“Darkling”
Written by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky
Directed by Alex Singer
Season 3, Episode 18
Production episode 161
Original air date: February 19, 1997
Stardate: 50693.2
Captain’s log. Having apparently made it through the Nekrit Expanse, Voyager is at an outpost occupied by the Mikhal Travelers, a people who are well traveled in this region of space, to find out what lays ahead for them. Janeway is listening to tall tales from a man named Nakahn, interrupted by Zahir, who joins them alongside Kes, to puncture the ridiculousness of his tale. Kes and Zahir have been spending a great deal of time together, and they’re obviously smitten with each other.
The EMH is on the holodeck, talking with holographic re-creations of Mahatma Gandhi and George Gordon, Lord Byron, and has also re-created Socrates, T’Pau of Vulcan, Marie Curie, and Leonardo da Vinci (though we only see the former two). He is attempting to improve his personality and is trying to find the best elements of various well-regarded humans, and also one Vulcan. The EMH is also snarky toward Kes about the fact that she hasn’t been available to help him with this project, as she’s been spending so much time on the outpost with Zahir.
Later, Torres is in sickbay with an allergic reaction to the plant life on the outpost—something the EMH warned all the away teams about in his preliminary report, but which Torres ignored. Even as he treats her, he starts acting very weird, and he explains that he’s trying to improve his personality by adding subroutines of the various other personalities into his matrix. Torres is appalled, as that’s not something you can just do without being very careful about it, as personality subroutines don’t always mix well. She promises to look his program over after her engineering shift is done. The EMH deactivates himself to be safe.
On the outpost, Zahir and Kes walk in a wooded area, and eventually smooch. A mysterious cloaked figure is watching them clandestinely. Kes returns to Voyager at 0300 hours with a very happy just-fucked expression on her face, and does the Walk of Shame down the corridor, where (of course) she bumps into Tuvok, who reminds her of the report that’s due in five hours that she hasn’t started yet.
Kes later goes to Janeway after staying up the rest of the night to finish the report and says she’s seriously considering going on a journey with Zahir. She promises to rejoin Voyager after it’s done. Janeway supports her decision, whatever it might be, but also urges her to give it a few days to be sure, especially since Voyager will be remaining for a few more days.
Zahir goes for a walk in the same area where he and Kes had been (Kes herself is catching up on her sleep), when he’s ambushed and tossed over a cliff by the same cloaked figure as before. That same figure confronts Narkahn, and it turns out to be the EMH, albeit with slightly funkier eyes. (We will refer to this as Evil EMH.) He threatens Narkahn and demands passage off the outpost from him.
Later, Kes goes to sickbay and activates the EMH, now back to his old self. She tells him that Zahir fell from a cliff, and is alive, but badly hurt. He puts on his mobile emitter, but Torres stops him from beaming down, as she needs to run a diagnostic on him immediately. The EMH gives Kes some medical advice for treating Zahir and then goes back to sickbay with Torres.
The engineer explains that he’s incorporated all the elements of the personalities he’s absorbed, including the negative aspects: Byron’s lechery, T’Pau’s ruthlessness, and so on. It’s causing his program to destabilize. She needs to purge the extra personalities, and he also needs to deactivate. But when he tries to shut himself off, instead he just shimmers…
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Tuvok is aiding Mikhal authorities in investigating the assault on Zahir, who is suffering traumatic amnesia and has no memory of the attack, nor is there any forensic evidence on his person. Tuvok is reporting to Janeway on Voyager and the two of them walk into sickbay to find Torres collapsed on the deck. Janeway activates the EMH, who claims that Torres is suffering anaphylactic shock from eating the local vegetables. After Tuvok and Janeway depart, we discover that this is actually Evil EMH, who faked the anaphylaxis symptoms and has paralyzed Torres. He needs her help to remove the EMH from his program, so Evil EMH will be the only personality. Torres refuses, and his program starts to destabilize. So Evil EMH goes to the holodeck instead to try to use the holographic re-creations of the various historical figures.
Tuvok interrogates Nakahn, and then Chakotay brings Zahir to him. He finally remembers some of the attack, including where it happened. He takes Chakotay and Tuvok there, and Tuvok’s examination reveals holographic residue.
Kes goes to sickbay and finds an unconscious Torres. The computer tells her the EMH is on the holodeck, and when she goes there, Evil EMH takes her hostage (having physically trashed the holographic re-creations for reasons the script never bothers to explain). They transport to the outpost, with Evil EMH scattering their trail so Voyager can’t find them. However, Nakahn can’t get them off the outpost because Janeway has cordoned off the area.
Janeway also penetrates Evil EMH’s scattering field enough to pinpoint their location, and Tuvok and Chakotay head there. Evil EMH jumps over a cliff rather than be captured, but Kim is able to get a transporter lock on them as they’re falling and beam them to Voyager. At this point, the subroutines have destabilized completely, and the EMH is back in charge of his own form, and is very confused as to what’s going on.
Torres is able to remove all the subroutines, and Kes also announces that she’s decided to stay on board. The EMH is grateful, and after she leaves sickbay, he recites part of Hippocrates’s oath.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently personality subroutines don’t mix well together in a holographic personage, and causes the hologram to get dissociative identity disorder where the other alter is evil. Sure.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway admits to Kes that in her Academy days, she was the queen of the all-nighters, having waited until the last minute on far too many assignments.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok gets to reprimand Kes on her Walk of Shame, be given information about their potential encounters in the forthcoming region of space from Zahir, and help investigate the assault on Zahir. Busy episode for him…
Half and half. Torres is the one who tells the EMH that he shouldn’t go just dumping personalities into his matrix willy nilly—which, unfortunately, makes her a target of Evil EMH, because she can actually stop him.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH is trying to improve his bedside manner by incorporating the personalities of various famous people. I can see Byron and Gandhi, both of whom have a CHA of 20 (Dungeons & Dragons reference, sorry), and probably Socrates, too (most of what we know of him is secondhand from Plato, so it’s hard to judge), but T’Pau? The one whose response to Kirk’s suffering in the thinner atmosphere was, “the air is the air”? This is who you want your doctor to emulate? And Curie and da Vinci are useful for their scientific curiosity, I suppose, which would probably help with research? I guess?
When he’s Evil EMH, his eyes are beadier and his teeth are different.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. This episode finally makes it clear that Kes’s Tieran-induced breaking up with Neelix has remained the case even after Kes was no longer possessed, as the EMH explicitly references their relationship coming to an end.
In addition, Evil EMH is leering and creepy at both Kes and especially Torres. At one point, Torres is cautioning him that, by mixing personality subroutines, he might get hurt, at which point the EMH notices that he’s put a hand on Torres’s thigh. He removes it quickly.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. For whatever reason, the EMH decides to interview his potential personality additions in the Paxau Resort program instead of, y’know, in sickbay. This is what happens when you build a new set and you want to amortize the cost of it, I guess…
Do it.
“Passion is meant for procreation. Anything further is contrary to divine intention.”
“Really? It is said the angels themselves take pleasure in their bodies of light.”
“And you should take a cold bath. In such cases, it is the finest preventative.”
–The re-creations of Gandhi and Byron arguing about passion. Personally, I’m on Byron’s side…
Welcome aboard. David Lee Smith plays Zahir, while Stephen Davies plays Nakahn. Davies previously appeared twice on DS9 as a Bolian in “Emissary” and a Jem’Hadar in “Hippocratic Oath.” Noel De Souza and Christopher Clarke play the holographic re-creations of Gandhi and Byron, respectively.
In addition, regular extra Sue Henley gets a couple lines of dialogue and an actual credit as the ensign in the turbolift. She’ll get another line in “Year of Hell” and be credited as Ensign Brooks.
Trivial matters: This episode is obviously inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and indeed it had its origin in a story pitch bought from an uncredited freelancer that was pretty much “Voyager does Jekyll & Hyde.”
The Mikhal Travelers and the Tarkan (whom Tuvok is told by Zahir to avoid at all costs) are never seen or mentioned again onscreen, though they do play a role in the short story “Monthuglu” by Craig D.B. Patton in Strange New Worlds, in the post-finale novel The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer, and in the alternate timeline of the short novel Places of Exile by regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett in Myriad Universes: Infinity’s Prism.
This is the second onscreen appearance of T’Pau (played here as a hologram by extra Betty Matsushita), who was introduced in the original series episode “Amok Time,” played by Celia Lovsky. She’ll be seen again as a younger woman in the Enterprise episodes “The Forge,” “Awakening,” and “Kir’Shara,” played by Kara Zediker.
The holographic re-creations of T’Pau and Socrates are playing kal-toh, the Vulcan game of skill introduced in “Alter Ego.”
The EMH says he also re-created Madame Curie and da Vinci, but they are not seen. Janeway will re-create da Vinci on the holodeck at season’s end in “Scorpion,” and again in “Concerning Flight” in the fourth season.
Janeway mentions to Zahir that they can use vorilium, and may detour to a dangerous asteroid to find some. Later this season, in “Favorite Son,” Voyager will find some vorilium.
Set a course for home. “But everyone seems to be treating me like I’m still a child—I’m three years old now!” And now for something I never expected to type at any point in this rewatch (or, indeed, anywhere at all): holy crap, is Robert Picardo awful in this.
This is the only time I’ve seen a performance by Picardo that I would classify as awful. He’s been in so many things, from Stargate (SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe) to Hail Caesar! to Supernatural to The Flash to Justice League Unlimited to China Beach to The Wonder Years and on and on and on, and he’s always been superlative.
And yet, he’s just dreadful as Evil EMH, overenunciating everything, and deepening his voice in a manner that sounds like he’s parodying Christian Bale’s Batman (yes, I know that was a decade later, work with me, here). Truly, what his performance reminds me most of is Alexander Siddig’s horrendous turn as Bashir possessed by Vantika in DS9’s “The Passenger,” which is also the single worst performance of Siddig’s career.
Worse is that the underlying script in this part of the Picardo’s nadir as an actor is really dumb. Both Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga, who collaborated on the story (Menosky wrote the script) have a tendency to go for high concept with little regard to scientific plausibility, and while sometimes that gets you “Darmok” or “Cause and Effect,” far too often it gets you “Masks” and “Threshold“—and “Darkling,” because man, is this dumb, and the concept isn’t actually that interesting, especially when you factor in Picardo’s lame-ass performance as Evil EMH. It makes little sense that Byron’s lechery, T’Pau’s ruthlessness, Gandhi’s single-mindedness, and Socrates’s disdain for authority would somehow combine to create a second personality that only has those features.
Not to mention the sheer laziness of who the EMH chooses. Why all humans, plus a single Vulcan? If this were still the Starfleet of the earliest episodes of the original series that was written as if it was an Earth service, with Spock as the token alien, that would be one thing, but it makes no sense for the EMH to not choose from all across the United Federation of Planets beyond Vulcan—why no brilliant Andorians or Tellarites or Betazoids or Bolians or Trill or Gallamites? (At least there’s some diversity among the humans, not just famous white dudes, thanks to having Gandhi and Curie)
Even worse than all that, though, is that the episode starts out so promising. The Mikhal Travelers are a very nifty idea, and it’s a spectacularly blown opportunity to never have seen them again—Voyager should have been bumping into their little ships all over the place for the next year or so. This is the second letdown in a row after the Nekrit Expanse, which got all this buildup in “Fair Trade,” and then was a big ol’ nothing after that, with the only real sop to it being Paris complaining that it was boring in “Unity.”
It also started with a very interesting examination of Kes. She’s blossomed on Voyager, and she’s no longer tethered directly to Neelix. Under the tutelage of the EMH, Tuvok, and Janeway, she’s developed tremendously, and the urge for her to move beyond the ship is understandable, and was worth dedicating more than one or two conversations to. It’s then forgotten and ignored for the back half of the episode so we can do Evil EMH, and then it’s fobbed off in an offhand remark by Kes at the very end. At no point do we learn how Zahir feels about Kes refusing his offer, nor do the two of them get any kind of goodbye.
This episode leads with a very promising story that it then abandons and ruins it in order to do a hoary Jekyll-and-Hyde pastiche that serves only to put a rare blemish on a great actor’s resumé.
Warp factor rating: 2
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Picardo had to chew so much scenery here and it really was awful. The script had him waxing about the merits of evilness, for God’s sake! But what really had me cracking up, to the point that I went back and played the part again, was the EMH saying, about his phaser, “It’s set…to kill!” Dying laughing, guys. The way Picardo delivered it, so over-the-top, was just absurd. Not sure if he was trying to be really cheesy there, but it was comic gold.
I was always disappointed that they were just *poof* through the Nekrit Expanse. It would have been cool to have a Year Of Hell-style trip through there for at least *one* episode, darn it! Especially since it was actually set up pretty well, and in a Neelix episode, no less! And the idea of having people who are Space Nomads is actually a pretty cool one, and the sort of thing I wish they had bumped into more of, both in Voyager and in Trek in general. You’d think there’d be all kind of groups of people who lived most of their time in space (a la the crew of the Serenity in Firefly), stopping off at outposts along the way, trading and picking up odd jobs. They are the sort of people that could have been really useful to Voyager- as they’d have a good knowledge of the area, could tell them where to stop off to get supplies, and would likely be willing to trade for things that Voyager would actually be willing to give them (instead of the usual “we want the secret to your weapons and replicators”).
And agreed, much those it hurts my heart, that this is undoubtedly Picardo’s worst performance, which is even more disappointing when you’ve seen other episodes where the EHM is on the fritz, and he does it quite well (he is heart-breakingly confused when he is exceeding his data limit, and quite spectacularly creepy when he is singing “My Darling Clementine” with Seven of Nine in Equinox).
My favorite part here was the exploration of Kes trying to spread her wings. It frustrated me that they created this character with such a short lifespan and then had her squander much of it hovering around sickbay. This episode was a plausible development for her, and I loved her interplay here with her surrogate-mom figure Janeway — although Zahir was extremely dull. It might’ve been cooler, come to think of it, if Kes had been inspired to go wandering by a female Traveler that she bonded with as a friend, instead of having this major life choice be catalyzed by her romantic interest in a man. (In the alternate timeline of Places of Exile, I had her hook up with Zahir initially but then realize she’d grown beyond him.)
Incidentally, the plural of “Tarkan” is “Tarkan,” not “Tarkans.” Tuvok asks, “The Tarkan are that powerful?” I remember making sure I got that right in PoE.
Also, Lord Byron was George Gordon, not Gordon George.
Yeah, this was just ugh. The tone or the pacing or whatever just felt really off and I suppose that could have been due to the sudden shift in focus from Kes to the EMH. And the whole evil EMH thing was just silly. Also, so strange about building up the Kes relationship with the alien she’s supposedly in love with and thinking of leaving Voyager for and then it’s just later ignored in the episode and resolved off-screen. Finally, for some pretty awful stuff the evil EMH does to B’Elanna, she doesn’t seem very traumatized after what was done to her.
The free-falling beam out was nifty at least. I think maybe that occurred in Star Trek (2009) and at the time I thought that was the first time that effect had taken place in Star Trek but this episode proves otherwise.
I have no memory of this episode at all. Sounds like it might be worth watching the Kes stuff and fast-forwarding through everything else.
I do wonder, though… “Tuvok’s examination reveals holographic residue.” What kind of residue would anything holographic leave behind?
@5/Steve Roby: Tuvok actually says “residual holographic signatures exactly like those of the Doctor.” I would assume those would be some kind of lingering EM fields or charges in the ground he walked on, left by the force fields that create his “body.”
Christopher: thank you for those corrections. I have always — always, since college — mixed up Byron’s first two names. Constantly. Makes me nuts. And Byron is one of my favorite poets!!!!
—Keith A.R. DeCandido
I guess I’m just a sucker for Picardo leaving tooth marks on every bit of scenery he can find. I’m trying to remember if he did any mind control episodes in SG:A but I don’t think so. He was also a doctor on Golden Girls (with equally terrible bedside manner, if I recall correctly).
The stuff with Kes was actually good though.
noblehunter: No, Woolsey never had his mind controlled or anything like that in any of his appearances on any of the three Stargate shows. (Picardo is one of a handful of actors who appeared on all three Stargate TV series, along with Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, Gary Jones, Bill Dow, and David Hewlett.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One other thing I liked about this episode (and there wasn’t much to pick and choose from!) was just how cute Kes was, acting like a schoolgirl head over heels with her first crush. This was something new for the character since we never saw that type of passion from her towards Neelix. Her giddy “hi” or “hello” to the officer manning the transporter after beaming up from her “date” with Zahir was really adorable.
Another case of “history,” meaning “history immediately accessible to the average American viewer,” I suspect, but yes, I would have been interested to see the Great Minds of other cultures as well. The idea that the EMH can reprogram his own personality is intriguing, in a Post-Humanity sort of way, but easy to see how it could go wrong when you’re experimenting on the system you use to examine and evaluate the system you’re experimenting on.
Hmm, apropos of very little, now I’m wondering if, once Voyager got back, anyone suggested giving Moriarty a mobile emitter.
@11/CuttlefishBenjamin: I think if Moriarty was retrieved from that simulation he and the Countess were existing in, in which he thought was reality, and was informed it was all a ruse, he wouldn’t respond to well to that elaborate deception. Equip him with a mobile emitter after he’s taken in that information and he’d probably seek out vengeance on Picard Wrath of Khan-style. Hmm, that might actually make for a pretty good season long arc on Star Trek: Picard.
On one hand, Darkling can be a bit dumb, but on the other I’m a sucker for this kind of pulpy, trashy take on Trek. I actually enjoyed this one quite a bit. More than it probably deserves.
I thought Picardo was genuinely great at playing this Jekyll/Hyde transformation. The shifty eyes, the unkempt hair. A person who looks like he hasn’t slept in years due to his extracurricular nightly activities. Picardo never looked more creepy than he does here. Chewing every scene to its core. Art can be subjective at times. I thought his performance captured the sexual deviant aspect of the character perfectly.
Of course, the episode faltered by diverting away from a promising Kes storyline without any proper resolution. That was one problem, but not the worst one. Darkling also started an unfortunate trend on Voyager: it made B’Elanna Torres a victim of the Worf effect.
Ron Moore once said that the laziest writer’s method for presenting an alien threat on TNG was to have him kick Worf’s ass. Braga and Menosky’s choice to do this to Torres not only feels lazy, but it’s also problematic. Voyager was supposed to be the progressive feminist show, with major female characters in key positions. Then it resorts to knocking out the strong Klingon woman every time they need to show a threat. It flirts a little too close to what’s known as the fridging effect.
There is a bit of a follow-up on both the Mikhal and the Tarkan in VOY: The Eternal Tide. Voyager returns to the former’s planet to investigate clues to Captain Eden’s origins, and has to fight off the latter to rescue the “Unity” Cooperative from their planet.
I will say this about this episode: Picardo couldn’t pull off the evil EMH, but when he was back to being his superlative self, I thought his recitation of the Hippocratic Oath at the end to be quite poignant.
DS9Continuing: Thank you for that. The Trivial Matters paragraph in question has been amended to include The Eternal Tide.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, abusing the edit function since 2011!
Another of those ominous-in-retrospect episodes about Kes going through changes: She decides to stay on Voyager here, but sadly it’s just delaying the inevitable. A shame that a chunk of one of her few remaining spotlight episodes is taken up with a rather insipid romance: The episode never quite convinces that there’s a strong enough bond between her and Zahir that she’d consider leaving Voyager for him, and it might have been best to just portray this as her exploring her new singlehood in a light-hearted manner. (There’s an amusing moment when she beams back to the ship glowing from a romantic encounter where the transporter chief looks at her as if to say “I know what you’ve been doing.”) To be honest, the fact Zahir’s virtually absent from the second half of the episode was a bit of a relief.
It’s not such a good episode for the Doctor. Robert Picardo gets to create an entirely new character but he’s not a particularly interesting one, and the episode seems to sidestep the morality of letting the other personality die by almost playing it for laughs. The final scene and his shamed apologies to Torres and Kes do show a new humbler side to him that we haven’t seen much of so far. His hitting on Torres early on is bewildering.
Finally confirmation that Neelix and Kes actually have split up, after the ambigious break-up in “Warlord”. Kes has started her catsuit phase: I seem to recall there’s an episode (“Favourite Son”?) where she goes back to her old style of dress, possibly indicating recording order. Paris makes an unlikely chaperone, unknowingly saving a female ensign from the Darkling Doctor’s attentions. The use of Leonardo in this episode is the first sign that no-one working on the show has seen “Requiem for Methuselah”…
I think it’s actually the regular Doctor who (mis)diagnoses Torres with anaphylactic shock and he only turns back into the Darkling when Janeway and Torres have gone. There’s a suggestion that the Darkling dismantles the holograms searching for a way to stabilise himself, which is also his main reason for targeting Torres: He knows the subroutines that created him will fade eventually and wants her to stop it.
I remember Picardo doing a couple of episodes of Smallville. He wasn’t bad in them exactly but his character was pretty much a plot device whose personality changed with the flick of a switch.
@17/cap-mjb: “…the episode seems to sidestep the morality of letting the other personality die by almost playing it for laughs.”
There isn’t really any moral question there, since assuming what happened to the Doctor is analogous to dissociative identity disorder in a human, the “other personality” isn’t actually a separate consciousness, just an altered psychological state of the original person. It’s a single consciousness that compartmentalizes aspects of itself from each other, experiencing dissociative amnesia so that the person in one ego state does not recall their actions in the other. The separate states aren’t whole beings, just fragments of the original personality.
So the “Evil EMH” wasn’t a distinct sentient being, just a neurological disorder the Doctor was suffering from due to his clumsy attempt at self-hacking his own code. Normally with DID the goal is to reintegrate the personality into a single whole. Although in this case, the “evil” subroutines were adulterations from an outside source, the equivalent of a behavioral change due to drugs or brain damage. So the goal was simply to delete them and restore the original program.
“The use of Leonardo in this episode is the first sign that no-one working on the show has seen “Requiem for Methuselah”…”
Not at all. In one of the later episodes with holo-Leonardo, Janeway says “Kirk claimed to have met him.” And of course, we only have Flint’s word that he was Leonardo. There was a story about him in one of the Strange New Worlds prose anthologies that suggested he claimed to have been famous historical figures as a kind of shorthand or useful exaggeration, so not all his attributions were correct (and of course he claimed to be several mythical figures like Methuselah and Merlin).
This one was way more more interesting when we were hanging out with Kes, with the EMH and Tuvok acting like overprotective dads. Kes goes to mom, Janeway, who proves once again how awesome she is by understanding what Kes is going through and fully supporting any choice Kes feels she needs to make. Janeway’s banter on pulling all-nighters back at the Academy just endears the Captain more to me, as I can’t imagine Picard pulling all-nighters in his Academy days. (Actually, scratch that. Twenty-something Picard would definitely have been pulling all-nighters, just of a different sort. Ahem.)
And I loved the bit in the transporter room where Kes beams up in full afterglow with a very cute, giddy “Hi”, or maybe “Hello”, then floats away, and the Transporter Chief looks at Kes like, “Yeah, girl, I know that look!” That’s the good shit.
This whole Mikhal Travelers thing could have been a good setup for Kes’ unfortunate departure from the series. Maybe not with Hot Long-Hair Guy exactly, but for Kes to actually be inspired to leave and explore “the unknown possibilities of existence,” which Kes kind of ends up doing, but this way would leave the door open for Kes to be a recurring character at least. Kes could appear every now and then to tell Voyager about some danger ahead or some places they should visit.
Sigh. I’ll cry all about it when we get to “The Gift.”
The EMH part of the story is pretty bad. The EMH gets all touchy and weird with B’Elanna at the start, and it’s pretty much downhill from there. Did we really need to abandon a promising Kes story for this? And we don’t even see a proper resolution and goodbye between Kes and Zahir? Hot Long-Hair Guy.
This one’s about a third of a good episode.
@18/CLB: “Not at all. In one of the later episodes with holo-Leonardo, Janeway says “Kirk claimed to have met him.” And of course, we only have Flint’s word that he was Leonardo.”
Yes, I know we had that line eventually, but the very fact that it was thrown in there as an aside, in the season after his first appearance, suggests to me that the Voyager production team had no idea about that episode when they were making Season 3. Sorry, but if the evidence is strong enough to convince Spock, it’s strong enough to convince me!
When I first saw this episode and they mentioned that Kes and Neelix had broken up I was sure that either I had missed an episode or that they had broken up offscreen between episodes. I had seen Warlord but that episode was so vague about their breakup that I hadn’t realized that it was the episode where the breakup occurred until I read the episode reviews in Cinemafantastique months after the season was over.
@krad:
A Gallamite! Now that would have been interesting to see! Ever since the establishment of Dax’s friend, Captain Boday, I’ve always been curious how an alien with a transparent skull and a brain twice our size would look.
I’m also a little surprised that we’re through the Nekrit Expanse this quickly (in narrative terms that is- I understand that there was a good deal of “absolutely nothing of interest is happening,” in there between the episodes we saw). I rather thought that the uncharted and unchartable voyage of new exploration was going to take up more of the season.
Of course we’re still in the unknown as far as both the Alpha Quadranters (Alphans? Alpha Quadrantians?) and Neelix are concerned so it’s not as though we’re abandoning the spirit of the unknown. Would it be uncharitable to suggest that Voyager not seeking out a new on-board local guide is probably largely in deference to Neelix’s inevitable insecurities?
@The Nekrit Expanse letdown.
Maybe they were saving all the good stuff for the Delphic Expanse in the next series!
@20/cap-mjb: “suggests to me that the Voyager production team had no idea about that episode when they were making Season 3.”
Maybe so, but clearly they learned better. You should never condemn someone for making one mistake — only for failing to learn from it.
@23/24: Remember, this is Voyager. It’s surprising that they even mentioned the Nekrit Expanse a second or third time. By this show’s standards, that’s exceptional continuity.
@@@@@ 25: Well there is that, but there was broadly a sense in the first couple seasons that we were in same region of space (we kept running into the Kazon and Vidiians, and it was territory that Neelix knew, at least in passing). I sort of figured the Nekrit Expanse would be the new status quo for a while in that way. Apparently not!
It’s a pity. They could have had a whole season about the weirdness of the Nekkrit Expanse, the people, the pirates, the natural and unnatural phenomena, but instead it’s just a blip. And it’s a pity that they didn’t further develope the spacefaring culture of the quadrant, traders, vagabond, criminals, colonists and conflicts. Voyager is like James Garner in “Support Your Local Sheriff”, just passing through.
@27/princessroxana:
It is a pity, but as CLB points out at 25, hardly surprising. Voyager was made to be an episodic show and largely stuck to that.
@27
Ha, I love that movie.
@25: Well, yes, I’m sure someone told them and they decided to cover it as painlessly as possible.
The Doctor is a program, right? so if you install a beta update and don’t like it, you just uninstall it. I don’t see why B’Elanna didn’t just do that, and why she had to stop him from beaming down to the planet. Or was it established somewhere that he is never backed up, which is kind of unbelievable?
And about the mobile emitter, there’s some reason it can’t be replicated, which is why there is only one. So Moriarty would have to fight for it.
@31/fresnel: There wasn’t a backup until someone decided a plot needed one in the season 4 episode, “Living Witness”. However, there was the diagnostic program from S3, “The Swarm,” but I’m not sure it counts…
I don’t know about all this….I just want to get to “Before And After”. There is ALOT to talk about there.
The Doctor is built on a human template, so human role models could be more compatible with his matrix.
How does Evil EMH manage to be sneaking about without anyone noticing he’s missing or that he’s using the transporter? One does not simply walk out of the Voyager… except when one does, I suppose.
20. cap-mjb
I’m not sure Spock ever had any evidence that was conclusive. Flint claimed he was Leonardo and he had artifacts that might tend to support that. But an immortal could easily be collecting those sorts of artifacts throughout his long life. So, in my view, he could have been Leonardo (and the others) or he just happened to be friends or acquaintances with all those people and simply kept souvenirs.
Anyway, I don’t see how there’s a conflict between this episode’s portrayal of Leonardo and “Requiem for Methuselah.” Okay, so Flint may have been Leonardo — so what? Leonardo was still a real historical figure. It’s not like he was a hoax or something, just an immortal living that phase of his life under that identity, achieving everything history says he achieved. It doesn’t contradict the historical record of Leonardo da Vinci, just adds context to it. And sure, the later holo-Leonardo doesn’t look or sound like James Daly, but so what? He’s a hologram anyway, and recastings are not uncommon in Trek.
Picardo isn’t bad here, he’s a stereotype. Classic hunched-over Hyde, sullen and nasty.
That might be a questionable acting choice or a casualty of the script, but he’s playing it to a T.
All that said, as split personality Star Trek episodes go, it’s no Enemy Within.
You probably don’t read comments on old posts like this, but the death counter should be in here, as the evil EMH shot the transporter operator with the phaser set to kill.
@39/mcf4dden: Oh they read them, this is an extremely active community!
mcf4dden: I read comments on much older posts than this. I just rewatched the scene, and it looked to me like the transporter operator was stunned, based both on how it was shot and how Kes reacted.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s amazing that I have absolutely no memory of this episode.
Blooper
At time 42:55, they beam up The Doctor and Kess after The Doctor throws them both off a cliff. On the planet before he jumped The Doctor was wearing his Mobile Emitter on his left side. When he beams up the Mobile Emitter is missing.
I’ve never understood the gap between Fair Trade and Unity showing Voyager still travelling through the Nekrit Expanse and nothing of it in between. That thing behind Kes and Zahir in the picture moved eventually! The author of Delta Quadrant assumed it to be a piece of furniture initially! Why does T’Pau look more Oriental here? Was it decided by now that Jennifer Lien would be leaving the show?
1: What inspired Darkling was Picardo’s performance as Eddie Quist in The Howling and Braga wanted to capitalise on that. 2: Picardo would get to play better villains in concurrent episodes like Warhead and Equinox. 7: Do you ever mix up the word Byronesque, Krad? 11: Could you ever build a mobile emitter from 24th Century technology? 17: I think the only times Kes returns to her previous outfits are Before and After and Worst Case Scenario because they revisit Voyager’s past. Her new outfits are a forerunner to Seven’s catsuits.
19: “A third of a good episode” – that’s overly generous. 23. Seven will come to fill that role now that Neelix’s knowledge of the DQ has run out. 25: And we will briefly revisit the Nekrit Expanse (and Bahrat’s station) in Distant Origin. 26: There were times during the first two seasons where it felt like Voyager wasn’t getting anywhere. 28: VGR loved the reset button. 32: It doesn’t, because the holo-Zimmerman wasn’t programmed for medical duties. 33: Darkling is the first of S3’s Trilogy of Error, where along with Rise and Favourite Son, between the three of them they represent the nadir of VGR.
34: The crew detected Kes and the Doctor’s transport because the plot demands it. 37: But I can’t see any good reason why the Doctor becomes “hunched over, sullen and nasty”. His Mr (EM)Hyde is such a cliche and not at all classic. 39: I doubt the transporter operator died because they can’t turn someone in the main cast into a cold-blooded murderer. 43: He’s definitely wearing it on the transporter pad after the beam-up.
@11 and @12: From the S3 Picard trailer released a couple days ago, looks like Moriarty might indeed have gotten a mobile emitter :-)