2-03. Projections.

Barclay (Dwight Schultz) urges
the doctor to destroy Voyager!

THE PLOT

The holographic doctor is activated, only to find himself apparently alone on the ship. The computer informs him that the ship came under attack by the Kazon. With a warp core breach imminent, Capt. Janeway ordered a complete evacuation.

As the doctor prepares to shut down his program, convinced that with the ship abandoned there is no further need for him, B'Elanna comes into the sickbay. She tells him that the ship's sensors were damaged, which is why the computer isn't detecting any life signs. She, Janeway, and a handful of others remained on board to contain the warp core breach. Now Janeway is injured, and her only hope lies with some experimental technology that will allow the doctor to project himself to other parts of the ship.

The projection technology works. The doctor is able to help Janeway, then is able to project himself to the mess hall to save Neelix from a Kazon warrior. But then something strange happens. The doctor, a hologram... bleeds. And feels pain. Then a stranger appears in the sickbay. Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz), an engineer formerly attached to Picard's Enterprise, informs the doctor that he is not a hologram at all. He is actually Lewis Zimmerman, running an experiment on a space station's holodeck. Radiation has caused the program to go wrong, and scrambled the doctor's memories in the process. He must shut down the program in order to save his own life. And there's only one way to do that: Destroy Voyager!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Present, but largely inconsequential. Still, Kate Mulgrew's facial and body language when the doctor orders the computer to "Delete Janeway" are hilarious.

The Doctor: Any episode centered around the holographic doctor gets an instant boost from Robert Picardo's effortlessly assured performance. Picardo is terrific, whether he's reacting with smug satisfaction to the newfound ability to deactivate certain annoying programs (Tom Paris, Harry Kim), or whether he's struggling with pain in his head to determine which of two possible realities is the real one. Thankfully, Brannon Braga's script is at least sensible enough to make the doctor very skeptical of Barclay's claims, with it taking a lot of genuinely persuasive evidence for him to even begin to believe in it.

Kes: It's revealing that in the doctor's hallucination, Kes is his wife - the hallucination's last temptation for him, and its strongest. After all, Kes was the first person on Voyager to actually treat him with respect and friendship. He mentions within the hallucination that he has always found Kes very beautiful, though he does not repeat that to the real Kes. In the tag, Kes seems both amused and flattered at her role in the hallucination... though she asks the doctor not to mention it to Neelix, lest it trigger jealousy.

Neelix: Though only in the episode briefly, he still manages to annoy. When he duels with a Kazon, he dodges a gun-blast and then smirks, "Missed me." I really wanted a follow-up blast to literally wipe the smirk off his face, before wiping away his face for good. Kes' concern about Neelix's jealousy recalls what we saw in Phage, when he became paranoid about Tom Paris. It would seem that Neelix can add "possessive jealousy" to his long list of bad qualities. In fairness, he's probably self-aware enough to realize that Kes is far, far, far, far, far too good for him. A hologram would frankly be an enormous step up for Kes from her current boyfriend.

Barclay: Dwight Schultz reprises his TNG role as engineer Reg Barclay. His performance gives the episode a considerable boost. Not only does he have terrific screen chemistry with Robert Picardo, he is an actor who has the ability to go from funny to threatening very quickly, with little apparent change in behavior on screen. For most of the episode, Schultz and Picardo essentially make a comedy duo, with re-enactments of some bits from Caretaker particularly amusing. But when Barclay gets serious about convincing the doctor that he must either destroy the ship or die, Schultz is really quite sinister, particularly when he grills the doctor on who he would rather be - Dr. Zimmerman, a real person with a real career and a beautiful wife who loves him; or a hologram confined to sickbay and the holodeck, and nothing more?


THOUGHTS

Coming off the tedious mess that was the last episode, Projections is a bit of a relief. It's not a great episode, or even as good an episode as it honestly should be. But it's solid and enjoyable, with a workmanlike script and typically confident direction from Jonathan Frakes.

It's obvious fairly early on that none of what we're seeing is real, and the script tips its hand too quickly by having the medical tricorder unable to detect B'Elanna's life signs. But as a look into the doctor's character, with his fondest wish to be a real person with a family and a career to call his own, it has merit. Plus, a lot of it is fun to watch, particularly when the episode starts replaying bits from Caretaker, with the doctor and Barclay effectively providing color commentary ("Was Mr. Paris always this annoying?" "This is the work of an entity you will come to know as the Caretaker - or Banjo Man").

It isn't all it could be, however, simply because the episode never makes it seems as though there is any other possible outcome. An obvious comparison would be with Buffy the Vampire Slayer's episode, Normal Again. That saw a similar scenario, with the main character being made to think that her life within the television series was a delusion... but it did it in such a way that the "delusion" had credibility, to the point that it was hotly debated within fandom. Here, there's never any question what the truth is, nor is there anything within the episode to give us even a tug of doubt. Nor are there any real layers to the delusion, an attempted "sting" ending aside. As such, Projections plays well on its surface level, and that's fine. But it doesn't do anything more, leaving it an entertaining but shallow piece.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Episode: Initiations
Next Episode: Elogium


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