VOY - Real Life (Torre's is sadistic) SPOILERS

[RobbyB1982]

The thing is Torres didn't just tweak the program to make it less Leave it to Beaver, she rewrote it into Game of Thrones. Where the changes were SO sudden and drastic that it was outright cruel and broken and nothing at all like what the Doctor signed up for.

Yeah, "fit it into a 40 minute tv episode" but shows can do montages over months of time. Torres COULD have programmed it so that the family was willing to complain and have arguments, or the wife was tired and didn't feel like making dinner and got cranky over it... and over time start making new and different decisions breaking out from that dynamic. Not just the complete instant180 that it had.

Or, the kids SLOWLY get new dangerous friends. Not just "And now they're all nasty and hate you." And definitely don't just murder the daughter like a day later, cripes.

It's kind of like when the characters are doing a Sherlock Holmes adventure and then suddenly there's dinosaurs. It's completely opposite what the initial intent was.

[CrypticMirror]

I don't think it was Torres' intention/programming to kill the EMH's daughter. I think that was a possibility during the game, and it just happened by chance.

Her death happened in a non interactive portion of the programme, while the Doctor could not be present, it was essentially a cutscene death. That was deliberate. The only way to prevent that story thread was the Doctor to not allow her to take part in the sport in the first place. Once he said yes, her death was inevitable by the programme. The other story fork to that thread was divorce and losing custody of the kids if he's continued to hold the hardline. It was 100% deliberate and cruel, with no "good" ending possible. It was either the daughter dies, or he loses the entire family to divorce. Torres is an asshole.

Reminder that they had a whole family meeting, and the Doctor 'okayed' her competing with people three years older than her.

...

The Doctor let his twelve year old daughter play a full contact sport, even noted by him as dangerous, against high schoolers. What did he think was going to happen?

Reminder. I covered that in my previous reply. Torres wrote a deliberately cruel story fork which allowed only for death of the child-character or the disintegration of the family.

[TGLS]

Reminder. I covered that in my previous reply. Torres wrote a deliberately cruel story fork which allowed only for death of the child-character or the disintegration of the family.

Well:

1) It's impossible to know the alternative because the game is fictional.

2) There is no fork. His daughter agreed with the Doctor to join the second team because it would be safer than the first team:

EMH: You're not old enough to realize how hazardous that game can be. It's up to me to keep you safe. I'm just trying to be a good father.
BELLE: If it'll help, Daddy, I'll be on the second team.
EMH: Thank you, Belle. That's very grown up of you.

Given the Doctor is an expert pediatrician, he obviously can make a risk calculation about how dangerous the second team is. So the only plausible situation here is that the Doctor knew how dangerous the second team was and decided to gamble so he could make changes in his wife and son's lives too, or the risk was acceptably non-dangerous and we're dealing with the fact that this is television and nobody tunes in for "Daughter wins Parrises Squares sectionals".

3) Torres's culpability is uncertain. Obviously, she introduced the changes to begin with, and may have introduced Parrises Squares specifically to irritate him. The problem of the holodeck is that the computer is designed to improvise. As far can be seen from within the story, there's as much evidence that the computer rolled percentiles and said "double zeroes, daughter dies." as there is evidence Torres said, "Then on day 8 kill off the daughter."

--

Anyway, what the hell kind of game is Parrises squares anyway? American football has crazy padded uniforms, and that game only has people banging into each other. PS has an incline high enough to break your neck on and mallets that can break your ribs. You'd think it'd be more than elbow pads.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Parrises_squares

[Thebestoftherest]

You know this is probably the most people talk about Voyager in years

[Nevix]

I don't think it was Torres' intention/programming to kill the EMH's daughter. I think that was a possibility during the game, and it just happened by chance.

Her death happened in a non interactive portion of the programme, while the Doctor could not be present, it was essentially a cutscene death. That was deliberate. The only way to prevent that story thread was the Doctor to not allow her to take part in the sport in the first place. Once he said yes, her death was inevitable by the programme. The other story fork to that thread was divorce and losing custody of the kids if he's continued to hold the hardline. It was 100% deliberate and cruel, with no "good" ending possible. It was either the daughter dies, or he loses the entire family to divorce. Torres is an asshole.

Was it an absolute? Is that actually said in the episode that Torres guaranteed one of those results?

It's definitely the WRITER'S intent, which is why some don't like this episode. But I'm not so sure about what Torres' intentions were, and if she guaranteed heartbreak for The Doctor.

[Thebestoftherest]

I think that they needed this episode to have consequences in other episodes as oppose to Nelix being in jealous for three episodes and not told to get over himself.

[DoctorWTF]

Anyway, what the hell kind of game is Parrises squares anyway? American football has crazy padded uniforms, and that game only has people banging into each other. PS has an incline high enough to break your neck on and mallets that can break your ribs. You'd think it'd be more than elbow pads.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Parrises_squares

In real life, kids are required to wear helmets for basically any sport where head injuries are a noticeable risk. There's absolutely no excuse for the Doctor's daughter not to have been wearing some form of protection against the injury what killed her.

For that matter, the Doctor's failure to fix his daughter's injury also pushes the boundaries of suspension of disbelief. Her injury couldn't have been that bad if she was fully conscious right before she died - we've regularly seen characters survive far worse. For her injury to be unsurvivable, either her brain should have been dribbling on to the floor or her last words should have been drool.

[PapaPalpatine]

Was never that big a fan of Torres, but after this episode she official joined Nelix in the Scrappy Pile as far as I'm concerned.