“Someone to Watch Over Me”
Written by Brannon Braga and Michael Taylor
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill
Season 5, Episode 22
Production episode 216
Original air date: April 28, 1999
Stardate: 52648.0
Captain’s log. Seven has been observing Paris and Torres’ courtship from not-very-afar to the point where Torres confronts her about it and tells her to stop. Janeway later backs Torres up, saying that Seven shouldn’t be observing the crew like she’s out in the wild making notes on the mating habits of animals. She also suggests that Seven try first-hand experience by actually dating someone.
Voyager is starting relations with the Kadi, a very spiritual and very Puritanical people. They are sending an ambassador to Voyager named Tomin, while Janeway and Tuvok beam down to the Kadi homeworld. Neelix is Tomin’s handler while he’s on board, and he intends to give him all bland food and make sure he sees all of the ship and makes all his prayer meetings and such. Unfortunately, Tomin wants to try spicy foods and check out the holodeck, and do other hedonistic things, much to Neelix’s chagrin.
During a checkup in sickbay, the EMH and Seven discuss the incident with Torres and Janeway’s suggestion. The EMH volunteers to teach her how to date, starting with a primer on the holodeck on various mating rituals of Klingons, Bolians, and Species 8472 before settling on humans. He then takes her to Chez Sandrine on the holodeck, where she follows a script he’s written on meeting a person and striking up a conversation. While she chats up a holographic patron, Paris enters the holodeck and says that the EMH is wasting his time. Sure, she’s doing okay with a programmed potential date, but she’ll never be able to manage it with a real person. They make a wager: Seven will bring a date to Tomin’s reception on Thursday and leave with the same date without incident. If she does, Paris will work double shifts in sickbay. If she doesn’t, Paris doesn’t have to work in sickbay for a month.
Neelix is trying and failing to get Tomin to tour the ship and stick to the schedule, but all he wants to do is try more yummy food and also check out the women on the ship.
The EMH works with Seven to figure out her interests. The doctor mentions his own explorations of photography and music, and Seven mentions that she is interested in music. Thanks to her Borg vocal subprocessor, she has a superlative singing voice, and she and the EMH wind up doing a lovely duet of “You Are My Sunshine.”
After going over the crew roster, and with a bit of input from Kim, Seven decides to ask Lieutenant William Chapman from engineering out on a date. He is rather surprised by the offer, and, while befuddled, accepts.
The EMH convinces Seven to not dress like she normally does, providing her with a dress and encouraging her to wear her hair down. On the holodeck, the date goes awkwardly. Chapman thought the whole thing was a prank, and Seven has difficulty navigating eating lobster. The date comes to an ignominious end when they dance and Seven tears a ligament in Chapman’s shoulder.
Seven wants to call the whole thing off, but the EMH convinces her to take some dancing lessons. He shows her how to dance to an instrumental version of “Someone to Watch Over Me,” something the doctor actually finds himself enjoying immensely.
Later, Tomin gets drunk at Chez Sandrine. It turns out that the Kadi don’t have the enzyme that breaks down synthehol, so he’s actually getting drunk on the fake stuff. Neelix pours coffee down his throat and drags him to the reception in the mess hall. The EMH invites Seven to go along as his date, which she accepts. She even behaves almost human at the party, and Paris—who has been telling incredibly bad hologram jokes to Tomin. (“How do you bend a hologram’s ear? Use a prism. What did the counselor say to the hologram? You’re projecting.”) Tomin has never heard jokes before, so he thinks they’re hilarious.
Seven offers to fetch drinks, makes small talk, and even proposes a toast. Paris is impressed and says the EMH has won the wager. Seven is furious that the EMH only asked her to the reception to win a bet and storms out, pausing long enough to deflect the drunken pass Tomin makes at her. (Tomin, thankfully, passes out after that.)
Tomin is being reunited with his people the next day when Janeway and Tuvok return, and Neelix is scared that Tomin’s debauchery will torpedo the trade agreement. The EMH needs several days to synthesize the enzyme that will metabolize the booze, but they don’t have that kind of time. Seven’s nanoprobes can be used as a substitute because of course they can, and the EMH extracts some.
While doing so, the EMH apologizes for the wager. He assures her that his asking her to be his date was genuine, and motivated by how much closer he feels to Seven after these past few days of doing courtship lessons. Seven accepts the apology.
A very hung over Tomin goes to the transporter room to meet the Abbot, who is disappointed by Tomin’s lie that he didn’t succumb to temptation at least a little bit, as the Abbot feels that it’s worth trying the occasional new thing, as long as you don’t make a habit of it.
Paris sees that the EMH has completely fallen for Seven, and encourages him to use the direct approach and just tell her. We then see the EMH giving flowers to Seven in the cargo bay and declaring that he’s fallen in love with her. He doesn’t expect her to reciprocate, but he wants her to know how he feels. But then we discover that this is a practice run on the holodeck. When he encounters the real Seven, she says she has decided to discontinue her dating attempts, as there’s no one on board appropriate. If she changes her mind, she promises to go to the EMH for more advice.
Realizing that she doesn’t see him as any kind of romantic partner, the EMH dials it back, just saying that he’s come to value their friendship. He then goes to the holodeck and plays “Someone to Watch Over Me” on the piano.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is the one who suggests that Seven try actually dating instead of watching other people date, which is what gets the whole mishegoss started.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok joins Janeway on the planet to meet with the Kadi. We’re told it goes well.
Half and half. Torres is incredibly not happy with Seven intruding on her and Paris’ love life, to the point where she threatens Seven with a busted nose. Nice to see Tuvok’s emotional-control meditation techniques are working so well!
Forever an ensign. Kim is greatly enthusiastic at the notion of Seven dating until she informs him that he’s not on her list of finalists, at which point you can see his crest fall. However, he gamely kibbitzes on her choices, pointing out that Ensign Bronowski does like music, but he also plays the accordion really badly and also has no sense of humor, leading Seven to cut him from the list.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH gets to play Cyrano, after a fashion, and also gets to sing and dance.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix is run ragged by Tomin, who refuses to stick to the plan and is instead is trying all the things that he’s been denied by the Kadi’s ascetic lifestyle.
Resistance is futile. Seven actually develops some conversational and dancing skills, and while it was a rhapsody in awkward, and ended very badly, her date with Chapman wasn’t a total disaster. And she can really sing…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Let’s see, we have Seven chatting up a hologram, going on dates with Chapman and the EMH, and still being faunched after by Kim. We also find out that Paris and Torres have very loud sex, and that Tomin thinks women are hot.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. It’s the triumphant return of Chez Sandrine, which we haven’t seen since the end of season two…
Do it.
“‘Stardate 52647, 1400 hours: Subjects quarrel in corridor outside female’s quarters. Male returns with twelve flowering plant stems, species rosa rubifolia, effecting a cessation of hostilities. Stardate 52648, 0300 hours: Intimate relations resume.’ How the hell do you know when we’re having intimate relations?”
“There is no one on deck nine, section twelve who doesn’t know when you’re having intimate relations.”
–Torres angrily reading Seven’s account of Paris and Torres’s relationship, and Seven saying “Bazinga!”
Welcome aboard. Two veteran character actors, Ian Abercrombie (the Abbot) and Brian McNamara (Chapman), guest star in this one. Abercrombie will return in “Spirit Folk” as one of the holographic stereotypes. David Burke (who will always hold a warm place in my heart for his doofy portrayal of Arthur in the first live-action version of The Tick) plays Seven’s holographic test date.
But this episode’s Robert Knepper moment is the great Scott Thompson as Tomin. Thompson is probably best known for his fantastic work with the Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall.
Trivial matters: The Chez Sandrine holodeck program was last seen in “Tuvix.” This is the last time it’s seen onscreen.
Chapman will be mentioned again in “Relativity.”
Seven declines to drink champagne during her date, as she says synthehol impairs her cortical functions, as she learned in “Timeless.”
The EMH defensively says to Paris that he’s had his share of romantic encounters, likely referring to Freya in “Heroes and Demons,” Denara Pel in “Lifesigns” and “Resolutions,” and Charlene in “Real Life.”
Klingon sex has been described as violent, as seen or implied in TNG’s “Hide and Q,” “The Dauphin,” and “The Emissary,” and DS9’s “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places,” so it’s perhaps not surprising that Paris and Torres can’t keep it quiet in the bedroom…
Laura Behr, the wife of DS9 show-runner Ira Steven Behr, choreographed the dancing in the episode.
Both Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan did their own singing in the episode.
Neelix gives the crew complement of the ship as 146. This is the fourth different contradictory crew complement we’ve gotten this season, after 150 in “Timeless,” 152 in “Gravity,” and 143 in “Dark Frontier.” If only they’d written down the numbers in scripts that are saved, or perhaps preserved the episodes on some sort of filmic medium, then maybe they might have been able to maintain consistency…
Set a course for home. “You make me happy when skies are gray…” There are some wonderful bits in this romantic comedy that owes a lot to Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, My Favorite Year, and Cyrano de Bergerac, the same DNA that went into She’s All That, released the same year as this episode.
But there’s also a lot of cringe-worthy moments, starting with the EMH’s holodeck primer on courting rituals and the first painful trip to Chez Sandrine. We have yet another failure of imagination, as this hologram programmed by a 24th-century human who lives in a multispecies Federation showing Seven how to go on a date in a manner that would be exactly the same if done with two people in a United States bar in 1978.
And then we have the EMH falling for someone to whom he is a mentor again. He did it with Kes (“Projections,” “Elogium“), and now he’s doing it with Kes’ replacement. It’s more than a little creepy.
Plus, what a spectacular waste of Scott Thompson. Arguably the most talented member of the Kids in the Hall (which is not to speak ill of his troupe-mates, Thompson’s just that good), he’s utterly wasted in a role that any mediocre comic actor could have done decently with. In fact, we saw two mediocre comic actors do this exact same story in TNG’s “Liaisons.” If you’re going to repeat something from a TNG episode, you should at least make it a good one, not one of the drearier entries in that show’s incredibly dreary final season.
There are some charming moments, particularly the duet of “You Are My Sunshine,” the disastrous date with Chapman, and the absolutely heartbreaking ending. Seven is oblivious to the EMH’s feelings (likely not realizing he even is capable of such), and the EMH’s dialing back his intended declaration tugs at the heartstrings, despite the creepiness of the setup. And his sad singing of the titular song at the end is the perfect tragic coda to this hit-and-miss episode.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido has two recent releases. There’s the short story “In Earth and Sky and Sea Strange Things There Be” featuring Ayesha from H. Rider Haggard’s She in Turning the Tied, a charity anthology from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. And then there’s “Transcript of the Mayoral Debate Between Batman and the Penguin” in BIFF! BAM! EEE-YOW!: The Subterranean Blue Grotto Guide to Batman ’66—Season Two, his piece on “Hizzoner the Penguin”/”Dizzoner the Penguin.” Ordering links can be found here.
A fairly nice episode, no doubt inspired by the chemistry between Picardo and Ryan — and by the fact that their characters were the two most popular and interesting ones in the show (and the ones most capable of growth — as I’ve remarked before, all of the other characters have already resolved their outstanding character arcs by this point and are basically just spinning their wheels for the rest of the series, aside from the Paris-Torres romance).
I appreciate it when ST does a purely character-driven episode like this. Back on TNG, the writers would’ve felt obligated to tack on some kind of technobabble crisis endangering the ship, but by this point they’d matured enough to let a story be driven entirely by character and relationships without any need for action or life-and-death stakes. The only hint of danger is the risk of the negotiations going badly, and that turns out to be a false alarm.
“We have yet another failure of imagination, as this hologram programmed by a 24th-century human who lives in a multispecies Federation showing Seven how to go on a date in a manner that would be exactly the same if done with two people in a United States bar in 1978.”
Not to mention that in all of Seven’s explorations of romantic possibilities, the prospect of dating someone other than a man is never even brought up.
Why is my primary problem with this episode that starship walls should be sound proof?
Can you imagine all of Riker’s complaining neighbors when he practiced the trombone? How about Data’s when he played seven symphonies at the same time at full volume? When you are in the holodeck next door, does some of the sound bleed through?
Of all the problems we solved in the future, “needing a condo association with noise regulations” should have been one of them…
@2,
Assuming that starship designers are concerned about weight and density, instead of thicker soundproof walls, I would use active noise cancellation, which should be well within the computer’s abilities. However, maybe it has to be turned on once the ruckus starts (whether musical or amorous) so everyone hears a few seconds before they have time to call out to the computer.
Joe: I have that same issue, but I also don’t care, because Seven’s line made me laugh out loud and snarf my iced tea.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My college roommate called this the “Rumschpringe in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!!” episode.
(we were especially dorky college girls)
I am not a fan of this episode for a few reasons, primarily that I felt this was when Voyager turned into the Doc & Seven show.(IMHO). It’s easy to say the other characters were less popular but that’s down to the writing and no-one wanted to make the effort. We won’t go into the whole issue of Braga dating Ryan but I’m sure the promotion of Seven as a character wasn’t entirely a coincidence.
However “There is no one on deck nine, section twelve who doesn’t know when you’re having intimate relations.” is one of my favourite lines in all of Voyager, it’s just a shame the rest of the episode doesn’t live up to it.
@@@@@ 1, Christopher Bennet
Hmm. Now I’m imagining a scene with the characters on the holodeck flipping through various “Classic First Date,” scenarios from different cultures. Sort of a Lower Decks energy to the idea, I think.
@6/lesleyk: “It’s easy to say the other characters were less popular but that’s down to the writing and no-one wanted to make the effort.”
As I’ve related before, I literally did make the effort. When I had the opportunity to pitch story ideas for season 5, I strove to avoid Doctor or Seven stories, because I figured everyone would do those and I wanted to offer something different to better my chances. But it was hard to come up with worthwhile stories for anyone but the Doctor and Seven, because stories come from personal growth or conflict, and as I said, the other characters had already resolved their conflicts and personal issues by then, so there was little to work with (as Sherlock Holmes once said, “I cannot make bricks without clay!”). But it was easy to come up with Seven or Doctor stories, because both characters had plenty of room for growth and were easier to put in conflict with other characters. So I ended up with mostly Seven or Doctor pitches even though I specifically tried to favor the other characters instead. That’s how much potential both characters had.
(Although the one pitch I came closest with — which I made over the phone to none other than Michael Taylor, this episode’s co-author — was a Tuvok story. It got as far as getting brought up in the writers’ room as a possibility, but it never went beyond that.)
“We won’t go into the whole issue of Braga dating Ryan but I’m sure the promotion of Seven as a character wasn’t entirely a coincidence.”
I think that’s unfair to Jeri Ryan. After all, the Doctor was just as heavily featured as Seven, and Picardo sure wasn’t dating the showrunner. The Doctor and Seven were both rich characters that it was easy to tell stories about, as I said, and they were both portrayed by the two most gifted and charismatic actors on the show. And they were about equally prominent over the course of the last four seasons. It’s a sexist double standard that only Ryan is accused of sleeping her way to success while Picardo’s equal success is taken for granted as being the result of his talent and the richness of his character. No doubt Braga was happy to center his girlfriend, but I’m sure that Ryan would’ve ended up being just as much a breakout player even without that advantage.
I think this one is pretty good overall and you can never go wrong with a Seven/EMH pairing (“Body and Soul” in the seventh season is my absolute favorite of the pairings). I like the concept of Seven learning how to date and embark on romances as a leap forward in her exploration of humanity and I find it sweet that the EMH helps her along and ultimately falls for her. Regarding the creepiness factor, I think it’s just very “human” of him to fall for her because it wasn’t intentional and there’s no malicious intent. They are both adults here.
I believe season seven’s “Human Error” is basically the sequel to this episode, which I also like, but unfortunately begins the unconvincing Seven/Chakotay romance.
The alien ambassador indulging himself in pleasures plot line was completely forgettable and basically just repeated the same story element from TNG’s “Liasions” so that felt lazy.
It’s always great to hear Ryan or Picardo sing.
Nice to see an a new face among the crew with Chapman who was likable but of course we never see him again.
@6: I think even if Ryan wasn’t dating Braga, her character would still get a lot of promotion and interest from the writers because her character was newer, and let’s face it, one of the most interesting on the show.
the disastrous date with Chapman,
My favorite bit is at ~24:45– Chapman pulls out the chair for Seven, an oblivious Seven takes the other chair, he double takes and quickly just takes the chair he intended for her. It’s played subtly but portends disaster. Okay, I’m biased, because that exact same thing happened to me. Apparently, women in New York City don’t usually expect this.
@2 Joe: Why is my primary problem with this episode that starship walls should be sound proof?
I mean, this is at least consistent (unlike the crew size). In The Thaw, Harry Kim’s neighbor pounds on the wall so he’ll stop playing the clarinet and it’s mentioned that Voyager has a design flaw– the fluid conduits running through the walls conduct sound. Which does strike me as the sort of second-order effect design glitch that could slip through on a new design.
In concept alone, the Borg character on the show was pretty well destined to become the breakout star, or at least had a very good chance of happening. The Borg had yet to be worn out as a villain in Star Trek at that time. The year prior they had just had the successful First Contact when Seven was introduced. It would be baffling if the series didn’t feature her character in quite a lot of stories.
I often wonder if the EMH’s fixation on both Seven and Kes happen to be a poorly timed coincidence or an intentional writer’s design to make him purposefully creepy towards certain women. He would never try that approach on strong personalities like Torres and Janeway, because they wouldn’t stand for it.
Putting that issue aside, this is a welcome character-centric story. As pointed out, TNG’s Family was a welcome trend breaker back on TNG’s fourth season, because it proved that Trek didn’t always need some jeopardy plot to keep a viewer’s attention. This episode follows on that pattern, and is all the better for it. And they would do it again on Enterprise, to some nice results.
The episode does suffer somewhat due to portraying some very dated notions of dating and courtship that seem like leftover scenes from old TNG episodes such as In Theory and The Outcast. But most of that is redeemed by Picardo’s performance during that heartbreaking ending. That alone elevates the episode from a middling one to a very good one. Far more understated and effective in comparison to the melodramatic family death scene in season 3’s Real Life. And way more effective than the upcoming Seven/Chakotay material. I’m a bit of a sucker for unrequited love stories, and this one fits the trope in a nutshell. Both Picardo and Ryan raise to the challenge and make for some memorable scenes.
@11/Jelly: Excellent point. It’s usually the “outside observer of humanity” characters who are the breakouts — Spock, Data, Odo, the EMH, Saru. A human who has an alien identity and must relearn her humanity is naturally going to fit that mold well.
Indeed, Seven and Spock have a lot of parallels (as I pointed out in a Star Trek Magazine article once). Each is a “half-human” character who became a breakout player due to the character’s richness and the actor’s talent and sex appeal (people today have forgotten the near-Beatles-level frenzy Spock inspired in the female audience). Each came to dominate their series, with the only other characters matching them in prominence being the two closest to them, the captain and the doctor.
@10 Rick – If it was explained in another episode, I rescind my criticism. Thanks!
@10: “My favorite bit is at ~24:45– Chapman pulls out the chair for Seven, an oblivious Seven takes the other chair, he double takes and quickly just takes the chair he intended for her. It’s played subtly but portends disaster. Okay, I’m biased, because that exact same thing happened to me. Apparently, women in New York City don’t usually expect this.”
One might wonder why this behavior was still a thing in the 24th century, where there was equality of the sexes.
People might admire Jeri Ryan’s body, but I’ve always been mesmerized by her lips, especially in this episode. I’m not sure why; possibly it was the lighting or camera angles. And her singing voice! It’s no wonder why I had such a big crush on her.
@13- Heck, I suppose TNG gave us three* “half-humans,” though I don’t think any of them was quite the breakaway or sex symbol that Spock or Seven were (Data’s memetic and musical status as fully functional and anatomically correct aside). An alien raised by humans in Worf, an artificial man actively trying to be more human in Data, and, technically although I don’t recall it driving many episodes, a half-human half-Betazed in Troi.
*Just off the top of my head- I’m sure cases could be made for others.
@12, the EMH seems to go for blonds. He probably falls for proteges because the only people he seems to get close to are one’s he mentors. How much of a social life does the Doctor have?
@1, CLB, it was the nineties. But that would have been an interesting scene.
Doctor: First of all are you attracted to men or women?
Seven: I don’t know.
Doctor: Pick one.
@17- Well, he’s got the mobile projector now, so he probably could socialize more with the crew, but despite some occasional pining he doesn’t seem like too much of a people person. When he starts daydreaming, while Seven does get some special attention, it becomes clear that he’s given some *ahem* consideration to Janeway and Torres as well.
His main romantic confidante, meanwhile, seems to be Paris. Make of that what you will.
@17/roxana: Yes, it was the nineties — three and a half years after DS9: “Rejoined,” and two years after the game-changing moment when Ellen DeGeneres came out in her self-titled sitcom. By this point, it was no longer uncommon to acknowledge sexual diversity in television (Wikipedia stops keeping count at the point where Ellen came out, because after that it was routine), so that’s no excuse. The problem wasn’t the nineties, the problem was Rick Berman keeping Star Trek‘s sexual politics stuck in the eighties, or earlier. By this point, Trek’s near-absolute refusal to acknowledge non-heterosexuality was more the exception than the rule.
@17: More like, “Are you attracted to *anyone?”
Seven approached the whole thing clinically. Nobody even bothered to ask her if she feels a sexual or romantic attraction to anyone.
@15 Jeez…why WOULD you have a crush on a woman who’s physically attractive, a hell of an actor, a great singer and (by all accounts) is a real sweetheart as a person?
“I have mastered this exercise. We can proceed to the next.”
I found this one funny and charming in equal measure. Someone finally seems to have twigged that if you’re going to do a Doctor/Seven episode then you need to actually stick them together and have them play off each other for a decent chunk of the episode: They’re two of the actors with best comic timing on the show and you can get a lot from watching the one that’s reacting as much as anything else. (“You’re a woman, Seven.”/“Is that an observation or a diagnosis?”) Actually, thinking about it a bit harder, it might be significant that, unlike in previous team-ups “One” and “Bliss”, the Doctor is the viewpoint character here: Seven episodes all tend to follow the same character arc and rely on a lot of Aesop Amnesia (frankly it feels like she only had the most potential for character growth because her character growth kept getting reset, since her main conflict was resolved at least as early as “The Raven” if not “The Gift”), while the Doctor’s can bring something new to the character. Not that Seven’s a weak link: Her interaction with Chapman is downright hilarious. (And a rare chance to see her wearing something that isn’t a skin-tight catsuit!)
It does however mean that the rest of the cast are sidelined: Apart from Paris and Neelix, the others basically only get one or two scenes each. (Chakotay’s near-absence is particularly odd: Shouldn’t he be taking some interest in the visiting alien ambassador rather than letting Neelix drown?) It’s hard to be sure what Paris was doing revealing the bet and whether he actually meant to cause trouble. He certainly seems smug and insincere for much of it (although the Doctor doesn’t seem to notice) but then looks genuinely guilty when Seven stormed out: Maybe he expected a negative reaction but didn’t realise she’d actually be hurt by it. He’s back in his “Lifesigns” role of being the Doctor’s relationship guru soon afterwards anyway.
Watching 20+ years on, the episode is notably heteronormative, with everyone just kind of assuming Seven will be interested in men (the Doctor also seems to just assume she’ll only date humans) and Tomin acting as though segregating genders means no romantic involvement. Whether that’s typical of 90s US network television or not I guess is something for the people who were there to judge. The B-plot about the ambassador from the ascetic society overindulging doesn’t provoke as many laughs as the A-plot, but it has its moments.
Of course, the usual Voyager problem is that it all has to be wrapped up in one episode: Robert Picardo apparently pitched the idea as a story arc spanning a number of episodes. So apart from one speech in Season 7 and the odd bit of subtext, the Doctor being in love with Seven is mostly forgotten going forward.
Memory Alpha claims Sandrine’s appeared in “The Swarm” but I’m not sure I agree: It appears to be the same set but that’s about as far as it goes. After their duplicates beat them to the punch in “Course: Oblivion”, the real Voyager crew finally get to wear dress uniforms…but again it’s only Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok and Paris, with everyone else present wearing their regular uniforms. I think that’s possibly the last reference to Kim being attracted to Seven (except of course when Paris gets his list out).
I am not really sure why the fact that the Doctor fell for Seven is considered creepy. He didn’t abuse his position as her mentor. I think it was presented as a natural feeling that evolved based on the situation and the fact that Seven is likeable, it’s not like he told himself, “ok, I have a position of power over this woman, I can take advantage of this”. And I see the mentoring thing more as a friendly gesture from him than an official duty where he is formally assigned as her mentor and has power over her career path or her position on the ship.
@22/cap-mjb: “Watching 20+ years on, the episode is notably heteronormative, with everyone just kind of assuming Seven will be interested in men (the Doctor also seems to just assume she’ll only date humans) and Tomin acting as though segregating genders means no romantic involvement. Whether that’s typical of 90s US network television or not I guess is something for the people who were there to judge.”
Was it typical? Perhaps. There was certainly increasing acknowledgment of non-heteronormativity compared to before, but it wasn’t unusual for a show to ignore the issue and stick with heteronormative assumptions.
But that’s exactly the problem — Star Trek is not supposed to be merely typical of the TV landscape, it’s supposed to push the envelope on inclusion and diversity. Or at least, that was what it professed to aspire to. Fans and critics had been asking about LGBTQ inclusion in Trek since TNG started in the late ’80s, since the conversation about gay rights was going on in the culture then just as the civil rights conversation had gone on in the ’60s. And Roddenberry had promised that he would include a gay character, but he never followed through, and David Gerrold’s AIDS allegory script “Blood and Fire” was quashed by Roddenberry’s homophobic lawyer (or so Gerrold tells it, IIRC), and things didn’t get any better after that, despite repeated promises. The only sops we got were TNG: “The Outcast,” which used SF allegory to touch on discrimination but was ultimately very heteronormative, and DS9: “Rejoined,” which was a more effective and daring statement but was not followed up on. By the time of Voyager and certainly by the time of Enterprise, Trek’s insistence on LGBTQ invisibility was seen as notably backward for a franchise with a reputation for inclusiveness.
salix_caprera: It’s the combined effect of the EMH falling for Seven after previously falling for Kes, both characters to whom he was a mentor. It’s not so much the single event as the pattern.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@25/krad: I’d say Kes was more a mentor to the Doctor than the other way around. She was the one who encouraged him to grow and learn and explore his personhood. Now he’s paying it forward with Seven.
Also, the Doctor was never in love with Kes. Yes, he had a hallucination where he imagined himself as Lewis Zimmerman and Kes as his wife, but he didn’t have a lot of female acquaintances to cast in the illusory role, and presumably his mind chose Kes more for their closeness and trust than any actual romantic infatuation. The Doctor seemed more nonplussed by the idea of Kes as his wife than excited by it.
@20- Seven was demonstrating a clear (and perhaps somewhat creepy) interest in the subject of romance and intimate relations, and had demonstrated a willingness to experiment with the latter previously. It doesn’t necessarily follow that she’s interested in thus engaging, but I don’t think it’s wildly unreasonable to encourage her to explore that curiosity on a personal level, and perhaps with a slightly subtler approach than waiting to catch someone checking her out and then instruct them to remove their clothing in preparation for copulation.
@27/benjamin: “perhaps with a slightly subtler approach than waiting to catch someone checking her out and then instruct them to remove their clothing in preparation for copulation.”
To be fair, that would probably have worked with me.
@28- Well sure, it’s not a bad approach, if you have the advantage of being played by Jeri Ryan, but it does skip over certain nuances of the courtship process.
@27-29: You’re referring of course to when she tried that one on Kim onscreen and it didn’t work. He kept his clothes on.
I’m not clear on what sexual orthodoxy is in 2021 or 2377 but I’m getting the impression that dissatisfaction isn’t about Anna not being gay or considering it but about almost no one else in the Delta Quadrant going there. That wouldn’t stop her but it might limit her options to holodeck thirty.
What actually puzzles me apart from whether warp drive shoots heteron particles everywhere is the situations where character A and character B are discreetly in love for years but now and again, one or other of them goes head over heels for a newly introduced character who is usually never seen again after the episode, then it’s back to A and B. Is this how polyamory works? Or is it just how television works?
No doubt in the 24th century anyone can have chairs that move themselves around as you wish (except for Commodore Pike). Not to do so is therefore a choice of style and manners and your chair-work scores points. One imagines Tom and Harry practising it on each other in the early days before their next fiasco.
@30: Well, Harry Kim’s decision making process has been questioned before, but I think in that case, whatever his interest in Seven, it wasn’t in the quick shag she was offering. Kim strikes me as a bit of a romantic, if not always a terribly mature one.
And yes, the problem is less that any one particular character is hetero than that everyone seems to be, to the point that no one considers other options.
(The Doctor, apparently being called upon to issue medical approval for any interspecies liaisons, should have a pretty good idea who is single and potentially interested in Seven, but it would probably be unethical to use that data for a personal project.)
@30/Robert Carnegie: “I’m getting the impression that dissatisfaction isn’t about Anna not being gay or considering it but about almost no one else in the Delta Quadrant going there.”
The problem was that no character even seemed to realize it was a possibility. The Doctor claimed to be giving Seven an overview of the galaxy’s countless courtship rituals, but when it came to human courtship, he automatically presumed heteronormativity. The closest he came to acknowledging the existence of any other options was in saying “two people” in talking about dating instead of “a man and a woman.” But all his photographic examples were of hetero couples, as soon as he got Seven to Sandrine’s, he said “pretend you’ve come here to meet the man of your dreams.”
#8 Sorry, I wasn’t notified that there’d been a reply to this, I thought I’d subscribed to the thread but apparently not.
“It’s a sexist double standard that only Ryan is accused of sleeping her way to success while Picardo’s equal success is taken for granted as being the result of his talent and the richness of his character. “
You misunderstand me if you think I think Jeri Ryan slept her way to success. She deserves all the success she’s had and I really love her as an actress. My objection to the whole situation was Braga’s behaviour, not hers. If I’m correct, wasn’t there a similar situation on Enterprise involving him? In this #metoo age, I think it’s time that behaviour like that is scrutinised. Ryan would have been successful whatever but would there have been as many Seven-centric episodes as there were without Braga’s influence? That’s what I wonder about.
I still think there was way more scope for stories for other characters to shine: it’s irrelevant who was pitching what, Chris. It’s the stories that were chosen that matters and it definitely leaned too far in favour of certain characters. The fact your Tuvok story never went anywhere is indicative of that. If there wasn’t a conflict, then they could have created one. Harry Kim’s frustration at lack of promotion, for example, would have been interesting but then it’s been suggested that this was down to behind the scenes problems, not story telling ones.
As an aside, it’s been a long time frustration that I haven’t seen Picardo in much at all since Voyager – not surprising as being in the UK does mean I’m unlikely to see guest appearances unless it’s a US show airing over here that I watch. IMDB’s page says he’s kept busy, which is great. He’s always a joy to watch.
@33/lesleyk: “The fact your Tuvok story never went anywhere is indicative of that.”
On the contrary — my Tuvok story was the only one of my pitches that did go anywhere, i.e. out of the pitch session itself and into the actual writers’ room for consideration, whereas the Doctor- and Seven-centric pitches I offered were rejected right away. Even getting that far was an atypical success. This was my third Star Trek pitch session in which I’d pitched maybe 5-6 ideas per session, and the Tuvok pitch was the only one that even got as far as “I’ll propose it to the other writers.”
You have to understand that this is a very competitive business. There were dozens of people pitching stories and they only had a few open slots for freelancers’ ideas, so the odds of actually making a sale were always quite slim. Even a veteran TV writer might only manage to sell one out of 50 or 100 pitches, or none at all. There can be countless reasons why an idea doesn’t win the competition with all the others, so it’s extremely disingenuous and illogical for you to assume my idea was passed on for exactly the reason that reinforces your prejudices. Even I don’t know why it didn’t make it, so you certainly can’t know. It might not even have been formally rejected, since I never heard back from them. It could just be that they left it on the shelf for future consideration but never got around to it before the show ended. After all, again, it would’ve been competing for a finite number of slots with a large number of other proposals.
“If there wasn’t a conflict, then they could have created one.”
That’s like saying “If there wasn’t a crop, they could’ve grown one.” In practice, how easily you can succeed at that depends on the quality of the soil and rainfall, and you shouldn’t be surprised to see that more and richer crops are grown in a fertile river delta than in a desert. A richer character is more fertile ground for creating conflicts, because there’s more to work with. So that alone explains why a rich character like Seven or the Doctor gets so many focus episodes. There didn’t need to be an artificial bias in their favor to explain why there were so many stories about them. It’s just natural for the best characters to get the most episodes.
I thought it was creepy that the Doctor was basically the one to choose what Seven would look like as a liberated human, turns her into a sex bunny, then falls in love with her. Like Dr. Frankenstein creating a sex doll.
I would note that, in all this discussion of heteronormativity in the 1990s, the most jarring aspect of this is Scott Thompson’s presence on the show, given that his Kids in the Hall characters (hello, Buddy!) were unabashedly queer. If Thompson’s presence on the set didn’t lead the writers to at least trying to trouble heteronormativity in space, I’m not sure what would.
@35/John: Surely the appropriate literary analogy here is Pygmalion and Galatea.
@8/CLB: I want to say it’s a shame you weren’t more successful with your non-Seven or non-Doctor pitches, but if you’d managed to sell a Kim or Chakotay or even Lt. Carey story with some meaty character moments, any character stuff you managed to establish for them would have just been ignored or erased by the next time we saw those characters.
krad: Sorry for the nitpick, but you left the first “i” out of “Spirit Folk.”
@33/lesleyk: Picardo was a longtime guest actor on Stargate SG-1 and then a regular on Stargate: Atlantis, and he was every bit as wonderful in that franchise as he has been everywhere else. I’d be shocked if you can’t find a way to watch the Stargate series in the UK. Highly recommended.
Yeah, so just what was Rick Berman’s problem, anyway? The world was less enlightened in those days, but even by this time people knew enough to at least pretend they weren’t homophobic. This episode aired six years after the Seinfeld episode “The Outing” made “not that there’s anything wrong with that” a popular catchphrase. Has Berman ever offered a mea culpa or apology in the past 22 years?
Re: “Spirit Folk”—typo fixed!
@38/terracinque: “Yeah, so just what was Rick Berman’s problem, anyway? The world was less enlightened in those days, but even by this time people knew enough to at least pretend they weren’t homophobic.”
Ah, but he did offer a pretense. He claimed he had every intention of including a gay character once they found the “right story,” then set the parameters for the “right story” so narrowly that it never happened.
@41/CLB: I think you may be referencing this article?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.startrek.com/article/rick-berman-answers-your-questions-part-2%3famp
The excuse that he, Berman, or the other showrunners/writers couldn’t find a way to do a gay story is a cop out. He seems to suggest that if there’s a gay character then that has to be the focal point of the story, the character’s gayness, and they didn’t want to have to hit the hammer on the head so let’s make it a sci-fi allegory about prejudice against gays “The Outcast”, or the stigma of AIDS in “Stigma.” He didn’t seem to get that a character, whether a guest role, or lead role, could just be gay without it being the focal point of the show. It’s the far future. No one cares if someone is gay or not. But it would have been so meaningful to contemporary audiences, especially all of those LGBT kids out there, to see a queer character who just happens to go on dates with someone of the same sex or already be in a relationship with someone of the same sex and none of the other characters has to make special note of that except to ask how that date went or how the queer character’s partner is. And even if it was just a token suggestion like Roddenberry had wanted in “Captain’s Holiday” for same sex couples in the background on Risa to exist, it would have been much appreciated. Or for Lal in “The Offspring” to observe same sex couples in Ten Forward but the producers absolutely put a stop to that from happening on set. TNG and DS9 were syndicated so they weren’t even beholden to any network dictates or pressure. Sure you may get some stations that edit out or refuse to even show an episode they find objectionable due to content but the vast majority of the stations would still show it. And by the time VOY and ENT rolled around, gay characters were quite common on television, so not including a gay human character in the future was playing it safe at best and just homophobic on the part of the series creators at worst.
@41/CLB Sure, but I what I’m wondering is why he wasn’t even willing to pay lip service with a line or two, like Seinfeld did. Depicting gay or lesbian relations is one thing, but it’s really galling to realize Berman couldn’t even suffer a throwaway line of dialogue to the effect that some people swing that way.
@42/garreth: “The excuse that he, Berman, or the other showrunners/writers couldn’t find a way to do a gay story is a cop out.”
Yes, that is exactly my point — that it was his pretense, his excuse. Terracinque talked about people knowing enough “to at least pretend they weren’t homophobic,” and I said that Berman did exactly that. He pretended he had a legitimate excuse, and hell yes, it was an obvious cop-out.
Despite all the problems in this episode it’s worth it for the date with Chapman which has some of the funniest moments in the entire series’s run outside of Bride of Chaotica. T
I’ve always liked this episode, though I must say that the heteronormativity of the Doctor’s relationship advice is even more noticeable given Picard‘s revelations about Seven of Nine’s sexuality. And, watching it now, I can’t help but relate to her complete inability to engage in small talk.
@46: Yes – In fact my queer eye read this whole episode as leading up to the realization that Seven didn’t like anyone In That Way because she’s actually (gasp) not hetero. I think there must have been a sizable queer audience going “Oh girl, we know what’s going on” though of course, there are lots of interpretations :)
Headcanon: Someone always saw this ep as the story of a young queer who hasn’t figured it out yet, and followed that up with Picard.
Rom coms are incredibly hard to pull off. I think you sold this one short.
This one charmed me. It’s not a conceptual tour de force that analyzes the progression of sexual mores. It’s a grafting of 20th century sexual mores onto 24th century set dressing, because that’s what a 20th century audience understands. And for my 42 minutes, it was pretty close to perfect for that (though the B plot is a rehash of “Liaisons”, true, and not much fun).
And I’m not bothered by the EMH falling for 7 because this is Pygmalion. Hell, who hasn’t gotten a little crush on someone they work closely with? Which is not to say it’s right to abuse that situation or even act on that, but Trek has never abided by any rules on fraternization. 7 has her agency and she uses it. This is entirely different from that godawful “he said/she said” episode with 7.
In the end it’s two mighty fine actors working together, using a basic premise so they can do good work. Sometimes plot and concept just need to get out of the way. A little laughter, a little melancholy, a nice 42 minutes.
“It’s a grafting of 20th century sexual mores onto 24th century set dressing, because that’s what a 20th century audience understands.”
That’s an overly facile generalization, and absolutely wrong in this context. 1990s audiences included plenty of LGBTQ people who were clamoring for greater representation at the time, as well as plenty of hetero people who were increasingly accustomed by that point to seeing gay and lesbian characters on TV. Indeed, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, many Trek fans had been clamoring since 1987 for the franchise to push the envelope of gay/lesbian exclusion, just as TOS did for racial and gender inclusion in the 1960s. Trek fandom has never been the typical TV audience, but has generally been more progressive and inclusive.