star trek voyager living witness dailymotion

Living Witness (episode)

• View history
• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Memorable quotes
• 3.1 Story and script
• 3.2 Cast and characters
• 3.3 Sets and props
• 3.4 Production
• 3.5 Visual effects
• 3.6.1 Dating
• 3.6.2 Dating of Voyager 's encounter with the Kyrians
• 3.6.3 The Doctor's backup copy
• 3.7 Reception
• 3.8 Video and DVD releases
• 4.1 Starring
• 4.2 Also Starring
• 4.3 Guest Stars
• 4.4 Co-Stars
• 4.5 Uncredited Co-Stars
• 4.6 Stand-ins
• 4.7 References
• 4.8 External links

Summary [ ]

Captain Janeway , sporting uncharacteristically short hair and black gloves, negotiates with Vaskan ambassador Daleth about fighting a war with their Kyrian neighbors. She indicates that she sees all the benefits for him, but doesn't see how it helps her at all. The ambassador explains that they know of a cyclic wormhole nearby; they can give her the coordinates and tell her how to stabilize it.

Janeway agrees and then the ship shakes. They emerge onto the bridge and Janeway demands a situation report. Neelix , at ops and in a gold Starfleet uniform, reports they are under attack by Kyrians. Janeway begins ordering use of biogenic weapons on the population. Daleth objects, saying the people themselves are innocent and they're only concerned with the leader, Tedran , but Janeway insists it's the best way to bring him down. Implemented by The Doctor , appearing to be an android , informs Janeway that he has finished integrating the biogenic weapon with the ship's phasers. Janeway orders the ship to fire.

This is all a simulation, being viewed from a window into a room clearly not from Voyager . It is a museum , the Museum of Kyrian Heritage . An older Kyrian, Quarren , explains to a group of Kyrians and Vaskans how the " warship Voyager " visited seven hundred years ago and had a lasting impact on them, even to their day.

Act One [ ]

In the holographic simulation, Janeway orders an attack on the planet

One of the guests becomes curious and starts asking questions about Voyager and its impact on the area. Quarren admits they are uncertain about a lot of things, but he is certain the ship impacted many worlds and "assimilated" other species to serve on the ship of about 300 soldiers. Voyager 's behavior and impact will be explained in more detail in the rest of the simulation. Back in the simulation, Janeway is impatient on the slowly-increasing death toll and they fire on the planet and Tuvok reports a death toll in the thousands, promising it will climb to several hundred thousand within an hour. Daleth objects again, and Janeway insists that he'll keep up his end of the bargain and detains him.

Janeway then focuses on locating the Kyrian leader, Tedran. Again in sickbay, 'Lieutenant' Kim and Chakotay (sporting a highly inaccurate tattoo , and whose name is pronounced "Chako-tay") are interrogating a Kyrian using beatings and, eventually, a painful toxin. Chakotay soon informs the Captain they know where Tedran is, and leads an assault team to retrieve him.

Another alert sounds and Mr. Paris reports that a boarding party has infiltrated engineering and erected force fields. Janeway initiates a "Borg activation sequence". A fully Borg Seven of Nine activates in cargo bay two along with three other drones. They transport into engineering and subdue the invaders. Janeway instructs her to assimilate the surviving two.

Janeway then meets the captive Tedran and an associate in a room on the ship and ends up executing both personally when they won't surrender. Tedran challenges Janeway for destroying their home so they can get to theirs, and Daleth for involving them when they could have resolved the situation peacefully.

Back in the museum, Quarren encourages his guests to remember the story of how Voyager 's intervention brought the Vaskans to power, and to look around the rest of the museum.

Act Two [ ]

While guests are looking around the museum, one of the Vaskans angrily questions the story's validity, taking issue with the portrayal of his species. Quarren informs him that the evidence has been examined carefully, and, furthermore, a data storage device, buried nine meters beneath the ruins of Kesef and that came from Voyager , has been recently uncovered. The device might contain personal logs or other proof directly from Voyager .

Later that night, Quarren begins a dictation describing how he's had trouble accessing the data on the storage device and is going to try to use tools from the simulation on the device because they might be more compatible. He ends up successfully accessing The Doctor 's program; the data source is actually a backup copy of the EMH .

The Doctor is immediately confused about being in engineering without his mobile emitter, and the presence of a Kyrian. He tries to warn the rest of the ship. Slowly, Quarren tries to explain that it's a simulation, and that 700 years have passed, give or take a decade, but The Doctor refuses to accept it, until he runs out of engineering into the museum and is faced with reality.

Act Three [ ]

The Doctor comes to grips with the new time he's in, looking at the artifacts around him. He starts looking over information and becomes more and more upset. Quarren informs him that he's a great source of data, but that in his culture artificial life forms are held responsible for their actions, so he may have to stand trial for war crimes. The Doctor is outraged at the implication that he is culpable and at the portrayal of Voyager as a warship. Quarren says they drew reasonable conclusions based on the evidence, but The Doctor points out that the fact they believed Voyager was trying to get home to Mars rather than Earth only highlights the problem.

Quarren offers to show The Doctor the full recreation and he can judge for himself. They watch a scene in Voyager 's briefing room where the senior staff argue over plans for winning the war until it degenerates into a fistfight Janeway has to break up with a phaser blast.

The Doctor is horrified, explaining that no one (except maybe Mr. Paris ) behaved that way. Once they get to the execution scene, The Doctor challenges Quarren by pointing out that the Kyrians are portrayed very favorably and Tedran a martyr when in reality he was the leader of a group of Kyrians that launched an unprovoked attack on Voyager , suggesting the whole thing is nothing but revisionist history. Quarren angrily dismisses The Doctor's interpretations, telling him that since the great war between the Kyrians and the Vaskans his race has been oppressed and that's all the evidence he needs. He then deactivates The Doctor's program.

Act Four [ ]

After taking some time to think, Quarren admits to himself that the fact The Doctor is a hologram when they thought he was an android is indisputable, and may cast the rest of their interpretation into doubt. He reactivates The Doctor's program and, after a little arguing, he allows The Doctor to create his own holographic version of events.

The Doctor creates another simulation of Voyager 's encounter with the Kyrians. The scene in Janeway's ready room describes a negotiation with Daleth for dilithium in exchange for medical supplies, but just as they are about to seal the deal, the ship is boarded by a Kyrian raiding party. Security responds in engineering, but the Kyrians have already killed three engineering crewmen and take Seven of Nine and another crewman hostage. They move to deck two and Janeway, The Doctor, and Daleth work with the security team to corner the Kyrians, including Tedran, in the mess hall . Once there, security manages to subdue the Kyrians, but not before Daleth takes advantage of the confusion and shoots Tedran, killing him.

When the simulation ends, The Doctor, Quarren, and three representatives, two Vaskan, one Kyrian, are shown to have been watching. The Doctor, presenting the simulation as proof that Voyager was not responsible for Tedran's death, condemns the murder as " a tragic, needless death ". The Kyrian representative dismisses The Doctor's recreation as pure fiction and lies to save him from the charges against him, but the Vaskans are more open to his interpretation since they have always been painted as the aggressive race that started the war between their people. The Kyrian representative demands hard proof, and The Doctor says the medical tricorder they have in the museum is the same one he used to scan Tedran; if they can get it working, he can prove Tedran was killed by a Vaskan weapon and not a Starfleet phaser . The Vaskans approve Quarran's investigation, while the Kyrian opposes it and promises to see The Doctor pay for his 'crimes'.

The Doctor and Quarren begin working on the tricorder and reminisce about The Doctor's experiences on Voyager and Quarren's fascination with it. In the middle of their musings, however, a mob storms the museum and begins destroying the displays and artifacts, angry that they've been told lies about how the war started.

Act Five [ ]

Quarren and The Doctor take cover as the mob destroys everything. Furthermore, they lose the tricorder in the riot. The next day, as they look for it, Quarren explains to The Doctor that the new revelations have snapped the tension that has been steadily building between the Kyrians and the Vaskans over the previous hundreds of years. While the Vaskans are keen to hear his side, the Kyrians are very angry over The Doctor's version of events which paint them in a more negative light. There's even talk of another war brewing between them. The Doctor states that he should be shut down, because as an EMH he is obliged to help people, and his continued presence is causing riots and intense anger among both races and points out that what really happened is open to interpretation. Quarren refutes his argument, as The Doctor was there at the events and no one should deny what he saw. The Doctor initially refuses to remain, telling him that for hundreds of years Tedran was a martyr to his people and he doesn't have the right to take that away. Quarran angrily tells The Doctor that history itself has been abused, and all the Kyrians and Vaskans have done since then is blame each other for what happened in the past. Unless the story of what really happened is set right, the constant fighting and pressure could continue for centuries. The Doctor relents, and they continue to look for the tricorder.

Not forgotten

Further into the future, a group of Kyrians and Vaskans stand around a viewscreen, watching these events unfold. Another tour guide explains how this was a turning point in their peoples' history, and how it finally brought about equality between the Kyrians and the Vaskans. Quarren died six years later, long enough to see the beginning of the peace he helped create. The Doctor became Surgical Chancellor of the united races for many years, before leaving in a small craft to trace Voyager 's path back to the Alpha Quadrant , claiming to have " a longing for home ".

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Why do you always keep me waiting, Tuvok? "

" Even today, seven hundred years later, we are still feeling the impact of the Voyager encounter. "

" Captain, don't you think that's excessive? " " You picked a bad time to have second thoughts, ambassador. " " I want them defeated, but… but this is genocide. " " Defeat? Genocide? Why quibble with semantics? "

" Don't look so shocked, ambassador. This is what you wanted, isn't it? "

" What's going to happen to me now? Will you put me on display? The holographic Rip van Winkle? "

"Voyager wasn't a warship! We were explorers! " " Yes, I know. Trying to get home, to Mars. " "Earth ! You see, you couldn't even get that right! "

" You have a better idea, lieutenant? " " As a matter of fact, I do. Fighter shuttles – a direct assault. " " Led by you? Good luck. " " Watch your mouth, hedgehog! "

" Pure fiction. This is absurd. " " Halt re-creation. This is a reasonable extrapolation from historic record. But if you'd like to point out any inconsistencies… " " Inconsistencies? I don't know where to begin. Granted, this looks like the briefing room, but these aren't the people I knew! No one behaved like this… well, aside from Mr. Paris. "

" Somewhere – halfway across the galaxy, I hope – Captain Janeway is spinning in her grave. "

" You've portrayed us as monsters: the captain is a cold-blooded killer, the crew is a gang of thugs and I am a mass-murderer. "

" I'll go first, captain, and draw any fire if need be. " " Your crew is heroic, captain… " " I just happen to be invulnerable to phaser fire – but I appreciate the compliment. "

" For your information, I don't appreciate being deactivated in the middle of a sentence. It brings back… unpleasant memories. "

" You miss them, don't you? " " B'Elanna Torres… intelligent, beautiful, and with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Horsehead Nebula. "

" Please state the nature of the medical – oh… it's you. "

" From my perspective, I saw them all only a few days ago. But in fact, it's been centuries. And I'll never see them again. Did they ever reach home? I wonder. "

Background information [ ]

Story and script [ ].

• This episode proceeded from a story pitch by Rob DeBorde , former writing partner of teleplay co-writer Bryan Fuller . " He had The Doctor reactivated in the future, realizing that he was responsible for an artificial intelligence movement and having them be accepted as living beings, as members of society, " Fuller said of the original plot concept. ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 )
• Bryan Fuller, Brannon Braga , and Joe Menosky then worked on DeBorde's story idea, deciding to change The Doctor's predicament. " We [initially] felt that was a little too close to Data , " Fuller recalled. ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 )
• The idea of The Doctor in a futuristic museum was one of the episode's earliest plot points. Joe Menosky commented, " All we really had going into this story was the very powerful, very compelling image of The Doctor in a museum in the future. " An aspect that needed to be addressed, however, was the museum's location. " For a while we thought it was in the Alpha Quadrant , " Menosky recollected. " Was it a Romulan museum? A Klingon museum? We didn't know. " Executive producer Rick Berman was involved in settling this issue. Menosky remarked, " I think it might have been Rick Berman who said, 'No, it's got to be in Delta , it's got to be an alien museum,' for the very good reason that he didn't want to let it be known that Voyager had successfully gotten home. If you've got The Doctor in a museum 700 years from now, there is a good chance that people at that museum know about the fate of Voyager . We just didn't want to have to deal with that. So with Rick's input we realized that it had to be an alien museum. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104)
• Rather than have The Doctor be reactivated to realize that he had influenced artificially intelligent individuals being socially accepted as living beings, the trio of writers decided to have The Doctor's discovery, upon reactivation, be that of an unfortunately misconstrued history. Bryan Fuller remembered, " We took it the other way with the historical revisionism, and that was fun to do. " The revised version of the plot was inspired by the controversial issue of extremists and their reinterpretation of historical facts. ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 ) Commenting on this plot development, Joe Menosky said, " When Bryan was writing the story, we realized that one of the cool issues today is the revolution in thinking about history. What are you doing when you are telling history? Are you just telling a story from the point of view of whoever is telling the history? How you can use history for political ends. How can people want to think about history in a different way to make them feel different about themselves in the present–a very rich lode of ideas. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104) Bryan Fuller felt that Brannon Braga was solely responsible for the act of changing the plot. " On that one, Brannon's responsible for the story completely, as far as reworking Rob's premise, " Fuller maintained, " and the historical revisionism is all Brannon. He wanted to tell that story. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 ) Braga himself said about the episode, " It's [partly] a show about revisionist history, which is a very topical issue. Cultures are taking issue with the way history is portrayed in the books right now, and controversies come out of that. Is the revisionist history accurate? Or is it being done to bolster one's cultural identity in the present? There are no easy answers, and that is one of the issues we try to tap into in that show. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104)
• Joe Menosky enjoyed taking part in writing the characters differently from how they usually were, in scenes such as the one in which conflict breaks out in the warship Voyager 's briefing room. Menosky reminisced, " It was really fun to cut loose with what I call the briefing room brawl. It's a blast to write things like that. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104)
• The episode's final draft script was submitted on 26 January 1998 . [1] It continued to be revised following that date and, on 3 February 1998 , Joe Menosky was writing final script pages for the episode. By the time the lunch interval ended on that day, he had stopped his work on the installment to attend a story break session about the fourth season finale . ( Star Trek: Action! , pp. 10 & 11)
• The shooting script of this episode referred to the Kyrian-envisioned members of Voyager 's crew with the word "revised" before each of their names (for example, "Revised Janeway", "Revised Tuvok", etc.) ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. ? ))

Cast and characters [ ]

• Robert Picardo plays three different versions of The Doctor in this episode, but does not actually play the usual version of that character (i.e., Picardo's normal role in the series). Picardo generally liked this episode, describing it as both "a very interesting show" and "an interesting, classic sort of Star Trek mind-bender episode." ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 86 & 106)
• During the making of the episode, actor/director Tim Russ frequently encountered Robert Picardo's habit of offering suggestions during production. " In some cases, " stated Russ, " I had to say, 'Bob, I can't do it, I've got four or five pages of dialogue and I've got to get out of here in two and a half hours.' But I did allow for extra time in some of the most important scenes. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 24)
• Robert Picardo's performance here was a highlight of the episode for both Tim Russ and visual effects supervisor Mitch Suskin . " Bob Picardo was absolutely amazing! " raved Russ. " Ironically, when he directed his show , I was featured in almost every scene of it, so this time the shoe was on the other foot, and it was really wonderful. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 24) Suskin enthused, " Robert Picardo, as usual, is fabulous to watch for 44 minutes on the show. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)
• Robert Picardo himself was impressed by Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew 's acting in the episode. " Kate is great, Kate is evil, " Picardo said. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)
• Star Trek: Voyager 's regular cast extremely enjoyed playing the collection of malevolent roles that differed from the characters the performers were used to portraying. Robert Picardo (who commented that the evil versions of the characters were "like Hitler and the S.S. ") noted, " It was fun for the actors to do. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 86 & 105) Tim Russ (who regarded this episode as "a chance to see us in a very different light") agreed, " I think for the whole cast, it was fun to be able to behave in an entirely different manner than they normally would […] It was an absolute kick to all of them to do this work. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 102, 104 & 105)
• Tim Russ not only directed this episode but also appeared as his usual character of Tuvok. The actor/director declared of his role, "[ Tuvok] was only on for a short period of time, but in the time that he was on he was different, definitely. You'll definitely see that, no question about it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105)
• Although her character is referenced, Roxann Dawson ( B'Elanna Torres ) does not appear in this episode, as she was recovering from the birth of her daughter, Emma Rose Dawson, who was born on 16 January 1998 . This is the second episode in a row in which she does not appear. Dawson had attended Star Trek 's workshop for budding directors at the same time as Tim Russ but, due to her pregnancy , her chance to direct would not be until the sixth season . ( Beyond the Final Frontier , et al.)

Sets and props [ ]

• Tim Russ was surprised that this episode involved the use of as many as three stages. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 24) While the sets for the warship Voyager were reuses of the normal Voyager sets and were permanently situated on Paramount Stages 8 and 9 , the set for the Museum of Kyrian Heritage – which was built by 9 February 1998 – was located on Paramount Stage 16 , a stage that simultaneously housed the permanent cave set and a set that was under construction for the later fourth season installment " One ". ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 15) Mitch Suskin thought highly of the museum set. " The art department really came up with a set that was phenomenal for this museum of the future, " Suskin remarked. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106) However, Tim Russ was aware of the same set also being "extremely expensive." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 24) Some sets in this episode, including that of the Kyrian museum, were modified and additionally utilized for Star Trek: Insurrection ; the museum set was used as the body enhancement facility aboard Ru'afo's flagship in that film . ( Delta Quadrant , p. 239; The Secrets of Star Trek: Insurrection , p. 117)
• In one of the scenes set in the fictional sickbay, a small, clear, cylindrical object with a gold coil-like accent inside can be seen on the table where the biobed is normally kept. This object was used as one of the parts of Steth's ship in VOY : " Vis à Vis ".
• In several scenes in the fictional sickbay, in the biolab (the room typically seen in the background of most sickbay shots, opposite the portion of sickbay that contains the biobeds) can be seen a tall, cylindrical glass chamber. This cylinder later appeared as the quarantine chamber on Cold Station 12 , in ENT : " Cold Station 12 ", as well as the agony booth in ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly ".
• The transwarp drive prop used in VOY : " Threshold " can be seen on Quarren's desk.
• The image of The Doctor that appears at the end of this episode was clearly a reuse of an official, promotional picture of Robert Picardo.

Production [ ]

• This episode marks Tim Russ' directorial debut. He was the third main cast member of Voyager to direct an episode of the series (following Robert Duncan McNeill and Robert Picardo). As such, this episode follows a trend set by " Sacred Ground " and " Unity " (directed by McNeill) as well as " Alter Ego " (helmed by Picardo). It is also the only episode of Voyager 's fourth season to be directed by a main cast member from the series; the three previous such outings were third season installments.
• Prior to directing this installment, Tim Russ commented, " I may or may not consider directing an episode of the show down the line to get my feet wet. " Between the time he made that statement and its publication in Star Trek Magazine , the arrangement was made for him to direct a Voyager episode. However, Russ was originally scheduled to direct a third season installment. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 20 )
• Before directing this episode, Tim Russ was entirely unaware that this would be the one he would direct. " I had no idea what kind of show I would get. It could have been a character show, a light show, a spooky show or an action show, " Russ explained. " For my first show, I would rather do something not so crazy and all over the place. I decided to make the best of whatever they had me do. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 17 )
• By the time Tim Russ was eventually permitted to direct for Star Trek: Voyager , he had been working towards producing this episode over the past three years. Russ later clarified that he spent that time "not so much lobbying [to direct] as learning how to do it." He elaborated, " The three-year wait was primarily because of the time it took to get a turn, because there are so many other people who want to do the same thing, but also because the producers ask you to go through a program, which takes about two years […] It took almost a year to get this one once I was ready to go. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , pp. 23 & 24) He further recalled, " I was next in line, and it was my turn. " Russ was extremely thankful that this episode finally gave him the chance to direct. He noted, " It was nice to get a chance to do it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 102) Russ elaborated, " It's a rare opportunity. [I was] completely beholden to the producers for having this opportunity to do so and I'm very grateful to them for giving me the chance to work behind the scenes for three years as an intern and learning the process, and then getting a shot to do it […] and to have the opportunity in time to prep for the episode, a wonderful opportunity and a hell of a learning experience – you can't beat it. " ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg)
• Prior to and during the episode's production period, Tim Russ had close contact with some key members of production staff about the installment. " I had to work very closely with the writers and the producers, " Russ noted. This was a typical step in a director's work on an episode, as the intense communication allowed them to make a few suggestions and ask many questions. " So you're basically in contact with [the writers and producers], for the week and a half or so before you shoot, " Russ continued. " Brannon [Braga] was always open. " Russ found that the producers were also very helpful, even more so than they usually were. He recalled, " Mostly with an actor it's dialogue and story points, but from a directing standpoint I used to get a lot of larger questions answered. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104)
• Tim Russ was also grateful for the assistance provided to him (during filming) by the production crew, describing them as "a very tight and professional crew to help me out along the way." ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg) In particular, Russ found Director of Photography Marvin V. Rush to be very helpful. " I worked with the DP very closely, " Russ recalled, " and I knew what I wanted and if it didn't work then he might suggest 'Okay, this might be better.' " ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. 338))
• Tim Russ found this installment challenging. " It was quite a step for me to be able to take the helm on one of the episodes, " he noted. ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg) Russ explained, " 'Living Witness' was expensive for a first-time director and it was certainly bigger than I thought it would be. " He went on to say that "some of the surprises I had to work around" included not only the quantity of the stages required for the episode and the expense of the set for the Kyrian Museum of Heritage but also "some very interesting lighting, which was somewhat time-consuming in terms of the actual shooting." The fledgling director nevertheless "came in under budget." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 24)
• Another specific challenge that Tim Russ was tasked with overcoming was finding the right balance between focusing on the technical elements of the installment, such as camera angles and eye-lines, with being aware of the performances that the cast delivered for the episode. Russ had initially expected that he would be concentrating much more on the technical requirements, which he had paid a lot more attention to during the pre-production period, so he was very shocked and surprised to find, within one or two days of the installment's production, that he needed to pay more attention to the performances. ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg; Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. 338)) He remembered, " I just discovered by doing it that I [tended] to focus, by the end of the episode, a little more on the faces and what people were saying and doing and how they were doing them. And less on the specifics of the shot, which is where the DP comes in. " ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. 338)) Russ also said, " It caught me off guard, so it was very interesting. " ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg)

Tim Russ tweaking the performance of a guest actor

• The problem of concentrating on the acting was heightened for Tim Russ due to the fact that the performances of the regular cast were far different from how they normally were on Star Trek: Voyager . " It was even more of a challenge, I think, coming into it, " Russ conceded, " because [the lead actors] had to behave or act in a different manner than they normally would […] From time to time, all I did was tweak them. " ( VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg) Russ elaborated, " It was a bit of a tweak here and there to try to get the parts refined because the tendency is to go overboard when you do something like that, to get carried away. So I had to keep it in line, because I'm looking at it as a third-party observer, an objective standpoint. Everybody came up with their own sort of twist. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104) Additionally, Russ expressed that being witness to the cast twisting their portrayals was "very nice" and "very interesting." ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104; VOY Season 4 DVD Easter egg) Russ also tweaked the performances of the guest cast. " We had several guest stars in key roles, and that was a little trickier than I had planned, because I found myself having to tweak the performances a lot more than I would like to have done. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 23)
• Tim Russ found that the plot of this episode seemed to allow for some technical conventions to be broken. He commented, " For me, the story itself, the concept carried or supported the foundations of being able to defy some of the conventional editorial rules. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105)
• A shot in the first act of this episode, showing Quarren watch the Kyrian museum's viewscreen as it changes between a picture of the warship Voyager and an image of the fictitious Janeway in the ship's command chair, was controversial among the episode's production staff. Although Tim Russ (who was concentrating on the dramatic aspects of the shot) felt that the short moment worked well dramatically and would probably not be especially noticeable to viewers anyway, some individuals (who were concentrating on the technical aspects of the shot), such as supervising producer Peter Lauritson , thought the moment was not absolutely correct from an editorial, post-production perspective. Brannon Braga agreed with Tim Russ, so the decision was made to use the shot. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 105)
• Mitch Suskin was delighted with Tim Russ' work on this episode. " Tim Russ did an amazingly excellent job as a first-time director, " Suskin raved. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)

Visual effects [ ]

• Only a single shot of the warship Voyager was created for this episode, visualized using CGI . Mitch Suskin talked about the digital ship model: " It's actually the same Voyager [as the usual CG one] with a lot of extra guns and weapons' ports on it, not terribly different, just beefier. As something that is just one shot in the show, it becomes much easier to sell that when it's a digital shot, and it doesn't cost as much. Also we're not going to damage the Voyager [studio] model that way. If we actually did it on the model, we'd have to fix it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)
• The episode includes two shots that pan across to a screen or window, through which futuristic spectators can then be seen. Mitch Suskin noted, " We had a couple of tracking shots where we let the production company pan from the set into these windows. " One of the two occasions on which this occurs follows the malevolent Janeway's execution of Tedran and his accomplice , at which point a group of observers in the Kyrian museum are shown through one of the warship Voyager 's briefing room windows. Recalling the filming of the footage from inside the briefing room as well as the view of the watchers, Suskin remarked, " Both of those shots were shot on stage with no electronic data gathering or motion control support, not even any targets. We let the camera operator operate as if it were a regular production shot […] For example, in the one shot in the mess hall, [where] we see Janeway execute the people, the camera operator pans over to the window where there's nothing but stars as usual. Several days later, we shot on the other stage an element of the people standing, staring [near] the camera. We matched the camera heights, and the lenses. " Suskin went on: " A lot of what we did was just to line up two different elements shot on different days and different stages, and put them together as if these people are looking through the port […] Because we have enough horsepower in the technology we are using in the composite bay, now we are able to really without a great deal of difficulty, track the elements in, and match them as if they were shot together. "( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 105 & 106)

Continuity [ ]

• This episode depicts a Kazon for the first time since the third-season premiere " Basics, Part II ".
• In a reference to early season-one episodes, The Doctor states in this episode that "I don't appreciate being deactivated in the middle of a sentence. It brings back unpleasant memories."
• In The Doctor's version of events, Voyager loses three engineering crewmembers in the attack by the Kyrian boarding party. These deaths would mark the 16th, 17th and 18th confirmed deaths of Voyager crew since the pilot episode " Caretaker ", the previous one having occurred in " The Killing Game ". This would put the crew complement as of the end of the Kyrian encounter at 143, given the crew complement of 148 that was most recently established in " Distant Origin " and " Displaced ", and the deaths that have occurred since.
• The presence of a Kazon crewmember on Voyager who is an ensign.
• The absence of rank insignia on their collars and combadges , the black gloves worn by many crewmembers, and a black undershirt instead of the normal purplish-gray undershirt worn beneath the Starfleet jumpsuit uniform .
• Different hairstyles on many crew (notably Janeway's), and Chakotay 's tattoo covering half of his face.
• One of the misconceptions the Kyrians had of Voyager was that their home was Mars . It is possible that they deduced this from Voyager having been built at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards orbiting Mars, a fact that is established in the Season 5 episode " Relativity ".
• The pronunciation of Chakotay's name ( CHA kotay, rather than cha KO tay), suggesting that the Kyrians did not know how to pronounce it themselves.
• This is the only episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Star Trek: Voyager not to feature any scenes set in the 24th century , as all depictions of Voyager 's encounter with the Kyrians are simulations set at a much later time, rather than flashbacks.
• This was the first episode of any Star Trek series not to feature any living Human characters on-screen. All Human characters appear only as holographic representations.
• This episode could technically be considered the first Star Trek episode ever not to feature any regular characters, as they all appear only as holograms in Quarren's recreation of Voyager with the exception of The Doctor, who also appears as a backup version of his program.
• The events of this episode take place at least 700 years after Voyager encountered the Kyrians, placing the activation of the EMH backup and subsequent upheavals in the late 31st century (approximately 3074). The final scene takes place no sooner than six years later, although the docent's monologue, and Quarren's statement that " it could be another seven hundred years, " both imply that several generations have passed. It is reasonable to conclude that the final scene takes place as early as the final years of the 31st century, and as late as the 38th century. Chronologically, this scene probably takes place further in the future than any other filmed scene in the entire Star Trek franchise, with the possible exception of the Star Trek: Short Treks episode " Calypso " and the later seasons of Star Trek: Discovery . Additionally, the final scene implies that all preceding scenes are part of a simulation, meaning the entire episode is set at the same date as the final scene.

Dating of Voyager 's encounter with the Kyrians [ ]

• the presence of Seven of Nine , placing this episode sometime after the third-season finale " Scorpion ";
• the following episode " Demon ", which takes place in the Vaskan sector according to the fifth-season episode " Course: Oblivion ", although the dating of "Demon" itself is unclear;
• the claim that Voyager was 60,000 light-years from home at the time, placing the episode sometime after the earlier fourth-season episode " The Gift " (in which Voyager is propelled thousands of light-years further towards home) but before the fifth-season episode " Timeless ".

The Doctor's backup copy [ ]

• This is the only episode where a backup copy of The Doctor is available.
• The existence of a backup module for The Doctor would seem to contradict earlier episodes, most notably the earlier fourth season installment " Message in a Bottle ", in which Tom Paris and Harry Kim try and fail to create another version of The Doctor, and the latter season six episodes " Blink of an Eye " and " Life Line ", where it is suggested his program will be lost forever if it is transferred and cannot return. In fact, in the episode " One ", which takes place just two episodes after this one, The Doctor states his program may be irretrievable if his emitter goes offline while outside Sickbay. A possible explanation is that the module was stolen after " The Gift " but before the events of "Message in a Bottle", or that the module was created shortly after "Message in a Bottle" and then stolen. Kim's creation of the Crell Moset program in " Nothing Human " would be consistent with the latter explanation if the module was stolen before then.
• The introduction of the backup module worried Robert Picardo, as he suspected some fans on the Internet would have nitpicks about the module being established. " I brought that up with Brannon [Braga], " the actor revealed, " and he said that if the story was good enough, they wouldn't complain about the technology. But there is also the possibility that we developed a backup program, and 'oops,' we lost it in that episode. " Tim Russ was puzzled by the suggestion that anyone would have a problem with the technology being introduced, as backup programs were – at the time the episode was made – and still are very common. Russ also speculated, " In case something went terribly wrong, of course you would have to have backup programs. I would think that people who watch the show, quite a few of them are computer literate. I don't think it would be even a hitch for them. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)

Reception [ ]

• This episode was neither Bryan Fuller's favorite of the installments he wrote for the fourth season, nor his least favorite of those episodes. He remarked that the installment "was just a cool concept." ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 ) Both Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga were very fond of the episode's final form, however. Braga enthused, " 'Living Witness' is a great concept in terms of The Doctor being activated 400 [sic] years in the future […] We get to see the Voyager crew behaving in somewhat nefarious ways, and it's a lot of fun. " Menosky remarked, " I think Bryan [Fuller] did a wonderful job. It's a wonderful image, it's a great sort of fun-to-write story, but at the same time there are certain, I would say Roddenberry -esque, social issues that we examined, but not in too, I hope, heavy-handed a fashion. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 104)
• Tim Russ was generally pleased with this episode. He opined, " It's a wonderful story […] and the show looks great. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 41 , p. 23) He additionally observed, " It's a wild piece, with a couple of twists and turns […] There are a couple of small points here and there, things I would have liked to have done differently […] But ultimately, the piece is wonderful. And I've gotten very good feedback from it as well. " Russ also enjoyed watching how much the finished form of the episode measured up to how he had originally envisioned the installment. " It was very interesting seeing that process happen, " he said. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 102)
• Mitch Suskin also held this episode in high esteem, generally. Shortly after the making of the episode, he said, " 'Living Witness' I think will be a very popular show […] I think it's one of the more clever concepts of the year. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 106)
• This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 3.9 million homes, and a 6% share. [2] (X)
• Cinefantastique rated this episode 3 out of 4 stars. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 107)
• Star Trek Magazine scored this episode 4 out of 5 stars. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 47 , p. 61) Toby Weidmann, an editor of that publication, cited the episode as his favorite from the entirety of Star Trek: Voyager . ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 113 , p. 84)
• The unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 241) gives the installment a rating of 10 out of 10.
• This was ultimately the only episode of any Star Trek series that Tim Russ directed. He found that the experience of directing had an effect on his acting hereafter. " When I went back to acting, " Russ recalled, " there was a certain appreciation for what the director's trying to achieve. The pressure he's under with the production staff looking at their watches and clocks and watching how long things take… the actors doing what we want to do and making his life a lot easier in doing so. All those things come out very much as an actor once you've done behind the camera. " ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. 339)) He did, however, later direct the fan-made production Star Trek: Of Gods and Men .
• Several costumes from this episode were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay, including the costume of Robert Scott . [3]
• In 2017 , Kirsten Beyer cited this as one of three favorite VOY episodes (the other two being " Scorpion, Part II " and " Distant Origin "). [4]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 4.12, catalog number VHR 4633, 7 December 1998
• As part of the VOY Season 4 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also Starring [ ]

• Robert Beltran as Chakotay
• Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
• Ethan Phillips as Neelix
• Robert Picardo as The Doctor / Emergency Medical Android
• Tim Russ as Tuvok
• Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
• Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Guest Stars [ ]

• Henry Woronicz as Quarren
• Rod Arrants as Daleth (hologram)
• Craig Richard Nelson as Vaskan arbiter
• Marie Chambers as Kyrian arbiter
• Brian Fitzpatrick as Tedran (hologram)
• Morgan H. Margolis as Vaskan spectator

Co-Stars [ ]

• Mary Anne McGarry as Tabris
• Timothy Davis-Reed as Kyrian Spectator

Uncredited Co-Stars [ ]

• Chris Blackwood as Kyrian boy
• Nancy Conn as Tedran's accomplice
• Damaris Cordelia as Foster
• Janet Dey as Vaskan spectator
• Tarik Ergin as Ayala
• Sylvester Foster as Timothy Lang
• Glenn Goldstein as a Kyrian commando
• Fred Hafner as a Kyrian visitor
• Tom Morga as Warrior Borg drone
• Kazon crewmember
• Warrior Borg drone
• R. Prince as Kyrian commando
• Jeff Pruitt as a Kyrian commando
• Shepard Ross as Murphy
• Robert Scott as a Vaskan
• Steve Silverie as a Vaskan spectator
• Martin Squires as Kyrian torture victim
• John Tampoya as Warrior Borg drone
• Kyrian female spectators
• Vaskan arbiter 2
• Five Vaskan spectators
• Three Vaskan visitors

Stand-ins [ ]

• Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan

References [ ]

31st century ; activation sequence ; aggressor ; aide ; almanac ; Alpha Quadrant ; android ; annexation ; ancient history ; arbiter ; artifact 271 ; artificial lifeform ; assault probe ; assault team / attack team ; assimilation ; backup ; backup program ; bio-agent ; biogenic weapon ; Borg activation sequence ; Borg drone ; brig ; cerebral cortex ; character ; chief engineer ; chief transporter operator ; city center ; corrosion ; curator ; cyclic wormhole ; Cyrik Ocean ; data (unit) ; datalink ; data storage ; Dawn of Harmony ; death toll ; decade ; Delta Quadrant ; diagnostic tool ; dictation ; dilithium ; diplomat ; Earth ; EMH backup module ; EMH backup module's craft ; encryption ; engine room ; ensign ; eon ; explorer ; extrapolation ; fatality rate ; fighter shuttle ; flush ; fossil ; freedom ; gang ; general population ; genocide ; genome ; gentleman ; Great War ; hanged ; hedgehog ; hero ; historic record ; history book ; holodeck ; holographic programming ; holotechnology ; homesickness ; Horsehead Nebula ; humble ; hyperspanner ; Intrepid class decks ; intruder alert ; isoton ; Kazon ; Kesef ; killer ; kilometer ; Kyrian ; Kyrian forces / Kyrian military ; Kyrian and Vaskan homeworld ; Kyrian heritage city ; Kyrian cities ; Kyrian fighter ship ; Kyrian ship ; Kyrian vessel ; leader (aka ruler ); living witness ( witness ); Mars ; martyr ; mass murderer ; medical chamber ; medical tricorder ; meter ; military installation ; Milky Way Galaxy ; mobile emitter ; Museum of Kyrian Heritage ; neural solvent ; nightmare ; oppression ; optic nerve ; optronic data stream ; particle weapon ; persuasion ; photon grenade ; photon torpedo ; plot ; population ; prisoner ; race ; race riot ; rank ; red alert ; representative ; research team ; revisionist history ; riot ; riot casualties ; savior ; squadron ; second-class hologram ; security team ; semantics ; sentence (linguistics) ; sentient ; servant ; soldier ; solvent ; " stage is set "; subservience ; surgical chancellor ; Tactical data ; Talaxian ; thug ; tokenism ; vandalism ; Vaskan ; Vaskan forces ; Van Winkle, Rip ; villain ; " Voyager 's doctor "; " Voyager Encounter, The "; war criminal ; warship ; warship Voyager

External links [ ]

• "Living Witness" at StarTrek.com
• " Living Witness " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Living Witness " at Wikipedia
• 3 Ancient humanoid

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E21LivingWitness

Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 4 E 21 Living Witness

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• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable : Everyone in the simulation stresses the first syllable of Chakotay (CHA-ko-tay) instead of the second, the first sign for the viewer that this is less likely to be a Mirror Universe episode than just some simulation in need of serious fact checking.
• Alas, Poor Villain : The Doctor's opinion on Daleth's summary execution of Tedran, which he describes as "a tragic, needless death". While Tedran's goons had killed several of Voyager ' s crewmembers and Tedran himself was a paranoid thug with a With Us or Against Us attitude, Daleth's actions prevented him from being properly brought to justice, caused his Historical Hero Upgrade , and made the Great War inevitable.
• Alternate Reality Episode : Played with; this was clearly meant to be Star Trek: Voyager 's version of a Mirror Universe episode, but without the midriff-baring uniforms and Homoerotic Subtext .
• And the Adventure Continues : The ending reveals that after serving as Surgical Chancellor for many years, the Doctor took a small spacecraft and set off to the Alpha Quadrant, to see if his friends had made it home.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking : Apart from the Historical Villain Upgrade , Voyager ' s crew are supposedly heading for Mars. EMH: Earth! You couldn't even get that right!
• "Ass" in Ambassador : How the Kyrians portray Daleth, the guy who recruits Voyager to attack them. The Doctor, however, shows him to be a fairly amiable guy who easily makes friends with Janeway. He's also something of an Ambadassador , standing up to Tedran and his mooks when they invade Voyager and being the one to fire the killing shot against Tedran himself.
• Attack Drone : Warship Voyager has a squad of reprogrammed Borg Drones led by a fully-Borg version of Seven of Nine, who Janeway sics on the Kyrians when they invade the ship.
• Badass Arm-Fold : The Doctor's pose in his official photo after setting things right.
• Badass Crew : Taken to its most terrifying extreme, the warship Voyager ' s crew are clearly insane. Even Neelix manages to get in an awesome line in a putdown to Paris. Paris retaliates by calling Neelix a 'Hedgehog'. Subverted with Evil Harry, though, when his attempt to Jack Bauer a prisoner ends up hurting his own hand.
• The Battlestar : As well as a company of soldiers and enough firepower to devastate a civilization, Warship Voyager also has 'fighter shuttles' (unfortunately not shown in action).
• Bittersweet Ending : A Time Skip reveals that Quarren and the Doctor's efforts to debunk The Voyager Encounter have not only vindicated Voyager but, despite causing things to briefly get even worse , led to equality between the Kyrians and Vaskans. However, Quarren only lived six more years, barely enough time to see the fruits of his work, and while the Doctor served as the species' Surgical Chancellor for some considerable time, he eventually became homesick and traced Voyager 's path back to the Alpha Quadrant, but at least judging by the future historian's mixed class, race relations have become a non-issue.
• Black-and-White Insanity : The Kyrians in general show signs of this attitude, as exemplified by the Arbiter who argues with Quarren. As far as she's concerned, they're the innocent heroes being oppressed by the cruel Vaskans, and Voyager was pure evil. When Quarren and the Doctor produce contradicting evidence, the woman is not at all receptive.
• Blunt "Yes" :
• Boyish Shorthair : Evil Janeway's hair is combed straight back in a fairly butch way, contrasting to her previous flowing locks.
• Brick Joke : In "Worst Case Scenario", Tom Paris suggested that a holographic Janeway execute some mutineers. We see this version of a holographic Janeway do just that, but to hostages .
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday : The Doctor notes that this started as a normal trading mission until the Kyrians and Vaskans began shooting at each other and Voyager got caught in the middle of it. After kicking both the Kyrians and the Vaskans off the ship, the real Janeway most likely ordered Voyager to leave, and the crew probably never gave that trading planet with its two race-warring humanoid species a second thought, except for mourning those three dead crewmen. But they probably never got another mention either .
• The Kazon from Season 1-2, and the Borg in the cargo bay as per "Scorpion". Seven of Nine is back in her full Borg regalia, too.
• Chakotay's tattoo takes up half his face, as per Q's "Mine's bigger!" comment in "The Q and the Gray".
• Neelix is in Security, as per the Alternate Reality Episodes "Before and After" and "Year of Hell". Likewise, Harry is a lieutenant again.
• Captain Janeway is addressed as "sir", which she rejected in the pilot episode.
• Biogenic weapons have been referenced several times on Deep Space Nine (and the crew have been shown to have some of the biomimetic gel necessary for making them on board too).
• As with the Mirror Universe in TOS, Evil Janeway's course of action is to target cities for destruction to force overall compliance.
• The Doctor expresses his anger at being shut down in the middle of a sentence, one of his regular gripes in Season One.
• The Doctor says he's adept at holographic programming. Mind you, that hasn't always worked out so well for him .
• Captain Obvious : Quarren, mostly out of surprise that the Doctor is a hologram, not an android. Quarren: You...are a hologram. Doctor: That I know!
• Chekhov's Gun : The Medical Tricorder as displayed on the exhibit.
• Clear My Name : The Doctor is more focused on clearing his friends' names, but his own reputation (and life) is on the line too.
• Cold Ham : Janeway and the Doctor manage to play up their evil versions without even raising their voice, coming across as even more psychopathic than if they were frothing at the mouth.
• Composite Character : In-universe. The "Emergency Medical Android" combined traits of the Doctor with others from Data in TNG . Specifically, yellow eyes and slight mechanical noises and motions. The creator of the holoprogram may have conflated the two characters in his reconstruction as one of the many inaccuracies.
• Content Warnings ( In-Universe ): Quarren warns viewers of The Voyager Encounter that what they're about to see is graphic and unsettling. Between the Cold-Blooded Torture of a Kyrian prisoner and the execution of Tedran and his aide, he wasn't kidding.
• Cool Starship : It has to be said, the alternate Voyager armed to the teeth with massive phaser cannons isn't a bad sight.
• Dark Is Evil : Warship Voyager has all the internal lights dimmed , and the crew wear black gloves and undershirts .
• Deadpan Snarker : The recreation's version of Neelix. Paris: My plan? Fighter shuttles — direct assault! Neelix: Led by you? Good luck. Paris: Watch your mouth, hedgehog!
• Defiant to the End : Heroic Tedran's last words before he's shot In the Back by Evil Janeway are "We will prevail".
• Depending on the Writer : The curator's initial idea when he finds the Doctor is to use him to help him alter the program to make it a more accurate simulation. He admits that over the years they've had to extrapolate certain things to fill in the gaps.
• Directed By Castmember : Tim Russ (Tuvok).
• Dissonant Serenity : Evil Janeway seldom raises her voice, whether making threats or carrying out genocide. The android Doctor also speaks in a calm Creepy Monotone , as opposed to the emotive Large Ham that Quarren is confronted with. It's the fervor with which the Doctor defends himself that brings on Quarren's doubt, as much as any evidence he might find.
• Distant Finale : The episode ends a few hundred years in the future, after the EMH has become a respected doctor and teacher to Kyrians and Vaskans before taking a ship to find his own way back to the Alpha Quadrant and find out the fate of his Voyager family.
• "Events have been reinterpreted to make your people feel better about themselves. Revisionist history. It's such a comfort."
• "Please, this isn't about race." / "It's always about race!"
• Persecution Flip : The dark-skinned Vaskans are oppressing the light-skinned Kyrians.
• "Doesn't it feel so good to be the righteous, persecuted one? Your oppression proves how good you are, and how heroic and completely without flaw all your culture's significant figures are! You wouldn't want reality and nuance to come in and ruin your oppression, would you?"
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot! : Quarren cautions a visitor to his museum who's stuck his hand inside a photon torpedo that it's a Weapon of Mass Destruction . He then reassures him that it's been disarmed, but still warns him not to touch it because it's irreplaceable.
• Do Wrong, Right : The Evil Doctor re: Kim's Perp Sweating . "That hyperspanner would cause an unacceptable amount of damage. I remind you, he should still be able to speak."
• Equal-Opportunity Evil : The soldiers from Warship Voyager include species they've 'assimilated' during their travels, such as a Kazon security ensign and a squad of Borg drones commanded by Seven of Nine.
• Even Evil Has Standards : The biased depiction of the Vaskan ambassador has him going to war with the Kyrians simply to steal their land. He contracts Voyager as mercenaries to accomplish this, but even he tries to cancel the deal when Janeway decides to effect massive genocide of the Kyrians as the best solution.
• Evil Costume Switch : The evil Voyager crew all wear sinister black gloves and black undershirts. Seven has her original Borg look. Janeway has changed to a more severe hairstyle .
• Evil Is Hammy : Though inverted with those who are normally hammy, such as Janeway and the Doctor.
• Face Framed in Shadow : The episode opens with Evil Janeway standing in her darkened ready room, back to the audience, monologuing on how Might Makes Right .
• Face-Revealing Turn : The Doctor, to reveal his normal-looking eyes have been replaced by golden android ones.
• Fantastic Racism : During the main story, the Kyrians and Vaskans have been at relative peace for a long time, but there's still some tension; unfortunately, Quarren's exhibits have exacerbated the differences between the two peoples, and once word gets out about the Doctor's version of events, the Vaskans (who are understandably not happy by having spent centuries being villified) start a riot.
• Final Solution : Evil Janeway's genocide of the Kyrians, which apparently kills at least 900,000 people.
• Fire-Forged Friends : The Doctor and Quarren go from arguing over the recreation of Voyager to working together to reveal the truth about what happened when the war started.
• Future Imperfect : Quarren's interpretation of events is... misguided, to say the least. This is due to two factors that even individually are a recipe for utter nonsense, never mind together: the fact that he barely has any data to work with, and personally has a heavy bias against both the Vaskans and the Voyager crew. The crew wear fascist uniforms note  actually just the regular uniforms minus the badge and with the addition of black undershirts and gloves and are portrayed as violent sociopaths. The Doctor is an android. Seven of Nine is still a Borg leading a contingent of captured drones. Even Voyager herself has become a darkly-lit ship, armed to the teeth and referred to as a warship.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop : The Good Cop is Chakotay (for a loose definition of "good"). The Bad Cop is Harry Kim .
• Great Offscreen War : It's even referred to as the Great War.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality : The Kyrians are engaging in revisionist history to absolve themselves of responsibility over a war they started, and the Vaskans are rightly irritated at being cast as the villains (even if the simulation puts most of the blame on a third party that isn't around to protest). But the Kyrian council member is also right to protest that her people are still subject to segregation and ostracization seven hundred years after the fact, and the race riot started by the Vaskans certainly isn't justified either.
• Heroic Sacrifice : When the city erupts into rioting, the Doctor is aghast and tells Quarren to delete his program. Fortunately, Quarren refuses.
• He's Dead, Jim : Tedran, though the Doctor did scan him with the medical tricorder first (fortunately).
• Historical Badass Upgrade : See Badass Crew and Cool Starship above.
• The Kyrians are leading a valiant cause against the Vaskan oppression and warmongering. Tedran in particular, who was a thuggish and arrogant terrorist, is portrayed as a wise martyr.
• Downplayed with the Vaskan ambassador. His historical counterpart was an "Ass" in Ambassador who shoots Tedran in cold blood over Janeway's objections. In the recreation, he does make a Deal with the Devil with Voyager, but he tries to object when they commit genocide and is shocked when Janeway shoots Tedran.
• The Vaskans were dominant on their planet and a bit haughty, but in the Kyrians' recreation they become openly evil imperialists.
• Voyager gets the even shorter end of the stick, as they were idealistic explorers who were turned into a gang of genocide-happy sadistic monsters as a convenient scapegoat.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy : After the riot, the EMH starts to feel that a comfortable lie is better than the harsh truth, and is willing to let himself be executed for crimes he never committed. Quarren, historian that he is, admits his initial denial of the truth was a natural reflex for everything he thought he knew being wrong, but no matter how painful it is, the truth must win out in the end. He and the EMH then go hunting through the debris looking for the evidence backing up the EMH's claims.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl : Kate Mulgrew is average height for a woman (5'5") but seeing her stand next to guest star Rod Arrants (the Vaskan ambassador), at 6'5", calls this trope into effect. Scenes on the Voyager bridge have camera angles that effectively obscures the massive height difference, but the scene in Voyager's ready room (from the Doctor's recreation) show it clearly.
• Hypocritical Humor : Evil Chakotay gives his peaceful warrior speech while watching a prisoner get beaten up. Evil Kim says he can beat the guy up all day, then flinches from a sore arm.
• Immune to Bullets : In his revised simulation, the Doctor offers to draw the terrorists' fire due to him being immune to phaser-fire.

• Invulnerable Knuckles : Subverted, Evil Harry knocks a prisoner around for a while, but then backhands him and injures himself. "I can keep this up all day. Tell the Commander what he wants to know. (punches prisoner, then shakes his hand in pain ) Maybe I can't keep this up all day."
• Mad Doctor : In the simulation, the Doctor is an evil android who tortures prisoners and develops biogenic weapons.
• Might Makes Right : It's the Starfleet way.
• Milking the Giant Cow : The Kyrian Arbiter. "I can't believe that you would co-operate with this MURderer! You of all people, you built this museum!"
• Misaimed Fandom ( In-Universe ): Quarren: Ever since I was a small child, the first time I heard the name Voyager , it conjured up my imagination. EMH: Even though we were the bad guys? Quarren: That didn't matter. I was too young to understand the implications. The fact you were so far from home, travelling across the stars. Ah, I found it all very heroic. I suppose Voyager is what made me fall in love with history.
• More Dakka : The '300 soldiers' on board Voyager carry compression phaser rifles. Warship Voyager has 30 torpedo tubes, 25 phaser banks and a triple-armored hull.
• Murder Is the Best Solution : After gaming several options, Evil Janeway deems the best and most efficient way to draw out Tedran is to make his people suffer, and decides to engage in genocide of the Kyrians. Even the otherwise unscrupulous Vaskan ambassador thinks she's taking it too far.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg : The Doctor points out that the way his colleagues have been depicted in the historical recreation has morphed them into violent thugs, but he actually finds Paris to be pretty well portrayed (who from what we've seen admittedly is not depicted so much as a bloodthirsty villain as just cocky and prone to skirt-chasing). The Doctor: These weren't the people I knew! They didn't behave like this! [ Beat ] Well, except for Mr. Paris.
• The Doctor's historical recreation, the Emergency Medical Android, has gold eyes and stiff movements just like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation .
• Neck Snap : How a Borg drone kills a Kyrian in Engineering.
• No Kill like Overkill : Evil!Janeway decides to end the Vaskan/Kyrian war by murdering thousands upon thousands of Kyrians with biogenic weapons and orbital bombardment. Janeway: You wanted us to end your war, ambassador, and that's what we're going to do.
• Perp Sweating : A prisoner is beaten by...Chakotay and Harry?
• Politically Correct History : The Kyrian recreation portrays Tedran as a martyr for the Kyrians who was executed by Janeway while trying to stop an alliance between the Vaskans and Voyager . Later averted when it's revealed that Voyager was merely trading with the Vaskans when Tedran attacked unprovoked, tried to loot the ship, and then was killed by the Vaskan ambassador without warning.
• Posthumous Character : Since the episode begins 700 years in the future, the entire crew of Voyager (with the possible exception of the original Doctor) are long dead. And the Doctor featured here is a backup, making this the first episode of Star Trek in which none of the "real" characters appear.
• Priceless Ming Vase : During an argument the Doctor picks up a PADD in the museum and brandishes it. Given that it's a 700-year old antique, Quarren quickly takes it off him.
• Proscenium Reveal : Done as Book Ends .
• Psycho for Hire : The entire crew of the "warship Voyager ", who are hired by the Vaskans to defeat the Kyrians. Their main mission is to get back to Earth, but they get so much fun out of killing that they happily torture prisoners to death, shoot unarmed people, and commit genocide.
• Psychotic Smirk : Evil Tuvok when his captain hints that the genocide could go a little quicker. Janeway: Status! Neelix: Approximately three thousand Kyrians dead. Janeway: That's it? Tuvok: The bio-agent is still dispersing through the atmosphere. The fatality rate will be three hundred thousand soon enough. Janeway: How soon? Tuvok: Best guess, one hour. Janeway: Why do you always keep me waiting, Tuvok? Tuvok: (smirks) My apologies. Preparing to fire again. Janeway: Double the yield.
• Pull the Thread : What Quarren is forced to do. "From what I can tell, the Doctor was telling the truth, at least about one thing. He is a hologram . A backup program. We always knew he was an artificial life form but, we thought he was an android. If we were mistaken about that, I wonder if we might also be wrong about Voyager itself. Another question. Why would a hologram designed for medical purposes be programmed to lie so readily? From the moment I activated him, this Doctor has insisted that he's innocent."
• Really 700 Years Old : The Doctor himself in this episode, or rather his backup copy, which is reactivated 700 years later. Justified in that, well, he's a computer program, and his backup copy could obviously last a long time.
• Red Shirt : The Kyrian terrorists killed three engineering personnel.
• Rip Van Winkle : Lampshaded by The Doctor.
• Robotic Psychopath : The Kyrians believed the Doctor to be a psychotic android who created a bioweapon that Janeway used against their people. As Quarren discovers that he's not an android but a hologram, he starts wondering if the rest of the historical record may be incorrect as well.
• Rule of Threes : Three simulations are shown: The Voyager Experience , the Doctor's revision, and the reveal that everything that happened in the museum was a simulation.
• Sequential Symptom Syndrome : The Doctor injects a prisoner with a 'neural solvent', then describes the symptoms to the victim as his brain slowly dissolves.
• Shut Down Mid-Sentence : Quarren shuts down the Doctor in anger when the latter questions his objectivity. To his credit, he turns the Doctor on again the next day to hear his version of events.
• Show Within a Show : In-Universe with "The Voyager Encounter". The episode starts with the holographic simulation of the conflict, and ends showing that Quarren and The Doctor's plotline was also a holographic simulation at some point even further in the future (possibly further in the future than any Star Trek media had ever shown until season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery ).
• "Shut Up!" Gunshot : When her ready room meeting degenerates into a brawl, Captain Janeway calmly executes an innocent computer screen to get everyone's attention. Janeway: Save it for the holodeck. We've got a war to fight.
• Slouch of Villainy : Evil Janeway in her captain's chair. She also has the habit of leaning on consoles .
• Smoking Gun : The medical tricorder shows that Tedran was shot by a Vaskan weapon, not a compression phaser rifle wielded by Captain Janeway. There's a Bait-and-Switch where it appears to have been lost in the riot , but it must have been found again as things ended peacefully.
• Some of My Best Friends Are X : A skeptical Vaskan museum patron makes a point of saying that he has Kyrian friends while criticizing the validity of Quarren's historical recreation.
• Standard Female Grab Area : Used against Seven of Nine. Though she does eventually get fed up and break out of it. Also justified since Tedran aims his phaser at her head before he grabs her.
• Superdickery : The episode opens with the crew engaging in all kinds of villainy in The Voyager Encounter before the Proscenium Reveal .
• Swiss-Cheese Security : The Vaskan ambassador is not only allowed to board Voyager with a functioning weapon, which either Security or the transporter should have relived him of, but he's allowed to bring it to a hostage crisis involving a known enemy.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork : In the simulation, a senior officers meeting breaks down into a brawl until Janeway fires a warning shot.
• Time Skip : To years later near the end when Quarren and the Doctor both find the missing tricorder, helping to set straight the events of The Voyager Encounter and bring the two warring races into peace with each other, with a Proscenium Reveal to show that the events that took place in the museum was also a holographic recreation.
• Title Drop EMH: And I'm some sort of...fossil? Quarren: No, not a fossil. A witness, a living witness to history!
• To the Pain : Evil Doctor describes the symptoms of his torture victim as they occur.
• Token Minority : The Kyrian Arbiter actually has little power and says she's only on the Council as their token Kyrian (the other two Arbiters are Vaskan).
• Torture Technician : The Doctor is portrayed as this, much to his (backup copy's) horror. He injects one of the prisoners with a chemical that starts to dissolve the man's brain to get Tedran's location.
• The Triple : The Doctor describes B'Elanna Torres as "intelligent, beautiful, and with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Horsehead Nebula."
• The Main Characters Do Everything : There's no security teams in engineering, allowing just four of the Kyrians to take control as well as grabbing Seven as a hostage. Janeway then sends Tuvok to storm Engineering and instead of shooting them Tuvok lets them go, at which point him and Janeway are on point.
• Unusual Ears : The simulation didn't get Tuvok's ears right either.
• Unreliable Expositor : An implied downplayed version. The Doctor's version of the story is suggested to be truthful, for the most part. However, there is a clear implication that he might be slightly exaggerating his own role in the events to make himself look better. He gallantly offers to lead the way into the hostage situation in the mess hall, to draw the enemy's fire; an act that Daleth praises the bravery of. Giving that the Doctor has been shown to have a bit of an ego, this could easy be him giving himself some Character Shilling through another character.
• Vindicated by History : In-Universe for the Voyager crew, as well as the Vaskan ambassador, once the Doctor sets the record straight.
• Wham Shot : The close up on the torpedo showing the label U SS Voyager , rather than the I SS viewers may have been expecting.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human? : Averted; artificial lifeforms can be held responsible for their crimes. When the Doctor expresses his anger at being arbitrarily switched off, Quarren promises not to do it again.
• Who Wants to Live Forever? : The Doctor ponders the death of his friends. Eventually he goes on his own journey to find out what happened to them, even though it will have been several centuries since they returned to Earth if they ever made it.
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide" : Evil Janeway doesn't share the Vaskan ambassador's concerns about annihilating the Kyrian population. Daleth: I want them defeated , but this is genocide ! Janeway: Defeat...genocide...why quibble with semantics?
• Written by the Winners : Inverted, as "The Voyager Encounter" was written by the losers, the Kyrians, who blame the whole event on the Vaskans supposedly conspiring with Voyager . Later subverted when the Doctor manages to set the record straight.
• Writer on Board : Also subverted; the original recreation was this, while the Doctor and the curator are seen this way by the historical council when they try to correct it.
• Wrongly Accused : All of the Voyager crew but specifically The Doctor, who is told he may still be prosecuted for his "crimes."
• You Have to Believe Me! : The Doctor uses these exact words while trying to convince Quarren of his side of events.
• Your Little Dismissive Diminutive : The Doctor in reference to the Vaskan-Kyrian race relations: The Doctor : 700 years, and I'm still caught in the middle of your little dispute.
• Star Trek Voyager S 4 E 20 Unforgettable
• Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
• Star Trek Voyager S 4 E 22 Demon

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Star Trek History: Living Witness

On this day in 1998, this classic Star Trek: Voyager episode premiered.

On this day in 1998, the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Living Witness" premiered.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram .

• The Original Series
• The Next Generation
• Deep Space Nine
• Strange New Worlds

The Wolf Inside

What’s past is prologue, et in arcadia ego, part 2.

Living Witness

When the Doctor, the beloved holographic medical officer of the USS Voyager, is sent to investigate a dispute between two warring planets, he is shocked to discover the truth behind what caused the animosity between them. Hundreds of years ago, the two planets had a bitter war, and a battle was fought on one of their moons. In an attempt to win, the citizens of one of the planets released a virus, which killed all the inhabitants of the moon and left the planet in ruins. The survivors of the war blame the other planet for the destruction, and the two sides have been locked in a bitter cycle of hatred ever since.

However, when the Doctor arrives, he discovers that a Living Witness, an ancient computerized recording of events, was left behind on the moon. This Living Witness holds the key to the truth of what happened hundreds of years ago. With the help of the Voyager crew, the Doctor is able to decode the Living Witness and uncover shocking truths about the ancient war. It turns out that the virus was not released by the planet the survivors blame, but that it was actually released by a third party in order to force a peace treaty between the two planets.

This revelation shocks the two sides, as none of them had ever heard this story before. However, rather than reignite tensions between them, the truth helps to bring the two sides together. With the help of the Voyager crew, they are able to finally make peace and move forward in a positive direction.

The crew of Voyager is left feeling proud of their efforts, as they had helped bring peace to two warring planets. However, the Doctor is left feeling conflicted. He realizes that although he uncovered the truth, it was ultimately the Living Witness itself that helped end the conflict. He reflects on the power of the Living Witness to bridge divides and settle disputes, and he gives a new appreciation to both the power of technology, and the power of understanding one another.

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Equinox (part 2), persistence of vision.

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Star Trek: Voyager – Living Witness (Review)

Living Witness is a fantastic piece of television, and a great example of what Star Trek: Voyager does best.

Living Witness is in many ways archetypal Star Trek , a story that uses the franchise framework to construct a powerful allegorical story that comments upon contemporary anxiety. It is a story that could easily have been told on any of the other franchise series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Enterprise , but it is a story told well. Living Witness is one of the highlights of the fourth season, and one of the strongest episodes from the seven-season run.

Command and conquer.

In many ways, Living Witness is the culmination of themes and ideas that have been bubbling through Voyager from the outset. Some of these elements are less than flattering, with the episode’s racial politics evoking the clumsiness with which the Kazon were handled. However, there is also a fascination with idea of history and how history functions in a world rooted in postmodernism and recnstruction. At the end of history, is the past up for grabs? Are facts anything more than pieces to be manoeuvred on a political chessboard?

Given this archetypal quality of Living Witness , how it reflects the themes and pet interests of Voyager , there is some irony in the fact that the episode does not actually feature a single regular character from Voyager . The regular cast appear as holographic representations of themselves, exaggerations and distortions. When the EMH appears almost half-way through the episode, he is explicitly identified as “a back-up programme” , and thus distinct from the version of the EMH who will appear in Demon or One .

Core principles.

In some ways, Living Witness confirms one of the more interesting aspects of Voyager , the fact that the characters are themselves largely irrelevant to the show and that the series is much more compelling as a framework to explore archetypal ideas. Living Witness is just one of several episodes that treat the regular characters as a secondary aspect of the show, almost as guest stars who have crossed over into a completely different series. Living Witness is very much of a piece with stories like Distant Origin or Course: Oblivion , or even Muse or Live Fast and Prosper .

Living Witness is a story about the thin line between history and mythology. In doing so, it consciously reframes Voyager as a story within a story, as concept more powerful as an archetype than as a material object. Living Witness images the ship and its crew as history elevated to mythology.

Any which Janeway but loose.

Voyager is fascinated with the idea of history, and the question of whether history can be said to exist. This preoccupation is reflected in a number of different episodes, in a number of different ways. Voyager ‘s preoccupation with time travel in episodes like Time and Again , Timeless and Relativity could be seen as an extension of this. What is Annorax actually doing in Year of Hell, Part I and Year of Hell, Part II besides literally rewriting and revising history? He just happens to use a time ship rather than a pen.

This preoccupation with history ripples across the show, most notably in the big event scripts written by Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky. Future’s End, Part I and Future’s End, Part II introduced the concept of these big sprawling adventures in which Voyager would ride through the pages of history. The Killing Game, Part I and The Killing Game, Part II suggested that the Hirogen were predators of history, a culture without a past that instead usurps the great historical narratives of their victims.

Pro- and con-gramme.

This preoccupation with history exists even beyond time travel. Memory was also subject to distortion and exploration, with Voyager repeatedly insisting that identity was a construct of memory in the same way that a film is constructed of individual images. The trauma that Seven of Nine received at the hands of the Borg broke her memory and identity in Retrospect , Chakotay pondered the connection between love and memory in Unforgettable , while the EMH suffers a breakdown when his memory is manipulated in Latent Image .

Cultural memory was just as prone to distortion, with similar consequences. Remember stressed the importance of preserving the historical record of the Hollocaust, of refusing to allow postmodernist theory to erase or distort the objective accounts of what had happened. Distant Origin was anchored in the idea that the historical framework supporting evolution should not be brushed aside because it was less politically comforting than the mythology of creationism, insisting that objectively verifiable facts are more important than reassuring lies.

Crossed wires.

Living Witness is very explicitly about the challenges of historical revisionism, of the difficulty on agreeing an objective account of things that happened and why they happened. Brannon Braga acknowledged as much to Cinefantastique :

But it’s also a show about revisionist history, which is a very topical issue. Cultures are taking issue with the way history is portrayed in the books right now, and controversies come out of that. Is the revisionist history accurate? Or is it being done to bolster one’s cultural identity in the present? There are no easy answers, and that is one of the issues we try to tap into in that show.

Historical revisionism was very much a part of the cultural conversation in the nineties. Deborah Lipstadt was caught up in a libel trial with David Irving when she accused him of Holocaust denial, which only resolved itself in April 2000 . Japan grappled with the legacy of the Second World War .

To be fair, it may just be that the Kyrians took their characterisation of Janeway from Scorpion, Part I or Equinox, Part II .

Living Witness touches on a similar idea. The episode is set hundreds of years in the future, long after Voyager has found its way home. The episode unfolds in a society populated by two unique races, the Vaskans and the Kyrians. Living Witness opens with a historical recreation of their encounter with Voyager, an event that occurred long before anybody in the room was born. The audience is shocked by this supposedly historical account. The EMH complains, “The Captain’s a cold-blooded killer, the crew’s a gang of thugs and I’m a mass murderer.”

The audience knows that this recreation is obviously not an accurate account; the costumes are wrong, the sets are subtly different, the lighting is turned way down, the characterisations have been changed. However, this historic recreation forms the cornerstone of Vaskan and Kyrian identity. It informs the understanding that the two cultures have of one another, and provides a nice framework for their society to function. Most obviously, pinning the responsibility for a disastrous race war on a bunch of travellers avoids casting blame on each other.

Piecing it together.

During the nineties, the United States fought a war over the right to determine what was and wasn’t history. It seemed like every aspect of the nation’s history and identity was up for grabs. As Gary B. Nash outlined in his introduction to History on Trial :

Since the mid-1980s, Americans have been beset by controversies, criticisms, and contretemps over history. Was Columbus not an intrepid explorer but the world’s greatest genocidist? Was Cleopatra black, the pride of Africa, rather than a heroine of Western civilization? Should the New York legislature stipulate that every schoolchild study the Irish potato famine of the 1840s? What other famines in history should legislatures mandate? Should one of Virginia’s most hallowed Civil War battlefields be obliged to share space with a mega-theme park where American families could learn versions of history produced in Disney’s imagineering laboratory? Did the curators of “The West as America” exhibit at the National Museum of American Art in Washington become part of the “embarrassed to be American” crowd when they suggested that the stunning paintings by Bierstadt, Remington, Catlin, and others might be looked at in many ways–as reflections of imperialism and racism as much as Arcadian depictions of the frontier? Why was Colonial Williamsburg staging an eighteenth-century slave auction, heartrending but allegedly degrading, even if the producer was a talented young black woman who wanted people to understand the brutality of slavery? Were the Smithsonian Institution’s curators and consulting historians really “hijacking history,” practicing “political correctness,” and demonstrating “anti-Americanism,” when they planned an exhibit on Enola Gay, the B-52 that dropped the first atom bomb on Japan a half-century ago? Why did San Francisco’s Art Commission agree to move an 800-ton monument showing a Spanish friar, with finger pointing to heaven, standing over a supine Indian while a vaquero raised his hand in triumph? All of these–a historical figure, a monument, a site, an event–became lightning rods for sulphurous debates over historical, heritage, and group sensibility.

After all, there had even been huge controversy over the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with the Smithsonian finding itself in hot water for daring to question whether dropping the atomic bomb upon Japan could ever have been justified . That was treated as an affront to heroism of America’s war veterans.

“He belongs in a museum!”

Although there are plenty of examples of historical revisionism from around the world, to the point that  Remember was more overtly engaged with the Holocaust denial more common in Europe at the time, Living Witness is very firmly anchored in the American experience. The politics at play in Living Witness are very firmly rooted in issues of race and the difficulty of creating true equality in a society that was built upon inequality. The inequality in Living Witness is built upon a history of war and conflict, but the episode alludes quite strongly to the legacy of slavery.

At one point, a Vaskan who takes exception to the history that is being taught. “You’re trying to blame the Vaskans for all your troubles the way you always do,” he warns Quarren. “I don’t have a problem with your species. I have Kyrian friends. But I don’t appreciate seeing my people being portrayed as villains in your little simulation, and I certainly don’t want your history taught to my children.” It is a pretty spot-on parody of white discomfort with teaching slavery in history class, right down to the victimisation complex and “I have [black] friends.”

This was a very real argument during the nineties, another front in the simmering culture wars. As Eric Alterman reflected, attempts to acknowledge slavery and the plight of Native American people in the American history curriculum met with tremendous blowback from conservative pundits who saw it as an attack upon the patriotic myth of American exceptionalism :

A merica’s children are being taught the “propaganda of an anti-Western ideology,” warns Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, “their minds . . . poisoned against their Judeo-Christian heritage, against America’s heroes and American history, against the values of faith, family and country.” Buchanan, like so many conservatives, is furious about the recent release of a set of voluntary curricula guidelines for teachers and textbook authors called “National Standards for United States History.” Sen. Bob Dole, speaking before the American Legion Convention in Indianapolis last month, called them part of the government’s “war on traditional American values.” Newt Gingrich said the curricula were “beyond the pale.” Republican Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington labeled the standards a “perverse document” and persuaded his colleagues to condemn them by a vote of 99 to 1. Former National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) chief Lynne Cheney hates the standards so much, she even asked Congress to “kill my old agency, please.”

This exists as part of a larger framework of conservative organisations and pundits trying to downplay the impact and horrors of slavery. The argument that this aspect of American history somehow undermines the country’s self-image, that the patriotic ideal of the country is somehow more important than the truth. It is a very depressing argument, but one that still rages to this day.

Better assimilate than never.

After all, there are still long-standing controversies about why the Civil War was fought , with various Southern States downplaying the importance of slavery as a contextual factor . The Confederate Flag is still trearted as an object of veneration and respect , even appearing in the state flag of Mississippi , ignoring the legacy of oppression and bigotry that fueled it . There is still a lot of debate about how the Civil War is taught in American schools and how it is debated in American life .

Slavery is still an open wound, with many senior officials and key personnel refusing to acknowledge the horror of what happened while trivialising the experiences of those who through the experience. Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, suggested that slaves were really “immigrants” who imagined the US as a “land of dreams and opportunity.” Donald Trump contended that the Civil War was unnecessary . Ivanka Trump likened her work schedule to literal slavery .

To be fair, that is a very nice reversal.

There is a debate about the function that history serves in a society, about whether history is supposed to tell a people who really are or simply reinforce who they want to be :

Americans want to be descendants of a noble people, explained David Blight, a U.S.-history professor and the director of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Americans want to be the people who emancipated the slaves—not the people who enslaved them. “But history’s job isn’t to make people feel happy about themselves or their culture,” he said. “That’s why we have religion, churches, and community organizations. That’s why we have rabbis and psychologists, not historians.”

While it is easy to understand why the truths about slavery and oppression are discomforting to those invested in the myth of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny, that does not make them any less true.

Janeway’s feeling dead tired.

There are definite shades of this to Living Witness , with the EMH explicitly calling out the comforting aspects of the history presented. “Isn’t it a coincidence that the Kyrians are being portrayed in the best possible light?” the EMH challenges Quarren. “Martyrs, heroes, saviours. Obviously, events have been reinterpreted to make your people feel better about themselves. Revisionist history. It’s such a comfort.” He has a very fair point, and is entirely accurate in his criticisms of Quarren’s approach to the historical record.

Living Witness wears its racial politics on its sleeves. The tensions between the Vaskans and the Kyrians tap into a collective American anxiety about race relations in the nineties. That is particularly true in California, which had been shaken by both the Rodney King riots and the O.J. Simpson Trial . These tensions rippled across the nineties Star Trek shows in a variety of ways, particularly informing the portrayal of the Jem’Hadar in The Abandoned or the Kazon in Caretaker .

It’s always the Kyrians who get in in the neck.

These same anxieties simmer through Living Witness . The attack upon the museum evokes the footage of the rioters, while the EMH explicitly worries about the truth prompting “a race riot.” Quarren even frames the dynamics in terms that will be familiar to anybody paying attention to the racial tensions of the nineties. “The Vaskans are more powerful, but the Kyrians are very angry. They’re talking about another war.” The Vaskans are obviously stand-ins for the white Californians, while the Kyrians are African Americans, which makes their make-up choices inspired.

That said, there is a certain clumsiness to the racial politics of Living Witness , particularly in its portrayal of the dynamic between the Vaskans and the Kyrians. Quarren’s history is controversial for the same reason that teaching slavery is controversial, in that it paints the dominant social class in an unflattering light. However, Living Witness leans away from that aspect of the reconstruction. The big controversial reveal in Living Witness is that the Vaskan oppression of the Kyrians was not as cruel and aggressive as Quarren had argued.

Things come to a head.

Although the EMH’s reconstruction suggests that the Vaskan Daleth murdered the Kyrian Tedran in cold blood, it also argues that the Kyrians were more brutal than the history books suggest. The EMH’s account of events portrays the Kyrians as aggressors, launching an unprovoked attack upon Voyager and taking hostages before forcing Janeway to intervene. Given the comparisons that Living Witness consciously invites to slavery, this is a deeply problematic reveal. It is akin to suggesting that African Americans were in someway responsible for slavery.

Indeed,  Living Witness seems to suggest that Kyrian accounts of oppression and victimisation are exaggerated. The Kyrian arbitrator argues that this revision is irrelevant. “It doesn’t change the fact my children can’t attend the same academies as yours, or that we are forced to live outside of the city centre,” she states. Her Vaskan colleague shuts down that line of conversation almost immediately. “Today’s problems are not at issue here. This is about history.” There is a sense that Living Witness agrees with the Vaskan representative.

A flash mob.

The Kyrian arbitrator is portrayed as hypersensitive and vindictive. She warns Quarren, “You’ll pay for your crimes.” She protests to her colleague, “I’m only on this commission because you needed a token Kyrian.” Quarren insists, “This isn’t about race.” The Kyrian arbitrator responds, “It’s always about race.” The Kyrian arbitrator plays like a grotesque parody of a hypersensitive African American, the conservative stereotype of the victim who cannot wait to play “the race card” to win an argument.

It is a questionable choice, to say the least, although it does fit with certain strains of political thought during the nineties. At the end of the twentieth century, there was an increased perception among conservative writers and commentators that African Americans had achieved functional equality of opportunity thanks to civil rights, and that the fixation upon slavery as a historical injustice was both unreasonable and unfair. This is perhaps most notable in the political establishment’s firm rejection of the concept of reparations .

Getting to the heart of the matter.

Certain conservative pundits would accuse African Americans of playing “the race card” while attempting to address issues of systemic injustice. Glenn C. Loury outlined the position in his review of the controversial America in Black and White :

America in Black and White is, and seems very much intended to be, a combative book. Reading it, one cannot escape the impression that the enemy is being engaged. Although conceived long before President Bill Clinton initiated his national dialogue on racial issues, the book’s publication at this moment offers, in effect, an opening salvo from the right in that proposed debate. The enemy on whom the Thernstroms have fixed their sights is the latter-day public philosophy of racial liberalism — what the economist Thomas Sowell once called “the civil-rights vision.” This is the notion that ongoing white racism is the main barrier to black progress, and that some kind of affirmative action is the appropriate remedy. Another crucial feature of the civil-rights vision as depicted here is that it fosters undue race consciousness by sustaining a sense of grievance among blacks of all classes — encouraging them to “play the race card.” Following the political scientist Donald Horowitz, the authors pithily refer to this belief in the enduring power of race as “the figment of the pigment.”

Of course, the truth is decidedly more complex than that. Although the Civil War may have legally ended slavery, the truth is that slavery introduced a system of inequality that shaped the American social and economic landscape . To pick one relatively abstract example, slavery is the reason that the United States has the Electoral College .

Janeway has some very strong opinions about Harry’s latest powerpoint.

Living Witness seems to argue that Kyrian inequality and oppression can somehow exist separate from the historical record. While it is an interesting theoretical position, it is a very awkward argument to make in the context of an allegory for real-world oppression. The economic and political disadvantages experienced by African Americans can largely be traced back to slavery, and acknowledging that history is most likely the best way to heal those long-standing divisions. The two do not exist apart from one another, and they never could.

There is something disingenuous in arguing that the controversial history of Kyrian oppression taught by Quarren is somehow inaccurate or unreasonable. Living Witness almost seems like it would side with Patrick Buchanan or Lynne Cheney on the teaching of slavery in classes on American history, which is a decidedly tone-deaf plot element. Quarren’s inflammatory and controversial history is ultimately disproven, which makes the character seem like a conservative parody of a liberal socially-conscious historian.

Kazon Kameo!

To be fair, this would not be a major issue in isolation. Indeed, it might have been a nice thought experiment. After all, Living Witness seems to accept that the Kyrian people are actually systemically oppressed and that the Vaskan people have never come to terms with their role in that oppression. In theory, historical facts should exist outside that framework. Even if Tedran was a pirate, and even if the Kyrians were the aggressors, the current inequalities cannot be excused or forgiven. However, Living Witness does not exist in isolation.

Voyager has a decidedly reactionary streak running through it, an awkward tone-deafness on issues of race and identity. The Kazon are perhaps the best example, modeled on Los Angeles gang culture as imagined by a middle-class white writers’ room. In Alliances , Janeway actually finds it easier to get along with the (white middle-class) former slave owners than she does to align herself with the primitive and violent Kazon. This is to say nothing of the xenophobia that underlines the immigration metaphor of Displaced or the refugee allegory of Day of Honour .

Still, leaving aside that particular tone-deaf plot element that plays into the more conservative subtext of Voyager , there is a lot to like about Living Witness . In some respects, it is the perfect and archetypal Voyager episode. It is a classic Star Trek story that could arguably be told using any of the series. Indeed, appropriately enough, Living Witness has a strong thematic and literal connection to the franchise’s history. The Kyrian recreation of Voyager might be inaccurate, but the story is crammed full of images and ideas lifted from across the franchise’s history.

Most obviously, the idea of evil doppelgangers of the crew evokes Mirror, Mirror . In fact, the disorderly conduct and the brutal sadism of the holographic crew evokes the chaos seen on the ISS Enterprise. The image of the audience peering into the mess hall through an outside window is lifted directly from The Mark of Gideon . The EMH is reimagined as an evil version of Data, the breakout character from The Next Generation . Even Quarren’s confusion over with Torres is “the chief transporter operator” or “the chief engineer” recalls ambiguity over Scotty’s function .

Chairing the debate.

Living Witness is also an archetypal Voyager episode in that it features no members of the original crew. More than any other Star Trek series, Voyager tended to treat its primary cast as elastic and archetypal. The actors on Voyager would find themselves playing doppelgangers or alternatives with much greater frequency than their counterparts on any other show. More than the surrounding shows, Voyager often used the ship and the characters as a springboard to tell unrelated stories, as in episodes like 11:59 or One Small Step .

In some ways, Voyager could feel like an anthology series. It was a vehicle for telling a variety of Star Trek stories with very speciation. Because the studio had hired an ensemble, those actors tended to appear in almost every episode. However, they were frequently playing replacements or holograms or facsimiles. Very often, the actual characters on Voyager felt incidental to the story being told. These stories could be told using any random Star Trek cast. Often, they could even have been reworked as an episode of The Outer Limits .

Black shirt.

Indeed, Living Witness also embodies Voyager ‘s long-standing antipathy towards serialisation and long-form storytelling. Notwithstanding two brief experiments with multi-episode arcs, a disastrous run culminating in Investigations in the second season and a more convincing run beginning with Message in a Bottle in the fourth season, Voyager has largely avoided any sense of continuity between episodes. Almost any episode of Voyager can be watched in any sequence, give or take Kes and Seven of Nine, and allowing for two-parters.

Living Witness plays into this discontinuity in a number of clever ways. Most obviously, the episode opens on a delightfully grotesque representation of Voyager that does not exist in continuity with any version of the ship from any earlier episode. However, once the framing device becomes apparent, it is also clear that Living Witness unfolds hundreds of years after the crew of Voyager are dead. Living Witness might be the twenty-third episode of the fourth season, but it really fits long after Endgame in any chronology of the series.

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

Indeed, this plot element generated some debate among the writing staff, as Joe Menosky explained to Cinefantastique :

For a while we thought it was in the Alpha Quadrant. Was it a Romulan museum? A Klingon museum? We didn’t know. I think it might have been Rick Berman who said, ‘No, it’s got to be in Delta, it’s got to be an alien museum,’ for the very good reason that he didn’t want to let it be known that Voyager had successfully gotten home. If you’ve got the Doctor in a museum 700 years from now, there is a good chance that people at that museum know about the fate of Voyager. We just didn’t want to have to deal with that. So with Rick’s input we realized that it had to be an alien museum.

It is a very cute storytelling concern, if only because the production team seem to believe that there was any way that Voyager would end without the crew getting back to Earth.

Museum musings.

As with episodes like Future’s End, Part I , Future’s End, Part II and Relativity , the basic plot of Living Witness assumes that the future is relatively stable. The episode might be written in such a way as to avoid explaining if Voyager gets home, but it does assume a future in which the Delta Quadrant still exists. It imagines a future in which the Borg have not dominated the region, in which no natural disaster has befallen this area of space, in which nobody has weaponised the omega molecule. The past might be up for grabs, but the future is assured. The end of history .

Even the flashbacks within Living Witness are positioned as to be ambiguous. Darleth speculates that Voyager still has sixty thousand light years to travel, but that is a vague enough detail. Similarly, Seven of Nine is on board the ship while Kes is absent. There is nothing in Living Witness to confirm that the episode unfolds between Unforgettable and Demon . It could in theory happen anywhere between The Gift and Timeless . Then again, the discontinuities slyly make it impossible to date. The encounter with the Kyrians could have happened at any time.

It is nice that the Kyrians let the EMH pose for a badass profile picture.

There is undoubtedly a valid criticism there, an observation that the lead characters on Voyager were less developed (and more interchangeable) than the lead characters on any other Star Trek series. Certainly, characters like Chakotay and Harry Kim lack any real personality at this point in the run, let alone a unique history or a distinct identity. The actors on Voyager often felt like cogs in a machine, working parts that could be restructured and repositioned in order to satisfy the needs of a given episodes.

Living Witness belongs to that rich subgenre of Voyager episodes, stories more invested in the idea of Voyager than in the material reality.  Deadlock imagines two duplicate Voyagers tethered to one another. Worst Case Scenario and  Author, Author feature holographic interpretations of the crew. Course: Oblivion is built around a crew of doppelgangers that have convinced themselves that they are the real Voyager crew. Even  Endgame features two versions of Katherine Janeway for the price of one.

In an interview with Cinefantastique , Joe Menosky acknowledged that this theme of doppelgangers and alternates appealed to him:

I heard this quote sometime back on TNG where someone said, ‘Our characters are never more interesting than when they are somebody else.’ In some ways, that’s more true of Voyager. It was really fun to cut lose with what I call the briefing room brawl. It’s a blast to write things like that.

There is definite sense that Voyager does not see the ship or the crew as a concrete and material object with its own arc or its own ambitions. Instead, Voyager treats the ship and crew as abstract concepts.

“You might feel a slight stinging sensation.”

That is particularly true in the case of writer Joe Menosky, who returns time and time again to the notion of Voyager as a mythic object in the history of the Delta Quadrant. Menosky seems to imagine Voyager as a mythic saga about a lost ship and the lives that it touches along the way home. Menosky seems less interested in the lives of the characters on the ship, and much more interested in the impressions and ripples that the crew make on their journey back to the Alpha Quadrant.

This is very much suggested by False Profits , a story that positions the crew as divine creatures interacting with local folklore. In Distant Origin , Gegen tracks Voyager across the quadrant by listening for whispers and stories, even going so far as to revisit the locations of Basics, Part II and Fair Trade . In The Voyager Conspiracy , Seven of Nine tries to construct a logical narrative of the crew’s journey to date. In Muse , in which an alien culture reimagines and readapts the crew’s stories for their own entertainment.

Having a blast.

Living Witness plays into that same idea, focusing on a society that only had a fleeting interaction with Voyager. Nevertheless, that small point of intersection had huger repercussions. Living Witness portrays Voyager as tourists, as guests who are just passing through this area of space and who happen to make a sizable impact upon the people with whom they interact. Although Janeway never mentions the Vaskans or the Kyrians in any subsequent episodes, Living Witness suggests that Voyager left quite a mark on those people.

Living Witness stresses that Voyager is an external force at work. “You have shamed us all,” Tedran claims in the original recreation. “We could’ve ended this on our own, peacefully, without her.” The detail is so important that it even recurs in the corrected and historically accurate account of events, with Darlath appealing to Tedran, “Tedran, this is between us. Leave these people out of it.” Quarren acknowledges that Voyager did not hang around to pick up the pieces after these events. “The warship Voyager continued on its way, leaving the Kyrian dynasty in ruins.”

His career is in ruins.

There is something powerful in that image, especially the contrast in scale. It seems unlikely that Janeway ever thought twice about the encounter, but it would define the Vaskan and the Kyrian people. “It took centuries for us to undo the damage that Captain Janeway had done, and the Kyrian struggle for equality is far from over,” Quarren informs his people. “This simulation and this museum are a testament to that struggle.” The events in Living Witness would barely fill an forty-minute episode from Voyager’s perspective, but they shaped centuries of history.

It seems almost like Voyager aspires towards its archetypal status, trying to build an interpretation of the Star Trek mythos that conjures the raw mythic power of the franchise. Voyager is more of an idea than a literal ship, an object of aspiration rather than a fully fleshed-out entity. To the inhabitants of the Delta Quadrant, Voyager is the subject of speculation and rumour, perhaps a children’s bedtime story or a fable repeated at a dark barroom table. Discussing his own childhood with the EMH, Quarren speaks of Voyager as an object of fascination.

Eye, eye, sir.

“Ever since I was a small child, the first time I heard the name Voyager, it conjured up my imagination,” he confesses. Even more than “Enterprise” , the very name “Voyager” distills the spirit of the franchise. When the EMH wonders why Quarren was so fascinated with the “bad guys” , Quarren dismisses the question. He was never interested in the reality of Voyager. Just the idea of Voyager. “The fact you were so far from home, traveling across the stars. Ah, I found it all very heroic. I suppose Voyager is what made me fall in love with history.”

Indeed, there it seems like even the EMH is taken in by the romance of that idea. Although the EMH remains an important part of Vaskan and Kyrian society for many years, eventually he surrenders to that archetypal call to adventure. The EMH is a voyager, in his own way. “He took a small craft and set a course for the Alpha Quadrant, attempting to trace the path of Voyager,” explains a tour guide, centuries after the fact. The EMH tries to chart his mythic course, following in the foot steps of his predecessor.

The Voyager Home.

It is worth noting that Voyager very consciously and repeatedly adheres to a very archetypal mythological structure. In particular, the basic concept of the show evokes Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey . As Anna Claybourne remarks in Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology , the plot of Voyager is in many ways inspired by that classic adventure:

The Odyssey’s simple structure of disaster and recovery, the exciting monsters, and the universal theme of longing for home make the poem enduringly popular. The Odyssey has been translated and retold countless times in books, films, and literature. A famous example is Irish writer James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which is based on the Odyssey. The poem has also inspired more recent works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, in which the crew of a spaceship encounters many monsters and strange peoples on their long journey home.

Indeed, it is possible to draw explicit parallels between certain events in The Odyssey and certain episodes of Voyager , most notably Favourite Son . In some ways, this speaks to the idea of  Star Trek as an American mythology, a tether between Voyager and the second-oldest extant piece of Western literature.

His is bigger.

Living Witness is a great piece of work. In particular, the opening few acts are particularly memorable. Ironically for a series so fascinated with doppelgangers and alternate versions, Voyager never produced a literal mirror universe episode. As such, Living Witness provides amble opportunity. It transforms the cast into a bunch of violent outlaws in sinister costumes with some effective mood lighting. The little touches are particularly effective and uncanny, from the EMH’s contact lenses to Chakotay’s tattoo to Tuvok’s twisted smile.

In particular, the twisted version of Janeway presented in Living Witness is an absolute delight. Part of this is down to the way that the character is written and designed. The opening shot of Living Witness is brilliant, panning slowly to a fascist version of Janeway staring out at the stars. “When diplomacy fails there’s only one alternative,” she reflects. “Violence. Force must be applied without apology. It’s the Starfleet way.” It is almost a parody of the version of Janeway that Brannon Braga championed in episodes like Macrocosm or The Omega Directive .

Star of the show.

However, a lot of it is down to Kate Mulgrew’s performance. Mulgrew is a fantastic actor, often stronger than the material apportioned to her. She is a joy to watch while she is chewing scenery, indulging her inner ham. Most obviously, Mulgrew excels at cutting one-liners in episodes like  Counterpoint . The version of Janeway presented in Living Witness afford Mulgrew the opportunity to play it large, and she responds by playing it to the hilt. It is a joy to watch, even without the nice production joke about how difficult it was to get Janeway’s hair right.

The script for Living Witness is very clever in this regard, offering a sly off-kilter interpretation of how life on Voyager works, almost as though the show were described to a stranger through a game of Chinese Whispers. “Voyager had many weapons at their disposal, including species they’d assimilated along the way,” Quarren explains. “Borg, Talaxian, Kazon. They were captured and made to work as part of Voyager’s fighting force.” It is a sly reference to the similarities in ideology (if not methodology) between the Federation and the Borg.

To hive and to hive not.

Living Witness is notable as the only episode of Star Trek to be directed by Tim Russ. In an interview with Cinefantastique , Russ was justifiably proud of his work on the story:

“The part that’s the most rewarding really is seeing whether or not what you planned or envisioned actually comes about. If you envision a scene a certain way, it’s very rewarding to see the mechanical process of that happen, and then to see it on the screen when it’s played back, in the same way that you envisioned it, to find out whether or not what you had planned was going to come to life. It was very interesting seeing that process happen. That’s the challenge and it’s the fulfillment that comes out of it.” He continued, “There are a couple of small points here and there, things I would have liked to have done differently. I can’t do anything about that now. Anything that you’ve done as a type of artwork is never completely finished. It’s never done exactly to satisfaction. There’s always something you could do better. But ultimately, the piece is wonderful. And I’ve gotten very good feedback from it as well.”

For an episode that is so far off-format, Russ does a good job. It likely helped that Tuvok had a relatively small part in the episode, which would have afforded Russ more time to invest in directing.

Safe and secure.

A lot of the impact of the early scenes in Living Witness comes from the production design, the way that the scenes are lit or the way that the props have been subtly altered. Russ’ direction is generally unobtrusive, familiar enough with the basic template of the show that he understands how to emphasise the differences and play against the audience’s expectations; the slow pan around the EMH’s head is a nice touch, as is the introduction of Seven of Nine’s Borg army.

However, Russ’ direction never feels as stylised or off-kilter as it might otherwise. It is interesting to wonder what David Livingston might have done with those first two acts, given his willingness to play with camera angles and lenses in off-format episodes like Crossover or Distant Origin . The opening acts of Living Witness work because they are bizarre images shot in a very matter-of-fact manner, but it might have been interesting to play with the audience’s comfort by shooting the familiar sets from more unusual positions or drawing more attention to artifice.

Brought to heal.

In the years since Living Witness aired, Russ has acknowledged that he felt somewhat confined by the house style on the episode :

If I was to redo it today I would change the way it was shot to be more progressive, more edgy style in terms of the cameras and lighting. Not unlike some of the dramas we have now. Voyager was done in the way the Executive Producer at the time [Rick Berman] liked it to be shot. If you brought him something that was shot outside the box he would make you redo it again.

Although Living Witness works very well in its present form, Russ makes a fair point. The Rick Berman era could be very conservative in its aesthetics, particularly in terms of soundtrack and direction.

Seeing red.

Living Witness is a fantastic episode of television, and superb demonstration of what Voyager does very well. Somewhat ironically, Voyager ‘s key strength seems to be pitching itself as a container for generic Star Trek stories. Living Witness is a beautiful piece of Star Trek allegory about the dangers of historical revisionism, the politicisation of history, and the perils of a society unwilling to confront the more uncomfortable chapters of its past.

It is an allegory that has aged very particularly well indeed.

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: emh , history , living witness , memory , politics , race , star trek , star trek: voyager , voyager |

15 Responses

I agree that this episode is fantastic, but I would also argue that it is a distinctly Voyager episode. One of the themes of Voyager is that the ship and crew end up changing civilizations all throughout the Delta Quardrant. The theme is present here, but also in Dragon’s Teeth, Blink of an Eye, and Flesh and Blood. I believe in one episode, though I can’t remember, it is even commented on that Voyager seems to bring destruction everywhere they go.

That’s a fair enough point. I think the fascination with history and the malleability of the past is also a very Voyager theme.

But, at the same time, I think you could do this with the Next Gen or Enterprise casts without missing a beat.

Nice Locutus reference with the war doctor. (Turning to expose his artificial eyes and exposed wiring.)

There is a cycle of victimhood playing out on the planet which is, arguably, a better Nazi/Zionist parallel than anything DS9 tried.

The show pulls the ol’ Rod Sterling ol’ with the Vaskans. It’s the whole point of “Nemesis”, but here, it adds texture to the story rather than the be-all, end-all.

I also enjoyed how the Vaskans look vaguely like Aborigine people. They’re still blacked up (as is custom), but they’re relatable… unlike the Nemesis, who looked out of place in his Brooks Brothers suit.

*Rod Serling. Sorry, I’m on mobile again

“There is a cycle of victimhood playing out on the planet which is, arguably, a better Nazi/Zionist parallel than anything DS9 tried.”

Yeah, I always had problems with DS9’s tackling of the Nazis and the Holocaust. The problem is that the Cardassians aren’t Nazis, and the Bajorans aren’t Jews. The Jews did not have their own civilization and were not “invaded”. Jewish lands were not strip mined, there was no Jewish nation that Hitler conquered. I find DS9 did better when they made Cardassia it’s own identity, rather then trying to shoehorn them as Nazis. Gul Dukat was at his least interesting when he declared that he wanted to exterminate the Bajorans.

I found the Nazi speech from the Killing Game hologram, the most effective commentary on the Nazis in the entire franchise. I love Shanter and Nimoy and I understand they are both Jewish, but the Patterns of Force episode made the alien-nazis too goofy to act as any serious commentary, and the Nazis in Enterprise were just “the bad guys”. So it’s weird that Voyager managed to do a better job (in my opinion) with a Nazi recreation hologram (which might be the only hologram that has coerced a real person for sex) then a show that dealt with slave labor camps. Duet comes close, but Nazi death camp commandants aren’t treated with any kind of honor or protection, I suppose those who ran the Gulags might get protection like they do in that episode, but Gulags aren’t analogous to what happened on Bajor.

I agree. Ironic that a “Holonazi” is more convincing than the real deal.

DS9’s more of a meditation on the perils of western imperialism. The Cardassians want their Pax Americana back. The Federation are well-meaning but morally compromised. The Founder can’t suffer any society which doesn’t conform to her rigid cultural standards.

Again, I’ll be in the minority and admit to liking the use of Nazis in Patterns of Force , although mileage may vary. But, yeah, the Nazis in Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II were basically cosplayers. Then again, I’ll always have a soft spot for Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II as weird bookends to The City on the Edge of Forever , episodes treating the Second World War as the cornerstone of the Star Trek universe.

That said, Boehmer’s speech in The Killing Game, Part II is a beautiful (because it is so horrific) and probably the closest that the franchise comes to capturing the sheer magnitude of the horror of Nazi ideology. This is somewhat undercut by immediately equating the Hirogen Turanj to the Nazis.

I like the pseudo Nausicaan dude in his suit. It was weird in a way that Voyager seldom let itself be weird.

“Living Witness is in many ways archetypal Star Trek, a story that uses the franchise framework to construct a powerful allegorical story that comments upon contemporary anxiety. It is a story that could easily have been told on any of the other franchise series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation ”

And yet, it wasn’t. We never got the mirror mirror universe Picard. Oh sure, we got that affable duplicate Picard that tried to get the crew to fly into a star, and we got that affable goateed Picard from Future Imperfect, and *cough* Shinzon *cough*, but we never got Patrick Steward hamming it up with Fascist Picard, which is a real shame. Whenever Patrick Steward got intense like “The line must be drawn HERE! THIS FAR, NO FURTHER! I WILL MAKE THEM PAY FOR WHAT THEY’VE DONE” it was always amazing to witness. Alas, it was Voyager that truly gave me what I wanted, in a really good episode no less! We’ll get another episode like this in Author Author, and in this show, they knew that the episode had to be more then just “evil doppelgangers”, these “fun/corny” episodes actually tackled serious topics, and smartly made them Picardo episodes. This I feel, was when Voyager was firing on all cylinders, using their best actors with unmistakable Star Trek stories that tackled real world issues while showing optimism for the future. As much as I like DS9, or Ent’s In a Mirror Darkly, they didn’t use their mirror mirror episodes to really say anything. Voyager maybe archetypal Star Trek, but I never saw that as a bad thing, and sometimes Voyager was the best at these kinds of episodes. Unfortunately, this model of episode would be used in Blink of an Eye which has become controversial due to the episode using too many elements from Dragon’s Egg.

I really liked Kate Mulgrew in this episode and I’m glad we got to see Fascist Janeway’s ready room in Author Author, adorned with so many weapons it would make the Hirogen blush. Also, it it just me, or is Tuvok wearing the ears that would be used for the Star Trek reboot?

To be fair, I seem to be fonder of In a Mirror, Darkly than most, despite the fact I think the fan service is the weakest aspect. I think it uses the mirror universe quite well, playing into the recurring fourth season theme that the franchise’s utopian future is far from certain. A two-parter about the Terran Empire right before Paxton’s big speech about the need for a “human-centric consciousness” in Demon seems like a very overt thematic point. The hopeful future of the Federation is not assured. In fact, at the time that Enterprise was produced, it arguably seemed much further away than it had been during the nineties.

(A point also suggested in Babel One and United , in which the Romulans (another classic “ space! Romans” civilisation) treat the possible emergence of the Federation as a political and existential threat. The original Star Trek used the “ space! Roman” civilisations as a commentary on contemporary America. One of the smarter things about the fourth season of Enterprise is bringing back two of those twisted reflections as the War on Terror kicked into gear. I mean, the Romulans even use drone warfare.)

But, yeah, I am really disappointed that we never got evil scenery-chewing Patrick Stewart.

I never saw this episode as a kid (VOY was what I grew up watching), and ended up seeing it on a whim after a Star Trek mobile game put in a plotline referring to it. I think now it’s easily in my top 5 favorite VOY episodes, even if it is a bit plodding in the middle.

Delightful concept and great execution, especially in the first act. Up there with ‘Author, Author’, ‘Tinker Tailor’, and the Pathfinder storyline episodes for me. (Yes, they are all Doctor episodes…but VOY’s best non-action episodes tend to be…)

For me, the most interesting concept explored was how history is rewritten over time and according to the needs/goals of the writers. It’s an interesting issue and not one that I ever expected to see Star Trek tackle.

To be fair, I think it’s a theme to which Voyager returns time and time again. Voyager tends to treat the past as something malleable and warpable, whether in a literal sense (as in Future’s End, Part I and Future’s End, Part II or Year of Hell, Part I and Year of Hell, Part II) or in a more abstract and metaphorical manner (as in Remember or Distant Origin or Latent Image).

Living Witness has the most ambitious scope of any Star Trek episode, so it’s all the more surprising it turns up in VGR. VGR was often a show that shied away from its own implications, and while Living Witness takes place in a far, far (far) distant future that could never impact the Voyager crew, one has to admire it for taking this gamble. Living Witness is up there with the very best that Star Trek has to offer.

Right from the teaser, we know Living Witness will be a very different experience to most VGR episodes. First, we have Janeway sporting a severe hairdo, black gloves and a slightly more muted uniform while looking out one of the windows of her Ready Room. She’s discussing plans with an alien ambassador to defeat the Kyrians, the enemies of his people, the Vaskans. In return, he will stabilise a nearby wormhole that will get them home (to Mars).

This is only the first of several surprises. Janeway and Ambassador Daleth move to the Bridge where they launch an all-out assault against the Kyrians, until it stops in the middle of the action and we realise we’re watching a recreation of events in a Kyrian museum, set an astounding 700yrs in the future.

You half expect this to be one of Star Trek’s illusory episodes (and it is in a sense), but Living Witness is still firmly set in an extremely distant future, and it never backs off from that conceit. The fact this is an episode of a TV series rather than a film is what makes it so staggering.

The museum curator Quarren is immensely proud of his depiction of “The Voyager Encounter”. In his mind, this is an unfailingly accurate account of what happened seven centuries ago. But some patrons are quick to poke holes in the sequence of events. Did the Vaskans truly conspire with Voyager’s fighting force to conquer the Kyrians, or were Kyrians the true aggressors as the Vaskans have long suspected?

At this point, our heads are still reeling from what the teaser showed us to even begin to answer that question. But Living Witness has far more in store. As horrifying as the simulation is, it’s impossible to deny its power, no matter how fake we know it must be. The crew of the Warship Voyager are a thoroughly wicked bunch (it’s the closest VGR will ever get to it’s own Mirror episode) who use violence, fear and intimidation to travel the Delta Quadrant, rather than diplomacy and good intentions.

The cast relish the opportunity to trash they’re characters, even if it’s only for one episode. Janeway’s a single-minded sadist, Chakotay and Harry are good cop/bad cop torturers, the Doctor’s a cold, lethal killing machine, Seven has a Borg army at her command, Tuvok’s a grinning, gleeful weapons man, Tom and Neelix are a couple of thuggish heavies, etc.

It’s hard not to be entertained by this ruthless Voyager crew (even Daleth thinks they’re methods are excessive) that it’s almost a disappointment to press on with the real story (or more to the point, get us back to the real Voyager crew).

Quarren discovers a module that contains a backup copy of the Doctor’s program, left over from the days of The Voyager Encounter. The Doctor is mortified to see his former shipmates depicted as villains in the Kyrian history books, and endeavours to set the record straight. But his good intentions backfire when it reignites the Vaskan/Kyrian conflict.

Living Witness is an astonishing episode. Tim Russ’s excellent direction beautifully engineers each shift in the script. Judging from his work here, Russ could have become the VGR equivalent of Jonathan Frakes. Living Witness is arguably in the same class as TNG classics like The Offspring, Reunion, Cause and Effect and First Contact. What a shame Russ never returned to the directors chair again.

Tim Russ delivers an astounding piece of television in his debut. He tackles each scene with the same confidence, and whether it calls for a horrifying, jarring or thought-provoking approach, Russ just aces it. He draws out some finely shaded performances from the regulars, and some excellent ones from the guest stars.

It was a stroke of genius to bring back Henry Woronicz from another VGR masterpiece, Distant Origin. Quarren is in some regards not dissimilar to Professor Gegen. They both manage to shake up they’re respective civilisations when each makes a profound discovery. Living Witness has a happier ending than Distant Origin but Woronicz imbues Quarren with the same radical intelligence he brought to Professor Gegen. The two episodes would make a fine double feature.

It was wise to put one of VGR’s strongest performers at the centre of Living Witness. Robert Picardo rises to the material with relish. Be it the distorted version of the Doctor we know, or the Doctor’s campaign to clear the names of his crew, we’re riveted all the way.

Living Witness has one of the finest scripts we’ve ever seen in a Trek episode. As well as the vastly different versions of what happened hundreds of years before anyone in the episode was born, it brings up topics like racial diversity, revisionist history, the inevitable race wars, etc. We see more of the internal politics of the Vaskans and the Kyrians in this single episode than we do of most Star Trek societies, right down to the Kyrian arbiter throwing the logic of Quarren’s argument back in his face. In the end, it always comes back to race.

Even as things invariably lead to a conflict, Living Witness ends on a hopeful note. It turns out that what we’ve been watching this whole time is yet another simulation, set in the same museum a further 200yrs in the future (the furthest we’ve ever travelled in the Star Trek universe), where we’re treated to a glimpse of the Vaskans and the Kyrians as now a united people. It’s a suitably dizzying coda to a vastly ambitious episode.

Living Witness, along with Year of Hell, are the two best examples this season of VGR fully aware of what it can offer when it remembers what it has to offer.

Yep, Living Witness is one of the great Voyager episodes, and one of the ones which has aged better than a lot of those around it. (Indeed, it seems to have gotten more relevant as time marches on, and as the we increasingly see the dangers that nostalgic fantasy can unleash upon the world.)

One way this couldn’t be a TNG episode is that the TNG cast would almost assuredly be remembered as heroes and saints. It’s quite telling that the Voyager crew are remembered as a callous band of violent thugs who selfishly sold out a planet for their own good and then warped off, leaving the broken civilization to pick up the pieces. Though I will say this anti-heroic crew is in some ways more entertaining than most of the regular crew.

It’s also interesting that the Borg, far from being remembered as an existential plague to the entire quadrant, are remembered as merely Voyager’s thoroughly domesticated muscle.

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Living witness

Josho Brouwers 4 March 2021

Lost in space

A witness from the past.

Similarly, the Voyager that the Kyrians feature in their reconstruction includes a collection of Borg drones. The Borg are cybernetic lifeforms that are among the most dangerous enemies faced by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant: they assimilate entire planets into their Collective, removing all trace of individuality. At this point in the series, they have managed to save one of them, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), removing most of her implants so that she appears more human. But in the Kyrian reconstruction, she appears as a full Borg drone, even if her own personality has somehow been preserved.

“Pure fiction!” our Doctor exclaims.

The politics of the past

He then adds that Voyager was attacked by more Kyrian ships and his program was disabled, probably because the Kyrians stole his backup module.

Picking sides

A longing for home.

Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series)

Living witness (1998), full cast & crew.

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Writing credits  , cast (in credits order) complete, awaiting verification  , produced by , music by , cinematography by , editing by , casting by , production design by , costume design by , makeup department , second unit director or assistant director , art department , sound department , special effects by , visual effects by , camera and electrical department , casting department , costume and wardrobe department , music department , additional crew .

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