History Recap / StarTrekVoyagerS7E18AuthorAuthor

* TookALevelInKindness: Seven is placed in charge of the communications with Earth. She abruptly cuts the Doctor off while he's talking to his publisher and shows no sympathy in Harry's transmission is cut off with less than a minute remaining. Later, she gives Torres a thirty-second warning when she's talking to her dad.

* ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: Paris creates his own holonovel exaggerating the Doctor's worst qualities (and adding a few more) with the excuse "he looks like you, he has more hair" to get the Doctor to understand how the crew feels about his holonovel.

* WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture: just as in "Life Line", the EMH Mark One's are reconfigured for manual labor in the mines. This, when they have devices capable of disassembling matter to the subatomic level (including industrial ones, as mentioned on Deep Space Nine), not to mention a race of friendly living ore processors (the Horta). But no, they consign outdated humanoid holograms with glorified shovels and picks to mining. It's both cruel and inefficient to an absurd degree.

* FriendshipMoment: The Doctor is initially hurt by the crew's reaction to ''Photons Be Free''. He thought they would be happy for him, not upset about how his characters might affect their reputations. But when Broht unilaterally publishes the novel's draft without permission, it becomes clear that the crew is more conerned for The Doctor than for themselves, as they choose to fight for his rights rather than take the easy way out by voiding the contract.

* TheTriple / GettingCrapPastTheRadar

* The47Society: A Mark I EMH tells another to "ask the operator to run program 47-beta," which is what ''Photons Be Free'' is named on the mining colony.

* PyrrhicVillainy: For the publisher, as the judge ruled that personhood isn't necessary to declare authorship rights.

** Janeway's expy shooting a critical patient in triage is a call back to the Doctor witnessing a Hirogen officer doing the same in "The Killing Game".

* CaptainErsatz: The holodeck characters are this for Voyager crew members.

* FantasticRacism: The holodeck expies of the Voyager crew behave like this towards the holographic doctor.

* IronicEcho: The Doctor says he's using a Voyager-expy because he's writing what he knows, like all good authors. When the Doctor shouts at Tom for replacing his holonovel with a "hackneyed narrative", Tom quips that he's just writing what he knows.

* SubspaceAnsible: Voyager finally establishes the first trans-galactic communications link with the Alpha Quadrant.

'''EMH:''' This is outrageous!

* ParallelPornTitles: Tom Paris introduces the Starship ''Voyeur'', starring a sleazy doctor who makes out with his hot blonde buxom patient. Makes you wonder [[TheInternetIsForPorn exactly how extensive]] was Tom's study of 20th century movies.

* DoNotCallMePaul: In most cases, Seven of Nine reacts negatively to anyone calling her Annika. Here, when her aunt calls her by that name, [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments Seven is notably silent]].

->'''Doctor:''' You had me drugging a patient and taking advantage of her!\\

The Doctor ignores them, convinced as he is that he has written a masterpiece, so Paris arranges an object lesson to drive their point home. When The Doctor returns to his holonovel, he finds it substituted with an inverted satire of his own work, in which he must watch helplessly as an [[CaptainErsatz ersatz]] facsimile of himself commits about a dozen blatant ethical violations within the span of a few minutes. Though he is outraged at first, the message eventually sinks in.

* LudicrousPrecision: DrJerk getting up Paris!Doctor for being 24 seconds late.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Expy!Seven gives Expy!Janeway one for her decision to decompile the Doctor's program. It doesn't change anything.

* StylisticSuck: ''Photons Be Free'' plays with this trope. The story, which is meant to make a serious point, is devoid of subtlety almost to the point of self-parody, with lots of superfluous narration that [[ShowDontTell tells instead of showing]]. Despite this, the only people who don't like it are the crew, and that's mostly because of their portrayal. Neelix loves it, the publisher loves it, and the published draft is popular enough that Barclay gets wind of it almost immediately.

* TriageTyrant: The Janeway and Chakotay expies want the Doctor to treat Marseilles' concussion even though there's a dying RedShirt. Expy!Janeway settles the debate by shooting the poor guy.

* WallOfWeapons: Captain Jenkins has one, and brandishes one of her guns while chewing out Doctor!Neelix.

* DramaticIrony: The Doctor isn't allowed to make changes to his holonovel - you know, the one he wrote about hologram rights - because as a hologram, he doesn't have any rights. The Doctor's publisher demonstrates very little sense of perspective here.

* StylisticSuck: ''Photons Be Free.''

->''"It's just frustrating to hear that I have no more legal standings than a replicator."''

The Doctor is busy writing a holonovel to submit to a publisher on Earth at the same time that ''Voyager'' is testing out a new communications relay system so that they could have constant access to Starfleet. Unfortunately, the crew finds out that the holonovel the Doctor is writing is about a ship that's so similar to ''Voyager'' that it has (less than flattering) {{Exp|y}}ies of ''Voyager'''s crew in it. The Doctor tries to have the holonovel recalled so that he could make changes to make it less obvious that it's about ''Voyager'', but the publisher has already published the work in progress, catching the attention of the Federation and resulting in a trial over whether the Doctor is enough of a person to be granted rights of control as an artist.

* MilkingTheGiantCow: The Doctor's introduction to ''Photons Be Free''.

* DramaticIrony: The Doctor isn't allowed to make changes to his holonovel on hologram rights, because as a hologram he doesn't have any rights.

* OhCrapThereAreFanficsOfUs: The crew's reaction. Neelix is the only one who likes it, most likely because it doesn't feature an expy of him.
** That we see. We aren't shown chapters 2, 3 or 4. (Though this could be because the Doctor hadn't written them yet). It's possible Neelix had an insulting expy, but wasn't offended because as morale officer, he's a thick-skinned individual (his early-season [[GrowingTheBeard pre-beard]] behavior notwithstanding).

* PyrrhicVictory: For the Doctor, as the judge declared him legally an artist, but was not quite prepared to rule that he is a person. However, it was still a step forward, and the coda does show the novel has indeed made an impression among the Mark Ones stuck in the dilithium mines.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman

* PyrrhicVictory: For the Doctor, as the judge declared him legally an artist but not a person.
** However the coda does show the novel has indeed made an impression among the Mark Ones stuck in the dilithium mines.

* WriteWhoYouKnow: The characters of ''Photons Be Free'' bear no resemblance to any member of Starfleet living or dead. [[InUniverse Or so the Doctor would have us believe.]] He gets it back from Tom Paris when he finds out Paris has modified the holonovel so that the Doctor's Expy takes advantage of Seven of Nine's Expy.

* WriteWhoYouKnow: The characters of ''Photons Be Free'' bear no resemblance to any member of Starfleet living or dead. ]]InUniverse Or so the Doctor would have us believe.]] He gets it back from Tom Paris when he finds out Paris has modified the holonovel so that the Doctor's Expy takes advantage of Seven of Nine's Expy.

* WriteWhoYouKnow: The characters of ''Photons Be Free'' bear no resemblance to any member of Starfleet living or dead. Or so the Doctor would have us believe. He gets it back from Tom Paris when he finds out Paris has modified the holonovel so that the Doctor's Expy takes advantage of Seven of Nine's Expy.

* WriteWhatYouKnow: In-universe, it's the Doctor's defense behind writing his holonovel. He gets it back from Tom Paris when he finds out Paris has modified the holonovel so that the Doctor's Expy takes advantage of Seven of Nine's Expy.

* ItsAllAboutMe: ''Chapter One: It's the Doctor's world, you're just living in it...'' The Doctor however argues that it's not about his ego, but helping the other EMH's in the Alpha Quadrant.