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| The Doctor develops a murderous split personality! |
The Voyager crew stops at an outpost belonging to the Mikhal Travelers, a race of explorers whose knowledge of the space ahead may prove invaluable. During the stopover, Kes develops a relationship with Zahir (David Lee Smith), prompting her to consider leaving Voyager.
Meanwhile, the Doctor is experimenting with his program, integrating traits from notable historical figures into his own personality. He hopes to improve his bedside manner, his "patience with his patients" - but the experiment has unintended consequences. As Torres observes, all of these figures had a dark side, and their darker passions have fused with the Doctor's program to create a new personality: a ruthless figure with all the Doctor's medical knowledge and none of his scruples. And this new, unimproved Doctor is fixated on Kes!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Acts as a friend to Kes, listening as she explains her inner conflict about staying or going and giving her time and space to make her own decision. Does relatively little for most of the rest of the episode, at least until she helps Technobabble the transporter beam through the Plot Interference to retrieve the Doctor and Kes at the end.
The Doctor: Does a Dr. Jekyll: In seeking to improve himself, he manages to transform himself into a monster. This allows Robert Picardo to let out his (only very thinly-veiled) inner ham, snarling his way through lines while chewing viciously on the scenery. There is an effort made to connect the Doctor's "Hyde" to his normal personality, with his first violent act being committed against the man who wants to take Kes away from him. Unfortunately, little more is done by either script or performance to suggest that we are truly seeing the Doctor's dark side, which limits most of the episode's second half to effectively watching a completely different character who happens to be played by Robert Picardo.
Kes: Her short Ocampan life span means that at 3 years old, a third of Kes' life has now passed. She has had exactly one lover, and had the misfortune for that to be Neelix. Now she's met somebody attractive to whom she feels drawn, and that's adding onto reflections she's already had about the near-certainty that if she stays on the ship, she will spend her entire life there. All of this is fine material to put Kes "at a crossroads," as Janeway says. Except we are only told that Kes is changing; we never once actually see it. She's the same Kes as in every other episode, save for a rather forced bit at the start in which she snaps at Tuvok and the Doctor.
Torres: Is very concerned when the Doctor describes his experiment. She recognizes that tampering with personality can have unpredictable side-effects, and sets about removing the Doctor's handiwork. Unfortunately for her, she's too late in getting to it, and the "Hyde" personality emerges to knock her out and threaten her for a while. In the midst of a scene that's mostly generic, albeit well-acted, Torres gets one very good bit. Instead of stating that she'll never tell the Doctor what he needs to know, regardless of torture, she tells him that by the time he gets her to talk, it will be too late for him. A nice touch, in an episode that could use a few more such touches.
THOUGHTS
Darkling is an episode that gets worse in my mind the more distance I get from it. The Voyager version of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the story's "A" plot/"B" plot structure provides an opportunity to contrast Kes' evolution due to her exposure to a wider universe against the Doctor's changes due to his crude tampering with his own program. This could work well, particularly with a script by Joe Menosky, who often excels at character episodes.
Unfortunately, the script does little to connect the two storylines. Instead, the script all but forgets Kes' subplot once the Doctor's "Mr. Hyde" emerges at the midpoint. This strand is dropped to such an extent that we never even see Kes say goodbye to the man she was seriously considering running away with. The major story element of the episode's first half, Kes' yearning for a life beyond Voyager, is never resolved on-screen... It simply gets forgotten, save for a few throwaway lines in the tag.
This badly damages the episode's overall success. If Menosky, who has shown he is capable of better work, couldn't find a way to balance the two character strands, then he should have rewritten the episode to solely focus on the Doctor's story. As it stands, while the episode is kept watchable by the always-reliable work of Robert Picardo and Jennifer Lien, it ends up feeling as if the first half of one episode got somehow stitched onto the second half of a completely different one. The results are as jagged and uneven as that would imply.
Oh, and the Doctor and Kes are saved by the power of transporter ex machina, rather than anything the show's primary characters do - just to make an already troubled episode that little bit worse.
Overall Rating: 4/10.
Previous Episode: Unity
Next Episode: Rise
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