Spirit Folk (2)

 DVD, Voyager S6 (Spirit Folk) (2)

I knew there was one of the pair of Irish Holodeck stories I wasn't so keen on, and I was thinking it was this one since I hadn't minded 'Fair Haven' much and this was fairly daft right from the beginning. The idea of seeing the Holodeck from the perspective of the holo-characters was a great one, but I was thinking this wasn't the one to do it right. But it won me over, and I was surprised to find this was the good episode, not the previous one, and it ends on a real high of goodwill and happiness. Yes, it is inconsequential, has no real bearing on anything, and throws up a few questions (could the Doctor really be hypnotised by a holo-character dangling a spoon? I know he was merged with the program and potentially susceptible to its flaws...), but a good Trek story, even a good story in general, isn't based on the size of the stakes, otherwise it would be galactic threats all the time (oh, ah, yes, modern Trek does rather prove that theory correct since it doesn't have as many small stories, nor does it have many good ones, either!). Often the most intimate little two-person dramas are the most powerful. But this isn't one of those, it's no 'Duet,' has no strong moral message (despite the sermonising of the Doctor in his Father Mulligan role that comes across more like the ravings of an old windbag than the pertinent reminder of grace and charity to fellow man, but then he was dealing with a herd of ill-mannered rustics so perhaps that was the most effective address he could come up with?), it's merely a fun muck-about in the Holodeck. With the safeties off.

How a gunshot could damage an open diagnostics console within the Holodeck and disable the safety protocols is another of those questionable moments, but I can reconcile it by the fact the program was malfunctioning, in which case perhaps the safeties themselves weren't a hundred percent reliable, or we could go with the console, unless it had a forcefield around it, once opened was susceptible to whatever physical effects happened in the Holodeck (be it flood, fire or shotgun), thus it was possible to damage the safeties from an unsafe source. That's when things get relatively worrying since it's mob rule and a mob will do anything it sees necessary when it's threatened, so being burned at the stake of lampposts or hung from them wasn't out of the question - Seamus the instigator, for all his charm isn't much of a role model, quick to put all he's seen together and rally the townsfolk behind his emotional, fear-led revolt against the 'spirit folk.' As much fun as it all is, it's also rather creepy that it's true to life and people can be so easily riled up into acts of aggression. Only Michael Sullivan (a return for my 'BUGS' connection of Fintan McKeown playing the barkeep again), the rational voice that doesn't want to give in to the rampant emotionalism around him even while accused of being on the other side and despite seeing strange things he can't explain ("Superstition is the religion of fools," was my favourite quote of the episode).

His accent wasn't as reliable this time, and in fact I felt the accents generally were variable, perhaps due to handing over so many scenes to these guest actors. That's one reason I wasn't so keen on it at first because it rarely works well to take time away from the main cast in Trek and give it to guest stars unless they're of an exceptionally high quality. Not that there was anything wrong with these ones, but perhaps because of the accents I sensed a slight air of them being in over their heads, taking too much of the limelight and having the weight of the episode upon them. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, and it does get a lot better by the end. The writing was the strength, and it's a Bryan Fuller credit so you can see him weave in the series' history quite comfortably if there's a reason to do so - the most obvious being the Doctor's lack of a name, cleverly brought in when he's hypnotised and they think knowing the name of something gives them power over it! Or someone saying Neelix looks like a leprechaun. But also the way the story progresses, and any cracks filled in (Michael says the crew never used machines to hurt us, and someone else brings up Maggie being turned into a cow), where we see a reverse of 'Fair Haven': Janeway travelled into Michael's world, here he travels into hers.

It's far from the first time holo-characters have escaped their confines - the first Holodeck story, 'The Big Goodbye' (on my mind recently since its writer, Tracy Tormé died the other week), did just that, and we've had so many instances of characters leaving the Holodeck or becoming aware of their reality since then that it's not a revolution. What it is, is good storytelling because you want to see Michael, the calm, rational one, thrown into the world we know so well to see how he reacts. Of course he reacts calmly and accepts it. They never did a sequel, but I could see them going down the Moriarty route (another person in mind having recently seen his return of sorts in 'Picard' Season 3, though that was a bit of a wasted opportunity), since though they tell them some things in order to pacify them, Janeway doesn't let on the whole truth. So they're spacemen from the future rather than the creators of a fantasy environment, and I can imagine some of them might not take kindly to this omission of their true identity and cause trouble. But that wasn't really the style of this holoprogram, although Seamus got a mob going they were shown to be pretty foolish with their superstitions and cobbled together half-stories, they weren't 'an opponent to challenge Data' as the creation of Moriarty was. Equally, unlike Vic Fontaine they might not have taken to the reality of their situation with as much ease since he was deliberately created with that knowledge part of his program and had enough on his plate to worry about with his career, pally! I'm not sure how much I'd want a sequel, I never loved the characters as I loved Vic, for example, and while they could have written an even better story, as this was an improvement on their debut, it would be easy to simply have the Irish clichés for the sake of it since Americans tend to love that stuff.

An oddity about the episode is that it appears to go against the usual Trek attitude to fantasy lives, best summed up in 'Generations' where the message is that real life is more rewarding than living in a fantasy, because nothing really matters there. In this, Janeway admits the characters aren't real, but their feelings for them are, which is exactly how fans view this series they're watching, and doesn't want to delete their experiences and knowledge. In this case it's a little different in that Voyager is stuck out away from home without those comforts, although is a life in Starfleet supposed to be comfortable? That's another issue, that comfort doesn't bring reward, only softens a person, but again in this case the crew do need something to take their minds off the regular dangers they face and it's something communal they can all take part in. I wasn't sure at first why the program was malfunctioning, were they keeping it on all the time? It seems they were as Tom Paris had instituted an open door policy, but surely they know what happens when a program is allowed to have free rein as we saw with the Doctor, despite him being a special case, but they should've known about Moriarty as essential recent history of the technology, so there was a likelihood for things to go wrong! B'Elanna, who increasingly comes across as a killjoy whenever we see her these days, points out that they pushed the limits of holo-technology, and it pushed back, which was fair comment!

I was really expecting, and hoping, that when they took Michael out to try and determine the problem (interestingly using Holodeck 2 as a lab in which to fix things as the program was kept running in Holodeck 1 - although a bit inconvenient if someone on the crew had no interest in Irish culture and wanted to play in their own program!), they'd discover the malfunctions stemmed from Janeway's own tinkering with his program to change him more to her tastes, as we saw in 'Fair Haven.' Sadly we can't put it down to that as all the characters are affected, but it would have been a fun twist, and perhaps a little bit of a jab at her for wanting things to be just right for her! There is a bit of that romantic side to it again, but actually it's the scenes where she's showing Michael her ship that mean the most. As for Harry Kim, you'd think he'd have learned his lesson in 'Alter Ego'! I know, in that she turned out to be an alien posing as a holo-character, but even so, will Kim ever learn? He's the Geordi La Forge of 'Voyager' in that respect - maybe in a few years' time they'll ask him back to reprise the role and he'll demand Kim has a family with children as recompense for how he was 'treated' on the series...

It's sort of a Harry and Tom episode, but actually it's a bit closer to an ensemble, although because the Irish characters are given a sizeable portion of scenes it serves to make the lesser used main cast appear to have been more involved than they were because they aren't being shown up by the focus on other characters quite as much - Tuvok, Chakotay, Neelix, Seven and B'Elanna are rarely seen, but even the featured ones, Tom, Harry, Janeway and the Doctor, aren't in it as much as they would normally be. It's good that Seven takes a back seat, but at the same time we're still getting a lot of Janeway and the Doctor, which is how the series would tend to go, and of course they do steal scenes, based either on their sheer presence (Janeway, even in her period dress (and the return of the hair bun!), exudes authority in Engineering, which just goes to show, for those with real strength of will, it doesn't matter what they're wearing, clothes maketh not the man... Or starship Captain!), or exuberant performance (the Doctor sinks his teeth into the part of spiritual leader with gusto as only the Doctor would, although it does tend to exacerbate the stereotype of the church leader in a negative way, which is unfortunate, but then it is a story all about stereotypes so we can't complain too much! When Seamus claims a Father isn't going to listen to talk of the supernatural he seems to be forgetting that's the thing which a Father is going to talk about most, there isn't the distinction between good supernatural, as in that from God, and that forbidden by God, which isn't great commentary, but that's what you get when it's written by heathens!).

It's just tough that the other cast don't have the unique characteristics to compete, or that the writers found it as easy to gravitate towards, and I'd say B'Elanna in particular has suffered this season, with perhaps Neelix second, though as I've stated a few times, in general I've been surprised how much more balanced the season has been. I wouldn't say I enjoy this episode as much as I used to, perhaps some of that can be attributed to my disinterest in the program - I never liked it in the way I did the Paxau Resort or Sandrine's, or even the Burleigh stuff early Janeway got involved in, and a big part of that is that those others always had some memorable episode in which this already established setting was used to the full ('Alter Ego' and 'Persistence of Vision' come readily to mind as great examples, and 'Twisted' might go in that category, too). If they had brought the scenario back, and there was no reason why they couldn't, I could see it being a recurring locale, but because it was full of very specific characters that had specific interactions with certain crew-members, it would be harder to justify crew just having a social occasion there without wondering where the progression of the holo-characters had gone. It's also entirely possible they felt they'd done as much as they could with it - so annoying there's no detailed companion book that goes into these production decisions as the 'DS9' one was so good at doing for every single episode. But this was fun, and I'm sure all involved saw it as a chance to freshen things up, be it the Composer, the Director, or anyone else involved. That doesn't always translate into a good experience for viewers, but in this case it did. Other than some characters returning to their roles from the first episode, the only names of note are Richard Riehle in his last 'Voyager' role (he'd be back for 'Enterprise'), and Ian Abercrombie (Milo), who was the Abbot in 'Someone to Watch Over Me.'

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