“The Killing Game”
Written by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky
Directed by David Livingston
Season 4, Episode 18
Production episode 186
Original air date: March 4, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. The Hirogen have attacked and boarded Voyager, subduing the entire crew. Rather than hunt them, as is traditional, the alpha, Karr, has imprisoned much of the crew, and used others to participate in holodeck scenarios designed to learn more about their prey.
We open with a cave on a Klingon world, where Janeway has been surgically altered to look like a Klingon. Hirogen neural interfaces suppress people’s memories and superimpose a new personality. In this case, Janeway is a Klingon warrior, who does not surrender, though she is defeated by a knife to the gut. She’s brought to sickbay, where the EMH and the Hirogen medic are able to heal her. Karr then instructs her to be sent to Holodeck 1, where he has set up an Earth scenario, specifically World War II France.
Janeway is Katrine, the owner of Le Coeur de Lion, a bistro in Sainte Claire, a town in Nazi-occupied France. Tuvok is her bartender, Seven of Nine is Mademoiselle de Neuf, the singer, and Torres is Brigitte, who is pregnant by one of the German military. Ostensibly, Le Coeur de Lion is open to all, the first drink is on the house, and you must leave the war outside. In truth, it’s the central point for the local cell of the French Resistance, and they’re gathering intelligence to help American forces advance through the town to liberate it before moving on to Germany.
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Neelix is serving as a courier, and he brings the keys to the cipher in radio messages to Brigitte. The Americans will be arriving within a few days, and Katrine and her people must disable the Nazi communications.
The Hirogen beta, Turanj, doesn’t understand why Karr is doing all this nonsense. Karr and Turanj have been posing as a Nazi commandant and his aide-de-camp, but Turanj, fed up with all of this, shoots Neelix and Seven in the back.
They’re taken to sickbay. The EMH is appalled and begs the Hirogen medic to reinstate the holodeck safety protocols, but Karr’s orders are to keep them disengaged. While Seven is to be returned to Sainte Claire, Neelix is sent to the Klingon simulation. Meanwhile, Karr instructs Kim—one of the few crew members who isn’t either locked away or performing in a holodeck simulation—to expand the holoemitters to a wider field on the ship. At this point, the holodecks take up several decks.
When he’s alone, Kim uses the expanded holoemitters to bring the EMH to talk to him. He’s worked out a way to disable the neural interfaces, but it requires someone in the holodeck to engage the bridge control relays. The EMH can use Seven’s Borg implants to disable her neural interface, and then she can engage the bridge control relays. The only problem is that she’ll have no memory of what she was doing on the holodeck, so she’ll have to bluff her way through being Mademoiselle de Neuf.
Karr explains to Turanj that it’s important to know your prey, which is why he’s been doing all these historical simulations on the holodeck. He also feels that the Hirogen culture is disintegrating, overwhelmed by pure predatory instinct. Karr feels it’s important to learn about prey, not just blithely hunt it, hence the holodeck simulations.
Seven’s neural interface futzes out while de Neuf is mid-song. Seven doesn’t actually know any songs, so she excuses herself, saying she’s sick. Katrine orders her to go back onstage—she’s pumping Karr for information, and he likes her singing—but Seven refuses. Tuvok and Katrine have been suspicious of de Neuf, thinking she might be a Nazi sympathizer, and Seven’s behavior is only feeding that paranoia.
Chakotay and Paris are two American soldiers, Captain Miller and Lieutenant Davis, respectively. Davis has been to Sainte Claire before, and had a relationship with Brigitte, though he hasn’t heard from her recently. As they advance on the town, Katrine, Tuvok, and de Neuf go to Nazi headquarters to plant explosives. Tuvok stands guard while Katrine and de Neuf go inside. However, Seven isn’t familiar with such primitive explosives and screws up setting them, making Katrine more suspicious. Then Seven starts messing with a holodeck control. This gives Kim the ability to access sickbay systems and give the EMH the ability to neutralize the neural interfaces. However, he’s only able to neutralize Janeway’s before he’s caught and deactivated.
His timing is good, as Katrine was about to shoot de Neuf. Seven brings Janeway up to speed even as Miller and Davis arrive. They attack Nazi HQ, but their holographic artillery is enough to blow a big-ass hole in the bulkhead, which is what happens when you disengage the safeties. Miller, assuming this is some secret Nazi installation, sends his people into Voyager’s corridors. The damage is such that Kim no longer has control over the holodeck and can’t shut it down. Now Karr has a real war on his hands…
To be continued…
There’s coffee in that nebula! Katrine dressed in a white suit and looks and acts very much like Rick Blaine in Casablanca, though she’s much more of a dedicated resistance fighter than the more laissez-faire Rick. Janeway also makes a dandy Klingon at the top of the episode.
Mr. Vulcan. If Tuvok’s character has an alternate name, we don’t get it. But he’s pretty much Katrine’s security chief anyhow, so it’s not much of a stretch for him.
Half and half. Brigitte develops a relationship with one of the Nazi captains—going so far as to have a baby with him—in order to get access for the resistance. (This also enabled Roxann Dawson’s pregnancy not to be hidden for a couple of episodes…)
Resistance is futile. Once again, it’s Borg implants to the rescue! The EMH is able to use the magical mystery nanoprobes to futz out the neural interface.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH is stuck having to heal the crew every time they’re injured on the holodeck. He does, at least, convince the Hirogen to avoid head shots, as those are harder to fix, and he has lost at least one patient in the three weeks the Hirogen have been on board.
Forever an ensign. Poor Kim isn’t allowed to cosplay with the rest of the gang, instead stuck on the bridge being tech support…
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Fittingly, Neelix’s task in Sainte Claire is to deliver food. After he’s shot, he gets to think he’s a Klingon. (And poor Ethan Phillps had to wear both Talaxian and Klingon makeup, for which one hopes he got combat pay…)
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. The Hirogen pretty much turn half the ship into a couple of big-ass holodecks. And once again the safeties are disengaged, and once again I must ask WHY THE FUCK AREN’T THOSE HARDWIRED especially since it means that holographic explosives can blow a hole in the bulkheads…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Even in the Hirogen-created simulation, Paris and Torres are a couple, as Davis and Brigitte had a thing in the past.
Do it.
“When the Americans arrive and the fighting begins, I don’t intend to be standing next to a piano, singing ‘Moonlight Becomes You’.”
–Seven as Mademoiselle de Neuf, bitching about her role in the resistance.
Welcome aboard. By appearing as Karr in this two-parter, Danny Goldring plays his third of five Trek roles, having previously been on DS9 as a Cardassian politician in “Civil Defense” and a human soldier in “Nor the Battle to the Strong.” He’ll appear twice on Enterprise, once as a Nausicaan captain in “Fortunate Son,” once as a Takret captain in “The Catwalk.”
Other Hirogen are played by Mark Deakins, Mark Metcalf, and Paul Eckstein.
Deakins will return in the “Unimatrix Zero” two-parter, and also appear in Insurrection.
Eckstein, having played two different Jem’Hadar in DS9’s “Rocks and Shoals” and “The Dogs of War,” will return to Voyager to play a different Hirogen in “Flesh and Blood,” Supervisor Yost in “Gravity,” and a Klingon in “Prophecy.”
This is Metcalf’s only Trek appearance. He’s best known for playing Neidermeyer in Animal House, the pissed-off Dad in Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” music video, and the Master in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Finally, the Nazi captain is played by J. Paul Boehmer. He’ll return in “Drone” as a Borg, and play a different Nazi in Enterprise‘s “Zero Hour” and “Storm Front.” He’ll also appear in DS9’s “Tacking Into the Wind” as a Cardassian and Enterprise‘s “Carbon Creek” as Mestral.
All five will return for Part 2.
Trivial matters: Though this and Part 2 were produced and filmed as two separate episodes, complete with different directors, they were aired in a single two-hour block on the 4th of March 1998. They have remained as single episodes in syndication and home video, however. The success of this stunt would lead to UPN doing it again in season five with “Dark Frontier” and season seven with “Flesh and Blood.”
While we only see the Klingon and World War II scenarios, others are mentioned, notably the Crusades as one that had already been done, and Karr also mentions wanting to do the Battle of Wolf 359 between the Federation and the Borg, as seen in TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II” and DS9’s “Emissary.”
This two-parter is the only time that Roxann Dawson’s pregnancy is visible, as it’s written into the storyline that her holodeck character is pregnant.
Joe Menosky had wanted to do a World War II episode ever since he returned to the U.S. after spending time in Europe.
As Mademoiselle de Neuf (which means “of Nine”), Seven sings two 1940s ditties, “It Can’t be Wrong” and “That Old Black Magic.” The latter song will be heard again in “Virtuoso.” Jeri Ryan did her own singing.
The EMH mentions that one crewmember has died in the three weeks since the Hirogen took over. This brings the crew’s death count up to fifteen, and the crew complement should be at 140, despite the inexplicably higher number given in “Displaced” and “Distant Origin.” They had 155 when they destroyed the Caretaker’s array. (Seska and Kes also left, but Seven joined and Naomi Wildman was born, so that’s a wash.)
Set a course for home. “You wanted a war? Look like you got one.” In 1987, TNG pioneered the holodeck cosplay episode with “The Big Goodbye.” Little more than an opportunity for the actors to play dress-up, and often with a nonsensical actual plot, it’s a well that the 24th-century Star Trek shows dipped into repeatedly. From the Dashiell Hammett pastiche of “…Goodbye,” we progress to Sherlock Holmes (“Elementary, Dear Data,” “Ship in a Bottle”), Westerns (“A Fistful of Datas”), James Bond and his ilk (“Our Man Bashir“), Beowulf (“Heroes and Demons“), Renaissance Italy (“Scorpion,” “Concerning Flight”), etc. (Picard has not done so yet, thank heavens.)
“The Killing Game” fits right in. In fact, it’s pretty much the same plot as “Our Man Bashir,” except the stakes are way higher for our heroes, as the whole ship is in danger.
Ultimately, it’s ridiculous, but it’s a fun kind of ridiculous. It starts out with the absurd hilarity of Janeway as a Klingon—and points to Kate Mulgrew for attacking the role with gusto, as she totally throws herself into the part—and continues with a mix between Casablanca and ‘Allo ‘Allo. Seeing Seven as a chanteuse, Janeway as Rick Blaine, Chakotay and Paris as 1940s soldiers, Torres as a Mata Hari-style spy is all a delight. Honestly, I wish they’d gone further with it, as too much of it is folks in roles that are similar to their existing ones, and I’d have loved them a bit further afield from their usual personalities. At one point, Neelix bitches to Tuvok about him being so logical, and Tuvok bitches back, and I’m thinking, “Really? You can’t come up with a new argument?” And it might have been fun to see Seven and Tuvok be a bit looser and more emotional, and maybe have Chakotay’s Miller be a cigar-chomping Sergeant Fury type. I mean, you’re gonna have them play characters, have them play characters, dangit!
There’s a certain appeal to Karr’s idealism, of his wanting to reform Hirogen society, though it’s hard to get behind it too enthusiastically given that (a) we’ve only known about the Hirogen for five minutes, so a call for reforming it is of very little moment and (b) it’s really just an excuse for WWII cosplay anyhow, so who cares? Having said that, his rant at the Nazi captain following his master-race colloquy is brilliantly done. In fact, that scene is a masterpiece, with J. Paul Boehmer selling the white supremacist bullshit he spews, and Danny Goldring beautifully puncturing it.
Most of this is just a fun acting exercise. Which is good, because you’re certainly not watching it for the plot. When the Nazi building blows up and we see multiple decks on the other side of the bulkhead we know that scientific rigor—never Voyager’s strong suit—isn’t going to be the order of the day, and you just gotta roll with it.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s next novel is Animal, a thriller he wrote with Dr. Munish K. Batra, about a serial killer who targets people who harm animals. It’s now available for preorder, and if you preorder it directly from WordFire Press before the 24th of December, you get a free urban fantasy short story by Keith.
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It’s a fun kind of stupid, even if the premise doesn’t make any logical sense. Something I’ve noticed this season, but for some reason really noticed this episode, is that Kate Mulgrew’s voice seems to be getting…gravellier? Is that a word?
@1 – Fixed, thank you!
One little note for maximum amusement: the French Resistance cells, especially in rural areas, were named for the underbrush they used as camo.
Maquis.
I’ve said it before, but I’ve never been a huge fan of time travel or holodeck episodes that take place either in the viewer’s present or past. To me it often comes across as the writers trying to pad out their resumes with stuff that proves they can do things other than SF, and shows a lack of imagination about the world that exists for the characters. Some of them in Trek are done really well (“Far Beyond the Stars” and “City on the Edge of Forever” being my two personal favorites), but those usually rely really heavily on character work, where this is more of an action romp that takes itself a little too seriously. I’d rather have seen the setting be more like “The Trouble With Tribbles” or “Past Tense,” where the events are happening in the character’s past, but what would be the “future” for the viewer. It allows them to be displaced, and allows us to learn something more about the Trek universe. Frankly, if I want to watch a movie or show about WW2, there are much better ones out there (ditto with knock-off Sherlock Holmes and Wuthering Heights). I know some people love them, but they just aren’t really for me.
That said, I *love* what we learn about the Hirogen in this episode, and I wish more time was focused on that, instead of watching Janeway play Rick from Casablanca. It would have been clever to have the Maquis play, well, the Maquis in France, instead of having them mostly played by the Starfleet officers and Seven/Neelix, but overall it’s a well-done episode, for what it is.
“their holographic artillery is enough to blow a big-ass hole in the bulkhead”
Really, holodecks fall into the “Why do we even have that lever” class of technology at best, and possibly into the “Existential threat to humanity” at worst.
At one point, Neelix bitches to Tuvok about him being so logical, and Tuvok bitches back, and I’m thinking, “Really? You can’t come up with a new argument?” And it might have been fun to see Seven and Tuvok be a bit looser and more emotional, and maybe have Chakotay’s Miller be a cigar-chomping Sergeant Fury type. I mean, you’re gonna have them play characters, have them play characters, dangit!
ON the one hand, I totally get this. On the other hand, it kinda makes sense: the Hirogen have them playing out a fictional scenario (ok, based on reality, but still) with (one assumes) fictional characters. Thus, there are no “real” people upon whom to base personas. So the Hirogen are forced to work with what they’ve got: an emotional Neelix, a logical Tuvok, an aloof Seven, etc. They’ve layered fake simulation personas over their real personas.
@00::
In 1987, TNG pioneered the holodeck cosplay episode with “The Big Goodbye.” Little more than an opportunity for the actors to play dress-up, and often with a nonsensical actual plot, it’s a well that the 24th-century Star Trek shows dipped into repeatedly
I mean, the Holodeck episode was arguably the next evolution of TOS and its (budgetary) reliance on planets that were ‘suspiciously’ similar to Earth culture or time travel to ‘past’ (1960s) Earth (ex. “Patterns of Force”, “A Piece of the Action”, “City on the Edge of Forever”, etc.).
But yeah, I do think the TNG era ultimately went back to the Holodeck well one time too many (and especially during VOY).
Dan Adler: “Making sense” isn’t really something this episode is doing, so I don’t see why they couldn’t go full cosplay, y’know?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8 Of all the shows, I think DS9 used the holodecks the best. They were frequently referenced- either by Quark renting them out for dubious purposes, Bashir and O’Brien’s never-seen battles at the Alamo and in the air over Great Britain, or Dax and Maj. Kira bursting out of them in full medieval garb- which gave the impression that they were just a casual part of life. When they were used, it was usually for something that told us something about the characters, a la “It’s Only A Paper Moon,” or even showing ‘real-life’ spy Garak in the silliness of a knock-off James Bond program. They were also often used in the same way that the local banquet hall at the airport Marriott is- rented out for bachelor parties, selling things, etc. The “we are going to spend a whole episode in the holodeck just messing around” were mercifully few and far between.
This episode is also quite similar to the ancient Doctor Who serial The War Games.
I now want to recast this.
Tuvok as the lounge singer, Neelix as the Army Lt., Torres as the bartender, Chakotay in the same role but more animated as you suggested, Paris as the courrier, and Seven as the pregnant spy. Janeway was perfection as we’re Kim and the EMH.
I always forget that this was two episodes aired back-to-back instead of a 2-hour episode.
The reason we see multiple decks beyond the holodeck wall after the explosion is because, as established in the episode, the holodecks have been physically expanded in size to take up a much larger portion of the ship. So presumably they actually were several decks high at this point. Although that brings us back to the usual question of how the crew was able to restore the ship to its original specs so quickly after the episode.
This episode reminds me a bit of a story from Pocket’s first Strange New Worlds anthology, “Fiction” by jaQ Andrews. It’s sort of a cross between this, “The Inner Light,” and “Resolutions,” as it involves the Voyager crew believing they’ve spent four years stranded on a Delta Quadrant planet only to discover they’ve been in the holodeck and programmed with false memory engrams by aliens who took over the ship. It’s a beautiful, moving story, but it fails logically on the grounds that there’s no way 150-plus people could fit into Voyager‘s few holodecks. So I was glad that “The Killing Joke” acknowledged that the holodecks’ size would have to be greatly increased for something like this to work.
But there’s a different logic hole here, one that’s always stood out for me. If the Hirogen were able to expand the holosystems so far across the ship, then why did Voyager‘s crew have so much trouble rigging holoemitters outside sickbay to let the Doctor move about the ship before he had the mobile emitter? Given that the premise of the 2-parter depends on the Hirogen not having holotechnology of their own, it can’t be an advance they provided, so it must be something the crew were capable of doing themselves with existing Starfleet resources. So why didn’t they do it sometime in the first year or two?
@10,
Yeah, I completely agree that DS9 used the Holodeck technology the most efficiently with their storytelling.
@13 Season 1 and 2 power issues? Then they didn’t bother after getting the mobile emitter?
One thing I particularly like about this set of episodes is that it shows the Hirogen to be a dynamic species. It suggests the current set up of a species scattered across a huge volume of space isn’t the way the Hirogen have always been and that the change threatens their long-term viability.
You know, I was just thinking about Voyager being taken over yet again. You would think that any hostile race that tried to take over the ship would be locked out by security protocols. Maybe they can force crewmembers to work for them, but that brings up another issue, which is the fact that this in the Delta Quadrant and none of these alien races should have any familiarity with a Federation ship at all.
But there’s a different logic hole here, one that’s always stood out for me. If the Hirogen were able to expand the holosystems so far across the ship, then why did Voyager‘s crew have so much trouble rigging holoemitters outside sickbay to let the Doctor move about the ship before he had the mobile emitter?
13: A valid point. But Voyager had a lot going on in those early years and getting the Doctor out of sickbay was likely always in the “would be nice, but not urgent” priority tier, then it became a moot point when they “acquired” a mobile emitter, so maybe it was always something they could have figured out eventually but just never got around to. When the Hirogen roll in, suddenly obliging their demands became a much higher priority and the crew (at gunpoint) can crack the problem in a relatively short amount of time. What they had to do to accomplish this might have also compromised secondary systems, like long range scanners, that the Hirogen wouldn’t care about but Voyager wouldn’t be willing to lose.
@17/Rick: I just don’t buy it. The project to install holoemitters in vital areas like the bridge and engineering was mentioned a couple of times in the early first season as something they considered important enough to work on, then forgotten about for two whole years before the mobile emitter came along. That should’ve been plenty of time to work the bugs out. It always seemed strange to me (well before “Future’s End” aired) that they just abandoned the idea after setting it up so clearly.
@18,
Yeah, it’s such a minor thing, but it’s so emblematic of how VOY almost gleefully refused to follow through with the logistics of its premise or abandoned any setup at all.
We should have seen the Starfleet tech on board become integrated with alien replacement parts indefinitely or pushed to limits it was not intended for back in the AQ. And given the necessity of the Doctor, installing those emitters should have been followed through.
Silly, but fun which is how I would generally categorize Voyager at this point: tune in and turn your brain off. I can imagine the concept of this two-parter being sold by the image of villainous aliens in Nazi garb (which concept Star Trek: Enterprise would later return to itself) and Seven literally letting her hair down. It all just seems like a big opportunity to let the cast play a different sort of dress up and play different characters which is nice every now and then.
One thing that occurred to me just now and I think is weird: when our heroes are in the Klingon simulation they all appear as Klingons, but in the WWII simulation they retain their normal appearance so that B’Elanna is half-Klingon, Neelix is Talaxian, etc. Where’s the consistency there? Poor Ethan Phillips indeed!
Also, I never understood how some of these holodeck situations were supposed to test the hunting prowess of the Hirogen. I get it in the context of hunting down aliens like Species 8472, but a holodeck simulation of something like the Battle of Wolf 359 seems more like testing someone’s space battle abilities than one’s skill at hunting.
@20/garreth: Maybe they were thinking of simulating a hunt against Borg drones on board the cube. In which case they would’ve been biting off more than they could chew, if the simulation were accurate.
@20/garreth: Exactly! Wolf 359 was a fleet battle (and massacre), not a lot of opportunity for hand to hand combat even if you board the cube and get all the fun of tens of thousands of hive mind, super techie, adaptive drones.
Also, not to diminish the service and sacrifice of the French resistance but if the Hirogen wanted to be “hunters in WW2” then it should have been set in Yugoslavia because Tito and his Partisans occupied more German divisions than all other resistance groups combined. Really none of the battles they describe are known for their examples of martial prowess (which is their thing? It’s not entirely clear if they love hunting or battle or both or bits of both and other things). You had a better chance of dying from disease during the crusade than blade or bow, so was it a five month simulation where 80 percent of the Hirogen warriors defecated themselves to death on a slow boat from Venice or in the hills of Armenia? They are very much a villain you enjoy but should not think too hard about their raison d’etre.
@22
I think they love hunting, and Karr is trying to direct them more toward battle, which would allow them to stay in a smaller area and/or use the holodeck. That would explain why the other Hirogen aren’t really on board with his glorified LARPing, since they aren’t like the Klingons, who delight in battle. They strike me as more like the aliens from “The Hunters” over on DS9.
At this point I would like to offer a sensible, considered and insightful commentary on my attitude toward this episode – but since my attitude towards this episode is that it’s my favourite episode of VOYAGER and I don’t even care, what follows will just have to be whatever can be set down during those brief periods when I can actually concentrate long enough to type, in between outbursts of cackling glee.
I really do love this episode because, along with ENTERPRISE ‘Storm Front’ it might just be the most deliciously Pulp production in the whole of STAR TREK and I love me some juicy Pulp; any episode where Starfleet spends its time kicking Nazis and/or Alien Nazis in the spuds is alright with me.
Speaking of which, those of you with a knowledge of the period might be at least a little amused to learn that I kept thinking of the Alpha Hirogen in this episode (played to the hilt so deliciously that if he had a moustache it would be twirling like the propeller on a Messerschmidt 109) as ‘Skorzeny’ (since I didn’t catch his name during this half of the two-parter and that distinctive scar made me think of another terrifying enthusiast in a Nazi uniform)
Anyway, on a more serious note I love this episode because it gives everyone something to do and cracks along at a splendid pace: it also gave us Tuxedo Janeway and Seven of Nine, chanteuse, for which we must always be grateful – honestly, it might just be the sexiest darned episode of STAR TREK just for that!
By the way, @12. TA: How dare your little alternate timeline even suggest we be deprived of the glorious spectacle of Ms. Jeri Ryan as a Glamourous Wartime Singer – why can’t we have nice things?!? Do you actually hate us or do you merely enjoy watching us squirm at the mere thought of such a loss to our fevered fannish imaginations? (-;
@18. ChristopherLBennett: I’m not saying the crew were so desperate to get a bit of peace & quiet from the old windbag that they deliberately endangered themselves by NOT installing holoemitters on every deck, but heck Voyager isn’t that big – what’s a little emergency run when you can carve out a safe space away from The Doctor’s babbling?
@20. garreth: Given his expressed ambitions concerning the use of the Holodeck and its technology, one might reasonably guess that the Alpha Hirogen is deliberately choosing scenarios that nudge his subordinates that little bit outside of their comfort zone, in a bid to encourage their mental flexibility and broaden their skills beyond the trail, the stalk, the kill & the breaking-up.
@22. Darth Meh: It bears considering that the Hunters and the Voyager crew are enjoying (or ‘enjoying’) a holodeck version of these historical events, rather than the events themselves – it seems doubtful that all the tedious minutia and tragic everyday realities would be retained by a programme intended to be played through (or walked through) during the relatively brief Break Time enjoyed by a Starfleet officer or crewman with plenty of competition for holodeck time slots.
I’m also not sure that the Hirogen are as obsessed with hand-to-hand combat as Klingons can be; so far as we can tell the Hirogen are much more utilitarian in their approach than Klingons (employing a fairly wide variety of tools to eliminate their prey without fuss or mercy – or at least without fuss until after the prey is safely dead).
If nothing else, given the Hirogen appear to be interstellar nomads, it seems highly likely that they would hold skill with a starship (and programmes that hones such skill) in fairly high esteem.
@23 – That would make more sense than what the presented objective of the Alpha was since neither Wolf 359 or the Crusades were known for the “hunting” experience. In fact, both of those would be programs you would see Klingons choose in Quarks.
@24 – I get that if you are going to program an event on the holodeck it’s not going to include dysentery or trench foot but they did program one where they obviously spend a fair bit of time sitting around French cafe’s in a poor man’s Allo Allo fantasy. If they wanted to make it sporting, they should have maybe masked the faces of the voyager crew so that at least the other Hirogen wouldn’t immediately know who the resistance members were. Seems like a real poor project execution by the Alpha to show the value of the holosystem.
@25. Darth Meh: I’m inclined to regard this as a character note on the part of the Hirogen Alpha – it’s not unlikely that while he had some Big Ideas for his species (the result of some Deep Thought), he didn’t quite have the finesse to pull them off without significant issues on the part of his subordinates (who would appear to be notably restless throughout).
Not least because he seems to be having a BLAST digging through the back-catalogue of an Alien culture for some juicy scene to insert himself into – he genuinely seems to enjoy seeking out new life & new civilisations forts own sake quite as much as he does the Hunt (to a degree that makes me suspect he might have made a pretty fair Starfleet officer, had he been born in the Alpha or Beta Quadrant, rather than the Delta).
He is, we can safely say, a most unusual Hirogen
“You are mine. Now and after death.”
If anyone’s seen Secret Army (the BBC drama spoofed by the more famous ’Allo ’Allo in a kind of shooting-yourself-in-the-foot way), it’s hard not to look at the inhabitants of St Claire and go “Albert. Max. Monique. Natalie. Alain. Kessler. Brandt. And Americans instead of British, naturally.” Okay, in some cases the character traits and functions seem to have been split up and combined (the singer’s the same person as the beret-wearing action girl, the new commandant is the more reasonable one than his colleague), but the cliches are still there, and have probably been used in other places.
So, most of the crew spend the episode thinking they’re someone else, yet still managing to retain their most annoying characteristics (Seven’s inability to see anyone else’s point of view, Tuvok’s pedantry, Neelix’s inappropriate cheerfulness). We could problem add Paris’ eye for the ladies to the list: I thought at first he said he knew “Brigitte” when he was eight rather than eighteen, which was a bit awkward!
Therefore the focus shifts to the Hirogen as we get another in-depth look at their culture. The clash that’s brewing between the forward-thinking leader Karr and his younger more traditional deputy Turanj isn’t the most original but it’s a neat way of making the Hirogen seem more diverse. (Mind you, there was at least one scene where I wasn’t sure which one it was.) Actually, it’s just now occurred to me that they occupy the same narrative roles as the lead villain and his deputy from Voyager’s next two-parter, “Equinox”, but I suppose that’s getting ahead of ourselves!
I seem to recall an interview with Garrett Wang where he noted Kim wasn’t meant to be in this one and all his scenes were added later as padding. It’s interesting to watch it with that in mind: Presumably the Doctor was meant to come up with the plan to disable the neural interfaces on his own. (The shot quickly cuts away from him when he mentions Kim, and Seven transferring control to Kim who then transfers it to the Doctor makes him seem like a bit of an unnecessary middle man. It also explains one nonsensical moment in Part II as I recall.) Torres appearing pregnant (down to real life issues of course) is a bit of another odd example of Voyager doing things with the holodeck that raise a lot of questions: None more so than Janeway and Neelix appearing Klingon I suppose, but again see Part II. Mark Metcalf, in the relatively minor role of the Hirogen Medic, becomes the second Buffy Big Bad to appear in the series.
I’m not sure if they deactivate the Doctor so much as drag him away from the console (which makes him seem oddly solid, although I guess he needs to stay corporeal to press the button). The BBC also showed this one edited together with Part II, I didn’t realise that was how it was originally broadcast. I do get a bit confused at times as to which episodes are two-parters and which are double length…
@13 ChristopherLBennett
“If the Hirogen were able to expand the holosystems so far across the ship, then why did Voyager‘s crew have so much trouble rigging holoemitters outside sickbay to let the Doctor move about the ship before he had the mobile emitter? (…) it must be something the crew were capable of doing themselves with existing Starfleet resources”.
Resources would be an obvious answer to that question. The Starfleet crew would have to divert too much power from propulsion/weapons/etc. for the additional holo-emitters, and that is why it hasn’t been done. From the Hirogen standpoint, on the other hand, the ship doesn’t need to fly anywhere or do battle – it can remain a big stationary holodeck, with all available power diverted to the emitters.
This also tracks with the way the extra holo-emitters are mentioned in “Message in a Bottle”, on the Prometheus ship. Not as some technological breakthrough that was previously thought impossible, but as simply a virtue of having a newer and better ship.
@28 Yea, I think the easiest explanation is that they figured out *how* to do it, just not how to do it in a way that is practical. Like SFDebris said (in a different context) it’s like building a slingshot big enough to catapult someone to the moon- it is technically possible, but by the time you’ve figured out how to do it, you likely have a better way figured out (like the mobile emitter) that would render it obsolete.
I appreciate any time we see a conflict within an alien society, where neither of the sides are particularly close to Federation Values. It lends, if not depth, at least the illusion of it.
@krad: That much praise in the analysis, and it’s rated 6? I’d rate it at least an 8.
The Killing Game works both as the occasional holodeck cosplay adventure, and also as a commentary on the current state of Hirogen society. Of course, after having established the race four episodes ago, the natural inclination is to challenge their ways and see if their relentless pursuit of traditions can survive for much longer. Not surprisingly, it was successful enough to generate a Bryan Fuller penned sequel in season 7’s Flesh and Blood.
I adore the fact that Braga and Menosky start the episode as late as they can, bypassing the entire Hirogen takeover of Voyager and construction of the new holodeck borders. As viewers, we’re just thrown in the middle of it, with a only a Klingon battle program and a clever World War II reenactment as our respective anchors, making great use of the command crew. We have to connect the dots and build the whole thing back in our minds. And I’m glad they didn’t show it. The actual takeover likely would have been disappointing.
This way, the episode can focus on the actual story. Not only the cast is having tremendous fun doing this, but it’s also reflected in the way it’s shot. It doesn’t get much better with Livingston behind the camera.
It’s certainly ridiculous, but it never stops being fun. As for the inconsistent logic regarding holodeck safeties and emitters, I don’t have much of a bone to pick with this episode because of them. After all, holodeck storytelling inconsistencies had a decade’s worth of plot holes by this point, going back to early TNG. I’m not going to expect either Voyager or DS9 to try and fix them by now.
My only complaint is that it ends a bit too soon. While it makes sense to end it with that visual effect of a holo-breach across multiple decks, that only means the fantasy is over and we have to spend part 2 cleaning up the mess. If we could have had more time to spend on the WW2 caper, maybe this could have been a three-parter. If I were a producer, I wouldn’t have had any problem excising one of the late-season episodes in order to do so. There are a couple of candidates, which we’ll be getting to soon.
I really enjoyed both parts of The Killing Game. The Hirogen arc was by far Voyagers strongest arc in the whole series. The Hirogen were perfectly developed and in the 5 episodes we saw them we learned a lot about them and their society. (excluding Flesh and Blood).
The Holladeck fits perfectly into the Hirogens society of their hunter ways and what they can do with the technology.
And fast forward to S7 with Flesh and Blood where we see the ramification of the technology Janeway gave them.
Eduardo: because the praise was with the caveat that the whole notion was really kinda dumb. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So if several decks of the ship have been converted to holodeck, maybe after this story the Voyagers spend the next several months just living in a holo-simulation of the ship’s original architecture?? Without ever mentioning it to us.
Also, maybe they couldn’t get the planned bridge and engineering holo-emitters to work without popping out characters from Captain Janeway’s holonovels at inconvenient moments. Wait, wasn’t that an actual episode?
I know these two ideas don’t exactly go together. You go off shift for some cabin time and Leonardo da Vinci is your room mate…
Yes, I agree with the other posters that Star Trek writers made too many holodeck episodes that felt inconsequential to the overall fate of the characters and the ship. There are some, like Hollow Pursuits, which are done well to flesh out existing characters and highlight some of their problems.
Too many others though, like the ones set in Old Ireland on this series feel totally pointless. They are basically an episode watching the characters entertain themselves like on a field trip, and we don’t learn anything new about them in them. I particularly disliked “Fair Haven” and found it to be pointless and a caricature of Ireland.
One holodeck episode per season ought to be enough.
I’m glad the Allo Allo comparison was made in the main review it’s one of the reasons I could never take this episode seriously first time around, Sevens “resistance girl” outfit complete with beret and white socks is all most exactly the same as Michelle’s in the sitcom and when Neelix arrived on the bike (only missing the string of onions around his neck) I half expected him to dismount and exclaim “It is I, Leclerc” Anyone from outside the U.K. will wonder what I am going on about but you will just have to believe me, or YouTube Allo Allo..
Also the French village setting looks quite a bit like the one used in season 3 of Westworld when Maeve was briefly in “World War 2 world” was it the same location.?
@36/chadefallstar: “Also the French village setting looks quite a bit like the one used in season 3 of Westworld when Maeve was briefly in “World War 2 world” was it the same location.?”
It was the European Street portion of the Universal Studios backlot (which would also be used later in the series as Fair Haven). According to IMDb, Westworld has also filmed there. So that sounds like a yes.
This episode was shown tonight on Horror channel here in the UK. And I too was glad to see an Allo Allo reference made as that was the foremost thought in my mind
Whilst 7’s singing voice was enchanting – its actually used in the channels promos for the series atm – it would have been comedy gold to see her sing in the same style as Madame Edith.
(apologies to all of those that are wondering what I am blabbering on about)
Why is there a WW2 scenario on Voyager’s Holodeck? Who would want to relive that? Are the crew surgically altered to look Klingon or is it a holographic projection like Torres’ pregnancy? Seven might’ve been in a better position to play Mademoiselle de Neuf after the Doctor’s singing lessons in S5. In Future’s End and The Killing Game, both Kim and the Doctor rescue a crewman or crewmen right before they’re about to get shot. Why does Miller think something in midair is an underground bunker?
The strong focus on Seven continues apace. What happens when the Doctor runs out of meds to treat the crew with? A theory ventured is the reason Chakotay, Paris and Kim are kept isolated from the action is because they’re played by much less talented actors than the rest of the ensemble. There are still shops open in Nazi occupied France – yeah, right! After playing the Master, Mark Metcalf is forced to sport another heavy makeup job. The Killing Game is VGR’s own Patterns of Force. Shouldn’t Seven’s character be named Sept de Neuf?
2: Kate Mulgrew has always had a husky voice and she had quit smoking by this stage. 5: Knock-off Wuthering Heights? 13: Voyager’s miraculous ability to repair massive damage is a classic argument. And it’s The Killing Game, not The Killing Joke. 14: DS9 was never as enamoured with the Holodeck/Holosuite goes wrong plot like TNG and VGR. 15: I’m not sure how long the mobile emitter lasts without a recharge.
16: Voyager gets seized a few times on its journey home. 20: Living Witness would prove an even better dress up for the cast (minus Dawson, sadly!). 24: Does Karr have a scar? Terrifying enthusiast? Yep, it’s sexier when the clothes stay on. Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan have been compared with Katherine Hepburn and Veronica Lake in this episode. 31: Jeri Ryan got very upset during the making of Pt II because the stress of the past year was finally taking its toll on her. And I don’t think there’s enough story to sustain a third part.
32: Don’t forget Tsunkatse. 34: That was Persistence of Vision but a telepathic alien was drawing on Janeway’s own experiences instead of a Holodeck malfunction. 35: Holodeck gone wrong stories are a well Trek would return to much too often.
@39/David Sim: “Why is there a WW2 scenario on Voyager’s Holodeck? Who would want to relive that?”
There are literally hundreds of movies about World War II, or more generally about heroes fighting Nazis. It’s a perennial subject for fiction and entertainment. And we saw it on DS9 too, O’Brien and Bashir restaging the Battle of Britain in Quark’s holosuites. Since it’s an Earth history program, they presumably got it from a Federation database.
“There are still shops open in Nazi occupied France – yeah, right!”
Of course there are. An occupation means that the occupiers are there to stay, every day, and they need food, services, and entertainment as much as anyone else. It also means that the occupied country is no longer officially at war with the occupier, so theoretically life gets back to normal under new management. It was only the resistance that was still fighting back.
Quoth David Sim: “Why is there a WW2 scenario on Voyager’s Holodeck? Who would want to relive that?”
You seem to be blissfully unaware of the HUGE numbers of people who do re-creations of various wars. The Civil War and the American Revolution are particularly popular right now (especially the former). So the answer to your question is, “lots of people.”
Quoth David Sim again: “There are still shops open in Nazi occupied France – yeah, right!”
Of course there were. How do you think people got food and things? That’s not how occupations work….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Maybe it’s just a personal thing with me but I wouldn’t want to reenact WW2. I don’t think it’s a conflict that should ever be forgotten but it’s not something I would ever want to experience. And I thought the Nazis cracked down on everything and that’s what led to rationing in the first place. If not, then that shows you what I know.
Rationing happened in the UK because the government’s money was going toward the war effort, so there needed to be belt-tightening elsewhere.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@42/David Sim: Ever seen Casablanca? At the time of the film, Casablanca was controlled by France’s collaborationist Vichy government, so it was essentially Nazi-occupied the same as France itself, which was why Nazi officers like Major Strasser had the run of the place and Captain Renault, the local lawman, had to cooperate with them. But businesses like Rick’s Cafe Americain were open and doing business as usual, as long as they catered to the needs of the Nazi and collaborationist authorities.
As Keith said, rationing was a product of the war effort in countries that were fighting the Nazis, which Vichy France was not. In the US, there was rationing of food, gasoline, rubber, metal, anything useful to the war effort.
Thanks Krad and Christopher for showing me what’s what
Tomato; Tomahto- when the gang working the bar deciphers radio code, the British broadcaster announces weather temperatures in Fahrenheit. iiRC; most of Trek units are/were metric. Just a funny moment rewatching on PlutoTV
I wondered about that. Brief googling indicates Europe, most likely including France, or certainly any English radio in France, was still using Fahrenheit until the 1960s. I’m not totally clear about it, but it is at least somewhat accurate of them I think.
Did I manage to make a comment on the new message boards? Is it my first or am i forgetting?
I really liked these two episodes, having never seen them before. Not at all perfect, but a blend of enough fun and enough logic that they worked for me. And the spectacle, the visuals, the music, the acting. With a bigger budget and a bit more time to develop, this could have been Voyager’s “Star Trek IV”.
Oh wow, threaded replies?
I can’t help but like this one, it’s just a really fun episode, holodeck nonsense be damned (or maybe praised every once in a while). The tension felt real, even if we knew all our regulars would live.