479. ProjectionsFORMULA: Ship in a Bottle + Distant Voices + Frame of Mind + bits of Caretaker
WHY WE LIKE IT: Barclay.
WHY WE DON'T: The new holodeck set. None of it happened.
REVIEW: An episode that looks like it was written by Philip K. Dick? Must be Brannon Braga's doing. While I found his reality benders an entertaining change of page on TNG, they seem to come too soon and too frequently on Voyager. Though making everyone real a hologram and the hologram a real person is a fun notion, it seems like every show has now had it's "one character wakes up alone on the ship" brain teaser episode, so it feels very derivative. And for a malfunction in the program, it seems altogether too coherent an "alternate reality".
Despite the "here we go again" nature of the premise, there's some good comedy here. The very notion that Reg Barclay was in charge of the EMH's social skills is subversively funny, and the show has a lot of fun with the Doctor's foreknowledge once the simulation is reset to Caretaker. There's the deletion of key characters that annoy the EMH, Neelix's frying pan fight with a Kazon, and Kes' recasting as the Doctor's wife (she's most responsible for his thinking of himself as a "person", so definitely an important part of this hallucination).
We also learn a little bit about the EMH's early development, and the name Lewis Zimmerman is thrown at us for the first time. The series bible famously has Zimmerman as the EMH's name, but despite the confusion here, that didn't stick any more than Schweitzer did. Barclay probably worked on the program between Generations and First Contact, and his presence is welcome, though it's a case of forcing a cool recurring character into the proceedings despite the distance. I like Barclay, but I do wish Voyager would be a little braver with its concept sometimes.
In the end, we know Voyager can't have been a simulation gone wrong all this time, so it's a matter of watching the Doctor go through the usual hoops until the holoprogram ends. The episode can't quite maintain a sense of suspense. I think it's the first time we see the new holodeck set, and it looks like a step back to me. More manageable as a set, but I liked TNG's yellow-on-black grid a heck of a lot more. The idea of projectors elsewhere on the ship is an interesting one that would give the Doctor more mobility, but it's part of the fantasy, so we'll have to wait a bit longer for that.
LESSON: It's not fun being real.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: It's entertaining enough, but not quite as involving as it wants to be because "it never happened" (again).
5 comments:
Even through it never happened it does have important repercussions. This episode sets up the home team back in the Alpha Quadrant that will allow the writers to set stories on Earth that aren't fantasies or time travel. Knowing that there are people at home that still remember and care about Voyager is a valuable addition to the series mythos.
Not that much, as I recall. Zimmerman is mentioned here, but not seen until later. And Barclay's connection to Voyager isn't set up here (the Pathfinder project). If he helped test the EMH, well, that's not a Voyager connection since one was installed in many ships.
Both characters will need to be reintroduced in the proper context, so this episode doesn't actually have "repurcussions" per se. My opinion is subject to change as I watch the various episodes, of course.
This marks the first of the More Interesting Alternate/Parallel/Fictional versions that includes the entire crew rather than just one member of it. This trope is turning up even more often than I'd remembered it. (And, at least later on, it does tend to show up in some of the best episodes of the show, probably because of the whole 'more interesting' bit.)
Even if this episode didn't officially establish Barclay and Zimmerman, it set them up in the writer's minds as toys to be played with later. I suppose I oversold that in my first comment. Sorry.
Nah, don't worry about it. I get your point.
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