Star Trek: Voyager went full My Fair Lady and broke hearts with Seven and the Doctor [Warp Factor 4.2]

Marry Freddy. Ha!

Two of the most fascinating characters on Star Trek: Voyager are Seven of Nine and the Doctor. Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo are always magical together, and nowhere is that chemistry more apparent than in the heartbreaking episode "Someone to Watch Over Me."

It's a riff on My Fair Lady, as the Doctor teaches Seven about romance and courting rituals. He also makes an ill-conceived bet with Tom Paris that Seven will be able to make it all work. Then, you know, he falls in love with her. Who wouldn't?

While singing a duet of "You Are My Sunshine" the Doctor pauses and just looks at the former Borg standing before him. You can tell from the look on his face — he's toast. He continues the lessons, and even goes so far as to ask Paris what one does in a situation like this. Before he can tell Seven how he really feels, Seven tells him that she's found no suitable match in the ship's databanks and has decided to terminate their lessons in romance.

With that, the Doctor sits at a holographic piano and plays the song that gives this episode its title.

The Doctor never tells Seven how he feels until "Renaissance Man" in the show's final season, and that's something of a deathbed confession that is glossed right over. Seven and the Doctor have had much more fun before this, as the show revisited the pairing often... it just never did so in a romantic way. Seven is eventually hooked up with Chakotay towards the end, for almost no reason at all. That's that.

It's a hard lesson for the Doctor, but a necessary one, perhaps? What's more human than heartbreak? Holo-heartbreak is still heartbreak.

Welcome back to Warp Factor, where we're watching over all of the ups and downs of this episode. There's coffee in that nebula, and the medical emergency is that Seven has a date. Where the devil are my slippers? Who cares.