

(written from a Production point of view Real World article

Reactivated after lying inactive for seven hundred years, a backup version of The Doctor tries to uncover the truth about war crimes supposedly committed by Voyager when they passed a planet centuries ago.

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Summary

Teaser

"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative: violence. Force must be applied, without apology. It's the Starfleet way."

Captain Janeway, sporting uncharacteristically short hair and black gloves, negotiates with Vaskan ambassador Daleth about fighting a war with their Kyrian neighbors. She indicates that she sees all the benefits for him, but doesn't see how it helps her at all. The ambassador explains that they know of a cyclic wormhole nearby; they can give her the coordinates and tell her how to stabilize it.

Janeway agrees and then the ship shakes. They emerge onto the bridge and Janeway demands a situation report. Neelix, at ops and in a gold Starfleet uniform, reports they are under attack by Kyrians. Janeway begins ordering use of biogenic weapons on the population. Daleth objects, saying the people themselves are innocent and they're only concerned with the leader, Tedran, but Janeway insists it's the best way to bring him down. Implemented by The Doctor, appearing to be an android, informs Janeway that he has finished integrating the biogenic weapon with the ship's phasers. Janeway orders the ship to fire.

This is all a simulation, being viewed from a window into a room clearly not from Voyager. It is a museum, the Museum of Kyrian Heritage. An older Kyrian, Quarren, explains to a group of Kyrians and Vaskans how the "warship Voyager" visited seven hundred years ago and had a lasting impact on them, even to their day.

Act One

One of the guests becomes curious and starts asking questions about Voyager and its impact on the area. Quarren admits they are uncertain about a lot of things, but he is certain the ship impacted many worlds and "assimilated" other species to serve on the ship of about 300 soldiers. Voyager's behavior and impact will be explained in more detail in the rest of the simulation. Back in the simulation, Janeway is impatient on the slowly-increasing death toll and they fire on the planet and Tuvok reports a death toll in the thousands, promising it will climb to several hundred thousand within an hour. Daleth objects again, and Janeway insists that he'll keep up his end of the bargain and detains him.

Janeway then focuses on locating the Kyrian leader, Tedran. Again in sickbay, 'Lieutenant' Kim and Chakotay (sporting a highly inaccurate tattoo, and whose name is pronounced "Chako-tay") are interrogating a Kyrian using beatings and, eventually, a painful toxin. Chakotay soon informs the Captain they know where Tedran is, and leads an assault team to retrieve him.

Another alert sounds and Mr. Paris reports that a boarding party has infiltrated engineering and erected force fields. Janeway initiates a "Borg activation program". A fully Borg Seven of Nine activates in cargo bay two along with three other drones. They transport into engineering and subdue the invaders. Janeway instructs her to assimilate the surviving two.

Janeway then meets the captive Tedran and an associate in a room on the ship and ends up executing both personally when they won't surrender. Tedran challenges Janeway for destroying their home so they can get to theirs, and Daleth for involving them when they could have resolved the situation peacefully.

Back in the museum, Quarren encourages his guests to remember the story of how Voyager's intervention brought the Vaskans to power, and to look around the rest of the museum.

Act Two

While guests are looking around the museum, one of the Vaskans angrily questions the story's validity, taking issue with the portrayal of his species. Quarren informs him that the evidence has been examined carefully, and, furthermore, a data storage device, buried nine meters beneath the ruins of Kesef and that came from Voyager, has been recently uncovered. The device might contain personal logs or other proof directly from Voyager.

Later that night, Quarren begins a dictation describing how he's had trouble accessing the data on the storage device and is going to try to use tools from the simulation on the device because they might be more compatible. He ends up successfully accessing The Doctor's program; the data source is actually a backup copy of the EMH.

The Doctor is immediately confused about being in engineering without his mobile emitter, and the presence of a Kyrian. He tries to warn the rest of the ship. Slowly, Quarren tries to explain that it's a simulation, and that 700 years have passed, give or take a decade, but The Doctor refuses to accept it, until he runs out of engineering into the museum and is faced with reality.

Act Three

The Doctor comes to grips with the new time he's in, looking at the artifacts around him. The Doctor starts looking over information and becomes more and more upset. Quarren informs him that he's a great source of data, but that in his culture artificial life forms are held responsible for their actions, so he may have to stand trial for war crimes. The Doctor is outraged at the implication that he is culpable and at the portrayal of Voyager as a warship. Quarren says they drew reasonable conclusions based on the evidence, but The Doctor points out that the fact they believed Voyager was trying to get home to Mars rather than Earth only highlights the problem.

Quarren offers to show The Doctor the full recreation and he can judge for himself. They watch a scene in Voyager's briefing room where the senior staff begin arguing over plans for winning the war until it degenerates into a fistfight Janeway has to break up with a phaser blast.

The Doctor is horrified, explaining that no one (except maybe Mr. Paris) behaved that way. Once they get to the execution scene, The Doctor challenges Quarren by pointing out that the Kyrians are portrayed very favorably and Tedran a martyr when in reality he was the leader of a group of Kyrians that launched an unprovoked attack on Voyager, suggesting the whole thing is nothing but revisionist history. Quarren angrily dismisses The Doctor's interpretations, telling him that since the great war between the Kyrians and the Vaskans his race has been oppressed and that's all the evidence he needs. He then deactivates The Doctor's program.

Act Four

After taking some time to think, Quarren admits to himself that the fact The Doctor is a hologram when they thought he was an android is indisputable, and may cast the rest of their interpretation into doubt. He reactivates The Doctor's program and, after a little bit of arguing, he allows The Doctor to create his own holographic version of events.

The Doctor creates another simulation of Voyager's encounter with the Kyrians. The scene in Janeway's ready room describes a negotiation with Daleth for dilithium in exchange for medical supplies, but just as they were about to seal the deal, the ship is boarded by a Kyrian raiding party. Security responds in engineering, but the Kyrians have already killed three engineering crewmen and take Seven of Nine and another crewman hostage. They move to deck two and Janeway, The Doctor, and Daleth work with the security team to corner the Kyrians, including Tedran, in the mess hall. Once there, security manages to subdue the Kyrians, but not before Daleth takes advantage of the confusion and shoots Tedran, killing him.

When the simulation ends, The Doctor, Quarren, and three representatives, two Vaskan, one Kyrian, are shown to have been watching. The Kyrian representative dismisses The Doctor's recreation as pure fiction and lies to save him from the charges against him, but the Vaskans are more open to his interpretation since they have always been painted as the aggressive race that started the war between their people. The Kyrian representative demands hard proof, and The Doctor says the medical tricorder they have in the museum is the same one he used to scan Tedran; if they can get it working, he can prove Tedran died from being shot with a Vaskan weapon and not a Federation phaser. The Vaskans approve Quarran's investigation, while the Kyrian opposes it and promises to see The Doctor pay for his 'crimes'.

The Doctor and Quarren begin working on the tricorder and begin reminiscing about The Doctor's experiences on Voyager and Quarren's fascination with it. In the middle of their musings, however, a mob storms the museum and begins destroying the displays and artifacts, angry that they've been told lies about how the war started.

Act Five

Quarren and The Doctor take cover as the mob destroys everything. Furthermore, they lose the tricorder in the riot. The next day, as they look for it, Quarren explains to The Doctor that the new revelations have snapped the tension that has been steadily building between the Kyrians and the Vaskans over the previous hundreds of years. While the Vaskans are keen to hear his side, the Kyrians are very angry over The Doctor's version of events which paint them in a more negative light. There's even talk of another war brewing between them. The Doctor states that he should be shut down, because as an EMH, he is obliged to help people, and his continued presence is causing riots and intense anger among both races and points out that what really happened is open to interpretation. Quarren refutes his argument, as The Doctor was there at the events and no one should deny what he saw. The Doctor initially refuses to remain, telling him that for hundreds of years Tedran was a martyr to his people and he doesn't have the right to take that away. Quarran angrily tells The Doctor that history itself has been abused, and all the Kyrians and Vaskans have done since then is blame each other for what happened in the past. Unless the story of what really happened is set right, the constant fighting and pressure could continue for centuries. The Doctor relents, and they continue to look for the tricorder.

Further into the future, a group of Kyrians and Vaskans stand around a viewscreen, watching these events unfold. Another tour guide explains how this was a turning point in their peoples' history, and how it finally brought about equality between the Kyrians and the Vaskans. Quarren died six years later, long enough to see the beginning of the peace he helped create. The Doctor became Surgical Chancellor of the united races for many years, before leaving in a small craft to trace Voyager's path back to the Alpha Quadrant, claiming to have "a longing for home".

Memorable quotes

"Why do you always keep me waiting, Tuvok?"

- Captain Janeway in the historical simulation



"Even today, seven hundred years later, we are still feeling the impact of the Voyager encounter."

- Quarren



"Captain, don't you think that's excessive?"

"You picked a bad time to have second thoughts, ambassador."

"I want them defeated, but... but this is genocide."

"Defeat? Genocide? Why quibble with semantics?"

- Vaskan diplomat and Captain Janeway in the historical simulation



"Don't look so shocked, ambassador. This is what you wanted, isn't it?"

- Captain Janeway after shooting Tedran in the historical simulation



"What's going to happen to me now? Will you put me on display? The holographic Rip van Winkle?"

- The Doctor, concerned about his destiny



"Voyager wasn't a warship! We were explorers!"

"Yes, I know. Trying to get home, to Mars."

"Earth! You see, you couldn't even get that right!"

- The Doctor and Quarren



"You have a better idea, lieutenant?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. Fighter shuttles – a direct assault."

"Led by you? Good luck."

"Watch your mouth, hedgehog!"

- Chakotay, Tom Paris, and Neelix, in the historical simulation



"Pure fiction. This is absurd."

"Halt re-creation. This is a reasonable extrapolation from historic record. But if you'd like to point out any inconsistencies..."

"Inconsistencies? I don't know where to begin. Granted, this looks like the briefing room, but these aren't the people I knew! No one behaved like this... well, aside from Mr. Paris."

- The Doctor about the holographic simulation



"Somewhere – halfway across the galaxy, I hope – Captain Janeway is spinning in her grave."

- The Doctor, regarding further inconsistencies in the historical simulation



"You've portrayed us as monsters: the captain is a cold-blooded killer, the crew is a gang of thugs and I am a mass-murderer."

- The Doctor, summing up what he saw in the historical simulation



"I'll go first, captain, and draw any fire if need be."

"Your crew is heroic, captain..."

"I just happen to be invulnerable to phaser fire - but I appreciate the compliment."

- The Doctor and Daleth in The Doctor's own recreation of the same event



"For your information, I don't appreciate being deactivated in the middle of a sentence. It brings back... unpleasant memories."

- The Doctor



"You miss them, don't you?"

"B'Elanna Torres... intelligent, beautiful, and with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Horsehead Nebula."

- Quarren and The Doctor



"Please state the nature of the medical – oh... it's you."

- The Doctor, to Quarren



"From my perspective, I saw them all only a few days ago. But in fact, it's been centuries. And I'll never see them again. Did they ever reach home? I wonder."

- The Doctor

Background information

Story and script

Cast and characters

Sets and props

Production

The problem of concentrating on the acting was heightened for Tim Russ due to the fact that the performances of the regular cast were far different from how they normally were on Star Trek: Voyager . " It was even more of a challenge, I think, coming into it, " Russ conceded, " because [the lead actors] had to behave or act in a different manner than they normally would [...] From time to time, all I did was tweak them. " ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg) Russ elaborated, " It was a bit of a tweak here and there to try to get the parts refined because the tendency is to go overboard when you do something like that, to get carried away. So I had to keep it in line, because I'm looking at it as a third-party observer, an objective standpoint. Everybody came up with their own sort of twist. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104) Additionally, Russ expressed that being witness to the cast twisting their portrayals was "very nice" and "very interesting." ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104; VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg) Russ also tweaked the performances of the guest cast. " We had several guest stars in key roles, and that was a little trickier than I had planned, because I found myself having to tweak the performances a lot more than I would like to have done. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 41, p. 23)

. " " Russ conceded, " " ( Easter egg) Russ elaborated, " " ( , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104) Additionally, Russ expressed that being witness to the cast twisting their portrayals was "very nice" and "very interesting." ( , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104; Easter egg) Russ also tweaked the performances of the guest cast. " " ( issue 41, p. 23) Tim Russ found that the plot of this episode seemed to allow for some technical conventions to be broken. He commented, " For me, the story itself, the concept carried or supported the foundations of being able to defy some of the conventional editorial rules. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105)

" ( , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105) A shot in the first act of this episode, showing Quarren watch the Kyrian museum's viewscreen as it changes between a picture of the warship Voyager and an image of the fictitious Janeway in the ship's command chair, was controversial among the episode's production staff. Although Tim Russ (who was concentrating on the dramatic aspects of the shot) felt that the short moment worked well dramatically and would probably not be especially noticeable to viewers anyway, some individuals (who were concentrating on the technical aspects of the shot), such as supervising producer Peter Lauritson, thought the moment was not absolutely correct from an editorial, post-production perspective. Brannon Braga agreed with Tim Russ, so the decision was made to use the shot. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105)

and an image of the fictitious Janeway in the ship's command chair, was controversial among the episode's production staff. Although Tim Russ (who was concentrating on the dramatic aspects of the shot) felt that the short moment worked well dramatically and would probably not be especially noticeable to viewers anyway, some individuals (who were concentrating on the technical aspects of the shot), such as supervising producer Peter Lauritson, thought the moment was not absolutely correct from an editorial, post-production perspective. Brannon Braga agreed with Tim Russ, so the decision was made to use the shot. ( , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105) Mitch Suskin was delighted with Tim Russ' work on this episode. "Tim Russ did an amazingly excellent job as a first-time director," Suskin raved. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)

Visual effects

Only a single shot of the warship Voyager was created for this episode, visualized using CGI. Mitch Suskin talked about the digital ship model: " It's actually the same Voyager [as the usual CG one] with a lot of extra guns and weapons' ports on it, not terribly different, just beefier. As something that is just one shot in the show, it becomes much easier to sell that when it's a digital shot, and it doesn't cost as much. Also we're not going to damage the Voyager [studio] model that way. If we actually did it on the model, we'd have to fix it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)

was created for this episode, visualized using CGI. Mitch Suskin talked about the digital ship model: " Voyager Voyager " ( , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106) The episode includes two shots that pan across to a screen or window, through which futuristic spectators can then be seen. Mitch Suskin noted, "We had a couple of tracking shots where we let the production company pan from the set into these windows." One of the two occasions on which this occurs follows the malevolent Janeway's execution of Tedran and his accomplice, at which point a group of observers in the Kyrian museum are shown through one of the warship Voyager's briefing room windows. Recalling the filming of the footage from inside the briefing room as well as the view of the watchers, Suskin remarked, "Both of those shots were shot on stage with no electronic data gathering or motion control support, not even any targets. We let the camera operator operate as if it were a regular production shot [...] For example, in the one shot in the mess hall, [where] we see Janeway execute the people, the camera operator pans over to the window where there's nothing but stars as usual. Several days later, we shot on the other stage an element of the people standing, staring [near] the camera. We matched the camera heights, and the lenses." Suskin went on: "A lot of what we did was just to line up two different elements shot on different days and different stages, and put them together as if these people are looking through the port [...] Because we have enough horsepower in the technology we are using in the composite bay, now we are able to really without a great deal of difficulty, track the elements in, and match them as if they were shot together."(Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 105 & 106)

Continuity

Dating

The events of this episode take place at least 700 years after Voyager encountered the Kyrians, placing the activation of the EMH backup and subsequent upheavals in the late 31st century (approximately 3074). The final scene takes place no sooner than six years later, although the docent's monologue, and Quarren's statement that "it could be another seven hundred years," both imply that several generations have passed. It is reasonable to conclude that the final scene takes place as early as the final years of the 31st century, and as late as the 38th century. Chronologically, this scene probably takes place farther in the future than any other filmed scene in the entire Star Trek franchise, with the possible exception of the Star Trek: Short Treks episode " Calypso ". Additionally, the final scene implies that all preceding scenes are part of a simulation, meaning the entire episode is set at the same date as the final scene.

Dating of Voyager's encounter with the Kyrians

No date or stardate is given in this episode, leaving the exact timing of Voyager 's encounter with the Kyrians and Vaskans unclear. Notable clues include: the presence of Seven of Nine, placing this episode sometime after the third-season finale " Scorpion "; the following episode " Demon ", which takes place in the Vaskan sector according to the fifth-season episode " Course: Oblivion ", although the dating of "Demon" itself is unclear; the claim that Voyager was 60,000 light-years from home at the time, placing the episode sometime after the earlier fourth-season episode " The Gift " (in which Voyager is propelled thousands of light-years further towards home) but before the fifth-season episode " Timeless ".

's encounter with the Kyrians and Vaskans unclear. Notable clues include:

The Doctor's backup copy

This is the only episode where a backup copy of The Doctor is available.

The existence of a backup module for The Doctor would seem to contradict earlier episodes, most notably the earlier fourth season installment " Message in a Bottle ", in which Tom Paris and Harry Kim try and fail to create another version of The Doctor, and the latter season six episodes " Blink of an Eye " and " Life Line ", where it is suggested his program will be lost forever if it is transferred and cannot return. In fact, in the episode " One ", which takes place just two episodes after this one, The Doctor states his program may be irretrievable if his emitter goes offline while outside Sickbay. A possible explanation is that the module was stolen after " The Gift " but before the events of "Message in a Bottle", or that the module was created shortly after "Message in a Bottle" and then stolen. Kim's creation of the Crell Moset program in " Nothing Human " would be consistent with the latter explanation if the module was stolen before then.

", in which Tom Paris and Harry Kim try and fail to create another version of The Doctor, and the latter season six episodes " " and " ", where it is suggested his program will be lost forever if it is transferred and cannot return. In fact, in the episode " ", which takes place just two episodes after this one, The Doctor states his program may be irretrievable if his emitter goes offline while outside Sickbay. A possible explanation is that the module was stolen after " " but before the events of "Message in a Bottle", or that the module was created shortly after "Message in a Bottle" and then stolen. Kim's creation of the Crell Moset program in " " would be consistent with the latter explanation if the module was stolen before then. The introduction of the backup module worried Robert Picardo, as he suspected some fans on the Internet would have nitpicks about the module being established. "I brought that up with Brannon [Braga]," the actor revealed, "and he said that if the story was good enough, they wouldn't complain about the technology. But there is also the possibility that we developed a backup program, and 'oops,' we lost it in that episode." Tim Russ was puzzled by the suggestion that anyone would have a problem with the technology being introduced, as backup programs were – at the time the episode was made – and still are very common. Russ also speculated, "In case something went terribly wrong, of course you would have to have backup programs. I would think that people who watch the show, quite a few of them are computer literate. I don't think it would be even a hitch for them." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)

Reception and aftermath

Video and DVD releases

Starring

Also starring

Guest stars

Co-stars

Uncredited co-stars

Stand-ins

References

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