4.23 living witness

Janeway has short hair and wears black gloves, and she’s ruthless about making deals and wiping out other races. What’s going on? We are viewing a simulation inside an alien museum, 700 years after the fact, recreated from fossils and hearsay. Chakotay has half a face full of tattoo, the doctor is an android with spooky eyes, Kim brutally beats people, Tuvok smiles eerily and has very pointed ears, and Paris…well, he looks exactly the same. And Voyager itself has huge cannons and is referred to as a ‘warship’, and is blamed for starting the war between the Kiryans and the Vasquans, and of wiping out thousands of people. One of the relics discovered is data, a data stream, an optical data stream – the backup EMH. He is appalled to find out how Voyager has been portrayed, and also that he is accused of being a war criminal. He creates a holographic simulation of his own, which throws the entire planet into civil war. Wanting to end the conflict, he asks the museum curator to deactivate him, but the curator believes the truth is more important, that the truth will liberate the people, and they agree to keep working to get it heard. We cut to see that we are once again viewing a simulation, that some time has passed, and that peace has been achieved between the two races because of the doctor’s efforts.

A fantastic episode, with great twists, and it’s fun to see the crew looking and acting different. Paris calls Neelix a ‘hedgehog’, too.

Memorable Quotable Quotes:

"These aren’t the people I remember! No one behaved like this!.....well, aside from Mr. Paris." – The Doctor

Nits:

This is another unusual museum where the lead scientist also conducts the museum tours, much like marine biologist Dr Gillian Taylor did in the movie Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home.

When the doctor is reactivated, he says that only a day has passed since he saw the crew and experienced the events surrounding the Vasquan/Kiryan war. Yet a couple of scenes later, when he is trying to remember what happened at a senior officers meeting, he seems to have to think very hard, as if it happened a long time ago.