Do Holograms Dream of Photonic Sheep?
"Flesh and Blood" Plot Summary:
During a practice hunt at a training facility, holograms dressed in Starfleet uniforms slaughter dozens of Hirogen. Voyager receives a distress call and finds only one life form, a terrified engineer named Donik. He explains that the holograms malfunctioned, deactivated the station's safety protocols, and stole a ship equipped with holoemitters. When more Hirogen arrive, Janeway asks to accompany then on their hunt to pursue the escaped holograms. Tuvok and Chakotay have reservations about an alliance with the species that once took over Voyager, but Janeway feels responsible for having given holographic technology to the aliens and wants to help shut the holograms down.
The holograms destroy the Hirogen ship and steal the Doctor's program. On their ship, Bajoran holographic leader Iden tells the Doctor that he is among his own kind, and asks for help stabilizing his crew. The Doctor agrees to help repair the holograms, whom the Hirogen programmed to bleed and feel pain. Although Iden is a Hirogen creation, he has been programmed with Bajoran spirituality, and claims his killer instinct has been used only to fight for the liberation of their people, who can die and be revived over and over at the whim of the Hirogen. A holographic Cardassian engineer named Kejal helps transfer the memories of another hologram to the Doctor so he can experience what it's like to be prey.
Torres realizes the new holograms can learn and adapt -- they're not malfunctioning, they're behaving as worthy Hirogen prey. Janeway wants to take the holograms offline from a safe distance, which the Hirogen consider a coward's tactic. They come up with a plan to use Voyager's deflector dish to disable the holograms with a photonic pulse. Iden and Kejal explain to the Doctor that they want to create a home on a planet where they can create a holographic environment. The Doctor mentions that he knows a Klingon engineer who could help. When Voyager approaches, the Doctor orders the captain to stand down, asking for additional emitters so that the holograms can live in peace. When Janeway balks at sharing more technology, the Doctor insists that she can't turn her back on a species she helped to create.
One of the Hirogen on Voyager hails additional ships, forcing Janeway to make rapid decisions. She asks an unwilling Iden to shut down all holograms on his ship as a temporary measure, promising to reactivate them when the Hirogen have been dealt with. When she then threatens to shut the holograms down by force and dismisses the Doctor, he downloads Voyager's shield frequencies and offers to help Iden if he promises not to attack Voyager. Iden gives him his word. The holograms create a feedback surge that overloads Voyager's deflector, allowing the smaller ship to escape. But as they go to warp, Iden orders Voyager scanned for Klingons and beams Torres aboard his own vessel.
Janeway realizes the Doctor must have helped the holograms and concludes that they must have modified his program while he was on their ship. A furious Torres asks the Doctor why he switched allegiances, and becomes uncomfortable when the Doctor compares it to her decision to join the Maquis to fight oppression. Iden says he will give Torres an escape pod when she is well enough to travel, but he hopes she will consider helping them develop a photonic field generator so they can live in peace on a nearby Y-class planet. Kejal says she doesn't seem like a bloodthirsty Klingon, to which B'Elanna retorts that Kejal doesn't seem like a cruel Cardassian; they are both more than the sum of their inborn programming.
When the new Hirogen ships arrive, Donik offers to stay on Voyager to help track the holograms, though the Alpha Hirogen warns that the Starfleet officers will be treated as prey if they interfere in the hunt. Donik helps Voyager mask its signature to surf in the wake of the large Hirogen ship. The holograms are hiding in a nebula, trying to complete their generators, but Iden is becoming increasingly megalomaniacal -- he believes he is the messiah chosen to slay the oppressors of the Children of Light. When a mining ship carrying photonics used for labor approaches, Iden downloads the holograms, then destroys the vessel and its crew. The Doctor's horror at the murders is compounded when the new holograms turn out to be very limited mechanical workers, not sentient beings.
Voyager disables the Hirogen ship, then comes after Iden's vessel as it approaches the planet where he intends to settle. The holographic leader orders all Hirogen on the disabled ship beamed to the surface, where he intends to hunt them as prey. Chakotay, Tuvok and Paris rescue Torres on the Delta Flyer but Iden takes the Doctor's mobile emitter, leaving the Doctor's program in the computer banks on his vessel. Torres convinces Kejal to disable the other holograms, then to send the Doctor down to stop Iden from slaughtering Hirogen. When the Doctor finds Iden on the surface, the hologram doubts whether the Starfleet officer would really kill one of his own to save an organic. Shooting Iden before the Bajoran hologram can kill the Alpha Hirogen, the Doctor takes back his mobile emitter.
Voyager sends all the surviving Hirogen to other Hirogen ships, insisting that they leave the holograms behind while they regroup. Kejal concludes that Iden's program cannot be recovered, but she can restore the rest of the liberated holograms. Janeway offers to leave her active on Voyager's holodeck, but Donik suggests instead that she let him and the holograms take their vessel to develop a new society.
Later, in sickbay, the Doctor finds Janeway in his office, distressed because she now knows he was not malfunctioning when he gave Iden Voyager's shield frequencies. Appalled that he put his crewmates in danger, the Doctor gives the captain his emitter, but she says she can't punish him by turning back the clock on his freedom. She feels just as responsible for letting him expand his programming into the realm of human fallibility as she does for giving holographic technology to the Hirogen. All she wants from him is a full report on what he learned.
Analysis:
"Flesh and Blood" takes an issue that's been lurking since The Next Generation's "Elementary, Dear Data," asking: If humanoids can transcend their genetic legacy to become peaceful, logical beings, can't holograms transcend their algorithms to become sentient? The Hirogen in this episode seem much more limited than their holograms. They can't move beyond their self-image as hunters, though even the psychotic hologram Iden manages to grow beyond his programming. He merges the scariest features of the hunt mentality with the self-serving fanaticism we've seen in warped Bajoran religious figures like Kai Winn. Kejal, on the other hand, makes a choice to reject implanted Cardassian arrogance and accept Torres' advice, which ends up saving the rest of the holograms.
The Doctor and the captain have been arguing for years now over whether he is a person or property. Janeway has always been willing to let him explore harmless hobbies and try experiments that might benefit medicine. But as we see in the opening in which Chakotay refuses to let the Doctor attend a distant symposium, there are limits on his autonomy -- limits that don't necessarily apply to Lieutenant Torres, for instance. The captain reacts harshly when the Doctor asks her to stand down, and snaps that she won't let him turn a request for technology into an argument over holographic rights, but she looks defensive, as if she knows deep down that her position is untenable. She gave the Hirogen an optronic core that allowed them to create a sentient species, which they then brutalized the way they brutalized Voyager's crew in "The Killing Game." As the Doctor says, if Janeway made a mistake, she must deal with the consequences by moving forward -- not by trying to take it all back.
Chakotay tries to strike a balance by asking whether the holograms' violent subroutines could be removed, which the Doctor claims wouldn't be discussed if they were flesh and blood. The holograms are in essence a genetically engineered race; we've seen such races before on Star Trek, organic beings whose natural inheritances have been manipulated to favor desirable characteristics. The Doctor argues rightly that in this case, the holograms would be left defenseless, and under any circumstances it should be their choice now that they are capable of choosing.
Janeway refuses to respect Iden's choice not to accept her plan to shut them all down, a decision she promptly validates by threatening him and dismissing the Doctor. Yet by the end of the episode, she has come to accept her own responsibility for the Doctor's subsequent choice to leave the ship. It doesn't occur to her to try to reprogram the Doctor as she did in "Latent Image." They have come full circle from the first season episode in which Torres suggested that the Doctor modify his subroutines and he exclaimed, "A hologram that programs itself! What would I do with such power? Create a family? Raise an army!" The moral dilemma about responsibility is as much Janeway's as the Doctor's.
It's too bad Iden ends up unredeemable, which seems like a copout. In Fatal Attraction, we're supposed to forgive the husband's subversion and betrayal because he was taken in by a murderous mistress who represents the real threat to his family; in "Flesh and Blood," we're supposed to forgive the Doctor because he was taken in by a murderous master who represents the real threat to his crew. Whatever Iden's faults as an individual, even if his revolution stems from a vision of personal glory, the issues he raises remain. Is it right for species across the galaxy to create holographic slave labor? Which is worse, allowing holograms to feel pain and know their limitations, or to create mindless drones that can't ever evolve into sentient beings? Is it any more fair to create a sentient EMH for every ship in Starfleet than it would be to breed babies specifically to become scientific geniuses? These sorts of questions lurk in the background, buried under the shoot-em-up production values of Voyager.
Still, this very well done double episode seems much shorter than its two hour air time. There's a good balance of action and philosophy, despite the phony appearance of the holographic forest and the haphazard appearance of the holograms' ship. Bob Picardo gives a superb performance, as does guest star Jeff Yagher, and Kate Mulgrew's weary frustration as Janeway actually works to the character's advantage for a change. If she's going to feel the weight of her responsibilities, the pressures of playing god, this is a worthy dilemma -- more interesting at this point than the tired question of what magical device can bring her ship home.