3x14 Alter Ego

[7.8/10] I don’t have any numbers to support this, but I’d dare to suggest that there’s a fair number of lonely Star Trek fans out there. Nerd culture has taken over the world by this point, but even now, and especially in 1996, there’s a certain stigma to being super into this sort of geeky science fiction. That’s the glory of going to cons, or joining internet communities, or even review sites like Trakt. They help nerds like yours truly to find like-minded folks. But the truth is that having those types of hobbies and interests can be isolating at times.

So while the franchise often offers fan stand-ins like Geordi LaForge or Harry Kim -- folks who want to socialize but feel awkward or flustered in some social situations -- there’s also merit in considering whether someone like Tuvok might be a better fit. Someone who’s isolated by their different interests, different disposition, that spurs an urge to cloister and keep to oneself, can be just as good a representation of a certain set of Trekkie as the more traditionally geeky characters. (So to speak. This is Star Trek -- it’s geeky characters all the way down.)

People deal with loneliness and isolation differently. So in “Alter Ego”, when Tuvok aims to help Harry get over his attraction to a holographic woman from the resort program named Marayna, I assumed this would turn out to be a story about parasocial relationships (a la LaForge bonding with a holographic version of Leah Brahms in “Galaxy’s Child” from The Next Generation). Once Marayna starts getting too attached to Tuvok and starts causing problems on the ship, I figured it would be a riff on the ethics of sentient holograms a la TNG’s Moriarty. And you could be mistaken about assuming the same story shapes and themes were in the often.

Instead, “Alter Ego” is a story about people who seem content to keep to themselves, because they don’t feel like they fit with their comrades, admitting that they need connection. I’ll confess, as a Trekkie who felt his share of loneliness along the way, and often found it easier to turtle and lose myself in my passions, that notion made an impact on me.

My beef with Voyager is often that I struggle to connect with the characters. But this is an open-hearted episode where even the more underdeveloped crewmembers start to feel more human. I’m not the biggest Harry Kim fan in the world, but he’s sad and sympathetic in the way that he experiences feelings for a hologram that he knows are unhealthy, but also feels powerless to stop them. Tom and B’Elanna continue their combative flirtation in an endearing, hawaiian-shirted sort of way. Janeway and Chakotay have a certain “chaperones who are sidling up to one another” vibe. Even Ensign Vorik gets in on the action, doing something considerate for Lt. Torres.

The whole build to Neelix’s “authentic” Polynesian luau has a sort of “drama heading into prom” vibe, replete with people going on non-date dates, and consternation over who’s hanging out with whose crush. It’s not the kind of thing I’d want from Voyager every week, but despite the semi-teenage atmosphere to the whole thing, there’s a vulnerable and down-to-earth quality to the whole thing that I sometimes find missing from this show.

The peak of that is Tuvok, intervening to help Harry detox from his attraction to Marayna, while inadvertently becoming attracted to Marayna himself. Star Trek vet Joe Menosky does a great job crafting someone who would intrigue Tuvok: someone who plays kal-toh, someone who can speak with both lyricism and logic about the sensation of looking out over the waves, and most of all, someone who knows what it’s like to feel apart from your fellow men and women.

Guest star Sandra Nelson does an outstanding job as Marayna, convincingly conveying that sense of allure but also earnestness, to where you buy the budding but potent connection between her and Tuvok despite her theoretically being a mere simple holodeck program. And you feel for Tuvok, lonely so far from his family, and often disconnected, by choice or by circumstance, from his colleagues, finding unexpected comfort in his digital companion.

The love triangle business with Harry is a little tedious, but a closed off, stoic person finding companionship in an unexpected time and place comes with a certain power that Menosky and director/castmember Robert Picardo seem to intuitively understand.

And from there, the episode gets ridiculous. If you read the behind the scenes material, you’ll find out the producers wanted more action and sex appeal. So how does Voyager manage? With a loony tunes fight between our heroes and a bunch of hula-skirted combatants. Frankly, the attempt at “Polynesian” culture here is borderline offensive, particularly since the indigenous performers/waitstaff at the “resort” are treated like party favors rather than characters. I’m sure Picardo enjoyed the smooching scene, and it’s played for laughs, but the whole thing is cringe as hell.

I could also do without Marayna’s threats to Voyager. Savvy viewers knew some sort of twist was coming, and a repeat Moriarty scenario with a “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” twist is nothing to write home about. Worse than the plot development, though, is the fact that it takes away from the intimate, unalloyed vibe that the show had managed to evoke to that point.

Nevertheless, I love where things land. The twist that Marayna is not the usual sentient hologram gone mad, but rather the puppet of an alien who’s been hidden in a nearby nebula, strains the bounds of plausibility a bit. But I’m willing to give the twist a pass because of where it goes with the real, flesh and blood Marayna and her reasons for the ruse.

Because she too is lonely. She’s basically an intergalactic lighthouse keeper, stuck on a hidden vessel, preserving the beauty of a unique spatial phenomena, gazing into the lives of passerby for amusement, but otherwise keeping to herself. Her rationale for holding Voyager hostage is not retrograde hysteria or bog standard possessiveness. It is, instead, the sense of having found a kindred spirit, someone who understands what it’s like to be different, to crave that connection, and being unwilling to let go.

In essence, Marayna is coming from the same place Tuvok is, even if neither of them realized it until things had gone so far. The stand-off is a little silly, but I love the fact that TUvok succeeds not through force or through guile, but by convincing Marayna that if she cares for him, this isn’t right, and is perhaps a sign that she’s stayed closed off for too long, unwittingly craving the human connection that she’s willingly sequestered herself from for so long. A Vulcan wins the day through empathy and understanding, and through helping someone to better understand themselves.

But the end of “Alter Ego” is not simply the sage Tuvok dispensing Vulcan wisdom to the unwashed. It’s him taking the same lesson to heart, and realizing that his bond with Marayna gave him something he didn’t think he needed, but plainly feels empty without.

The scene where Marayna asks he and Harry if they’re friends, with Tuvok saying “No” and Harry saying “Yes” simultaneously is one of the most memed moments from Voyager. Fans use it for everything from Star Trek/Star Wars fans, to enthusiasts of different bands, to feuding celebrities. To be honest, I’d forgotten its original context.

But it’s a setup and a payoff of the moving variety. In the beginning of the episode, Tuvok denies the need for friends, and calls Harry the Vulcan equivalent of a Ron Swanson-style “work proximity associate.” And yet, by the end of the episode, he sits down with Harry and apologizes for his actions. They begin a game of kal-toh and maybe, in a way Tuvok’s been needing, a friendship.

I find great beauty in that. We nerds are often a lonely breed, Star Trek and otherwise. Finding a soulmate is joyous and invigorating. But finding connections of all stripes, be they filial, friendly, or otherwise, can be just as important. And so can admitting that we need it. It’s all well and good to lose ourselves in these stories of noble officers discovering new worlds and new parts of themselves in the final frontier, but an episode like “Alter Ego” is a reminder that sometimes, it’s good to step outside of the holodeck, and find a good friend.