Jammersreviews

Warning: Spoilers teem below for Voyager's "Spirit Folk."


Nutshell: Bad. A contrived, ill-conceived premise featuring virtually every
holodeck cliche in the book.

Plot description: A holodeck malfunction causes the characters in the Fair
Haven simulation to become more aware of their surroundings than they should
be.

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Star Trek: Voyager -- "Spirit Folk"

Airdate: 2/23/2000 (USA)
Written by Bryan Fuller
Directed by David Livingston

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
Rating out of 4: *

"They're not people, they're holograms." -- Seven, a reasonable sentiment
falling upon deaf ears
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I do not like the village of Fair Haven. The premise is taking the idea of
the holodeck way too far--to an apparent point of no return. If this episode
constitutes sci-fi imagination, it's imagination abuse. The rules are
arbitrary and absurd and the game is played by players who come off looking
like complete idiots.

Problems on the holodeck became a cliche on TNG, and now it's become an
bercliche on Voyager. In the past I've made it a position regarding
stock-issue holograms that perhaps doesn't allow for a particularly flexible
open mind for this week's installment, which might as well be called "Fair
Haven, Part II." Well, too bad. I need to establish some sort of standard to
measure reality. And each use of the holodeck on Voyager seems to get
increasingly egregious.

The gist of the story is this: The Fair Haven program, which has been
running 24 hours a day, begins to malfunction, which causes its fictional
programmed residents to begin "noticing" things they shouldn't. For example,
when Paris calls to the computer to fix the tire on the automobile he has
just run headlong into a tower of barrels, Fair Haven standby Seamus
(Richard Riehle) hears the computer voice answer and witnesses the tire
magically repaired, and thus believes Paris has harnessed some sort of
spiritual/magical power.

From here, the episode is essentially one ridiculous holodeck gimmick after
another, with some would-be Important Human Themes thrown into the mix,
though they're lost in a sea of implausible madness. But before the madness
we first get the extended setup, which suffers from entirely too much
nonessential dialog. There are discussions that go on and on and seem never
to end. Most of these dialog scenes are solely between holodeck characters,
and I kept asking myself: Who cares? These are "people" I have no interest
in whatsoever. The episode spends so much time on scenes between the Fair
Haven residents (discussing the plot in overly obvious ways that are
redundant and unnecessary) that the main characters almost seem like an
afterthought. Do so many viewers really like the Fair Haven folks that we
need to spend so much time on them?

For that matter, the idea of holograms sitting around a bar and debating
each other about things they shouldn't be aware of strikes me as silly,
whether it's a malfunction or not. Yes, the holodeck as Trek has conceived
it is an implausible fantasy in any case, but when the focus goes completely
away from the real characters and alleges that holograms routinely think and
argue on their own accord outside the presence of real participants, it's
coming dangerously close to a situation where we have no choice but to
either dismiss the idea completely or wonder if we're dealing with a bunch
of programmed slaves. Nope--I'm with Seven: The writers need to clue into
the fact that these *aren't* people. They're *simulations*. It's been a huge
mistake for the writers to implicitly allege that Doc is the same as a
holodeck character. It was a mistake in "Concerning Flight," it was a
mistake in "Nothing Human," it was a mistake in "Fair Haven," and it's a
colossal mistake here. Holograms as artificial lifeforms should be the rare
exception to the rule caused by a freak happenstance, like the Moriarty
character from TNG's "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle" (from
which this episode unsuccessfully rehashes its share).

The contrivances in this episode are so blatant and pervasive that it seems
almost as if staff writer Bryan Fuller was hoping we'd go with the flow and
not care that the characters would have to be utter morons not to take the
simple actions that would avoid these problems entirely. I'm not willing to
simply go with that flow.

Let's start with the "Tom"foolery (lame pun fully intended). Tom comes off
as a loser with no life, turning Harry's would-be holo-girlfriend into a cow
just as he's about to kiss her. This attempt at humor succeeds only in
making the characters look foolish. (I'm with Harry: "Haven't you got
anything better to do?!" Unfortunately, the delivery of the line is as
half-hearted as the joke.) What, is Tom 35 years old or 12? And can we
dispense already with the concept of romantic liaisons with holographic
characters?

The cow incident is witnessed by, again, Seamus, who goes talking to the
people of Fair Haven about Tom as one of the dangerous "spirit folk" and the
apparent impending gloom and doom destined for the town. Later, when the
girl is de-cowified, we have to endure her description of being a cow,
something which again makes me wonder about the can of worms that is the
holodeck: Are the memories of these "photons and forcefields" transferred
from one holodeck subprogram to another? If someone conjured a new
character, might it then remember that it was once a representation of a
rock? Some torture it might be, to be a rock.

It turns out that the non-stop use of the holodeck has led to the failure of
a subroutine that prevents characters from attaining this level of
awareness. This is a deeply flawed idea. It goes against everything
conventional wisdom has taught us about holo-characters (that is, they're
simulations--not learning, adapting people who comprehend everything going
on around them).

Things turn truly ridiculous once this malfunction is discovered, which
happens when Kim and Paris transfer the captain's Fair Haven boyfriend,
Michael Sullivan (Fintan McKeown), to the holodeck lab so they can study the
problem. At this point, Michael becomes fully aware he has been removed from
Fair Haven. Kim and Paris discover the malfunction in the subroutine and
send him back. They report the problem to the captain. But then what? Does
the crew shut down the holodeck? Suspend the program to prevent it from
further damaging itself? Nope. They just let it run on, even though nobody's
using it. And run on it does, as Michael explains to the other
holo-characters where he has been, leading the holodeck town to plot a
revolt against these suspicious outsiders. How stupid is the crew to know
there's a malfunction, voice out loud that they hope it doesn't spread, and
not bother to simply *shut down the holodeck* until the problem is fixed? My
motto is that if your contrivance has to make your characters do blatantly
stupid things, it's a bad contrivance. The whole second half of the episode
wouldn't be possible if the crew displayed a shred of competence.

The contrivance-cliches continue on: To fix the problem, Tom and Harry go
into the holodeck to run some technobabble computer whatever-the-hell. Of
course, this has to be done while the program is still running *and* after
the townspeople have come to the conclusion that the outsiders are dangerous
and something must be done about them. Well, no points for guessing that the
holodeck safeties get disabled in the process. The way it happens is
simultaneously laughable and infuriating, and reveals the depths of how far
this episode allows itself to reach into the holodeck bag-o-tricks. The
holo-characters throw a net over Tom and Harry, and shoot a computer console
with a shotgun. This shouldn't be remotely possible. (1) If the safeties are
on, how can bullets destroy the computer console? (2) Why would destroying
the computer console just automatically disable the safeties? (How very
nice.) (3) Why can't Paris yell out "Computer, freeze program!" rather than
telling the holo-character not to shoot? (This episode makes one want to
scream at the characters not to be so bone-headed.)

So Kim and Paris are held captive on the holodeck, with the safeties off of
course, and now the crew has to figure out how to rescue them.

Through all of this, Torres seems to be the lone--and futile--voice of
reason. She points out that the holodeck can be reprogrammed, so the crew
should just pull the plug. This will reset the program, but at least Tom and
Harry's safety would be guaranteed. Janeway responds that even if they
aren't real, the crew's emotional attachment to the characters are, and
another solution should be found. 'Scuse me? So we're going to risk the
lives of two crew members in order to save a holodeck program? What kind of
sick prioritizing is this? If this isn't proof of the dangers of holographic
attachment, then I don't know what is.

Janeway decides to send Doc (as his overplayed preacher character) into the
holodeck to reason with the Fair Haven folks. This plan promptly fails and
looks to be getting the crew into an even worse position, and I'm finding
myself thinking, just how incompetent *are* these people? Subsequently we
have Michael using Doc's portable emitter, which gets him beamed aboard
Voyager, which is the sole potentially interesting sci-fi idea in the story,
except for the fact that it arises out of a situation that's such a
contrived mess that by this point we simply don't care.

Using Michael as the way to bridge the gap between "us" and "them," Janeway
walks into the holodeck and hammers out one of those humanistic solutions
that's heavy on the trademarked Trekkian dialog ... and if I sound lazy and
cynical about the synopsis at this point, it's because it's such a tiring
story to watch unfold (and to explain). Janeway's
we-can-overcome-our-fears-and-all-get-along solution is met with a shot of a
bunch of Fair Haven folks, and the music swells as they look, smiling, at
one other in a moment of understanding assent. Frankly, it's hard to watch
this with a straight face. Was I suddenly beamed into an after-school
special?

And at the end, Janeway decides not to erase the memories of the characters.
So now the people of Fair Haven believe that the Voyager crew is a group of
space travelers from the future. Well, wonderful. But what's to stop them
from blowing away the holodeck controls again? And if the malfunction
regarding their expanded awareness is repaired, how can this new knowledge
be something that registers with them? None of this has any useful
sensibility.

I'm of the opinion that the best use of the holodeck is in a situation that
allows the participants (i.e., our regular characters) to have fun, while
the comedy or drama reveals something worthwhile about them. But instead we
get the holodeck taking itself and our characters hostage. Here, our
characters are once again faceless (and often stupid) pawns in a
preposterous plot. Like too many Voyager offerings, we don't learn anything
about them; they remain a means to an end, to drive the plot forward and
nothing more.

It's an episode like this that makes me want the holodeck destroyed so we
can deal with real issues (or at the very least real characters and sci-fi
plots) in the real world. If Torres didn't have to answer to a captain whose
boyfriend lived in the holo-town, I'd recommend that, for everyone's own
good, she secretly program a surprise air strike upon the quaint little
village of Fair Haven, and reduce it to a pile of smoldering cinders. Now
there's a thought. Not the nicest one, perhaps, but an honest and satisfying
one. Maybe then the crew could grieve, get over Fair Haven, and move on.

--
Next week: A la "Latent Image," we get the invented backstory of another
dead crew member whom we'd never known about. And this one even comes back
to life.

Note: By strange coincidence, this week's episode of "The X-Files" was also
essentially a holodeck malfunction story. I guess no horribly implausible
idea isn't worth being ripped off numerous times. (And frankly, I'm
convinced the "X-Files" episode was even worse.)

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Copyright (c) 2000 by Jamahl Epsicokhan, all rights reserved. Unauthorized
reproduction or distribution of this article is prohibited.

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