Review

Lots of mud gets thrown at this episode for being mindless entertainment and in some ways downright offensive. But I personally enjoyed the doctor's absurd recreation. I also think that it's important that the doctor learned not to use such a provocative tone in his writing so as not to offend his friends. The absurd recreation while a fine plot in and of itself is expanded into an episode with a much more serious tone though, which is why I ended up liking it so much. Voy: Author, Author becomes for holograms what TNG: The Measure of a Man was for androids. Granted this episode lacks the level of profoundness the TNG episode had, it retains quite a bit of it. The ending of the episode more than peaked my interest, and I thought it was handled well. What better irony is there than Broht stealing the doctor's work, which satires the lack of holographic rights in the Federation, because the author, the doctor is a hologram and has no legal rights in the Federation! The timing is perfect too. We've seen so many episodes already dealing with holographic persecution, such as Voy: Flesh and Blood, among others. I was waiting for an episode that would spearhead the issue, tackling it once and for all. I'm annoyed that the arbitrator would not declare the doctor a person, closing the issue once and for all, but then again for the sake of the plot I'm kind of glad he didn't. You don't want to do too much in a single episode, now do you? ;) Overall, I think this episode is quite underrated.