The Good: Moments of performance, Moments of plot
The Bad: Problematic plot and character aspects, Mediocre special effects.
The Basics: When The Doctor is extorted by an alien race, he makes some poor decisions in a mediocre episode.
It always surprised me when the “breakout character” for a television show is one that the producers of the show somehow did not figure would be the character audiences were drawn to. In the case of Star Trek: Voyager, the breakout character was the Emergency Medical Hologram. The Doctor was witty, sarcastic, and intriguing and actor Robert Picardo portrayed him exceptionally well. Even after Seven Of Nine arrived on Star Trek: Voyager and took much of the emphasis off Captain Janeway, The Doctor managed to keep a rising number of episodes focused on him. The final one is “Renaissance Man.”
“Renaissance Man” is actually not a traditional Doctor episode. Instead, it is an episode similar in concept to “Warhead” (reviewed here!) where the Doctor’s program is corrupted and, like “Body And Soul” (reviewed here!) has other actors essentially playing The Doctor, though in this episode, the viewer quickly comes to understand that it is the Doctor who is portraying other characters!
Janeway is annoyed by the Doctor when they are on a mission in the Delta Flyer. When the Delta Flyer returns to Voyager, Janeway tells Chakotay that the Delta Flyer encountered a vastly superior alien race that they almost did not escape from. Somewhat irritated, Janeway tells Chakotay that Voyager will be surrendering to the alien armada and setting down on a Class M planet after ejecting their warp core. Facing the real possibility of the crew being stranded on a planet in the Delta Quadrant and Janeway acting twitchy, Chakotay asks the Doctor how Janeway behaved after her interrogation by the violent aliens.
The truth is revealed to the viewer quickly enough; Janeway is not herself. Instead, she is The Doctor, having managed to reprogram his holo-emitter to appear to be the Doctor. Janeway has been abducted by aliens and to get Janeway back, the Doctor must impersonate Chakotay, Torres, and Kim to meet the demands of the captors and get Janeway back safely.
“Renaissance Man” is interesting, but it is essentially a remix of “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy” (reviewed here!) where instead of simply seeing through his eyes, an alien race compels The Doctor to impersonate others. Unlike “Body And Soul,” where Jeri Ryan had the chance to really impersonate the Doctor and recreate Robert Picardo’s performance, the only actor who really has the chance to “play Picardo” is Roxann Dawson. When “Torres” encounters Paris in Engineering, the Doctor is squeamish about what Paris wants to feed her and Roxann Dawson gets to bug out her eyes and pretend to be The Doctor.
The rest of the actors pretty much play their traditional characters, even when it is The Doctor in altered form playing those characters.
“Renaissance Man” has plot and character aspects that require a level of suspension of disbelief that is far too extreme for me. First, in this episode, we see stasis pods in use. It seems strange to me that Voyager, if it had functional stasis beds still, would not have minimized the risk to the crew by using the stasis tubes and keeping only a skeleton crew awake.
But the big thing for me is that one of the more idiotic races in the Star Trek universe not only extorts The Doctor, but gets him to successfully take command of Voyager. It seems like the commands for the ECH would have been designed to prevent exactly that type of co-opting. Moreover, the crew’s inability to find and neutralize the Doctor fast seemed particularly incompetent. As well, the Doctor’s safety protocols and medical subroutines should have come into conflict with the demands of the aliens. In using sedatives on crewmembers seems like they could have risked his life and violated the medical ethics of “do no harm.”
Finally, in the wake of so many episodes where the Doctor’s program has been corrupted, it seems like there should have been a failsafe to prevent exactly this type of self-modification.
“Renaissance Man” does not have any particularly extraordinary performances from either the main cast or the guest actors. The net result is a fair episode, but not a particularly incredible one.
[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Voyager - The Complete Seventh Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the final season here!
Thanks!]
4.5/10
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© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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