Star Trek: Voyager: Darkling   Rewatch 
July 27, 2017 4:51 AM - Season 3, Episode 18 - Subscribe

First, do no harm. Second, do SOME harm. Third, hey, this harming people stuff is pretty great. Fourth? Oh, you better beLIEVE that's a-harmin'.

Combine Memory Alpha and MetaFilter, and you might get a monster:

- Robert Picardo reckoned that Brannon Braga co-wrote this episode after finding out that Picardo had played Eddie Quist, a psychopath/werewolf, in the 1981 movie The Howling.

- The Doctor's malevolent alter ego was initially scripted as being more perverse than he is in the episode's final version. Episode writer Joe Menosky remembered, "We originally made The Doctor perversely sexual and sadistic. There was a sense that his attachment to Kes was weirdly kind of psychosexual, and we took it to its limit. In the screenplay first draft that I wrote, I had a scene when Kes walks into the holodeck and sees The Doctor doing an experiment. There are Keses everywhere, and he's got one of them on the operating table, and he has some flip line about, 'Just trying to get to know you better.' It's very perverse." Presumably, this scene ultimately became the one in which Kes finds The Doctor sabotaging the historical holograms on the holodeck.

- The perversity of The Doctor's evil second self was lessened on behalf of story consultant Michael Piller, much to the disappointment of Robert Picardo. "Michael Piller [...] wrote a strong memo. He basically said, 'If you guys shoot it like this, I'm going to take my name off this episode,'" Joe Menosky recounted. "It made us reconsider doubts that we'd had. Michael's argument was that you got a sense, after the episode was done and The Doctor was back to normal, that somewhere in The Doctor was this horrible, dirty old man who was just waiting to get his hands on Kes. There was almost no way to erase that. That's probably why Picardo was so disappointed when we ended up not going that route, because he really loved the 'S and M Doctor,' as he liked to call it.

- Robert Picardo used contact lenses and prosthetic teeth for the evil version of The Doctor. "There were very subtle changes in my appearance, subtle make-up changes," he observed. "I wore some interesting contact lenses that were my idea, to reduce the size of my cornea so that my eyes appear just slightly beadier. And I also wore a dental appliance on my lower teeth that I had not worn since The Howling. I save all of my prosthetics in a drawer, so I pulled out the teeth and wore them to give me a more Neanderthal, animalistic appearance."

- The individuals on whom Robert Picardo tried out his subtle make-up changes included Joe Menosky. "He walked into our offices when we were working, looking mean and basically being mean, and he said, 'What do you think?' in his Hyde voice, and stayed in character the whole time," Menosky remembered. "It wasn't until the end of his little psychodrama that we realized that makeup had put in contacts that made his eyes beadier, and also he had put on his bottom teeth, a couple of real tiny kind of overlays."

- According to Beyond the Final Frontier, an "unauthorized review" of all of Star Trek, this episode is the first in what is known to some fans as the "trilogy of terror" – three consecutive episodes that are often considered to be remarkably bad (the other two episodes being "Rise" and "Favorite Son").


"It is said the angels themselves take pleasure in their bodies of light."
"And you should take a cold bath. In such cases, it is the finest preventative."
"I'll keep that in mind."

- Lord Byron, Mahatma Gandhi, and The Doctor


"Any sharp pains? Heartburn? There's nothing like a heart that burns. Your pulse is – lovely. Ah-hah. Mmm, does that feel ... good?"
"Doctor, unless you want me to knock you into the middle of the next millennium, you'd better back off!"

- The Doctor and B'Elanna


"The fine art of putting off an important task to the very last minute... then rushing through it. In my Academy days, I was the acknowledged master."

- Captain Janeway


"The flesh is weak, Kes. Never forget that."

- The Doctor threatening Kes


Poster's Log:
Well, this one is pretty dopey. The only reason at all that I have thus far continued to find it engrossing on rewatches is for The Bad Doctor. Robert Picardo is just so damn talented.

The Delta Bajorans—I mean, the Mikhal Travelers—are an interesting idea limply executed. But good for Kes, wasting no time getting busy. (Of course, she has even less time than she thinks…)

Poster's Log, Supplemental:
The Asshole Traveler looked faintly familiar to me, and it turns out it's because he had a notable role in the DS9 pilot.

Joe Menosky, who worked on quite a number of TNG and VOY episodes, appears to be one of a very short list of past Trek series writers officially confirmed to be writing for Discovery. It's good to know that their bench is not solely made up of newbies to the TV side of the franchise—but it looks to me to be largely so. I try to take comfort in the likelihood that, among the series' writing staff, one who should be quite influential is Wrath of Khan/Undiscovered Country writer/director Nicholas Meyer…but he is also joined by Batman & Robin writer Akiva Goldsman, so :/
posted by CheesesOfBrazil (14 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I save all of my prosthetics in a drawer

Heh, I wonder what his girlfriends think when they stumble on that bedside drawer of goodies.

I rather enjoyed this one, despite the campiness.

While they were probably right about removing some of the perverseness from the Doctor's story, I would pay money to see Picardo turn and say "just trying to get to know you better" while cutting into holographic Kes.
posted by 2ht at 6:35 AM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Batman & Robin writer Akiva Goldsman

In all fairness, he's also Fringe writer Akiva Goldsman.
posted by Servo5678 at 8:10 AM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]


This was seriously thin and predictable. There's no depth to anything that appears onscreen. Nothing Evil Doc does or says matters - it's all reset at the end. There's no real character development. Nothing particularly compelling and no real suspense. Even the quotes seem bland.

They should have had Neelix throw the guy off the cliff in a fit of jealous rage. That would at least have been interesting, and possibly in character.

Cheeses, I kind of hate you right now for pointing out the Doc's teeth and contacts, because now I have to go back and watch those scenes again to try and spot them. Terrible torture! :D
posted by zarq at 10:11 AM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Particle of the Week: Skipped in favor of software bugs.
Pointless STO Comparison of the Week: The Star Trek Online episode What Lies Beneath exploits the possibilities of an evil hologram too. It's pretty creepy, and one of my favorites in the early missions due to atmosphere. (The evil hologram there is basically filling in as an angry ghost if the setting were fantasy.)

Ongoing Counts: Just rolled forward this time.
* Maximum Possible Photon Torpedoes: 23.
* Shuttles: Down 4.
* Crew: 142.
* Other: 46 bio-neural gelpacks remaining, maybe 25-50% of the escape pods should be gone at this point.
* Credulity Straining Alpha Quadrant Contacts: 8.
* Janeway's Big Red Button: 2 aborted self-destructs, 1 successful.

Notes:
I actually like this one. I feel weird about saying this, but I think prevailing opinion may be a little too down on this episode of Star Trek Voyager.

I'll grant you all that it's formulaic - at heart, this is just a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde retelling, with the added limitations that network TV offers. It's necessarily low stakes and bloodless, far from the best medium to tell any sort of horror story, much less one that should definitely have some cutting.

That said, it has a few things going for it, and some interesting underlying themes:

* Picardo's just great fun here.

I loved Picardo's performance. I did spot the contacts, and I wondered about prosthetic teeth - the whole shape of his face is subtly off during every Evil Doc scene in a way that made him look ugly and savage. As ever, Picardo did great. (I liked pretty much everybody on this show, but he was always my favorite.)

I'm sad they didn't film the harder version, and would love to read a transcript. Also, the idea that he just saves prosthetics in a drawer? Oh man, I would love to visit his house. He sounds awesome.

* The technobabble is plausible-ish.

The idea of interlinked software dependencies producing bugs actually rings true to me, even if they play it kind of simplistically. In principle, well, this was the Doctor as Microsoft's Tay: he took a bunch of raw human input from wildly conflicting sources, tossed it in a blender and incorporated it into himself, and lo and behold: evil. If anything, this story is more plausible now than it was when it aired because it's basically happened.

I also appreciated the, (likely unintentional), critique of popular entertainment: Evil Doc is clearly the product of a lot of misogynistic fiction. Like, sure, he goes on and on about pain and stuff, but at heart? He's like an avatar of Rape Culture from the moment he starts inadvertently pawing at B'Ellana, to where Tom accidentally saves that ensign in the lift to the whole thing with Kes. He's creepy and possessive and boundary pushing in ways that both feel real to me, and have uncomfortable things to say about the kind of entertainment people often choose.

It's also a rare case where the superficial and spurious good vs. evil debate actually appeals to me: the Doctor isn't representing, like, true supernatural evil, he's representing a composite of humanity's ideas about villainy in fiction - him being leering and cliched and shallow sounds about right to me.

* The thing with the holograms is straight up hilarious.

Ghandi with his head all wibbly? Bisected Socrates? That scene maybe wants to be scary from Kes' reaction, but it is some comedy gold.

So... hm. Yeah. I like this one. It's not a classic. I'd never be like 'oh guys you gotta see this.' But I feel like it's a perfectly serviceable problem-of-the-week.

... yeah, it's definitely weird to be on this side of the fence for once.
posted by mordax at 2:15 PM on July 27, 2017 [3 favorites]


One of the reasons I was interested in a Voyager rewatch is because there is something fascinating to me about how we look at a show that can be appreciated, or criticized, from so many different, equally compelling, angles. Between the last episode and this one, for example, the manner of appreciation is difficult to hold constant. What worked best last time were the elements that spoke to the show as part of a larger franchise first, an on-going series second, and an individual episode third. This time that order is pretty much reversed.

Where interest in the Borg and their role in the Trekverse dominated the perspective towards the previous episode, here the main enjoyment of the show comes more from seeing it as a single episode in a longer history rather than as a more cumulative hindsight driven pleasure. The relationships as they are being developed seem more compelling, at least to me, than in thinking about them from the perspective of knowing how things play out and trying to fit this story into that larger pattern. The doctor, for example, at this point in the run as it plays out is exhibiting a new set of characteristics, experimenting with human ideals, and finding the downsides to them.

In the way they approach the issue, starting with conversations between Gandhi and Lord Byron, suggests a TOS type examination of ideals, but one that's been effectively transposed to a Voyager style. The episode feels like Voyager, but the manner of inquiry has echoes in TOS basically. Using the Jeckyl/Hyde idea as a template doesn't take away from the approach, it more combines the goatee alternative to the address of philosophical history. Here, it isn't an exceptionally deep match I grant, but as mordax suggested, there is some possibility of seeing ideas in it that do carry some greater weight than the plot alone might indicate.

The conflict between ideals and base impulses, the way the latter must be held back to gain the former are important enough questions, and here, using Gandhi's questionable sexual views as a match against Byron's own sexual excesses has some interest. Gandhi, of course, isn't Gandhi because of his sexuality, but because of what he did despite that or with that as part of a larger package of moral values, while Byron is celebrated with those values being seen directly as part of his romanticism. Mixing that sort of celebration of sexual aggression with values of sexual denial might be a crude way of seeing some of the problems that accompany fan boy culture in some regards.

For most of the episode, this can be made to roughly fit the story if one sees it as a stand alone, adding the doctor's later relationship with Seven into the mix though adds a different, less appealing flavor to the affair. The episode takes pains to try and separate the doctor from his deviant program double, while maintaining some hint that they are two halves, not entirely distinct from each other as Kes herself believes. Looked at from the perspective of this episode in its original context, this is far more acceptable than seeing it as part of a unattractive pattern for the doctor that he will come back to with Seven.

Seeing it in that light starts to make the doctor a little more Hyde throughout the series, while still holding him as a character of special pleasure for the audience, a not great combination. It reminds me of how the writers treated Neelix at first, as a character whose romantic failings were something of a match for those of some of the shows fans, in fan boy culture terms. Where Neelix was used to comment on those failings in ways that showed them as unappealing, and made Neelix more annoying for having them, the doctor doesn't quite get the same treatment, with his failings being used more for "fun" with Picardo being better able to navigate the bad behavior/fun character dilemma far more easily than the excessively sincere Phillips.

That isn't necessarily a bonus in the long run, though it works here in the same manner as seeing evil Kirk and Spock worked in TOS in a sense. It's fun, makes a point, and doesn't wholly implicate the character as we normally see him, just suggests the kinds of temptations they face and overcome. As an ongoing pattern for the character though, that "fun" can't maintain its form, becoming a regular trait rather than a alternative not chosen. That isn't to say I think the show ever completely endorses the doctor's relationship desires, but it doesn't entirely deny them either, instead mostly showing him as clumsy in their pursuit and, maybe, simply not worthy of his interests rather than being at fault for them. We'll see how that plays out and if my feelings on that remain as they are at the moment, but it's something that sort of flits around my feelings on this episode in context of the series run.

How the episode uses Kes, on the other hand, both seems to hint at some future change, and thus perhaps signal their awareness of her immanent departure from the series, while also seeming to be trying out some new elements of her character as if she might remain. The show starts with Kes modeling something like one of the catsuits Seven would later be known for, but in a purple velour kinda style, from that the episode plays up her sex appeal more than before, and not just in giving her a new romance. Lien, as usual, is really good with much of this, her "Hi!" after being beamed back from her romantic evening was particularly enjoyable. There is a problem though in the episode not being really clear about what it is she's actually feeling in the end.

Her talk with Janeway was good to see, it's something they should have been doing more of since it was used so effectively early on and makes sense for both characters, and the dilemma presented between love/new experiences and staying with her ersatz family makes sense, so much sense that her later abandonment of the idea almost seems tied to the doctor showing interest in her rather than anything made more clear by the show as her relationship with Zahir is just handwaved away as a minor offscreen resolution.

Kes' reactions to events seem a bit too subdued as well. More anger at Zahir being attacked, as she's showed in other circumstances, would have been nice, some greater response to being thrown off the cliff made have been good, and generally just being a little more conflicted in response would have been preferable in making the decision seem like it was actually coming from and about her rather than the episode seeming more about the rest of the crew's reaction to Kes liking Zahir. The writing wasn't focused on her character's experience enough in the end, even as they did have moments of making her more central in the romantic evening at the applique rock. Even there though it seemed Zahir was doing the driving and Kes more a passenger in the events, as if perhaps even suggesting validity to the doctor's doubts about him.

Anyway, this got much longer than intended (I'm sure you're all shocked), so I'll drop it there, other than to add I also got a kick out of seeing Gandhi and Byron chatting up the bikini girls in the background of the doctor and Kes' early disagreement over her behavior. It was a nice little touch. All in all, I enjoyed the episode enough to not dislike it, but found it rather unsatisfactory in its ending and how it relates to the rest of the series.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:24 PM on July 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh, and on a more pedestrian continuity note, how exactly did the doctor manage to get to the planet and back to the ship the other two times if his escape with Kes sets off an unauthorized transport alarm? (And maybe they should think about adding an auto disable system for any unauthorized transports at this point rather than always needing to react after the fact.)
posted by gusottertrout at 10:48 PM on July 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Seeing it in that light starts to make the doctor a little more Hyde throughout the series, while still holding him as a character of special pleasure for the audience, a not great combination. It reminds me of how the writers treated Neelix at first, as a character whose romantic failings were something of a match for those of some of the shows fans, in fan boy culture terms. Where Neelix was used to comment on those failings in ways that showed them as unappealing, and made Neelix more annoying for having them, the doctor doesn't quite get the same treatment, with his failings being used more for "fun" with Picardo being better able to navigate the bad behavior/fun character dilemma far more easily than the excessively sincere Phillips.

That isn't necessarily a bonus in the long run, though it works here in the same manner as seeing evil Kirk and Spock worked in TOS in a sense. It's fun, makes a point, and doesn't wholly implicate the character as we normally see him, just suggests the kinds of temptations they face and overcome. As an ongoing pattern for the character though, that "fun" can't maintain its form, becoming a regular trait rather than a alternative not chosen.


I suspect part of the intention (and here, I think it IS safe to assume some authorial intent, not mere coincidence based on scattered character development, since (so far, at least) they do seem to be consciously considering what they're doing with the Doctor) may have been simply to humanize him. Effective characters often have aspects that make us go :/

But I too will be interested to track how consistent, and how balanced, they end up being with him.

How the episode uses Kes, on the other hand, both seems to hint at some future change, and thus perhaps signal their awareness of her immanent departure from the series, while also seeming to be trying out some new elements of her character as if she might remain.

Well, probably not, because initially they thought they were gonna get rid of Garrett Wang. IIRC (and we'll confirm this when we get there), they changed their minds when People Magazine named him one of the sexiest men alive. I'm not even sure they knew they were gonna do ANY cast change by this point.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:21 AM on July 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm sure you're right about this being an attempt to humanize the doctor, but it's not an especially good way to do so, replacing Neelix's jealousy with his regarding Kes, and even more troubling given he's allegedly programmed with psychological as well as medical knowledge. His role as physician makes this a more egregious error than it was for Neelix, or would be had it been, say, Harry or Tom having difficulties in building relationships.

As to Kes, I wouldn't say they've absolutely made up their mind she was gone at this point. I suspect though that they at least knew some change was going to happen in the crew, with this episode and possibility the next Kes one, Before and After, serving as a test for her, while Harry's Favorite Son episode, and maybe Neelix's Rise were other tests on which character would be given the boot. They struggled in finding things for Harry and Kes to do, and Neelix wasn't very popular, so I'm sure there was a plan to lose one, but the evidence suggests Kes as the likely candidate at this point. It's pretty heavily lampshaded here that her character was about to undergo a major change in the nearish future, while they took pains to revamp her look and attitude, sexing her up, in this one as well.

Given the last episode laid out the basics of their plan for the Borg. It showed them as able to be returned to something like their original species attributes, though with some Borg effects attached, and virtually said they'd be playing a big role in the series soon. The next big Borg episode is the season finale introducing Seven, which almost had to be planned out then by the last episode in basic form. There may have been some option to introduce a male Borg to replace Harry or Neelix in the case of sudden audience appreciation for "sexy" Kes, but my guess is they pretty much knew the path they were choosing already by this point, with Kes at least the most likely one out the door.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:53 AM on July 29, 2017


I think the Doctor's problematic views about women were meant to be a nod to his creator: the Doctor is templated off of the personality of Lewis Zimmerman, who isn't depicted as a shining beacon of social adjustment. He's actually pretty unpleasant, which comes across in a lot of the Doctor's mannerisms even before they started hinting at 'he has an inappropriate thing for Kes.'

Thinking about it that way, this episode actually has an underlying theme: to me, this suddenly sounds like the Doctor's teenage rebellion. The crew doesn't like the way he talks to them. He doesn't really like the mannerisms he was trained to have. So he begins wildly - and immaturely - experimenting with new behaviors. Unfortunately, he's inexperienced and doesn't vet this with someone who can supervise him, (coming to B'Ellana first would've been the smart thing), and he gets himself into trouble.

For me, that sort of adds a layer to the story.

I'm not even sure they knew they were gonna do ANY cast change by this point.

Agreed. I'm basing this on our observations of backstage stuff. I've learned a *lot* about Voyager from the posts here, and one thing that stands out is that they didn't really plan much. There was too much interference, too much disagreement in the writers' room. They couldn't even have consistent characterization for half the crew. IMO, there's no way they had a plan this far ahead of Scorpion. (IIRC, this was sprung on Jennifer Lien pretty abruptly too, which sounds like shittier behavior than I'd expect from them backstage if they knew it was coming ages sooner.)

(Also, I'm pretty sure I remember the Garrett Wang thing too, it's just been so long.)

As ever, I really appreciate the discussion in these threads, because I never would've thought of that without the lengthy discussion essays you folks put forth. :)
posted by mordax at 11:52 AM on July 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh, gus: I also absolutely agree that Kes should've been more freaked out by the attack on her new guy, and that her talk with Janeway should've been the rule, not the exception. Those are both excellent observations, IMO.
posted by mordax at 11:54 AM on July 29, 2017


IMO, there's no way they had a plan this far ahead of Scorpion.

Likewise. In fact, they don't even introduce Seven until the season 4 premiere—on this rewatch, I had originally misremembered her as being introduced near the end of the season 3 finale. I suspect I was conflating the two big Borg Character reveals (Locutus and Seven).

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Whatever the writers' degree of cast-change awareness may have been at this point, I think they were smart to give Kes these obvious bits of significant character growth, even if they didn't know to what end, and even if in this case it's arguably a bit problematic insofar as she is stuck in the Damsel in Distress role. But, like mordax mentioned, maybe it's at least fitting for her to be tied to the railroad tracks in a situation where the Doctor is basically Snidely Whiplash anyway.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:19 AM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Likewise. In fact, they don't even introduce Seven until the season 4 premiere—on this rewatch, I had originally misremembered her as being introduced near the end of the season 3 finale.

Yeah, I just have suspicions that, at the top level, they had some tentative plans in mind, but agree that's getting ahead of things and isn't entirely germane other than thinking of things via hindsight in a long term series context instead of focusing on the show as it goes perhaps. It's something to think about, but not get too involved with since it's all just conjecture and not so much about the show as its making.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:55 AM on July 30, 2017


gusottertrout has already cited the evil Kirk episode ("The Enemy Within"), so I'll use that as a jumping-off point for my own observations. Like Shatner in that episode with the more theatrical makeup and lighting, part of Picardo's performance is accomplished with the prosthetics, and as with Shatner, I think that they're largely unnecessary because of the actor's ability to convey the changes in the character--they're more subtle, but still superfluous.

The thing that really intrigues me about this episode, though, is that the idea of an AI being able to hack its own program and rewrite its own personality is a very meaty science fiction concept, especially as it's being done by an AI with some ethics that are supposed to be hardwired into his programming. (Although not that solidly, as we'll see in "Equinox.") The Doctor isn't like Kirk in that any aspect of his programming has to have been put there by a sentient being deliberately, not as the result of any sort of non-guided evolution, but he obviously wants to be a more well-rounded individual; I think that as he goes on beyond his original operating parameters and receives criticism from others--criticism that he obviously takes seriously, despite some pushback--he wants to be more of a person. So he goes sifting through the holodeck's records, and finds people that he'd like to be more like, and also finds out that he can't just split off the more salubrious aspects of Byron or Gandhi or even T'Pau from the less appealing ones; the results are something like Armus, regardless of the skin that it's wearing. This process--of an AI hacking itself, with unintended consequences--is very Philip K. Dickian; in fact, Dick wrote a short story, "The Electric Ant", in which an android hacks itself (its sensory input rather than personality), and in which a character is watching some sort of program called a "captain kirk".

Another interesting aspect to this episode are the contrasting roles of B'Elanna and Kes. B'Elanna responds to the mechanical aspects of the Doctor's hacking, and he in turn tries to hack her biochemistry to get her to do what he wants. Kes appeals to him on more of an empathetic level, and has more success.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:14 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ahh, Armus. What a dork. Thank goodness they handled the concept better here.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 10:57 AM on July 31, 2017


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