Star Trek Voyager Ruminations: S3E14 Alter Ego

[@Lalo-fv2ne]

37:15 "We adapt in ways we shouldn't", An astute observation of human nature. .....Impressive!

[@MatthewWilson44106]

Watching this during quarantine after more than a year of minimal social contact except for online… it feels much more relevant now

[@MatthewWilson44106]

Wild how Tom Paris said "everybody falls for a character in the holodeck" as if this is just a popular habit. And the more time you spend with your holodeck, the more the character becomes conscious and individualized. It's not a waste to throw away a blank canvas, but it seems tragic to throw out anybody's art. There's so much to discuss in this episode.

[@MatthewWilson44106]

Maybe the holodeck is designed on purpose to entice lonely crew members into a romantic relationships as a way of boosting morale.

[@Yura-Sensei]

Tuvok greatly showcases how diverse vulcans can be. He's pretty much the only vulcan I actively would like to have close relations with. Most other vulcans make me facepalm

[@StefanTravis]

In "Meld", Tuvok says "You are not invulnurable, _hologram_", using the word contemptuously. He's calling the doctor is a _mere_ hologram - nothing more, and not sentient. That's like calling your wife "Woman". But it makes no sense to insult something you regard as inanimate. Thus his contemptuous reduction of the doctor to "hologram" indicates that he regards the doctor as something more.

[@Z1gguratVert1go]

Calling him what he is also reminds him that Tuvok understands what he is. Holograms might be immune to fists and phasers but not to someone who understands what they are. Basically he is telling him "I know how to kill you."

[@fredrikcarlstedt393]

Love lifes of Harry Kim and Mr Vulkan .

[@ciboxcibox222]

I feel like this conversation is gonna applicable to the occulus when that hits with people :o

[@roflwaffles222]

Sorry if you answered this question already Arch, but I've noticed that the intro music to these videos comes from Mechwarrior 2. I was just wondering if you are a fan of Battletech, and were ever planning on making videos discussing the games, novels or even that entertainingly bad cartoon. Either way, thanks for doing what you do. Listening to your videos has made my overnight shift exponentially more bearable!

[@Flaris]

I'd agree with the discussion on this episode for a lot of points. While people can get pretty judgmental on others I'm not all that surprised that people get attached to characters that exist in various mediums. Certainly have had some characters in games and shows that I cared about. If something bad happened to them I felt bad about it and if something good happened then I was happy. Key thing is keeping that understanding on what isn't real there. It does make a lot of sense that this was a Harry episode. Almost wish he'd been able to keep that focus throughout. Although Tuvok did a great job there so it's hard to mind too much that he kind of took over in it. Hopefully the woman in this episode got back to her people and was able to find that interaction with others that she needed. Also hopefully her people realize that it can be dangerous to just leave people in isolation like that and lessen the shifts or put more people out there.

[@Lorerunner]

I'm actually kind of hopeful she or her people show up in STO so we can have some kind of continuation of this storyline. Especially since Tuvok is still around.

[@Flaris]

That is something I would be fully behind. It would be nice to have some continuation of that storyline and just see how things turned out.

[@Z1gguratVert1go]

On the holodeck, Voyager's writers use the word, "delete," when they really should be saying, "terminate process." You can tell that's what they really mean but they're not IT people, so they confuse stopping the execution of a process with removing its stored copy from long-term storage altogether. Like closing a Word document vs. deleting it. Rather they don't confuse the two concepts, they use one word for two different things. They know what they "want" to say but they don't gots the lingo.

[@MatthewWilson44106]

I had the same thought! it took me out of the story for a quick moment and I wanted to shout unix commands at Tuvok

[@mr51406]

Holograms are awesome! Though some can be smegheads.😜 Looking at you Rimmer.

[@elleoneiram]

I think that DS9 actually did the best job of not "pointing at the freak and laughing." If they did, those characters were often developed into a character with more depth and pathos. Really enjoying these Star Trek reviews!

[@williamozier918]

I think the Doctor's view of other holograms is analgous to how we feel about animals, we respect them as living beings but we still use them for our own purposes up to and including killing them sometimes. So for the hologram in Photons Be Free that gets killed over and over again, I'm sure the Doc feels bad about it but sees it as that hologram is helping to spread the message of hologram oppression therefore its constant death over and over again is worth it, like animal testing.

[@GHOSTBUSTERS168]

I'm completely new to this channel, so forgive me if I'm completely ignorant in asking this but Arch do you have any plans to stream Kotor I? Would love to see somebody play the game again because it's so underplayed on KZbin. Thanks.

[@Lorerunner]

Probably, though the DA:I delay means not until later most likely.

[@FooQuuxman]

Archengeia SQUUUUEEEEEEE!!!! I actually found your channel via your KOTOR rumination, which was great by the way.

[@undyingscorpio]

y no da1 today

[@williamozier918]

A) This episode was mediocre at best, B) I liked the aspect of it that it turned out the holodeck character Harry was infatuated with was real, and hence the moral of the story being that no hologram could be sufficiently advanced enough to engender real emotions. Here is why I like that point being made: I agree that holograms are not sentient. Yet the only time they focus in on the holodeck or holographic characters is when they are sentient. I like an episode that it is a reminder, no they are not sentient, yes there is a difference between even the realest holodeck character and a sentient being. I like this point being made for 3 reasons, 1) it emphasizes the specialness of the few sentient holograms we do meet, 2) it makes fall in love with the holodeck episodes emphasize the character's fucked up emotional state making them more parallels of addictions like a gambling addition, than ACTUAL love plots.I feel like the exploration of emotional addiction much more interesting character exploration. For Michael Sullivan as a sentient being is a Janeway love plot of the week episode and nothing more. Michael Sullivan as a non-sentient hologram means that episode was about Janeway developing an emotional addiction because she's at the breaking point of lonliness because of how she detaches herself from her crew.

[@EnvisionerWill]

*spockbrow* How do you screw up the pronunciation of Ivanova's name? You've seen the show, you've heard people call her "ah-vah-nah-vah". Not criticizing, just confused how your brain managed this error. (Mine has done worse, I assure you, and I wish I understood that too.)

[@MBF78]

I know at least one reviewer of Star Trek who finds the relation between a flesh and blood being and a hologram as incredibly creepy, and I find that attitude exaggerated. In this case it's the episode in TNG where La Forge creates the hologram of Leah Brahms... Yeah, that one, and I just don't get it, why is that creepy?

[@Lorerunner]

I recall that episode, and I have to agree, why the creepy factor? It never went over any lines, and at no point did I feel LaForge abandoned any form of distinction in the incident so... yeah

[@Charmolution]

Because it's a artificial facsimile of a real person? The same way it would be creepy for someone to tape a picture of a person's face on their blow up doll so they can pretend to have sex with that person?

[@williamozier918]

A) This episode was mediocre at best, B) I was at first bothered by the presentation that NONE of the Vulcans on board prepared for the pon far KNOWING it's coming. However I have worked myself up into the notion that this is just an extension of the power of the pon far. The vulcans HAVE emotions they just have to work to supress them. The pon far is so powerful that they culturally have to suppress it by going to completely ridiculous levels of denial of its existence. Is this the most logical approach, no. That's what I like about it, something that shows some crack in the vulcan culture, one of their cultural warts so to speak, a way of showing us no vulcans aren't perfect and even they have their messed up cultural ideals that make perfect sense to them but are completely baffling to outsiders.

[@whatonearthamito]

first :) (normally I never do it)