Somehow the Doctor manages to spend more time in the alpha quadrant than literally any other character in this show.
A few weeks ago, I remarked that it was interesting that the Doctor seemed very invested in Icheb making a connection with his biological family, given that the Doctor himself doesn’t come from an organic familial background.
This week, we learn that this definitely wasn’t part of his programming — even Lewis Zimmerman, the man who created him, doesn’t want to think of the Doctor as a surrogate son. This interest in family connections (remember how the Doctor built himself a whole holographic family back in season 3?) is entirely a product of the Doctor himself, and the organic life forms around whom he has “grown up”.
There’s an obvious conflict here, and the result is — I can’t believe I’m saying this — I’m cringing as I type it–
A good Doctor episode and a good Barclay episode.
This is a good Barclay episode because it’s not about Barclay
The problem with a lot of Barclay episodes is that he tends to pull focus away from the regular characters, and I find him entirely off-putting. “Life Line” manages to avoid that, possibly because the Doctor is another focus-puller, and once you’ve duplicated Robert Picardo, there’s not a lot of space left for Barclay.
Here, he’s a supporting character in a supportive role, caught in between the Doctor and Zimmerman, coming up with practical solutions like calling in Deanna Troi (this is also a great Troi episode), and figuring out the solution to helping the two Picardos get along. I mean, it’s a big supporting role! But if we didn’t have years of history with Barclay, we would come out of this knowing him little better than we know Hayley, Zimmerman’s holographic assistant.
Anyway, the Doctor
Sometimes — several times this season, in fact — the Doctor makes personal requests which are completely unreasonable. In “Life Line”, he asks a huge favour — for Janeway to compress him into a zip file and email him to the alpha quadrant so he can treat his dying creator, leaving Voyager without a doctor for a month in the best case scenario.
Janeway’s first instinct is to turn him down, much as my first instinct is to go, “Piss off, Doctor, you’ve had enough special treatment this season.”1
But here’s where I realised this is going to be a good episode: the Doctor persuades her. Respectfully but skillfully, he makes his argument: that his experience in the delta quadrant has given him a promising hypothesis regarding Zimmerman’s condition, and made him the most qualified person to test it. And, yes, there is the emotional aspect, that he considers Zimmerman something like a father and would like to meet him. But that’s not the only reason.
This is a long, talky scene, but it’s two characters, who have not always respected one another, having a complex and mature discussion. With everything that has passed between Janeway and the Doctor over the years, it feels earned, and with it, Janeway’s change of heart.
The asshole father/holographic son conflict
Way back in early season 2, the Doctor malfunctioned and hallucinated that he was Lewis Zimmerman, but we didn’t actually meet the man in the flesh until DS9’s “Doctor Bashir, I Presume”. Where it turned out he was as egotistical as his holographic creation, and also a lech. I mean, I think he was meant to come across as an incorrigible flirt, but the outcome had powerful “cover your drink” vibes.
(Janeway describes him as addressing her as “Captain Jane” on their one meeting, possibly because it annoyed her; I would go further and say he was deliberately negging her.)
So it’s not a surprise to the Trek-literate audience that Zimmerman turns out to be a complete ass. But it is a shock to the Doctor. And it’s kind of delightful that he does not rise to this occasion whatsoever; instead resorting to various tricks and ethically dubious strategies to treat his unwilling patient. He will not be the bigger man or hologram. As Deanna says, when a frazzled Barclay begs her to help, they’re both jerks.
Deanna’s characterisation here is straight out of her drunk scene in First Contact, aka the moment when, a decade after she was cast, people finally figured out Marina Sirtis is funny. She’s dedicated, she’s exasperated, she’s earned herself a little treat (chocolate ice cream). It’s fun stuff, and I almost wish they had been able to rig up an Emergency Deanna Troi Hologram to send back to the delta quadrant with the Doctor.
Meanwhile, the Federation is literally a slave state
And Lewis Zimmerman’s main concern is that the enslaved former EMH Mark Ones have his face and reflect badly on him and his work.
This is completely in character for Zimmerman, and it makes sense that the Doctor is not in a position to process this information in any meaningful way. But no one else — not Barclay, not Deanna, not even Hayley the holographic helper — seems concerned that here is the Doctor, a sentient being who has overcome the limitations of his original programing with very few growing pains, and there are 675 more of him, who have been barred from the profession for which they were created2 and now they are cleaning plasma manifolds.
This is the sort of thing I’m thinking of when I say the Federation is not really a utopia. Yes, Data won his court case back in season 2 of TNG, and his legal right to exist as an autonomous sentient being was settled, but the Federation keeps creating these artificial beings for its own convenience, then discarding them when they become inconvenient. Whether it’s holograms or the synths in Star Trek: Picard, no one has learned the lessons of history or Battlestar: Galactica, that beings — even artificial ones — don’t want to be enslaved.
Not everyone has forgotten the Maquis
“Life Line” is very heavy on the Doctor’s story, but there is one hilarious scene on Voyager, where the admiral of the week asks Janeway to account for the status of the Maquis on her ship. This requires her and Chakotay to sit extremely close to one another, practically in the same chair, while Janeway declares that she doesn’t see rank insignia, she treats all her crew the same, and Chakotay almost keeps a straight face.
I don’t think anyone intended for this scene to be funny, but in an episode with a lot of amusing moments, it was a highlight.
Other observations
- People still give Star Trek: Discovery and its writers shit for Jason Isaacs’ Elon Musk ad lib back in season one, but I think we need to put a pin in that, and dedicate some time to bullying Voyager for putting Barclay in “Shuttlecraft Dawkins”.
- Hayley is an interesting idea for a character, because of course Zimmerman would create a holographic assistant to cater to his needs, and of course she’d be a cute girl, but ALSO Star Trek is so full of these two dimensional “young woman devoted to the great man of science” characters that I didn’t think twice about her presence.
- Zimmerman’s will sees him leaving Hayley to Barclay, and again, I cannot stress this enough, she is a person.
In conclusion
This is a good episode with a disquieting subplot, and if (like me) you enjoy shouting at Star Trek and going, I THINK THE FEDERATION IS THE BAD GUY HERE, that may not be a downside. Four talking iguana holograms out of five.