The Doctor is using the holodeck to simulate a holographic family -- wife, son, and daughter. But when B'Elanna suggests he needs more realism in his simulation, he soon finds himself in situations far beyond his emotional experience. Meanwhile, Voyager encounters a unique and dangerous astral phenomenon from which the crew hopes to harness energy.
This episode asks a lot of a handful of people: Robert Picardo as the Doctor; guest stars Wendy Schaal, Glenn Harris, and Lindsey Haun, who portray his holographic family; and director Anson Williams. They all have only their half of a 42-minute episode with two plot lines to go from saccharine parody to emotional tearjerker -- and they pull it off. You'd expect the former star of Happy Days and the voice behind the mom on American Dad to have the lighter tone locked in, and of course they do. The early scenes with the "50s sitcom" take on the Doctor's family show us a funny, cloying, even hateable trio of automatons.
It's a pleasant surprise that the material works as it grows increasingly serious. The guest stars become just as natural as they were previously artificial (even if daughter Belle's meltdown at one point feels a touch young for her age). Son Jeffrey's rebellious foray into Klingon culture feels accurate, and is a fun misdirect for where the "danger" is really going to come from. And Belle's death hits us both in the heart and the head -- I found myself afterward thinking about how a death does bring some families closer together, while driving others apart.
Obviously, it's a tremendous episode for the Doctor. Early on, it's just fun to see him be a bit of a punching bag, in over his head and called out repeatedly for his strangely patriarchal attitudes. But as his emotions begin to spill over, we see that... well, he really has emotions (other than irritation). And he's "rewarded" when he honestly shares them with others, getting tender responses from his daughter and (in the episode's real "thesis" scene) Tom Paris. Part of me wishes the Doctor's growth here continued in future episodes featuring his holo-family, even as the larger part of me recognizes that a full story is brought to its conclusion here within this episode.
But there is another half to the episode here. There's a "B plot" that actually takes up almost as much screen time as the "A plot." It's pretty straightforward stuff for Trek in general and Voyager in particular: here's a weird space phenomenon, they need to harness it for resources, and it puts them in jeopardy. There's not much to praise about this half of the episode, other than the fact that the visual effects of the "astral eddies" actually look really great (without even allowing for them being decades old). At least the specific danger to Tom Paris dovetails a little with the Doctor's story. (And for once, they actually save the shuttle too!)
It is a low-key great episode for B'Elanna Torres. She's the instigator for changing the Doctor's family -- and it's fun to wonder how many of the "realistic elements" were truly random as we're told, versus specifically chosen by her. (Jeffrey's Klingon friends can't be a coincidence, right?) B'Elanna gets a nice flirtatious scene with Tom Paris; initially, it doesn't look great for Tom when he tears her smutty novel right out of her hands, but she plays back at him in a way that begins to sell me on their romantic pairing. (She gets a new hair style too, featuring a side braid. But it turns out that's only for this one episode.)
Other observations:
- Star Trek doesn't always do the greatest job when giving us "alien music." But the Klingon music Jeffrey listens to feels pretty on point. Good work from Dennis McCarthy.
- We've been hearing about Parrises Squares on Star Trek for years, and this episode finally pays off basically the one thing we know about it: it's dangerous. (That said, it feels like a bit of a stretch that a physical head injury would be beyond 24th century medicine.)
I'm a little torn on rating this episode. To me, it's clearly the best Voyager episode so far. It would have been better still without the common secondary plot... and yet it did need something, as I don't think the Doctor's family alone would have sustained the entire hour. I find myself likening it to the episode "In Theory" from The Next Generation. Both episodes feature an inexperienced character running a social behavior experiment on themselves; both episodes include a "ship in jeopardy" subplot that's clearly the weaker element. Because the space anomaly from "In Theory" also gave us the creepy-as-hell visual of getting stuck inside the floor, I'm going to give that episode the edge, and grade this relative to the A- I gave that. That means "Real Life" is a B+. But it's a solid Voyager episode.
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