10 Times Star Trek: Voyager Went Woke
9. Question The Official Story
Living Witness may well be remembered for Kate Mulgrew's performance as dark Janeway, but there's an earnest warning under all that roleplay.
In the distant future, The Doctor is awakened in a museum and is horrified to find the Voyager crew portrayed as violent, ruthless warmongers. As he watches a simulation (very loosely based on real events), he realises that the truth has been severely warped to blame his crewmates for crimes they never committed. Worse, this rewritten history has supported the continued oppression of an entire race.
While the episode makes for an entertaining 'what-if' story, showing us the villainous alter-egos of our favourite characters, it was deliberately drawing on questions being asked at the time. In a 1998 edition of Cinefantastique, writer and producer Brannon Braga said:
It's also a show about revisionist history, which is a very topical issue. Cultures are taking issue with the way history is portrayed in the books right now, and controversies come out of that. Is the revisionist history accurate? Or is it being done to bolster one's cultural identity in the present?
And the remarkable thing is that almost 30 years later, we're still having the same debate. Still questioning the narratives presented to us. If anything, fake news and social media have only made it harder to separate fact from fiction. But the most important thing is that no matter how difficult it gets, we keep asking questions and challenging the stories we've inherited as fact.