The Doctor has been experimenting with adding a "daydreaming" subroutine. But when it begins to overwhelm his programming, he soon can't distinguish reality from fantasy, and the ship has a crisis on its hands. What's more, an alien species lurks nearby, having hacked into the Doctor's mind and taken his fantasies for intelligence on life aboard Voyager.
Many of the roles Robert Picardo played before Star Trek: Voyager were in comedy films. (Seriously, you'll be shocked at the number of 1980s "modest hits" he appears in, from Inner Space to Explorers to Gremlins 2.) So he's a good choice to put at the center of a light-hearted episode of Star Trek. This one is further tailored to Picardo's skill set, incorporating opera singing and the Doctor's well-established irritability.
The comedy is working right from the very first scene, as the Doctor wows the crowd with his vocal performance, improvises lyrics to an opera, and stops a raging Tuvok all in the span of two minutes. And it's not just Picardo who gets to be funny; the whole cast gets to have moments throughout. Tim Russ plays Tuvok's imagined pon farr episode to the hilt, Roxann Dawson is fun in a scene where B'Elanna watches her imagined self be dumped by the Doctor, and Robert Duncan McNeill gives the best deliberately "dopey wave" possible. Even the voice of the computer quips that a warp core breach is coming "a lot sooner than you think."
Also nice: the story isn't all about the comedy. There are a couple of genuinely touching moments along the way. Janeway is ultimately quite sensitive to the Doctor's potential embarrassment at having his dreams made public. Kim is sympathetic to his anxiety about actually taking command. The alien spying on the Doctor expresses genuine admiration of him, and of being able to "rise above one's station." Plus, there's a foot in both comedy and humor when the episode culminates in its version of a Star Trek classic "corbomite maneuver" type of moment, in which the Doctor bluffs his way out of a crisis.
All that said, it feels like the series as a whole has to regress a bit to tell this story; this feels like an episode that would have been more at home in the second season than the sixth. The Doctor is having to argue for his essential humanity much more forcefully than seems necessary. He complains of how others treat him, but we haven't actually seen that sort of behavior toward him on the show for several seasons; he's long ago been accepted as the closest thing to human he can be.
The nature of the Doctor's daydreams feels a bit regressive sometimes too. As fun as it is to see him fantasize about commanding the ship, it's equally not fun to watch all the women on the ship throw themselves at him as demeaningly as 1990s network television will allow (complete with a lascivious saxophone soundtrack).
An interesting new concept for an alien race is a bit squandered here too. The Overlooker are a really different idea for a society: calculating to a fault, unable to act without consultation with their authority figures (or AI? Seems like it could be either). If I recall correctly, they do show up again once or twice more in the series, but they feel to me like they have more potential than that -- or certainly more than other aliens who wore out their welcome in earlier seasons of the show.
Other observations:
- In the opening scene, some members of the Doctor's concert audience seem quite bored to be there. It's his fantasy, so that shouldn't be the case.
- When the Doctor transforms into the "Emergency Command Hologram," Harry Kim speaks for all of us when he says "this is the part I like." Watching the uniform turn red, and the four pips melodramatically appearing on the Doctor's collar, is really funny.
- Seven of Nine posing topless for the Doctor. Ick. At least she does get to razz him at the end when she kisses his cheek: "That was a platonic gesture. Don’t expect me to pose for you."
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