Story By: Brannon Braga and Joe Menonsky
Directed By: Alexander Singer
Rating: *1/2 (out of 5)
�Darkling� attempts to be a meaningful and powerful episode that pits the Doc in a �Nutty Professor� or �Jeykl and Hyde� kind of situation with his darker more powerful side surfacing and playing havoc with the people, or holograms, around him. We unfortunately get something that is neither meaningful nor enjoyable. The reason �Darkling� fails is because it takes itself too seriously when it shouldn�t and not seriously enough when it should.
What �Darkling� should�ve been was a simple and light episode in which the Doc plays around with his program and adds different personalities to his program and he starts to exhibit odd behaviors and maybe starts to wreak havoc by experimenting with torture and other brutal acts in the holodeck. But here the Doc almost kills a handful of real people.
The guy Doc first attempts to kill, Kes�s boyfriend Zahir, isn�t even missed! The beginning of the episode sets up Kes with Zahir and after he�s attacked we never see him again! So, what was the point in that? Kes doesn�t appear at all to have any interest in what�s happened to Zahir, even though she�d said she might leave Voyager to be with him!
To make things even worse, Doc has no motives for throwing Zahir down that crevice or anything else. I suppose that having different kinds of dark personalities inside wouldn�t give Doc a motive because the holograms the personalities originated from are only programmed and not made to makes sense, that�s the way the real characters are, but that still doesn�t explain why Doc took Kes. If Doc has no motive because of the circumstances then what was the purpose of his actions? If we could�ve seen these actions from the person Doc took the personalities from then we would�ve had a better understanding of what was going on.
When �Darkling� attempts to be smart, it falls flat on its face! When the episode needed seriousness (Zahir�s death) we got nothing, when we needed a simple scene to proceed further into the episode we get rubbish from Doc and Kes about whether or not good or evil is better! The entire conversation was laughable.
The apparent climax were Doc throws himself and Kes down a cliff falls flat on its face (no pun intended) when they are able to beamed to Voyager and the Doc is good as new! It was a very clever seen because it actually looked as though they were falling; however the end result of that was a scene wasn�t needed.
Again trying to be meaningful, the last sentences were poetic and would be meaningful if �Darkling� had any real drama in it.
The only parts of �Darkling� that were exceptionally good was the idea of the Doc playing with his program and Robert Picardo�s excellent acting! I also enjoyed Paul Bailgarions score and what Doc does to B�Elanna was fun to watch, as Roxanne Dawson seemed to be enjoying being tortured! Also the torture to the holograms was amusing (you probably think I�m some kind of psycho by enjoying the torture!). Other then that, I�m afraid �Darkling� has nothing to say and nothing special to add to the Voyager saga.