Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series)

Good Shepherd (2000)

Jay Underwood: Mortimer Harren

Quotes 

• Mortimer Harren : We never should have left Voyager.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : I've got news for you, crewman. Voyager isn't exactly a safe haven. We've been chased across the quadrant by far worse than whatever's out there - the Vidiians, Species 8472, the Borg... but I guess if somebody's hiding down on deck 15, they may not be aware of it.

  Mortimer Harren : I wasn't meant to be an explorer.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : And I wasn't meant to guide a ship across an unknown quadrant.

  Mortimer Harren : Then we're both victims of circumstance.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : Oh, I've seen things I've never imagined, grown closer to people than I ever thought possible. I wouldn't call myself a victim, and I wouldn't trade the last six years for anything.

  Mortimer Harren : Then you've been deluded, by the inexhaustible human capacity to avoid the truth. You're the one hiding, not me.

• Captain Kathryn Janeway : That's the nature of space exploration. It's unpredictable.

  Mortimer Harren : Which is why I don't like space exploration. Stumbling from star to star like a... a drunken insect careening toward a light source is not my idea of a dignified existence.

• [Harren flies his escape pod toward the dark matter aliens] 

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : Janeway to Harren, what're you doing?

  Mortimer Harren : If they have to deal with me, it should give you a few more seconds to get away. That's my theory, anyway.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : [firmly]  Resume your escape course now.

  Mortimer Harren : It's too late for that.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : You made a mistake, Harren. Don't make another one.

  Mortimer Harren : I'm done hiding, Captain. A few seconds of exposure to real life, maybe I'll understand what I've been missing.

• Mortimer Harren : You're standing in the way of cosmological history.

  Engineer : The cosmos is sixteen billion years old. It can wait another few minutes.

• Tom Paris : Then, what ARE you doing?

  [Harren slides over the PADD he has been working on, showing nothing but complicated calculations] 

  Tom Paris : [frowning]  Very interesting.

  Mortimer Harren : What do you find most interesting about it?

  Tom Paris : Your creative use of the minus sign.

• [the propulsion system of the Delta Flyer has been damaged] 

  Mortimer Harren : We'll be able to do one eighth impulse, no more.

  William Telfer : That should get us to the rendezvous point with Voyager in about ten years. Think they'll wait for us?

• William Telfer : Spend some time with us when we get back. You might enjoy yourself.

  Mortimer Harren : A hypothesis that would require testing. I'm a theoretician, remember?

• Mortimer Harren : I'm about to disprove Schlezholt's theory of multiple big bangs. Of course, I had to demolish Wang's second postulate to do it.

• Captain Kathryn Janeway : [breaking for lunch]  Mortimer.

  Mortimer Harren : Even my mother didn't call me that.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : Well, then, Mr. Harren, are you hungry?

  Mortimer Harren : No. Thank you.

• Mortimer Harren : Do you really believe that childhood environment is more important than genetically driven behavior patterns?

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : Just making conversation.

  Mortimer Harren : Conversation filled with unspoken assumptions, which I don't agree with. I'm a product of my nucleic acids. Where and how I was raised are beside the point, so if you're trying to understand me better, questions about my home planet are irrelevant.

  Captain Kathryn Janeway : All right, then. How's your thirteenth chromosome? Missing a couple of base pairs in gene 178?