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* [[Digital Muse]] was responsible for "building" Harry Kim from the bones up. For more information, see: [http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_blood_guts_star/ Blood and Guts: ''Star Trek: Voyager'' Builds Character from the Bones Up]. |
* [[Digital Muse]] was responsible for "building" Harry Kim from the bones up. For more information, see: [http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_blood_guts_star/ Blood and Guts: ''Star Trek: Voyager'' Builds Character from the Bones Up]. |
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* Several costumes and items from this episode were sold off on the [[It's A Wrap! sale and auction]] on eBay, including [[Nancy Bell]]'s uniform. {{stala|9492}} |
* Several costumes and items from this episode were sold off on the [[It's A Wrap! sale and auction]] on eBay, including [[Nancy Bell]]'s uniform. {{stala|9492}} |
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| − | *In the flashback scenes Kes is strangely absent. |
+ | *In the flashback scenes [[Kes]] is strangely absent. |
=== Video and DVD releases === |
=== Video and DVD releases === |
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Revision as of 21:25, 8 March 2010
Template:Realworld When The Doctor discovers evidence that his memory files may have been tampered with, it sets in motion a chain of events that leads to the recollection of the death of a crewmember, a crewmember The Doctor believes he let die.
Summary
The Doctor is doing annual check-ups on USS Voyager's crew and is using his holo-imager to take images of everyone "all the way down to the subatomic level". After taking Harry Kim's image, he notices some scarring along the base of his skull which could only have come from a neurosurgical procedure that he developed himself. However, the Doctor has no memory of performing such a procedure, and Kim says he doesn't remember having an operation.
Act One
The Doctor visits Captain Janeway in her ready room to perform her physical examination, since, as usual, she didn't show up. The Doctor asks Janeway to come to sickbay at her earliest convenience so that he can take a deep body scan of her, and tells her about the surgical procedure he doesn't remember performing on Kim. He has deduced from the isotope decay around the scars that it must have been eighteen months ago, but Janeway says that she doesn't remember it either. The Doctor asks for a complete diagnostic of his program and Janeway tells him that Torres and Kim are both busy, but he is next on the list.
The Doctor comes to the astrometrics lab to ask Seven of Nine for a favor, but she is busy recalibrating the deflector dish and tells him to come back tomorrow. The Doctor complains that Janeway is "acting like she's allergic" to him, and now Seven, his "star pupil", won't talk to him either. Seven tells him to state his request, and The Doctor tells her about the surgery and asks her to help him run a self-diagnostic. Seven agrees to help him in one hour.
An hour later, Seven comes to sickbay and finds The Doctor inactive. She activates him and tells him that she has run a preliminary diagnostic and his suspicions were correct, but he doesn't remember speaking to her and doesn't know what she's talking about. He tries to view Kim's holoscans, but the computer says that the file has been deleted. The Doctor decides to look at his photo album from eighteen months ago and asks Seven to meet him in holodeck two.
On the holodeck, The Doctor finds that all of his images from the date of the surgery have been deleted. Seven reconstructs five of the images from residual photons in the holobuffer. The images are from a birthday celebration for an ensign The Doctor doesn't recognize, and a shuttle mission with her and Kim.
Act Two
Seven discovers that The Doctor's memory files from Stardate 50979 are still available, but that The Doctor's program has been rewritten to deny him access to them. She restores them, but The Doctor experiences them out of order. He remembers going to the ensign's birthday party, going on the shuttle mission with her and Kim and being attacked by an unknown species, and performing surgery on them with Tom Paris in sickbay.
The Doctor meets with Janeway and Tuvok in the briefing room. Janeway doesn't recognize the species that attacked the shuttle crew, and Seven says that they are unknown to the Borg. Tuvok suggests that the images have been manipulated, but The Doctor thinks that there was an attack on Voyager by the unknown species, all of the crew's memories of it were erased, and Jetal, the ensign from the shuttle mission, may be an alien intruder posing as a member of the crew. He believes the crew may be in immediate danger, since his memories were tampered with a few hours ago. Janeway orders Tuvok to do a security sweep and Seven to recalibrate the sensors in astrometrics to try to detect cloaked ships in the area. The Doctor offers to review his medical records for other injuries, but Janeway tells him to deactivate himself for his own safety, and promises to keep him informed.
The Doctor returns to sickbay and, before deactivating himself, tells the computer to copy all of his memory files from the previous 48 hours and to reactivate him and restore the duplicate files if his program is altered, and programs his holo-imager to take images in five second intervals if anyone enters the room. Some time later, the computer reactivates him and restores his memory files (which may have been tampered with again), and the holo-imager reveals that the person who tampered with his program is Captain Janeway.
Act Three
On the bridge, Chakotay and Tuvok are arguing with Janeway about a Sumo match when The Doctor interrupts and accuses them of conspiring against him.
In the ready room, Janeway tells the Doctor that she had to deny him access to his memories of the events surrounding the attack because they caused a conflict in his programming that couldn't be resolved. The Doctor demands to know what happened, but Janeway tells him that that might cause the conflict to happen again. The Doctor feels violated because he has essentially been operated on without his consent, but Janeway believes that the ends justify the means and that rewriting his program again is the only option. She orders him to return to sickbay.
In sickbay, Chakotay asks for copies of The Doctor's memory files so that Torres and Seven can rewrite his program, and tells him to brief Paris about any experiments or tests he's performing, since Paris will replace him while he is off-line. The Doctor asks Paris why Janeway won't tell him what happened, and Paris says that she has her reasons and he agrees with her.
Seven of Nine comes to Janeway's quarters late at night for a discussion on the nature of individuality. Janeway tells her that this isn't the time or the place, and to meet her in the mess hall tomorrow, but Seven says that tomorrow will be too late, since the Doctor's program will have been rewritten by then, and his rights as an individual violated. Janeway tells Seven that the Doctor is more like a replicator than like a person, and that she won't take the risk of his program self-destructing again. Seven counters that insofar as being part machine, she is also much like a replicator, and wonders if she might someday be treated in a similar fashion. Suggesting that she may have been mistaken when choosing Janeway as her "guide to humanity", Seven leaves Janeway's quarters.
Janeway goes to sickbay and offers to show the Doctor what happened eighteen months ago. The Doctor agrees.
Act Four
The Doctor remembers participating in a surprise birthday party for Ensign Jetal, and later, going on a shuttlecraft mission with her and Kim. He takes a few holo-pictures of them before Jetal protests that she is supposed to be flying the shuttle. The alien appears and attacks the three of them with an unknown weapon. The Doctor beams the alien off the shuttle and sets auto-navigation back to Voyager, and both Kim and Jetal go into synaptic shock.
In sickbay, The Doctor and Paris try to stabilize Kim and Jetal, whose spinal cords are both deteriorating. The Doctor decides to use a spinal shunt to isolate the patients' spinal cords from the brain stem until he can repair the cellular damage, but he doesn't have enough time to operate on both Kim and Jetal, and the procedure is too complicated to talk Paris through it. He chooses to operate on Kim. The procedure saves Kim, but Jetal dies.
Act Five
Later, after Jetal's funeral, The Doctor comes to the mess hall to get some medicinal herbs and synthetic antigens from Neelix. Neelix asks him which he wants first, and the Doctor begins ruminating obsessively about his decision to treat Kim before treating Jetal. Neelix calls a security team to the mess hall.
Janeway explains that after that, The Doctor developed a feedback loop between his ethical and cognitive subroutines and was having the same thoughts over and over. The only way to stop it was to erase his memories of Jetal and the events surrounding her death. The Doctor begins ruminating again, and Janeway deactivates him. Janeway wonders if her original solution to reprogram the Doctor was wrong.
Janeway visits Seven in cargo bay two and asks her whether the transformation she has gone through since being disconnected from the Collective was worth it. Seven says that if she could, she would not change what happened.
- "Captain's log, supplemental. Our Doctor is now our patient. It's been two weeks since I've ordered a round the clock vigil. A crew member has stayed with him at all times, offering a sounding board and a familiar presence while he struggles to understand his memories and thoughts. The chances of recovery? Uncertain."
On the holodeck, The Doctor tells Janeway that he couldn't have done anything differently because everything in the universe is pre-determined. Tuvok offers to relieve Janeway, who has been on the holodeck for sixteen hours, but she sends him back to the bridge. The Doctor asks Janeway about the book she is reading: La Vita Nuova. Janeway says that it is relevant to his situation. The Doctor scoffs at the title and ruminates some more before he notices that Janeway has fallen asleep. He wakes her up, and then realizes that she has a headache and a fever. He tells her to get some rest, and starts reading from La Vita Nuova: "In that book which is my memory, on the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, appear the words: Here begins a new life."
Memorable Quotes
"The primordial atom... burst. Sending out its radiation, setting everything in motion. One particle collides with another, gases expand, planets contract, and before you know it we've got starships and holodecks and chicken soup. In fact, you can't help but have starships and holodecks and chicken soup because it was all determined twenty billion years ago!"
- - The Doctor
"It is unsettling. You say that I am a human being and yet I am also Borg. Part of me not unlike your replicator. Not unlike the Doctor. Will you one day choose to abandon me as well?"
- - Seven of Nine
"Perhaps you should accompany me to Sickbay, Doctor."
"Et tu, Tuvok? You're conspiring against me, all of you. Why?"
- - Tuvok and The Doctor
Background Information
- Janeway repeats Admiral Kirk's line at Spock's funeral from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for Ensign Ahni Jetal's: "We come here today to pay final respects to our honored dead."
- In the special features for the Season 7 DVD box set, Robert Picardo mentions that this is his favorite Voyager episode, and the most important in The Doctor's character development.
- The episode is set 18 months after stardate 50979, which places Jetal's death chronologically between "Worst Case Scenario", and "Scorpion".
- The quotation that The Doctor reads at the end is purportedly a translation from Dante's La Vita Nuova, but it is actually a reworking of it. Possibly because the Voyager version is somewhat more touching as a stand-alone quote, various websites have erroneously attributed The Doctor’s version to Dante himself.
- In this episode, whenever the Doctor takes a picture, the flash effect is actually a mosaic of Ensign Jetal's face.
- Digital Muse was responsible for "building" Harry Kim from the bones up. For more information, see: Blood and Guts: Star Trek: Voyager Builds Character from the Bones Up.
- Several costumes and items from this episode were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay, including Nancy Bell's uniform. [1]
- In the flashback scenes Kes is strangely absent.
Video and DVD releases
- UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 5.6, catalogue number VHR 4796, 21 June 1999.
- As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection.
Links and references
Guest stars
Co-star
- Majel Barrett as the computer voice
Uncredited co-stars
References
77th Emperor's Cup; acetylcholine; annual physical; antigen; Big Bang; bioelectric field generator; birthday cake; birthday party; canape; cellular regenerator; chicken soup; choline compound; class 2 shuttle; coffee; cranial meninges; cyto-metabolism; Dante; deflector dish; dura mater; endocrine system; fever; funeral; headache; herb; holo-imager; hors d'oeurve; hydrogen; Kar-pek; La Vita Nuova; medical database; microlinear incision; neocortex; nervous system; neural membrane; neurosurgery; occipital plexus; photon torpedo; photonic energy; plasma relay; plasmic energy; probability; replicator; saki; sickbay; spinal cord; spinal shunt; subdermal scalpel; Sumo; synaptic shock; Takashi; triage
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Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 |
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