Seeing more of the Doctor exploring what it means to be him is definitely a good thing for the show. Also when they introduced the idea of the Doctor having a perfect family and Torres "fixing" it I thought it was going to just be a straight TV trope about how awful real families are. And yeah, there was some of that, but there was also a healthy scoop of "losing a child too soon" trope to keep things reasonable. The entire B story about the anomaly that for some reason they send Paris into just so he can be hurt to push the Doctor ahead in his A story is totally consequential and I will mostly ignore it in my summary below as a result.
We open in stereotypical 50's family life on the Doctor where his loving wife and children line up at the door to send him off to work. And yeah, Torres got it right, way too sweet to be anything close to real. On the bridge they are supposed to be meeting with some scientists or something but the space station is gone! Oh no, the Jedi are really going to feel this one! Janeway is pissed and insists they investigate but they find it is just some kind of spatial anomaly that sends out waves to distortion that they send Tom into in some kind of harebrained scheme to get free energy or something but it doesn't work and he is trapped only to be rescued and suffer a minor injury.
The Doctor keeps bragging about his family and invites Kes and Torres over for dinner but Torres can't stand it. She does her own thing and the next time the Doctor comes him his house is a mess, his wife is out the door, his daughter is screaming about not being able to find something and his son is hanging out with some tough Klingon kids. He is horrified that his son is trying to become a warrior and holds a meeting to fix the family. But it is a disaster as such things often are and they all are even more mad at him that before.
Things take a turn for the worse though when his daughter is badly hurt in a sports accident. He has to tell his wife that their daughter isn't going to make it and then the daughter wakes up and asks if she is going to be ok and it is too much for him. He turns off the program but then finds himself scolding Paris for taking a risk and the two talk about it. Paris tells him he won't be able to move on unless he goes back in. The episode closes with his daughter dying and the family mourning together.
Review: A very touching episode despite being kinda weak, especially when it came to the B story. Janeway is in fine hawk form ready to seek and destroy. Neelix's food is still a disaster but that isn't really news, or new, or amusing for that matter.
4 out of 10
Note: I am having some issues with blogger fonts so this review may look slightly different than the rest. Hopefully it will be fixed soon!
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