Darkling (Star Trek: Voyager)

While Kes pursues a romantic interest, 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. 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. As the episode concludes, the Doctor is heard reciting part of the Hippocratic Oath.

In 2017 this episode was noted as featuring scary and/or eerie Star Trek content.[2] In 2018, TheGamer ranked this one of the top 25 creepiest episodes of all Star Trek series.[3] They note a series of disturbing behaviors by the EMH program in this episode, and were disappointed that many of the programs malfunctions were not addressed.[3]

The story derives from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which the mild mannered Doctor of Stephenson's novel is transformed into the ebullient and violent Mr. Hyde through the ingestion of a secret formula. This parallels the experience of the EMH, in which the 'ingestion' of the personality elements from famous historical personalities - in particular the romantic Lord Byron - results in violent, dark personality emerging.

• "Darkling" at IMDb
• "Darkling" at TV.com

• Darkling at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)

• Darkling at StarTrek.com