“Spirit Folk” is episode seventeen of season six of Star Trek: Voyager.
Tom is in Fair Haven, driving an early motor car, badly. And crashes it. Tom tells Seamus he bought it through money received from an inheritance, which fact Seamus uses to scrounge some money from Tom. Tom is going to go to the castle; Seamus warns him not to, as it’s reclaimed by the queen of the faerie folk when the sun goes down. Tom has the computer repair his car; Seamus sees this and decides it’s magic.
Seamus tells the other villagers in the pub about what he saw, and Tom used unnatural powers. Sullivan doesn’t take him that seriously, though some of the others comment on Tom coming through town as if he built the place. A shifty one, as are his friends. Sullivan defends Captain Janeway. Seamus and Milo talk about a town that welcomed in the spirit folk, only for the entire place to disappear from the map, never to be seen again. The captain arrives at this point for her usual; a tea.
Harry is replicating lilies for Maggie O’Halloran when Tom approaches. Harry mentions Tom’s accident; B’Elanna thinks the entire place is an accident waiting to happen. It’s running around the clock and she had to replace three holoemitters. Tom says everything is fine. After Harry leaves, Tom says he knows how to make Harry’s date more interesting.
That night, Tom is following Harry and Maggie, spying on them, whilst Seamus and Milo are doing the same to Tom. They see Tom using his PADD. Which he uses to turn Maggie into a cow just before Harry kisses her. Harry is not pleased. Chakotay summons both to the bridge; Tom says Maggie will be fine as a cow for now.
The next day, Doctor is giving a sermon in the church – one thinks he loves the sound of his own voice, or has been nipping the sacramental wine – when Milo and Seamus arrive with the cow. Maggie, turned into a cow by the spirits. The Doctor says Tom is a known prankster. They’re victims of a practical joke; he saw Maggie at her flower stall this morning.
Maggie appears at her cart just before Milo and Seamus get there. They ask her questions, and she doesn’t feel quite herself this morning. Maggie had the strangest dream, about walking around town with nothing but a bell around her neck. She wound up in church; they were both there. The next thing she knew, she was tending flowers, just as they arrived.
The villagers return to the pub and are comparing stories of strange things they’ve seen. And that Neelix looks like a leprechaun. Sullivan tries to stop everyone going off on one.
Sullivan has The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser for the captain when she returns. He wants to talk about the strange things happening around town, and that she and her friends are thought to be responsible. Afterwards, the captain asks what changes Tom has made to the program, because Sullivan was asking questions no holodeck character should. It seems they’ve never run a holodeck program this long before, having kept it continuously active. The program is getting buggy, the characters are working out there’s something strange going on and things start to get a little tense.
This is another ‘holodeck malfunction’ episode. It seems Starfleet ships would be safer if they just stripped the things out. Or, perhaps, got the Ferengi to run them for money. Quark never had the sorts of issues with his holosuites on Deep Space 9. Perhaps because it’s hard to get repeat customers to holosuites if the things kill the customers.