S4 E05: Revulsion

Following a celebration of Tuvok's promotion to Lieutenant Commander, Torres and the Doctor respond to a distress signal from a fellow hologram. Dejaren is the lone survivor on a small ship that had otherwise been populated with biological personnel. He's an odd fellow and, after he rants at Torres about the disgustingness of non-holograms, she soon discovers that the rest of the crew had been murdered. The Doctor, who had been sympathetic towards Dejaren, helps her shut him down, until his mobile emitter is incapacitated. Torres, wounded from a previous encounter, barely manages to lure him into a trap. In a B-plot, Kim has developed a crush on Seven of Nine, but when he finds that Borg do not share human social mores, he quickly chickens out. Also, Torres and Paris kiss finally.

The main storyline is a sufficiently creepy horror story, supported by the subtext of Dejaren essentially being a slave to the people he murdered. We are never shown exactly how he was mistreated, but giving aspirations and emotions to a construct designed for menial labor is a recipe for disaster. Still, those elements may have been part of his malfunction, making it somewhat tragic that he needed to be shut down.

The Doctor and Torres pair together well, particularly in terms of their individual reactions to their own competence. Both are very skilled at what they do, but the Doctor has a great deal of confidence, leading him to brag often. That makes Torres bristle since her own competence is something personal to her, something that, if people notice, that means to her that they have a clue, and people that don't have a clue don't really need to know how great she is. How does conflict like this differ from the Janeway/Chakotay spat? Because it is played for humor, and neither one lets it get in the way of doing their jobs.

The Kim/Seven plot is intensely awkward, but when Seven breaks the tension by reading Kim like a book, it gets almost kind of cute. I'm not terribly thrilled that Kim acts so terrified the whole time, but, let's face it, it isn't exactly out of character. I am happy that the writers seemed to be interested in going the dry humor route with Seven, since that's really one of Trek's strengths. Attempts at campy humor break the immersion for me (see: A British Tar, or Lifeforms, or really any of the humor in the TNG movies), but the dry humor, that stuff has me in stitches (see: "What must I do to convince you people?"). And Trek, they were doing it before it was cool. I shouldn't be too hasty to induct her into the society* though, because it sounds like, from the memory alpha commentary, the writers thought giving her a sense of humor was a mistake.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Mostly centering on Torres and the Doctor was a good choice. As a Doctor episode, it escapes some of the more trite "this is what it means to be human" bits that often miss the mark, in favor of comparing him against another hologram.

***

**Really, Worf should have a spot on there too, but I decided to keep it at one character per series.