2.8 — “Persistence of Vision”
Plot: Under doctor’s orders to reduce stress, Janeway returns to her Gothic holonovel. But scenes from the holonovel start following her around the ship. An encounter with a new species, the Bothans, turns deadly as hallucinations similar to what Janeway is experiencing spread to the rest of the crew.
Thoughts: I like Janeway when she’s annoyed. It’s a simple pleasure. So I enjoyed the opening act. The scenes in her holonovel, a pastiche of Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, seem more justified than earlier appearances, less like a gratuitous effort to feminize the character.
But after this it’s all downhill, as stuff from the holodeck starts manifesting in real life and the episode just turns into stuff we’ve seen before. Either the Captain’s going crazy, or the Holodeck is trying to kill everyone, or… yes, another psionic attack like so many episodes of TNG.
Even the doctor ordering the Captain to take shore leave is familiar scene from “Shore Leave” and “Captain’s Holiday.”
Of note, we see Tuvok’s wife for the first time and catch B’Elanna crushing on Chakotay, although [spoiler] apparently this will never be mentioned again. Probably a good choice.
According to Memory Alpha, part of the impetus of the story was to let Janeway “resolve” her feelings towards her husband, so that writers could pair her up in various love stories in future episodes. Sigh. If this is a direction the character wants to move, knowing she’s 70 years from home, why not just address it frankly? And acknowledge she’s an adult? Rather than make a big deal out of the banal normality of enjoying a romance novel by suggesting it is tantamount to a thought crime of infidelity. I can’t even parse this logic.
2 out of 5 tiny EMHs.
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