74. Living Witness

"Please state the nature of the historical inaccuracies." — The Doctor

74. Living Witness, Voyager, Season 4, Episode 23

You could probably argue that this episode broke this blog. And you'd probably be right. It's been a while since I've written on this — nearly two years since I visited the Final Frontier in this fashion. A lot has happened since then, and I've been preposterously swamped with projects both personal and professional... But, that's just an excuse. The real reason I haven't been able to move forward on this list of the Top 100 episodes of Star Trek is this episode of Voyager. I've watched 'Living Witness' several times in preparation of this entry. I've started and stopped this article many times, and I keep coming to the same conclusion... 'Living Witness' isn't really a story. It's an hourlong premise told by a series of unreliable narrators, wrapped in a framing device inside another framing device, offers smorgasbord of 'what ifs,' and has an ending that feels less like a shocking twist and more of an oh-crap-we're-totally-out-of-time-and-need-to-wrap-this-up.

And that's frustrating as all get out, because it's a damn great premise.

The cold open of 'Living Witness' is just... well, it's nothing short of glorious. An Evil Janeway presides over a Super-Evil crew — the Doctor as a Soong-style android, Seven of Nine in full Borg-mode, Chakotay with an even craaaazier face tattoo. The crew of the Warship Voyager portrayed as amoral genocidal militant a-holes. They find themselves in an alien civil war between generic aliens species one, the Kryians, and generic alien species two, the Vaskans. And everything about this pointed to Voyager dipping their nacelle in the Mirror Universe, until the twist! It's not real! It's a holodeck historical recreation by the Kryians, showing the events of the war — and the villainous acts of the Voyager crew — from the vantage point of 700 years in the future!

The information about the holographic crew of the Voyager is pieced from fragments of knowledge taken from the historical records, filling the holes with that they needed to fit the historian's preconceived narrative. While poking around the artifacts recovered from the incident, they accidentally reactivates the a data module, and a backup copy of the Doctor materializes, believing himself to be still in the middle of the conflict. The Doctor is a living time capsule, who tries to correct the narrative of Voyager being Eeeevil, and tries to present them as unwitting participants in a civil war.

Just like on Earth, in space, history is written by the victors. I know this only because they hit me over the head so hard with this I was knocked out for the better part of two years (as far as you know). It's one of those afforisms that makes me more or less want to projectile vomit, it's so overused. But.. as much as I love snark, let's accentuate the positive, shall we?

"Say... something... nice." — Evil Janeway

Mulgrew is great as Evil Janeway. She's dark and menacing without ever falling into mustache-twirling-terrible territory. Evil Janeway takes morally questionable actions not because she's evil, but because it's the shortest distance between the two points of where she is and where she wants to be. She supports Generic Alien Species One because it gets her closer to her ultimate goal, the safe return of her people to the Alpha Quadrant. Evil Janeway has an ends-justify-the-means-mentality so pure she places herself above morality. Evil Janeway knows what she's doing is extreme, but sees the big picture. She'll use torture, Borg assimilation, and mass genocide if it means getting her crew — nay, her family — home. Mulgrew's Evil Janeway is so great, that when the Doctor presents Actual Janeway in the simulation,* Actual Janeway seems far less interesting.

And let's give a shoutout to Robert Picardo, who always shines as the Doctor, and has to sell the outrage of the portrayal of the crew of Voyager as villains and be the voice of reason correcting the annals of history. Picardo's an outstanding actor, and this episode rests squarely on his shoulder pads. He's the single reason the Doctor is elevated beyond a Data knockoff to being among the greatest characters in all of Star Trek.

What's astoundingly prescient about the episode — especially in a time when anything that contradicts the establishment is dismissed as fake new — is how resistant the powers that be are to truth. The Doctor's more accurate representation of the facts are dismissed as being overwhelmingly biased by those who are challenged. And maybe they're right. The Doctor admits to extrapolating some parts of his recreation based on what he knows about the players involved, and not objective truth. Because this episode is presented as a layer within a layer within yet another layer with unreliable narrator telling the story of another unreliable narrator, there is no truth. Only, certain points of view.

Like a lot of entries on the list, it takes a crew we know and places them outside their norm. And this seems to be a reoccurring theme on the list. One of the reasons that Evil Janeway (and evil Voyager crew) works is that Mulgrew (and others) have crafted such a well-defined and morally stalwart character that it's okay to see them out of that norm. 

This is the fourth entry into this list by Bryan Fuller. Now, I love Fuller's work. Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, American Gods, and was executive producer and creator of Star Trek Discovery. Heck, I even liked his reimagining of the Munsters with Mockingbird Lane.** He once cited the desire to write Star Trek as the reason he became a professional writer, and that's a thing that I can absolutley relate to. However, as much as I love Fuller's work, I feel one of the reasons I struggle with this episode, is that it feels incomplete.

Once the Doctor gives the impassioned speech about the importance of truth, justice and the Federation Janeway, we cut to another historian presenting another historical recreation set in the distant future. So everything we saw was a historical recreation about a historical recreation. And for that reason, it feels two steps removed from any actual events. Ultimately, there are no consequences, either for the characters or for the show. And without consequences the whole thing falls flat.

One of the frustrating things about the episode is the unresolved nature of the story. Because the episode's rushed ending, the resolution and vindication of the Doctor's point of view feels unearned. The Doctor and we know that Janeway and crew are not Evil.*** Recorded history says otherwise. Obviously we side with the Doctor, but... would we? If we were only presented with the information in the episode, who's to say what we should believe. Okay, then, I'll say it, we might believe that the crew of Voyager were monsters. Horrible, horrible monsters.

Some with weird face tattoos.

Thanks for reading, and welcome back, dear readers.

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Next up, the Picard brothers get into shenanigans in 'Family.' And by shenanigans, I mean they yell at each other in one of the most poignant and powerful episodes of the franchise.

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*I know how absurd that reads, even as I type it. 

**Google that. It's fun. 

*** Boring sometimes, and overly reliant on technobabble, but not evil...