“Message in a Bottle”
Written by Rick Williams and Lisa Klink
Directed by Nancy Malone
Season 4, Episode 14
Production episode 1551
Original air date: January 21, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Seven summons Janeway and Chakotay to astrometrics. She has found an alien sensor net that seems to be abandoned. The far end of the net’s range is on the edge of the Alpha Quadrant, and is picking up a Starfleet vessel in that region.
They are unable to get a regular communication through the network, as it degrades and reflects back. Torres suggests a holographic signal that can go through without degrading. It means sending the EMH through, and there’s a risk they won’t be able to get him back. But it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.
The EMH is sent through and materializes in a Starfleet sickbay. But he only finds two dead bodies. The computer informs him that he’s on an experimental prototype, the U.S.S. Prometheus, the Starfleet crew is all dead, and the ship has been taken over by Romulans. The Prometheus can split into three parts—which is called the multivector assault mode. The Romulan commander, Rekar, uses that mode to destroy another Starfleet vessel. One of the Romulans is hurt, and is brought to sickbay. The EMH pretends to be the Prometheus EMH and treats the Romulan.
Buy the Book
Remote Control
The EMH activates the Prometheus EMH, who is also a prototype. EMH2 is disdainful of the inferior earlier model, and also wants to deactivate until they get rescued, but the EMH wants to fight back. The EMH convinces him to try to take the ship back, mostly by boasting of everything he’s accomplished over almost four years in the Delta Quadrant. The EMH2 is a bit skeptical of all the EMH says he has done—though he’s intrigued by the fact that he’s had sexual relations and surprised by the mobile emitter—but eventually, he agrees to go along with it.
Back on Voyager, Paris is being overwhelmed by being the ship’s medic, and begs Kim to create a new EMH. While Kim is able to re-create his physical form, the best he can do is get the hologram to recite Gray’s Anatomy from the beginning.
On Prometheus, the EMH’s plan involves placing neurozine gas in the environmental systems. While EMH2 goes to environmental control, the EMH goes to the bridge to activate the systems via the bridge ops station, under the pretense of checking the other Romulans for a disease that the injured Romulan allegedly has.
However, Rekar realizes that the EMH isn’t actually scanning them, and takes him prisoner. Rekar assumes that there’s a Starfleet officer they missed on the crew who is manipulating the hologram, but in mid-sentence, they’re interrupted by neurozine gas. The EMH2 figured out a way to activate the gas without using bridge ops. Now they have to fly the ship.
On Voyager, they are contacted by the Hirogen, who, it turns out, control the network. Janeway tries to plead with the Hirogen, named Idrin, to allow them to continue using the network just until they can get the EMH back. Idrin refuses. Seven decides to send an electric shock through the communications line to render Idrin unconscious.
On Prometheus, the EMHs learn, to their chagrin, that Rekar was about to turn the ship over to the Tal Shiar, and they were about to rendezvous with some Tal Shiar vessels. While the two EMHs struggle mightily to operate the ship, a firefight ensues, with Starfleet also getting in on it, and firing on the Prometheus. (It doesn’t help that EMH2 accidentally fires on one of the Starfleet ships.)
Then they accidentally activate the multivector assault mode and that turns the tide of battle.
The EMH reports to Starfleet Command everything that has happened to Voyager. It turns out that Starfleet declared Voyager lost fourteen months previous. Now, however, they will be working to try to help get them home. For the first time, Voyager doesn’t feel like they’re alone.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently holographic signals don’t degrade as easily as subspace signals.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway updates her letters home to her family and to Mark, which she does even though she knows this whole thing is a long shot and doing so probably tempts the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. Chakotay admits that he did the same for a letter to his cousin.
Forever an ensign. Kim humors Paris by trying to create a new EMH, even though it’s way beyond the capabilities of a single officer on a starship.
Half and half. Torres is sick unto death of Seven’s imperious attitude. She tries to convince Seven that she needs to be polite, which is hilarious, considering the source.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. Apparently, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman and his team have created a Mark 2 Emergency Medical Hologram, and are testing it on the already-experimental Prometheus. While he looks like Andy Dick instead of Robert Picardo, he still has Zimmerman’s charming personality.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Paris’ nightmare running sickbay in the EMH’s absence is the number of people coming in with gastrointestinal distress after Neelix served Rodeo Red’s Red-Hot, Rootin’-Tootin’ Chili.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. EMH2 is able to function on any part of the ship, as Prometheus has holoemitters all over the vessel.
Do it.
“Stop breathing down my neck!”
“My breathing is merely a simulation.”
“So is my neck! Stop it, anyway!”
–The EMHs bantering.
Welcome aboard. Judson Scott makes his third appearance in Trek as Rekar, having previously played Sobi in TNG’s “Symbiosis” and Joachim in The Wrath of Khan. Tiny Ron—who had the recurring role of Maihard’u in the various Ferengi episodes of DS9–makes the first of two appearances as Idrin; he’ll return in the the very next episode, “Hunters.” Valerie Wildman plays Nevada.
But the big guest is the great comic actor Andy Dick as EMH2.
Trivial matters: This episode marks the first contemporary contact with the Alpha Quadrant Voyager makes, having made contact with the AQ of the past in “Eye of the Needle” and “Future’s End.” (One could argue for Kim’s sorta-kinda doing so in “Non Sequitur,” also, I guess.) This also marks the first time seeing the new uniforms that debuted in First Contact on Voyager.
It was established in DS9’s “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” that Dr. Lewis Zimmerman was working on a Long-Term Medical Hologram, and this episode shows that he also did a Mark 2 of his original EMH, as well.
The EMH learns of the Dominion War, which the Federation is embroiled in at this point, the first time that conflict, which dominated the final two seasons of DS9, was mentioned on Voyager.
The Prometheus will be seen again onscreen in the series finale, “Endgame,” and also appear in the Destiny trilogy by David Mack, your humble rewatcher’s A Singular Destiny, Star Trek Online, Star Trek Heroclix: Tactics, and most notably in the Star Trek: Prometheus trilogy by Christian Humberg & Bernd Perplies. The latter were the first original Trek novels published by Cross Cult, a German publisher that publishes translations of English-language Trek novels. In 2016, as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the franchise, Cross Cult was given a license to publish their own anniversary trilogy, and they chose to focus on the Prometheus. The novels were translated into English and published by Titan from 2017-2018. (Your humble rewatcher provided editorial assistance on the English-language versions of those books.)
This episode also introduces the Hirogen, who will continue to be antagonists to Voyager for the rest of its run. Voyager will encounter the Hirogen in four of the next five episodes. In addition to appearing several times in this and each of the subsequent three seasons, the Hirogen also appear in two of the novels in the Gateways crossover, No Man’s Land by Christie Golden and your humble rewatcher’s Demons of Air and Darkness, in which a Hirogen alpha destroys a Malon ship and gets into a fight with a Jem’Hadar.
Starfleet declaring Voyager lost, as well as the response when the EMH made contact with Prometheus by the folks at home, was chronicled in your humble rewatcher’s short story “Letting Go” in the anthology Distant Shores.
Set a course for home. “I’m a doctor, not a commando.” I unreservedly love this episode for many reasons, but the main one is obvious: pairing Robert Picardo and Andy Dick is simply comedy gold. Every moment the two of them together is hilarious, from Dick’s skepticism regarding Picardo’s accomplishments to Picardo’s constantly having to push Dick to be heroic to Picardo abashedly realizing he doesn’t recognize the newfangled medical equipment on Prometheus to both of them trying desperately how to figure out how to operate the ship.
Plus we get the Hirogen, an alien species I was captivated by when they were introduced, and am still very much interested in. (I’ll get into this more when we do “Hunters” and “Prey” in the next two rewatches.)
And best of all, we finally get real contact with the Alpha Quadrant. Even more than Kes’s 10,000-light-year jump, even more than finally hitting Borg territory, this connection with home shows true progress in Voyager’s journey back, and it’s quite heartening.
To get there, we also get a fun comedy-action sequence. Judson Scott is pretty terrible as Rakar, but luckily he’s not onscreen all that much. The Prometheus is a spiffy ship (though I’m sorry we didn’t get to see it on DS9), and, again, the double act of the two EMHs is just hilarious as all hell.
The stuff back on Voyager was a little too obviously there to give the rest of the cast something to do, and it really doesn’t work. Torres’s complaints about Seven are legitimate, but Chakotay’s response is a bit too laid-back for someone who’s supposed to be the first officer of a starship. Seven summons Janeway and Chakotay to astrometrics in the same tone that a commanding officers uses on their subordinates, and the fact that Janeway doesn’t call her on it is a glaring omission. And the Paris-Kim subplot with the former begging the latter to create a new EMH can charitably be called filler.
But ultimately, it’s all irrelevant, to use Seven’s favorite word, because the meat here is two snarky doctors being snarky while snarkily saving the ship, and it’s glorious.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be part of the virtual Philcon 2020 this coming weekend. Check out his schedule here.
Yeah, acknowledging the Dominion War in the Alpha Quadrant sequence was one of my favorite parts of this episode. It was a nice, appreciated bit of connective tissue between the two TNG spinoffs.
And if you were only following VOY and not DS9 and the TNG films, it also helps sell the idea that much has changed back home in the 3.5 years since “Caretaker” — which nicely sets up next episode, but I’ll hold off on that until next time.
With respect, this episode only works if you can tolerate Andy Dick. I cannot. Dick has a rap sheet of sexual battery a mile long, his addiction challenges eventually spilled over to lead to the death of Phil Hartman, and he also completely screwed up the “Get Smart” relaunch which (while not at the same level as the above) caused terrible damage to one of my all time favorite franchises.
I respect that he did may have done good work here, but I cannot even look at the guy anymore and skipped this episode when it came up in my rewatch.
Other than that, a great recap as usual. :)
@2
Got to agree with Joe here. Even ignoring all of Andy Dick’s history of sexual assault and substance problems, the guy was simply never that funny even before we knew about those issues. Even when this episode was new, he was my least favorite part of it. I find his “comedy” grates on my nerves.
Once you add all of the other history to that, it makes for a performance that hasn’t aged well.
Luckily, the fact that we get the progress KRAD alluded to makes up for it. Giving Voyager some long overdue hope goes a long way.
Think the autocorrect screwed you with “Nevada” in the Welcome Aboard section.
Im not a big fan of Andy Dick either, but I gotta admit at this stage of his career he was still OK. I remember liking him on the Ben Stiller show in the mid 90s. In retrospect, I wouldve liked to have John Lovitz in Romulan makeup kick his ass in this episode.
“Please state the nature of the medical emergency. What the hell are you doing in my sickbay?”
Well, this episode starts with something of a fake-out as Seven announces she’s detected a Starfleet vessel…and then, one set of opening titles later, adds that they’re in the Alpha Quadrant. Maybe lead with that?
Despite the Doctor arriving to find a couple of dead bodies on the floor, this quickly settles into being a rather comedic episode, mainly down to the byplay between the two EMHs. They get up each other’s noses but gradually learn to work together, with the scenes of them both bumbling about on the bridge, unsure what exactly anything does, being a particular highlight (“You hit the wrong ship.”/“It wasn’t my fault!”/“Whose fault was it, the torpedo’s?”). This is another case where I’ve never knowingly seen the actor in something else, so don’t have the same perspective as other people. Even the short subplot about Paris and Kim trying to create a new EMH for if the Doctor doesn’t return is quite amusing. Seven electrocuting a Hirogen, even with a “mild shock”, does seem a touch psychopathic though, even if it gets Torres’ approval.
A low key first appearance for the Hirogen, kicking off the arc that will occupy the third quarter of this season. First appearance of the First Contact-style uniforms on Voyager, although the crew never adopt them. We don’t see the face of the injured Romulan on the bridge, only in sickbay: Could they not rebook the right extra? The Doctor doesn’t seem to know who the Dominion are when the EMH-2 mentions them, even though Starfleet first encountered them months before Voyager went missing: Possibly no-one updated his programme on recent politics, but Chakotay doesn’t seem to know who they are either in the next episode. And of course, Voyager finally gets proper contact with Starfleet, which will change the nature of the show somewhat going forward even if the contact is only sporadic until Season 6.
Fun episode, but I had my conceptual issues with it. For one, I wish they’d tied more directly into the Dominion narrative instead of going for this random swerve with Romulans. For another, it was unclear whether the EMH Mark 2 was meant to be sentient or not. The Doctor’s sentience is supposed to be a fluke that resulted from long-term use under exceptionally challenging conditions, so EMH2 should be nothing more than a sophisticated NPC (non-player character). That makes it problematical treating him as a full-fledged person for the Doctor to play off of.
Also, the Prometheus always seemed silly and gimmicky to me. It seems to me that something that’s designed to work as both one ship and three ships won’t be ideal for either configuration — it will have too little structural integrity and too much redunancy for a single ship, and the three separate pieces will be too small and not as ideally configured for independent operation as they would be if they were designed that way from the start. I mean, if you need three ships, why not just build three ships? I can almost accept the idea of two separable hulls in the Galaxy class, given the original, quickly-abandoned intention of having a large civilian contingent that would need to be left behind before the battle hull went into danger. But even there, it would’ve made more sense to have a civilian ship with a separate military escort.
As for Andy Dick… well, I try to keep the art separate from the artist. If we threw out every creation of a sexual predator, we’d have to throw out Star Trek (Roddenberry), most of the past six decades of DC Comics (Julius Schwartz), the work of Isaac Asimov, etc. That said, however, I always found Andy Dick’s performance style more annoying than amusing. I would’ve been happier with another actor in the role.
I did appreciate the connective tissue to DS9, but it really seems like it should have been Cardassians taking over the ship here? The Romulans are neutral (or at least “neutral”) in the conflict and it just seems strange they murdered a bunch of Starfleet officers and destroyed a Starfleet ship with no political ramifications whatsoever and, I guess, all is forgotten when Sisko successfully tricks them into a declaration of war. Why not make the antagonist the one that’s actually currently at war with the Federation? Granted, that would leave the problem of why they were testing an experimental ship so close to Cardassian space, but it’s not like it was a great idea to perform the test that close to Romulan space either.
@7/Rick: I think the Romulans’ neutrality in the Dominion War (this aired about 3 months before “In the Pale Moonlight”) was the whole reason they used them. They wanted the episode to be comprehensible to viewers who didn’t watch DS9, to be unconnected to the specifics of the Dominion War narrative, aside from the throwaway mention. So they chose a power that didn’t have a role in the conflict, so they could do whatever was needed without having an effect on DS9’s story arc or being affected by it.
Also, part of it may have been that of the major antagonistic powers, the Romulans are the ones whose space is closest to the Delta Quadrant per the standard map that was in use behind the scenes and was eventually the basis of the maps in Star Trek Star Charts. So it kind of makes sense that the far end of the Hirogen relay network is close to Romulan space. If it were close to Cardasian space, then there would have to be relays within Federation space already, and in that case Starfleet would already have known about the Hirogen.
Is this the first appearance of the sleeker Romulan uniforms, or had they already been used at this point? Anyhow, this was my first noticing them and I was grateful they had moved away from the poofy shouldered grandma’s curtains they’d used previously.
Agreed with the above criticisms about Dick. He’s a creepy, annoying little shit and not at all funny so I’m giving the credit for the comedy in this episode all to Robert Picardo. Without him it would have been the Andy Dick show, which no one wants. I’d like to imagine when The Doctor was de-briefed (by both SF and Voyager), he embellished so much the Klingons would be proud! No mention of getting detained by the Romulans at all lol! I did think it was strange that such a new, technologically advanced ship wasn’t deployed along the front lines of the Dominion War? I know it was experimental but you’d like they would need all the firepower and new tech they could get.
Also, HELL YES The Hirogen.
So this is definitely improved by not knowing who Andy Dick is. It also neatly cures any desire to go looking up Mark 1/Mark 2 fanfic. Watching the two of them play off each other is highly entertaining. The Prometheus wasn’t as badass as I remember, sure we see it fight but there’s no explanation of why splitting into three is a desirable tactic. It is cool to see evidence of progress since SF that’s not about technology often comes across as fairly static.
The stuff with Seven should have ended with her getting reamed out by the Captain not just waved off as borg will be borg. I know she’s the narrative’s golden girl right now but assaulting a representative of an alien race in the middle of negotiations is pretty damn serious. She’s starting to remind me of Damian Wayne.
I also had no idea who Andy Dick was before watching this episode, so it was quite fun seeing the Doctor getting “a taste of his own medicine” so to speak. (I am referring, of course, to the Mark II being just as arrogant, superior-minded and sarcastic.)
Whatever the reason for the “new EMH” subplot, I thought it was very hilarious hearing the new Doctor babbling on and on and unable to comply to Paris yelling “shut up!” That, and Seven giving the Hirogen a ‘mild shock’ was also hilarious.
Every time I see the beginning, I wish Chakotay could have reminded Torres “Hey, you didn’t think it was a good idea when I wanted to throw you in the brig for the rest of the trip for breaking someone’s nose!”
I love this episode too and think it’s one of Voyager’s best. It’s a rousing, amusing adventure that is all the more significant because it takes places in the Alpha Quadrant and shows us what are old foes, the Romulans, are up too plus the intrigue of taking place on an experimental starship. Picardo and Dick made for a great pair playing off one another. I’m not a fan of Andy Dick, the person, but separating the man from his work, I thought he put in a nice biting performance here. The scene at the end where Janeway remarks they feel less alone now is endearing. And I can chalk up Janeway’s lack of chiding Seven for her authoritative tone for her still relative lack of understanding for politeness and the command structure. Therefore, I think Janeway let it slide. I thought the Prometheus was pretty nifty too. I didn’t realize it showed up again in “Endgame” but yes, strange that it didn’t show up in the Dominion conflicts on DS9. I did, however, greatly enjoy the fact we saw two Defiant class starships in the battle with the Romulans in this episode. It felt like a DS9 crossover on Voyager in a sense.
I always liked this episode; despite being, essentially, a comedy, the whole thing is a top to bottom goldmine of star trek, whether it’s the prototype ship, the new species, what amounts to a story being told by non-hero ships, it’s all good.
However, in more recent years, I’ve also found myself somewhat amazed at all the high stuff in it, particularly with newer Star Treks, like Picard, somehow being unable to produce high quality ships. This episode not only had to spend budget on a guest star, but also on redressing the bridge and sets, as well as wholly creating a whole new ship– and battle scenes!– for the episode. I’m not sure what the per episode budget is, but I can’t imagine it was all that much more than what NuTrek gets. Yet, despite this, they were able to pull this off.
@6
To be fair, I have the impression that the writers of Voyager, by around this time in the series’ run, were forgetting that the EMH’s sentience was meant to be the result of the unique circumstances of the Doctor. Later we get the very weird idea that Mark 1s are being used to mine Dilithium, an all together bizarre idea when you realize it’s a computer program.
I would have loved to see the Doctor’s reaction to the half-baked EMH that Paris and Kim cooked up (but boy, you’re right; talk about filler material).
Also, I just want to give a shout out to the small, but poignant, moment at the end when the Doctor relayed the message that they are not alone.
To me I don’t even know how you can have a Top 5 of this series without Message in a Bottle.
I kind of rate this as a 10. Everything basically hits.
Picardo and Dick have great chemistry with the same propensities towards annoyance, snark, and self aggrandizement, which very sweetly evolves into supporting each other’s self aggrandizement.
I love the Prometheus as a design though I’ve been on enough Star Trek forums over the years (to say nothing of Youtube comments) to hear all the complaints about Multi-vector Assault Mode. I always interpreted as they wanted to cram three Defiants into a traditional space frame. So the ship can act as a cruiser or an escort. The Defiant’s issue is that she’s slow. Why? I think it’s shape. The spaceframe of Starfleet vessels helps shape the warp field. The Defiant while ideal for combat is very inefficient for long distance high speed warp travel. The Prometheus in its combined form has that new speed record warp 9.99 speed and apparently the ship shape to go with it. So it lets you get to a trouble spot quickly and then separate into three more tactically optimal vessels (smaller more maneuverable) to deal with whatever threat you have. She had two warp cores though the one in the “Stardrive” section splits along the plane into two warp cores. She had all the upgrades that the Defiant had and more, ablative armor, regenerative shielding etc so she’s probably pretty tough. As for the Structural integrity, I doubt she’d be any easier to split apart than a Galaxy’s saucer from her neck. I think I still have that Star Trek The Magazine issue with her in it.
B’Ellana and Seven being the most acidic people on the ship and directing it at each other will never get old. But B’Ellana the Klingon Maquis enjoying Seven deep frying a Hirogen…priceless. Janeway’s “What happened?” always puts a smile on my face. “You killed him?” “It was a mild shock, he will recover.“
And the ending with the crew FINALLY letting Starfleet know they were alive…it still hits. A wonderful moment.
To this day I still don’t know all the crap surrounding Andy Dick, he basically seemed to fall off the face of the Earth and it was never worth it to look it up. I do recall him being annoying, but this was probably the most enjoyable performance of his career that I’m aware of. It seems that his life has taken a turn for the worst for whatever he did, so I see no reason not to enjoy this episode because he’s in it.
@8 / CLB:
They wanted the episode to be comprehensible to viewers who didn’t watch DS9, to be unconnected to the specifics of the Dominion War narrative, aside from the throwaway mention. So they chose a power that didn’t have a role in the conflict, so they could do whatever was needed without having an effect on DS9’s story arc or being affected by it.
And it also fits with the Romulan activity and behavior during “In the Pale Moonlight”. We know the Star Empire was turning a blind eye to Dominion activity along the border both to curry favor and to stick it to their longtime rival.
So I can completely buy the Romulan spooks taking advantage of the War and Starfleet Command’s strained and reduced resources to hijack Starfleet’s newest hot rod (even if it’s not explicitly stated).
@7, interesting points. I would say, though, that you’d barely need to change this episode to make it Cardies and indeed it’s even more comprehensible for the Voyager only viewers– who have only seen a Romulan once, but at least some notion of what the Cardassians are from the pilot and the whole Seska thing. Then EMH-2 just has to say “We’re at war with Cardassia (again)” and it’s the same episode, but without having DS9 ignore that the Romulan Star Empire seemingly engaged in several acts of war against the Federation. Having some Cardassian operation that doesn’t amount to anything is, comparatively, a much more minor infringement on DS9’s backyard. But that being said it may have been infeasible to coordinate exactly where the story would be by the time this aired.
But good point that the Romulans make sense given what we know about the geography of space.
Quoth borgqueen: “I did think it was strange that such a new, technologically advanced ship wasn’t deployed along the front lines of the Dominion War? I know it was experimental but you’d like they would need all the firepower and new tech they could get.”
Because it hadn’t been deployed at all yet. This was a test run to make sure the fancy-shmancy new ship worked. You really don’t want to do that on the front lines.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@18/Rick: I think it’s quite possible that DS9’s producers asked them not to use the Cardassians or anything that would come too close to what they were doing on their show. All it would’ve taken was the wrong throwaway line and a contradiction could’ve been created. It’s hard for two simultaneously ongoing productions to stay consistent when dealing with overlapping subject matter. Simpler for the two productions to keep their distance and avoid the risk.
Also, even back to Balance of Terror Starfleet has talked about Romulans stealing their technology. This honestly isn’t out of character.
Having given up any attempt to separate the artist from the art after Mel Gibson’s drunken arrest, I’ve got zero interest in seeing anything that Andy Dick has done. He’s a serial sexual assaulter, including on a 17 year old gir;. The fact that he’s also a drug addict is the only thing keeping him out of jail. Throws himself on the mercy of the court, gets a slap on the wrist and then does it again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
You can include Orson Scott Card on the list of people I don’t want to support in any way, shape or form.
And once again, Starfleet helps themselves to someone else’s property and then resorts to assault when the owner objects.
After all, the array couldn’t have appeared that abandoned if the Hirogen show up as quickly as they do. Obviously they were in the neighbourhood.
Imagine you’re walking down the street and see a house with no lights on and no car in the driveway. You let yourself in and start cooking yourself some dinner. The owners show up and your request to finish your dinner is refused. So you knock them unconscious. Way to show that you’re the good guys.
You’ve got a high tech, state of the art starship and two “”people” with no training managed to activate it’s sooper secret tech? Really? Starfleet needs better locks on ther controls than 12345. You know, the sort of combination that an idiot uses on their luggage.
-23-
This person who broke into the house, were they forcibly dropped in a foreign country thousands of miles from home? Did they just cross a desert? How desperate are they to make contact with their government, family and friends?
I think Star Trek can do better than tell stories about good guys and bad guys.
@23 Amazing, that’s the same combination I have on my luggage!
I also love this episode. Voyager’s best hour of comedy. Trek has a very bumpy track record of comedy shows but this is one of the best. It’s especially impressive because Andy Dick has never been funny to me, except in this episode of Voyager. I imagine it’s because his natural comedy style was constrained by the script and Robert Picardo, and for once he had to use his comic ability for good rather than evil.
But yeah, the comedy is just hysterical, the adventure is fun, Picardo is especially brilliant, and for once the pointless B-plot to give the rest of the cast a paycheck is entirely on point with the tone of the A-plot. Not as funny, but pleasingly light-hearted, and I do love Seven zapping the Hirogen and being all confused about why Janeway and Torres are shocked.
Just a thoroughly delightful episode.
@20 / CLB:
I think it’s quite possible that DS9’s producers asked them not to use the Cardassians or anything that would come too close to what they were doing on their show. All it would’ve taken was the wrong throwaway line and a contradiction could’ve been created. It’s hard for two simultaneously ongoing productions to stay consistent when dealing with overlapping subject matter. Simpler for the two productions to keep their distance and avoid the risk.
Yeah, and considering the VOY Writers Room’s track record with consistency and contradiction (i.e. Reset Button!!!), that caution was arguably not unwarranted.
I think it’s also interesting looking back at the shared setting of the 24th Century shows and films through a 21st Century perspective.
We’ve become so accustomed to the idea of a shared TV or Film universe in recent years (be it the Netflix Marvel shows or The CW’s Arrowverse) — that we’ve forgotten how difficult it is to actually coordinate and execute — and that’s just in the current era of streaming, binging, and prestige television.
It’s almost weird looking back at the, by comparison, relatively minimal overlap and crossovers in the 1990s Trek compared to what we’d get nowadays (ex. like how closely interlinked the inaugural Seasons of Angel and The Flash were with their parent shows).
It’s just another instance how much the Television market/landscape and pop cultural zeitgeist has changed in the interim.
The Romulans being the bad guys in this episode never really bothered me. It carried on the long tradition of the Romulans doing whatever the heck they want (violating neutral zones, attacking things, having highly placed spies) and the Federation not doing much about it.
@26/Mr. Magic: I thought there was actually a fair amount of crossover between TNG and DS9 while they were both running concurrently for a season and a half. DS9 and VOY not so much but then they each took place in different quadrants of the galaxy.
@24 – So, if someone is on the far side of the country and wants to call their family, you’d be OK with them breaking into your house and then knocking you out when you ask them to hang up the phone? The fact that the Caretaker dragged them across the galaxy doesn’t gave Voyager a perpetual Get Out of Jail Free card.
Considering how quickly the Hirogen showed up, it’s obvious that Voyager simply did a “There’s nobody on board” scan.
In The Gamsters of Triskelion, Kirk, Uhura and Chejov are beaming over to an automated communication/navigation station. Does the fact that it’s normally unoccupied give anyone the right to do with it as they see fit? Are they within their rights to assault anyone from Starfleet who objects to their presence?
@26/Mr. Magic: “Yeah, and considering the VOY Writers Room’s track record with consistency and contradiction (i.e. Reset Button!!!), that caution was arguably not unwarranted.”
I want to be clear that I was implying nothing of the sort. It’s difficult for reasons that have nothing to do with competence. The continuity of any work in progress is a moving target, and trying to keep two moving targets perfectly aligned with each other is far harder than laypeople realize, no matter how conscientious and careful the creators try to be.
“It’s almost weird looking back at the, by comparison, relatively minimal overlap and crossovers in the 1990s Trek compared to what we’d get nowadays (ex. like how closely interlinked the inaugural Seasons of Angel and The Flash were with their parent shows).”
But both those shows were on the same network as their parent shows. Note that when Buffy changed networks, the crossovers with Angel became much more rare, because the coordination was harder to arrange under those circumstances — and because not every market carried both UPN and The WB, so there was no guarantee people would be able to see both shows, and it was thus better for them to stand apart. Much the same was true with DS9 (syndicated) and Voyager (UPN).
Always liked this one. It’s fun and does something important when it, finally, ties Voyager back to the Federation. Prometheus is a cool design, even if Multi-Vector Assault mode is just silly. I wonder if they were thinking of doing something else with the ship on Voyager that didn’t materialise in the end and that’s why we don’t see it in DS9. It wouldn’t be an uncommon scenario and the amount of work they put into the model doesn’t seem like a one off usage thing.
As to the Andy Dick thing, I make my mind up on a case by case basis. I mean, most popular entertainment contains some kind of scumbag, so it’s impossible to watch anything if you go to absolute. I also remember that there’s a lot of people involved in making these things who didn’t do anything wrong and their work deserves some consideration. So it’s a balancing act.
Andy Dick is, of course, still a word that would that I can’t use here.
@30 – Co-opting an relay network is NOT the same thing as a physical invasion of privacy. That’s a false equivalence. The better analogy would be if someone hacked your computer, you told them to get off, they said they just need to use it for something and will then leave, you still said no, and then they knock you out. I see the point you’re getting at but it’s not in the same realm of physically invading someone’s private space, which is a lot worse than what Voyager did.
@29:
I thought there was actually a fair amount of crossover between TNG and DS9 while they were both running concurrently for a season and a half. DS9 and VOY not so much but then they each took place in different quadrants of the galaxy.
That’s fair. I mean with DS9 and VOY, yeah, they couldn’t really do much because of VOY being stranded. The closest we ever got was Zimmerman’s crossover in Season 5 and the Intrepid-class ships showing up in Season 7.
But with the TNG and DS9 overlap from 1993-1994…honestly, it was kinda one-sided in hindsight with mostly TNG supporting characters (Vash, Q, the Duras Sisters, Laxwanna) showing up in Season One to bring the TNG audience over. With TNG’s side, the only real crossovers were Quark and Bashir.
What I’m saying is that we never really got a multi-show story arc; the closest was, in a sense, the Maquis Crisis and that kinda leads right into my next point…
@31 / CLB:
But both those shows were on the same network as their parent shows. Note that when Buffy changed networks, the crossovers with Angel became much more rare, because the coordination was harder to arrange under those circumstances — and because not every market carried both UPN and The WB, so there was no guarantee people would be able to see both shows, and it was thus better for them to stand apart. Much the same was true with DS9 (syndicated) and Voyager (UPN).
Right, right.
What I was trying to get, both earlier and with the Maquis Crisis example above, is that we take all that for granted nowadays in the streaming era. It’s easy to binge and get caught up if the episodes of a multi-show franchise are all collected in a single service (be it the Arrowverse on HBO Max or the Netflix Marvel shows) or to easily read up on recaps, etc.
To modern audiences working their way through the TNG-era for the first time, it just must seem odd there wasn’t more overlap or full-on crossovers compared to what they’ve been primed to expect from modern shows — and it’s precisely because they lack the context of how much the network/market landscape has changed since those original runs.
To use a similar example, it’s not unlike modern audiences watching, say, Babylon 5 for the first time. Everything that Joe Straczynski tried and pioneered has become more and more commonplace in American TV in the 30 years since and so they can’t understand how groundbreaking it was.
Mr. Magic, you’re forgetting a TNG/DS9 crossover, which involved no characters, but did involve situations: “Lower Decks.” The entire main mission of that episode was based on stuff that was happening on DS9, specifically the Cardassian dissident movement (introduced in “Profit and Loss” and also seen in “Second Skin” and elsewhere).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad: There’s one detail you left out. Janeway’s disapproving look at Seven, when she zapped Idrin with that electric shock, to the point where Torres even waited until Janeway was out of range to thank Seven. That’s a long-term plot point. The seed for Seven’s unilateral decision track record, which would come back with consequences on the upcoming Prey. A rare instance of establishing character arc on the show. In other words, as you often put it, this will be important later.
Message in a Bottle is a fun ride. Worth it for the banter between the EMHs. Dick’s personal issues aside, I like this character more than his usual roles, and he has great chemistry with Picardo.
I would have liked to see this ship being used on DS9, say during that show’s series finale (then again, they also never used the Enterprise-E or the Sovereign-class model for whatever reason during the big Dominion battles). But it’s nice to be reminded that Voyager still takes place in a big, shared universe in which a major war is taking place and that the First Contact uniforms are now the norm. It helps that Voyager employs Okuda and some thoughtful designers keenly aware of the continuity.
As standalone as Voyager can be, it’s nice to get back to the initial premise, that of ship trying to get home, and that premise needs the occasional callback. Which is why episodes like this one can represent significant steps and are welcome additions to the lineup. Plus, we get the beginnings of the Hirogen arc, a very well conceived Delta Quadrant species.
@7/Rick @8/Christopher: When I did my Voyager Netflix watch last year, I was also rewatching DS9 on Netflix, and I used Memory Alpha as the reference to follow the exact original air dates. Message in a Bottle aired on January 1998. DS9 spent that full month without airing any new episodes. The next DS9 to air after this was Who Mourns for Morn. Pale Moonlight was months away.
At this point, whether thanks to scheduling or other production issues, Voyager tended to air episodes much earlier than DS9. This would change next season, with DS9 premiering their final season ahead of them (probably because of the increased focus on high-end VFX and needed post-production during VOY season 5).
@33 – It’s their space. It’s their property. And Voyager just comes along, does a cursory look around. Doesn’t see anyone at that moment and decides “Cool, it’s totally abandoned. We can do what we want”?
Of course we can’t draw an exact parallel but we can imagine.
Starfleet does all sorts of things that they wouldn’t let others get away with because they’re convinced of their own moral superiority. Even with the PD, they often interfere because they believe that they know better than others. And if they have to bend the rules, it’s all for a good cause. Of course, the owners of the array would disagree but then that makes them the “bad guys”.
@@@@@ 34 – “is that we take all that for granted nowadays in the streaming era. It’s easy to binge and get caught up if the episodes of a multi-show franchise are all collected in a single service (be it the Arrowverse on HBO Max or the Netflix Marvel shows) or to easily read up on recaps, etc.”
That may work in the US but the Arrowverse series are split among different services in places like Canada. And they’re not even showing all the seasons at the same time. In order to watch Crisis, I’d need Netflix, Crave and Amazon Prime. And even then, I’d have to wait for the seasons to align.
@36:
I would have liked to see this ship being used on DS9, say during that show’s series finale (then again, they also never used the Enterprise-E or the Sovereign-class model for whatever reason during the big Dominion battles).
With the latter, didn’t Berman mandate that the Sovereign-class was to remain exclusive to the TNG movies — so as to avoid diluting the film brand and to avoid confusing casual viewers?
@40: Yes, which is a pretty thin excuse, given that DS9 wasn’t really being watched by casual viewers at that point, not to mention the ‘film brand’ was about to take a hit with Insurrection. Plus, I fail to see how seeing the model in action on DS9 would detract from First Contact in any shape or form.
But Berman isn’t known for being consistent with his mandates. He had no problem pushing for Tuvok’s inclusion on the DS9 Mirror Universe as a ploy to promote Voyager, or put the EMH on both FC and DS9. Cross-platform sharing of ships and characters was fine by him if it suited his wishes.
^^*Also the Defiant on First Contact. That had protests from Behr but not Berman.
@41:
But Berman isn’t known for being consistent with his mandates.
Yeah, you reminded me of that informative interview Ronald D. Moore did with IGN right before Battlestar launched years and years ago — specifically this excerpt:
IGNFF: Who was putting up the fight against [more experimental episodes]?
MOORE: That was Rick. Rick really… “That’s not the show! We don’t do comedy! It’s not a comedy series! There’s action/adventure, and it has to be something serious, and there has to be something at stake.” It’s just one of these rules that gets held up as A Rule.
IGNFF: When you talk about the rise of Rick’s influence in the show, and the transition from Gene to Rick, these “rules” that pop up seem quite arbitrary…
MOORE: Well, we certainly felt that they were, at times. I remember when we started, Rick had a rule that he said was Gene’s rule – and I don’t know that it really was…
IGNFF: But he could claim anything by that point.
MOORE: Yeah. Rick’s rule was that you couldn’t mention Kirk or Spock, in any context. Their names were not allowed to be mentioned. And it got to the point where – Ira probably told you this story – where he and I were working on “Sarek” in Season 3, and Sarek is doing this whole mindmeld thing with Picard, and we’re dealing with his life and his mental well-being, and to an extent his emotional well-being. And how can you not mention Spock? And Rick was like, “No. You can’t mention his name.” Ira had to fight with Rick, and fought tooth and nail, so that he could say the word “Spock” one time in that mindmeld sequence. But it was like Picard makes some oblique reference to being at his son’s wedding or something, and it was never clear who the son is. “Did Sarek have another son?!?” It was absurd. And years later, this came up in some context with Rick, and Rick just looked at us like, “I never said that. Did I? Did I ever have that rule? I don’t know why I had that rule.” But it didn’t matter anymore.
I’m rather horrified to learn that Mr Dick has apparently decided to make his surname something rather nastier than a piece of schtick; the pall it casts over one of my favourite episodes of STAR TREK* is by far the least of the horrible, horrible consequences of this comedian’s pattern of misbehaviour: I’m willing to separate the character from the creator (so long as neither the character themselves nor the production mirror such nastiness or express support for the attitudes that drive it), but I’ll never again be able to watch this episode with quite the same unqualified enthusiasm.
*I saw one review describe this whole delightful experience as ‘like Niles & Frasier Crane IN SPACE!’ and thought “That would be just about right” (and as a man who loves some FRASIER, you may consider this amongst the very highest praise one can pay a comic episode).
On a lighter note, I’m slightly amused to hear Dahar Master Krad express such enthusiasm for the Hirogen – one really ought to have seen it coming, given they pass the Hertzler Test** with flying colours – and one looks forward to seeing his analysis of their forthcoming appearances (Not least because I rather enjoyed these particular villains myself, though it’s been a little while since one saw an episode with them in it all the way through).
** “Is your species Awesome enough to support a J.G. Hertzler performance?” is a pretty good way to determine whether or not Mr K. R. DeCandido will love them for life, one suspects! (-;
I’d also like to add my voice to the chorus of appreciation for the Prometheus-class; one hopes that this particular class and other ‘Flight of 237*’ graduates like the Intrepid- & Sovereign-classes get a chance to cameo in PICARD (Since they’d only be about a quarter-century old by 2399 CE; only just in their prime, and those Excelsiors aren’t going to replace themselves!).
If anyone is wondering why the Defiant-class makes no appearance in that shortlist, then please know that I like that tough little ship but suspect that the designs tendency to be overmanned & overpowered would see it gradually phased out as more refined variations on the ‘Escort’ concept (like the Prometheus-class itself and most probably the Inquiry-class to boot) were introduced following the Dominion War.
Going by what we see, I suspect that the Prometheus-class would have a fairly short production run (it feels like the mechanics of the triple split are just too complicated for their own good) but that those ships would serve out a respectable life span.
Oh, and my take on why we don’t see the Prometheus at work in DEEP SPACE NINE is that they’re busy elsewhere – the Dominion War was fought on many fronts, after all, and it makes perfect sense that a ship as new as NX-59650 would be handled very carefully indeed (especially after the intelligence leaks & failures of security that saw that starship come within a whisker of being acquired by the Romulan Star Empire; one imagines that the entire Prometheus Programme would have been shaken down and worked over by Starfleet Intelligence, which would likely have affected production).
Also, much as I love the Sovereign-class (almost certainly my very favourite design in all of STAR TREK), given that the class was only three years old when the Dominion War broke out and that first-class, cutting-edge battlecruisers take time to build (even in a replicator economy) it’s far from impossible that Sovereign and the Lady E were almost the only representatives of their class available fully worked up for much of the conflict: with that in mind it (and the classes formidable qualities) it makes perfect sense to me that The Federation would use these excellent vessels to cover its core territories and free up large numbers of less irreplaceable ships for the battlefront (if nothing else, being able to give neutral Ambassadors a good, long look at the Sovereign-class would be a useful way of emphasising the benefits of remaining a good neighbour during troubled times).
I think in regards to the whole issue about separating the art from the artist, I mean you have to do that for a ton of popular artistic works or we’d have practically nothing 100% controversy-free in which to enjoy ourselves and not feel any guilt about. This goes for a lot of Star Trek itself. Can we no longer watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture because that would somehow imply we’re okay with Stephen Collins, who is an admitted pedophile? Or what about any Voyager episode with Jennifer Lien since she was arrested and convicted for exposing herself to minors? Sarah Silverman was a guest star on the “Future Tense” Voyager two-parter and she wore blackface. Do we cancel her and her Star Trek appearance too? I guess it all depends on our level of dislike for the particular performer and how serious the offense they’ve committed. But I’m of the train of thought that watching something they’ve already performed in is not tacit support for the real-life actions of the artist. I think where it does feel more problematic for me is that I wouldn’t go out and pay to see something involving someone who did commit a heinous crime and help to line their pockets.
“And here’s our brand new ship that we won’t be using in the war because they’re just too darn spiffy.” doesn’t sound like something that would inspire a lot of confidence. It would be like the US keeping it’s aircraft carriers out of the war in the Pacific.
As we saw in Insurrection, the Enterprise wasn’t keeping the core worlds safe. It was off doing the sorts of missions it did during the TV show.
@47:
As we saw in Insurrection, the Enterprise wasn’t keeping the core worlds safe. It was off doing the sorts of missions it did during the TV show.
I remember that really bothered me back in 1998. Since Insurrection was the only TNG film released during the Dominion War, I’d gone in hoping it would more directly tie into the War narrative.
20 years later, of course, I know better now.
It’s exactly the scenario CLB was talking about earlier with dueling productions tackling the same setting or subject matter. Insurrection was written and shot well before DS9 entered (let alone conceived) its endgame — not to mention having to share custodianship of Worf without affecting DS9 (and not having the Defiant plot device to fall back on this time).
Plus the film had to appeal to mass audiences and casual fans who weren’t watching DS9 and knew nada about the Jem’Hadar, Founders, etc.
Frankly, looking back, we’re lucky Piller was able to at least acknowledge the broad strokes of the War and the geo-politics in his screenplay.
And it does at least make sense that as the Federation Flagship and the flying symbol of everything the UFP and Starfleet stands for, it makes sense Command would put the priority on protecting the ship and having it show the flag in key diplomatic/political theaters.
It’s like TPTB saying “We’ve got the wonderful shared universe that we’re not going to share”. Instead we get later productions picking one from column A and one from Column B and ending up with the revelation that Delta Vega was in the Vulcan system.
Sure, Delta Vega is a callback to TOS but it’s like they didn’t even watch the episode. And the Dominion War was a big enough event that they could have easily had the Enterprise taking part in an entirely different part of it. Instead, we get Data running wild and Troi and Crusher commenting on how much firmer their breasts have gotten. Oh, and yet another patent pending Evil Admiral.
@46/garreth: “I think where it does feel more problematic for me is that I wouldn’t go out and pay to see something involving someone who did commit a heinous crime and help to line their pockets.”
I can see that logic when it’s a solo creation like a novel, but it doesn’t make sense for a movie or TV show that’s the collective creation of hundreds of different people. Why should they all be penalized because of something just one of them did?
Besides, money circulates. That’s what it’s for. We can’t help but pay money for some things that end up benefiting bad people, even if it’s paying taxes for the roads and electricity they use. It’s all part of the same financial ecosystem, just like we breathe the same air and drink the same water that criminals do. The pretense that we can totally segregate our commerce from people we don’t like is a fantasy. How do we know what misdeeds some of the people who pack our groceries or service our cars or maintain our power lines and plumbing might be guilty of? Not to mention how much of our hard-earned money ends up in the pockets of greedy corporate executives who screw over their workers, buy politicians, and have all sorts of vile deeds on their ledgers.
@48/Mr. Magic: I think Insurrection did a rather deft balancing act, telling a story that was influenced by the Dominion War but in a subtle enough way that it could work for viewers that knew nothing of the War. The early scenes established specifically that the Enterprise was not just going on the same routine missions as before, but was being run ragged on diplomatic missions meant to recruit new members and allies to increase the UFP’s wartime strength. Picard even lamented that they didn’t get to be explorers anymore. And the main plot was directly, if implicitly, influenced by the war — Admiral Dougherty was so desperate for the planet’s healing power because of all the injuries Starfleet personnel were suffering in the war, and so he was susceptible to Ru’afo’s manipulation. It was the same kind of story DS9 was doing about Starfleet leaders compromising their morals in response to the Federation’s dire straits. But only between the lines, so that it could still work as a standalone story. I love it when stories succeed in doing that, managing to work on two different levels at once.
The people that worked on the movie, TV show or whatever have already been paid. I didn’t go see Ender’s game because I didn’t want OSC to get paid for a sequel or a series. And it’s not as if there was a huge hole that could not be filled by something else. But if they know that OSC or Mel Gibson or Andy Dick means box office poison then they won’t green light anything with them in it.
Of course, if TPTB or certain members of the public have no problem lining the pockets of such people, at least I (and others) can take solace that none of the money flowing to them came from me. Personally, I rather like it that Mel Gibson isn’t in the news much any more and can sit at home and blame Jews for starting all the wars all by himself. Same with his misogynist and homophobic ideas.
@47 &@49. kkozoriz: On the other hand had HM Government been a little more cautious during WWII it might not have lost HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse to Japanese action – a tragic defeat that not only robbed Great Britain of two very fine warships at the very worst possible time, but also dealt a blow to the Royal Navy’s prestige in the Far East that helped make it d— near impossible for the British fleet to play any useful part in the Pacific War (and the political consequences were probably even MORE disastrous than one that, in all truth).
It was this incident that made me wonder if Starfleet might prefer to keep the Sovereigns closer to home than the battlefront.
Also, in all honesty (given DEEP SPACE NINE’s increasingly exclusive focus on the conflict) it’s a useful contrast to see that while it’s all hands on deck for the Dominion War, the United Federation of Planets is so imposingly big that there are areas never directly touched by that clash of civilisation – and still problems other than The Dominion that need looked into by Starfleet, war or no war.
@50 / CLB:
I think Insurrection did a rather deft balancing act, telling a story that was influenced by the Dominion War but in a subtle enough way that it could work for viewers that knew nothing of the War.
True. For all my quibbles with Insurrection, it does play to both those audiences. You’re right about the thematic connective tissue being there and seeing it examined through the lens of Team Picard rather than Team Sisko.
And in the 20 years since Insurrection (plus after hearing some of the details from his still-unpublished memoir), I’ve come to better appreciate how much pressure Piller must’ve been under.
With Moore and Braga having bowed out from the Trek film branch, Piller had the unenviable task of having to craft a follow-up to First Contact (and hitting the same learning curve Moore and Braga faced with transitioning from writing for TV to writing for Film). He had to craft a story that met the wish list of Berman and the Paramount Suits and a limited timeframe to do it. And he had to craft that story to acknowledge the larger developments of the 24th Century while still being accessible to casual TNG audiences.
@23 Did the communications network actually belong to the Hirogen? I got the impression that the Hirogen claimed it belonged to them, but there is no particular reason to believe them. However, even if they did build it, I think your analogy is a little over the top. It is really much more like someone who is lost in a wilderness finding a smartphone and using it to make a call. I think if I was lost and was in the middle of calling for help and you came and snatched the phone away I’d be tempted to fight back. Yes, they stole (really borrowed without permission since they could easily give it back) someone’s property and hurt them when they objected, but under the circumstances the crime of stealing a phone/hurting someone would be considered mitigated (by almost everyone) by the fact that the use of the smartphone was the only viable option for getting home. The more unfortunate fact is having yet another example of hard-headed aliens who refuse to negotiate, although at least it is in character for the Hirogen. In this case, since it was a comic episode, the aliens are more of an amusing obstacle than a genuine one.
I have never heard of Andy Dick before or since and am rather sorry my enjoyment of the episode will now be diminished. I thought he was hilarious, although that is probably more of a function of the brilliant dialogue than his comedic skills. I do think one needs to have some leniency in separating art from artists (or as CLB pointed out we’d have nothing to watch), but I think that depends on whether their biases and actions may then be reflected in their art (as well as the seriousness of their crimes/behavior). If Dick’s comedy was misogynistic I think we can assume this would help further the notion (especially for a receptive audience) that sexual assault isn’t all that bad, making his art unacceptable. If he was more of a Don Rickles, insulting everyone equally, it might be possible to separate his comedic performance from his personal life. Fortunately nothing can ever diminish one’s enjoyment of the brilliant Robert Picardo (who, by the way, suggested the whole breathing/neck dialogue).
@54/vegblt: I’ve always assumed that the Hirogen simply took over an ancient comm network built by some long-departed power.
@50/CLB: I see the points you’re making but that’s why ignorance is bliss if in fact our hard-earned dollars wind up in the pockets of some greedy executive or the person handling our groceries might be some heinous criminal. But at least if someone’s misdeed becomes well-known then the public can decide how they want to respond in regards to whether they should spend their money on the offender’s creative work. Even though there are a lot of people that work on a TV show or a movie, if there’s still one prominent person apart of that work that stands to profit in some way, then of course a lot of people are going to be hesitant to see and spend money on that work. That’s why the powers that be behind some of Kevin Spacey’s last completed projects either cancelled their release, replaced his scenes with another actor, or outright scrapped what he had already shot and fired him and started over. These higher-ups rightfully knew that people would have an icky feeling being subjected to watching anything with him in it.
@54. vegbit: My impression was that Voyager‘s initial offence was comparable to hacking into a wireless network more than pickpocketing (or just picking up) an artefact – much more dangerous (and most definitely more offensive, in more ways than one, given Seven of Nine doesn’t believe in sitting back and letting the enemy come to her) was Seven’s decision to attack a member of an unknown species.
@56/garreth: “Even though there are a lot of people that work on a TV show or a movie, if there’s still one prominent person apart of that work that stands to profit in some way, then of course a lot of people are going to be hesitant to see and spend money on that work.”
Well, I find that very unfair. How dare anyone say the hundreds of other people who put just as much hard work into a production, who have just as much right and need to make a living and be compensated for their work, are unimportant just because they aren’t as “prominent” in the public’s eye? What a horribly shallow and solipsistic way to think, to assume that the only people who matter are the ones directly in our line of sight.
True morality is about governing how you behave toward other people, not just judging how others do it. And that includes the people who aren’t right in front of you.
“That’s why the powers that be behind some of Kevin Spacey’s last completed projects either cancelled their releas, replaced his scenes with another actor, or outright scrapped what he had already shot and fired him and started over.”
Yes, and the point is that they still released the movie. They didn’t punish everyone else involved in the production by cancelling the whole thing because of just one guy. They found a way to separate themselves from that one guy and still honor the work of everyone else involved.
The “great comic actor Andy Dick”?
OK.
@58 – Unless all those people behind the scenes had profit sharing, they all got paid regardless. Every years there’s lots of TV pilots that are shot and never see the light of day. People still got paid for their work on them.
Zoe Saldana filmed a movie in 2004 called Temptation that has never been released except for a single showing at the New York Musical Festival. She’s now a big star, It happens even when one of the stars isn’t involved in some scandal.
Here’s a list of unreleased films from Wikipedia. I’m sure that it’s very incomplete.
Unfinished films
@58/CLB: I was also alluding to the fact that one of Spacey’s last completed films was actually never released in light of his revealed problematic behavior:
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/10/kevin-spacey-gore-netflix-screenplay-sex-1202015515/?_gl=1*icr8ze*_ga*YW1wLUIyRnNTZjBIX2ZkVlRxZTZ4NF9qUE13eGR5UDBJMzNsQzZHelJocDR4VDVnOWtZeVQ4ZTBXdVlXMlV1Wm9URFc.#respond
@61/garreth: I am not ignorant of the facts, thank you very much. Isolated facts do not prove global patterns. That particular film was abandoned for a specific reason, because its subject matter struck too close to the thing that Spacey was found guilty of. That doesn’t mean it would’ve been right to suppress every film that Kevin Spacey ever did, even ones where his role had nothing to do with his personal misdeeds.
The discussion really seems to be getting into the weeds, here–let’s get back to discussing the episode/Star Trek. Thanks.
Given that this episode has two holograms (albeit one with Out of Context and presently nonreplicable technology in the form of the Mobile Emitter) seize control of a state-of-the-art experimental war vessel, I’m back to wondering why holograms aren’t depicted as more of a concern when the Federation opinion swings against synthetic lifeforms in Picard.
@64:
Yeah, that was one of my quibbles about Picard‘s inaugural Season too.
I know the intent with the Ban was to key the focus on the repercussions of Data and the Soong Family’s legacy.
But sentient holograms in theory should’ve fallen under the terms of the Ban, so I don’t know why they weren’t. It just felt like lazy storytelling.
@64/65: yeah. Full agreement here. I even thought the name change to “Synth” was explicitly done to encompasses both androids and holograms alike. But then we get Index in the very first episode, and all the holographic Rioses later-on, and it’s like… okay, why the name change then? Why isn’t it dubbed an android ban?
Especially because, despite what characters keep saying about holograms not having true sentience, certainly a hell of a lot of them seem to arrive sentient, not just gradually becoming sentient (hell, the Doctor’s own gradual ascendance in the first season and part of the second seem mostly like Kes is just convincing him to choose to admit he’s sentient).
There’s the diagnostic program who is immediately self aware, and states that he is built on the same special matrix as the EMH. Which suggests the EMH was indeed sentient from the start (he was definitely at the least self-aware and capable of generalised learning from the very beginning). And, importantly separate from holonovel characters, is completely able to adjust to new information which wasn’t originally programmed into him. Then he muses on his short existence at the end – that’s not something Zimmerman pre-scripted in lab.
Then, later on, the holographic prey in revolt all make extremely clear they were made sentient from the get-go by incorporating the Doctor’s matrix (whether that’s the original matrix the diagnostic program had, or their combined double matrix, is unclear). That episode even gives us an example of a regular, dumb, pre-scripted hologram in the group that gets “rescued” later.
All intentions from this point of the show suggest that Zimmerman had created a purely holographic GAI matrix, on top of which can be made any type of specialist staff and any type of person. Even if inadvertently. The suggestion is that the functions of memory, learning, cross-applied skills, and personality subroutines (which are, in “Darkling”, stated to be the same programs that holonovel characters use) combine to always end up with sentience.
Even if, one could argue it still is saying there needs to be enough time, as the holographic prey do say it took a certain amount of time for them to decide to take matters into their own hands and build compassion for each other. Even so, it would seem that the right kind of experiences can accelerate such a sentience forming, like the existential questions Kes was giving him really early on, or again the existential questions and requests Kes made of the diagnostic program.
So, are the EMHs from “First Contact” or “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” sentient? Probably not. But later-run Voyager seems to say all it takes is to leave them on long enough until they question (or are induced into questioning) their own existence. It certainly seems to say the copies used for mining and industrial cleaning have all run long enough to develop it – especially since it would only take one of the whole bunch to begin thinking in those ways and bring it out in the rest of them.
Plus of course, Voyager keeps leaning on the idea of holographic rights being a problem sooner or later, with all of these indications that they’re carelessly creating sentient software slaves, but now with Discovery it seems they still just occupy the same space in society as they do in Voyager.
The way they appear in Picard felt like, well okay, so the problem has been left to simmer under the surface for a while. But another 800 years and they’re still in the same place? It’s somewhat troubling. Though of course, “The Swarm” points to all of the “stock” EMH-matrix-offshoots as having significant limitations on just how far that can go, which makes their time spent self-aware all that much more tragic. Perhaps 800 years in the future that limited space isn’t such an issue, or perhaps they just have an acceptance that their existence is always more limited in some ways than the fleshbags they work with – like the diagnostic program, saying “I’m content to be the best diagnostic program I can be!” and “you’re supposed to be off in your off hours!”.
@66/kaitlyn: You can program a computer game character today to talk about itself as if it “knows” it’s a program in a game. Heck, comic book characters like Deadpool and She-Hulk are written to act as if they “know” they’re in a comic book. That doesn’t mean they’re actually conscious and thinking, just that it’s easy to create the illusion of self-awareness. (The Turing test is often misinterpreted as a way to prove machine consciousness, but it’s actually just the opposite, an illustration of how easy it is to program an unthinking machine to convincingly mimic sentient behavior. Turing’s actual name for it was “the imitation game.”)
Distinguishing between the surface illusion of consciousness and the real thing requires looking deeper than just whether an AI acts like a person and expresses awareness of itself. For one thing, does it initiate its own actions, pursue its own desires and goals, rather than just responding convincingly to its audience? An example of this is the hologram Joi in Blade Runner 2049. For me, the most compelling evidence that she was not sentient was that she never expressed a thought or desire that was about herself, or about anyone other than her owner, the film’s lead. Everything she said and did was geared solely toward his happiness and safety, because she was specifically programmed to say and do exactly what the owner needed. Another test is whether the AI can grow, change, and learn from experience. Data and the EMH proved they could do this. So did Moriarty. For other holograms, it’s more unclear.
The three criteria, from Bruce Maddox in The Measure of a Man, Intelligence, self awareness, consciousness
I have to admit it’s a little jarring to see krad’s gushing praise for Andy Dick, without even a passing mention of what a terrible person he has (since) turned out to be.
@69/terracinque: As we’ve discussed before in this comment thread, assessing a person’s work has nothing to do with assessing who they are as a person. They’re separate facets of a person’s life. Would you object to criticizing a bad performance because you knew the performer was a sweet, kind person? The one has nothing to do with the other. Judging the work is only judging the work.
terracinque: I must confess to not having had any idea that Dick was such a piece of garbage until the comments here. (And I meant to comment sooner, and then forgot to and then got distracted by life.) However, I stand by what I said about his performance, which was excellent here, even if it was by a piece of garbage.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@71: Fair enough.
Just started rewatching this episode, this one is the one that has always made me very emotional about the stupidity of the writers for not understanding the concept of COPYING software. No, it does not magically disappear from one place and YES, this would mean that it would be easy to have multiple copies of the EMH. So I understand WHY they didn’t want to just copy him all the time, but the bare minimum for me would have been to come up with some technobabble why they cannot keep the original EMH on board and send over a copy only…
@75/th1_: Software can be copied, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a sentient mind could. A conscious mind isn’t just inert lines of code, it’s a dynamic process that emerges from the activity of that underlying code, and is chaotically sensitive to initial conditions. If you copy the software and run it again, the consciousness that emerges would not be a continuation of the original but would be a clone starting over from scratch, and the personality it formed would probably be different, just as two twin siblings or clones would have different personalities despite having identical genetic codes shaping their neurology.
So if you want to transfer the same singular consciousness, it would have to be in a way that preserved continuity of its neural network’s structure and activity. I tend to think that such a process might require quantum entanglement to maintain that continuity, and reading and copying information on a quantum level destroys the original information by changing the states of the particles encoding it. Essentially the consciousness would be transferred by quantum teleportation, and that means that it would indeed be erased from the original substrate.
Plus, of course, ultimately it’s fiction and the tech works however the story needs it to. Having the ability to easily create copies of the Doctor is a bad idea for the same reason that making it easy for the transporter to create copies of people is a bad idea. You want to create peril for your characters, and if anyone who dies can be easily replaced by a copy, it kind of defangs any mortal threat. So it’s only possible to copy them in specific stories like “The Enemy Within” or “Second Chances” where the copying creates a problem rather than solving it, or in a case like “Living Witness” where having a separate copy of the Doctor was the only way to make the story doable without contradicting the Doctor’s ongoing presence in the regular cast.
@76/ChristopherLBennett: If a transporter can clone humans, copying a software should not be a problem (even if it’s AI, it is just algorithms AND memory, unless it uses some extra magic :) ).
And if copying would be a problem, then transferring/moving would also have to face the same issues.
But yes, I totally understand WHY they don’t make copies for storytelling purposes, i would just appreciate some explanation for that, that’s all. I have many other concerns with the EMH – does he see threw holographic eyes and detect pulse with holographic hands etc? For me the EMH became TOO human – not in behaviour, though it’s interesting to see that while Data was unique due to his positronic brain, it was suddenly no problem to recreate the same AI as a hologram with a standard starfleet computer, but because of his capabilities.
@77/th_1: ” If a transporter can clone humans, copying a software should not be a problem”
That’s exactly the point — there are both dramatic and physics reasons why neither is be feasible as a rule. When it does happen, it’s presumed to be a rare exception arising from a unique set of circumstances that can’t be easily reproduced.
And again, it is simplistic to equate a sapient artificial consciousness to mere software like a JPEG file or a Word document. That’s like equating a human mind to a plant. You can clone a plant and it will have every significant attribute of that plant. But a clone of a human will be a different person, a different consciousness. It won’t be the same person. Because consciousness is not mere data, it’s a dynamic emergent process existing above the level of the substrate that is copied. If the program is the initial meteorological conditions, the consciousness is the weather that results from them. Set the same starting conditions twice and the weather will still be different, due to the chaotic variables.
I tend to assume that the copy of the EMH that appeared in “Living Witness” was some kind of experimental thing that couldn’t be duplicated, which is why later episodes showed them unable to copy the Doctor.
“though it’s interesting to see that while Data was unique due to his positronic brain, it was suddenly no problem to recreate the same AI as a hologram with a standard starfleet computer”
That’s exactly my problem with modern Trek’s portrayal of AI. In Picard you have them treating artificial sentience as this intractable secret that science still hasn’t managed to crack, but Lower Decks has a ton of sentient computers locked up at Daystrom and multiple shows treat holographic sentience as something that can happen by pure accident. It just doesn’t fit together.
@78/ChristopherLBennett: Yeah, totally agree with you. So i think my problem boils down to that that the doctor is just a simple software running on the Voyager’s computer. And that (even if AI), can be copied exactly. With Data, it was much easier to accept that he is like a human, and thus, cannot be copied easily.
@79/th1_: Again, my whole point is that a sapient artificial intelligence is not “simple software,” any more than your favorite performance of a musical work is a simple page of sheet music. If someone else performs from a copy of the same sheet music, it’s still not going to be the same performance. Consciousness is not inert data, but a dynamic process arising from it.
After all, Data’s consciousness runs on the physical hardware of his positronic brain, exactly the same way that the Doctor’s consciousness runs on the physical hardware of the sickbay computer. The only difference is external, in that Data’s CPU is inside a robot body instead of a starship.
@80/ChristopherLBennett – but it’s a huge difference that AI needs fancy science and positronic brain/computer etc, while the computer on the starships does not seem very different from today’s standard computers in terms of architecture and capabilities.
@81/th1_: It’s true that strong AI requires a different neural architecture and processes than normal computer software, but that’s the point I’ve been making — that you can’t assume AI can simply be copied the same way a regular program can, because they have fundamental differences (though not the kind of differences you suggest).
Considering both EMH’s are programmed with the Hippocratic Oath, I find it funny that EMH2 casually decides to turn off life support declaring, “we don’t need that!” Well what about all the unconscious Romulans! For that matter, shouldn’t the Starfleet security who beam over at the end of the battle be gasping for air or reacting to the lack of heat?
@83: I don’t think he actually turns life support off, he just diverts (some of the) power from it.
@83/Thierafhal – It wouldn’t be lethal over the timescales shown; bear in mind that it takes a while to breathe through all of the oxygen/for the heat to dissipate/etc.
Regarding Data, the argument of personal Interpretation of music was the exact point when he played the violin. His play being the exactly same one over different times of performing it resulted in a conversation with Dr. Pulaski. I do not completely remember it, but IIRC, it ran along the lines of individual Interpretation and what makes an artistic performance and what doesn’t.
In other words, If the artist can be replaced by something that comes to the exact same interpretation every time, you might as well replace them with something that neither needs sentience and feelings/emotions nor true understanding of art, and, well, individuality would be null as a copy of it would behave perfectly alike.
Intentional or algorithmic deviation from that repetitiveness would fool the audience, maybe, but would still not count as true interpretation through an artist, although sadly that is what you get from AI image generators. Sophisticated only in the way the engineers designed it to be. A pretty impressive Eliza, but by no means an artist in its own right.
With respect to persons being beamed by a transporter, I guess it comes down to whether quantum states make up an essential part of or personality at a specific point in time and whether the transported being is significantly different in how it reacts to stimuli compared to the way they would have done if untransported.
In the other hand, I often ask myself if a tiny diversion at some point of my life might have changed it completely and thereby also my personality. Of course I don’t mean by causing an accident or similar. Just: can some simple, different thought, caused by seeing, hearing or smelling something, transform my whole life and development? And if, how much of “me” is true “meness”? Gives my brain knots and congestion each time…
@84/85: Very good points, but I was being somewhat tongue in cheek ;)
Thank goodness for my facial blindness, because the whole time I could enjoy the episode wondering who the actor is that’s channeling Martin Short. And I really did enjoy it. The comedy and action are brilliant.
There’s a lot of handwringing here about 7 shocking the Hirogen. And why Janeway didn’t court-martial her. You know, sometimes we all — most of us anyway — consider dropping our codes (moral or otherwise) when we can get something we really want or need when someone inflexible is in the way. Moments like this give us license to enjoy the idea of doing so. That’s something fiction does. The Hirogen is every driver who won’t let us into the lane or the manager who won’t give us a raise.
It also seems that being a little untethered from Star Fleet has caused some moral drift amongst the Voyager crew. One would expect that. It’s not exactly Lord of the Flies, or anything. But you do things you wouldn’t necessarily do at home when you’re lightyears away from it.
Anyway. I dug this episode, Dicks aside.