Living Witness

Template:Infobox Star Trek episode "Living Witness" is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the 23rd episode of the fourth season. It is widely regarded[1] as one of the ten best Voyager episodes aired.

In it, an alien museum curator 700 years in the future hopes a Voyager relic containing a copy of the Doctor can confirm their version of history.

Plot summary and notes

The episode opens with a scene on the "warship Voyager", quite obviously an unrealistic depiction of the ship which turns out to be the museum's recreation of events. Although the brutality and detachment of the crew is chilling, there are some dark, campy elements of the alternate reality that provide comic relief. The whole crew wear altered versions of their uniforms with no combadges or rank insignia, black gloves, and the lavender turtleneck is also black. Chakotay's name is repeatedly mispronounced by the crew (as "CHAC-a-tay") and his tattoo has so grown in size as to cover half of his face and appears to be in the design of Māori Tā moko markings. Janeway sports a butch haircut and excessive schadenfreude. Meanwhile, the Doctor has become an android mass murderer while Tuvok has adopted a sinister sense of humor, and Seven of Nine is shown as she was when still a member of the Borg collective with several other drones serving as shock troops onboard Voyager. The excesses and contradictions in these alterations provide both humor and a chance for the cast to portray completely different characters.

In the actual course of events, Captain Janeway had agreed to provide the Vaskans with medical supplies in exchange for dilithium crystals. The Kyrians, who were at war with the Vaskans, boarded Voyager to stop the deal, which they thought was a weapons deal of some sort. During their time on the ship, they stole a data module carrying a backup copy of the Doctor. 700 years later, this module was part of a Kyrian museum exhibit which showed their version of the encounter. This biased encounter showed Voyager as a warship, crewed by a savage and sadistic crew that was willing to commit genocide. Even the Vaskan in the simulation became horrified over the atrocities committed, but the simulated Janeway told him it was too late to stop now. A curator at the museum, always fascinated by Voyager's story even though they were "the bad guys", finally figured out how to revive the holographic doctor, and, despite some initial problems, the Doctor was able to finally set the 700-year-old record straight, although he always regretted that he would never see any of his friends again. Following that, the Doctor served as the surgical chancellor for the Kyrians and Vaskans for many years, but eventually he took a ship and departed for Earth; he said that 'He had a longing for home'.

Reception

This episode has been subject to criticism for introducing a backup EMH program as a plot device, displacing the long-established impossibility of backing the Doctor up ("Message in a Bottle", "The Swarm"). However, the episode was popular among fans, and has an average rating of 4.3/5 on the official Star Trek website (as of May 22nd, 2007).

Trivia

• The episode is also notable as it is the only Voyager depiction of an explicitly "evil" version of the series' protagonists. Each Star Trek series has one or several episodes depicting its Mirror Universe, including Tuvok's appearance in a Deep Space Nine "mirror" episode, and although this episode does not take place in the Mirror Universe, there are similarities. They include: darker lighting on the set, more militant and darker uniforms (black gloves, militaristic tailoring), an unethical doctor, and a generally opposite set of ethics and actions from the main characters.

External links

• Living Witness on StarTrek.com
• Living Witness at Memory Alpha