S6 E24: Life Line

Voyager gets another message from Starfleet, but it isn't all good news: the Doctor's creator, Lewis Zimmerman is dying. The Doctor convinces Janeway to transmit his program back to Starfleet command, even though they only get one message a month at this point. Once there, he tries to convince Zimmerman to try a treament he has developed, but his designer is suspicious of the talents of an EMH mark one. Over the next few weeks, the two fight and fight and fight, and eventually Barclay calls Troi in to help. The Doctor's program malfunctions, and Zimmerman helps restore it, but he has a breakdown when the Doctor refuses personality upgrades. You see, all the EMH mark ones were made in his image, but since the advent of the mark twos (and beyond), they have all been relegated to menial duties. Now all of these copies of this arrogant, intelligent man are scrubbing plasma on scows, which has broken his heart. But now he's willing to admit that at least one of his "children" has met with success, and accepts his treatment. Barclay and Troi are thrilled that the malfunction they caused intentionally worked as intended.

I'll put it right out there: the premise of this episode is pretty ridiculous. Whenever they package up and send the Doctor somewhere, you wonder why they can't copy his program instead. And since, for whatever reason, they can't, it is simply a bad idea to send him away for a whole month. I understand the Doctor's motives, I do, but honestly he could've done more good in the delta quadrant after just sending his research to Barclay.

There are other problems too; most of the episode is a fairly straightforward Doctor plot. Wants to expand his program? Check! Wants to prove himself? Check! People doubt him? Check! With the help of other people who have come to appreciate him, he wins everyone else over? Check! Additionally, I cringed when Barclay and then Troi showed up after the Pathfinder disaster (though every other review I've found glows about it). Listen, enough with the chocolate ice cream bit. I looked it up - Troi's affinity for that food was mentioned on three occasions in TNG, but now on Voyager is has been mentioned in 100% of her appearances. Guys, I'm going to know it's Troi even if she's not eating chocolate ice cream. It almost feels like product placement when a Barclay, out of nowhere, seems to jump out of the shadows to present her with the confection.

Despite those faults, this is definitely one of the best episodes of the second half of the season. Picardo does have fantastic chemistry with Picardo, and he does a great job of making Zimmerman "the same but different." Most of all, the crux of this episode, the depression and displaced anger that Zimmerman feels over the failure of the EMH made in his image, is very effective. The idea that they're scrubbing plasma is silly and over the top, you don't really need a trained doctor hologram for that, and I don't think is necessary for driving home his internal struggle. Zimmerman's characterization is effective in that it is an extension of the Doctor's characterization, and based on that I think it would be plenty degrading to just have the EMH ones relegated to medical duties on scows.

There are about thirty authors for this episode, but there is one that stands out: Robert Picardo got partial story credit for this episode. I tried to look up exactly what parts of the story were his ideas; while most of the articles I found were pretty fluffy, the central premise of the Doctor wanting to prove himself to his creator is definitely his. I was unable to determine if the catch, the Zimmerman's self-image angle, was his, but I'm fairly confident that a number of the things that I didn't like about this episode weren't his ideas - particularly the chocolate ice cream element. I can see it now: "Hey, Bob, as long as you're going back to the alpha quadrant, we've just got to use Barclay again. And I'm sure Marina's not doing anything, why not throw her in there too? And get this: just have her eat ice cream - no, not just any ice cream, chocolate ice cream - the fans will just looooove it."

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: This is the only episode in all of Trek history that has an actor getting any share of the writing credits. I think it would have been interesting to have at least one episode for each of the major cast members - we've got a whole season left after all, and it's not like they've got tons of ideas floating around unused. Even if some of those episodes were bad, seeing what Tim Russ or Robert Beltran or really any of them would have done with the characters and the show would have added another layer of interestingness. Even if they took the characters in directions that the writers didn't like, they could always just hit the reset button eight more times.