My #StarTrekVoyager rewatch S4E23 “Living Witness”
It’s not just a new haircut, Janeway’s uniform is suddenly like a dominatrix outfit & she’s gone all Sun Tsu. I’m intrigued. Alternate universe? Changed timeline? I don’t know.
Damnit! A Kazon! We should be done with them!
Sultry Janeway, Warship Voyager, casual genocide. This is dark. Cut to a classroom 700 years in the future. The theme now seems obvious. Yawn. Lots more 1-D villainy from caricatures of the Voyager crew. It’s a museum display from when the Vaskans defeated the Kyrians.
Add racial animus to the equation. They’ve discovered an artifact which I bet is going to be the Doctor to give the other viewpoint. Yup. It’s an EMH backup actually. Here’s the first interesting twist. The Doctor may be tried for War crimes. We start looking for the truth.
Picardo is excellent throughout. The Doctor starts to make headway and it sparks violence and almost another war. He wants to recant and offers to be decompiled to ensure peace. Quarren, the historian, convinces him that finding the truth is the safer alternative in the long run.
And we get another shift of perspective. We pull back into the museum watching this last exchange as a simulation. The Doctor and Quarren set off “The Dawn of Harmony” between the Vaskans & the Kyrians. That’s a feel-good ending. Ultimately this was an excellent episode.
The false narrative bit was too long and some twists were too predictable. But… the predictable twists set up better ones and this didn’t end on a trite homily about history but on a much better adage about the search for the truth. I was dubious, then pleasantly surprised.
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