When Voyager responds to a Hirogen distress call, they find a station that was overrun by the holograms the Hirogen were hunting there. Lamenting her prior decision to give the Hirogen holographic technology, Janeway sets out after the escaped holograms. The Doctor feels a kinship with these holograms, finally free to pursue their own lives and start their own culture -- and he even turns against Janeway and the Voyager crew to help them. But the holograms' leader, Iden, may be a false prophet, pursuing an agenda the Doctor cannot endorse.
I suppose there are lots of reasons that an episodic television show might choose to stage a two-part episode -- including purely financial ones. But if there's any artistic integrity in the endeavor, surely it must be because you have a story to tell that would feel too compressed in the traditional one-hour format. "Flesh and Blood" gets two hours, and yet feels just as rushed and illogical to me as it would have been had it been stuffed into a single hour. I'm hard-pressed to point to a single character here who follows a logical arc of behavior from the beginning to the end of the story. Everyone is at the whims of a story that has a schedule to stick to. Every plot twist is utterly predictable, and yet simultaneously feels completely unearned.
Janeway is usually willing to be diplomatic and give the aliens of the week every benefit of the doubt, but here she decides immediately that these holograms are irredeemably violent and ought to have their memories excised. It's an artificial plot move solely to motivate the Doctor to "mutiny" against her. And in the end, she abruptly changes her mind and decides that the holograms are fine as long as they have a "supervisor" in the form of the Hirogen Donik (even though he was there when they rebelled and escaped the station the first time).
A few seasons ago, B'Elanna was so opposed to a hologram who looked like a Cardassian that she said she'd rather die than interact with him; what's changed since then that she can now come to accept the holographic Cardassian engineer she meets here? It's another artificial move -- necessitated because someone has to come to accept the holograms as people, and the story structure means that can't be Janeway.
The guest characters of this episode don't behave any more logically. The audience is made to feel sympathy for Iden when he engages in Bajoran prayer; yet not long later, he is decrying all organic culture as anathema, and eager to start his own holographic culture. Why the abrupt change? Because he can't be exposed as a megalomaniac until after the Doctor has made the mistake of joining him. Then, of course, he's free to become cartoonishly evil.
There are at least elements of the narrative that are interesting. The oppression of these holograms is palpable, and the notions that they were specifically made to feel pain when they don't have to (because "prey" must feel pain), and that they've been killed and revived over and over again with their memories intact -- these are particularly effective details. In the character of Donik, you're introduced to the idea that the Hirogen really didn't even have engineers like him until they were given holotechnology. And it's clever that holograms could settle on a traditionally uninhabitable planet, simply because they are holograms.
Even though the script may be weak, the production team seizes the moment. The Hirogen hunting scenario that opens the story is one of the series' most convincing settings, with more (realistic looking) trees than normal and even a pond (from which ambushers rise up in slow motion as if out of a war movie). The huge variety of species among the holograms allows the makeup department to show off -- we've got a Bajoran, a Romulan, a Cardassian, a Borg, a Breen, a Klingon, a Vulcan, a Jem'Hadar... it's great fun.
Other observations:
- Recurring Star Trek guest star Vaughn Armstrong is back, adding another alien (Hirogen) to the long roster of parts he's played across multiple series.
- Donik sounds a lot like a young Josh Gad. (No, it's not him.)
- Iden sure gives "his word" a lot.
- The Doctor gets off with a slap on the wrist at the end of this story, as Janeway says she "let" the Doctor grow to the point where he could act like this. When Paris acted mutinously, he got demoted and confined to the brig from 30 days. In an episode that's all about treating holograms as you would any flesh and blood being, the Doctor needed a true punishment of some kind to end it.
In the final season of any show, each episode feels precious -- one of the last opportunities the series will ever have to tell a story. In expanding to a two-parter here and then not making good use of it, it feels like at least one episode wasted. I give "Flesh and Blood" a C+.
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