Sfdebris.net

Before I go on with this, allow me to say: Chuck you have my sympathy. My grandparents on my mother's side lost a child at a very young age, a little boy who would've been my uncle if he had lived and grown to adulthood.

And now, what grinds my gears about this installment in the Voyager series:

B'Ellana's actions in this episode were childish. No, strike that. To say she behaved childishly in this episode would be an insult to every child who has ever existed in the Multiverse. Was the Doctor's holodeck family a bit on the Ozzie and Harriett side of things? Sure. Does she have any valid reason to give a damn about that? Hell no. Maybe you'd like the Doctor to make some edits to your holodeck fantasies, Miss Women Warriors at the River of Blood?

Just thinking on this episode; maybe it would have worked better if it were a "Jack-in-the-box" (like Vic's program and the mobsters) rather than something B'Ellana did to the program. A nasty, cruel jack-in-the-box. Had I did this episode, I would have focused in on the Doctor's tragedy. No teenage son, just the Doctor, his wife, and his daughter. Maybe have him blame himself; he recalls an off-handed remark where he told his daughter to follow her dreams and play the dangerous sport or whatever. Him looking over the numbers and noting that the one in ten million chance was staring him the face but he didn't notice. He can't reset it, because that would lose the months he spent in the fantasy, and he doesn't want to anyway. He just wants to put the whole thing behind him and forget about it. So he does, and that's how the episode ends. Then it would pay off later in the mental breakdown episode he had, with the ensign dying just triggering off all the bad memories he hid away.

TerranceMonster wrote:B'Ellana's actions in this episode were childish. No, strike that. To say she behaved childishly in this episode would be an insult to every child who has ever existed in the Multiverse. Was the Doctor's holodeck family a bit on the Ozzie and Harriett side of things? Sure. Does she have any valid reason to give a damn about that? Hell no. Maybe you'd like the Doctor to make some edits to your holodeck fantasies, Miss Women Warriors at the River of Blood?

While I don't completely understand why she reaches the point of being offended, the fact is that the Doctor was missing the whole point. This wasn't about him wanting to fantasize about a family life in his free time. His goal was to experience an actual family. What he did was program three nonsentient programs to completely revolve around him, being completely convenient and putting no demands on him. Plus, the Doctor using them as self-gratifying ego-stroking by having them describe how amazing he is as a father and husband.

Which again, only services the Doctor when he starts boasting about how easy to manage his fantasy family is. That's like someone playing Call of Duty (with the difficulty dialed down) and wondering what all the soldiers are always complaining about.

Honestly, the program did need some tweaking. What Torres does is completely rewrite them so the Doctor doesn't recognize them and can't address their needs. They didn't spend years becoming the people they were, she did it in a day and the Doctor had no time to see these changes coming. Clearly you need to program in some family needs that actually require the Doctor's time, but they need to be within the realm of things he knows about his kids.

And yes, I know how kids can sometimes be experiencing things through school and their social lives that make them seem like strangers to their parents. The fact is that this doesn't happen in a single day, with someone who's never been married suddenly having to interact with 3 people and try to get along with them.

TGLS wrote:. Then it would pay off later in the mental breakdown episode he had, with the ensign dying just triggering off all the bad memories he hid away.

I had a similar thought; they could have used that later episode to explain why the Doctor's family were never brought up after this episode by having that ensign die just after the events of this episode and the compounded tragedies being too much for him and having him delete his own memories rather than Janeway doing it. It could also be used to acknowledge that they made a mistake in this episode with the whole "Real people don't get to just turn it off so you should turn it back on" thing by having the crew in the latter episode admit they can't blame him for deleting his memories and being uncertain whether they'd have done any different in his place. That would also have shifted the latter episode from Janeway arbitrarily deciding for him and realising that was a mistake to an exploration of the dangers of denile when dealing with a tragedy (although considering how hamfisted Voyager's writers could be that would probably end up with them declaring 'denile is wrong and the only right way is to man up and face it' rather than actually exploring the issue and examining all sides of it).

What I never got was, why the doctor actually needs the holodeck to live out his little fantasy. The computer could feed the information directly into his program at any given time.

Madner Kami wrote:What I never got was, why the doctor actually needs the holodeck to live out his little fantasy. The computer could feed the information directly into his program at any given time.

Especially as we see him in the morning before he 'leaves' for work, so presumably he'd have run the night time part of the scenario as a programme within the computer system, otherwise the rest of the crew would get shafted on holodeck time just so he can spend all night sleeping on the off chance the computer decides to throw an event up (yeah I know there's a second holodeck but that's probably running either the French pool hall or the Talaxian resort programmes).

Also, presumably the "Computer, activate EMH" command in Sickbay would override his holodeck programme and send him straight to Sickbay, so in the event of an emergency in the middle of family dinner time would he just vanish from the dinner table? Considering the emergency nature of his existence I can't imagine he'd just get a page and have time to say "Sorry honey, emergency at the workplace, gotta dash; save some of that meatloaf for when I get back." Which is something that could be circumvented by having it just running as a programme within the computer system as then it'd be reasonable for him to be able to go through the motions due to time within the computer system not having to correlate with time in the real world.

Dînadan wrote:

Madner Kami wrote:What I never got was, why the doctor actually needs the holodeck to live out his little fantasy. The computer could feed the information directly into his program at any given time.

Especially as we see him in the morning before he 'leaves' for work, so presumably he'd have run the night time part of the scenario as a programme within the computer system, otherwise the rest of the crew would get shafted on holodeck time just so he can spend all night sleeping on the off chance the computer decides to throw an event up (yeah I know there's a second holodeck but that's probably running either the French pool hall or the Talaxian resort programmes).

Also, presumably the "Computer, activate EMH" command in Sickbay would override his holodeck programme and send him straight to Sickbay, so in the event of an emergency in the middle of family dinner time would he just vanish from the dinner table? Considering the emergency nature of his existence I can't imagine he'd just get a page and have time to say "Sorry honey, emergency at the workplace, gotta dash; save some of that meatloaf for when I get back." Which is something that could be circumvented by having it just running as a programme within the computer system as then it'd be reasonable for him to be able to go through the motions due to time within the computer system not having to correlate with time in the real world.

Oh no, people are trying to ingest logic into this story thread. When it comes to the holodeck, the writers usually are tossing logic out the window in order to service drama-that's why the holodeck safeties have to constantly malfunction and people can't just shut it down at any point.

I mean, this is an episode where the Doctor doesn't decide to just "Save scum" and reset the program the moment his daughter gets injured, making it as though it never happened. His daughter's injuries are just a simulation, after all, and interacting with the holodeck is like having the game code completely accessible, so he could just order the holodeck to repair the injuries. That isn't nearly dramatic enough, though, because this is the episode that introduces an adorable little girl character just so they force the audience to feel bad when she dies.

Torres didn't specify that 'little girl must die in tragic accident, LOL', she modified the program to have greater variations and risks happen.

EMH: I thought for a long time about what Lieutenant Torres said, and I finally concluded she was right. If I'm going to have the experience of a family, it should be as authentic as possible.
KES: What changes have you asked her to make in the programme?
EMH: Oh, she's already made them. She's simply added some randomised behavioural algorithms to the programme I constructed.
KES: How will it affect your family?
EMH: Events will simply unfold as a matter of natural evolution of probabilities within the programme, but there's no way to predict what those might be.
KES: That could mean a few surprises. Are you sure you've ready for this?
EMH: My database contains everything there is to know about paediatric care and childhood development. I can't imagine a parenting problem I couldn't handle.
KES: Your wife will have changed too.
EMH: Well, I have had some experience with romantic relationships. I don't anticipate any problems there.

Essentially, Torres did program 'jack in the boxes', and due to a low dice roll, and the daughter character already being an athlete already playing a dangerous sport, it went for 'physical accident'. And considering Torres familial background, I can see why she was offended by the Doctor's family life.

Still doesn't excuse the episode for killing the daughter off and it being considered real.

FaxModem1 wrote:Torres didn't specify that 'little girl must die in tragic accident, LOL', she modified the program to have greater variations and risks happen..

True, but later on, after the accident when the Doctor just turns off the programme rather than experience the fallout she gives him spiel about how we don't have the luxury of turning real life off which is what prompts him to turn it back on and experience the trauma, which is a dick move on her part and trivialises such traumas to 'pain builds character'.

Dînadan wrote:

FaxModem1 wrote:Torres didn't specify that 'little girl must die in tragic accident, LOL', she modified the program to have greater variations and risks happen..

True, but later on, after the accident when the Doctor just turns off the programme rather than experience the fallout she gives him spiel about how we don't have the luxury of turning real life off which is what prompts him to turn it back on and experience the trauma, which is a dick move on her part and trivialises such traumas to 'pain builds character'.

No she doesn't, Paris does. Kes does. Torres doesn't speak to him for the rest of the episode, because she's dealing with the B plot of saving Paris while he's trapped in space tornado dimension.