“Real Life”
Written by Harry Doc. Kloor and Jeri Taylor
Directed by Anson Williams
Season 3, Episode 22
Production episode 164
Original air date: April 23, 1997
Stardate: 50836.2
Captain’s log. We open in what feels like a parody of a 1950s sitcom household, as a perky blonde housewife named Charlene lines up her son Jeffrey and daughter Belle so they can wish their father Kenneth well on his way to work. The kids argue (politely) over who gets to speak to him first.
We then discover that Kenneth is the EMH, who has created this family on the holodeck to try to give himself the family experience.
Voyager arrives at a rendezvous with a scientific research station run by the Vostigye only to find it destroyed. They find a subspace trail and follow it, hoping to find out who’s responsible.
The EMH invites Torres—who is going over the changes the doctor has made to his program—and Kes to dinner with his holofamily. After getting through the first course, Torres is forced to freeze the program, lest she go into insulin shock. She tartly points out to the EMH that this is nothing like a realistic family, and she offers to alter the program to add verisimilitude to it.
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The subspace trail Voyager is following peters out, but then there’s a huge subspace distortion and a massive astral eddy forms, which breaks through the boundary between space and subspace. The eddy messes with the ship’s systems, but then disappears before Voyager can try to disrupt it with phasers.
The EMH goes “home” for dinner only to find the house a mess, Charlene on her way out the door to give a lecture at the Bolian embassy (meaning “Kenneth” has to cook dinner), Belle can’t find her ion mallet, and Jeffrey is playing Klingon music obscenely loudly. Jeffrey also has made two Klingon friends who stop by. The EMH is, to say the least, overwhelmed.
Another astral eddy appears, interrupting an attempt by Paris to flirt with Torres. They send a probe in, and discover that the eddies exchange matter between space and subspace. When the eddy disappears, it takes the probe with it, but they’re still able to read its telemetry. The plasma from the eddy might be useful to help power the ship, but the Bussard collectors on Voyager would corrupt the plasma because they’re too powerful. However, a shuttlecraft’s collectors might do the trick. Paris volunteers, first going to sickbay to be inoculated against possible radiation. While there, the EMH lectures Paris about taking unnecessary risks, and how he probably worried his parents sick when he was a kid.
The EMH has analyzed the situation with his family and come up with a solution. Paris warns him that you can’t diagnose a family the way you do a patient, and those words prove prophetic, as Jeffrey and Charlene reject his notions of how to “fix” things, and Belle isn’t that thrilled, either, though she stays on Kenneth’s good side mostly by being adorable. However, Jeffrey is pissed because he’s an adolescent who just wants to hang out with his Klingon friends (one of the “fixes” was telling him he can’t hang out with them anymore), and Charlene is even more pissed that Kenneth made all these decisions without consulting her.
Paris’s shuttle gets pulled into the astral eddy just like the probe was and gets stuck in a region that is between space and subspace. Eventually he rides one of the eddies back into normal space, and Voyager is able to rescue him.
The EMH goes “home” and tries to make nice with Jeffrey and his Klingon friends, but when he discovers that Jeffrey wants to go through a ritual that will make him an honorary Klingon (basically), he’s very upset.
Then Charlene contacts him: Belle was hurt in a parrises squares competition. Kenneth and another doctor operate on her for three hours, but the damage is too great. The EMH ends the program before she can die. He later tells everyone that he “finished” the program and got what he needed out of it. However, while examining Paris after his rescue, he admits that he didn’t want to face his daughter dying. Paris tells him that, if the point of the exercise was to experience a real family life, it has to include the bad with the good.
He goes back into the program and stands with Charlene and Jeffrey as they watch as Belle draws her last breath.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The region of space Voyager is flying through is filled with astral eddies that pop up like the flame spurts in the fire swamp (and which can swallow you up like the lightning sand in the fire swamp—all that we were missing were the Space Amoebas Of Unusual Size…).
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is outraged at the destruction of the Vostigye outpost, but that modulates into nerdy scientific curiosity once they discover the eddies.
Half and half. Torres has been checking up on the EMH’s program adjustments. She also wears a braid in her hair this episode, which is never seen again, though it looks pretty nifty.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH has been hearing people talk about their families constantly since he was activated, so he decides to create one.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris flirts with Torres, interrupting her while she reads her Klingon bodice-ripper (armor-ripper?), Women Warriors at the River of Blood.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. The EMH’s family is entirely on the holodeck, of course.
Do it.
“In fact, we think we have just about the most wonderful husband and father in the quadrant! Don’t we, children?”
“Yes, we d—”
“Computer, freeze program.”
“Lieutenant? What are you doing?”
“I’m stopping this before my blood-sugar levels overload.”
–Charlene and her kids carrying on, Torres stopping the program, the EMH objecting, and Torres speaking for the entire audience…
Welcome aboard. Wendy Schaal—who, like Robert Picardo, is a regular in films directed by Joe Dante—plays Charlene, while Glenn Harris plays Jeffrey, Stephen Ralston and Chad Haywood play the Klingon teenagers, and Lindsey Haun plays Belle. Haun previously played a different holographic moppet, Beatrice Burleigh, in “Learning Curve” and “Persistence of Vision.”
Trivial matters: This is the only time the Vostigye are mentioned, but they play a large role (and are significantly fleshed out) in the alternate timeline of Places of Exile by regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett in Myriad Universes: Infinity’s Prism.
This is the only time the EMH uses the name “Kenneth.” He will also once again have a family in the episode “Blink of an Eye,” when he spends three years on a planet where time moves more quickly.
Torres is keeping an eye on the EMH’s program tinkering in an attempt to keep things like what happened in “Darkling” from happening again.
The EMH mentions that he’s had experiences with romance in the past, a reference to Freya and Denara Pel.
The qutluch seen in the program was an assassin’s weapon in TNG’s “Sins of the Father,” and it also looks a lot like the mevaq dagger used in DS9’s “Sons of Mogh.”
The EMH injects Paris with a combination of hyronalin and lectrazine. The former was established on the original series episode “The Deadly Years” as being a treatment for radiation, and has been used regularly on all the spinoffs since. Lectrazine was first established in “Lifesigns,” and is usually used to treat cardiovascular issues.
Parrises squares was first mentioned in TNG’s “11001001,” and has been used repeatedly since.
Set a course for home. “How’s the new holofamily, Doctor?” I disliked this episode initially, but the more I think about it, the more I loathe it.
The EMH is programmed with the full medical knowledge of the entire Federation of the 24th century, including the knowledge of hundreds of worlds. Yet somehow, the only family unit he can manage to concoct on his first try is the insipid, patriarchal garbage that we get in the teaser and Act 1? And honestly, it’s not much better once Torres “fixes” it, as we go from Leave it to Beaver to Married…with Children, and it’s just awful.
The entire setup is just a colossal, pathetic failure of imagination. There’s no exploration of anything here, just inserting Robert Picardo into a 1950s sitcom setting that is then modulated into a 1990s sitcom setting that’s no less insipid. What is he supposed to gain from this experience, exactly?
And then apparently he totally forgets that he can change the program. In fact, Torres has already changed it. Why, when confronted with a wife who actually has a mind of her own (probably the worst aspect of the opening bit is how utterly mindless and bereft of personality Charlene is, and the kids aren’t much better), with a son who is rebelling by trying to be Klingon, and a daughter who can’t find anything, did he not just change the fucking program? Why were his only options after Belle’s accident to end the program or finish it? Why not tell the computer to rejigger the program so she doesn’t have the accident? For that matter, why was he wasting three hours operating on a hologram when he’s the only doctor on a ship that’s busy chasing subspace anomalies?
Oh yeah, the subspace anomalies. What starts as a promising adventure to avenge the deaths of the people on a space station quickly becomes a boring technobabble chase that has absolutely no suspense or consequence—or even vengeance for the poor Vostigye, whose deaths are forgotten by the time Act 1 ends.
Just a stupid, dumb, ridiculous episode. The only reason I gave it as high as a 2 is because it gave us Women Warriors at the River of Blood, which is a book I think we all need…
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be doing a bunch of panels at the virtual version of Dragon Con this coming weekend. His schedule can be found here.
I am gobsmacked that Torres’ idea of a useful human experience is the most horrible one a parent could possibly have. Was the point to inflict trauma?
The EMH had another brief name. You know, maybe that should have been the gag. He can’t decide on a name, so he tries out a new one every episode. The crew can’t keep up, hilarity ensues, etc.
The episode’s sudden turn into drama made no sense, for all the reasons Keith pointed out. The episode didn’t seem to be trying to make a point with the EMH’s experience. It was just a weird episode.
@1/JohnArkansawyer: Torres hated her own childhood so she probably wanted to inflict the same pain and trauma on the EMH because she’s nice like that.
@krad: I’ve see Torres wear a braid in her hair in later seasons but maybe it’s a different kind of braid if that’s the distinction you’re trying to make.
KRAD: notice that your first mention of Lectrazine is actually spelled lecrtrazine/?
Huh, I never thought that Torres programmed the holodeck specifically too make the daughter die, just that she added in possibilities that made it more realistic, and one of the kids getting hurt was just a result of that. I never thought she wrote out a holonovel so much as she programmed an “if, then” type process that would allow for a lot more reactions than just “idyllic 1950s white family.”
Although if she *did* program it, then it almost makes less sense, because nothing about Torres’ life has implied that either the 1950s sitcom family nor the 1990s sitcom family would be something she has as a point of reference. She isn’t a nerd for “ancient” (As they always insist on calling it) earth history like Paris is, and her childhood certainly wasn’t anything that.
Charlene is made up to look rather like Carol Brady as played by Shelley Long in the 1995 Brady Bunch movie, it seems to me.
I am sure there is room for a joke somewhere about the family from the 1950s and the episode’s director, Anson Williams.
I remember liking this one on original run and getting quite emotional with Belle’s death. I remember nothing of the B-plot. I do however also remember being greatly annoyed that there was absolutely no follow-up whatsoever in later episodes with this holodeck program when obviously this family is shown as being very important to The Doctor. I wonder if upon re-watch that I’ll like it just as much as before if I’ll more easily recognize its faults.
I’m a bit torn on this one. I do appreciate the effort Picardo put for this episode. It’s a melting pot of conflicting emotions, as we see the EMH learning to deal with this new aspect of existence. A superb performance, as we have the hologram dealing with personal emotions he never knew he had. Obviously, the biggest inspiration for Real Life is TNG’s The Offspring. The EMH building and learning to have a family is a beat by beat take on what TNG did with Data building Lal.
And I think that’s Real Life‘s biggest problem. The Offspring consciously framed much of that story around Lal’s point of view. Her working with Guinan and learning to grasp with unexpected emotions are what made that episode special. Real Life would have been a top 5 Voyager episode, had they built it around the EMH”s family instead of him. They should have been far more fleshed out than the cardboard cutouts they end up being. Jeri Taylor did the episode no favors by creating three walking breathing stereotypes.
Thankfully, I don’t think it’s all bad. The script is wise enough to call out the EMH’s initial design of the family by having B’Elanna speak for us. The B plot is forgettable science technobabble. I don’t mind the tragic ending either, even if doesn’t feel earned simply because they never developed the daughter enough to reach this turning point. But that final act salvages the episode for me. Having the EMH simply shut everything down in denial and then gather the courage to face his loved ones and their impending mortality is a good character arc. A melodramatic way to explore the human condition, but a valid one nonetheless. Once again, it’s based on The Offspring (I wonder if that’s what inspired Harry Doc. Kloor’s pitch) beat by beat, including that inevitable sacrifice.
I also have a bit of a problem with the EMH’s attitude towards his son befriending Klingons. It’s a rare case of a Starfleet Officer – being a hologram notwithstanding – being this openly racist. At least O’Brien had reasons to hate Cardassians. It doesn’t help that the script seems unaware of the conotations and writes the Klingons as one-dimensional bullies.
On a side note, Voyager hiring Anson Williams to do this one was a blessing in the long run. He’d end up directing two very good DS9 entries, Stastical Probabilities and It’s Only a Paper Moon, as well as Voyager’s own The Gift and Course Oblivion, two excellent episodes in their own right.
Great review as always.
In addition to the problems you noted, it’s also crazy that the Doctor is just outright racist.
JEFFREY: What’s this about no Klingon friends?
EMH: Exactly that. They’re a bad influence on you. They’re prone to violence, they keep you out till all hours. Why don’t you find some nice Vulcan friends?
Geez. Maybe Klingons really are more prone to violence, although open question how much of that is genetic and how much is cultural. But to jump from that to a blanket prohibition on all Klingon friends, with the kicker that Vulcans are automatically virtuous, is just flat out bigotry. And the worst part is, it’s one of the few times we actually see a Star Trek human interested in joining another culture, but the concept is wasted on a pointless and moot holodeck story.
It was explained why the Doctor didn’t just reset the program; Torres convinced him that “If I’m going to have the experience of a family, it should be as authentic as possible.” It’s right there in the episode title — he wanted it to be true to real life, and that means no resets, cheat codes, or do-overs. If a problem arose, he wanted to cope with it as if it were real.
I agree the episode didn’t work as well as it could have, but it was interesting to see a glimpse at (a simulation of) civilian life in the Federation, a side of it we rarely get to see. Not the most imaginative glimpse, no, but at least it was a change of pace. Although it had the very TNG-ish problem of trying to mash together a purely character-driven storyline with a completely unrelated action/danger/technobabble storyline that just dragged things to a halt because there was no human interest to it.
And yes, B’Elanna’s hair looked really nice this week.
Incidentally, my choice to feature the Vostigye heavily in Places of Exile was not out of any great fondness for this episode, but just because I needed a friendly civilization fairly close to where “Scorpion” took place, and the Vostigye fit the bill — plus, since we never saw them, they were a blank slate that I was free to fill in however I liked. Plus I thought the name was cool.
srEDIT: Thanks for catching the typo! It’s fixed….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who really really really loves the edit function
@10/Eduardo: “Real Life would have been a top 5 Voyager episode, had they built it around the EMH”s family instead of him.”
The problem there, though, is that they weren’t actually sentient, unlike Lal. They were just game characters; they had no viewpoints of their own, merely algorithms. Which made it a bit hard to really care about the Doctor’s grief at Belle’s “death,” although I’ve been known to cry at the deaths of a few fictional characters I was attached to, notably Tasha Yar. Still, it made it feel a little superficial.
I vividly remember watching this one for the first time as a kid and crying at the ending. I mostly watched TNG growing up, which had tons of episodes featuring children in danger, children dying of disease, or children kidnapped and you knew with absolute certainty that nothing bad was ever going to happen to them. Holographic or not, Belle’s death had quite an impact on me for that reason. I had a similar reaction to the episode featuring Icheb’s abusive parents and their lack of punishment.
I do like certain aspects of the Doctor’s initial program. It’s very much in line with his character to build a program around the assumption that anyone lucky to be his family would naturally spend most of their time fawning over his brilliance. I’m surprised his next program wasn’t just an outright fan club.
I assume the death was picked by the program, not by Torres. Yes, she picked the program but losing a kid could have been one of many possibilities.
The episode could have done more to look at the personhood of the holodeck characters. It seems to want the audience to treat them as if they were “real” but Star Trek has never treated generic holodeck characters as real people. Only special holograms get to be real. It would have been helpful to have a scene where the Doctor doesn’t change the program because he feels that would violate some principle or other.
I thought the B plot was kind of neat but it once again shows a certain lack of respect for off-screen deaths. It would have helped for an act 5 moment where they stop the eddies from coming out near inhabited space or something.
@12:
That’s not a glimpse at civilian life in the Federation; that’s a trip back in the time machine to the stereotypical 20th century portrayals of families in the 1950s and 1990s. There was no point or purpose to this entire experience. Keith said it best when he wrote:
Christopher Bennett not to be an ass about things and I did love “Places of Exile” but the Vostigye were 10,000 light years from where Scorpion toom place since Kes pushed them that far in “The Gift”
@16/noblehunter: “I assume the death was picked by the program, not by Torres. Yes, she picked the program but losing a kid could have been one of many possibilities.”
Yes. She set up the program to generate events randomly.
“The episode could have done more to look at the personhood of the holodeck characters. It seems to want the audience to treat them as if they were “real” but Star Trek has never treated generic holodeck characters as real people.”
As I said, I don’t think there was any attempt here to portray the “family” as sentient. They only felt real to the Doctor, in much the same way that fictional characters like the Doctor can feel real to us as viewers. We weren’t supposed to care about them, just about how they made the Doctor feel.
“It would have been helpful to have a scene where the Doctor doesn’t change the program because he feels that would violate some principle or other.”
They did. It’s the line I quoted earlier.
@17/Austin: You didn’t read my entire comment. I already addressed your remark in the sentence right after the part you quoted: “Not the most imaginative glimpse, no, but at least it was a change of pace.”
@18/Matt Brady: “Christopher Bennett not to be an ass about things and I did love “Places of Exile” but the Vostigye were 10,000 light years from where Scorpion toom place since Kes pushed them that far in “The Gift””
You’re confused. “Scorpion” came before “The Gift.” I do know what I’m doing, and if I hadn’t, then the very capable folks in the studio licensing department would’ve set me straight.
@14/Christopher: In a way, that’s an inherent problem with writing holodeck romance stories. If the character is a blank slate, he/she has no inner life when they’re not engaged with his/her significant other, which means trying to make one character compelling is a challenge in its own, let alone creating three of them.
The notion of a holocharacter being a blank slate reminds me of TNG’s 11001001. Whenever Minuet wasn’t interacting with Riker, she had this blank face, indicating standby mode. It made that story all the more tragic as he realizes he was in love with an illusion.
I’ll have to rewatch this episode myself soon, but I recall quite liking this episode initially 23 years ago, or at least the A-plot with the Doctor (the subspace anomalies B-plot was rather forgettable, to be fair). I think the “failure of imagination” is sorta the point. The Doctor is a holographic program with access to all these Federation cultural databases, but all of that data is no substitute for nuance and experience. He’ll get vague stories about families being difficult, but likely no specifics. Not to mention some folks will sugar-coat their recounting of family members on the other side of the galaxy.
The initial version of the Doctor’s family is sugar-coated and goody-goody because he has little basis for comparison. The Doctor only has superficial data and a bit of positive stories to draw upon, leading to the first family we saw. Torres’ reprogramming them into the dysfunctional version is likely reflective of her own experiences, with split up parents and her mixed species heritage leading her to be not quite welcome in either the human or Klingon cultures (or at least that was her perception). That was her ‘real life,’ and she decided to inflict a dose of that on the Doctor, even going so far as to make the son’s bad influence friends Klingons. Sure, the Doctor could undo all of Torres’ changes, or simply hand-wave away the daughter’s accident within the program, but he is arrogant enough to think he can handle anything. Of course, he’s wrong, and when he feels all the feelings associated with anticipating his daughter is about to die, he shuts down the program because he has that option. A reset, never-had-an-accident daughter would just conjure up memories of the dying daughter. Instead, the Doctor tries to avoid the problem, which strikes me as a very human response to the situation. To his credit, he does ultimately go back to face the trauma head-on. In the end, though, what matters is that, to the Doctor, this holographic family is real enough to care about, even if they can be reprogrammed.
@19 – “You didn’t read my entire comment. I already addressed your remark in the sentence right after the part you quoted: “Not the most imaginative glimpse, no, but at least it was a change of pace.””
I have to disagree here. It’s not the most imaginative glimpse, no, because it’s not a glimpse of anything! I’m not sure why you think this resembles civilian life in the Federation in any way, shape, or form. I like the idea of showing a member of the crew getting ready for their day, conversing with their family, etc. (though this would probably be too boring for TV), but that’s not what’s going on here. It’s not how any member of the Federation lives outside of their duties, because what this episode does is basically place the EMH in a couple of old sitcom settings. It would have been fun, however, if the episode went with want a contemporary 24th century civilian lived like that was true to life. I agree with you that it would have been interesting to see.
@20/Eduardo: As I said, the goal is not to make the nonsentient holodeck characters compelling, it’s to make the main characters’ reaction to them compelling. They’re just catalysts. It’s like Hitchcock’s concept of a MacGuffin — something that’s essential to the characters but unimportant to the audience, something that doesn’t have any meaning except in that the main characters’ pursuit of it or reaction to it drives the narrative.
@22/Austin: “I’m not sure why you think this resembles civilian life in the Federation in any way, shape, or form.”
I never said it did. That’s a bizarre way of phrasing it, because Federation civilian life is not something that has an actual existence independent of what we’re shown in the episodes and films. And my point is that we’ve been shown virtually nothing about it, so we don’t really have a standard of comparison. As inadequate as it was, this was at least an attempt to show a side of the Federation beyond Starfleet. I’m not praising its depiction of civilian life; I just found it a mildly refreshing change of pace from the usual focus on military life.
And beyond that, I am really under no obligation to justify my reactions from 23 years ago to you in the here and now, certainly not if you’re going to be so confrontational about it. So that’s all I have to say on the subject.
I took the jump from 50s family to 90s family as commentary on how American families and the representation of them in media had changed dramatically in that time. See also “Pleasantville.”
A major problem here is one that comes up a lot is when are holograms considered sentient and when there not. I mean if she’s not sentient who cares? and if she is then the doctor is a monster for not preventing it or not taking care of his family afterwards.
I always considered this episode to be Voyager’s EXTREMELY POOR attempt at imitating the superlative TNG episode Inner Light.
At first, I thought it was a cool idea that teen aged Klingons are basically Deth Metal Goth AF, because of course they are, but then I realized that the horror and rejection of the son’s embrace of Klingon ethnicity was just really bigoted and racist.
I assumed The Doctor wasn’t able to “rejigger” the program because Torres locked it somehow so he couldn’t just wipe out the parts he didn’t like (much like a real family)
If this was supposed to be Voyager’s version of The Offspring then they failed terribly. You cared about Lal and her death was upsetting, not so much for Belle
I liked Torres’s braid here but I always liked her more wavy “Klingon” hair best that showed up far too infrequently throughout the show
I found this a rather odd but also rather enjoyable episode. The Doctor’s scenes with his family start off utterly hilarious, switching from Torres’ bewildered reaction to the Doctor’s idealised family, to the Doctor’s equally bewildered reaction to his significantly less idealised family. And then we get that little touching moment between the Doctor and his daughter before it all takes a darker turn as he’s stuck in the middle of a family tragedy. I agree with those that say having the Doctor cheat and alter the programme to make it easier for him would miss the point that he wants to have this experience in as real a way as possible.
His attitude towards the Klingons is another aspect that seems to eschew black and white morality. Whilst the Doctor’s “Can’t you find some Vulcan friends?” is played for laughs (and is actually quite funny), it’s also quite prejudiced. But when it switches to Jeffrey wanting to take part in ritual blood-letting, it enters a more grey area: Where do you draw the line between respecting someone else’s culture and opposing the parts of it that conflict with your own culture’s values?
The B-plot sadly is ultimately a failure, both in terms of supporting the A-plot and in itself. I think I’m surprised by that opening every single time I watch the episode and find I don’t remember it at all, and no wonder. We begin with Voyager stumbling across the aftermath of the deaths of sixty people and resolving to find out what happened to them…and then the moment they stumble across the subspace eddies they go “Wow, cool!” and forget all about the dead aliens, which makes them seem more than a little callous. (Do they even tell their families what happened, or set up a warning that the area of space is dangerous?) Ultimately, it’s a rather pointless way of giving the bridge crew something to do this episode.
It does at least lead to that electric scene between the Doctor and Paris, with the Doctor relating Paris’ cavalier attitude to danger to the more serious consequences of Belle’s belief she was indestructible. (Oh, and Paris catching Torres reading trashy Klingon romance novels is hilarious.)
But unfortunately, it’s another one let down by the lack of follow-through. Paris convinces the Doctor to go back to the programme so he can go through this tragedy and come out the other side…but then we never see or hear of his family again, suggesting he gave them up soon afterwards anyway. One of the early Voyager Relaunch novels had a character proving another EMH wasn’t the Doctor by asking him his daughter’s name. It took me quite a while to realise what they were referring to.
In retrospect, this kind of feels like Jennifer Lien’s last episode as a regular. She’s reduced to cameos for the next three episodes (in the season’s penultimate episode, the real Kes doesn’t even appear), after which we’re onto “Scorpion” and “The Gift” during which she gets taken off the opening titles to make room for her replacement.
@28/cap-mjb: I disagree as to your feeling that this is like Jennifer Lien’s last episode as a regular. Her role in “Scorpion, Part I” is pretty significant, and even in “Scorpion, Part II” and “The Gift” next season when she is actually considered a guest, she still has significant roles, making her feel like a regular still, and as if for a short time it’s a cast of ten regulars.
I honestly had no problem with any of the elements of the story for multiple reasons:
1:] The Doctor having an idealized 1950s-esque view fits his own privileged viewpoint. The Doctor wants to be worshiped and have all of the benefits of a family life with none of the drawbacks. The idealized 1950s never existed in real life but exists in the Doctor’s mind (or a Federation version of it) for the same reason it existed in real life fiction. It’s a fantasy. He’s the head of the household, revered, and respected. Which is the opposite of being a barely loved appliance on Voyager.
2:] Torres is offended by the Doctor’s view because she grew up in an utterly miserable family. Family is not a refuge for her. It is not a source of comfort but is the reason she had nothing but bad things to think about her mother, father, and family in general. She said her “home” was the Marquis ship in Season 1’s 2nd or 3rd episode. So yes, I totally believe the holodeck family was a bit of “revenge porn” for her. I also believe she probably wrote his child dying, not quite realizing how traumatizing and horrifying it would be.
3:] The Doctor is an enormous snob and I have no doubt is very racist. Certainly, he considers the humans on his ship inferior to him. Then again, I’ve always assumed the Federation struggles with speciesm. They’ve overcome sexism and racism but still have large amounts of xenophobia to deal with among other races.
@30 Eh, I have a problem buying the Doctor being a racist. Thinking he is above them all? Totally. Specifically being racist against Klingons? That doesn’t make a lick of sense. Why would he have be programmed that way? (And if it is a development from him being left on so long, why Klingons? His only “real” exposure to them is B’Elanna, and while she has a temper, she isn’t horrible. If anything, he should develop a bias against Betazoids, since the only one on ship turned out to be a psychotic serial killer.) Considering that Starfleet has at least one Klingon in it (and potentially more, if B’Elanna isn’t the only one who tried to join after Worf did), and that they work with Klingons on a fairly regular basis, it seems like a *terrible* thing to program into him. In the real world we know that racial bias against patients can literally result in their deaths, and efforts are being made to try to counteract that. So you’d think that Utopian Starfleet would have been extra careful and specifically work to try to avoid that. It’s a funny line (I chuckled at it), but it is a glaringly stupid thing to have in a piece of (essentially) medical equipment. The EMH might *look* like a human, but he isn’t, and having him display such a human flaw (one that the Federation itself has supposedly moved beyond) is really weird.
So I just re-watched it. Try as I might, I still got very emotional at the end. I guess I’m not immune to the misery of seeing an innocent little girl die before her time surrounded by her loving family even if she wasn’t developed much as a fully fleshed out character. The b-story was utterly disposable and I can see why I totally forgot about it after all of these years. There was nothing particularly meaningful about that plot at all and was pure senseless technobabble and never had me in suspense either. That was precious time that could have been devoted to The Doctor’s family storyline so we spent more time with his family and cared about them; or create a better b-story that wasn’t bogged down with eye-rolling technobabble. Maybe something like Tom asking B’Elanna out on a first date and he tries to make it perfect but totally bungles it. Anything would be better than going on and on about innerspace eddies or whatever they called it.
I can see why the Doctor would disapprove of Klingons on a cultural basis. Their culture embraces bloodletting, hunting, ritual suicide and the like. He’s programmed to stop bleeding and save lives. Therein lies the conflict. Beyond that, I see no other reason
Having read most of the other comments I feel a little ashamed for liking this one. Of many forgettable Voyager episodes I have to admit this one stays with me. Probably a lot down to Picardo, who totally sells deluded jerk at the start, through confused jerk with family being less 50’s and more 90’s sitcom, right to grieving parent at the end. It did feel like real growth for the Doctor, and I can accept that it was, after all, he’s only three years old!
I’ll admit under cloak of internet anonymity to being affected by the holograms ‘death’. Mind you, I teared up at Navi’s bravery at the end of ‘Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’, so what do I know?)
In common with everyone else I had no recollection of the B plot at all.
Fun fact that I’m sure everyone but me knew – Wendy Schaal is another sitcom mum, Francine, in American Dad. I bet having this on her resume helped her get that gig with Seth MacFarlane’s love of all things Trek.
I actually had different issues with the episode than the people in the comments.
I didn’t mind the lack of imagination in the representation of the Doctor’s family so much because I just assumed it was supposed to reflect the Doctor’s lack of knowledge about how a family works. So he just created some cardboard cutouts without any personality, issues or interests besides being his wife and children. I haven’t seen any 50s sitcoms, so I didn’t make the connection.
However, after the change I was hoping that he will find a way to deal with his new dysfunctional family and realize that even if a family isn’t perfect, it can move on with some work. Instead, they took it to an extreme with the ultimate tragedy in any family: losing a child. I just think a more subtle approach would’ve been better.
As for the Klingons, I think it was simply meant to show the over-protectiveness and inadequacy of the Doctor as a father. He is not racist in real life, but when he sees a couple of Klingon kids have bad influence on his son, it is easier to go with a cover-all veto of any Klingon friends, than try to understand what makes his son act out. I would’ve loved if this was the central conflict and the Doctor realized at the end that the Klingon friends were not the issue and found a way to communicate and connect with his son (and probably accept his wish to become a honorary Klingon).
Perhaps it’s also a reflection of the Doctor’s own “ownership” of his family that he created for the purposes of being an idealized family. He wants to raise an intellectual, snooty, doctor-like perfect son and the Klingons don’t fit that mold. Klingons disdain medicine if you recall Doctor Crusher’s encounter with a long-suffering Klingon Doctor that KRAD wrote some books about actually [The awesome Klingon Empire series that I recommend].
Yes, it unfortunately plays into the mold of his being a prejudiced patriarch figure but the Doctor’s ego is the real source of things here as he created his family as an extension of himself.
@29/garreth: I accept it’s a personal thing, but to me she feels like a guest in those episodes, as if the show is moving on and she’s not really a part of it anymore.
I know, of course, that the reasoning is for the “classic idealized family,” tropes to be quickly recognizable, and that husband, wife and 2.5 kids is a quick way of doing that. But I do wonder what the “standard” Federation family unit is. I suppose that pretty much every time we look into it, we get “Raised by birth parents,” or “Raised by one parent after the death or absence of the other,” with a couple notable exceptions (Worf, Data (although wasn’t there something with a woman who was more or less identified as Data’s mother?) Seven of Nine).
Anyways, yeah, I understand why the show didn’t have the Doctor’s idealized family include two wives, a couple of spare husbands, and his Andorian wife’s aging parents, but a guy can dream.
Also, apropos of very little, I’m suddenly wondering whether the EMH on all Vulcan ships can be tweaked to have more logical ears and eyebrows, for the comfort of its patients.
@38: I don’t think the Rick Berman-produced shows are necessarily the best reference for what the standard family unit would be.
If anything, Discovery and Picard both feel more realistic in their depiction of social relationships. Even if we assume humanity will reach the Roddenberry standards of decency and morality by the 24th century, forsaking all conflicts and economical problems of the past, the concept of the traditional nuclear family will probably be way more affected than anything else. It’d be a natural part of the evolution process. Star Trek Beyond also took a step in that direction by having Sulu with his daughter and his partner. I’m eager to see the non-binary and transgender characters in the upcoming season.
I’ve been reading the Jeri Taylor-written Voyager novel Pathways during the quarantine. Without spoiling too much, I can tell you the family backstories for each of the characters: Neelix had three sisters and two loving parents before the war claimed their lives; Kim has two loving parents; Paris has a sister and two parents; Chakotay had two loving parents before the Cardassian War; Kes had two loving parents; Seven had two curious adventurous parents (I’ve yet to read the Tuvok chapter).
You see the pattern? Torres is the exception, with divorced parents, but still a former heteronormative interracial couple. Taylor wasn’t very imaginative with establishing family backstories, not taking into account the endless possibilities of family units that would probably become an integral part of society by the 2370’s.
I tend to agree with the idea that The Doctor perfect little ‘Suetopia’ of a family is a reflection of his own impressive Ego, but I suspect that it’s also a by-product of Tom Paris’ fondness for 20th Century miscellany: while The Doctor & Paris don’t really get along, one would be surprised if the former hadn’t checked out quite a bit of the Pop Culture Mr Paris evokes so casually (if only to avoid the dread possibility that Tom Paris will drop a reference so obscure that The All-knowing Doctor will actually have to admit his complete ignorance).
The idea that The Doctor has picked up at least a few ideas from 20th Century pop culture via Tom Paris (either via osmosis or deliberate study) would, if nothing else, help explain why ‘Drive-in … on MARS’ is the Holo-doc’s idea of a Dating hot-spot!
…
Also, am I the only one who wonders if The Doc’s expressed distaste for holo-Klingons might just be a way of venting his acute dislike of Chief Engineer Torres’ sticking her oar in?
My first ever full rewatch of Voyager only happened 5-6 years ago, so I don’t have any 90’s nostalgia overshadowing my views on these episodes. As opposed to say, my soft spot for TNG’s “The Royale,” which might be the first episode I really absorbed.
Curiously enough, when I rewatched this one, I did find myself a bit more moved by the holodeath than the first time. Blame anxiety and the pandemic?
You can almost feel the cut and paste in a few places: a little bit of “The Offspring,” a dash of “Hollow Pursuits,” maybe even a little “Outrageous Okona,” with the cardboard holodeck characters.
The end result, to me. kind of falls flat the way I think “In Theory” does. 24th century characters exploring 20th century television formulas about family and relationships. But dysfunction doesn’t really fit well with the utopian ideal of “humanity is better now” originally established.
Also, “I’m late for my meeting with the Bolians…” Okay, but… transporters exist?
There had to have been some middle ground, between plastic early sitcom saccharine, and weird unrelatable perfect future people.
ED: to be fair, the drive-in on Mars notion came specifically from Paris….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Christopher Bennett I meant to check this yesterday and I forgot so I apologize for the late reply and idk wtf I was thinking man but I am so sorry for my comment cuz I was flat out fucking wrong about the relation of the Vostigye to the events of Scorpion but somehow I thought this happened in season 4 don’t ask me why cuz Kes was in it so I guess my brain malfunctioned but I sincerly apologize :)
What really gets me about this episode – more than anything else already mentioned – is that the Doctor’s moral lesson is “you can’t just walk away from your family when things get hard, because real people aren’t a game of the Sims even if in your case they are” and then we never see his holofamily again. He never mentions them, we never see them, there’s no continuity or anything.
@42. krad: Aaah … I didn’t realise that, but is DOES strengthen my suspicion that The Doc isn’t above borrowing ideas from Mr Paris (for better and for worse). Thank You for point this out. (
@39/Eduardo: Re: Jeri Taylor’s lack of imagination with character creation, one thing that bugged me about Mosaic was how the human characters created for the novel were almost uniformly Anglo-Saxon and disproportionately likely to be red-haired. I got the sense she was basing Janeway’s life story largely on her own (they both come from Indiana), and thus the characters may have been based on people from her own formative years in the 1940s-50s. If so, I wish she hadn’t adapted things so literally.
@46/Christopher: I haven’t read Mosaic myself. I got Pathways as a birthday gift by chance. I do understand Taylor wanting to base Janeway on herself to a degree. It’s what makes a character come alive with personality. Her mistake is to not take the 24th century setting into account. Indiana in the 2350s-60s would likely be a very different Indiana from the 1940s-50s.
We don’t know much about the future-sport of parrises squares apart from its uniforms, but I’m wondering what it involves such that a juvenile human player in a (presumably supervised game?) on Earth is able to incur a terminal injury that can’t be repaired by 24cen surgery — an injury, as opposed to a disease, a parasite that’s actively defying the physician, or a crazy space anomaly that transmutes your cells to mush. Skull-crushing and spine-severing seem to be the only conditions that can’t be protoplased, regenerated, reattached or cybernetically replaced.
So, in this sport, do you leap between platforms and Belle landed badly, on her neck? Did she collide with a much larger player, incurring some kind of super-concussion? Are there giant swinging axes?
Probably just a case of “the writer didn’t think through the Fed-civilian implications of the milieu, and couldn’t posit a future-style injury that still resonates with 20cen viewers”. Visual SF has a recurring shortcoming in the realm of urgent care, IMHO: e.g., you see uniformed characters expire from lacerations and punctures, because a spreading crimson stain is a dramatic way to add an urgency-timer or pathos — when instead, their future-textiles could reasonably have integrated first-aid wound-sealing and shock-treating capabilities. Conversely, in the webcomic “Schlock Mercenary”, if a soldier gets dismembered you just toss the pieces in a “nanny-bag” for biosuspension and later reassembly (and counseling for the bodily insult?).
@38, The Doctor in a multi-species group marriage with live in in laws would have been a hoot at that
@49, it would have been funny to see the EMH “test run” various types of family situations before settling on his 1950s family. At the very least it would have acknowledged that there are other types of families out there! Even a line of “I considered utilizing Andorian family structures but figured I’d start with something simpler” would have been a nice nod to the fact that it’s the 24th century and humans/aliens have many different ideas of what makes a family.
I just find it kind of amusing that the Doc can perform such incredible medical feats like restoring salamander-Janeway and salamander-Paris back to human form with no adverse effects, and restore Chakotay’s disembodied consciousness to his body somehow among other things, but he can’t save his daughter from dying of a bad bump to the head.
@51 – What’s even more amusing is the Doctor claiming that they still don’t know much about the human brain. With the medical tech in that century and all of those medical procedures you listed…that…doesn’t make sense. At all.
@krad — where do you list re-watches ?
jmsnyc: I’m not sure what you’re asking. There are index pages for the rewatches I’ve done on this site:
Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch (2011-2013)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rewatch (2013-2015; 2019)
Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch (2015-2017)
Stargate Rewatch (2015)
Holy Rewatch, Batman! (2015-2017)
4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch (2017-2020)
Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch (2020-present)
Hope that helps….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Hmmm, I remember when I first saw this episode that it seemed pretty clear early on that the whole idea of the family exercise, after B’Elanna modified the program, was for the Doctor to experience a decidely imperfect family and experience it without being able to alter it. I also never even considered the possibility that B’Elanna might have programmed in the child death on purpose. I always took it as a random occurrence, albeit purposely included in the story by the writers as a worst case scenario for the Doctor to “experience”. I’ll get to the Klingon debate and the B-story in a minute, but I personally think the episode worked well overall for what it was. As for B’Elanna’s hair, I kinda preferred her hair the way it was in the first season.
Okay I lied, I’m not going to get into the B-story at all because it was just, umm. As for the way the Klingon friends were depicted, I can only say that perhaps it was meant as a joke (Klingons are all troublemakers don’t cha know?!
), but if it was, it’s extremely shortsighted. If they had simply tweaked that part, they could have made Jeffrey’s friends anything. Make the issue about Jeffrey’s friends actually being troublemakers, not just identify two friends as being troublemakers for being Klingons. I mean, I get it, it was a quick way to inform the viewer that these friends are bad news (which in itself is troubling that the writers expect viewers will immediately jump to that conclusion), but shave off some of the B-story and sneak in some exposition why these friends are a bad influence; it seems so simple.
Ok, this one hit hard originally. I remember that. I think it’s because I empathize with the Doctor, both from the in-story standpoint, and I guess, the in-in-story standpoint. With the latter… I barely have to explain how a child character dying would be a kick in the chest, right? I don’t have any kids of my own but I have 8 niblings at present, and I seriously consider my status as their uncle as the most important thing in my life. No exaggeration. So I connected with that aspect.
As for the former, I’m looking at it as although it was just a story from the Doctor’s standpoint, it was a story he’d made a commitment to stay invested in… I can totally buy that he didn’t want to finish it, because there’s a reason why I personally haven’t finished Dragon Age 2 more than once, and it’s not the gameplay. But halfway-ish through Act 2 there’s a mission… I just cannot take Merrill’s heartbroken voice saying “There’s nothing I can do… I’m so sorry!” too many times. I just cannot choose to subject myself to that level of Feels.
Now, however… I wonder. Someone either here or in Concellation complained that if the Doctor was really taking this to heart, it would’ve affected him through the end of the series. PTSD, stress involving Naomi even looking at a holodeck, stuff like that. And it does diminish the effect of this episode greatly in hindsight.
Okay, to go a bit further into what seem to be the main issues of this episode: This episode is all about the Doctor being this show’s version of “the character who explores the human condition”. The whole point of the programme is for the Doctor to experience what it’s like to have a family the way that organics do. That means dealing with problems the way they would. The fact that he could change his family’s personalities or heal their injuries with a voice command is wholly irrelevant: The point is that doing so would invalidate the experience. (See “Fair Haven” for the flipside of that.) It’s about his growth as a person. He could simply download a compilation of other people’s experiences of family life, but he’s chosen to live it himself. Torres later notes that she gives him credit for sticking at it. And no, I don’t for a moment believe that she chose to have Belle die. That was randomly generated by the programme.
Now, the Klingons. I realise it’s very late in the episode and the Doctor has already made some prejudiced comments about them simply because Jeffrey is surly and plays loud music. But the scene with the dagger of kut’luch kind of proves the Doctor right. Klingons do have practises that would seem barbaric to other races. In order to become an honorary Klingon, Jeffrey has to perform a ritual act of violence and draw blood. Now, the scene is frustratingly unclear as to whether his target would be consenting or not: If they are, that’s less problematic, but still something that the most liberal would be uncomfortable with.
And yes, this is yet another episode which should have had a lasting effect on a character but is never mentioned again.
I remember liking this episode and feeling terribly for the doc when his daughter died. That said, I completely forgot about the B-plot with the anomaly.
I always took Belle’s death as being a consequence of Torres taking the training wheels off of the life simulation.Similar to how when they told the Enterprise’s computer to make someone who could go head to head with Data they accidentally created Moriarty. Starfleet computers have no chill when you tell them to just make it up as you go along.
I also feel like it was definitely the Doctor’s ego that gave him that vision of a family. I’m not sure that Torres set out to inflict on him her own family problems. It was to show him what a family is like when their function isn’t to worship Dad, but instead of to have their own lives to deal with.
As for them being holodeck characters I would imagine that would feel more real to the Doc than the people around him do. If you’re a simulation how can other simulations be less real to you? Especially after Torres’ revamp.
As for the Doc’s casual racist anti-Klingon bent. I wonder if that’s something leftover from his own father, Doc Zimmerman. While he spends the entire series becoming his own person, the Doctor is originally just Lewis Zimmerman with an entire civilization’s worth of medical knowledge crammed into his head. So it may not be the Doctor’s own experience talking there.
And I love B’elanna’s hair here, almost as much as I love when Kira gets a similar braid in her hair.
It doesn’t really grind on me that the Doctor creates a traditional nuclear family. While the variety of family units will doubtless grow in number and complexity by the time of a multispecies interstellar society with constantly advancing social norms, I don’t see why the old heterosexual monogamous marriage would die out. It will just exist alongside four person Andorian marriages, daisy chain Denobulan marriages, and the more comparatively mundane human gender and gender preference numerically variable spouse type couplings/throupling/etc. The Doctor has already expressed heterosexual interest so we know that’s the way he goes. It’s only logical that he would institute that kind of marital situation. If he went the Lothario route and had three or four wives, we’d also be pointing out his ego dictating how the simulation was created.
@krad: Distant Origin delayed?
Eduardo: because yesterday was technically a holiday (it was still really Labor Day, even though in 2020 every day is a holiday), I didn’t do a rewatch for it. (I was busy doing virtual Dragon Con most of the weekend anyhow.) We’ll have “Distant Origin” on Thursday.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Now I get it. Labor Day is a fluid holiday due to it being the first Monday of September. Around here, it’s always May 1st, regardless of weekday.
The one thing that struck me about this episode was that the doctor essentially created his own family, holographic people like himself, and Torres felt she had the right to change them because she didn’t like them. Would she have done that to another of her crewmates? Maybe my genetic modifications or some Borg tech? Of course not. We’d be horrified. And yet she thinks she has the right to do it to the doctor because he’s not flesh and blood. I was disgusted by that.
@62/Kate: “and Torres felt she had the right to change them because she didn’t like them.”
That’s not how it happened. She let the Doctor know why she felt the simulation was flawed, she offered to help improve it, and after thinking it over, he accepted her offer. So she had his consent for the modifications. She did not simply “feel she had the right.” That’s grossly unfair to her.
I hated this episode mainly because my young niece just died, and I am burningly furious at Star Trek for making me watch a little girl “draw her last breath” for no discernable good reason. If I were the Doctor, I would murder B’elanna. Painfully.
@64/tracet: I totally can understand how a personal loss would make you feel that way, my apologies.
As has been pointed out in the comments, Torres did not program the child death into the simulation, she mearly made it so the events were truly random within the criteria of the program. Also, the Doctor agreed to let her modify the simulation and he chose to play through it until the end, whatever ended up happening.
@65/Thierafhal: Right. The Doctor could’ve just shut down the simulation and walked away. That’s exactly what he was going to do, until Paris convinced him that if he wanted to understand real life, he had to face the bad with the good. So it was the Doctor’s choice to face that pain, just as it was his choice to agree to the randomization that made it possible.
@65 – I know that. But she changed the program (yes I know it was with the Doctor’s permission) to open it up for accidents and randomization. His original Brady Bunch world would never have seen the death of a child. I would totally murder Torres.
@67/tracet: You contradict yourself. You acknowledge that it was with the Doctor’s permission. He knowingly chose to take on that risk. So he’d be a total bastard if he blamed someone else for that.
@67/tracet:
But your missing the point. The Doctor agreed to accept the risks of having a real family. The death of a child is certainly one of the most tragic things to happen to any family, but it happens. It’s unfortunate that it happened to him, but Torres didn’t script it, she simply defined the parameters of the program that The Doctor agreed to.
@68 and whoever else: The Doctor decided he wanted a family because he had no experience of having a family, and no real idea of what it would be like. He trusted that Torres’s alteration of the program would make it more realistic – still having no idea of what that meant. And my impression both of Torres’s expression when she offered to reprogram it and of the chaos the Doctor walked into after the reprogramming was that she wasn’t just tweaking it slightly to tone down the saccharine – she turned the whole thing deliberately upside down.
So, fine, she wasn’t responsible for the fake child’s death. She was responsible for altering the program in such a way that it was possible (maybe even probable – if it hadn’t been the daughter, the son looked to be well on the way to endangering his own safetly). And yes, the Doctor gave permission – but I still maintain he had no idea what he was giving permission for.
Obviously, the ones I’m angry with on my own behalf are the writers, because absolutely nothing was gained, taught, or otherwise justified the pointless and gratuitous death of a child in this story, which was precisely the last thing I needed to be ambushed with.
@69 – “It happens” – whoa, there! Check your unrestrained empathy! I’m getting verklempt over here. I know it happens. It happened to my brother. That’s why this episode makes me so angry.
@70/tracet: “And yes, the Doctor gave permission – but I still maintain he had no idea what he was giving permission for.”
Of course he didn’t! That was the whole point — to find out.
And once he did find out, his first choice was to shut down the program and walk away. He still had that power. But Paris convinced him that that was failing the purpose of the exercise. So the Doctor chose, of his own volition, to go back and face it anyway. Torres wasn’t responsible for that. It was his own choice, following a conversation with Paris.
“Obviously, the ones I’m angry with on my own behalf are the writers, because absolutely nothing was gained, taught, or otherwise justified the pointless and gratuitous death of a child in this story, which was precisely the last thing I needed to be ambushed with.”
A lot of us have lost people. I lost my mother when I was seven, and my father a decade ago. But that’s what was gained, what was taught. The Doctor wanted to experience what real life was like so he could learn more empathy for his patients, so he could relate better to their experiences. And one experience we all have to face sooner or later is grief at the loss of a family member. His loss was fictional, so he could’ve just walked away, but he recognized that the people he wanted to empathize with would not have that option. So he stuck with it so that he could learn what it was like for them.
I can understand that. When my father was dying in hospice care, I resisted going in to say my farewells (he probably wasn’t aware of them anyway), but his caregiver convinced me it would help me to face it, and it did.
@70/tracet:
My apologies that I came across as being unsympathetic to your loss. I’ve also experienced the death of a child in my family so in no way was it my intent to condescend. My comment was only for the purpose of framing the context of what this episode was ultimately about. As #71 pointed out: “…That was the whole point (for The Doctor in this episode)— to find out…“.
Still, that’s no excuse. Words matter, whatever the context, and I should have chose mine more tactfully and I will try to do so in the future.
@34 – ianc: Nice detail about Wendy Schaal.
@62 – Kate: But a) Torres didn’t do it without permission, b) it’s not a real family, it’s a simulation. Even the Doctor, as involved as he gets, never believes they’re ACTUALLY real, and c) she is actually helping the Doctor out, as Chris say. He wants to experience family life, she tells her it’s a flawed simulation, and helps improve it.
@73: I think you have a missing word : never believes?
I’ve gone from lurker to poster because of how much I hated this episode. KRAD is spot-on in the review: this episode was a spectacular failure of imagination.
While I believe that CLB’s responses to the criticisms made against the episode are valid, I feel like the conceptual flaw of the EMH’s family hasn’t really been addressed, the thing that irks me about this episode, even beyond the insipid nuclear family stereotypes: the family bonds are utterly artificial.
As a father with a wife and two children, this “Real Life” is frustratingly shallow. The EMH at this point has strong bonds with the crew of Voyager and has experienced hardship and loss with them. But this damn simulacra of a family is something the EMH threw together because one day he thought, “Gee, my crew mates talk about family a lot, I wonder what that’s like…” and programmed up three non-sentient beings that were meant to believe he was their established husband and father.
But what are these relationships? What bonds did the EMH actually create? Did he give himself memories of meeting, courting, marrying his wife? Did he program memories of the birth of these children? Given the fact that they were so incredibly one-dimensional, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess he didn’t. The fact that he so willingly allowed Torres to reprogram them also suggests that he didn’t have any significant emotional investment in these photon automatons. Their personalities change overnight, and his reaction to it is akin to reaching a tougher, more frustrating level in a video game.
And yet, this episode asks me, a father of two children, to feel the emotional weight of the EMH’s loss. Not only that, but I’m supposed to accept that he’s doing the “big, mature act” by not quitting or resetting the program, and endure a simulation of a dying child. It’s all such a load of equine manure!
The biggest failure of imagination here I think is that this episode is trying to have it both ways. If the EMH really wants to explore his humanity and understand his crew mates better by having a family, he can’t just plop himself into the starring role of a family sitcom and then weep photonic tears when a fake child dies. Either he needed to create a sentient individual that had their own agency, court them, commit to them, and build a sentient holographic family from scratch, or forge that kind of relationship with a real flesh-and-blood being and have children with them (either some kind of third-party insemination, adoption, AI, etc).
The thing is, if you’re just going to make a fake family and then cry when one of them dies like you would if a character you liked in a movie died, then you might as well just reset and bring them back to life, or start a new simulation. If you want a “Real Life” experience, you need to commit to a real life experience! Unlocking the “My Daughter Died” X-Box Achievement doesn’t cut it!
And there’s a big irony undercutting all of this: the EMH cared more about his own edification than he cared about any of these family members. If he’d followed one of my previous suggestions and REALLY made a family, you better believe he’d tell the program, “No, computer, screw you. Fix my daughter.” Imagine what an awesome episode that would’ve been, if in the end, he cared more about his daughter and less about farming some more Humanity XP.
But no, instead we get a dead fake kid in a desperate attempt at pathos that actually undermines the emotions and meaning the episode tried to convey.
What a wretched episode!
@75/CaptainJovannis: Those are fair points, but if I may offer a counterargument: The Doctor’s real goal was not to empathize with a holographic family, but to empathize with his crewmates, to understand their experiences better so he could be a better caretaker to them. So yes, it was an extended roleplaying exercise, not as deep as real family bonds, but that’s okay, because it wasn’t about the holo-family, it was about his real crewmates and his ability to connect better with their emotions. That’s the emotional bond that really matters here. That’s why he accepts it when B’Elanna alters the program and goes back when Tom tells him he should — because he cares about B’Elanna and Tom and the others and wants to understand how they feel about it.
@75: I understand that this was his intention, to empathize and understand his crew mates better. However, as I mentioned in my post, that only illustrates the irony of the whole situation: because it’s about his own edification and attempts at understanding, and not about the family members themselves, he then undercuts his own purpose. Watching a fake child die doesn’t help him understand what one of his crew mates actually goes through when they lose someone. The episode really wants me to believe that it does, and that makes it all the more infuriating.
@77/Jovannis: I’m not saying it works perfectly. I’m saying the fact that his intention is more about empathy with his crewmates than empathy with non-sentient holograms is what makes me more inclined to forgive the imperfection of his method, and of the episode.
Indeed, that imperfection is kind of the point. It’s built into the story that this is a bad idea, a clumsy and inadequate attempt on the Doctor’s part to achieve the goal he sets out for. The story arc is about the attempt to bring it closer to real life. It’s not about perfect success, it’s about the Doctor’s willingness to make the attempt, even when it would be easier to retreat into easy illusion or give up altogether. After all, that’s a large part of real life — sticking with imperfect things and trying to make them work better, because they’re the best we’ve got.
@74 – Andy: Yes, thank you.
Was the Doctor’s name Kenneth named for Ken Biller? Was Jeffrey supposed to kill someone with that dagger if it is indeed a qut’luch? I always thought the Doctor didn’t change the program because he wanted to persist with it rather than take the easy way out but Real Life is an absolute low point for this season and another example of how VGR can’t do a more character-based episode without tacking on an unnecessary SF subplot.
1: Torres just added some variety to the program with no clue as to where it would lead. 2: That gag would run out of gas pretty quick. 4: She had a curlier do in S6 (if that’s what you mean) but it was gone by S7. 7: I think Wendy Schaal played Charlene like a Stepford wife until Torres gave her a mind of her own. 10: I don’t think that would have worked since the family weren’t sentient like Lal ( unless they discovered the truth of they’re existence over the course of the episode. 16: I didn’t mind that the astral eddys were unpredictable and uncontrollable because not every phenomena has a rule book.
24: What was fun about Pleasantville was watching these one-dimensional stereotypes evolve into fully developed people. 25: Considering Voyager’s situation, I don’t see how the Doctor could maintain those relationships. 27: Although Real Life is just a lot of pointless filler, I’ve always thought that Lindsay Haun is a sharp, immensely talented performer. Her role in the episode is the one thing about it that did work. 29: “10 regulars”. Did that make VGR very briefly the Trek show with the largest ensemble?
30: In Nothing Human, the Doctor takes Torres to task for her xenophobic views concerning the Cardassians, forgetting his own prejudiced views against Klingons in Real Life. 31: Maybe the Doctor’s attitude towards Klingons stem from who rewrote his program (or is bigotry another one of Dr Zimmerman’s many character flaws)? And in DS9, we get humans (like O’Brien) who refer to Cardassians as “Cardies”. 32: Innerspace is another good name for subspace (and Robert Picardo and Wendy Schaal were both in the movie).
34: I hadn’t realised the Doctor is the same age as Kes and maybe that’s why they got along so well. Wendy Schaal has yet to be in MacFarlane’s Trek-inspired The Orville, but Robert Picardo, Tim Russ and Robert Duncan McNeill (as a director) all have. 38: Julianna Soong née Tainer was an android modelled on the woman who helped Dr Soong create Data. 43: Scorpion or The Gift? 52: Dr Bashir said the same thing in Life Support and that’s why he failed to save Vedek Bareil.
56: Thankyou for introducing me to the word niblings (although it’s not recognised by the spellchecker, except as nibbling). 57: “The character who explores the human condition”. Seven of Nine will come to fill that role instead when Jeri Ryan joined the cast in S4. After his experiences in Real Life, maybe that’s why the Doctor tried to advise Janeway during Fair Haven. 58: Thankyou for introducing me to the word throupling.
64: There’s a lot of anti-Torres resentment in this comments section but yours shocked me
67: Shocked again 
70: Never heard of verklempt (this comment section is full of words I’m unfamiliar with). 75: “Targ manure! Every word of it!” The title of this sitcom ought to be “Doctor Knows Best!” I wonder how the EMH had a son in Blink of an Eye?
@80: Regarding “10 regulars,” no, because in the first two episodes of the 4th season when Jennifer Lien was still on the show, she was downgraded to guest star whereas Jeri Ryan took her place in the main cast. But that’s why I was saying for that short time it was as if Voyager had 10 regulars. So the series is still tied for largest main cast of 9 people on a Star Trek series with TNG in its first season when Denise Crosby was still on the show.
@30
Pretty confusing overlap of terms there! Of course racism exists in ST (Romulans & Remans; TOS “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” ) but I don’t think the Doctor is racist. I’m not convinced he considers Humans to be inferior to him, except in medical competence and so on where of course, they are. But being racist means “Because they are like X, they are inferior”, not “Because only I am like Y, they are inferior” *. Since he only knows half a Klingon and seems to be fine with her, I doubt he is speciesist either. Xenophobic, maybe. As someone else commented where do you draw the line on things you genuinely believe are wrong, though. (Also, is the Doctor supposed to be Human himself in his family fantasy? I doubt a racist would be interested in learning how it is to be like an inferior race).
I agree the Federation does struggle with xenophobia and because of that, speciesm. I think ST does a pretty good job with that (DS9 of course the best for it) by making the point for our society, by example, not only is racism irrational and pointless, but even if “races” were a real thing (e.g. if certain genetically related groups of people really were just inherently stronger & more violent, or culturally obsessed with money) it would still be irrational and pointless and you should still judge people as individuals.
Anyway. The whole episode fell flat to me, the B plot was a non-thing and I wasn’t invested in any way in the Doctor’s fake family. His daughter dying was a horrific turn of events, but I also can’t help thinking very unreflective of the average Federation family – children dying like that is a rare and newsworthy event in our society, surely in the Federation in normal circumstances it just wouldn’t happen. So a) seems just very cruel both in and out of universe, and b) when people mention to the Doctor “I’m OK, but I am missing my kids” his response will not be “I understand” but “You miss them? But they are still alive – my daughter died!”, which doesn’t seem too helpful.
* I dislike large numbers of people as being stupid, wilfully ignorant, irrational, selfish, just generally very unpleasant to be around. It doesn’t make me a racist. Maybe a misanthrope. Or a realist. On alternate days.
I am really torn… :D The episode is really not good, but i found it much more entertaining than i had expected. :) But i’m mostly upset that there’s zero discussion about the destroyed science station and the dead scientists after 3 minutes and that investigation of those space hurricanes leads nowhere.
But it is interesting to see that the Doctor is more moved by the death of a virtual holo-family member than the death of his real crewmates. And by interesting, i really mean interesting – because i have the feeling that this could even happen to real people actually and the idea is not that absurd.
As for the beginning of the holofamily, i found it very funny actually, it just showed how the Doctor imagines a family and how clueless he was about the topic. Then B’ellana’s alterations – yeah, typical 90s maybe, but it wasn’t that bad…
And I appreciate that instead of modifying the game to make it easier for himself, he rather went forward with the scenario of losing his daughter. He just realised that if he takes the holodeck family as a computer game that he abandons, he won’t learn that much. So the only thing really is – didn’t he really learned much more about human relationships and families through his real experience on the ship?