73 – Revulsion

Grade: D+

Summary

Someone is killed on a space station. The bad guy is dragging the body to somewhere else to hide the crime. Then he starts cleaning up the station. The killer is a hologram.

Commentary

It was really only a matter of time before they had a story like this one. At its most basic level, this is the story of Frankenstein, in which his creation goes out of control and attacks people. Here, we have a hologram who was created to assist others, but who has ignored his programming and developed a criminal character.

It’s ironic that while the Doctor is trying to change this hologram into a better person and discussing how humans and holograms can work together to accomplish great things, he himself doesn’t even have a name. The Doctor has come along way, in earning respect from the crew and developing into a full member of the ship’s senior staff, but he still only goes by “Doc” rather than a name. In many ways, I wish the Voyager crew just gave him a name and got it over with. It would give stories like these a little more weight.

As you can tell from the grade, I really didn’t like this episode – it’s one of my least favorites in this entire series. I think it’s actually pretty lightweight and non-committal. In fact, I don’t think anyone really gains anything from these events. Torres’ opinions of holograms seem to be no different at the end of the episode than at the beginning, and although the Doctor seems to be the most impacted by this episode, he is already a champion of “hologram rights.”

Unfortunately, I’ve come to expect this from Voyager. Nothing that happens in one episode seems to have any affect on the characters or stories in the next one. For me, it makes it that much harder to enjoy the series. After all, in the real world, we all have to deal with things on a daily basis, but they do have an impact on our behaviors and our character. On this show, however, nothing seems to matter over the long term. This is certainly true of Revulsion.

Of Note

The Tom and B’Elanna romance is finally introduced in this episode. In general, I think they did a pretty good job with them, but it sure seemed to take a really long time to develop. Still, I guess that’s what makes it more realistic than other romances that have been developed in Star Trek. At least we get to see it develop over time.

Tuvok becomes a Lt. Commander in this episode.