Classic Star Trek Episode Was Secretly Inspired By Most Influential Philosopher

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 18 seconds ago

Star Trek has often been described as a philosophical sci-fi franchise, but that’s usually just a general descriptor for the thoughtful nature of various episodes and movies. Shows like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine frequently tackled big concepts, including personal autonomy, free will, the ethics of euthanasia, and so much more. However, few (if any) episodes from most of those series were written explicitly around the writing sof a singular philosopher.

Interestingly, though, the same can’t be said about “Projections,” an ambitious episode from the second season of Star Trek: Voyager. Episode writer Brannon Braga crafted this tale around the influential theories of renowned philosopher René Descartes. Furthermore, the climax of the episode involves the Doctor invoking Descartes’ most famous contribution to the philosophical canon: “I think, therefore I am.”

Holo Pursuits

For context, “Projections” is a Voyager episode where the ship’s holographic Doctor begins to think that he is actually flesh and blood and everyone else on the ship is a hologram. He spends the episode wrestling with a fundamental question of identity: is he an Emergency Medical Hologram on a ship trapped in the Delta Quadrant, or is he Lewis Zimmerman, the man who designed the EMH program? With a bit of help from the Voyager crew, he escapes this dilemma through sheer force of will: he is the holographic Doctor, and nobody can convince him otherwise.

Now, how does this wacky sci-fi plot connect to René Descartes, arguably the most influential philosopher of all time? Descartes was a philosopher who became obsessed with a simple idea: whether or not everything he was seeing was actual reality, or if this was all just a dream he was having. He went so far as to theorize that all of us could have our very own demon feeding us these illusions, and we would have no way of knowing what was real or what was not.

Eventually, Descartes solved his own crazy dilemma through the phrase “I think, therefore I am,” and this phrase is quite literal. You see, the very fact that he was questioning everything around him meant that he was constantly doubting everything, which meant that he was real and not an illusion. After all, he wouldn’t be thinking about whether or not he existed unless he actually existed.

Barclay The Demon

In an interview with The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, “Projections” writer Brannon Braga made it very explicitly clear how his story ties into this ancient philosopher’s musings. “In essence, it becomes analogous to the stories written by the philosopher René Descartes, of the man plagued by an evil demon, out to prove that he doesn’t exist, and in this case, the demon is Barclay.” This is in reference to a holographic Barclay consistently telling the Doctor that he is actually a human trapped in a hologram rather than a hologram living among (mostly) humans.

Finishing his thoughts, Braga said, “The story culminates in Descartes’ famous quote, ‘I think, therefore I am.’” This refers to the end of the episode, when the Doctor finds himself in the familiar holodeck grid. When Janeway asks if he knows who he is and where he is, the Doctor is finally certain: he is the Voyager’s EMH and currently on the holodeck.

“Projections” is a fun episode that proves you can create a truly compelling tale out of ancient philosophy. A few years after this episode, The Matrix would transform Plato’s parable of the cave into one of the most influential movies ever made. But when it comes to turning dusty philosophy into killer sci-fi, forget Neo and bullet time: Star Trek did it first, crafting one of the most thoughtful hours of entertainment in television history.