Star Trek Voy - Season 2 - Episode 03
Star Trek Voy - 2x03 - Projections
Originally Aired: 1995-9-11
Synopsis:
Illusion and reality collide for the Doctor. [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
- This is the second episode in Star Trek history to mention anything about a bathroom on a starship. The computer mentions the "sewage and waste reclamation systems are offline."
- This episode gives us more facts about Dr. Louis Zimmerman. He designed the EMH and lives at Jupiter station. Also, Dr. Zimmerman looks exactly like the EMH.
- This episode establishes that Barclay helped to design the EMH. He was in charge of testing the doctor's inter personal skills.
Remarkable Scenes
- Barclay's appearance.
- The flashback into Voy: Caretaker.
- The Doctor deleting people, but failing to delete Janeway.
- The Doctor returning to reality, only to find out that it's another illusion.
- The Doctor confirming reality.
- The Doctor reaching his arm out of sickbay just to make sure he really was a hologram.
My Review
This is the first of a long line of Voyager Barclay episodes, as odd as it may sound. Barclay was the best choice for this story though. For one, Barclay has struggled with holodiction, which makes this whole episode a bit ironic. Though Barclay presents a very convincing case arguing the doctor is not a hologram but a real person. Had me fooled pretty well. As such, the plot has lots of intrigue. The one flaw in the logic is Barclay's incessant cries for the doctor to destroy the ship, even though it's clear that the holodeck safeties weren't working. Even a simulated warpcore breach would surely kill someone on the holodeck with the safeties off. So as soon as Barclay started acting like that, I knew exactly what was going to happen. The climax thus became something of an anticlimax to me. The climax retains some greatness in the end, expressing some of the doctor's hidden desires. Kes as his wife and a struggle to be a real person. Fortunately the twist at the end where the doctor returned to reality but was in fact in another illusion sparked my interest once again. It reminded me a lot of TNG: Frame of Mind in which Riker couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't. Fortunately, this wasn't overdone and the episode ended with a particular charm. I like how the doctor had to test putting his arm outside of sickbay just to make sure he was really a hologram.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
This intensely psychological episode and doc character exploration simply blew my mind when I originally saw it. I couldn't even come up with a proper comment to do it justice. If you're a fan of the Doctor, or even the least bit interested in his character, this is a must watch.
This episode takes the doctor's ambivalence about his very nature to its full and logical conclusion: a dramatic existential crisis, complete with doubt, aspiration, self-delusion, madness, a declaration of love, and something like a mock suicide attempt (when he blew up the holographic projection of a holographic projector array).
Small details: love the conflicted, just slightly gleeful bemusement when he discovers that he's bleeding, has a pulse, brain wave activity, hunger pangs, etc.
One of my favorite Voyager episodes thus far (top 5). Altogether brilliant.