Darkling (Star Trek: Voyager)

"Darkling"
Star Trek: Voyager episode
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 18
Directed by	Alexander Singer
Written by	Brannon Braga Joe Menosky
Production code	161
Original air date	February 19, 1997
Guest stars
David Lee Smith as Zahir Stephen Davies as Nakahn Noel de Souza as Gandhi Christopher Clarke as Lord Byron
Episode chronology
← Previous "Unity" Next → "Rise"
List of Star Trek: Voyager episodes

For the beetle, see Darkling beetle.
For the comic book character, see Asylum (comics).
For an Ing-possessed creature, see Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

"Darkling" is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the eighteenth episode of the third season.

Plot

The Doctor attempts to improve his program by including elements of the personalities of various famous people that he admires, taken from holocharacters of them. However, the darker, less well-known sides of these people's personalities form a second, evil personality (similar to Mr. Hyde). This evil version of the Doctor attempts to murder an alien from the planet being visited by Voyager by pushing him off a cliff. The evil twin also temporarily paralyzes Lt. Torres when she discovers it. It later jumps off a cliff with Kes but is beamed back to Voyager while falling. At the end of the episode, the Doctor's program is restored to normal. While the episode concludes, the Doctor is heard citing part of the Hippocratic Oath.

Cultural References

This episode opens with a tale from an alien of his story of a visit to a moon. Upon landing on the moon his crew light a fire. A sudden moon-quake arises and it emerges that the moon is actually a massive life form. This story is a clear parallel to the story of the first Tale of Sinbad the Sailor where a sailing ship lands on an island that proves to be a massive whale which comes to life after the crew light a fire on its back. Also, this episode's plot-line is a reference to the famous story by Robert Louis Stevenson of a man's fight with his evil alter-ego in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

External links

• Darkling at the Internet Movie Database
• "Darkling" at TV.com
• Darkling at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• Darkling at StarTrek.com