Voyager Flashback: Heroes and Demons

It seems obvious in retrospect that the Doctor would be a breakout character on Star Trek: Voyager -- the non-human outsider who has more emotion than he would claim possible is clearly the heir to fan-favorites Spock and Data. Yet with barely a dozen lines in the first episode of the series, it seems just as clear that the Doctor wouldn't have become as popular as he did without the performance of Robert Picardo. The first major showcase for him and his character was "Heroes and Demons."

Harry Kim goes missing from his holonovel of Beowulf... as do Chakotay and Tuvok when they investigate. Something alien has infiltrated the holodeck, and only the Doctor can take up the search without being placed at risk himself.

While you could easily regard this episode as "yet another holodeck malfunction" story, the fact that it's finally letting the Doctor out of Sickbay does help with the sense that there's a new angle to explore this time. The episode did come from a familiar place, though: former Next Generation staff writer Naren Shankar. While Shankar also penned two Deep Space Nine episodes, this was his only Voyager effort. It cast a very long shadow, though, as you could pinpoint this as the moment where the series really cemented an interest in the Doctor that would ultimately lead to the marginalization of many other characters.

The thing that struck me in re-watching it? It actually could have been a much better episode. The Doctor voices a little anxiety for his first "away mission" (and gets another pep talk from Kes), but that scene feels like the only serious examination of his emotional state. He notes that he's never before seen anything outside of one room, but he handles with (too much) aplomb a romance, an intimidation, and a negotiation. He eats for the first time, feels something like love for the first time, is shown genuine respect by other crew members for the first time... and I don't think we're made to feel the weight of almost any of that. We're just not keeping tabs on his emotional journey along the way.

But we sure do get a lot of the holographic Beowulf characters. Naren Shankar had to write this script early, before much was known about the Voyager characters (even by the actors playing them), and it feels to me like he compensated by overepresenting the Beowulf characters -- over which he could exert full control. Freya's death is given a rather silly amount of dramatic heft, especially since the Doctor risks losing the only means to get back the missing crew members as he stays at Freya's side. (And we really haven't seen enough to suggest the Doctor would really care that much; he's shown general disdain for the holonovel characters.)

Guest stars Marjorie Monaghan (who you might recognize from Babylon 5) and Michael Kennan (who after this would play "mutant" Patrick on Deep Space Nine) get most of the fun. They boom in performative RennFest tones, repeat dialogue like thinly scripted RPG characters, and go on at surprising length about the troubles in their fictional village... troubles that you could also read in Beowulf. (Don't look for Freya there, though; she's trucked in from other legends.) To be sure, Robert Picardo is giving a big, fun performance too. I just think it's his sharp comic instincts more than the script that ultimately lands this episode in entertaining territory. It's certainly what made the writers want to start giving him more to do.

Other observations:

• The Doctor chooses (and ends up discarding) the name Schweitzer, for the real-world Nobel Prize winning doctor. Naren Shankar admitted he chose the name solely for the humor in hearing a bunch of Vikings shouting it in tribute.

• Since you're giving so much time to the holonovel characters already, maybe don't have them be so at ease with the Doctor's displays of what should look like magic to them.
  

• The character of Unferth doesn't trust anything anyone says and jumps straight to a wild conspiracy theory at every opportunity. He's Viking QAnon.

• Poor Harry Kim (and Garrett Wang). He gets all dressed up and in theory gets to be Beowulf! But he has exactly one line of dialogue in this episode.
  

I'd give "Heroes and Demons" a B-. It's stronger than it would be without Robert Picardo... but it's much weaker than it would be if there wasn't so much focus on the Beowulf characters.