Body and Soul (2)

 DVD, Voyager S7 (Body and Soul) (2)

Companionship, of all the morals and messages of this story, may be the most important, despite this being in many ways an issue-driven episode that packs in some rather sensitive subjects, it was Seven's thoughtful friendship with the Doctor that had the biggest impact coming right at the end when she attempts to sympathise with living in his 'skin,' unable to experience the many experiences and delights organic form allows us, a touching conclusion as they 'share' a meal by Seven explaining the experiences to include him, and while it may seem small comfort to someone unable to taste and smell, it was the best gift she could have given him, a symbol of understanding between them. So all's well between them after the Doctor couldn't help himself in exploring the opportunity of the senses provided by his enforced incarceration within Seven's implant to escape a hologram-averse race who are fighting a war with 'photonic' insurgents. We don't get a lot of information on how this holographic uprising developed (and it was a theme further explored later this season), but it sounds as if the Lokirrim were much the same level of technological development as the Federation (which doesn't explain how they've never developed the Replicator, which, considering holograms are matter-energy conversion themselves, shouldn't have been missing from their culture, you'd think), using holograms as useful tools, but as we've seen in 'Voyager,' the Doctor became much more than that.

It's true that Starfleet is still in early days of that route of holographic assistance and this 'late' in the time we'd have in the 24th Century it's a shame such ideas hadn't been considered much earlier as it is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down: should artificially created beings have rights? Can they develop a personality unique to themselves? Even so, can they still be considered sentient? If they can be, what does that mean for the Federation's pursuit of such technology, isn't it akin to slavery or would it develop into consensual servanthood instead? So many questions were thrown up by the Doctor's blossoming into such a character across this series, and one more reason to be intrigued and excited  by the possibilities of Voyager's return home, since we'd seen little of the implications in brother-series 'DS9' (some details of the direction Starfleet was going in thanks to 'Dr. Bashir, I Presume'), but alas, we never got to see the fulfilment of so much potential, even if the status of holograms was addressed later in this season. Treks set later avoided going into the issues since Trek became mere action adventure more than anything else, no time in 'Picard' (or 32nd Century-set 'DSC'), to explore such things, though holograms were still used. We can only assume they reached a level where they could program them to be tools and go no further, negating the need for them to develop into beings that required rights, but the details have never been hammered out (probably for the best considering how weak the writing has been on modern Trek in general).

They could have delved into the issue side of the story, but instead they preferred to throw out a comedy - not the kind we'd find in modern Trek which would have dealt with much of this subject matter in a juvenile, lowest common denominator way, but as a showcase for Jeri Ryan, displaying just how great an actress she was. It's strange how many similarities can be seen with this version being run by the Doctor, and the future Seven of 'Picard' - in that future she's learned to become a hard-drinker, somehow getting round the effect alcohol has on Borg physiology (aha, a new way to defeat them: get them drunk!). Then we see her in a rare chance at literally letting her hair down, the same look she'd sport decades later. And of course she has little restraint since the Doctor is expressing himself through her... just like latter-day Seven. Could it be... Is there some sort of conspiracy... Seven in 'Picard' has the Doctor living in her implant again??? It would be a fun theory except for all the un-Doctor-like harshness and wanton violence she enacts on her enemies, as he would have reined her in from such a destructive path. But joking aside, that could explain her extremely different behaviour in 'Picard' if it was to be revealed that another personality were inhabiting her body through her Borg tech, and would make all the horrible things they did with that character go away!

Ryan is really good here, which is why it's hard to understand how little she was able to return to the voice of Seven in recent years (and we never got that reunion with the Doctor, despite both of them acting in modern Trek - the only hope now is that a holographic version of her interacts with him in 'Starfleet Academy,' but I suspect the chances are slim, though the beauty of that situation, the Doc's own pupil returning in his form, would be delicious!), and she does an excellent job of portraying the Doctor's mannerisms, vocal style and all-round attitude. It's entirely believable he'd be unable to resist the temptation to try out the experiences as much as possible, even justifying it for a medical paper on the subject, almost completely forgetting the ethics of using someone else's body, or in Seven's words 'abusing her body'! Not something you'd ever have imagined the character accusing her mentor of! As I said, if this had been 'Lower Decks,' 'SNW' or whatever, they'd have gone down the entirely inappropriate paths with this body swap comedy, to the extreme, but while certain issues crop up, they were dealt with in a mostly adult way, in the good sense of that word rather than the modern sense of being more juvenile and explicit. Trek was meant to be family entertainment, quite far from what it's become to modern viewers, so yes, we get the Doctor being attracted to Trek guest returnee Megan Gallagher's nurse (another nurse!), while still in Seven's body, and quickly realising what's going on and getting a hold of himself quick-smart.

It's just enough to amuse without becoming uncomfortable, the same with the Captain of the Lokirrim ship finding 'Seven' so wonderful and going as far as kissing her, which the Doctor was completely oblivious to, perhaps caught up in the sensory pleasures of seeing and hearing the spatial phenomenon, although since sight and sound is something he experiences normally perhaps he should have been more aware, but he had no inkling what the signs were leading to (perhaps another good little message there for young people?). This could have been the last gender-swapping comedy judging by how the agenda has become a real and frightening possibility in today's world of science that does whatever it chooses because it can, instead of asking real questions about whether it should, except that even 'SNW' has done such a story in the 2020s! I suppose that's a good sign, really, that we can still enjoy the incongruity despite such a worrying move towards taking such ideas seriously, other than in counselling and mental health assistance. But the body swap is a long-standing tradition in entertainment, and even in Trek, so it's lovely to see it played out between two of this series' best characters (even if it's yet again falling into that trap of them being the fountain of story possibility, while others barely get a moment...), and highlights their differences so well. They didn't even have the Doctor say the obvious line about being a doctor, not a spy (though he'd been one before, last season), but I did like him saying Seven would make an excellent hologram, mirroring the Borg Queen when she said Data (or was it Picard, I forget?), will make an excellent drone, and when it's about an ex-drone like Seven that had to have been deliberate!

We learn some interesting insight into Seven's makeup, because according to the Doctor her senses are extremely acute. Of course we're only going on his perspective of not having felt such things before, so not necessarily a guarantee we can take it as said, but he is also a Doctor and well aware of everything in theory, just the reality is something he hasn't encountered. At the same time if he could smell Harry Kim's sweat in that holding cell (in which they're very free with their talk -  they could have been recorded for all they knew!), then Seven must have the nasal sensitivity of a Vulcan - that was especially enjoyable, well before 'Enterprise' revealed the fact Vulcans think human stink and take a nasal numbing agent to get by when around them, we're once again told how a Trek character smells, something you can never get from merely watching! In 'DS9' Worf was said to smell earthy, peaty (with a touch of lilac!), and here Kim smells like something the Doctor considers could be an airborne toxic sent to poison them, while Seven herself apparently smells like a rose! It makes me wonder what other Trek characters smell like... One note on that, though: I was wondering how Harry would be sweating so much when I always had the impression Starfleet uniforms and their futuristic fabrics were able to prevent perspiration, so we might have to speculate that it was malfunctioning (if such a thing were possible), or had been affected by rough handling, or Harry himself was just prone to sweat more under the circumstances (he is the 'senior officer' after all, despite only being an Ensign, although technically the Doctor must have seniority, I'd have thought, especially as it was his mission).

Another issue that cropped up related to Trek tech was Seven getting drunk on alcohol out of the Replicator. At first I thought it was merely a sugar high, the Doctor unused to eating such rich and delicious foods, but the Lokirrim Captain, Ranek, also seemed a little tipsy. So I was pleased when Seven says in the next scene that Synthehol interferes with her Borg implants, therefore it wasn't genuine alcohol after all, preserving the rules of Trek which I love to see being observed. Although, technically Synthehol can make you somewhat drunk, it's just that you have the ability to snap out of it at a moment's notice if you need to, and there are no aftereffects, though I'm not sure that's ever actually been said onscreen and is therefore not necessarily canon (but should be, if it isn't!). It's funny that Seven is disgusted by the Doctor's indulgence, while he describes the pleasure of feeling the prison rations sliding down her oesophagus, something his fellow hologram, Dejaren from 'Revulsion,' would have been utterly disgusted by. It shows that holograms really do have their own personalities, if we didn't already know that (perhaps if Dejaren had been able to stomach food himself he might have turned out entirely differently?). The Doctor loves being organic so much he suggests he should be given a holographic stomach in order to experience eating in future (surely a Bob Picardo suggestion!), but surely that would be a waste of resources Voyager needs, even if it was a temporary use of them, merely to satisfy the Doctor's sensations, since he couldn't gain any nutrition from it.

It might have made more sense for him to simply eat holographic food, that way it could be programmed to react as if it was real, and his 'throat' could be programmed to feel it. That's really the point of holographic technology, to simulate something, so holographic life should be able to feel whatever organic life does since they're simulated as much as their environment. We see a very different use of the holographic (fortunately not graphic...), in the B-story regarding Tuvok going through the Pon Farr (which is never actually named in the episode, but it's clear they know what's going on). It didn't seem as if it would be worthy to be called a B-story at first since it appeared resolved after a couple of scenes once he gets a hologram of his wife (T'Pel's name spoken by him during the ritual, and played by Marva Hicks, the same actress from 'Persistence of Vision' way back in Season 2, Kimber Lee Renay went uncredited portraying her in 'Bliss'), but then we come under attack from another Lokirrim ship and suddenly all Holodecks must be shut down. Tuvok merely returns to his post, little worse for wear, they even resist the urge to have him throw Neelix' pot of soup across the Bridge in parallel with Spock ad Nurse Chapel when the Talaxian thinks he really does have Tarkalean flu (just take Tarkalean tea, obviously!). I was imagining something akin to that scene where Tuvok attacks him in 'Meld,' ironically a holographic scenario Tuvok had devised to help him vent his extreme emotions, but no, he somehow remains steadfastly in control.

The Vulcan mating cycle is a sensitive issue, and we get the sense even here, a century on from when Spock was forced to go through it while aboard a ship full of humans, the most embarrassing place to get it, the race still want privacy. Perhaps Tuvok being a full Vulcan made a difference and he was more intense, but also had more control, but you'd think it would be like a pressure valve: the more pressure, the more steam would need to be let off. In the end it was a little too easy a way of dealing with the situation, though I was surprised how caring and professional Tom Paris was as the ship's deputy medical man, not making jokes as he once would have, having discernment in how to deal with this to preserve Tuvok's dignity among the crew (although perhaps lying to the Captain about his real illness may have been a step too far - for one thing it would have been good to see the old friendship that exists between them which rarely shows itself in these later seasons). At the same time you'd think if Pon Farr is regular as clockwork every seven years every Vulcan would know to the day when it's likely to start, they're accurate like that, and there should surely be a schedule in all Starfleet records regarding them so a Captain would be aware when it'll happen. Not so that the ship has to kowtow to their ways, but so they'd have time to address it for themselves, perhaps a leave of absence pencilled in well in advance. That wouldn't help Tuvok, of course, which is why people were always wondering what would happen when he inevitably went through it.

They could have got around it by saying older Vulcans no longer get this neurological imbalance, or it's a far milder version as they get older, but Tuvok actually confirms the older a Vulcan gets the stronger the urge. In some ways it's a bit disappointing how they dealt with it here, much in the same way T'Pol's Pon Farr was a mere B-story in 'Enterprise.' I suppose to some degree they felt the story had been done in 'TOS' so they only needed to pay reference to it rather than be the star attraction, and 'Voyager' at least had already addressed it through Vorik way back in Season 3 (perhaps one reason Tom stays so sober about the reality of the situation, having seen it firsthand with his now-wife). But I was always under the impression there was a mental side to it, too, since Vulcans are touch-telepaths, something that couldn't be recreated holographically since there would be no mind there. Still, Tuvok doesn't want to talk about it, understandably, so we don't know whether it was the hologram combined with the Doctor's miracle cure plus Vulcan meditation that all worked together to pull him through. It does seem a little hard to believe the Doctor would be able to create something that solved an age-old Vulcan problem - with this Vulcans will no longer have that mating urge to return home, which could in turn have dire consequences for their race's propagation. That being said, modern Trek (and I'd have to admit 'Enterprise' being largely responsible for it, too), has shown Vulcans to be as promiscuous and out of control when it comes to physical interactions as any human, helping to ruin what made the race special (and what's more, destroying all semblance of Spock as a character, disastrously, merely to make him more accessible by today's immorality).

I will say I felt the whole Vulcan thing was dealt with delicately, conscious of this being a family series (even though they'd gone into much more explicit territory in 'Blood Fever'!), talking of the breaking of wedding vows and whether Holodeck recreation could be considered immoral, basically, something I can't imagine the values of modern America reflecting favourably as seen in modern Trek or TV generally. So quite the litany of issues explored or dealt with in what was really a comedic episode, which is impressive. The Doctor even turns the Lokirrim ship upon which he'd been captive into a love boat, helping to nudge the Captain and nurse along. They were quite good characters, Gallagher always plays a greater depth in the Trek roles she's had, both prior ones being a bit more memorable in 'DS9' (the girlfriend of John Glover in 'Invasive Procedures' and another nurse and girlfriend in 1940s Earth of 'Little Green Men'), but this was sadly her final role in Trek. Her Captain was also played by a 'DS9' actor, Fritz Sperberg (a Jem'Hadar in 'One Little Ship'), not to be confused with the great Fritz Weaver, one of the best guest actors in 'DS9,' or Herschel Sparber the Federation President also in that series! A society that has a hatred for the photonic lifeforms wasn't new ('Counterpoint' has one example), but that they'd turned on them out of a place in society was different and I'd have liked to have gone into that in more detail, though the nature of the series was that they were always moving on, sadly.

Other characters don't get a lot to do, even Harry is mostly banged up in the cell, but what about poor Chakotay, relegated to sitting in the First Officer position with about one line (no wonder Beltran became so disenchanted with his role, but then I suppose the emasculation of the male lead is the price they were willing to pay for a female Captain, as good as Janeway was). Janeway demonstrates the art of bluffing when she threatens to destroy the initial Lokirrim ship, being in the fortunate and rare position of having the more powerful vessel - one case when no advance reputation of the Federation and its peaceful ways was an advantage since the aliens didn't know she wouldn't carry out such a threat, and indeed, merely disables them when the time comes. You know she means business when she says she'll disable the second ship if she has to as that is much more likely. This then turns into the Captain trying to overload his ship's power, or something, and only succeeds in giving himself an injury leading to the Doctor showing that his kind can be compassionate too as his medical instincts mean he won't leave until he's helped the injured man, despite them being his captors, a shining example of true Christian behaviour. It was interesting to me at the start of the episode (which began with a comet streaking by that made me think it could almost be an episode of 'DS9'!), that despite talking up his excitement over the nutty evolutionary process, he also calls it 'the miracle of creation' in the same speech, so even within an entertainment property with such a biased worldview, it's amazing they can't help but talk truth!

One other thing that impressed me was the idea that Seven insists on denying herself in the Doctor's eyes. With all these sensations and feelings around her, she continues to act more like a Vulcan (another very self-denying race), and I felt that was a strong message, something run roughshod over by the 'Picard' writers all those years later, and yet here Seven seems so much happier and contented having found her place and role. The Doctor doesn't have the chance to do anything but deny himself because he can't have the sensations his organic crew-mates do, but he always manages to do as much as possible and it's never enough, be that opera singing or mooning over lost love. Perhaps somewhere in between Seven and the Doctor lies the sweet spot of being able to enjoy life and yet know what's most important, to enjoy without indulgence, to have self control, but also be able to let the hair down. I don't know if it was intentional, but even in the teaser when Seven is acting herself she's become a lot more familiar and comfortable in herself, joking with Kim about the Doctor, so that the transition, while still wild, isn't quite as jarring. And she'd go on becoming more naturalistic towards the end of the series, so I wonder if the lessons learned here contributed to that. For a comedy they did a fine job of tucking in a lot of solid stuff, and I'd completely forgotten while watching it that Robert Duncan McNeill was directing, the mark of a good Director, and no surprise he went on to direct as a career (though oddly never directed more Trek after 'Enterprise').

****