Inside Man

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Voyager gets its very own Barclay for Sweeps! And sweeping up is what this interactive hologram should do instead of making grand rescue plans. Holo-Barclay claims a geodesic fold in a red giant star will shunt the Voyager home instantly! Janeway had already discarded this idea. Historically this procedure is useless- because all you'd get back is a radioactive ship with 150 liquefied crew-shaped floor stains.

Of course, the fast-talking shmoozer assures everyone it's all perfectly safe these days. Step into the changing rrroom! You will NOT be cooked!

Voyager's crew is desperate to believe in Holo-Barclay. Of course, real Barclay is having a terrible time back home. For one, someone stole his hologram and his girlfriend Leosa ran off at suspiciously the same time. For two, he's losing all credibility. Screaming "Borg!" in a roomful of kids on a field trip. Chasing Deanna Troi down on her Risian beach vacation. (Or maybe only the beach CHAIR was from Risa? It looks pretty overcast for that weather-controlled paradise. It's probably not Vancouver, though.)

Leosa works on Nunk's Ferengi casino ship. She dated Barclay in order to get her hands on the profits from the Borg nanoprobes they were planning to strain out of Seven's Corpse Puddle.

Can Admiral Paris and Commander Troi save Barclay's reputation, and incidentally the lives of the Voyager crew about to throw themselves into a sun?

"Inside Man" is old home week that intentionally tugs on the old nostalgia. When I hear that two months ago Barclay and Data were singing a duet at Geordi's birthday party it's like the series I miss most is still running somewhere off-screen. So, no, I don't mind them pushing the regular cast aside. Because Riker and Troi are setting Barclay up on a double-date in Tiburon! (The city in California, probably, rather than the alien planet.) And speaking of alien planets, what is the Doctors' obsession with playing golf on Giedi Prime? The only way I'd want to tee off with Baron Harkonnen is if I was actually teeing off WITH Baron Harkonnen- as in hitting that hovering bloated man-ball with a golf club.

Projections

***** (5 stars out of 5)

I've been in love with holograms since Princess Leia's, or at least since Red Dwarf's.  So the Holographic Doctor on Voyager was a shoo-in for my favourite character. I had his cardboard standee looming over me at home for years. So an episode of his own is just what the doctor ordered.

Nothing adds up when the entire crew turns out to be holograms, and the Doctor a flesh-and-blood human being.  Lieutenant Barclay pops up like an engineering genie to provide the explanation: the Doctor is actually Lewis Zimmerman; a programmer on the Jupiter station, and his Voyager simulation study of long-term isolation has malfunctioned. A radiation surge has damaged the hologrid and Zimmerman's memory. Holgrams aren't programmed for headaches, and the Doctor sure has a doozy right now.

Only by destroying the simulation can Barclay's team get in to save his life.

Or is our twitchy IT guy lying and the simulation is the only thing that's really really real?

Now able to roam the ship's key areas, delete "characters" like Paris, and even reset time back to his first activation during the "Banjo Man Crisis" months earlier, 'Zimmerman' grows more agitated and confused about his nature: Hologram or human? Person or projection?

I think they coined the expression "Nerdgasm" for stories like "Projections".

With Rene Descartes and Philip K. Dick clearly in mind, Brannon Braga wrote a cracking great bottle show about a guy cracking up, and they brought in one of my favourite characters from TNG to steal the show from the hologram who stole the show.  'Zimmerman' and Barclay are just the best. What a duo! What a tale! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Although OF COURSE it is. OR... is it?

Hollow Pursuits

***** (5 stars out of 5)

Picking up old medical waste turns out to be a bad idea! When Engineer Duffy drops one of the Mikulak sample containers, he tells Geordi he's blown a seal. Geordi tells him to chuck the damn thing and leave his personal life out of it.

Somebody on this sparkling technological marvel of the future has to do the dull, menial jobs...

Enter Lieutenant Reg Barclay, a diagnostics engineer who came highly recommended by starship Captain Gleason. Yet Barclay's always late and often on report. Was Gleason spreading a thick, creamy layer of truthiness?

Barclay has crafted a vivid fantasy life on the holodeck where he can deck the holo-boss. In the off-hour illusions he's a bad-ass who can put Riker in a headlock for his 'holier-than-thou attitude', or put Troi in a lip lock as 'The Godess of Empathy'. In reality Reg's got a nervous stammer and he's awkward with everyone.

Picard orders Geordi to get to know Barclay. "Make him your best friend."

Guinan's Uncle Terkim was regarded as a bad influence, but she thought of him as the only one in her family with a sense of humour. Guinan not only likes misfits like Barclay, the idea of "Fitting In" repels her.

Geordi bolsters the efforts of his underling and ends up making an actual friend. Finally there's someone in Barclay's corner he didn't program himself. After Geordi's adventure with Holographic Leah Brahms, his attitude about Barclay's fantasies is necessarily sympathetic. To La Forge, any holodecking is good holodecking, just so long as it isn't ruining you IRL.

(Which it does, because, let's face it, holodecks would be so addictive that holo-addicts would make meth-heads seem like chocoholics.)

Everyone soon blunders into Barclay's private domain. Troi is amused when Riker is affronted by his tiny Musketeer facsimile. Will in turn is pretty gleeful when Deanna meets Toga Troi.

"We want to gain some insight into what's been troubling this poor man," Riker grins.

Real Troi snarls at the gushing fantasy goddess. "Muzzle it."

Mortified, Barclay asks La Forge for a transfer off the Enterprise. Geordi refuses to give up on the guy. "You're just shy, Barclay."

"Just shy. It sounds like nothing serious, doesn't it?"

Despite his anxiety, his flights of fantasy, and his mistaking a flow capacitor for a flux capacitor, Barclay (teamed up with Geordi) brings the mad skills in time to save the ship from a runaway warp flight disaster.

"Hollow Pursuits" is a personal favourite of mine and the debut of a personal favourite character. I love the TNG crew unconditionally, but as much as I look up to heroic types, I'm drawn to the relatable guys as well. If flawed, imaginative weirdo Reg Barclay belonged on the Enterprise then so did I, or so the fantasy goes. If he could overcome his shortcomings then I could, too. There's nothing hollow about that pursuit.