Author, Author (Star Trek: Voyager)
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| Star Trek: VOY episode | |
| "Author, Author" | |
 The Doctor reviews his holonovel. |
|
| Episode no. | 165 |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 266 |
| Airdate | April 18, 2001 |
| Writer(s) | Phyllis Strong Mike Sussman Brannon Braga |
| Director | David Livingston |
| Guest star(s) | Dwight Schultz as Reginald Barclay Richard Herd as Admiral Paris Barry Gordon as Broht Joseph Campanella as Arbitrator Lorinne Vozoff as Irene Hansen Juan Garcia as John Torres Robert Ito as John Kim Irene Tsu as Mary Kim |
| Year | 2377 |
| Stardate | 54732.3 |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous | "Q2" |
| Next | "Friendship One" |
"Author, Author" is an episode of the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, the twentieth episode of the seventh season.
[edit] Plot
A new method of communications allows Voyager to contact home for eleven minutes each day, and each crewmember is given a chance to use this time once a day. In the holodeck, the Doctor edits his holonovel Photons Be Free, and is pleased with his work, and saves the file. He plans to use this new method of communication to publish his work in Federation space.
Tom Paris asks the Doctor to let him preview Photons Be Free, set on the fictional USS Vortex, a Starfleet ship lost in the Delta Quadrant. The protagonist of the story---a holographic doctor---wears a huge, cumbersome backpack-like mobile emitter to get around, and is constantly mistreated by his crewmates. Worse, each of the crewmates is a thinly-veiled allusion to an actual crewmember, but portrayed as being cruel or obnoxious -- for example, Paris' character is a self-serving adulterer, Harry Kim's a hypochondriac, and Captain Janeway's a tyrant and murderer. The senior crew plays through the novel one by one. When Janeway sees the fate of the fictional doctor, she orders a meeting. The Doctor, while insisting that the story was not based on his crewmates, claims his novel was meant to highlight the plight of Mark I holograms back home. The Doctor, a Mark I hologram, does not like the fact the other holograms are now reduced to menial tasks.
Going back to the holodeck to work on his novel, the Doctor discovers it replaced by a parody where he is a boorish slacker who drugs a patient, reminiscent of Seven of Nine, to take advantage of her. He confronts Tom Paris, who explains that he made it in order to show how hurtful the other members of the crew found the Vortex portrayals of them. This, and a talk with Neelix convince him to edit his work so it is more fictionalized. He does not wish the entire Federation to see his friends in a negative light. The issue seems to become moot when Admiral Paris from Earth lets Captain Janeway know that Photons Be Free is already being distributed without the Doctor's permission by Ardon Broht, his intended publisher, and people are wondering how fictional it really is.
When Broht refuses to recall the holonovel, an arbitration hearing is conducted by long distance. After several days, the arbiter rules that the Doctor is not a person under current Federation law, but is an artist and therefore has the right to control his work.
Flash-forward to a few months later, to an asteroid where several EMH Mark I's perform menial labor. One of them suggests to another that at the diagnostic station they play Photons Be Free.
[edit] Notes
 |
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- The Mark I holograms performing menial labor was first referred to in "Life Line," when Zimmerman expressed profound embarrassment that holograms he had modeled on himself were taken off medical duty and summarily reprogrammed.
- Some fans have noted the similarity of this episode to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure of a Man", in which the android crew member Data calls a trial to establish that he is a person in order to avoid being reassigned and disassembled. That episode's ruling concludes that Data has the right to self-determination, while this episode's ruling does not grant that same right to the Doctor, but does grant him the right to control his work.
[edit] External links
- "Author, Author" article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
- "Author, Author" episode summary from StarTrek.com
