Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Projections

Whoops! Sorry about that! Are you in the mood for some mind-games now? Yes? Well, then...Oh, you just don't like Voyager? Well, much as I pity you, why don't you head on over to Steven Younis' WEB OF WONDERS for Trek-free fun?

For those of us still here, let's enter into the mouth of madness...

INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Hey, the Doctor does "Frame of Mind" and I love it!...I can't believe I've actually gotten to like Barclay these days...Hmm, so he's been wanting Kes, has he?...Ooops, fooled me again!

PLOT
The Doctor is activated, but finds himself standing in an empty Sickbay. In fact, when he asks the computer why he's been turned on, he hears that that the whole ship is empty. He accesses Janeway's final log, which says that the ship is about to be destroyed in a warp core breach, and she's ordering the crew to abandon ship. The computer confirms that all the escape pods have been launched. So the Doctor realizes he's been left behind without so much as a "So long and thanks for all the Band-Aids."

He's getting ready to switch himself off when someone starts beating at the door. Looking quite frightened, he crawls to the door, grabbing a hypo to use as a weapon. But the person through the manually opened door turns out to be Torres. The ship's sensors are down, and couldn't tell him that she and Janeway are still on ship, having stayed behind to fix the core breach.

While the Doctor fixes her shoulder, Torres explains that Voyager was attacked by the Kazon, who also scooped up all those escape pods. The Doctor listens carefully, but is puzzled that he can't get the tricorder to register her life signs. He manages to fix her up anyway, and she tells him that Janeway is hurt on the bridge. With all the turbolifts down, it will take her too long to crawl there, and so the Doctor will have to go.

The Doctor doesn't think much of this idea, until Torres explains that for the past few weeks she and her teams have been installing remote holo-emitters in key sections of the ship. Janeway didn't tell him about it, probably because she didn't want to get his hopes up. Next time, he says, he rather be kept informed.

The remote transmitters haven't been tested yet, and Torres has to do some work to get them up and running. She warns him that it won't quite be the same as being in Sickbay. For one thing, his body won't be as stable, so he'll need to stay away from energy disruptions. He says he understands, and she transfers him to the bridge.

There, he finds and treats an unconscious Janeway, though once again he isn't able to get the tricorder to read her lifesigns.

Torres signals that she can repair the basics in engineering, and Janeway and the Doctor start working on bypassing some relay when Neelix signals that he's in trouble in the mess hall. Janeway, also stymied by the downed turbo lifts, sends the Doctor to help. In the mess hall, he finds Neelix flinging pots and insults at a Kazon who refuses to be irritated into submission. Wary of the phaser fire, the Doctor sneaks around behind the Kazon and demonstrates his extremely poor fighting skills by attacking him with a wire whisk. Neelix clocks the Kazon with his best sauté pan.

They talk over the Kazon's unconscious body, and Neelix sees that the Doctor is bleeding. "I'm not programmed to bleed," says the Doctor, then gets Janeway to transfer him back to Sickbay. Feeling unprogrammed pain, he grabs a medical tricorder and scans himself, reading brain waves and heartbeat and all the rest.

He tries to run a diagnostic on the EMH program, but the computer says there is no EMH program, nor any other holographic programs in Sickbay. The Chief Medical Officer, in fact, is Luis Zimmerman, who has been serving aboard Voyager since the date of the Doctor's initial activation.

The Doctor looks at Zimmerman's service record, and sees that he looks, smells, and tastes just like the man. The computer says that's because he is the man.

"No!" says the Doctor to the computer. "You the man!"

"No!" says the computer. "You the man!"

"No! How could I possibly be the man when you the man?"

This continues until Letterman calls them up and tells them to stop. Then Janeway, Torres, Neelix, and the Kazon enter Sickbay. Janeway wants the Doctor to run one of those lie-detector tests on the Kazon, but the Doctor tells her about the trouble he's having with the computer and not being able to read anyone's lifesigns but his own. Janeway figures it's all due to the remote projectors and turns off all the ship's holoprograms...which turns out to include her, Neelix, Torres, and the Kazon.

"Computer?" says the Doctor as he stands along in Sickbay. "What happened to everyone?" The computer responds by showing him a list of all the holoprograms on the ship, that is, the entire crew, except for himself. The Doctor stands there bewildered.

And in comes Reg Barclay, claiming to be the Doctor's -- well Luis Zimmerman's -- assistant. Zimmerman, he says, has been running a holodeck simulation on the Jupiter Station to study the psychological effects of long-term space travel. This program has been malfunction, and they're all been trying to reach him for the past six hours. Barclay, in fact, is still outside the holodeck. He's only being projected inside.

The Doctor, who is particularly non-plussed to hear that the people outside the holodeck include his wife, asks how this could possibly have happened, and Barclay explains that there was a kenoplasmic radiation surge which is messing up both the program and Zimmerman's own memories.

The Doctor is not convinced. "How do I know you're not some type of alien impersonating a Starfleet officer?" Barclay can only respond that Zimmerman is suffering from delusions and slaps the Doctor to show that he feels pain [Paris should have been there to see it]. Holograms aren't supposed to feel pain, so he must be real. In response, the Doctor slaps Barclay, and the lieutenant disappears.

Alone, the Doctor gives himself a few more slaps, wondering how he can be feeling pain, and then realizes he's hungry. Before he can eat ten hot fudge sundaes, however, Barclay reappears with the bad news: they can't shut down the program or beam him out, and in less than an hour the radiation will kill Zimmerman. The only solution is to bring the program to its conclusion. Two possible endings were programmed: either Voyager finds its way home, or the ship is destroyed. Zimmerman, says Barclay, should destroy the ship.

The Doctor says he doesn't know how to destroy the ship. Barclay says he'll help him. The Doctor says Barclay should do it. Barclay says the program will only respond to Zimmerman's input. The Doctor says this is all bull. Barclay disappears again and suddenly the Doctor is once again in a smoky Sickbay, being ordered by Kim and Paris to treat the injured as they hand him the wrong kind of tricorder.

In the middle of this clip from "Caretaker," Barclay comes back and explains that while they can't shut down the program, they can restart it. Kim and Paris stare at Barclay and demand to know what's going on.

Beginning to be convinced, the Doctor asks if he programmed Paris to be so annoying. Actually, Barclay explains that he did Paris himself, basing him on his cousin, Frank. The Doctor promptly deletes Paris and Kim, but he's still not sure he trusts Barclay. He needs to know for certain that he's a real person. The only way he knows to test this is to go to engineering and destroy the holographic memory core. Barclay agrees to help him do it, and the two of them walk into the hall, much to the Doctor's surprise.

In engineering, Janeway is once again fixing the engines. She challenges the Doctor and, not interested in his "Caretaker" plot synopsis, orders his arrest. Doctor finds that he can't delete her, and Barclay explains that the program is starting to break down. They're running out of time. Fortunately, the crew is all beamed off the ship right on schedule, and the Doctor proceeds to destroy the memory core. It doesn't make him disappear.

Barclay now feels the argument is won, but the Doctor is clearly terrified of being wrong about this. He demands that the computer tell him why destroying the holographic memory core didn't take the ship out with it, since the ship is supposed to be a hologram too, and the computer tells him, "You the man!" Barclay more helpfully explains that the memory core was itself a hologram. The ship is running off the Jupiter Station grid and cannot be destroyed any other way than by having its warp core destroyed.

The Doctor remains unconvinced until pain from the radiation grows almost unbearable. Hurry, says Barclay. You must destroy the ship before you're killed.

Reluctantly, the Doctor takes aim at the core, but then Chakotay appears and orders him to stop. It seems that the Doctor is on Voyager after all. He went into the holodeck to run a holonovel and the ship encountered a spacial anomaly which hit them with kenoplasmic radiation. This all caused the holodeck to get into a feedback loop with the Doctor's own memories. Barclay is just part of this feedback loop. Chakotay is the real person being projected from outside the holodeck, and the Doctor should listen to him.

Don't listen to him, says Barclay. You've got to destroy the holographic ship and end the program.

Wait, says Chakotay. If you destroy the holographic Voyager, the whole program will be wiped out, including yours, because of the feedback loop.

The Doctor collapses in pain. See? says Barclay. Only real people feel pain.

That's not pain, says Chakotay, that's the feedback loop wiping out your memory circuits.

While the arguing projections [Hence the title!] urge the Doctor to trust their version of the truth, a human Kes appears, claiming to be Mrs. Zimmerman. She loves "Luis" and wants her husband to realize he's real and come back to her. She even lays a wet one on his lips, but the Doctor won't destroy the ship.

Instead, he tells her that she's beautiful, but now he's not in the holodeck anymore. He's in Sickbay, with Kes, Kim, and Tuvok standing by him. They've managed to get him out of the holodeck, and explain how the radiation did indeed trap him in a feedback loop. Chakotay signals in, and they assure him that the Doctor is fine.

The Doctor asks who Barclay was, and it turns out he really was one of the original designers of the EMH program, assigned to testing his interpersonal skills. Kim and Tuvok leave and the Doctor gets to work.

Alone with him, Kes asks about his "beautiful" comment, and he assures her that he cares for her only in a platonic sense. "So you don't love me?" she cries. "Then I guess our marriage is over!"

"Are you making a joke?" the Doctor asks, but no, she isn't. In fact, she cries and clings to him as Barclay reappears and tells him he still needs to destroy the ship and end the simulation. The whole scenario breaks apart now, with Paris demanding that the Doctor, again in pain, treat a wounded man who turns out to be the Doctor himself, speaking with Janeway's voice.

And then the Doctor stands in the deactivated holodeck grid. Janeway and Chakotay and Kim stand by him in concern. Once again we hear about the kenoplasmic radiation and the Doctor assures them (somewhat unsteadily) that he knows who and what he is. He lets slip the part about Kes as his wife, then asks to be returned to Sickbay.

Naturally, the news about Kes makes it back to her, and she asks the Doctor about it in his office. He blows it off, but wonders why he got involved in such a strange story in the first place. Why would he have this free-form fantasy about being human when he knows exactly what and who and where he is?

"Are you sure about that?" Kes asks mischievously, then prances out. Alone, the Doctor looks a little thrown, then puts his arm out the Sickbay door to watch in satisfaction as it disappears. He knows what he is all right.