Star Trek: Voyager
"Real Life"
Air date: 4/23/1997
Teleplay by Jeri Taylor
Story by Harry Doc. Kloor
Directed by Anson Williams
Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
"You make it sound like you're treating a patient. I'm not sure you can diagnose and cure a family." — Paris to Doc
Nutshell: The main plot: Intriguing, absorbing, and quite well done. The subplot: Standard, forgettable anomaly stuff. Quite solid overall.
In "Real Life," the holographic Doctor decides to create himself a holographic family in an apparent attempt to make himself, in a goal akin to TNG's Data, "more human." Meanwhile, Voyager investigates a violent, naturally-occurring spatial anomaly in a premise that may best be described as "Twister in deep space."
"Real Life" makes use of the very familiar Trekkian practice of a main plot saddled with an unrelated subplot. This is often a mistake, and I'd say it's a mistake here as well—though not all that costly of one—because the main plot is quite strong, whereas the subplot is just kind of there. As a result, the overall show takes a bit of damage, and isn't quite what it could've been.
But, nevertheless, "Real Life" is a very solid Voyager offering—one of the more solid offerings this season—and if things continue along the lines of the last two episodes, we may end the season on a good note yet. I sure hope so.
Let's start with the forgettable part of the story, that is, Voyager does Twister. This qualifies as Yet Another Spatial Anomaly, something Voyager has done all too many times. Still, this anomaly subplot, which is basically the equivalent of a tornado in space, turns out to be surprisingly tolerable. I'm not saying it's good, but, as filler, it isn't as annoying as these types of gratuitous subplots can be. Rather, it just sits in the realm of neutrality, promising never to be neither compelling nor insulting. I do think that Jeri Taylor and Harry Kloor could've made better use of screen time than with this sort of brainless fluff; perhaps they could've added more to the main plot.
But at the same time, I'll have to admit that the idea of a space tornado isn't awful. And, in addition, the special effects are quite impressive and the technobabble remains light. While the thought pattern behind this anomaly isn't impressive, at least I can take comfort in the fact that the production values made this lackluster idea credible and real-seeming. I do question the logic of the Voyager crew chasing after these things—much the way I question the logic of people with camcorders who chase tornadoes. In both cases, maybe it's all in the sense of "adventure"—which isn't a bad thing, but isn't a very smart thing either. There are indications in the dialog that this anomaly harbors energy that the crew may be able to harness somehow, though there isn't really enough focus on this aspect. It merely serves as an excuse to put Paris—who takes a shuttlecraft closer to the thing to investigate (brilliant!)—and the Voyager in danger. Ho-hum.
(On an unrelated note, the subtle flirting between Tom and B'Elanna—and especially the discussion of the "Klingon romance novel"—worked pretty well. It managed to be clear in its intentions without feeling forced or excessive—and without spending too much screen time on itself. Nice job.)
But forget about that stuff. What makes "Real Life" a winner is the Doctor's story, which begins with all-out comedy and then progresses into seriousness and compelling character insight. If I could summarize this story in a single word, that word would be "intriguing."
The Doctor has probably been the ensemble's most interesting character, perhaps simply because of the parameters of his existence. But, at the same time, it seems that Doc has always been a character the writers have been able to write relevant, "human" stories about (never mind that "Darkling" didn't work and that I'm still smarting from the total lack of consequences from his "memory loss" in "The Swarm.")
So, then, why not give this guy a "family"? It seems to me that programmed people are just as real as you want them to be, and considering the Doctor is a program himself, they would probably seem even more so to him.
At first, Doc's family is 100 percent bona fide cardboard. They're perfectly problem-free, and seem like they need to be put on the cover of a magazine. In an amusing scene, Doc invites Kes and B'Elanna to dinner on the holodeck to meet his new family. But after the program runs long enough to exceed B'Elanna's tolerance, she freezes the simulation before, as she puts it, her "blood sugar levels overload." She offers to reprogram the simulation with randomness that will make it more realistic.
Needless to say, once Doc enters the holodeck after B'Elanna's tweaking, his family is different. And they're far from perfect. Doc's family life promptly becomes a nightmare of scheduling disasters and endless unpredictabilities. In fact, one could almost get the idea that B'Elanna's random event generator specialized in creating worst case scenarios—at least, that's the way Doc may certainly perceive it.
Much of what happens in the Doctor's family life is based on fairly standard television clichés. Bs. But the interesting thing is that these events take on new meanings since it's the holographic Doctor who is experiencing them. Doc's inexperience with these human settings forces us to re-evaluate every situation from his point of view.
The results are quite entertaining. I liked the notion that Doc's wife Charlene (Wendy Schaal) has a stress-inducing schedule. More interesting, however, were the kids: Doc's daughter Belle (Lindsey Haun) is a young girl who takes risks by playing dangerous sports with older children. Meanwhile, the rebellious teenage son Jeffrey (Glenn Walker Harris, Jr.) hangs out with the "wrong crowd." In a rather inspired notion, the wrong crowd turns out to be teenage Klingons, which brings up some implicitly interesting cross-culture issues. (I do believe this is the first time we've seen Klingon teenagers as a topic of family discussion.)
Much of the success of this storyline is due to Robert Picardo's performance. He plays it for comedy when it's appropriate, and when things turn serious he's engaging, yet appropriately subdued. Take, for example, the scene where he explains to his family his "new household rules": Picardo plays Doc as totally naive, and the results are humorous. But later, once the Doctor realizes the seriousness of a family crisis, Picardo plays the notes as real drama. I think Picardo will continue to be very effective as long as the writers supply him with fresh material. "Real Life" seems to exemplify this by giving him a unique situation.
A lot of this family stuff feels contemporary. In fact it's almost too contemporary. Whenever Doc transfers himself into the holodeck, it feels like he's stepping into the 1990s. But, then again, no one said that family life in the 24th century had to be that different from what it is today. I'm not saying that's bad—not at all—but I'll admit that it was kind of weird jumping from the decks of Voyager to the living room of a house, merely treating it all like different aspects of a real life.
The most powerful part of "Real Life" is when tragedy strikes, that is, when the Doctor's daughter suffers a head injury while playing Peresie Squares. The injuries are too severe to treat and she's going to die. I was genuinely surprised by this turn of events. By pushing the consequences of the situation to the extreme so suddenly, the writers put Doc in a situation that will cause him a great deal of unexpected confusion and pain. Doc can't cope with the situation so he ends the program with the intention of never returning.
This is where the truth of the episode resides. Since the Doctor has the option of simply turning off his life, does this mean he is fortunate to be able to avoid facing tragedy? No, it doesn't, because without tragedy and struggle there is no progress. That may seem like a fairly obvious and overused statement, but it works here because it's true. The only way Doc will learn anything about himself and humanity is by moving forward, taking the experiences that have been given to him. The fact that these events are artificially created is completely irrelevant. These people and events are just as real as Doc believes them to be, so by playing by the rules, he will get the most out of the experience. As Paris tells him in a wonderfully realized scene, if Doc refuses to face his family program in the face of bad news, he'll miss the entire point in the long run. Similarly, viewers who simply dismiss these events as "implausible" or "not real" are also missing the entire point of the Doctor's plight.
In the closing minutes of the show, Belle is supplied with a tender deathbed scene that proves surprisingly poignant. Overall, this tragedy turns out to be a good way of starting what will hopefully become a continuing story arc. There are great possibilities for building upon this. So let me close with a look to (and a demand of) future episodes:
I sincerely hope that this family storyline is here to stay. It absolutely has to be seen again, otherwise the writers are missing their own point. Judging by the ending, Doc's family can't simply vanish any more than did Miles O'Brien's family on Deep Space Nine. These characters must come back, and there needs to be a follow up to the events that happened here. I don't mean to sound skeptical, but after the way the writers simply tossed away the aforementioned "memory loss" issue from "Swarm," I'm not taking anything as given. So, let's have some more like this. I'd be very pleased.
Previous episode: Before and After
Next episode: Distant Origin
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76 comments on this post
Thu, Nov 15, 2007, 8:43am (UTC -6)
Tue, Jan 15, 2008, 6:25pm (UTC -6)
But as for the B'Elanna thing - I always thought she just gave the program a general direction and "life of its own" of sorts, incorporating random consequences, not that she directly programmed the kid to die. That would be too heartless, even given her constant irritation around The Doctor. Then again, who knows what she/they really intended (I doubt they even thought much about it, Voyager isn't exactly "deep"...)
Fri, Aug 1, 2008, 5:08pm (UTC -6)
Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 8:38pm (UTC -6)
I feel the same way (in the future!) re: the ridiculous "Fair Haven" program.
Sun, Aug 2, 2009, 11:47am (UTC -6)
Mon, Jan 4, 2010, 3:23pm (UTC -6)
Note, the shuttle got beamed back aboard Voyager, including the special plasma Tom captured - so Voyager has more power, or something.
Wed, Jun 9, 2010, 2:29pm (UTC -6)
Boy, retrospect sure stings on Voyager.
Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 10:48pm (UTC -6)
The power of bad writing can accomplish amazing things ;-)
Tue, Nov 23, 2010, 5:41pm (UTC -6)
As for the Doctor's family story, I found the circumstances of Belle's death to be completely unbelievable (banging your head on the corner of a court in the 24th century?) and Torres' "random algorithms" did seem to be a bit on the pessimistic side, but it was wonderfully performed and very moving (especially the last scene - Lindsey Haun and Picardo were both amazing).
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 11:01pm (UTC -6)
And Jammer, did you notice that the shuttle wasn't destroyed? :D
Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 9:09pm (UTC -6)
I think it best to recall that Doc is very young and experiences of love and loss are new to him. With that, I think it would be wrong to put him in a permanent situation where he is husband and father--a position rightfully reserved for those who've lived out their youth (hopefully). That he may presumably live for ever also makes the notion of tying him down like this seem premature.
The episode was emotionally engaging (both plots) and beautifully executed and performed. 3.5 stars, I think.
Mon, Apr 2, 2012, 9:16pm (UTC -6)
Thu, May 31, 2012, 11:12pm (UTC -6)
And I did and still do like this episode, though I don't think I remembered it very well when I first saw it. Admittedly, the same goes for much of season 3 Voyager. I don't know that the family situation is really that extreme (apart maybe from Belle's death), and much of the conflict stems from the Doctor's inexperience and naivety.
Having said that, I find it a bit silly that Belle is both conscious and alert despite a fatal brain injury with active hemorrhaging and brain stem involvement. She shouldn't be breathing on her own let alone awake. It IS a very touching death scene, and such things are not unusual in TV/movies, but that's not what dying looks like.
Thu, Sep 27, 2012, 12:25am (UTC -6)
Wed, Jun 19, 2013, 3:45am (UTC -6)
I would have shut the program off too. Yeah, it was a good scenario for the doctor to learn how real life can be, but as someone said above, it was a lot to throw at him. I don't buy into all that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" nonsense. If people really believed that, we wouldn't try to cure any diseases and we'd view every death as a thing to look forward to. But we don't. We TRY to avoid illness and save lives because we know that doing so is better all around. People just use these silly epitaphs (mindlessly and desperately) when there is nothing we can do to stop tragedy. Reminds me of how people thank the gods when a plane crashes and one person lives but also thank the gods that the ones that didn't live are "in a better place". Why is there no room for being pissed at the gods for allowing such violent ends to lives and families? Losing a child just plain sucks - HARD - no matter how much of a silver lining one wants to try to create from it.
I think that the episode would have been just as effective without the death of a child. Some final confrontation with the son about his friends that taught the doctor and the son something was where this thing seemed to be going and should have gone. That would have been just fine.
Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 4:20am (UTC -6)
Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 8:30pm (UTC -6)
Also, the Klingon bit was also absurd, the Doc was right in that case the Klingons are not pictured as honorable, just as thugs and forget being another "culture," to hurt an innocent person is the mark of a coward not a warrior. It would have made sense for the son to have to fight a Klingon and then have him be the one to die...
Fri, Aug 30, 2013, 5:15pm (UTC -6)
To some of the messages above: We are talking about TV characters in a fictional story. The holo-stories are just one level further away - the story *inside* of the story. What makes it so much more difficult to sympathize with them as we do with the, um, "real" Voyager world?
Tue, Oct 15, 2013, 11:31am (UTC -6)
It's good that the Doctor learned that life isn't always ideal, but the modified family isn't any more realistic than the idealized family the Doctor created. Both happy families and unhappy families exist, but neither example is typical. Given B'Ellana's family background, perhaps the version she created is colored by her own perceptions?
Of course, the Doctor could simply have rewritten the program to bring back the daughter, but the point was to connect him to the feelings that people have. He comes out of this better able to relate to people.
Wed, Apr 2, 2014, 7:45pm (UTC -6)
Sorry, I just don't think this episode deserves 3 stars, maybe 2 for parts or the 1.5 for the lack of plot focus or development.
Unlike Pleasantville or other "perfect family to bitter reality" story lines in fiction, "Real Life" lacks any redeeming value. There is no social commentary on racial relations, no probing questions about relationship struggles between the "ideal" and "imperfect reality", nor the simplest familial bond.
4/10, it's a weak episode that held no depth.
Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:21am (UTC -6)
Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 10:47pm (UTC -6)
It's a credit to the story and the performances that this holo-family...these standard holograms that are no more important than an NPC in Skyrim...actually cause an emotional reaction in the viewer. It's as if we realize just how much the Doctor can "feel" while these things are playing out.
The anomaly of the week this time around piqued the scientist in me. The idea of a layer of "existence" between space and sub-space was fascinating. Really makes me wish humanity would quit fighting over things that don't exist and superficial bullshit and start using our intelligence to explore and learn what's out there. Maybe one day. (:
Not groundbreaking and a tad silly at times, but well-done and thought-provoking all around.
3 stars.
Sun, Oct 19, 2014, 10:58pm (UTC -6)
Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 8:50am (UTC -6)
Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:40am (UTC -6)
Zero stars from me.
Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:47pm (UTC -6)
As for those who can't connect with "fake characters" in games or in the holodeck, I don't understand what you're even looking for in TV if you don't want to engage.
The drama in this episode is well executed and more impactful for being so out of the norm for star trek. I would gladly give this one 3.25
Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 1:39pm (UTC -6)
'Real Life' was funny, real, over the top and sad all in the same episode. All this centered around the EMH, so of course it's fantastic. Picardo is amazing.
Tear jerker at the end for sure. (sniff, sniff)
Easy 4 star episode from me.
Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 1:52am (UTC -6)
As a side note, it was genius to have the rebellious son hanging out with Klingons and trying to emulate them. Kind of like a white suburban teen who identifies with inner-city black culture.
Fri, Dec 11, 2015, 10:53am (UTC -6)
Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 8:33am (UTC -6)
The Doctor's family story swings from outright comedy at the beginning to the deepest of pathos at the end, and has to be given credit for that. Anyone not moved at the end must have a heart of stone - indeed even though it's clear they are trying to generate an emotional response in the viewer (eg with that wonderful violin led score) it works anyway. That doesn't make it a great episode, but makes for a great scene within an average episode. 2.5 stars.
Sat, Jul 9, 2016, 2:31pm (UTC -6)
Sat, Jul 9, 2016, 8:42pm (UTC -6)
"As for the Doctor's family story, I found the circumstances of Belle's death to be completely unbelievable (banging your head on the corner of a court in the 24th century?)."
I know! A doctor from the *23rd* century (McCoy) was able to fix up Chekov's middle meningeal artery just by putting a small model of a Klingon ship on his forehead for a few seconds!
Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 12:25am (UTC -6)
Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:16pm (UTC -6)
Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 8:17pm (UTC -6)
However, I do agree he could alter the program with a few parameters. No deaths of close family members and no forced separations longer than a certain amount of time.
I don't see how that would ruin the point of the program in any way.
He's playing it like an interactive soap opera. Harry Kim, for instance, could do the same, but if the program was distracting from his duties he'd be ordered to shut it down. Just because the doctor is a "photonic being" doesn't mean this is his real family. It was affecting, I admit. But what is the end purpose? To remind him he's just a program that can be deleted?
Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 3:05pm (UTC -6)
You know, I wouldn't rate this episode that badly but I really think there's something to this comment. The whole thing about painful events in real life is precisely that they happen *despite* attempts to prevent them. You have to suffer through pain and death exactly because you have to. There is no choice, and in a scenario where if you really cared about someone and could do something to save them and chose not to - well, that would be some sadistic or narcissistic stuff. "I could save you, but then, well, I just wouldn't learn anything from this!" So in effect the Doctor is using holodeck characters as a learning *tool* to become more human. That is precisely not the humane way to treat people, which therefore means he wasn't treating them like people, which in turn means the experiment was worthless. If they *were* people to him then he'd have more respect for them than to use them as his lab rats. The fact that he opted to 'play by the rules' here really just means he intentionally agreed to a scenario where they'd experience suffering and he would let it happen, just to see what happens. That's basically sociopathic. Since the Doctor, to whit, isn't sociopathic, that must mean he didn't really care about them very much, but rather cared about what he wanted them to mean to him. But the episode seems to never understand this and instead treats his experiment as legitimate, if badly tuned.
Given that the Doctor has been on a lost ship for several years and has had relationships, seen death, lost crew mates, and grown, I don't even exactly understand the purpose of artificially creating fake people with whom to relate in the first place. I mean, I understand why he'd *think* it was a good idea - to have a 'normal' life or something. But in fact it's a completely stupid idea that the episode took seriously anyhow. Doc's family was no less ridiculous than the Goddess of Empathy, and had less emotional need to back it up. But if conjuring holodeck characters to make you *feel good* was shown to be pathological in TNG, imagine how much more unsound it would be to create holodeck characters to make you *feel lousy*? Especially when life is often lousy in the Delta Quadrant anyhow!
The episode gets points for execution, but loses just as many for using a hair-brained idea to manipulate the audience's heartstrings. If you want to go for learning, how about giving the audience something real to feel sad about?
Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 3:53pm (UTC -6)
I don't think that's what the episode was *meant* to be about, but it still sort of is what it ends up being about. The family that B'Elanna creates is just as much a compendium of cliches as the one the Doc did, so I'm not sure that it really represents an artistic triumph, but it does make the case for confronting emotionally difficult art. In that sense it's closer to being something like Naomi Wildman finding out that her fictional water friend can die or whatever than it is to "Outsider character has child for first time" stories like "The Offspring" or "The Begotten." That the Doctor is a hologram himself, and thus that there is a possibility that his thrown-together family is as real as he is, muddies the waters considerably and undermines this reading I'm proposing, but I think it's still the main one that allows the episode to come across the best.
This is a general problem with holodeck stories in Voyager though -- a certain amount of flexibility in your metaphors is not bad, but something like "Fair Haven" jumps back and forth between "should you try to change your partner," "is a computer program a possible mate," "can you have a relationship with someone when you have all the power in the relationship" and "should you spend lots of time writing erotic fan fiction" all at once.
Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 6:48pm (UTC -6)
I very much like the idea of art as a means of learning about life, especially for a hologram who in a sense doesn't have access to other tools to learn about life (e.g. a biological body that informs him automatically). However aside from the curious scenario of a fictional character learning to relate to fictional characters, we must still ask what he is truly to learn from such an experiment. Dealing with death? He does that already. I mean, he's the only doctor on the ship of the damned, for chrissakes. Losing comrades? Been there. Dealing with people who won't settle down? Check. Problems that have no easy solution and must be born through patience? Yep. One thing Voyager did right is not to have everyone on the ship love each other all the time. Granted, there wasn't constant strife, but there was some tension at least.
To me, art is way of a learning how to live. It's a means of informing your sense of the world, and of your potential purpose in it. The Doc already has a purpose: a pre-programmed one. But if we're to take him seriously as a sentient then he'd need to discover his purpose for himself. Find a *reason* to heal people if that's what he wants to keep doing. Or maybe he'd even choose to train someone else to be a doctor and learn a new profession for himself. Who knows. But we could even get into Doc's *manner* of pursuing his goals, assuming he stays true to his programmed vocation. The one theme consistent with him in the series is a distinct lack of compassion and bedside manner. Early on these were quirks played for comedy (successfully) but as the show went on they might have become a real challenge for him to overcome, seeing as how he was modeled after a Zimmerman, who was frankly a schmuck. But even worse - an overconfident version of a schmuck. I would have loved to see him realize this limitation and try to grow out of the pigeonhole his creator stuck him in. A family could have been a good way to experiment with trying new kinds of behavior and tending to people, without worrying about his image with the crew. This would be much like Seven trying out romantic things on the holodeck to avoid making errors with the real crew.
So I agree with you fully that "art" should have been the objective, and a goal for that could have been the pursuit of real caring, as opposed to rote performance of medical tasks. How cool would it have been for the Doc, after some work on this, to turn around and begin instructing the crew on compassion just as he instructed Seven on romance? It could have been played alternatively for chuckles or seriously (or both). And like Jammer said, it would have justified the continued use of his holodeck experiment. But with how they did use it, there was really nowhere to go with it other than using it as a filler for hijinx. The lesson the writers seemed to want was "life is messy" and he "learned" the lesson and it was over. What a shame.
Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:16am (UTC -6)
I agree that ultimately, even if we allow that this is an experience of the Doctor learning through "art," it's very unclear what exactly he is supposed to be learning or getting out of it. I haven't seen this episode in over a decade, so I will not try to parse its finer points, but one thing that I recall is that B'Elanna is sickened by the saccharine fake-family of the Doctor's, and then immediately creates a dysfunctional family with exaggerated conflict, with a teen who hangs out with a "bad crowd" of Klingons, no less. It is easy to see how, if the episode pressed further, we would realize that B'Elanna is "projecting" her own issues. The Doc's initial family is surely unbelievable, but I'm not sure that the new family's strife quite match what I'd expect of the average 24th century family. Child death doesn't seem to be so common that it would literally happen every couple of days; is Parrises Squares really that dangerous? What kind of sadist is B'Elanna not only to create this scenario, but to insist that the Doctor can only learn about life if his kid dies in some freak accident from being around Klingons? That B'Elanna's father abandoned her and her mother, and we learn that B'Elanna attributes his departure to her and her mother's Klingon-ness, makes her insistence that the Doctor has to live through his wannabe Klingon son's rebellion and the loss of his daughter seems like her partly wanting to get back at her own father for not having the sterner stuff to stick by her.
So it makes me think: the Doctor has suffered loss, and Voyager is his makeshift family, but it is still possible that it's not really possible for him to appreciate what these close family relationships back home mean to others on the ship. He can't really appreciate what particular forms of damage they have from their childhoods, or what they have lost in being flung into the Delta Quadrant away from any contact with their parents, siblings, fiancees, spouses, children. Maybe that's a good thing, but it does make his ability to understand his new makeshift family limited. I could imagine an episode where eventually the Doctor realizes that B'Elanna's view of what constitutes "real life" is actually warped and underlined by tragedy, and the experience of going through his emotional engagement allows him to communicate with her that she has to start dealing with some of her anger, along with the idea that while he probably has some psychiatric programming for *emergencies* (say, psychotic breaks), he really has had limited understanding of what it means to have longstanding issues with loved ones which seem to be impossible to resolve, especially away from home.
Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 5:58pm (UTC -6)
Thu, Sep 1, 2016, 9:38pm (UTC -6)
1.5 stars.
Tue, Sep 6, 2016, 5:45pm (UTC -6)
The ending was just stupid. The girl gets injured, and the doctor, despite having access to Starfleet technology from the 24th century, isn't able to heal a physical injury when he was able to create holo lungs for Neelix? Bullshit. There is no way that injury could have killed the girl given the level of medical technology.
Tue, Sep 6, 2016, 5:59pm (UTC -6)
Voyager's writers CONSTANTLY refuse to accept the technology of the time period and use their hand waving deus ex machina writer powers to constantly place Voyager crew members in a situation where they can't use their technology in circumstances where they should be able to use it. Every time the teleporters won't work is another line being chalked up to the failure of the writers to create a story that takes place on Voyager and instead trying to write a story that takes place on Gilligan's Island because the writers seem unable to write a story involving the former.
Tue, Sep 6, 2016, 6:06pm (UTC -6)
The doctor taking out the tricorder to scan his daughter at the end of the show was a terrible decision. This was supposed to be his daughter and he was supposed to be suffering. He just saw her die, knew she was dead. Scanning her body like that in the situation was completely heartless and tonally wrong for that scene. This was a scene where the Doctor was being a father, not a Doctor. He was supposed to be emotionally attached to the scene, but the scanning caused him to be removed from the emotionally section of the scene and shoved him into the wrong role.
Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 7:37am (UTC -6)
Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 10:27am (UTC -6)
I think both the original family and the "B'Elanna modified" family were purposefully extremes. The first was Doc's cookie cutter perfect dad-worshiping family and then of course we get the "I'm going to screw with you" Klingon version.
Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 8:05am (UTC -6)
If nothing else this episode only highlights VOY's best character.*
*The Doctor, no not Neelix haha.
Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 11:54pm (UTC -6)
But there's a kind of open question to all of this: how real is this family supposed to be? The Doctor is starting to see himself as something like a "real person," with his own internal life (sentient). He makes himself a family, and it's hard to tell throughout the episode whether he considers them as real as him or not. You can maybe play this as a metaphor for a controlling head-of-the-household type who patronizes his wife and kids but doesn't quite see them as real, and the episode plays that idea for comedy, but mostly the problem becomes acute once Belle gets injured. B'Elanna only just modified the program, seemingly to prove a point (something like the "point" Kes proved by daring the Doctor to go through flu symptoms in Tattoo) that the Doctor's program lacks verisimilitude. The Doctor doesn't bother trying to fix Belle's life-threatening injuries by reprogramming the simulation, which surely the crew would do if the Doctor suffered some sort of head injury in a holodeck program or the equivalent. So he doesn't consider her real. Even if we assume that he can't fix her by reprogramming for some other reason, when Tom tries to sell the Doctor on returning to the program, he doesn't say "Well, aren't you abandoning your wife and son?" No one acts as if they believe they have independent existence or feelings or have a right to their own lives. So it seems we really are supposed to take as given that these people aren't actually real and their only importance is how they lead to the Doctor growing. But of course, in a real family you *have to* remember that the other people in the family are people who need to be treated as such, whose feelings matter not just by how they impact you, and so on, and that's not an insignificant thing that can be swapped out.
So the main way that the Doc stuff can work is if we take it that this is a practice run of some sort -- that this is "art," a kind of open-ended holonovel or Sim-based video game where he gets a chance to experience a family in order to gain understanding. He can't shut it off when his "daughter" dies because then he'll miss out on the catharsis and growth from getting narrative closure. And maybe he learns a little something about what Real Life is like. The question, as Peter asked, is why this is important for him. Dealing with loss? Relating to the crew? It's really not clear. The B'Elanna intrusion seems to suggest something; B'Elanna gets angry that his family is too perfect and modifies it to be more "realistic," and what she comes up with is some sort of probability algorithm that leads to one of the kids being dead within a week, which I think is a higher death rate than most families, last I checked. B'Elanna had an unhappy childhood where she probably courted danger and also dealt with Federation/Klingon culture clashes, so I'm not so sure that the additions in the program were totally random and not somewhat plucked from her own experience; it seems that she wants the Doctor to understand that what he's getting isn't a real family, but that real families are awful. It's only Tom who turns it around and suggests that dysfunctional and tragic families can still be uplifting. And those tell us something about B'Elanna and Tom (respectively) and where they are in their lives. The Doctor maybe could learn to relate better to the others on the ship, and maybe even to glimpse a little about what life is like. Maybe he'll have a real family someday, even. But it's unclear what the Doctor learned here from the simulation, and if he even knows that there's a difference between the "real life" where you go through your daughter's death for personal growth points and the real life where you live through bad things because you have to, and because other people genuinely need you to. I enjoyed the episode and so I want to try to believe that the Doctor did understand the difference, or that at least he will understand the difference, but I don't really feel sure. The problem maybe comes down to the show's vacillation on the Doctor's overall status; the Doctor doesn't quite see himself as real, and so he doesn't quite see his family as real either, and/but it's hard to figure out what that means for him.
The subplot was forgettable and the only thing of note is how badly Janeway's vague sense that maybe they can extract energy from the eddy anomaly worked out.
A high 2.5 stars; I could maybe be talked into going higher if what puzzles me about the Doctor-family material as concept could be worked out.
Sat, Nov 11, 2017, 3:51am (UTC -6)
CHAKOTAY: If we could harness some of that energy, we could go off replicator rations for a while.
KIM: Captain, we don't have any idea what caused that phenomenon, or what made it dissipate. So how do we investigate it if it's gone?
JANEWAY: I suspect there are conditions in this part of space that lend themselves to the formation of those eddies. Set sensors for continuous scans of subspace. Maybe we can anticipate the next one.
So they don't know what caused it or how to investigate it, but maybe they can anticipate the next one somehow, so they set sensors to scan for....what? They just said they don't know what they are looking for.
TUVOK: The Bussard collectors could be modified to gather plasma particles.
TORRES: We could do that, but Voyager's energy emissions are so high they'd corrupt the particles. I'm not sure the plasma would be much use to us.
Wut? Voyager's energy emissions are too high to collect plasma? They didn't realize that before they went chasing after this eddy to collect the damn plasma?
So of course Paris flies a shuttle to collect the plasma instead, but the temperature of the eddy is 9 million degrees celsius. There is no way a shuttle could fly into one or even near one. That would be like flying into the center of a star.
PARIS: I'm in position, Captain. Activating the Bussard collectors. It's working...This may save us from Neelix's pleeka rind casserole after all.
JANEWAY: We'll all thank you for that.
Wow, Neelix's cooking must be really really bad. Like really.
Now about this Doc business.
When he has Kes and Torres over for dinner are they eating holographic food? Or did they bring in real food? Or did the holodeck act as a replicator? If it's the first one, that's stupid. If it's the second one, why are they eating Neelix's slop when they have wild mushroom pilaf and salad and bread and all that? If it's the third one, why not use the holodeck as a replicator all the time? It seems to have unlimited power resources.
That eating in the holodeck annoyed me.
The Doc's sugary family seems to be a relatively recent thing, as in created in the past few days before this episode. Torres modified it and made it horrible and it ran that way for what, maybe a couple days tops? So the Doc (Kenneth) got so attached to his fake family and fake daughter that he couldn't bear to have her die, when he's known them for about a week?
And how much can you learn about being in a family in a week anyway? And in the more 'realistic' one for only a day or two? If I was plopped down in some strange family's house for two days, and then one of them died, I'd feel bad a little I guess, but I wouldn't be heartbroken like the Doc was.
I'm not sure what the point of all these 'Doc learns a life lesson' episodes is anyway, since he is always the same after them. He never seems to get more compassion or empathy or a better bedside manner or more humble or any of the stuff he is supposedly learning about all the time. They are just wasted.
As far as all the metaphysical stuff of how 'real' was his holodeck family, that people were talking about, all he was trying to do was have a sort of family, so he could relate to the crew a little bit better. That's it. It wasn't a deep philosophical journey he was embarking on or anything. He just wanted to be able to say to Ensign so-and-so, 'Do you miss your wife?' and sound somewhat sincere about it, because he also had a wife. It was all about how better to interact with his patients. To be able to have the sort of small talk that a real doctor uses, to improve his bedside manner, not necessarily about what it was like to actually have a real family. Though talking about his family to patients that are most likely never going to see their own families ever again doesn't sound like that good of an idea. But that's what the purpose was.
EMH: The tinkering you speak of has been for the sole purpose of improving my performance as a physician. I can hardly be faulted for that.
TORRES: I'm not faulting you for your intentions, Doctor. I think it's rather commendable that you want to improve yourself.
EMH: That's why I've created a family.
Torres changed things up a bit when she modified the program, and that made it more than it started out to be, and he rightly quit the program when it went beyond what it's purpose was. But then Paris convinced him to restart it so he could see what it's actually like to have a family. So he continued with it, and discovered that sometimes having a family sucks, because you can be hurt by them. I don't think that helped his bedside manner, or gave him any real understanding beyond that simple fact.
So him treating them as real people or as a holonovel or whatever else is beside the point. He was using them as a tool to begin with. That was his sole intention. Torres and Paris butted their big noses in and tried to make it something it was never meant to be. Maybe he began to have feelings at the end, or maybe not, but the whole point was for him to use the holodeck as a way to connect with his patients, not a family.
Anyway. 3 stars.
Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 11:24pm (UTC -6)
The anomaly plot was awful
The doc story was grating with it running through standard family sitcom stupidity. And I didnt feel much from his holographic daughters death. On the plus side B’elanna’s brief hair braid made its debut
Fri, Dec 8, 2017, 6:58pm (UTC -6)
The doctor : what kind of music is this?
The son : KLINGON!
Wed, Feb 21, 2018, 9:48am (UTC -6)
And the mother now plays Francine in Family Guy!
Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 8:45am (UTC -6)
If they’re merely characters in a holo-novel, then the girl’s death has no more meaning and emotional impact than would come from watching the Doctor watching a movie in which a character he likes, dies. Within the context of that double-layered story, no one real has died so why should we care?
On other hand, maybe the girl is sentient, so that her death has the same emotional impact as the death of Data’s daughter in “The Offspring”.
But that interpretation is undermined by the initial behavior of the characters as a weirdly comical 50’s family who sappily adore their father. After all, one could imagine Torres pulling out a gun and putting a bullet in that girl’s head to get her to shut up about the Doctor and if she did, we might all laugh about it. But wait, the girl is dead! Isn’t that terrible? How could you heartless monsters possible laugh?
So this episode tries to have it both ways and it doesn’t work.
Regarding the B-story: I for one am sick of instrument panels blowing up all the time. I keep imagining this conversation:
==========
Torres: Captain, you remember last week when we flew through that spatial vortex anomaly and the navigation panel exploded and killed Ensign DuJour?
Janeway: Do I remember? Tell me about it. We’ve haven’t gotten rid of the stench on the bridge yet.
Torres: Well, I’ve been doing some research and there’s this amazing 20th century device that would prevent our instrument panels from exploding ...
Janeway: Really? Tell me about this miracle invention!
Torres: It’s called a “fuse” and …
========
Fast-Forward Rating: Keep your finger on the FF button and don’t stop till it’s over …
Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:06am (UTC -6)
The other thing would be to give the characters so sense of being different after the change (other than simply become more angry, angsty, and unhappy.) Show that the girl has begun to become sentient and inquisitive about who she is and what she is. Have her ask the Doctor to take her out of the holo-novel (“Take your daughter to work day”) and enter into Voyager. Have him lend her his mobile holo-emitter so she can walk among and converse with the other Voyager characters on the ship. As with Lal in “The Offspring” we will accept his daughter as a real person if we see the other Voyager characters accept her as a real person.
Then you could tie in the Family story with the spatial anomaly story. Have the daughter be on the bridge when a navigation panel explodes (darn that lack of fuses!) and then her holo-whateveritis is seriously damaged and cannot be repaired. So now the Doctor (and the crew) deal with a real and meaningful death and we have a truly meaningful story.
Wed, May 2, 2018, 10:20pm (UTC -6)
The Paris/Doc scene also tied family to what Voyager is all about -- all the real people have essentially lost family and now Doc gets to somewhat understand what that's like. I think that's an excellent premise for a VOY episode. Also always seems like Doc gets more than he bargained for when he tinkers with his programming ("Darkling").
Of course the final scene with Belle dying was tough to watch -- enough groundwork had been laid for us to care. Belle was the one person in the family who showed she appreciated Doc as a dad when he tried to bring order to his more realistic family while his wife was too busy and son too rebellious. Doc's performance was very good here. The daughter dying -- it's a bit of a stretch as that is not typical for a family to have to deal with, but this is Trek and stuff does get rammed down your throat, but it makes the point.
The episode is dragged down by the spatial anomaly subplot. Just when you want to see what's next for Doc's family, that BS would pop up. It was pointless in that it's not clear what Voyager gained from the experience -- Janeway winds up making a bad decision in "storm chasing". A better accompaniment to Doc's plot would be more Paris/Torres stuff like the Klingon romance novel.
2.5 stars for "Real Life" -- the Doc family part was good and on its own is 3 stars worthy but the spatial anomaly subplot impairs this episode. Whether it's Doc or 7 or Data learning about human situations, these developmental episodes tend to have very strong and relatable parts. Felt like I was watching a family from the 50s with Doc's first "perfect" family, then it was one from the 90s. Funny how the Klingon boys were the "bad crowd" here -- maybe like the headbangers in the 80s. A good Doc (and Paris) episode for sure.
Mon, Jul 9, 2018, 7:35pm (UTC -6)
"And the mother now plays Francine in Family Guy!"
I think you mean American Dad. Or did they bring the Francine character over to Family Guy? I haven't watched FG for a hwile.
Sun, Sep 9, 2018, 11:50pm (UTC -6)
William B points out the "art" aspect of this, saying that he didn't think that's what the ep is meant to be about, but I think that's exactly what is meant to be about.
B'Ellana reading a Klingon bodice-ripper novel and talking about how it's "just escapism"' is not a throw away line. When is it just escapism, when is it more than that? Should it be more than that? How much more can it really be? If we learn it from a book, have we really learned it? Does losing a beloved character "on screen" teach you anything about losing a loved one in Real Life? Have you experienced an actual loss? Etc., etc.
I think our B story, as it puts our ship through some shaky times in an attempt to improve the ship's function, is meant to parallel what's happening with Doc.
There's a lot going on in the ep. Nicely done overall.
Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 1:47am (UTC -6)
The space tornado bit was cool-but I never understood the whole 2 plot format of Star Trek-I guess with an ensamble cast the writers just feel that this way everyone (or almost everyone) will be used equally this way. I mean, I get that in "real life" on a ship like this, more will be going on than the Dr's holodeck life, so it makes sense.
Still, this episode is a 0.5 star for me
Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:35am (UTC -6)
Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 9:24am (UTC -6)
Complaints aside though, this is very moving and insightful stuff. An important lesson wrapped up in sci-fi devices, the kind of which Star Trek has always excelled at. Paris' scene with Doc towards the end was particularly engaging—just honest, well-written dialogue elevated by two fantastic performances.
Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:47am (UTC -6)
This is a very touching episode. In about the half-dozen times I've watched this in the last 10, maybe 15 years or so, every time I still end up with a lump in my throat. The Doctor's unrealistic family in the beginning turns out to have somewhat relatable "problems" any family could face these days by the end of the episode. Yes, it is tragic when a family member dies, and the Doctor and his "new" holographic family handle this like any family would.
We share our grief about Belle with the characters. She is the Doc's holographic daughter who gets a bump on the head from playing Pirisi Squares with older kids and suffers a trauma that she will never recover from, and Jeffrey decides he wants to become Klingon and starts hanging around Klingon teens in preparation for receiving his Kut'luch dagger and becoming a warrior. The Doc's wife, Charlene, turns from a fuzzy-warm 50's mom to a 2000s-style mom who's blood pressure is about to hit the roof, yet all of these come together when Belle unexpectedly passes away because of her accident. In the hospital, Jeffrey is seen hugging his father so we know that possibly the idea of becoming a Klingon is now a passing thought. Charlene and the Doc become closer for having shared the loss of a child.
I give this episode a 4/5 mainly for the Doc's family story line and the wonderful acting by Linsey Haun (Belle) and Robert Picardo (and partly because Wendy Schaal plays Francine on American Dad!).
Oh yeah, and Tom gets caught in an astral-eddy, and blah, blah, blah. I couldn't help but think when Tom was telling the Doc about facing his family's troubles how much he looks like Nick Locarno. LOL
Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 9:24pm (UTC -6)
Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 10:31am (UTC -6)
Much of this episode revolved around with the Doctor dealing with bratty kids...that has nothing to do with science fiction and it dumbed down the tone of the episode.
This was a red flag for Jeri Taylor...clearly she was part of the reason why Voyager wasn't realizing its potential.
Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:09am (UTC -6)
- They're fellow holograms, just like the Doctor, so from his point of view they're as real as he is. It's like "Heroes and Demons" from season one, where Doc mourns the death of Freya, another holodeck character, so there's some character consistency here. And the Doctor's difficulty in dealing with the death of someone he cares about will be revisited in "Latent Image" to good effect.
- How many of us get caught up in the drama of a story to the point we're cheering with the characters, or shedding a tear when they do? Imagine being immersed in a scenario the way the holodeck depicts 24th century entertainment? It would probably be even more affecting than watching a movie or reading a book.
I like the idea of the Doctor attempting to learn more about what it means to have a life and a family so he can understand his crewmates, while at the same time having a complete lack of understanding. At the same time, given B'Elanna's rough childhood, perhaps she wasn't the best one to reprogram the simulation! The b-plot with the "space tornado" is also interesting, thanks in part to the nicely done visual effects, but also because it's nice to see the crew genuinely interested in investigating a new phenomenon. They are explorers after all, and they act like it.
I am glad the Doctor's family was a one-off. I think Janeway's holonovel convinced me that having an ongoing fictional plotline running alongside Voyager's "real" adventures can be more of a distraction than a benefit.
Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 7:18pm (UTC -6)
Mon, Aug 3, 2020, 9:08am (UTC -6)
Watched this again today (yay lockdown) and just realised that Belle’s accident happened AFTER the Doctor removed her from the first team, for her safety. So that’s another reason for him wanting to forget the program during the episode. Pity Voyager never returned to his family.
Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 8:01pm (UTC -6)
Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 2:15am (UTC -6)
B'Elanna isn't trying to teach the Doctor about real families; she's punishing him because she was offended by his shallow attempt. Well, excuse an emotionally inexperienced being for not taking your crap family experience into consideration when he tried to branch out, B'Elanna. Maybe, I dunno, everything isn't about you? After this episode, she almost deserves to be shackled to the perpetual manchild Tom Paris, who makes everything about him. Almost.
What a terrible thing to do to someone. And incredibly irresponsible, given how easy it seems to be to break the Doctor with emotional turmoil. Newsflash, B'Elanna: He's the only doctor you have. Maybe don't sabotage him because you didn't like his tottering, early steps toward emotional growth? Seriously, Voyager is filled with terrible people.
Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:28pm (UTC -6)
Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 4:35am (UTC -6)
Kes senses the Doctor's ambivalence to his role as head of household in two brief, quiet scenes in Sickbay which were wonderfully evocative of how alone we all are as beings. Paris' interactions with the Doctor were great -- fueled by down-to-earth acting and by the thoughtful detail that Paris 'the risk taker' is to the Doctor a symbol of dangers inherent in Belle's tendency to thrill-seek with the big kids in her advanced Parrises squares group.
The show poses important questions for the Doctor: Are the limits we set for others necessarily the best ones for them? Do we destroy by trying to protect? What is the nature of freedom? When should we leave well enough alone?
I have no problem with the handling of the fatal injury, clearly the internal bleeding within the brain was impossible to arrest. Life is terribly fragile, but we go through our days too often critical of others' efforts, thinking we ourselves are immortal or even omnipotent until the unexpected occurs. 4 stars for the episode for trying to teach us that, if for nothing else.
Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 6:07pm (UTC -6)
"Good morning, Voyagerrrrrr..."
Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 8:27am (UTC -6)
Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 12:38am (UTC -6)
To me, all that suggests she did it deliberately.
Anyway, in meta terms, I doubt many people expected this episode to take such a drastic sad turn. As reviewers above have noted, it's really painful to watch. Who wants to start playing "Doc gets a family" for it to end up with "Terms of Endearment"?
I almost wonder if it comes across so sad because Picardo is so damn convincing. You can see it quite clearly in each of his scenes after he shuts down the program, with him flipping out at Tom being the most notable.
Fri, Mar 3, 2023, 7:41pm (UTC -6)
Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 1:10pm (UTC -6)
Wed, Jul 5, 2023, 6:46pm (UTC -6)
As far as the doc scanning her at the moment of death, I took that as just him resorting to habit . A combination of needing something to do - when there wasn't anything to be done - and a vain hope that he was wrong about what he saw.
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