from the flu during filming, though that probably helped him look morose and unhappy…
Set a course for home. “Vulcans do not hydrosail.” This is a delightfully effective low-key romance. The script fools you into thinking it’s about Kim being a callow youth—and that certainly is the undercurrent—but it switches direction into a sad tale about two very lonely people.
Tim Russ and Garrett Wang do superlative work here. I love watching Tuvok so perfectly analyze Kim’s feelings and diagnose his problem and provide a solution, and I love how annoyed Kim is at what an open book he is. Kim plays very young here, but that’s fine, since he’s supposed to be the baby on the ship, as it were. Of course he acts like this is the worst thing ever, and everyone around him is downplaying it. Tuvok approaches it logically, and Torres and Paris both are pretty indulgent but also make it clear that it’s not the end of the world and he’ll get over it.
And Tuvok finds an unexpected kindred spirit. By serving on a ship full of emotional beings, Tuvok has placed himself in the position of outsider. He is able to function alongside them fairly easily—recall how well he took to command in “Resolutions,” not to mention how readily he deals with Kim’s emotional crisis in this episode—but he’s not one of them. There are other Vulcans on board—we see one of them in Vorik—but he doesn’t seem to socialize with any of them, either, probably due to his position as third-in-command and chief of security. It would only be appropriate for him to socialize with people at his own level on the chain of command, but they’re all humans and half-Klingons. It’s telling that when Marayna asks if Kim and Tuvok are friends, Tuvok answers in the negative. He considers Kim a trusted and respected colleague, but that’s as far as it goes.
The weak link of the episode is Sandra Nelson. She was wonderful as Tavana in DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire,” which prepared me for a much better performance that we actually got. Marayna is perfectly okay, but you don’t see the same spark that made, for example, Minuet so compelling in TNG’s “11001001,” or, since Marayna isn’t really a holographic character, Denara Pel in “Lifesigns.” I also must confess to being totally unimpressed that the avatar created in a holodeck program that’s otherwise full of Pacific Island folks, is a blond-haired blue-eyed white woman.
Tuvok’s arc here reminds me a bit of Spock’s in “This Side of Paradise,” though significantly less extreme, as Tuvok doesn’t get teased with emotionalism and then have it ripped away. But the tragedy of his loneliness mirrors that of Marayna, both of whom chose this life. I particularly like the way Russ delivers his final urging to Marayna to do the one thing Tuvok can’t do: ask for a way out. Tuvok is stuck—doubly so by virtue of Voyager being stranded in another quadrant. Marayna, though, has a choice…
Warp factor rating: 7
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A fairly good one, IIRC. I thought Kim’s part in it was a little silly and overdone, but otherwise it worked. It was refreshing to see a holodeck “malfunction” turn out to be just someone hacking the holodeck from outside.
“What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Marayna is able to create a holographic avatar of herself on the Paxau Resort program, and later puts that avatar in sickbay and borrows the EMH’s mobile emitter so she can go to Tuvok’s quarters.”
Doesn’t that literally contradict the subject header? ;)
@1 I recall Voyager being fairly good about that. Most of the holodeck episodes I remember from the show were either caused by an outside force moving in (actually quite a few of these, come to think of it), or were extrapolations from the program running as intended, like Janeway being kind of freaked out by her reaction to her holographic lover snoring.
When it’s revealed that Marayna does it artificially, it never occurs to anyone to ask her how they do it and maybe trade for the technology.
I mean, I don’t know. She’s obviously unstable, can hack their computers, can disable their navigation, and was threatening to kill them all a few moments ago. Under the circumstances, getting out before she changes her mind again seems like a fairly wise decision…
I’ve read that this was intended, or at least interpreted, as a metaphor for internet relation-ships. Marayna is alone and lonely so she uses a remote system to communicate with Voyager and find people she can talk to, and because of the remote nature of that communication she can portray herself however she likes, regardless of who she is in real life. When that shockingly doesn’t work out for her, she turns into an online troll/stalker, but it’s all because of loneliness, so the advice is to get out of the basement and go find real people to interact with in the flesh.
This is one of those episodes I kind of always forget about, but enjoy when it comes back on. It is a nice change of pace from the usual episodes that center around Vulcans, in that it isn’t about Tuvok losing control, and it is nice to see that Trek is actually capable of showing a species with repressed emotions without it being *all about* that fact.
One of the things I like about this is that Vorik is there to show contrast to this, making it clear that this is Tuvok’s preference, and not just a “Vulcans hate fun” sort of thing. Vorik, with his lei and pineapple drink and intent to romance Torres, seems to be enjoying himself, and I like that. I know a lot of people don’t particularly like his character (or the nepotism) but I liked him and wished he had shown up more. It was fun to see Vorik (and his doppelganger over on TNG) show a Vulcan that was a little younger, and maybe not quite as uptight as some of of the other, more mature Vulcans we tend to see.
For the first 15 minutes, I was prepared to loathe this episode. A Harry Kim romance is rarely, if ever, a good thing. Wang simply can’t sell it, and playing the jilted jealous lover isn’t my idea of a memorable story. It certainly isn’t helped by the script exacerbating the whole Harry is an innocent child who’s never been rejected response.
But thankfully, it came with a serious plot twist. The episode does a hard 180º and becomes far more interesting when the story switches to Tuvok/Marayna. I’m a sucker for this type of “love story”. One that addresses the loneliness of both characters. It’s not a surprise that TNG’s 11001001 is my favorite holodeck romance episode of them all, where Riker was presented as a lonely figure who found his soulmate in Minuet (the jazz setting helped a lot, also). Alter Ego leans heavily into this particular approach, minus the jazz (though I enjoy Neelix’s Paxau resort program as a setting). Marayna is one of the more interesting antagonists the show’s come across. Not a bad person, just a flawed one who’s spent way too much time in isolation.
A mostly good Menosky-penned episode that caught me off-guard, with a solid first directorial effort from the second Robert in the cast. Picardo does good work with Russ in this one.
So, one could theoretically design their idea person and then give them a mobile emitter…Weird Science anyone?
I was ready to chuck Kim when he had his temper tantrum over Tuvok having the nerve to spend time with Marayna.
Rick: this is Star Trek, which has always — always — been about compassion and forgiveness. They absolutely should have talked trade with her — or her people.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8 It’s understandable, Tuvok was aware that Kim had feelings for the lady. From Kim’s perspective it was a betrayal stacked on top of jealousy. It’s an easy mistake to make at that age. It’s nothing to throw the kid across the room over. Tuvok’s reaction of just deleting her was brilliant.
@9 KRAD: I agree that compassion and forgiveness are core Star Trek ideas. And this episode shows that the ship is still sticking to those ideals. If Voyager was just engaged in brutal survivor mode, then they should have just beamed her into space rather than beaming Tuvok to her and hoping he can make his saving throw vs. stalker. Tuvok showed compassion to her. Voyager implicitly forgave her, in that they don’t even consider seeking any form of retaliation. But, geez, she stalked the crew for days under false pretenses, has the ability to destroy the ship, and was threatening to destroy the ship just seconds ago. If Tuvok talks her off the ledge, great, take yes for an answer and get out. Sticking around for days of trade negotiations– which by their very nature would risk raising her ire again, or let her get infatuated with another crewmember– goes beyond optimistic and crosses the border into foolhardy.
If they can find her people, then sure, they absolutely should consider trading with whatever her official government is. But dealing with her for a second longer than they had to is just an unacceptable risk given her behavior up to this point.
Ah, Harry Kim’s disastrous love life, part whatever. I think it’s around this time that Tom Paris must have started keeping score. (He was never going to encourage Harry to give Marayna a wide berth: He seems to think that’s what holograms are for. Maybe if Kim had gone to him for advice instead of Tuvok, everyone would have been a lot happier. Even the Doctor’s got the right idea.)
The focus quickly shifts from Kim to Tuvok, who finds he actually quite enjoys Marayna’s company himself, at least until she goes off the deep end, breaks into his house, and threatens to kill everyone he cares about and Neelix. It’s an unfortunate weakness of the 45 minute format that Marayna has to go from charming to crazy to reasonable at breakneck speed.
I’m afraid this may be an episode that I enjoyed less than the majority. I found it unfortunately unclear what the episode is trying to say. It can’t quite decide if Tuvok has no emotion at all or not. He is somewhat dismissive of Kim’s feelings, but Kim did go to him for exactly that sort of help so doesn’t really have any reason to complain. Tuvok doesn’t make friends easy and maybe he is in danger of ending up like Marayna if he spends too long playing Vulcan patience in his quarters. Or maybe not. I quite like the idea someone suggested back on “Resolutions” that Tuvok is secretly adding black marks to Kim’s file to block him being promoted: I think he got another one here…
Frankly, I think I remember it most for Kes in a bathing suit and that takes up a disappointingly few seconds!
Quoth cap-mjb: “and threatens to kill everyone he cares about and Neelix.”
This made me snarf my iced tea.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@10, He may act like a kid, but he’s not a tween just figuring out girls don’t have cooties – he’s an adult graduate of Starfleet Academy who was in a committed relationship when he was assigned to Voyager and was either living with his girlfriend or about to be based on Non Sequitur. And he’s had at least two other ‘romances’ since the premiere. He came across Tuvok & Marayna playing a frelling game and had a complete melt down. Even after Tuvok deleted her, Kim stormed off in a childish huff. The show may have been aiming for ‘betrayed love and friendship’ but it came across as overblown, gross and possessive.
treebee72: There’s nothing in your post #14 that I find in the least bit unrealistic. Maybe I’ve just met too many idiots in their 20s….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@12 this episode made me wish they explored Tuvok being lonely a bit more throughout the rest of the show. He really is in kind of a tough position. He and Janeway are close, but it is hard to be friends with someone who is your superior, especially since on Voyager there isn’t really any time off. Chakotay and B’Elanna might have forgiven him for being a spy, but I doubt they want to be friends with him, and he is seemingly much older than the other Vulcans we see on the ship. He fantasizes about killing Neelix, Kes is his protege, and he doesn’t seem overly fond of Paris. It must have been a lonely 7 years for Tuvok, and I think it would have been interesting to see more of that.
I had no memory of this episode until I read your re-cap and then I realised it was the episode that introduced kal-toh. I am so disappointed no-one’s found a way to make this game in our century because it looked awesome!
You were far kinder to this episode than I was expecting.
Being in complete isolation for long periods of time has the tendency to make a person go a little binky-bonkers, as I’m sure many of us have discovered first hand over the past few months. I feel like I find it much easier to identify with Marayna now than I did back when the episode first aired (though I was just a kid at the time).
Now I’m kind of wondering if this episode has aged much better than others as a result of recent events, since the message about loneliness and being an outsider feels so much more relevant now (at least, it does from where I’m sitting). Not that it wasn’t always relevant–considering I’m a woman with Asperger’s Syndrome, I know that all too well.
@@@@@ 15 krad – maybe I’m not being clear because I’m not trying to say it’s unrealistic behavior. I’m trying to say it’s unacceptable behavior which needs to be called out instead of waving it away as Kim being a ‘naive kid’ when he’s an adult who’s had multiple adult relationships – both romantic and non.
Kim’s overreaction seems realistic enough to me. These people are living in a pressure cooker, their nerves must be permanently on edge.
Kim’s overreaction seems realistic enough to me. These people are living in a pressure cooker, their nerves must be permanently on edge.
@21 I think that would work better if the show bothered to regularly portray them as being under extreme pressure. Other than having to eat Neelix’s cooking and not being in contact with home (a fact that is so rarely mentioned it is possible to forget it for episodes at a time), they aren’t really any worse off than most other Starfleet crews we see. The holodecks are working, there is no shortage of showers and clean uniforms, everyone gets along, and once a week they run into something they need to technobabble their way out of. Kim being snappy makes a lot more sense in an episode like “Timeless,” where there is clearly years of pressure on him than it does here, where seemingly his only problem is that he likes a character from the Holodeck and can’t handle it with maturity. It is perfectly reasonable for someone under extreme pressure to snap at things that would normally be trivial, but the show has gone out of it’s way to avoid their characters being under that kind of constant stress.
Poor Garrett Wang: not only is he noticeably stuffed up with the flu during this episode and has a significant role, but the portrayal of Ensign Kim here does the character no favors. Personally, I thought he came across as a whiny, jealous adolescent brat. He’s not the professional senior officer with prior romantic relationship experience that he should be, so I find him insufferable here. @12/cap-mjb: I like your idea that Tuvok has been secretly giving Kim demerits over the years and thus blocking Kim’s promotion!
This episode could easily have taken place on TNG. Substitute Worf for Tuvok, the solitary security chief who feels apart from the others; and substitute Wesley for Harry, the whiny adolescent brat who is awkward around women. You’ve still got the holodeck, weird space phenomenon, lonely misunderstood alien, and nothing here has anything to do with getting home to the Alpha Quadrant.
Pretty forgettable episode too. Robert Picardo is barely in it (which is understandable as he’s directing but less Picardo is always a detriment), and poor Jennifer Lien is a glorified extra here.
@22, you’re right of course. The constant stress of passing through unknown space, worrying about resupplies and hostile aliens is totally ignored. Replicator rationing is barely mentioned, the Starfleet/Marquis conflict disappears overnight. Nobody grieves for the dead. Voyager is just another Starfleet ship, all bright and shiny, sailing tranquilly through space dealing with the space wedgie of the week. Every now and then there’s a nod to the far from home issue but all in all it’s pretty disappointing from that angle.
@72/treebee14
I have to wonder how committed to his girlfriend Libby, Kim really was. I mean he had what should have been a dream come true life and threw it all away just because he felt sorry for Tom Paris. So perhaps he wasn’t all that mature about women after all, haha.
@18/denise: I feel ya so hard!! I’m an autistic woman too and I always related with Marayna here to some degree. Also my other disabilities had me cooped up at home for years even before COVID – the irony being that I was just beginning to have the arm stamina to push my wheels to go out far more often, and then lockdowns hit!
I was thrust right back into my prior life. It has been pretty vindicating that people who had a strong sleep schedule before lockdown are all “what day is it? what month is it?” now – since that has been my experience for years, yet so many people in my life acted as if that were a personal failing on my part.
So at least… I can bring up people’s experiences with lockdown in the future, to relate how my life had been for years! Non-disabled folks never could properly relate to my experiences before this. So that’s one silver lining (in amongst a hell of a lot of death, people losing their jobs, their homes… it’s like 99% grim, of course. But from a personal level, at least my struggles aren’t so incomprehensible to regular folks anymore?)
Not entirely related to the episode anymore, hah. I just really like how many more women are involved in the Tor comments, compared to so many other places :D
I like it how the alien is at least reasonable in the end; while in similar scenarios in other shows they have to trick or overpower them.
How is it a clue that Neelix doesn’t recognize Marayna’s name? Why would he have chosen every single character’s name for the program? There might be a setting to “populate simulation with archetype characters and randomly select names”. ;)
@6 – Eduardo: “The second Robert”. According to the recent panels they’ve done, they call Beltran “Robert”, Picard “Bob”, and McNeil “Robbie”.
@7 – Austin: Supposedly, holodeck characters are very limited; only specific ones with lots and lots of work (and left to run continuously) end up approaching or achieving sentience.
@23 – garreth: The episode could have been done on DS9, with Jake and Odo.
Was Tuvok the show’s outsider before Seven of Nine joined the cast? Alter Ego is the first of Kim’s many doomed romances (that Paris delights in keeping score of). I know we’ve heard before that there are Vulcans on the ship, but other than Tuvok and Vorik, who are they? Tuvok was indeed uncomfortable talking to Vorik in Blood Fever (unless it’s because the subject was Pon Farr?).
Would Tuvok consider Kim a friend after the events of Resolutions? “Kim’s supposed to be the baby on the ship.” Yeah, he sure acts like it. I wasn’t expecting such a positive review for this one, probably because Kim acts like such a total douche (not for the first or last time).
5: The reference guide Delta Quadrant hated Vorik’s character (as well as Neelix and Naomi Wildman), so much in fact that his presence in an episode was a sure sign (to the author) it would be a bad ‘un. 6: And vice versa in Living Witness. 12: This episode and Gravity would make a perfect double-bill because of the themes of unrequited love. And like Let He Who Is Without Sin, we remember Alter Ego for the bathing suits.
16: We do see something of that in S5’s Gravity. 19: Before or after Voyager became stranded? 20-21: Deja vu. 22: I think that is a valid criticism of VGR, where no matter what happens to the crew on a weekly basis, the next episode returns things to factory settings. 23: “Jennifer Lien is a glorified extra here”. You may as well get used to that from here on out. 27: It’s Picardo.
@28/David Sim:
I would love to have seen the “other Vulcans” on the ship. I have no recollection of any extras dressed up as Vulcans, but it would be cool if there had been. As for Tuvok being uncomfortable talking to Vorik, I’m pretty sure it was only because of the subject matter. I believe Spock said something to the effect of Vulcans not even discussing it among themselves in “Amok Time,” someone correct me if I’m wrong.
@28/David Sim: Actually, Jennifer Lien post this episode will be featured quite prominently in “Darkling,” “Before and After,” the “Scorpion” 2-parter, and “The Gift.” The problem was that in episodes that didn’t focus on her, she was barely given anything to do.
@28 and @29/Thierafhal: Tuvok mentions other Vulcans plural aboard in “Flashback” but other than Vaurik we never meet any and in “Counterpoint” it’s shown that Tuvok and Vaurik are the only Vulcans aboard.
@30/garreth: Except in season 7’s “Repression,” we see a female Vulcan Maquis member as part of the crew, contradicting “Counterpoint.” https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Unnamed_USS_Voyager_command_division_personnel#Officer_029
@31/CLB: Well, internal consistency was never Voyger’s strong suit.
@32/garreth: As we’ve discussed in some of the rewatch threads, the crew composition seemed to get more inconsistent after Michael Piller left.
@33/CLB: Right, I’ve previously made that specific point in reference to Michael Piller myself.