Star Trek Episode of the Week: Fair Haven

This week’s Star Trek episode is “Fair Haven,” that 6th season Voyager classic in which Janeway bangs a very boring hologram.

Plot: Faced with a neutronic wavefront, the crew of Voyager are forced to bide their time in a dull recreation of a 19th century Irish village named Fair Haven until the storm passes. Instead of allowing her crew to enjoy the endless possibilities of the holodeck, Janeway feels it would be better to keep just the one program running, and force everyone to play along with her sick fetish for Irish holograms.

In this episode, Janeway meets a bartender in Fair Haven, and quickly falls for him. As their relationship develops, Janeway finds numerous small flaws with her new fake man, and modifies him to her liking. In other words, she makes him as dull as possible.

Eventually, the netronic wavefront causes Chakotay to need all the ship’s power to be redirected to the deflector emitters, and much of the Fair Haven program is lost as a result. Janeway’s man is saved, but the captain uses the events as an excuse to stop seeing him so much, and to stop modifying him.

Character Development: In this episode, we see yet more proof of Janeway’s stunning dullness. Instead of creating an 8-dicked-pleasure-monster, she spends all her time with a bartender/poet.

Forehead of the Week: Since there aren’t really any new aliens in this episode, I’m going to have to give it to Voyager’s holodecks. At one point, Janeway has Paris expand the program to use an additional holodeck, and yet there were no obvious limitations when only a single holodeck was used. How do those things work?

Memorable Quote: “Delete the wife.” – Janeway, not treating all holograms equally.