4-5. Revulsion.

The Doctor encounters Dejaren (Leland Orser), another sentient hologram.

THE PLOT

Voyager receives a distress call from Dejaren (Leland Orser), a sentient hologram who is the only survivor of a damaged ship. The Doctor, excited at the prospect of meeting another self-aware hologram, volunteers to give aid. He and Torres beam aboard and begin work on stabilizing Dejaren's program.

The Doctor sees too much of himself in Dejaren to do anything but explain away the other hologram's antisocial manner. But Torres is disturbed almost from the outset. When Dejaren tries to keep them from exploring the ship's lower decks, Torres prevails on the Doctor to distract him while she investigates. It doesn't take long for her to find the bodies of the crew - all murdered by Dejaren, who has picked Torres for his next victim!

CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Nervous about sending the Doctor to answer the distress signal. With the departure of Kes, he is now the ship's only real medic - If anything happens to him, it would be a disaster for the ship.  She does allow him to go, but only with B'Elanna accompanying him.

Doctor: However much he may now feel like a proper part of Voyager's crew, he still feels some isolation at being the apparent only one of his kind. He identifies strongly with Dejaren, but when he urges the other hologram to stand up for his rights and to pursue other interests, he is talking more about his own situation. He only recognizes Dejaren as a threat when he catches the other hologram attacking Torres. These events should have some impact on the Doctor; he finally meets someone like him, and he turns out to be criminally insane. Unfortunately, writer Lisa Klink shows no interest in delving beyond the surface, and the episode's tag is just an extended bad joke about the Doctor's fastidious nature.

Torres: Tom gives her a chance to back away from her profession of love, but she refuses to take it. She meant what she said, and fully owns up to it. Tom makes it clear that he is happy about this, so at least one good thing happens before she spends the rest of the day playing hide-and-seek with a killer hologram. Roxann Dawson gives another terrific performance, showing Torres' instant unease with Dejaren as she picks up on his strangeness, an unease that increases as his behavior becomes more and more disturbing.

Tom Paris: I know continuity isn't Voyager's strong suit, but it's been all of two episodes since Tom stated that he didn't care about Seven of Nine's past and offered to be a friend to her. Now, he's making snide remarks about all the people Seven helped assimilate and snapping at her that she's "a mere mortal" now. Is it too much to ask that characters not completely reverse themselves within the space of three shows?

Seven of Nine/Harry: In "B" plot land, Harry develops a crush on Seven, despite her having knocked him unconscious in their last interaction. Or maybe it's because of that? Maybe Harry's been beat up and knocked around so many times that it's become a turn-on. Makes as much sense as anything in the "B" plot, which otherwise just retreads the ground already covered by Day of Honor in integrating Seven with the crew. This "B" plot does represent a minor milestone, though: It's the first time Seven is featured in an episode in which her subplot is boring (though I'll admit to laughing at Seven's very direct response to Harry's infatuation).

THOUGHTS

Revulsion isn't a bad episode. It just isn't a particularly good one. Lisa Klink, my pick for this series' weakest regular writer, gives superficial treatment to the main plot, and makes sure there isn't time to do more by spending almost as much time on the Harry/Seven story as on the Dejaren story. At least that main plot has three excellent performances to keep it afloat. Robert Picardo and Roxann Dawson are among the show's strongest actors, and they are well-matched by guest star Leland Orser.

Orser seesaws effectively between pathetic and sinister. His twitchy performance as Dejaren is exactly what this script needs. The episode's best scene sees him meekly approaching B'Elanna to offer her some rations. When he steps near an exposed power cable, she snaps at him and he cringes and all but hides his head as he apologizes. Then, as they talk, what begins as simple social ineptitude on his part gradually rises into a full-boar rant. These are a lot of rapid-fire emotional changes within a single scene, and Orser not only hits every major beat, he manages to make the transitions between them feel convincing. This goes a long way toward making Dejaren both more pathetic and more frightening than he might have been otherwise.

Too bad the rest of the episode doesn't live up to that standout scene. The script never delves into what happened and why. Dejaren alludes to the crew treating him badly, but we never get any details. If we learned more about how the crew treated him badly, enough to sympathize with his plight, then the story might have some meaning beyond the visceral thrill of him threatening Torres. Alternatively, if the crew had treated him perfectly well, and a malfunction with his program had caused him to misperceive reality, then that could have been effective. Or if the crew had treated him well as far as they were concerned, given that he was "just a hologram," and he still finally snapped under the stress of being regarded as a mere piece of technology, then that could have been very strong. Any of these possibilities could have had reflections on the Doctor's own journey as a character, as well, making something out of his attempts to bond with and protect Dejaren.

But while Lisa Klink's script may be shallow, it at least moves along. Kenneth Biller, making his directorial debut, does a solid job with the thin material, wringing a decent amount of suspense out of the B'Elanna/Dejaren scenes. It's easily Season Four's weakest episode to date, but it's not a bad show - It's just not a particularly good one.

Overall Rating: 5/10.