FAIR HAVEN
Episode 131

 

SUMMARY: Voyager's crew wait for an interstellar hurricane to hit by spending time in a holographic Irish village, where Janeway falls in love with a holographic character. Paris creates a new holodeck program, set in the invented Irish village of Fair Haven in the early 20th century, wherein members of Voyager crew are able to assume roles and enjoy convivial holographic company and entertaining pursuits such as arm-wrestling in the pub. The village's slogan is "Welcome, weary traveller." Certain crew retain their original names for the holoprogram, e.g. Tom Paris, Harry Kim and Chakotay; whereas others adopt names e.g. the Doctor plays the role of Father Mulligan the village priest. Janeway visits Fair Haven to recall the crew to their posts as Voyager is on collision course with a class-9 neutronic wavefront, a form of interstellar hurricane. In the Fair Haven pub, she meets the holographic barman Michael Sullivan. 6 pictures above: Fair Haven village, Janeway meets Sullivan, Kim wins the arm-wrestling match in the pub against a 3-counties champion, and Sullivan exchanges a farewell smile with Janeway Outside the holodeck, the Voyager crew learn that the wavefront is travelling at a velocity of 200,000 kilometres per second and extends for 3.6 light-years. The wavefront will hit in approximately 15 hours and the ship is already feeling its effects: the neutron radiation is disrupting plasma flow so that they cannot jump to warp to escape, and impulse power instead would be insufficient. So the crew generates an inverse warp field and "drops anchor" so as to ride out the storm, and radiation inoculations are ordered for everyone. Janeway grants permission for the new holoprogram to have a 24-hour 'open door' policy in order to maintain morale as they wait for the wavefront to hit, and she later grants Paris permission to extend Fair Haven into Holodeck 2 and add a sea coast. Having met the attractive Sullivan, Janeway revisits the pub after closing time and spends an enjoyable time with him in amusing conversation, a game of rings and her form of arm-wrestling. He calls her Katie, and then O'Clare when she says her aunt and uncle are from the Irish county of Clare. 4 pictures above: Janeway has tea with Sullivan, watches him take one of his goes at rings and cheats when arm-wrestling him by using both hands and he also notices that she has her leg braced against the bar to which she replies: "How else do you expect me to win?!" But she is disconcerted to discover that he is married. Because she is so drawn to him, she makes a few modifications to Sullivan's program subroutines; she makes him more enquiring and more intellectual, and deletes his wife. Sullivan's wife Frannie Janeway alters Sullivan's parameters in Voyager's holographic research lab When Janeway returns to Fair Haven, she finds a much more compatible man. They enjoy a pleasant conversation at the railway station where he often sits and reads poetry, and as they walk into the village it is clear that Sullivan is attracted to her. The hurricane arrives, and while Voyager successfully clears the leading edge of the wavefront, the ship must spend at least three days inside the storm. During much of that time, many of the crewmembers return to the holographic creation. While spending more time with Michael, Janeway discovers that her amendments to his program were too good, because she finds herself falling in love with him. Uncomfortable about having romantic feelings for a hologram, after a perfect day together Janeway does not show up to meet him the next day. This leaves Sullivan confused and upset. He turns to drink, and drunkenly demands that Paris tell him where she is, which leads into a drunken brawl. Though the crew try to hide the reason for the brawl, Kim unfortunately lets it slip to Janeway. The Doctor carries over his village priest role onto Voyager, and counsel Janeway not to try to control every aspect of her relationship with Sullivan. Janeway tries to find out the reason for the brawl during which crewmenbers sustained cuts and bruises Janeway: "Oh you know the story: girl meets boy, girl modifies boy's subroutines." The storm intensifies causing problems for the ship's systems, with a plasma conduit rupturing when they meet the storm's leading edge. Later, stabilisers go offline and there are hull fractures. All power (including that from all secondary systems including transporters, replicators and holodecks) is diverted to the deflector to help Voyager cut a path to escape. Without enough time to go through the hologrid shutdown sequence, they lose most of the Fair Haven holoprogram. When shutting down all those systems also proves insufficient for generating the necessary power, they siphon every last deciwatt of energy from the plasma network. Voyager successfully makes it out of the hurricane, but Paris and Kim are able to save only 10 per cent of the existing elements from the Fair Haven holoprogram, so it will have to be shut down while it is restored. Paris informs Janeway of this, tacitly giving her the opportunity to have one last talk with Sullivan. Voyager uses the deflector to finally escape the wavefront Kim and Paris assess the damage to Fair Haven Accordingly, Janeway calls up Sullivan in Voyager's holographic lab and tells him that she is leaving Fair Haven for a while. (See second quote below.) Even though she cannot give him a definitive reason why, as she cannot divulge information about Voyager and his own holographic nature, the disappointed Sullivan tells her that he still loves her. She closes down his holoprogram, and then orders the computer to deny her any future access to Sullivan's behavioural subroutines. 3 pictures above: Janeway calls up Sullivan's program, Sullivan hears Janeway is leaving Fair Haven for a while, Janeway is unable to be specific as to her reasons why      SULLIVAN: 'A hundred thousand welcomes.' It's an old Irish saying. We're all friends here. JANEWAY: I had an aunt who used to have a saying like that. A stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet. SULLIVAN: Definitely Irish.    SULLIVAN: You disappeared on me, Katie. I woke up and you'd gone. JANEWAY: I had some thinking to do. SULLIVAN: Are you done? JANEWAY: Yes. I'm leaving Fair Haven. SULLIVAN: Why? JANEWAY: Because. SULLIVAN: That's not a very good reason. JANEWAY: The situation is complicated. SULLIVAN: Another man? JANEWAY: No. SULLIVAN: Your friends, they don't approve of me? JANEWAY: They think you're charming. SULLIVAN: Are you not ready to settle down yet? JANEWAY: I'm as ready as I'll ever be. SULLIVAN: You're not making any sense. JANEWAY: No, I guess I'm not. SULLIVAN: I have a feeling that you won't be forgetting this that easily, Fair Haven has that effect on people, but there's one thing I want you to know. I love you, Katie. JANEWAY: I might actually be passing this way in six or seven weeks. Maybe I'll stop by the pub. SULLIVAN: See that you do.