Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 6 E 13 Virtuoso

Where's Buffy to pop in and stare at him till he takes that thing off?

Voyager comes across an alien culture that has never heard music before and is enamored by the Doctor's singing. When he becomes an overnight celebrity on their planet, he considers resigning his commission aboard Voyager to live the life of a star.

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This episode provides examples of:

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Fame goes to the Doctor's head; he starts addressing the Captain by her first name and acts like a jerkass to B'Elanna.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Janeway's reaction to the Doctor's fan mail. She quickly loses her sense of humor on seeing the corridors of Voyager crowded with his fans.
• Advanced Civilization, Hollow Imagination: The Qomar are brilliant when it comes to mathematics and science, but limited in terms of creativity, to the point that they have never developed the concept of music. Even when Tincoo attempts to create music, it's tuneless and unlikely to be appreciated by anyone else, due to how coldly and rigidly-scientific it is.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Of course, the Doctor himself is only appreciated for bringing the musical arts to the Qomar until Tincoo develops a holographic replacement of him that can reach vocal ranges the Doctor himself cannot.
• All Love Is Unrequited: The Doctor even sings an old Neapolitan ballad on the subject after Tincoo dumps him.
• Always Someone Better: The aliens ended up developing an analog program similar to The Doctor who is designed exclusively to perform insane melodic constructions far beyond the normal speech patterns he was designed with. He asked Torres to help boost his capabilities, but she lets him know they would have to remove other aspects of who he is in order to do so.
• Bags of Letters: A future tech example, as Voyager's computer systems are all clogged with fan mail for The Doctor from the Qomar.
• Become a Real Boy
  EMH: When I'm standing on that stage performing, and I see those rapt faces in the audience, I feel I finally know what it's like to be made of flesh and blood.
  Seven: You simply crave attention, applause, fan mail.
  EMH: What if I do?
  Seven: Those things are irrelevant.
  EMH: To you, maybe. But to me, it makes me feel appreciated, even loved. Not for what I've been programmed to do, but for who I've become.
• Big Little Man:
  • The Doctor is introduced treating a Qomar who's apparently sitting in front of him, except it turns out all the Qomar are rather short.
  • The Doctor is shown singing opera; it's actually a small holographic figurine, which is only revealed when the Doctor sticks his Huge Holographic Head next to it to sing a duet.
• Book Ends: The Doctor singing "I've Been Working On The Railroad".
• Butt-Monkey: The Qomar rudely interrupt Harry and the Kimtones because they'd rather listen to the Doctor. However one attractive female appears interested in this handsome clarinet player...because he might introduce her to the Doctor.
• Call-Back:
  • "Prime Factors" also involved a species that was only interested in what Voyager had to offer because it was new.
  • The Doctor impresses the Qomar by humming "Pop Goes The Weasel". In TNG's pilot episode "Encounter At Farpoint", Data was whistling the song on the holodeck when he meets Riker, showing him how devoted he is to becoming more human.
• The Cast Show Off: Besides Robert Picardo's efforts, there's also "Harry and the Kimtones".
• Catchphrase:
  • "What's the nature of their medical emergency?"
  • When the Doctor tells Seven he's leaving, she responds coldly, "I will adapt."
• The Cameo: Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, appears as a Qomar.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: The Doctor realizes that the aliens were not really enamored with him and his talents so much as the raw mathematical vibrations that was turned into music. Once the aliens started creating their own pieces that reached far beyond the vocal register even the Doctor could emulate, he lost all popularity in an instant.
• Chick Magnet: This time for real when the Doctor becomes famous for his music. He has to deactivate himself to escape a couple of amorous fans in Sickbay.
• Debate and Switch: When the Doctor raises the Just a Machine issue, Janeway points out that he's their only medical doctor on Voyager. The Doctor is determined to leave regardless so she grants permission "as a friend", but it's hard to believe The Captain would do so unless the plot required it.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: An indirect, serious example of this occurs when the Doctor and Janeway are debating about his decision to leave the ship. The Doctor initially objects to Janeway apparently treating him like he's just another component of Voyager, but when Janeway asks if he's sure the Qomar can support him the Doctor's first response is to talk about how they're capable of maintaining his program and Janeway clarifies that she was talking about them supporting his emotional needs.
• First-Name Basis: The Doctor accidentally calls Janeway by her first name when his fame gets to his head.
• Forehead of Doom: Lampshaded when the Doctor insists B'Elanna design an opera house for him.
  B'Elanna: What's wrong with the sight lines?
  EMH: If you consider the height of the average Qomar, it's obvious that anyone seated in the back five rows will have an obstructed view!
  B'Elanna: You're right. They won't be able to see anything but the top of your head. The glare could blind them!
• Foreshadowing: The Just a Machine debate for "Flesh and Blood"; there's even a Title Drop for that episode.
• Friendship Moment: Seven's fan letter.
• Have You Come to Gloat?: The Doctor asks this of Seven after he goes back to Voyager with his holographic tail between his legs. Seven reads him her fan letter instead.
• Humble Pie: The Doctor gets a big old plate of it by the end of the episode, ashamed that he let his ego get so great that he didn't realise that the Qomar were more interested in the technical aspects of music rather than the emotional scale he was trying to explore.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: B'Elanna Torres: "I'm an engineer, not a costume designer."
• Infinite Supplies: Janeway gets up the Doc for using his precious replicator allocation on his souvenirs. Turns out the Qomar have turned over an entire factory for the job, and are willing to redesign a lecture hall into an opera house.
• Informed Attribute: The Qomar and Voyager frequently make mention early on that the Qomar are vastly more technologically advanced than Voyager, but this is never demonstrated. The closest thing to a demonstration is that the Qomar themselves seem to possess extreme natural mathematical aptitude.
  • Tincoo however is able to develop a more sophisticated hologram in a short time, something that represents years of work for Dr Zimmerman.
  • It may be more that the Qomar are superior in certain, less obvious ways and interpret this as them being superior in all regards, with the crew basically just accepting it as they're trying to be polite^note the Qomar may also conflate 'complicated' with 'advanced'. Their ship's propulsion systems are so delicate that they're disabled simply by Voyager scanning them, and immediately blame Voyager's "primitive" scanners for the failure..
• Instant Fan Club: The Doctor impresses the Qomar just by humming a few bars of "Pop Goes the Weasel".
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The Doctor in the romantic and platonic sense.
• Ironic Echo
  EMH: Then shouldn't I be given the same respect as any flesh and blood member of this crew?
  • Later...
  Janeway: You're expected to follow orders just like every other flesh and blood member of this crew.
• Irony As He Is Cast: Singer/songwriter Paul Williams playing a being with no concept of what music is.
• Just a Machine
  • With Janeway...
  Janeway: You're a part of this ship.
  EMH: You sound as if you're talking about a piece of equipment.
  Janeway: That's not what I meant.
  EMH: Then shouldn't I be given the same respect as any flesh and blood member of this crew?
  • And Tincoo.
  EMH: I thought you wanted me.
  Tincoo: I did, but now I've developed a far more sophisticated piece of technology.
  EMH: Technology...
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Janeway explains the concept of "fans" and celebrity to Seven... on a show that's part of a franchise with one of the most well-known fanbases in pop culture.
• Mood Dissonance (In-Universe): The Doctor's ballad moves Janeway to tears, while the Qomar just listen politely until it's over.
• Mood Whiplash: The Qomar are complaining about the poor standard of medical care and trying to switch off the Doctor's vocal subroutines to stop him from snarking back at them until he starts singing, causing them to become instantly fascinated.
• Not so Dire: Seven calls for a Red Alert, saying the Qomar are attempting to sabotage Voyager by clogging up their comm system with tons of irrelevant data. Is this the obligatory Crisis Of The Week to provide Stuff Blowing Up for the promo trailer? No, Seven is just overreacting to an inundation of fan mail.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer does not feature one second of footage from this episode. Much of it comes from "Tsunkatse," which would air two weeks later.
• The Napoleon: The Qomar are very short and very full of themselves.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Doctor shuts off his 'superior' model in the middle of a sentence, normally his own Berserk Button.
• Other Me Annoys Me: The singing hologram has a Qomar forehead and is just as arrogant as...the Doctor.
• Planet of Hats: The Qomar are smug isolationists that have never heard music before.
• Playing Sick: The Doctor had fans playing sick so that they could get close to him.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Inverted from the usual when the Doctor denies Tincoo is his girlfriend after she's already demonstrated her lack of romantic interest in him.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: The Doctor vs. the Qomar.
  EMH: I assure you there is nothing primitive about me. I am programmed to perform more than five million medical procedures.
  Abarca: Does that include bloodletting?
  EMH: No, but I'll be happy to add it to my repertoire.
• Stock Footage: The matte painting of the Zahl colony from "Year of Hell" is reused here as the Qomar homeworld.
• Stylistic Suck: Played with. The song composed by Tincoo sounds god-awful to human ears, but the Qomar audience goes absolutely nuts for it.
• Take a Third Option: Knowing the Doctor is torn over whether to leave Voyager, Tincoo decides to solve the problem by building a singing hologram, and can't understand why the Doctor is so upset.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: Invoked when the Doctor asks B'Elanna to modify his program so that he can sing Tincoo's composition even when that would involve potentially deleting his medical subroutines to make space for the new data. B'Elanna points out that if he has to change that much of himself to sing, would he really be himself afterwards?
• Translation by Volume: Tincoo starts talking to the Doctor this way, having decided his technology is so primitive he won't be able to understand them otherwise. When the Doctor starts doing it back, the Qomar don't like it.
• Tranquil Fury: Seven of Nine, while acting cool and collected, is clearly pissed when the Doctor decides to leave the ship.
• Virtual Celebrity: The Doctor when he shows off his musical talent.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The Doctor claims that Janeway is objecting to his leaving for this reason.
• Weirdness Magnet: Tuvok suggests throwing the Doctor's fans off Voyager because they're interfering with ship's functions.
  Janeway: When have functions on board this ship ever been normal?