Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series) Renaissance Man (2001) User Reviews

The Doctor disobeys orders

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 2 June 2010]

On their way back from an away mission Janeway and the Doctor run into a few difficulties. Once back on Voyager the captain tells Chakotay that they have accidentally strayed into the territory of a species which does not allow warp travel and is demanding the surrender of their warp core. He suggests making a run for it but she insists they must obey as the alien species has cloaked ships and superior weapons. Reluctantly he follows her orders but when she starts to act strangely he goes to see the Doctor so he can give her a check up. Later he claims to have seen her and determined that there is nothing wrong with her health. Chakotay goes to see the captain and realises that the person in front of him isn't Captain Janeway. Before he can do anything though he is drugged and hidden in the ship's morgue. At this point we learn that the captain was in fact the Doctor who has been working with two aliens to steal Voyager's warp core in exchange for the captain who they are holding captive. As he proceeds he impersonates further crew members until he finally gets his hand on the core. Once he hands it over he finds that the aliens have no intention of honouring their side of the bargain and ends up a captive alongside the captain.

This was a fun Doctor led episode... although for the first quarter that wasn't obvious as he was impersonating the captain. Once we realised he was impersonating various crew members it was fun to see the hints he gave to who he really was; such as when he is pretending to be B'Elanna and tells Tom the food he is giving her is unhealthy. It was also fun to see him confessing his various misdemeanours when he thinks his program is about to decompile.

The Doctor is put through the mill again

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 13 August 2020]

The Doctor and Janeway get abducted and The Doctor is made to steal Voyager's warp core.

This one took a battering from other reviewers but I personally didn't find it that bad. I have noted during other reviews that a lot of people struggle with suspension of disbelief, but for me if the episode is pretty well made, I forgive those elements.

The plot is pretty daft, but I went along with it and was entertained by the performances and the way events unfolded. I also liked the sequence where the warp core is ejected from Voyager.

When The Doctor does his confession scene near the end I laughed, but thought to myself, I wish the writers would stop humiliating such great character so much. On the other hand, I suppose what makes Robert Picardo such a good actor is he can behave so pompous and manic, yet you still like him.

I don't think it this one is for everyone, but if you don't take it too seriously I think you will enjoy.

A Bump in the Road

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 20 September 2018]

Going into the final episode, this episode does nothing to segue into that major event. This starts with a sort-end-of the-road event, reporting the potential destruction of Voyager and the resettlement of its crew. A formidable adversary proves, however, to be anything but. Instead, we are reintroduced to those two fat guys from a previous episode. They are scroungers and have come up with a plan to get the warp core from our favorite starship. They have kidnapped the Captain and the Doc and are using the holographic talents of the transparent physician to manipulate the crew. Soon he is impersonating just about the entire main staff. This has some fun stuff in it, and the Doctor's confessions at the conclusion are quite hilarious. But the episode seems so out of place and so far fetched, even in the Voyager world, that it hardly seems possible. I look forward to the conclusion. It certainly has been a circumlocative path to this point.

Why the hate for this one?

[christopherdarveaux · 10/10 · 8 December 2019]

I don't understand why so many people hate this one. This is one of the most innovative episodes of the entire series.

The doctor's dilemma makes perfect sense. Since he is programmed to do no harm, it makes sense he would turn over the core to save the captain's life. Furthermore the space battle to reacquire the core was intriguing and his deathbed confession scene was hillarious. Classic voyager

The Doctor times Seven

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 27 May 2020]

This is just something that The Docs programming can't help him with, another reviewer hit it on the head: the doctor cannot do any harm. We have also seen that he can deliberately disobey orders. Which he does in this case, but only in his quest to make sure that no harm is done to voyager or her crew. But the problem is, he can't do it until he has the perfect opportunity.

Unfortunately the doctor is being manipulated. He is being manipulated by that one race that understands him more than he understands himself. I did not really want to reveal who that was in my review but I have to: he is being manipulated by the race that I have named "the Googys" (after the original actor who played one of them, and whose features adorn their makeup: Google Gress).

The difficulty here is that these two former members of "the Heirarchy" had opportunity to study the doctor in great detail after their first encounter with him, and in fact this caper had been in planning for a long time. They know how to dig the knife into the doctors photonic back and twist, and as this episode goes on we can see that it is really getting to the doctor.

But it just shows how ingenious and creative the doctor can be, and he eventually discovers a way of extricating himself from this conundrum, which he does with some finesse and a level of subtlety.

We've seen the doctor in previous episodes do everything that he has done in this episode. It's just that here, we see him doing all of it all at once! He is a doctor, he is an Opera singer as well as a jazz piano player, he is an emergency command hologram, he is a secret agent! He is a... photonic!

And it has taken him seven years to at last, become comfortable with what he is and finally to have pride. Which is another one of his problems because he overdoes it.

The Googys know how to use all of this against him to make him do what they want.

So generally the whole episode is waiting for the doctor to have that one opportunity to bust out of his expected modes of behavior.

I don't consider this episode substandard in the least, and it was the perfect lead-in to "Endgame".

Also there are some ingenious technical gags, and those just make it all the more worthwhile. You just have to ask "how did they do that"?

As this episode moves from the teaser into the episode, you know that something is wrong but you just can't put your finger on it, and then suddenly, when you least expect it...

Weird Filler

[dave-kuhn · 8/10 · 14 November 2020]

What a weird little filler episode, but enjoyable never the less. It was cool seeing Dr. Who Sontarans. Luckily they were no more clever on ST than on Dr. Who.

I think the Doctor was very poorly written in this episode....very poorly.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 8 March 2015]

I really did NOT like this episode as the Doctor's character really behaved irrationally. So much of what he did simply made very little sense.

When the show begins, the Captain mentions that they'll be jettisoning the warp core and moving to a planet nearby! Her reason for this seems silly and through the course of the show, she acts batty. It's because down deep it ISN'T her but the Doctor posing as her! In fact, he then poses as several other crew members--all in order to steal the ship's warp core. Why he's done all this is explained but his logic sure seems faulty and stupid. Overall, this is a very weak episode--the sort that make you feel that it was about time to end the series--which occurs in the following episode. The only real positive part of the show is when the Doctor thinks he's dying and he makes some funny confessions.

A clear example of how stupid decisions and insubordination are encouraged in voyager

[rapettif · 3/10 · 20 June 2018]

So, you're the doctor, an hologram. You're with the captain in a shuttle, and it's attacked. The captain is held hostage, and they're going to kill her if you don't do what the attackers want (two pathetic aliens). She orders you to not comply, and to inform the crew of their plans. So, what do you do? Exactly the opposite of what your captain ordered you. You attack several of your comrades, eject the core, rendering Voyager defenseless, and then you go to exchange the core for your captain's life, but instead of that, you're taken prisioner also. The only thing that made sense, is that the doctor leaved a secret message with a way to find them, so they manage to rescue them with a shuttle (because Voyager is disabled) and a lot of luck.

All of this could be avoided by simply telling the crew what was happening. They can kill the captain, but then nothing stops the Voyager from turning them into sub-atomical particles, so that would be a really stupid decision to be made by the aliens.

So, what happens after everyone returns to the ship? No effective penalty for the doctor, that's for sure! Even if that's kind of a cout martial kind of behaviour, which endangered the ship and the lives of everyone, but hey! it's Voyager, what did you expected!? Not even restraining of the doc's program, nor disabling the "command mode" which gave him enough security autorization to eject the core!!

So, this episode tells us that the doctor is just another time bomb inside Voyager, waiting to explode at any time. As if the incredibly violent delta quadrant wasn't enough!!

Too over the top

[mgruebel · 5/10 · 11 November 2015]

The premise of this episode really does not quite make sense. The Doctor has now matured for seven years. He would not freeze away crew members and impersonate them to save the Captain from some alien traders holding her hostage to obtain a warp drive - and only the Doctor knows about it!

The episode would not have fitted earlier in the series because the Doctor would not have had the attachment to do what he does here. It does not fit later in the series because the Doctor has a lot of experience and understands that such a situation is best resolved working with the crew. And no, the feeble excuse that the aliens can see what he sees and hear what he hears is not enough to explain it: he communicates with the crew in subtle ways at the end, so why not right away? He's not stupid, you know.

The episode is still sort of silly fun as the Doctor tries to imitate B'Elana, Chakotay and other assorted characters he's stowing away in the ship's morgue as they catch on to his scheme to save the captain alone while sacrificing the warp drive. And it features those bumbling aliens from The Hive, who have decided to become highway robbers. So if you take it in the vein of a comedic escapade at the penultimate tick of the clock of Voyager's final season, it's OK. Hence still a 5.

If you like The Hive and the Doctor, watch the "Tinker, Tenor, Soldier, Spy" episode again and see how it's done right.

In the World of Tomorrow...

[GreyHunter · 4/10 · 27 January 2020]

...we will have no means of communication except talking. No keyboards, no writing implements or writing surfaces. No ability to use either (were they to exist) without looking directly at them and/or announcing to everyone listening (including nosy obese aliens) what's happening so you can't do anything surreptitiously.

I get the intention here. Create an exciting caper with elements of a comedy of errors. But the entire episode hinges on the fact that it made no sense whatsoever unless you assume one of (or both of) two things:

1) the Doctor is a complete idiot who can't possibly think of any alternatives than doing everything he's ordered (except, of course, when the orders come from someone who actually has the right and responsibility to give him orders) and can only come up with the most abstruse way to leave a relatively minor clue of very limited usefulness

2) In the World of Tomorrow, humanity (and the occasional representatives of vulcanity and klingoninity) has forgotten the concept of the written word and does everything a starship is capable of doing by pressing pretty pictures on a screen

It was just too distracting to suspend disbelief here long enough to relax and enjoy the caper plot. The actual events weren't uninteresting, as such. The fact that the viewer has to wrestle with the overwhelming impulse to cry out "Oh, for the love of God, is he stupid as fu...?" at the screen kind of neutralizes any interesting aspects to said events.

And in the end, at the very least, the Doctor should have been stripped of his ECH powers. Happy ending or not, he demonstrated quite ably that he could easily represent an existential danger to Voyager even when his program is technically performing properly. He also demonstrates why real command officers are chosen from people with experience -- he has thousands of tactical subroutines but has no idea how to act competently. He could destroy the ship just because he doesn't have the wisdom to see past the tactical subroutines that have been programmed into him and find a less-obvious solution.

This is a rare episode for Voyager: a bad Doctor episode.

Dreadful episode

[thespirituk · 1/10 · 4 November 2018]

While I'm a fan of Voyager there are times when Star Trek really does make laughable story choices. This is absolutely one of those times. The poor writing and total lack of continuity in character development is a classic example of just how bad writing can get. The total nonsense of the storyline, that doesn't have a complete conclusion with there being no repercussions for the Doctor, makes for very painful, watching. As almost the last episode it's astounding that they thought this was worthy of the end of a run. In a word: dire.

Doctor's Malpractice

[Sunnydws · 2/10 · 2 November 2023]

I love Voyager and have watched through the entire series many times over, aside from a handful of dreadful episodes. Usually I skip this one, but I decided to give it another spin. And I was reminded all too well at why I never dust this one off.

The Doctor's behavior is completely reprehensible. Impersonating officers, incapacitating crew members, SHOOTING TUVOK (Where's the "do no harm" protocol on that one?), and compromising EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM on the ship. And for all that, he receives no punishment. It's insultingly bad. I just can't fathom anyone defending this absolute trash of an episode.

The implications are just astronomically horrible. Are we to believe that Star Fleet has such a "heightened" sense of morals that they are beyond holding anyone accountable for their actions? It's actually barbaric and makes them look like they have no moral code at all. I hate it. I hate it with every fiber of my being. And I hate it all the more that any one would try to defend it out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to Robert Picardo. He is a brilliant actor, and deservedly one of my favorite people on the show. But he should've been fighting this tooth and nail to save his character some semblance of integrity. And his deathbed confession isn't remotely funny. It's beyond distasteful.

And not only the moral implications, but how about the practical consequences of the Doctor effectively stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant with no warp core. He rationalizes the decision to do full on espionage on his own friends by suggesting that if he didn't do so, the captain would die. But without a warp core, they are completely vulnerable to any number of attacks. They encounter some hostile species on a daily basis in the DQ! It's so hypocritical and contradictory, it makes my head spin. I think I'm gonna be sick.

You get the sense they wanted to explore the full capability of the Doctor's hologram. But it's done in a mystifyingly horrible way that's chock full of moral qualms. A much better avenue to explore the inherent risk in giving the Doctor too much freedom would've been through a holodeck simulation, a la Worst Case Scenario from Season 3. Perhaps Tuvok wants to run a tactical program to go over procedures in case the Doctor's program is ever compromised, and he could illustrate to the Captain the faultiness in giving the Doctor free reign. There's a reason they have the chain of command on a star ship. The fact the Doctor could abuse it so freely is obnoxious and unpalatable. There's no fail safe protocol built into his program should he decide to just take over the ship?? YIKES!!

Another clear example of the mephitic writing for this episode is how every conceivable plot hole is just patched up with the convenience of the Doctor overriding every function on the ship off screen. When does he have time to do all these things? "Let's do this to stop him! Ope, the Doctor has blocked us out." Ghastly and horribly contrived.

They seriously should've been discussing de-programming him after this whole debacle. That's why it's a terrible episode, because it compromises such a wonderful, thoughtful character like the Doctor. They use him as a canvass for self aggrandizing in what really amounts to treason. And piggy-backing this episode on Author, Author which was only a few episodes before tarnishes the Doctor even further. He comes off as a loathsome, self-righteous blowhard. He's been given more freedom than even any human could ever dream of, but we're to believe he's still bitter over being treated like a computer when he was first activated. I hate to break it to you, Doc, but that's literally your function. The writers on this episode should've applied the "do no harm" principle to themselves, because they nearly did irreparable harm to the Doctor's character. I dearly wish someone had the guts to tell the architects of this final season to stop spoon feeding your audience this tripe about the Doctor fighting for equality. It's an abomination of a storyline and ground that was covered much more poetically and beautifully in Latent Image. Leave it alone. This episode makes it seem like they've learned nothing from their past mistakes. Just an endless stream of worthy criticisms. It never should've made it to air.

TL;DR: If you enjoy the Doctor's character at all, do not watch this episode.

Horrible episode

[mlavik-91127 · 1/10 · 5 December 2019]

The doctor cooperates with an alien race against Voyager, he impersonates Janeway, attacks and impersonates several crew members, misuses his ECH routine against the crew of Voyager and leaves Voyager defenseless and without power. For this he reveives no punishment at all. This episode is just horrible. Don't watch. The writers should have been fired.

The doctor shyamalans his personality into multiple identities

[tomsly-40015 · 4/10 · 15 February 2024]

A rather below-average episode about the doctor, who once again slips into the shoes of other crew members. In contrast to the episode where he is in Seven's body, this time he only changes his holographic appearance. However, since he only imitates Janeway and the other characters, a lot of the doctor's personality is missing. It seems unimaginative when Janeway plays herself and acts quite conspicuously due to a few quirks.

Nobody notices that suddenly half the bridge crew is not at their stations and cannot be reached via their com badges. And although there is a long history of alien-possessed crew members in Star Trek series, Chakotay isn't really suspicious of Janeway's strange behavior.

The story itself also seems too staged. Voyager and the crew have found themselves in worse situations. The fact that the doctor takes out one person after another, ejects the warp core and steals a shuttle without consulting the senior officers seems unrealistic.

At the end, when the doctor is faced with impending digital death, he also makes a few pretty intimate confessions. Among other things, he confesses his love to Seven. But as we know, Seven is more into spirit quests than holographic spirits.

Clumsy. Doctor episodes are boring

[keithfmanaton · 2/10 · 19 January 2022]

The Doctor seemed to get more & more weak as a character as he was supposed to get more 'human'. Also the fact that Seven became almost the main character and incredibly central to the whole series. Again he puts the whole mission in danger &, yet again yawn, nearly strands Voyager in the Delta quadrant. He should have been taken off line permanently a dozen time already. A real bodge-up of an episode. Considering it is penultimate one of the series, & following Neelix's exit, they really could have come up something a lot better. Skip it.

Superfluous episode puts the doctor in a bad light

[ralph-notman · 2/10 · 13 April 2021]

This was a poor choice for a penultimate episode. I can think of 4 or 5 episodes from the season that would have been better suited for such a position in the season. If this episode really needed to be used, it would have been better a few episodes earlier.

The doctor is forced into performing tasks, at best, unfriendly to the Voyager crew, and at worst, down right nasty. Stranding the whole crew in the delta quadrant just to save 1 person. I thought the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few (or one).

The aliens are a poor imitation of a second rate Ferengi with no dress sense, and even worse appearance. They behave in a way that the Ferengi did in early TNG episodes, before DS9 fleshed them out better. It just seemed that they dragged up a new race, they'd shown a few episodes earlier, and just hung them out to dry.

Overall, a poorly written, and not much better performed episode.

The Negative Reviews are Correct

[beanslegit · 5/10 · 27 February 2021]

The Doctor does his best to strand everyone permanently through a series of assaults, kidnappings, impersonating fellow crewmen including the captain, the first officer and several lieutentants, stealing high tech federation technology to give to the local space d-bags, disobeying direct orders, oh and sabotaging their whole mission of getting back home!!! These things surely are worthy of space hanging. Instead he gets a cup of coffee with the captain at the end... WHAT

It makes no sense that the doctor does these things and the reasons given aren't nearly enough. They should have written it that his program was taken over by aliens or something and thats why he commited high space treason. Then maybe in the attempt to get him back to normal he almost gets deleted in the process, that would have had some actual emotional impact. Instead it's totally ridiculous.

By the end we hate the doctor and want him punished but the writers were too stupid to understand basic story telling. But hey it's well known you don't need talent to be hired as a Star Trek writer, in fact I think they actively avoid it most of the time.

Stupid, frustrating, and weak plot. I hope the finale will be less ghastly.

Worst episode of the series; unwatchable!

[xzntcp · 5/10 · 17 March 2024]

That the Doctor disobeyed a direct order, betrayed all of his fellow crew members, and put the ship and everyone on it in mortal danger is bad enough, but when he declares, "Voyager can survive without its warp core, but not without its captain," I almost turned it off. Wrong on both counts, and stupid, stupid writing. In fact, the logic was lacking in pretty much every scene in the entire episode. The Doctor's reasoning and rationalizations throughout lacked causation and credibility. I watched the episode with a group, and the emotions in the room varied from puzzlement to anger that this piece of derk was allowed to be put into production. What a sad second last episode in a great series.