Reel Heroes: Michael Sullivan, from the "Star Trek: Voyager" episodes “Fair Haven” and “Spirit Folk”, played by Fintan McKeown

Every month in my journal, I pick somebody I like or admire in some way and write about what it is I like about this person or fictional character.  Most recently, after reviewing a few new Star Trek magazines that rated every show and movie (don't laugh; after all, my blog title is "Thoughts of a Sci Fi Christian Guy") it peaked my interest in these old shows again, and so when I was looking for someone I might admire, this character from two Voyager episodes caught my eye because of his simple, unfettered nature.  It's something that caught my attention, and so I wrote about it:

I don’t like politics.  I don’t like fighting.  More and more, I’m beginning to realize that if I really had my way, I would settle for the simple, peaceful life.
          I admire this guy because he is untroubled, even-tempered, and is reluctant to get mixed up in a brawl even when all the evidence seems to point that way.  All he wants is an unworried life, and the love of his girl Katey.  Of course a character like him is too good to be true!  Not only is he not real, he’s a fictional character within another fiction, a fiction within a fiction!  He’s an illusory holodeck character dreamed up by the imaginary television characters on the series Star Trek: Voyager.

            The crew of Voyager is far from home, and they may never see Earth again, but they have a holodeck at their command, a fantastical technological wonder that can recreate any place and any time that ever existed, or never existed.  So Tom Paris, of Irish decent himself, decides to use it to create a quaint Olde Irish Towne called “Fair Haven,” including a sensible, unfettered Irish bartender named Michael Sullivan.  Captain Janeway is captivated by him when she meets him, perhaps because he is so Olde World Charming and uncomplicated.  Coming from a world of technology in which she is responsible for hundreds of lives under her command 70 thousand light years from a home they may never see again, this fictional character, created using the most sophisticated technology, actually represents a simpler, friendlier, easier kind of life, and that’s appealing to Janeway… and, after some reflection, it’s appealing to me too.  I’d like to be a man more like the undemanding and good-natured Michael Sullivan.

            Yet Janeway might overanalyze the situation.  Since he is a fictional character, his parameters are adjustable, and she makes him taller, scruffier, educated and well read, and single (“…and computer… delete the wife”), but keeps his gentle nature and personality intact; in short, she makes him into the kind of man she simply can’t resist, real or not.  Yet she calls it off before it goes too far.  After all, he is just a hologram.  He might appear to be real, with flesh and blood just like her, but he is, in fact, just a computer program with projected light and force fields.  He doesn’t even know what he really is.  Yet she has a talk with Voyager’s doctor, who is a hologram himself, able to walk around with the crew with the help of a 29^th century device called a “holo-emitter”, and with knowledge of who and what he is, and he explains to Captain Janeway that as the captain, she cannot fraternize with the crew, leaving her little options for any romantic relationships.  She is in a unique situation, unlike what most other Starfleet officers have ever had to deal with, and so she decides to keep seeing Michael, even though she knows he’s not real.  At least it’s somebody.

            Then something strange happens.  With this special program running almost all the time for various members of the crew, it starts to experience technical problems. Some of the characters vanish, and when the Voyager crew operate the holodeck and give the computer commands, the fictional characters, being part of the program, are not supposed to notice such things or remember it all… but they do, and they start to think that perhaps these strange visitors are enchanted fairies, witches, and wizards.  When Tom and Harry call up Michael Sullivan’s program in a holodeck work station, he is terrified, for he is still conscious at this point, though he plays along with Tom and Harry as if he doesn’t know a thing.  Later, when they capture the Doctor, Michael uses the Doctor’s 29^th century holo-emitter to visit Janeway on the bridge of her ship.  Yet even at this point, his character is effortless and agreeable.  His world as he knows it has just come crashing down around him, and yet he keeps his head.  Janeway never tells him the whole truth, but introduces him to concepts of science fiction much like Jules Verne and tells a bit of a lie, saying they are all travelers from the future, which, in a sense, and from his perspective, they are.  That would be easier for him and the residents of Fair Haven to take than to tell them that they aren’t even real, and Michael and the residents of this fictional town accept this, and the crew.

            Ah, if only real life were more like that fictional town, and more real men were like Michael Sullivan.  The world would be a better place.  Yes, that is more the life I want, and the man I want to be.  I want to live in a place where everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is friendly, and technology is kept to a minimum.  It’s one reason I like the new show Heart of Dixie.  Michael Sullivan is the type of creation who owes his very existence to technology, and the very town he inhabits is created from this same technology, and yet he doesn’t know it, and is content to live a simple life, with simple love, a job he fancies, a few good books, and his charming Katey.

            The same kind of thing would make me just as happy and content.