“Projections”
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Season 2, Episode 3
Production episode 117
Original air date: September 11, 1995
Stardate: 48892.1
Captain’s log. The EMH is activated to an empty sickbay. The computer states that there is nobody on board, but the ship is at red alert, and there are no escape pods left. The last log entry is a chaotic one by Janeway, which gives incomplete information, only that they’re under attack.
Eventually, the doors are pried open by Torres, who is injured. Strangely, none of the medical tricorders are picking up her life signs. Internal sensors aren’t working right, which is why her life sign wasn’t detected by the computer, either, but as far as Torres knows, only she and Janeway are still on the ship, and the captain is injured on the bridge. They were attacked by the Kazon and had to abandon ship because the warp core was going critical. Janeway and Torres managed to get the core ejected before it went boom.
The turbolifts are out—Torres had to go to sickbay on foot. The EMH says she has to go back on foot with a medical kit and a comm channel open, but she says that they’ve been working on putting holoprojectors in certain areas of the ship, including the bridge, engineering, and the mess hall. They haven’t tested them yet, but no time like the present…
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The EMH arrives on the bridge for the first time, and it’s a wreck. He is able to treat Janeway, though his tricorder remains useless. They then get a communiqué from Neelix, who it turns out is in the mess hall, in a fight with a Kazon. Janeway transfers the EMH to the mess hall and he distracts the Kazon long enough for Neelix to take him out with a sauté pan.
However, somehow, the EMH came out of that altercation with a cut—and pain. He transfers back to sickbay and is very confused as to how he can be injured. What’s stranger is that the tricorder is picking up his life signs. Janeway and Neelix arrive with the Kazon as a prisoner, with Janeway asking that the EMH set up an ARA scan while they interrogate him. But the EMH is more confused because he’s still not picking up anyone else’s life sign readings.
Janeway thinks there may be a malfunction in the holoemitters, and she instructs the computer to shut off any holograms. At that command, Janeway, Neelix, Torres, and the Kazon all disappear while the EMH remains.
The computer says that the others were programs that were discontinued—and then Reginald Barclay appears.
He tells the EMH that he isn’t really an Emergency Medical Hologram. He is Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, and he’s running a long-term simulation of a fictional ship, Voyager, that’s lost in the Delta Quadrant, by way of studying the effects of long-term isolation on a crew.
The EMH has trouble with this, but Barclay explains that the holodeck on Jupiter Station was hit with a burst of kinoplasmic radiation, which has caused a malfunction. Barclay isn’t actually there, he’s a holographic projection from the observation room, but it took six hours to insert him into the program—that’s how borked it is.
The neurological damage to Zimmerman is considerable, according to Barclay, and will kill him if he stays in the holodeck much longer. The only way to get him out is to end the program, but all attempts to do so have failed. So they have to end it naturally. There were two possible endings to the scenario: success (getting back to the Alpha Quadrant) or destruction. Barclay says the best bet is to just destroy the ship. The EMH is reluctant.
Barclay proves it’s a simulation by doing the one thing he can still do to affect the program, and that’s start it all over. He resets it to the day they fell through the Caretaker’s rabbit hole and Kim activated him. He goes through the events of that day before finally giving in. He also deletes Paris and then everyone else from sickbay.
He goes with Barclay to engineering, where Janeway is supervising repairs. She’s confused as to the appearance of the EMH and an engineer she doesn’t know. However, the Caretaker whisks her and the rest of the engineering crew away before she can arrest them.
They’re about to destroy the ship when Chakotay appears. This confuses the EMH, as everyone should be at the array by this point. (He doesn’t mention this, but Chakotay also wasn’t part of the crew at this stage yet, either.) Chakotay explains that the EMH was on the holodeck playing a holonovel when Voyager was hit with kinoplasmic radiation. He’s locked in a feedback loop, and they’re trying to get him out. The pain he’s felt has been how he’s reacted to his memory circuits degrading. If he destroys Voyager in the simulation, he will also be destroyed. He just has to wait it out, they almost have the problem fixed.
The EMH doesn’t know what to believe, as Chakotay’s story is very similar to Barclay’s. Barclay then raises the stakes by bringing in a holographic projection of Zimmerman’s wife, Kes. Turns out that the character of Kes on the Voyager holoprogram was based on Zimmerman’s one true love.
Collapsing on the deck, Zimmerman gets inveigled from both Barclay and Chakotay—
—and then he wakes up in sickbay. Kim, Tuvok, and Kes are there, and they tell him the same thing Chakotay said: he was taking a Janeway-mandated day off on the holodeck when they got hit with kinoplasmic radiation, which messed with his matrix. He’s fine now.
Tuvok and Kim leave, and the EMH talks to Kes—who then reveals herself to be Kes Zimmerman, who’s devastated to learn that her husband doesn’t love her (which the EMH said to Kes). Barclay reappears, and the EMH starts to have multiple delusions, including seeing himself on the biobed injured and talking in Janeway’s voice.
And then he appears on the holodeck with Janeway, Chakotay, and Kim. Voyager hit a subspace anomaly that sent a radiation surge through the ship’s computer, including the holodeck, where the EMH was in a holonovel. Apparently, his program’s way of dealing with the surge was to create a detailed existential delusion. He discusses it with Kes, who says that having an existential crisis is something every living thing goes through, when they question their reasons for existing.
The EMH also sticks his arm through the sickbay door—where it disappears, as there are no holoemitters in the corridor—which he finds as something of a relief.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Kinoplasmic radiation is the latest made-up radiation type that can do whatever the plot requires it to do.
There’s coffee in that nebula! The holographic Janeway stays on board to try to keep the ship intact, but has everyone else except Torres abandon ship in case she can’t. Even the holographic captain goes down with the sinking ship.
Half and half. The holographic Torres has set up holoemitters on various parts of the ship to allow the EMH to go places other than sickbay and the holodecks. Sadly, this was just an artifact of the delusional program, and no such project was undertaken on the real Voyager. The EMH won’t be able to roam freely until he gets a mobile emitter in the third season’s “Future’s End” two-parter.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH was designed on Jupiter Station by Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, assisted by Barclay. When stuck in a feedback loop from the kinoplasmic radiation, his program created a very bizarre delusion to keep him occupied. Chakotay makes it clear that the crew considers him a friend and comrade regardless of his holographic status, and it’s also obvious that the EMH has great fondness for Kes in particular and the crew in general (except for Paris, anyhow).
Everyone comes to Neelix’s. The holographic Neelix throws food at the Kazon to keep him at bay, and I kept waiting for John Belushi to appear and scream, “FOOD FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!” Then he hits the Kazon with a sauté pan, which was delightful.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. When she learns that she was his wife in the EMH’s delusion, Kes asks that they keep it to themselves, as Neelix might get jealous. My first thought upon her saying that was, “So you know he’s a toxic asshole, why are you still with him?”
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Except for the final scene, the entire episode takes place on the holodeck, kinda. Indeed, Janeway, Chakotay, Kim, Kes, and the EMH are the only characters who really appear, and the former four only in the last two scenes—we only get holographic versions of Torres, Neelix, and Tuvok.
Do it.
“Did I program Mr. Paris to be so annoying?”
“Actually, I programmed him. I modeled him after my cousin Frank.”
–The EMH asking about the “simulation” of Paris, and the simulated Barclay giving a delightful answer.
Welcome aboard. Only one guest in this one, and it’s the triumphant return to Trek of Dwight Schultz as a hallucination of Reginald Barclay. Schultz was last seen as the real Barclay in TNG’s “Genesis,” and will next be seen in First Contact. He’ll return to Voyager as the real Barclay five more times in the sixth and seventh seasons, starting in “Pathfinder.”
Trivial matters: Like “The 37’s” before it and “Elogium” and “Twisted” after it, this episode was produced for the first season but held back for season two by the network.
This is the first of three Voyager episodes directed by Jonathan Frakes, who has at this stage directed episodes of five of the nine extant Trek TV series (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Discovery, and Picard; he obviously didn’t direct any episodes of the original or animated series, nor any of Enterprise, and he hasn’t yet directed any of the Short Treks). Amusingly, all three Voyager episodes he helmed are one-word titles beginning with the letter P—the others are “Parturition” and “Prototype.” After working with them extensively in this episode, Frakes made sure there were cameos for both Dwight Schultz and Robert Picardo in the movie First Contact (which he directed), the former fangoobering Zefram Cochrane as Barclay, the latter as the Enterprise’s EMH.
This episode establishes that Lewis Zimmerman modeled the EMH to look and sound exactly like him. Zimmerman himself will be seen in the DS9 episode “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” as well as two subsequent Voyager episodes, “The Swarm” (a holographic re-creation) and “Life Line” (the real one).
Barclay is established as being one the engineers who helped Zimmerman design the EMH.
The original conception was to have Geordi La Forge be the engineer trying to convince “Zimmerman,” but writer Brannon Braga decided having it be Barclay would be more fun.
Several scenes from “Caretaker” are re-created and re-done here, including the EMH’s initial activation and Janeway’s working in engineering right before the Caretaker kidnapped everyone.
Set a course for home. “Well, it’s bigger than I thought.” On the one hand, this episode is a less surreal redo of TNG‘s “Frame of Mind,” also a Brannon Braga script (and one that heavily featured Jonathan Frakes, who directed this one). It takes a much more linear approach to the main character’s breakdown, but given that the main character is a computer program, this makes sense.
And the main reason why it works despite its derivative nature is the same reason why every episode that focuses on the EMH works, to wit, the superlative work by Robert Picardo in the role.
I realized watching this that one of the things I like about the EMH is also one of the things I like about the characters of Jonathan Banks’s Mike Ehrmantraut on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House on House: characters who are smarter than everyone around them and who have absolutely no patience with people dumber than them, which is pretty much everyone, and they’re just disgusted and fed up with all of it.
But Picardo adds another dimension to the EMH because, while he starts out that way—mainly because that’s also Lewis Zimmerman’s personality, as we later see in DS9’s “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” and the character’s two subsequent Voyager appearances—it’s leavened with the desire to expand his experiences, to learn more, to become less a program and more a person. It’s similar to the journey Data went on, only with a thousand percent more sarcasm.
Picardo is aided and abetted by the always-wonderful Dwight Schultz as a version of Reg Barclay. Picardo’s snotty confusion goes nicely with Barclay’s desperate urging, giving us a delightful two-character play for the latter half of the episode.
Indeed, my only real complaint about the episode is that the situation set up in the teaser, with the EMH seemingly alone on a ship that’s been abandoned after a catastrophic Kazon attack, is one that I would have loved to have seen play out, and I’m kinda disappointed that it was all an illusion.
However, the twists and turns the episode takes are fun, and the notion that the entire series has been a holographic simulation is a fun one to play with for a while. And besides, some of it is totally convincing, from Kes’s template being Zimmerman’s wife to Paris’s template being Barclay’s annoying cousin Frank.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido has started a YouTube channel called “KRAD COVID readings,” where he’s reading his works of short fiction, by way of giving folks some entertainment while they’re at home because of the coronavirus. Please do subscribe!
“a thousand percent more sarcasm.”
But a thousand percent of zero is still zero. I don’t recall Data ever being sarcastic.
But,yes, lots of fun here.
Two episodes back-to-back watchable on the strength of the main actor. I don’t remember the actors feeling so significant to episode quality in TNG or DS9.
As nice as it would be been to see Geordi, Barclay was definitely the right choice for this. He was a much better foil for the Doctor.
I seem to have little memory of this episode, because I’ve evidently conflated it in my memory with the more interesting Doctor plotline in “The Swarm.” I remembered the bit about the abortive attempt to set up holoemitters in various areas, but I didn’t remember it was only in simulation (although wasn’t it put forth as a possibility in episode 2 or 3 or something?).
I do love the joke that Barclay was the one responsible for testing the EMH’s interpersonal skills. It explains so much!
wiredog: I was told there would be no math in this debate…………….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who wonders who gets that reference
This is a really fun episode, and one of the smartest plays is not to reveal what’s “really” going on until almost the last minute. Unlike Frame of Mind, where it’s possible either Riker is still a prisoner or there’s just something wrong with him, of course we know Barclay is full of it, because obviously we’re not resetting the series with a new premise of watching Lewis Zimmerman at Jupiter station. Voyager has a lot of early episodes that are unjustly forgotten.
No real memory of this episode, so watching it was a treat. I’m inclined to put it in my top 20 Trek episodes. I admit I’m a sucker for these types of episodes where the mystery starts from the very beginning. Reminds me a lot of one of my all time favorite TV episodes: Firefly‘s “Out of Gas.” So I was pretty hooked from the very beginning. The episode almost lost me with the ridiculous food fight bit with Neelix (ugh) but it rebounded and ended rather nicely. One other minor complaint would be Beltran’s acting when he is projected in. It was probably the direction he was given, but he came off oddly flat and gave me the impression of hiding a smirk. It’s as though he was trying to act non-convincing so that the viewer wouldn’t believe him. It was weird.
But, overall, one of my favorite episodes. Picardo nailed it.
Oh, and Kes’ hair is starting to look more life-like. At least, as compared to whatever that wig was that they stuck on her in the beginning.
I love Neelix’s “Missed me” taunt tot he Kazon. Makes me laugh every time.
Picardo, as always, is amazing.
Bobby
I forgot my favorite part! When the Doctor said, with absolute glee on his face, “Computer, delete Paris.”
Well, if Voyager is conciously designed to be nostalgic towards TNG, they might as well poach the among the best that show has to offer. Projections makes excellent use of Dwight Schultz as holo-Barclay. Pairing him with the Doctor makes for an entertaining hour, even if you know it’s all going to be resolved at the end.
And they might as well ape one of TNG’s better hours. Frame of Mind has a structure that works perfectly in this scenario. Can’t blame Braga for freely borrowing from one of his better works. You can’t go wrong with a questioning your own reality story in a show like this.
And Frakes – as usual – brings a Rob Bowman-esque level of direction to the proceedings, nailing the tone and setting. And Picardo rises to the occasion, bringing a sense of helplessness and a certain level of irascibility that makes sense when you consider who programmed him.
directed episodes of five of the nine extant Trek TV series for some reason it caught my eye but shouldn’t it be directed five episodes from the nine extant Trek series ?
@11/templarsteel: No, Frakes has directed 19 Trek episodes across five series, which Keith listed in the parenthetical immediately after what you quoted.
@@.-@, krad: I remember nothing of the skit itself, but I’m pretty sure that was Chevy Chase on SNL.
“kinoplasmic radiation”
Must only affect cinema.
It bugged me that Chakotay was the one ‘sent in’ to talk to the EMH instead of Kes, but then she showed up as his ‘wife’ & I was all, ok, that’s why! It would have been interesting to see Kes vs Kes though.
@krad: You mentioned that Frakes worked extensively with Picardo and Schultz in this episode and thus worked to include them in cameos in First Contact. But Ethan Phillips was included in a cameo in the same film as well (as the holographic maître’d) so did Frakes also try to include him in the film for the same reasoning?
But yes, this episode is a lot of fun. Picardo is always reliable and It’s always great to see Dwight Schultz. Stories that question the nature of reality are usually entertaining. We got to see a human Kes (I think she had no prosthetics on her ears in the simulation scenes anyway). And my favorite scene is where Barclay slaps the EMH and the EMH slaps Barclay back. Love that! I think the EMH slaps or is slapped at least a few times during the course of this series.
However, my biggest (but still minor) grievance with this story is at the very beginning where we see the EMH activated in sickbay and then in the scenes where he moves around to the bridge and to the mess hall and back again to sickbay by way of holoemitter. Of course we all know that the EMH is not really a human, but then how could the EMH ever really be fooled into believing he’s human by fake Barclay and Kes when he’s been moving about Voyager as a holo-projection?
Hiwever
@16/GarretH: “how could the EMH ever really be fooled into believing he’s human by fake Barclay and Kes when he’s been moving about Voyager as a holo-projection?”
Because from his perspective (as opposed to an outside observer’s), it would simply look as if his surroundings were changing around him. Which could just be an illusion created by the holodeck.
@17: Okay, but it doesn’t help from the viewers’ perspective to buy into the EMH’s dilemma either. I mean, like I said before, we know he’s not really human but if they at least made it less obvious then we could better understand how the other viewpoint could be true.
@18 On the other hand, given how much I hate “it’s all a dream/hallucination/hologram” episodes, I like the subtle reassurance that it’s not a delusion.
@19: So you’re saying you hated this episode then?
I’ve heard it suggested that there’s no mystery in this episode because we all know that the Doctor’s the EMH, Voyager’s a real ship and everything has to be back to normal by the end. That’s true to a point but it’s still an enjoyable ride. Mainly because we get wall-to-wall Robert Picardo, filling it with brilliant moments: His “Oh for goodness sake” reaction when Janeway deactivates the holograms and everyone but him vanishes (brilliantly chosen as the main image of this rewatch!). His glee at deleting Paris and Kim. The increasing feeling of “What?” when he realises Kes still thinks she’s his wife.
Some elements aren’t entirely explained. I go back and forth on whether that’s the real Chakotay in Engineering, but I’m mostly coming down on the side of it not being. (He says they’re trying to transfer the Doctor to Sickbay but he’s still on the holodeck when everything’s resolved, and then the real Chakotay repeats information that the other Chakotay already gave him.) A shame, because that means “Chakotay” saying the Doctor’s their friend is just his imagination. That’s definitely not the real Kim in Sickbay, so we don’t actually know if his story about Barclay helping design the Doctor and test his interpersonal skills is true or not: I find it utterly bizarre that no-one ever seems to notice that and just states it as if it’s an established fact! (We do eventually learn that the real Barclay and Zimmerman are colleagues though. Do we really not see Zimmerman again after “Life Line”? I was convinced he appeared more than that, which shows how much of an impact he made.)
That last scene was hilarious, with Kes’ reaction to her and the Doctor being married and gentle teasing about whether or not he’s a hologram. Up until now, these two have been about giving the other a purpose, but someone seems to have noticed that, as “Learning Curve” demonstrated, they can also be very funny together. (And hey, if I wanted an imaginary wife, I’d probably choose Kes too. And have done, on occasion.)
Barclay becomes the second character in the series to refer to Voyager as “the Voyager”. The Doctor again says Zimmerman looks like him, but apparently didn’t know he looked exactly like him, so that sorts out one apparent discrepancy with “The Cloud”.
@3/CLB: You may be thinking of “Persistence of Vision”, which features a less-than-successful attempt to transfer the Doctor to Engineering.
@21/cap-mjb: “That’s definitely not the real Kim in Sickbay, so we don’t actually know if his story about Barclay helping design the Doctor and test his interpersonal skills is true or not: I find it utterly bizarre that no-one ever seems to notice that and just states it as if it’s an established fact!”
Well, it has to be, doesn’t it? Lt. Barclay is a real person. The only way the Doctor could hallucinate him is if he had some prior knowledge of Barclay, if the hallucination was based on an actual memory from his early development and testing.
@22/CLB: “Well, it has to be, doesn’t it? Lt. Barclay is a real person. The only way the Doctor could hallucinate him is if he had some prior knowledge of Barclay, if the hallucination was based on an actual memory from his early development and testing.”
He wasn’t hallucinating him. He was interacting with a holographic projection of him, just as he was interacting with accurate holographic projections of the bridge and other parts of the ship that he’s never encountered, and witnessing events from “Caretaker” that he wasn’t there for like Janeway stabilising the warp core. The messed-up holodeck computer could have just chosen a Starfleet officer from its database at random, maybe one who has a connection with Zimmerman. (I have however always been sceptical about the idea that Barclay was still on the Enterprise in “Genesis”, less than a year before Voyager was lost, and on the Enterprise-E in First Contact, leaving a very small window for him to have served a tour on Jupiter Station and worked on the development of the EMH. So it may be that he really was just a random Starfleet officer and him later working with Zimmerman is a pure coincidence.)
EDIT: Actually, thinking about it, Janeway and the others are suddenly with the Doctor on the holodeck when everything’s sorted. It may be he was simply deactivated and then reactivated and it only appears instantaneous to him, or there may be more than one level of reality going on. Either way though, the point remains that the Doctor isn’t the only source of information involved. (It gets even more thorny when Voyager encounter the real Barclay and there’s no mention of him having a connection with the Doctor, but we’ll talk about that when we get there.)
@23/cap-mjb: “At random” is the problem. When weighing alternative possibilities, what matters is their relative probability. Random coincidences, by their very nature, are less probable than things that happen because of real causal connections.
Besides, the delusion was explained as arising from the Doctor’s own “memory circuits.” Granted, it’s unclear what was real and what wasn’t at that point, but at the end, the Doctor and Kes were speaking as though the earlier exposition about the nature of the malfunction had been true even if other details had not. So I see no reason to reject the explanation we were given; it seems like sheer contrariness to dismiss it all for no reason and argue for a far less plausible — and deeply unsatisfying — explanation like “Ahh, it was just some incredibly unlikely fluke.”
As for Barclay, he wasn’t seen or mentioned for more than a year between “Ship in a Bottle” (episode 6×12) and “Genesis” (episode 7×19) — unless you count ENT: “These Are the Voyages” claiming he was aboard as of “The Pegasus” (7×12), but that’s still a whole year between mentions. He could’ve been reassigned to Jupiter Station during that year. Maybe he requested the transfer in the wake of his experiences with Moriarty, in hopes of finding a way to free him from his holographic prison.
@24/CLB: Ah, we seem to have just crossed over. That’s the problem with editing… Anyway, what this basically comes down to is that it’s possible that Barclay really did work on the EMH, but there’s no definitive proof either way. You might find that’s the explanation that you like best, but that’s a far cry from it being confirmed as fact.
@25/cap-mjb: It’s not about “liking” or “fact.” Neither is a valid objective standard; the former is irrelevant and the latter requires unattainable certainty. What matters, as I said, is weighing the probability of different explanations. “It’s possible” is a meaningless assertion, because countless things are possible. What matters is how probable they are in relation to one another, and whether they have evidentiary support or not. To arbitrarily reject a model based on the available evidence just because there’s less than 100% certainty of its truth is an overreaction, because there’s never 100% certainty. And a model based on the best available evidence is preferable to a model based on nothing but “Well, it could be!” The latter is just being contrary for the hell of it and adds nothing of value to the discussion.
@20 Robert Picardo makes up for a great many sins.
I actually haven’t seen this episode, but your review makes it sound rather interesting, krad (it’s especially interesting to learn that Mr Barclay became an honorary member of the Voyager crew so early in the series – even before Seven of Nine made her debut!).
I’ve never watched BREAKING BAD (or it’s spin-off) but seeing The Doctor compared to Gregory House MD left me acutely offended on our favourite EMH’s behalf; I loathe Gregory House with the fury of a Klingon warrior being compared to a Ferengi huckster for the simple reason that he’s an abusive, manipulative, egocentric ass who belongs on the breadline and not in any position of trust & responsibility.
Please note, Mr Di Candido, that this is a summation of my personal opinion of HOUSE MD and not a critique of your fondness for him; ‘different strokes for different folks’ as the poet put it – I simply can’t stand the character and have no intention of learning to love him. For all his snark Holo-doc likes helping people and as a rule treats them rather well; I’m not sure House enjoys anything but scoring points in his ongoing quest to make his colleagues & his subordinates as miserable as himself.
@28: I don’t believe Barclay became an honorary member of Voyager until the 6th season when the “real” Barclay from the Alpha Quadrant made contact with the ship. His holographic/imagined appearance here in the 2nd season (way before Seven shows up) doesn’t count.
And in regards to BREAKING BAD since it was brought up, that is subjectively one of the best shows of all time and you should really check it out!
@28 – I imagine Keith is not referring to House’s entire personality, but rather that one aspect of it.
@28 & 30: Yeah, there’s a difference between finding a fictional character entertaining to watch and approving of them as a person. Some of the most entertaining characters are awful people we’d never want to cross paths with in real life — because they give fine actors a chance to cut loose and make their awfulness endlessly entertaining. We see plenty of this in Trek with characters like Harry Mudd, Q, and Gul Dukat.
Of course, the Doctor isn’t really in that category, but he does bring the same level of snark game as someone like Q.
ED: No argument that Greg House is a piece of shit, but — as Austin said — it’s the aspect of his personality that I mentioned that I find interesting to watch. I wouldn’t want him to be my friend, or my doctor, or my boss, but he’s fun to watch a TV show about. (I’ve also been a fan of Hugh Laurie’s from waaaaaaaaay back in his days on Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster and A Bit of Fry and Laurie…..)
Also, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are two of the absolute best TV series produced in the history of the medium, and I do not say that lightly. You should watch them.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
After that barely watchable second season opener we’re treated to the back-to-back great episodes “Initiations” & “Projections”. Out of the pair I do favor the latter a bit more simply because the Doctor was easily my favorite character from the Voyager series.
I hadn’t been aware that the original proposal for this episode was to use Geordi La Forge here instead of Barclay. But, as with “Projections”, when I watched the episode the first time it aired, I absolutely was convinced that the part had been written specifically with that actor in mind. And, just like it paid off hugely by casting Aron Eisenberg as Kar in “Projections” where he was excellent, using Dwight Schultz was the right decision here. I just can’t picture Levar Burton’s Geordi being nearly the perfect foil to the Doctor as Schultz’s Barclay is. Someone somewhere deserves kudos for these casting decisions.
I remember being baffled throughout this episode, wondering what the heck was going on with the Doctor. Had an alien force somehow hijacked his program? That was my initial presumption as Barclay kept pestering him to terminate the program by blowing up Voyager. Lots of neat twists & turns in this one – especially the double-take at the conclusion. Another memorable moment was when the Doctor (gleefully) says “Computer, delete Paris.”
One thing I noticed during this rewatch that I hadn’t caught in my previous 2 to 3 viewings of this over the years: when Kes appears onscreen for the first time, she doesn’t have her ever-present (and easily identifiable) Ocampan ears. That part of her make-up isn’t seen until the Doctor is initially revived in sick bay. This was done (of course) because in the illusion she is supposed to be the Doctor’s human wife. I just never picked up on the change in make-up for whatever reason….
When I re-watched this awhile back, I discovered that I had completely forgotten that Barclay was in this episode. I remembered the episode itself, but I didn’t remember that the engineer following the doctor around was actually Barclay. I don’t know HOW I forgot that, because I love Barclay. I remembered that he showed up later in the series. I just can’t believe I forgot about him appearing in this episode. Considering I was raised on TNG, you’d think the reappearance of a beloved character (beloved by me, at least) would be something I’d remember.
@26/CLB: Okay, well my weighing of the “probability” of evidence is that the only person that says Barclay worked on designing the EMH and tested his interpersonal skills is a figment of the Doctor’s imagination (or a projection from a malfunctioning holodeck), so it probably isn’t true and we’ve no more reason to accept it than we are to accept that the Doctor is really an amnesiac Lewis Zimmerman and the rest of the series is a delusion of his. It’s random whichever way you look at it. If the information comes from the Doctor, whose short-term memory is obviously faulty but remembers every other aspect of his experience, why does he need someone else to tell him? That to me suggests that the information is wrong. He doesn’t seem to have any personal experience of Barclay: I highly doubt that Barclay testing his interpersonal skills means personally interacting with EMHs before they’re installed, and if it did, then either that’s a lot of EMHs or a startling coincidence that he worked with the one on Voyager. Looking at it logically, given that the Doctor casts Kes in the role of his wife, it would make more sense for him to have cast someone he knows, like Torres or Kim, as his assistant.
It becomes even less probable in later seasons, when Barclay becomes a semi-regular character and has a lot of involvement with the Doctor but his supposed role in the Doctor’s creation is never mentioned. That does of course mean we need another explanation for “Why Barclay?” but the guy does have a disease named after him: The holodeck/the Doctor’s subconscious is just as likely to have latched onto a reference to Barclay’s Irumodic Syndrome as it is to have chosen a name from a list of engineers who worked on him.
@29.GarretH: I was able to watch the episode where Mr Barclay is officially proclaimed an honorary crew member (repeated on the local ‘if it couldn’t happen in Real Life it goes here’ channel) a week or so ago, but I was referring more to the fact that Mr Dwight Schultz (as one of the most plot significant and regularly-recurring guest stars) would have arguably earned the title even if Reginald hadn’t been given it. (-:
@30 & 31: I’m not seeking to question Mr DeCandido’s taste or infer any sinister motivation on his part, I just Hate HOUSE MD so much that seeing the EMH compared with him worried me a great deal and one wanted to speak up in defence of the latter.
@32.krad: I appreciate your courtesy and share your love of a little bit of Laurie; Thank You for your recommendation r.e. BREAKING BAD & BETTER CALL SAUL, but I’m afraid that neither show is on my ‘To Watch’ list for the simple reason that Real Life is bleak enough already – a major reason I have absolutely zero taste for Villain Protagonists, however sympathetic their reasons for taking the first steps down the long road to Hell.
As I said earlier, “different strokes for different folks”. (-:
I honestly did not remember Barclay (or a version of him, at least) showing up so soon on VOY, and I didn’t rewatch the show that long ago. Glad it was Barclay and not Geordi.
Also, I was absolutely certain that they had actually installed holoemitters in the bridge and other places. Guess it was just the idea in this episode that got stuck in my head, as well as the emitters on the Prometheus, and one bit in another episode where B’elanna tries to install one in Engineering and it doesn’t work well.
@35 – cap-mjb: If Barclay interacted with the original EMH program, and then they copied that to several ships, then yes, he interacted with all of them. And the Irumodic Syndrome is Picard’s, not Barclay’s, that was Barclay’s Protomorphosis Syndrome.
This is fun. Everybody remembers fun, right?
It’s interesting seeing a “what if the holodeck is FUBAR” episode from 1) completely within the holodeck and b) from the perspective of one of the holograms.
Waaaaayyyy more than a day late, and probably more than a dollar short, but I have a weird fondness for the moment when Chakotay tells the Doctor “It doesn’t matter what you’re made of!” Some combination of Beltran’s delivery and the score really made that moment stick for me.
Tim Wilson: People are still commenting on TNG Rewatch entries I wrote a decade ago. So you’re fine commenting on something that’s not quite a year old. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What is time, anyway?
This episode is an example of the Cuckoo’s Nest trope, alongside “Shadows and Symbols” as well as “Frame of Mind” and recently, Moon Knight, for that matter. I’m so glad that the first time (outside of the Twilight Zone) I ever saw this trope was Buffy’s “Normal Again”. It’s a little disappointing that I’ve seen so many versions of it now. I love the idea, and I don’t exactly get tired of it, but I’m like, do something more with it?
I like that Kes messes with him in the end. She can be so warm and kind and … creepy af.
In my dream version of this episode, we start in the nowhere that the Doctor retreats to when not activated, and then he boots into reality, and we get his POV. Maybe that happens somewhere down the road. I haven’t seen the whole series…