Episode Review - Flesh and Blood Part II
Reviewed by Andy Taylor

Synopsis
The Doctor, now on the holograms’ ship is furious at Iden due to the capture of Torres. However, he promises to let her go when she has decided whether she should help them or not. On Voyager, the crew try to repair their battle damage in the wake of Torres’ capture, whilst Janeway finds out that The Doctor had transmitted Voyager’s shield codes to the holograms and beamed off the ship. She suspects that his matrix may have been altered by the holograms.

Meanwhile, Torres finally wakes up on the holograms’ ship, and intends to leave at once. She is also angry with The Doctor for switching sides – he argues that she did the same when she joined the Maquis originally, and also persuades her that her help with her technical expertise, she can help to stop the violence and bloodshed. He then takes her to meet Iden – she agrees to look at the photonic field generator, but offers no promises as to what she will do.

Back on Voyager, the crew cannot find the holograms. Donik believes that he could alter the sensors to detect them, and asks to stay onboard Voyager rather than have to go back with the other Hirogen. Suddenly, two large Hirogen craft arrive to retrieve their stranded officers, except for Donik. The Alpha-Hirogen then threatens to turn Voyager’s crew into prey if they interfere with their hunt for the holograms. However when he Hirogen vessels go to warp, Janeway decides to follow them using a plan by Donik – Voyager will be hidden in the ion wake of one of the Hirogen vessels, essentially a blind spot.

Torres takes a look at the photonic field generator with the Cardassian hologram, Kejal, suspicious of the holograms’ overall motivation. She realises, however, that she has prejudged them, and decides to proceed with helping to enhance their technology. Meanwhile, Iden approaches The Doctor, who is beginning to have doubts about being with the holograms. Iden shows him a Y-class planet that he calls ‘Ha’Dara,’ Bajoran for ‘Home of Light.’ Iden plans to install the photonic fields generator on the planet as the class-Y environment will be toxic to organic life, therefore they will be left alone. However, the future takes a backseat when they realise that two Hirogen vessels have found their location, so they travel into a nebula to hide. The Hirogen ships follow, unaware that Voyager is still following in the wake of one of them.

The holograms initiate evasive manoeuvres against the Hirogen as Torres works faster to try and get the generator online. She runs Kejal through it to test if it works, and is successful – she also lets the ‘Cardassian’ know that as the closet thing to the ship’s engineer, she is the most important member of the crew. Meanwhile, The Doctor tells Iden that on Ha’Dara, he plans to introduce music and various forms of other art to the rest of the society. Iden says that he plans to create a new religion, with himself being worshipped as the ‘Man of Light,’ who delivered his people to freedom. This obsession plants further doubts in The Doctor’s mind as to whether Iden’s ideals are sound or not.

As a Nuu’bari mining ship is detected by the holograms, Iden orders them to intercept – he hopes to liberate the holograms onboard that vessel. The Doctor tells Torres of his concerns about Iden, saying that he is showing signs of megalomania. Meanwhile, the Hirogen detect the holograms’ ship on the other side of the nebula and move to intercept, with Voyager still hiding in one of the vessels’ ion wake. On the holograms’ ship, Iden contacts the Nuu’bari and tries to persuade them to let their holograms free. When they refuse, Iden fires at them and orders Kejal to steal the Nuu’bari holograms. When the miners threaten to retaliate, Iden fires torpedoes at their warp core to destroy them, much to the horror of The Doctor and Torres. He sets course for Ha’Dara despite Torres’ accusations of him being a murderer. He has her confined and then asks Kejal to activate their newly liberated ‘friends.’ However, they are incompatible with their emitters, therefore Kejal asks for Torres’ help. She lets Kejal know that Iden does not have to be the main person making all of the decisions, and that she actually has the power to deactivate him. At last, the Nuu’bari holograms come online, but are unable to interact with anybody. They are actually only programmed with quite rudimentary subroutines – Torres points out to Iden that he killed two living beings to free mindless machines. Iden insists that they are still ‘Children of Light’ and he will deliver them to freedom. The bridge announces that they are approaching Ha’Dara, so Iden orders the deployment of the generator immediately – and refuses The Doctor’s demands for the release of Torres.

The Hirogen follow the holograms to the Y-class planet, but when they drop out of warp Voyager immediately fires weapons and disables both vessels. Voyager then turns towards the holograms’ ship, just as Iden has them beam the Hirogen to the planet so that they can be fought in retaliation. The Doctor again objects to no avail – Iden deactivates his program, but insists that he will be remembered in prayer. He then uses The Doctor’s mobile emitter for himself – his program is transmitted to it, and he and the photonic field generator are beamed to the planet. When the other holograms are brought online, he rallies his troops and ensures that today the hunt will be theirs.

On the surface, the unarmed Hirogen have trouble breathing. Holograms materialise around them and the hunt begins. Back on the holograms’ ship, Torres finally convinces Kejal to stop the massacre – however, their transporters and communications systems were damaged by Voyager’s attack. Therefore, she persuades Kejal to shut down the holograms – she does this, albeit reluctantly, and the holograms on the surface dematerialise before they can kill even more Hirogen. Iden is using The Doctor’s mobile emitter, thus cannot be deactivated. She suggests sending The Doctor himself through the generator on the planet. He materialises with a Hirogen hunting rifle and begins to pursue Iden, who is about to kill the Beta-Hirogen. The Doctor catches him however, and demands that he lower his weapon. When he refuses though, The Doctor shoots him – completely obliterating the madman.

The survivors are rescues by Voyager, and when he recovers the Beta-Hirogen wishes to reclaim the holograms’ vessel and everything in its database. However, Neelix is able to convince him that the stories told about the hunt will reflect more favourably upon him if the ship is believed to have been destroyed. The Hirogen agrees, and leaves Voyager. Janeway offers Kejal asylum onboard Voyager, yet insists that it is her ship that is her home. Donik volunteers to stay onboard with her in the hope that he can reprogram the malfunctioning holograms – hopefully, he’ll be able to undo some of the damage he helped to cause. Torres believes they can be successful, therefore Janeway’s only hope is that they consider the consequences of their actions.

With the rest of the loose ends tied up however, one problem remains – The Doctor’s guilt. He offers to allow Janeway to take his mobile emitter away, which would revoke the freedom he has enjoyed for years now. However, despite being incredibly annoyed, she does not believe that she can punish him for becoming as fallible as those who are actually made of flesh and blood.

Summary
One thing I’m quite sure of is that The Doctor got off tremendously lightly here – as mentioned in my last review, he left behind the relationships he had developed on Voyager over the past six and a half years, sabotaging Voyager in the process and putting people in trouble. I saw Janeway’s point that she won’t punish him for being as fallible as ‘real’ people, but it was barely a slap on the wrists – surely something bigger should have happened? Something that would have sorted him out and would put the holographic rights programmes to a rest? Perhaps the writers have another one planned for later in the season, and needed something to fill a mid-season gap, but whatever the case was, this second part certainly was on a different wavelength than on the first.

So then, it appears that last week’s uneven start to this particular two-parter did not improve much – in fact if anything, it remained dull, simple and even strange.

So what went wrong? Well personally I didn’t like how easily B’Elanna came around to being captured and made to work with the holograms. OK, she seemed to have common ground with them due to her Maquis experience, and the bond she built up with the Cardassian was, well, nice to see. That, however, was one hell of a huge step she made - especially when you consider the events that transpired in ‘Nothing Human’ with the Cardassian doctor that operated on her then. Her relationship with Kejal seemed incredibly unrealistic in the early parts of the episode.

The intriguing Iden from last week this time round became another ‘villain of the week’ – here he was developed into a real madman, which was ultimately a shame. Much more could have been developed, especially if the holograms did eventually settle down on the planet or something and he became a decent leader. However ultimately the good guys won and the bad guys didn’t – it all seemed a little shallow considering that the theme of holographic oppression is supposed to reflect issues about slavery and such.

The Doctor, whilst interesting last week, came across this week as confusing and certainly misguided (though obviously that fits in with the story in hand.) What this meant though was that The Doctor changed sides feel making him appear as if he’s this person who doesn’t trust anyone, which is perhaps a shame but of course is certainly not the intention of the episode, therefore it simply has to be looked past.

Again, this show was full of action, and the urgent ‘we’ve got to stop the madman’ story, which developed quite predictably – by the end, Iden’s ‘death’ did not surprise me. Perhaps one thing I would have liked to have seen would be the Hirogen, Donik, staying aboard, a concept that I would always have liked Voyager to use (ferrying passengers whilst continuing on their own journey, perhaps in exchange for some sort of help.)

Another problem was how everything was solved so quickly at the end of the episode – already mentioned is The Doctor’s non-punishment, but the loose end of Kejal and Donik (and even the Hirogen), were dealt with far too quickly – especially for a two-parter! It always bugged me how Voyager would never offer transport to any aliens they encountered who needed it. Of course, there has been Neelix, Kes and Seven, but I always thought that in exchange for some sort of help on the ship, or some ‘much-needed’ resources (yeah right), that helping an alien traveller would have been a likely Voyager story – so out of the window goes two more people. And as for that matter – the Equinox crew (whatever happened to them? )

As far as ‘Voyager two-parters’ go, a topic brought up again in my last review, this certainly doesn’t fare up to episodes like ‘Caretaker,’ ‘Scorpion’ or ‘Year of Hell.’ I would, however rate it above ‘Unimatrix Zero’ and ‘Equinox’ – after all, 'Flesh and Blood' does attempt to be ethical, and did keep me entertained whilst it was on. Roll on next week though.

Final Opinion
Disappointing – could have built on part one more, and should have had more depth

6.5/10

Flesh and Blood Part I Review and Synopsis