Pathfinder

	Harry brings Barclay "the usual" - warm milk.
	Holo-Harry and holo-Tom share a laugh.
	Holo-Tom and Holo-Harry meet Barclay for breakfast in the mess.
	Tom and Harry fight over Barclay...in his dreams. Holo-Harry wants Barclay to teach him to play velocity. Never mind that Harry was the captain of the velocity team when he was at Starfleet Academy. This info must have been available to Barclay, but he chose to ignore it.
	The photo of Tom on Admiral Paris' desk. (Eek! Tom was so young and scrawny. And his hair was so dark! This looks like it's actually a photo of Nick Locarno, Robert Duncan McNeill's earlier Trek incarnation.)
	Admiral Owen Paris, Tom's father.
	The real Harry reacts to hearing Lt. Barclay's voice - their first "live" contact with Starfleet since they got to the Delta Quadrant.
	Tom hears his father's voice: "Tell him I miss him. And I'm proud of him."
	The crew of Voyager celebrates. Tom toasts his father: "To my dad. It's nice to know he's still there."
	"And to the newest honorary member of the Voyager crew, Reginald Barclay...whoever you are."

I admit that I found a lot of this episode boring. I'm not a fan of TNG, so Troi and Barclay weren't terribly interesting. But the ending, with the real Voyager crew, made it all worthwhile. Great stuff for Tom and his dad at the end, and something actually changed. They have the possibility of regular communication now.

Barclay's vision of the Voyager crew was rather warped. In his sim, they all looked like they did in "Caretaker." As nearly as they could emulate it, anyway. Neelix and Seven weren't present at all. (Reasonable, since Reg would have no way of knowing what they looked like.) Torres and Chakotay wore their Maquis clothes, not Starfleet uniforms. Harry's hair had a part again. Tom's was in an approximation of his first-season comb-back. Janeway had the power bun. B'Elanna had straight hair, and Chakotay had bangs again. And of course, they didn't really act like themselves.

Curiously, Barclay seemed to know that Tom and Harry were friends. They were always together in his sim: standing next to each other talking, sitting next to each other to play poker, having coffee elbow to elbow in the mess. How did Reg know? Did Harry send a letter home with the Doc in "Message In a Bottle"? ("Dear Mom and Dad, I met the most wonderful guy....") Or did the Doc say something? ("Tell Admiral Paris his son is well and happy, but I hope he didn't have his heart set on grandchildren." Or maybe, "Tell Mrs. Kim not to worry, I gave young Harry and his 'friend' Mr. Paris the lecture on safe sex....")

Though Owen Paris generally takes a bashing in fandom, this episode reveals him to be a kind and apparently loving man. He thinks of his son every day since Voyager was lost. And he keeps a photo of his son on his desk. It's the only picture on his desk; it's placed so only he can see it, so it's not just for show. He's obviously not ashamed of Tom, no matter what Tom fears. He was gentle and understanding with the flaky Barclay. In the end, he approved Barclay's idea. All that running around was for nothing. If Reg had played by the rules, he'd have gotten what he wanted. He should have trusted Owen Paris. (I think this is a first: a Starfleet admiral who's not an idiot or a jerk!)

My main nit was that Janeway supposedly served under Admiral Paris, but it doesn't seem like she knows him when she talks to him (though admittedly, the scene was very brief). Also, there's no mention of Tom's mother. Is she alive? Is she still married to Owen, assuming she ever was?

Some impressive acting in this episode. McNeill was terrific in the scene where Tom hears his father's voice for the first time in years. And Wang - it was great fun seeing him act like not-Harry. His holographic Harry Kim used expressions, gestures, etc., that our Harry Kim doesn't. Makes perfect sense; Barclay has never met Harry, and wouldn't know his habitual mannerisms.

The ending was lovely. Tom toasts his father, making explicit their reconciliation. At last. And it was Harry standing by his side in that scene, just as much the focus of the shot as Tom. Standing behind him - literally. That was so perfect and right and good. Harry is ever Tom's true and loyal friend, the one man in a thousand, who's been "more close than a brother" since the beginning. Hear, hear.