“Renaissance Man”
Written by Andrew Shepard Price & Mark Gaberman and Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman
Directed by Michael Vejar
Season 7, Episode 24
Production episode 270
Original air date: May 16, 2001
Stardate: 54890.7
Captain’s log. Janeway and the EMH are pootling along in the Delta Flyer for a medical conference, the EMH’s opera singing keeping Janeway from sleeping. They encounter a subspace eddy in a Mutara-class nebula. The EMH also says that he thinks he and Janeway should socialize more.
On Voyager, Torres and Vorik are trying to chase down some plasma surges. Paris tries to entice Torres for a picnic lunch on a shuttlecraft while watching a red giant. Torres reluctantly asks for a rain check, and Paris reminds his pregnant wife that they might not get any more alone time for eighteen years.
On the bridge, Kim is in charge of gamma shift, when Ayala reports an odd pulse being directed at Voyager from the Flyer. Janeway comes on the static-filled viewer saying that they’ve taken damage and need to dock immediately.
In private she tells Chakotay what happened: they were attacked by a technologically superior empire called the R’Kaal. Apparently, they’ve been in R’Kaal space for three weeks now. They’re ecological extremists who believe that traditional warp drive is damaging to the fabric of space. The usual punishment is to destroy the ship, but Janeway managed to talk them out of that. Instead, they have to turn over their warp core to the R’Kaal and then they will be escorted to an M-class planet they can settle on.
Chakotay is not on board with this notion, and is surprised that Janeway is giving in so readily. But she says she’s tired of people dying in their all-fired attempt to get home. She also orders Chakotay not to discuss this with anyone else.
Janeway then goes to engineering, where she instructs Torres to modify the tractor beam so it can tow the warp core. Torres, confused, mentions this to Chakotay, who then asks why Torres was read in on this when Chakotay was told to stay quiet. Janeway doesn’t have an answer, says she’s not feeling well, and goes to her quarters, leaving Chakotay in charge. She’s also seen to be briefly talking to herself.
Chakotay goes to sickbay and asks the EMH to give Janeway an examination. He goes to her quarters to do so. Chakotay then goes to astrometrics and asks Seven to scan for cloaked ships—Janeway mentioned that the R’Kaal have cloaking technology. While there, Kim reports a communication from Supreme Archon Loth of the R’Kaal. Chakotay takes it in astrometrics, and he stalls by telling Loth that they can’t eject the core until they reach their destination. Loth gives them ten hours.
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After being told by the EMH that Janeway has a clean bill of health, Chakotay goes to her quarters—but she isn’t there. Then she comes around the corner and invites him into her cabin. He tries to convince her to change her mind, citing a mission to Lessek Prime earlier in her career. Except there was no such mission, and the fact that “Janeway” doesn’t know that proves it isn’t her. Then the captain hits Chakotay with a hypospray before he can stop her, rendering him unconscious.
It turns out that Janeway—and Loth for that matter—are actually the EMH, disguising himself. When “Janeway” was talking to herself earlier, that was the EMH talking to the Overlookers from the Hierarchy, who are holding the real Janeway prisoner and spying on Voyager through the EMH’s perception filters. They won’t free Janeway until they get Voyager’s warp core, hence the bullshit story about the R’Kaal.
The EMH places Chakotay’s unconscious form in the morgue and then contacts Zet and Nar, the two Overlookers who engineered this. He demands to speak to Janeway, who immediately orders the doctor not to eject the core. The EMH, however, won’t endanger Janeway’s life and so disobeys that order. Zet also decides that he doesn’t just want the warp core, he also wants some bio-neural gelpacks.
Janeway tells Zet that the EMH is just fooling them, that he’s spending all his time on the holodeck, and not actually doing what they say. Zet doesn’t believe her, though Nar is concerned. Zet, however, says they’ve been planning this for too long, plus they have a buyer for the warp core whom they can’t disappoint.
On Voyager, the EMH disguises himself as Chakotay to discuss the repairs to the Flyer with Tuvok—who reports that the comm systems are functioning normally, which is at odds with Janeway’s reporting them damaged. “Chakotay” compliments him on his good work. Then the EMH goes to Janeway’s quarters and uses the captain’s voice to summon Torres to the captain’s cabin to fix her replicator. The EMH then disguises himself as Torres to retrieve some gelpacks. After bluffing his way through a conversation with Vorik, he is ambushed by Paris, who tries to have their picnic again. “Torres” manages to get out of it, but not without a kiss first.
Kim and Seven then report to “Chakotay” that the communication from “Loth” actually came from Voyager’s holodeck, not outside the ship. Kim and “Chakotay” go to the holodeck, and once Kim sees that the holodeck logs have been erased, the EMH hits him with a hypospray also. Kim gets the morgue spot next to Chakotay. The EMH now has three combadges: Janeway’s, Chakotay’s, and Kim’s.
Unfortunately for the EMH, Tuvok has figured out that the doctor is responsible for what’s going on, having worked through his subterfuge on the Flyer. The EMH reminds him that the phaser Tuvok is holding on him won’t affect him as a hologram, but then Tuvok shoots out one of sickbay’s holo-emitters. However, the EMH manages to escape with his mobile emitter. He lures Tuvok to the holodeck, and creates multiple holograms of himself. By the time Tuvok is able to override the EMH’s lockout and cut power to the holodeck, the real EMH is long gone, having entered a Jefferies Tube. Disguising himself as Chakotay, he goes to engineering and tells Torres that a warp-core breach is imminent. He needs to eject the core. Tuvok then tells Torres that the EMH is right near him in engineering—since everyone except for Torres and Chakotay were evacuated, she realizes that Chakotay isn’t really Chakotay.
The EMH then activates the Emergency Command Hologram and transfers all command codes to himself. He puts Torres inside a force field, ejects the core, shuts down internal sensors, and then tries to transport to the Flyer. However, Tuvok has locked down transporters, so he goes through the Jefferies Tubes to the shuttle bay. En route, he encounters Tuvok, but he’s disguised himself as Torres again—this doesn’t fool the Vulcan, but the ECH still manages to get past him with some unexpected acrobatics (while still disguised as a pregnant Torres, thus making for a hilarious visual), take Tuvok’s phaser, and stun him.
The ECH takes the Flyer out, tractors the warp core, and heads back to the Hierarchy ship.
From her cell, Janeway sees that Nar is fixing some equipment. Janeway bonds with him over how to fix them, and finds out that Nar intends to open a sort of used-parts emporium. Janeway allows as how Voyager might be interested in doing business with him. But then Zet shows up and shuts it all down.
The ECH arrives with the warp core and the gelpacks, but instead of freeing Janeway as he promised, Zet takes the doc prisoner, too. Then he takes over the imaging program and change the EMH into a member of their species. They intend to use him to infiltrate a Hierarchy ship. However, they’ve added so much stuff to his program that it’s starting to destabilize.
Chakotay and Kim are freed from the morgue, and Torres manages to get the impulse drive online. As soon as she does, however, “The Blue Danube” starts to play all over the ship. Strangely, some of the notes are wrong. Seven does a Fourier analysis and discovers that it’s a warp signature, which enables them to track the ship where the EMH and Janeway are. Voyager is still warp inactive, so Tuvok and Paris take a shuttlecraft to the Hierarchy ship. A firefight ensues, during which the force field imprisoning Janeway goes down. Janeway is able to release the tractor beam on the warp core. Janeway and the EMH subdue Zet, with unexpected help from Nar.
Returning to Voyager, they bring the EMH to the holodeck, as his program is decompiling. Worried that he’s going to be gone soon, the EMH makes several confessions before Torres and Seven are able to purge the excess stuff Zet programmed him with.
The next week or so is spent reinstalling the warp core and getting it going. The EMH stays in sickbay the entire time, mortified both by his behavior to the crew and by his embarrassing confessions. Janeway goes to sickbay and informs him that his punishment for his actions is six days without his mobile emitter. Since he hasn’t left sickbay in a week, it’s time served. She then invites him to the holodeck for a cup of coffee—he said they should socialize more, but she tells him that there absolutely should be no opera…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? In a very nice touch, it takes a week to install the warp core. Yes, Scotty was able to restart it in a few minutes in the original series’ “The Naked Time,” but that was an emergency. This was not an emergency, so Torres took the time to do it right and make sure nothing goes wrong with the big thing that is powered by the constant annihilation of matter and antimatter…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway orders the EMH not to cooperate with the Overlookers because she knows they won’t do as they say. She somehow manages not to say “I told you so” to the EMH when they imprison him after he brings the warp core.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok is the one who figures out what the EMH is up to, and almost succeeds in stopping him.
Half and half. Interestingly, while the EMH has no trouble sedating Chakotay and Kim so he can disguise himself as them, he doesn’t do the same for the very pregnant Torres, because she’s also his patient and he doesn’t want to do anything to endanger mother or impending child.
Forever an ensign. Kim actually figures out that the EMH was using the holodeck to send the “R’Kaal” messages, and he gets sedated and stuffed in a morgue for his trouble.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH waxes rhapsodic at the top of the episode about how awesome it is to be a hologram because of all the cool things he can do, and then he spends much of the episode doing some of those cool things.
Then at the end, he confesses to Tuvok that he violated doctor-patient confidentiality by telling Neelix about a delicate medical issue the Vulcan had; to Kim that he once said mean things about his saxophone playing; to Seven that he loves her; and to Janeway that when he was first activated, he compiled a list of what he felt were questionable command decisions of hers.
Resistance is futile. Seven is the one who decodes the EMH’s “Blue Danube” clue as to where he is.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris tries desperately to have one last romantic meal with his wife before she gives birth. He is done in first by her being a responsible officer and later by it not being his wife he’s inviting, but the EMH in disguise…
When the EMH declares his love for Seven, her nonplussed reply is, “Your cognitive algorithms are malfunctioning.”
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. The EMH very cleverly delays Tuvok’s finding him by creating dozens of duplicates of himself on the holodeck.
Do it.
“Voyager can survive without its warp core, but not without its captain.”
“Now it doesn’t have either.”
–The EMH justifying his not following orders, and Janeway pointing out the flaw in his logic.
Welcome aboard. Andy Milder and Wayne Thomas Yorke play the two Overlookers, while Alexander Enberg makes his final appearance as Vorik. David Sparrow and J.R. Quinonez play two of the holographic alien images superimposed over the EMH.
In addition, regular extra Tarik Ergin gets a rare speaking part as Ayala, as he’s at the conn during gamma shift.
Trivial matters: The EMH is singing “Questo o quella” from Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto in the Delta Flyer at the top of the episode. He also plays “The Blue Danube,” and uses it to encode his message to Voyager after making off with the warp core.
The Overlookers were first able to see through the EMH’s eyes in “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy.”
The notion that traditional warp drive damages the fabric of space was first seen in TNG’s “Force of Nature.”
Set a course for home. “Questo o quella per me pari sono.” There is one scene in this episode that pisses me off no end because it once again brings up an issue with Voyager and then does nothing to actually deal with the issue, sidestepping it and thus making it even worse.
It’s when Chakotay and the EMH disguised as Janeway are talking about the R’Kaal and how they have to give up their warp core and settle down. The EMH uses Janeway’s voice to talk about how tired she is of casualty reports and risking lives for the slim chance they might get home.
And this is a thing that the show should have been dealing with way more often. More than thirty people have died since Voyager went into the Badlands to chase after the Val Jean. It was very heartening to see Janeway acknowledge that, finally, and very frustrating to have it not even be Janeway. Mind you, it makes sense that the EMH, who has had to compose death certificates for all thirty-plus of those people (including his predecessor as chief medical officer, whose death is indirectly responsible for the EMH becoming the sentient being he is today), would raise this concern. But it’s maddening to know that (a) it isn’t really Janeway and (b) it wasn’t even really the EMH expressing that concern, because it was all bullshit to convince Chakotay to be on board with giving up the warp core.
Once you get past that, the episode is perfectly fine. We’ve only got one episode left, and Robert Picardo is pretty much the breakout star of the series, so it seems fitting that he gets one final vehicle. He gets to sing opera, he gets to be the ECH one more time, he gets to histrionically confess his sins, and he gets to be repentant, yet still improve his relationship with Janeway. The rivalry between him and Paris gets two final acknowledgments, the first with the EMH being forced to kiss him while disguised as Torres, the second when Paris rather bitterly asks if the EMH has anything he wants to confess to him (he doesn’t, though Paris very obviously thinks he should, dagnabbit).
Plus it’s fun watching Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, and Roxann Dawson impersonate him. Of the three, Dawson is the most successful at replicating Picardo’s tone, though all three are just off enough to have it be obvious that they’re not who they look like. (My wife was watching this with me, and she knew from jump that it wasn’t really Janeway because Mulgrew didn’t sound right.) And I’m always happy to see the Potato People…
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido is pleased to finally be able to talk about the fact that he’s writing a Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness graphic novel that serves as a prequel to the Netflix animated series. It was announced at New York Comic-Con, it will be published by TokyoPop, and it will be out next year.
This is a very nice thing to say to your friend, but it is also completely untrue. The whole point of having a chain of command is that everything doesn’t completely fall apart if the person at the top gets offed. The whole point of the first officer is literally to be able to move over one chair and take over as seamlessly as possible. I mean, sure, it would be a loss for the ship, but there is no evidence that Chakotay would be unable to successfully command the ship (and maybe make a few less deals with the Borg or go hunting for white whales than Janeway did).
This episode is… fine. It doesn’t really feel like a penultimate episode, though, which annoys me to no end. I mean, I know UPN was practically allergic to continuity on Voyager– but the show is ending. The people who are still tuned in will likely be watching all the final episodes. You could have done *something* to lead up to the finale.
“I’m sorry I put us in this position, Captain.”
It might be strange (some might even say illogical), but I’m more bothered by the lack of consequences for the Doctor in this episode than I was in “Flesh and Blood”. Over the course of the episode, he betrays the ship, disobeys orders, assaults (and in some cases imprisons) several of his crewmates and leaves 100+ people stranded in deep space. Okay, he keeps Janeway alive and leaves a message behind for the crew, but it feels like there should be more recriminations at the end than there are. Even Janeway’s token punishment of confining him to sickbay for a week seems to be for him criticising her command decisions rather than shooting Tuvok.
Just to increase the awkward tone, it seems like someone thought the episode was going to be a comedy: The Doctor ending up with an increasing amount of unconscious bodies and com badges seem to be written like a farce. (Oh, and he gets kissed by a man while in female form for the second time this season. Get some new material, guys.) The problem is it’s a “comedy” heist with our heroes as the victims, so our sympathies are going to be with them rather than the deceiver. It doesn’t help that Robert Picardo seems to be playing it straight and showing the Doctor as conflicted, while Kate Mulgrew seems to have decided to play the disguised Doctor as Evil Janeway. Only the Doctor’s “deathbed confession” is genuinely amusing.
I seem to remember that on first viewing I realised “Janeway” was the Doctor very early on, maybe as early as the ready room scene. But to show I’m not that smart, my reaction to reveal the villains of the episode was “Those are…Maelons!” It took me at least another scene to realise “Oh, wait, they’re the Hierarchy, aren’t they?” Paris trying to surprise Torres with a picnic while on duty is equal parts sweet and irresponsible (although to be fair, he does get permission from Chakotay the first time). Janeway promising to socialise with the Doctor more feels like the show knowing there’s only one episode to go so no-one will notice if it doesn’t happen. Doctor-Janeway’s conversation with Chakotay about their determination to get home also feels like the show acknowledging it’s going to be over soon.
Vorik was last seen back in “Counterpoint” in Season 5. Paris gets to sit in the captain’s chair again: That makes four times by my count (NOT including “Initiations”, where he never sits there despite being in command). It’s also him, not Tuvok, that traces the Doctor to Engineering. (He’s also the first to identify the Doctor’s message as a warp signature, although Seven may have figured it out already.) I think that’s the first and only time we’ve seen Ayala wearing red in seven seasons, but he gets two lines and a credit out of it, which is probably the most Tarik Elgin’s ever said on the show. Talking of, I forgot we got one last look at the Emergency Command Hologram! The Doctor’s confession of love to Seven (who tries her best to ignore it) is the only overt reference to his feelings since “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Given that all the Doctor’s confessions were deeply embarrassing for the person he was confessing to, I suspect Paris a)was glad he wasn’t a target and b)expected to be next on the list.
It surprises me how little recollection I have of most of season 7, since I remembered generally liking it more than the previous two. Yet the only thing I remember about this one is cringing at the Doctor’s confession of love to Seven when he mistakenly thought he was dying, which I found needlessly embarrassing to both of them. I didn’t even remember the Potato People were in it, and I love the Potato People.
I think I generally thought this one was okay, but was trying too hard to replicate past glories, even bringing back the same adversaries from “Tinker, Tenor” and a similar premise. It’s a bit weird to take the Overlookers, who were previously portrayed as members of a rigid bureaucratic Hierarchy, and turn them into Ferengi-like con artists. I guess they could be renegades from their society, but that doesn’t fit well with the very regimented and obedient way they were portrayed before.
From a production-standpoint, I kinda wish they’d gone for the hat trick on this one.
What I mean is that the penultimate episodes of TNG and DS9 were both directed by their Captains.
Would’ve been amusing and nice to see Mulgrew follow and complete the tradition (since, as far as we knew at the time, this was it for the 24th Century’s TV run).
@1, I agree. Chakotay can in theory can take over, and there’s always the option of recruiting more crew from the Delta Quadrant to replace losses. It’s another thing the show should have explored but just didn’t– for a normal Federation starship, the technology is disposable and crew safety is of paramount importance. Voyager’s odd situation inverts this. The crew is valuable and difficult to replace, but the gelpacks and the warp core are irreplaceable. And frankly the show should have also started with more crew so there were more people to kill off throughout the run. Reminds me of one of the Fallout games where a character is given a choice of saving a plasma rifle or a baby. Saves the plasma rifle, reasoning that nobody knows how to make a new plasma rifle but everybody knows how to make a new baby. Not quite the same thing in the DQ, but close.
@5/Rick: “but the gelpacks and the warp core are irreplaceable.”
The cutaway graphic shows that there actually is a spare warp core “in the trunk,” as it were (actually mid-ship just behind the deflector dish assembly), but the show never acknowledged it.
I have a fondness for this episode. I think it’s one of the highlights of season 7. Most Doctor episodes are enjoyable and this one is no different. You have the fun of several of the actors impersonating the Doctor impersonating their characters, the return of the Potato People, an appearance by Vorik, Ayala and his actor getting a prominent shoutout by the series at the top of the episode, an exciting chase through Voyager as Doc and Tuvok face off (with some of it reminiscent of The Matrix which came out two years prior and was highly influential on special effects and action movies in general), some amusing moments, and the furthering of the relationship between Doc and Janeway. While this episode did nothing to further the arc of Voyager going home, especially with the finale coming next, there were still obvious nods at the series ending. Nice fun heist story here.
Christopher: I didn’t mention it in the recap, but Zet and his crew were explicitly stated to be renegades, on the run from the Hierarchy. And I think they mentioned the spare warp core once before. (So it should have come up here.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I wish I could have watched these last few episodes again, but since they dropped off Netflix a couple weeks ago, I’m going to have to go off the recap. The Potato People are always great, and I remember always cringing a bit at the Doctor’s confessions (well, mostly with regards to Seven).
The “what about the spare warp core?” thing bothered me a little bit now, mostly since I’ve been following the rewatch, but as a casual viewer when the show was new I didn’t know anything about it. It would have been nice to have a bit more closure for the Doctor / Paris relationship that was often strained, too. Otherwise, yeah, this episode would have been “fine” at basically any point in the show’s run, but was always a bit disappointing to me as a next-to-last episode.
@8/krad: Okay, so it was explained that they were renegades, but still, why use the Overlookers at all if they didn’t want to use the Hierarchy? They could’ve used any alien criminals. I guess they just wanted to rehash “Tinker, Tenor.”
@1 This was a very obvious retort from the second the Doc said it, which bugged me too. They CAN survive without a captain, if she’s lost then they have Chakotay. And if he’s lost then they have Tuvok, and so on all the way down to Naomi Wildman probably.
I got pretty tired of these “doctor is a narcissist” type episodes, and wasn’t interested in watching yet another one as the second to last episode, so I think its placement wasn’t great. I suppose given we knew the show was ending, it made the “will they not get the warp core back and have to settle down on a planet?” possibility a little more plausible than usual, so some suspense was there.
Whoever named them “the Potato People,” I want to thank you. Gives me a chuckle every time I read it.
@12/terry: “Whoever named them “the Potato People,” I want to thank you. Gives me a chuckle every time I read it.”
As far as I know, that was me, so you’re welcome.
Do you have a magic carpet?
@12/13,
Since I’ve become acquainted with Doctor Who in the years since VOY ended, I’ve personally and sarcastically begun calling them the ‘Copyright Friendly Sontarans’.
@5 Yea, all of this might have meant something more if there actually seemed to *be* a personnel shortage they were suffering from, but as KRAD has dutifully documented for us, that shortage only ever exists on paper and doesn’t seem to effect actual ship operations. And it *also* might have meant something if the Starfleet-Maquis tension that we were promised when the show premiered had actually mattered, and Janeway and Chakotay formed a fine balancing act of keeping the ship working together, but that never happened, either. As far as I can tell, the reason Janeway is indispensable is because she had the good sense to have her name be in the opening credits.
The Hierarchy/Potato People are one of the more memorable alien races Voyager came up with so I’d love to see them show up on Prodigy especially as they seem ideal for a children’s series.
I guess Neelix could conceivably show up. After all, we’re already getting Janeway and Chakotay.
No Borg though. Voyager already ruined them. :op
@17,
I guess Neelix could conceivably show up. After all, we’re already getting Janeway and Chakotay.
Neelix also makes the most sense as the last of the VOY characters still in the DQ. And it’d be interesting to see him coming full circle with another Starfleet (or quasi-SF) crew.
There’s this misconception that Voyager became a Seven-centric show after she joined, which we know it isn’t true. But it’s interesting to notice that season 7 has the character gradually lose more and more space to the EMH (there was also the increased focus on Torres/Paris obviously). But it seems as if the writers in general reached a wall with Seven, and chose to focus on Picardo instead. I can certainly understand Sussman and Strong’s preference here. They’d already done both Body and Soul and Author, Author.
Still, I can’t say Renaissance Man is a memorable one. It plays like a greatest hits album of the EMH, and it has some fun with the impersonations, but overall I find this one almost forgettable. The Overlookers feel shoehorned in, and the plot is way too convoluted. It’s not bad, but like a lot of season 7 it just feels pedestrian.
@19: I have to disagree – Seven may not be as omnipresent this season as say seasons four and five, but she’s still got a lot of screen time and episodes that focus on the character or have a lot for Jeri Ryan to do: “Unimatrix Zero Part II”, “Imperfection”, “Body and Soul”, “Nightingale”, Human Error”, “Natural Law”, and her impending Chakotay romance in “Endgame.” That’s more than a third of the season devoted to her character so I can’t agree the writers hit a wall with her. If the series had continued I can imagine the writers would still cook up plenty for the character to do.
I think a lot of perception that Seven “took over the show” came from the fact that, while Seven might not have gotten more episodes (although she certainly did get more than some of the other cast), but that her episodes tended to be better quality, focus more on her character development, and generally stick out in people’s mind more. Obviously some Seven stories were stinkers (looking at you, “Unimatrix Zero”), but she had a lot of really solid episodes to balance those out, whereas Harry, Chakotay, and even Tuvok really only had a couple episodes where their character development was the main focus, and a lot of those were… not great. Intentional or not, I think it became clear to a lot of people that, even if she wasn’t getting most of the episodes, Seven (and the EMH) was getting most of the effort.
This last season was definitely the Doctor AND Seven show just by the shear volume of episodes that focused on them and they were the most interesting and had actual character growth. After them was the Torres/Paris relationship/pregnancy arc. Tuvok, Kim, and Neelix each got only a single episode that was solely about them. Poor fellas.
@21 – That’s a good point. It also might be that Seven started as a character so strongly opposed to Starfleet and humanity that her stories were bound to be more interesting and memorable. They could have done likewise with the Maquis from the beginning, but, as we all know, they pretty much gave up on that early in the series. Compared to Seven, the transition from Maquis to Starfleet was relatively fast and easy, thus diminishing a lot of potential for those characters in the long run.
So, naturally it seems, the characters who have the most to learn about humanity, Seven and the Doctor, stick out the most.
@23/terry: “So, naturally it seems, the characters who have the most to learn about humanity, Seven and the Doctor, stick out the most.”
Right. I’ve mentioned before that when I had a chance to pitch for season 5, I tried to avoid Seven or Doctor stories because I assumed everyone would be pitching those, but still, most of the ideas I managed to come up with were Seven or Doctor stories, because they were the characters with the most potential for both growth and conflict, and thus the most potential for storytelling. Aside from the Paris/Torres relationship, the rest of the cast had all worked through their major arcs, conflicts, and driving personal issues by then, and the writers never managed to come up with much of anything new to do with them.
Not that important, but as a fellow clarinetist, I thought Kim played the clarinet, not the saxophone?
@25/denise_l: My father played various saxophones, clarinet, oboe, flute, trombone, even an electronic wind instrument — not all that well, in my opinion, but he liked to try different things. Harry might have decided to branch out from clarinet to sax, and not been very good at it, which was why the Doctor criticized it.
denise_l: We saw Kim play the clarinet, but people can play more than one instrument, as Christopher said.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I enjoyed this one it’s obviously one last chance for a Robert Picardo tour de force but it works and there are some enjoyably funny scenes, the best where Paris cosies up to the Tores disguised Doctor Roxanne Dawson is absolutely hilarious in that scene. The only bit I now find a bit off is The Doctors ‘death bed confession’ to Seven of his love for her, that was a bit unnecessarily embarrassing for both. Otherwise really liked this.
Hi yall! I am finally getting around to [re]watching some Voyager – I haven’t committed to a full rewatch, but mayyyybe – and just wanted to say, with low expectations, I was really entertained by this episode! Like, it’s successfully suspenseful, and it’s not overly explained – Janeway mentions that the Doc is programmed with lots of strategy, and then in the end we find out that the whole time, he was going along with demands while planning to leave a clue behind… a clue that nobody would catch him leaving, even though they could see and hear everything he did. That’s really cool! And ballsy.
I also wanted to add something I don’t see anywhere on the net for some reason:
This episode was released May 16, 2001. 2001 A Space Odyssey was released May 15, 1969, in the UK. Its US release date was April 2 1968, still quite close. Both feature the Blue Danube, and both feature an artificial intelligence turning rogue and seemingly cold-blooded, and disabling systems so the humans can’t interfere.
So I mean if this isn’t a straight up VOY tribute to 2001, it’s an awf’ly coincidental coincidence.
Just me?
@21 The actors for Seven and the EMH did a really great job of being characters becoming human ish
The problems of other characters (maybe not all) reflected more issues that are frankly more boring. I think it’s natural that fans of the series preferred the unusual characters. That’s who watches Star Trek – I include myself.
Both actors did a great job. And we see that especially in the episodes they play someone else – like each other. Voyager as a series does have flaws – serious ones as people have said – but I think it was very worthwhile. The ethos and characters are admirable even if some of the stories were, well, flawed.
@26 & 27, I just didn’t remember Harry ever playing the saxophone–and then I realized after I posted that the reason I didn’t remember it was that there were sizeable chunks of seasons 6 and 7 that I had never seen. I was in junior high or high school by the point the latter seasons of Voyager aired and pursuing other interests, so I didn’t watch the show as reliably as before.
So, my memory is not as great as I thought, but I did do a pretty good job of embarrassing myself! ;)
There is one reason I always come back to this review – “the Potato People.” 🤣🤣🤣
Though I think it’s a fun ride, I have two issues with this episode. One is that I think they should have had the EMH somehow brainwashed/overwritten and not just motivated by Janeaway’s ransom. It brings up a a host of issues like why he couldn’t have found a way to surreptitiously telegraphe his predicament sooner, or why he rarely looked conflicted about what he was doing. The way he was collecting the com badges seemed creepy.
And speaking of creepy, my second issue is with his deathbed confession to Seven. That whole bit about trying to avert his eyes during her maintenance checks was just gross. Actually, that whole scene was pointless comedy to me, particularly because you can see the resolution a mile off.
Still, it’s a fairly innocuous good time in space.