Heroes and Demons
Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet and Maquis crew of the starship USS Voyager after they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant far from the rest of the Federation.
Shankar sought to move the Doctor out of sickbay, and while he was looking generally to involve Vikings on the holodeck, it wasn't until later that he realized he had inadvertently followed the story of the Beowulf poem, and so changed the script to include direct references.
Picardo's performance was praised by the crew, and the episode was received positively by critics, who compared elements to The Lord of the Rings and computer based roleplaying games.
The crew encounters a protostar and Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) decides to have samples beamed aboard for use as a potential power source.
Janeway recommends to B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) that she should have Ensign Harry Kim's (Garrett Wang) assistance, but he is discovered to be missing.
With each person sent into the holodeck also becoming lost, Captain Janeway sends in the Doctor (Robert Picardo) to investigate, under the assumption that as an immaterial hologram, he cannot be dematerialized in the way the missing crew had been.
She takes him to the hall, where he is made to prove himself before the others, and after a celebratory meal and everyone has retired to separate rooms, she reappears and suggests that, in the cold of the night when the fire in his hearth has gone out, he ought to join her.
As the Doctor investigates, he realizes that alien energy lifeforms were beamed onto the ship within the containment field into which the protostar samples were transported.
Rick Berman, Jeri Taylor and Michael Piller had worked together as executive producers for the pilot of Voyager, "Caretaker", and the following ten episodes.
[1] Instead, the episode was written by Naren Shankar, the former story editor for Star Trek: The Next Generation during the final two seasons of the show where he worked with Berman, Taylor and Piller.
Following the end of The Next Generation, Shankar had pitched a number of spec scripts for a variety of television series including The Simpsons, but "Heroes and Demons" was the first one he sold, which was accepted before Voyager had begun production.
[3] Shankar had originally intended the story to be "Star Trek with Vikings", and it wasn't until he was sketching out the plot of the episode that he realised that he had inadvertently created something similar to the Beowulf poem.
"Heroes and Demons" was significant for McCarthy, as he had sought to increase the tempo of the music he created over the course of several years with the addition of further percussion instruments.
[12] Garrett Wang also added that he was happy with the episode, as being an Asian-American actor he didn't otherwise get a great deal of chances to appear in period work, and he enjoyed the wardrobe he wore.
He said that certain elements of the episode were more similar to the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons instead of historical fact, such as the character of Freya who he also compared to Éowyn from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
[4] He praised the episode, saying that the "real pleasures" were "to witness the surly, introverted, neurotic Doctor being forced to play the hero, banter with Vikings and have his first romantic liaison when Freya falls for him.
[14] Edward L. Risden described "Heroes and Demons" as "Pulp TV tackles mead-hall ritual" in his book, co-authored with Nickolas Haydock, Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations.
He added that it gave the Beowulf story "a new twist adaptive to science fiction and to audiences who want human interest even in electronic projections.
