That the episode succeeds in this—with a performance that
proves Aron Eisenberg is just as talented as any Star Trek principal actor—is
not as surprising to me as two other things I noticed.
First, Ron D. Moore wrote a tight, confident script. I’ve
been impressed by how clean the writing is in the last couple seasons of DS9.
The episodes have an internal logic and all the pieces fit to deliver the
story, including tight dialogue. In this one, there is no B plot. Nog’s
recovery is the only story. There is no threat of physical danger to anyone or
anything. There is a nice scene in the ward room. Usually this is the set where
weighty decisions about war and peace, life and death are made by the uniformed
regulars, admirals and generals. In this scene, there are a few uniforms, but
most of the lines go to Jake, Rom, Leeta and Quark. The only suspense in the
episode’s plot structure is summed up by Ezri: “Let’s see what Nog does next.”
And it is more than enough to carry us through.
I think I have read somewhere that the TNG writing room had
a rule that the Enterprise or a regular character always had to be in danger,
or else the episode couldn’t have suspense. They only broke this rule a couple
times, “Data’s Day” being a stand out. Even “The Inner Light” contained the
threat to Picard’s life. There is nothing wrong with ginning up suspense this
way, even doing it in most of the episodes, but when you have to do it ALL of
the time—well, that’s why the 1701D was always having to save a planet from an the
asteroid/volcano/earthquake/supernova/spatial anomaly plot device of the week.
These kinds of stories allowed for some good character stuff in between, but
always ended with meaningless technobable solutions. It’s extremely fitting that
TNG ended with the Mack Daddy of spatial anomalies that was going to destroy
the whole universe (and very telling that Moore did not want that anomaly, and
its requisite tech-tech solution, in the episode at all). DS9 went out of its
way to abolish this old TNG rule, and instead fond suspense in character
interactions. Of course this allowed for much more drama than on TNG, and I’d
argue more compelling characters. [Note to future Trek TV series writers: If
you are going to write a danger-of-the-week series, solved by characters
pressing buttons and spouting technobable, then your crew will become a bunch
of bland sieves no matter how interesting you make them out to be in your show
bible.]
Now, about the SIRI comparison. By which I really mean the responsive,
friendly SIRI-like operating system imagined by Spike Jonze’s “Her” where the
computer actively learns about its owner and forms a relationship with him. Vic
was programmed this same way. Bashir wanted the character to be self-aware so
the lounge singer could have natural conversations with the crew, instead of
phony role playing.
This was an episode where a flesh-and-blood person, Nog,
forms a dependent relationship with the hologram because he is suffering PTSD.
Unlike so many hologram-centric episodes, this one did not even pause to give
credence to the idea that Vic should be considered a sentient being on par with
a human (or Ferengi). And Vic is the one to make the case against himself. When
Nog tries to persuade Vic to let him stay in the holosuite because Vic seems just
as real to Nog as people off the holosuite, Vic says this: “Compared to you,
I’m as hollow as a snare drum.” The moral of the episode is that forming
emotional bonds with a computer program is a feature of mental illness.
In light of the creep of technology into our lives today, I
find this extremely refreshing. Just because a computer can act and speak
intelligently, does not mean it is has attained artificial human intelligence,
to say nothing of a soul. This episode correctly envisioned how humans will
program our computer toys to better serve us by being more like us. But it also
warns about the dangerous temptation this will pose to the most vulnerable.
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