VOY - The Darkling

[PerrySimm]

The long hair era being basically... "Before and After" ? And that was probably the best Kes episode apart from the pilot.

[Artabax]

Chuck calls this episode "stage play presented as television" as though that's a bad thing, when you could also use those words to describe Cheers, one of the best sitcoms of all time.

2 things

1) Cheers and other sitcoms that have a stage oriented toward an audience still have the production value of a TV show to differentiate them from a purely stage production, Extras being the top item, to fill out the massive set of a bar that is well lit; Cheers feels rather alive. Darkling by contrast feels like an empty stage. It is darkly lit to hide how small and empty everything is.

2) Star Trek is not a sitcom, it is not a great comparison to pull in Cheers as a measure of how to produce a science fiction exploration show.

Magic reset Button fits the Sit-Com genre: Homer, Chandler, Frazer NEVAH learn the Lesson of the Week TM because the Joke is incompetent Husband TM. Sit-Com

But when a TV show claims to be Drama TM, then we the Audience demand that Actions produce Consequences.

[Marko Kujundžić]

The last scene of the episode actually made me well up a bit, with the Doctor reciting the Hippocratic Oath to himself while carefully walking through the medical bay.

[Durandal_1707]

Am I the only one who was really impressed by Picardo's "evil Doctor" performance? At least up until the point where the script started making his lines "generic shouty villain", but in the earlier, more subtle bit, he was really selling it.

[Madner Kami]

Am I the only one who was really impressed by Picardo's "evil Doctor" performance? At least up until the point where the script started making his lines "generic shouty villain", but in the earlier, more subtle bit, he was really selling it.

No, you are not. I was just about to comment on that. The man got some acting-skills.

[clearspira]

The long hair era being basically... "Before and After" ? And that was probably the best Kes episode apart from the pilot.

8 episodes believe or not.

[TheStarWarsTrek]

Another episode where I contest that the Doctor isn't actually alive. If you can turn yourself evil this easily at the flick of a switch then your free will is still at ''appliance'' level. Equinox is the de facto worst example of this though.

''Doctor, cut up the brain of your crush.''
''Never!!''
''Ethical sub routine deactivated.''
''I wonder if Seven, Janeway and Torres would look good as a human centipede...''

Compare to Data, whom Lore had to flood with rage and anger in order to make that face heel turn believable, not just turning him evil by flicking a switch.

I am always full of praise for Red Dwarf and here is another occasion why this budget British sitcom is better than Voyager. In the curry episode where they save Kennedy from his assassination, it isn't Kryten who is cooking humans because Lister deactivated his ethical chip, its Spare Head 2, because the script writers realised that Kryten knows better than to do something like that even if you DO turn off his morals. But the Doctor is one program away from Dr Mengele apparently. But then, this is probably why Starfleet did away with the whole notion of EMH and LMH programs in the first place and not just ''terrible bedside manner'' as is often implied.

But didn't the Doctor's evil side only happen because of unintended consequences of altering his code, not because he "flipped a switch to evil"? And didn't Data become evil because of his ethical programming being switched off?

In any case, it dosn't prove that the Doctor isn't actually alive. After all, Dr. Jekyll makes a potion in an attempt to split his good and evil sides (which could be considered a biological equivalent to the EMH messing with his own behavior programs), and accidentally unleashes Mr.Hyde as a split personality. Does that somehow prove that pre-potion Dr. Jekyll was not sapient?

[clearspira]

Another episode where I contest that the Doctor isn't actually alive. If you can turn yourself evil this easily at the flick of a switch then your free will is still at ''appliance'' level. Equinox is the de facto worst example of this though.

''Doctor, cut up the brain of your crush.''
''Never!!''
''Ethical sub routine deactivated.''
''I wonder if Seven, Janeway and Torres would look good as a human centipede...''

Compare to Data, whom Lore had to flood with rage and anger in order to make that face heel turn believable, not just turning him evil by flicking a switch.

I am always full of praise for Red Dwarf and here is another occasion why this budget British sitcom is better than Voyager. In the curry episode where they save Kennedy from his assassination, it isn't Kryten who is cooking humans because Lister deactivated his ethical chip, its Spare Head 2, because the script writers realised that Kryten knows better than to do something like that even if you DO turn off his morals. But the Doctor is one program away from Dr Mengele apparently. But then, this is probably why Starfleet did away with the whole notion of EMH and LMH programs in the first place and not just ''terrible bedside manner'' as is often implied.

But didn't the Doctor's evil side only happen because of unintended consequences of altering his code, not because he "flipped a switch to evil"? And didn't Data become evil because of his ethical programming being switched off?

In any case, it dosn't prove that the Doctor isn't actually alive. After all, Dr. Jekyll makes a potion in an attempt to split his good and evil sides (which could be considered a biological equivalent to the EMH messing with his own behavior programs), and accidentally unleashes Mr.Hyde as a split personality. Does that somehow prove that pre-potion Dr. Jekyll was not sapient?

My point with Data though is that it wasn't just turning his ethical programming off, Lore had to flood him with anger so that he was red misting alongside having no morals. The Doctor went from good to evil in about twenty seconds. Same for the Equinox EMH too come to that, who logically would have had no loyalty at all as opposed to being evil but only for one side.

As for Jekyll and Hyde, the Jekyll is the good side and Hyde is the evil side plot is actually a modern, rather simplistic development.
In original 1886 tale, Jekyll and Hyde are not two separate people - not even in the split personality sense. We never get Hyde's perspective in the book because Hyde does not exist - he is a disguise that Jekyll uses to mask his identity when using the inhibition deleting potion. Even when under the effects of the potion Jekyll still thinks of himself as Jekyll. He is actually closer to Batman and Bruce Wayne than Bruce Banner and the Hulk.
Or to put it another way, ''Hyde'' is not the ''evil'' Jekyll, he is the Jekyll that Jekyll wants to be deep down: a man free from all of the moral and ethical constraints of society. All the potion is doing is bringing forth who he actually is deep down. That is another thing about the original Jekyll: a lot of his ''good guy traits'' were arguably a facade to begin with.
That is quite different to an ''on and off evil button''.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Sounds more like Fight Club than Batman tbh.

[clearspira]

Sounds more like Fight Club than Batman tbh.

I think better analogy of the original Jekyll and Hyde thinking about it would be Kirk when split by the transporter. The good Kirk is good merely because he is civilised and cowardly, and the evil Kirk isn't actually evil, he is a man driven solely by base impulses.
The difference being of course that Jekyll and Hyde have not been split, they are one and the same.