S4 E11: Concerning Flight

While Janeway is in her Leonardo's workshop holodeck program, the ship is attacked by technology thieves. The main computer core, the doctor's mobile emitter and various other pieces of equipment are teleported out of the ship - as well as the da Vinci hologram. Voyager tracks the equipment to a haven for stolen goods, and Janeway and Tuvok work with da Vinci, who is running about using the mobile emitter, to resteal that which had been taken from them.

Most of this episode feels like a pretty contrived excuse to run around with Leonardo da Vinci, which isn't so bad because who doesn't want an excuse to have more John Rhys-Davies? It's interesting; the author of the story, Joe Menosky, was adamant that the manner in which da Vinci gets put in the mobile emitter shouldn't be terribly important, but he was overruled by the writing team. I can see his point: much of the episode feels hijacked by the technology thievery story, which wasn't what he wanted to write about - and it probably feels that way because he didn't want to write about it. The whole mugging storyline doesn't have much weight to it, but I do agree that there needed to be a good reason for da Vinci to be in the emitter (or the story would have been flimsy in a "but why is this happening??" sense) and it does add a decent adventure element to the show.

The other reason I'm somewhat glad that the story gets hijacked is that I didn't get much out of the da Vinci storyline either. He's not a self-aware hologram, so he is forced to interpret his surroundings in terms of his programming, which gets kind of annoying. Additionally, I'm generally not a fan of the "historical figure holograms" - if a computer program can effectively reproduce the ingenuity, imagination, and creativity of the great minds of humanity, then why do we have humans anymore? I'm not saying I don't think computers will ever get to that point (though it will certainly be a long time from the present day), but if the conceit is that they are capable of that kind of modeling in the Trek universe, why bother sending even above average humans to represent us?

There is one da Vinci scene that makes it worth it to me. When Janeway asks him to abandon his "patron" (his interpretation of the guy who stole all the stuff), he delivers an excellent speech asking "when are we really free?" For some reason, memory alpha's contributors didn't think it was an important quote so I don't have the exact wording, but he makes well-reasoned point about choosing the lesser evil. Who can really say that they don't have to answer to someone? If you can find a situation where you have enough freedom to be comfortable, to do 90% of what you want to do, maybe that isn't so bad. The story eventually decides that it is better to be on the run and jump off a cliff on an untested glider while people are firing phasers at you, but I'm thinking that there's a middle ground. That you can strive for more than 90% without necessarily engaging in rebellion.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Decent adventure, and a thoughtful idea that I don't quite agree with.