LogFAQs > #934159283

7. The Doctor
Please state the nature of the screenwriting emergency Terrible characters, hm? Let me fix that right up.

The Doctor is the only thing holding Voyager together. There, I said. Seven is great and all, but shes a little too weird. The Doctor has the perfect mix of eclectic traits, undeserved ego, and competent acting to make Voyager watchable. The first two seasons in particular, man, he is the only thing that makes some of it bearable.

Someone on Voyagers writing staff must have said: You know how Data is Spock in reverse? What if we did Data in reverse? And instead of making Spock, they got the Doctor. Data is designed to be an emotionless android who will find his own path, and decides that he wants to become human. Hes unfailingly polite and always does the moral thing. The Doctor is a slightly malfunctioning program designed to do one thing, but develops a personality mostly by accident, realizes hes the glue holding the ship together, and lets it go to his head. Hes rude and only mostly does the right thing. Data has the support of his entire ship; the Doctor has to prove to everyone that hes a living being, too. Its such a clever turnaround that it makes me wonder how intentional it is, because boy oh boy is the rest of the show not clever at all.

Theres a good rule of thumb to determine if a Voyager episode is good or not: does it star the Doctor, Seven, or both? Then its a good one. Does it not? Then its probably bad. And even the non-Doctor episodes are still made better by his appearances. Every human character was instructed to act stilted, Tuvok is a Vulcan, and the other aliens are just bad characters, which leaves the Doctor and Seven to pull all of the weight, and they do. Its kind of amazing.

I mean, yes, it also helps that the Doctor gets almost all of the good ideas for episodes. Hologram recreation of Doctor Mengele can help you save a friend, but are you willing to use his knowledge? Your daydreams of commanding the ship are intercepted by an alien who thinks you actually lead the ship, so can you bluff him by actually leading the ship? You were sent to an experimental super starship in the Federation being attacked by Romulans, can you figure out the controls on the fly? Your mild singing skills impress a race of aliens who dont know about music, so they invite you to be their greatest star, but then just program another hologram thats better than you, so you have to go back to Voyager and admit you were stupid. All of the weird sci-fi ideas were channeled into the Doctor, and thank God for that. Id rather have one interesting character and four boring ones that five slightly less boring ones.

It also helps that the Doctors grating, egotistical personality makes him easy to play off of any other character. Character X says something, the Doctor takes it as a compliment to his amazing skills, Character X has to tolerate the Doctor acting all self-satisfied, unless its Janeway, who just tells him to shut up. Even boring Voyager characters can still make that work.

Now that I think about it, there isnt a single bad bald character in Star Trek. Picard, Sisko, and the Doctor. We can count Kirk, too, but I dont think William Shatner will appreciate that.

And with that, I've finished all the Voyager characters.

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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005