Special Agent Matti
Now, what else happened? Oh yeah, the Doctor used his metamorphic abilities to impersonate various members of the crew à la Reg Barclay's hologram in Inside man. The EMH didn't just mimic the crew, however, he downloaded their holographic templates (a "new" piece of technology developed for this story although logically they must have existed prior as various crew members are used in training simulations - see Worst case scenario). And he stored his kidnapees in the Morgue (another part of the ship that should've existed but was never seen until now, despite the plethora of dead Ensigns left in Voyager's wake). Once you get over these two stumbling blocks you run into the special guest aliens of the week: the Hierarchy (aka Mr Potatohead), who have appeared as baddies in Tinker, tenor, doctor, spy and as goodies in The void. These bureaucrats from Hell have travelled a long way, two whole seasons' worth of travel by Voyager. It's fun to see a familiar face every now and then but this is ridiculous. The Hierarchy does not have technology that advanced, no matter how long they've been at it (if you just beamed in from The next generation, these guys are the Pakleds of the Delta Quadrant with more brains and less brawn). On the plus side, they have just the right characteristics (weakness and sneakiness) to do the kind of thing that they do: get other people to do their dirty work for them.
Renaissance man is just the kind of episode to allow several members of the cast to display their acting talents, performing as both the Doctor and the way that the Doctor sees their character. The funny part was watching Tom kiss the Doc while he was using B'Elanna's holo-template. It's the closest Star trek has been to having a male-male kiss since its inception (female-female relationships/kisses have occurred in The next generation and Deep Space Nine). Robert Duncan McNeill's "innocent" behaviour with his seeming wife is great given that you know that the actor knows that the character isn't who he thinks she is.
It's a good episode, but as the penultimate episode of a seven year series, it's not up to par. It's not even as good as The Neelix one.
FYI: A "Renaissance man" is one who is well versed in many different areas (eg art, politics, music, etc.), so named because of the emphasis during the European Renaissance on being multi-talented. Leonardo da Vinci was one such person.
PG (Low level violence)
VHS rental and retail: 8 March 2002