| Voyager responds to a Hirogen distress call, only to discover that the holographic technology that they'd given them is killing them. The holograms, which the Hirogen altered to be sentient in order to be sufficiently formidable prey, have begun rebelling against their creators. They have stolen a ship filled with holoemitters, and after capturing the Doctor, explain to him that they are on a mission to find a new homeworld. He is suspicious of them at first, but they win him over with shared memories of the brutality they faced in captivity. When Janeway arrives with a plan to deactivate all the holograms, and the Doctor can't convince her it isn't necessary to do, he defects to the hologram's ship and helps them escape. However, he is troubled when they also abduct Torres for their nefarious purposes. While Torres gets to know and trust Dejar, a hologram of a Cardassian, the Doctor becomes more and more disillusioned with his new crew. The leader, Iden, is a holographic re-creation of a Bajoran, and had Bajoran spirituality built in to his programming. However, megalomania has begun to set in, and Iden is twisting his faith to have himself at the center as the messiah of the holographic peoples. When he takes a detour to rescue some more holograms, and they kill the biological crew before discovering that the holograms are non-sentient, the Doctor's support for Iden evaporates completely. When they reach the new Class-Y (classy!) planet they were seeking, and beam down a Hirogen crew into an atmosphere they cannot breathe in order to hunt them down, the Doctor, Torres, and Dejar manage to subdue Iden and stop him. |
This is Voyager's second feature-length episode (the first being Dark Frontier), and as such this episode will again count twice in the end of season average. Back in Dark Frontier, the writers seemed more visibly drunk on the idea of an Event Episode, but this time the story felt like it evolved more naturally from an episode that simply couldn't fit in one hour, and yet had no obvious mid-episode breaking point that would make it a two-parter.
While Dark Frontier went to Seven, this one goes to the Doctor; kind of the obvious move for this show. As usual, we take some steps backward for the character in order to give them growth in the episode. The Doctor starts out once again disappointed in his lack of growth opportunities, and for some reason Iden is able to successfully convince him that he is... well, while not exactly a second class citizen, but that he isn't a first class citizen. The theme of rights for holograms once again arises, and to be honest it is getting a bit stale. Latent Image was fantastic (if a few seasons late) and Warhead successfully expanded the theme to other sentient AIs, but this episode did tread dangerously close to the beating a dead horse line.
What saved it for me is that neither the Hirogen, nor the holograms, nor the Doctor were presented as being "right." The Hirogen's use of the hologram technology did free up some of their populace to pursue non-hunting professions, and it most certainly saved the lives of many non-holographic potential prey. To make it more than a passing fad, I'm convinced that they had to make their prey capable of learning. And the holograms, well I certainly do not begrudge them the right to freedom from incessant, daily, agonizing deaths, or even the chance to help free others. It is when their quest became more of a crusade, when it became clear that they had not exactly overcome their ruthless programming, that was when the episode got more interesting for me. That is when getting involved become more of a messy decision; not one to discard without a care because of the prime directive, but one to weigh your options carefully before making a choice (something the Doctor didn't do).
That's also what makes this a better episode than Nightingale. Both belong to the season seven school of episodes that conveniently forget about the first six seasons' dogmatic adherence to the prime directive, but Nightingale wanted us to forget about the prime directive for the wrong reasons. This episode fixes those problems by making directive-related decisions something to discuss and analyze, and showing the Doctor's practice of jumping into the fray headlong as being the ill-advised course of action.
I do have a few more problems though: the crew acts here as if they didn't give up the holodeck technology under duress initially. I place no blame on the crew of Voyager for the deaths of the Hirogen at the hands of the holograms. Taking responsibility for their irresponsible actions is incredibly arrogant, and adds to the perception of the Federation as a condescending nanny-state that looks upon others as mere children. That evaluation extends to the Doctor's reprive too; Janeway lets him off for his treason by taking some of the blame for his actions for herself because she was the one who allowed him to have freedom in the first place. Really? You gave him his freedom because he was entitled to it as a sentient being. What he does with his freedom is his responsibility, that's what it means to make decisions for yourself. Of course, if I were the Doctor, I'd probably do exactly what he did at the end of the episode: swallow my pride, not say anything about the passive insult, and just be happy that she's not making me scrub plasma conduits.
The theme of a created species rebelling against its creators is not a new one, but the parallels between this episode and the central themes of Battlestar Galactica are interesting. Particularly in the reboot, the Cylons and the Humans are portrayed to both be flawed antagonists in their conflict, just like the Hirogen and the Holograms. Taking it further, this time the created ones are seeking a new home, but they are still retaliating in kind against their former oppressors. And even more interesting, the theme of religion in an artificially intelligent species comes up, with the holograms taking the religion of a biological species and turning it into something they can call their own.
Watchability: 4/5
Bottom Line: Of all the Voyager feature-length episodes and two-parters, this is the best since Basics , which probably got a little score inflation by being at the end of the second season. This was a solid story, one which paints a nicely complicated picture.
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