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I think in real life, some serious concerns would be raised about the Doctor here. He can shape-shift, take over the ship at will thanks to the ECH, has no problem shooting his comrades if he has to, and has no problem with sexual assault if he needs to (what? Imagine you were in Tom's position. I would be thinking that).

This REALLY seems like one of those ''Worf points out the obvious and then Picard ignores him only for the day to turn to shit'' sort of moments. If I was on that ship, I would be lobbying for safeguards put onto that shape-shifting function and for that ECH program to require some kind of command authorisation. It is too much power for any one man to have.

Not to mention the fact that it hasn't actually been that long since the Hirogen hologram wars, the Equinox EMH trying to take the ship, and that insane hologram that tried to kill Torres. Throw in Moriarty and you have a kind of trend here.

But this is Voyager, where the Reset Button is always pushed and lessons forgotten.

BTW, on a general note about shape-shifting, have you noticed how casually people in these universes always take this power? There is someone out there who can commit perfect identity fraud. They can literally kill you and replace you and everyone is fine with that. They can take nude photographs of you whenever they wish. They could commit any crime whatsoever and have you go down for it.

This is the same bullshit where everyone is fine with telepaths despite the horrific shit that they could get away with effortlessly.

In real life, Bestor from Babylon 5 and the PsiCorp would absolutely exist to monitor telepaths, and there would absolutely be an organisation or movement to police or stop shape-shifters.

Kind of also reminds me of the Mutant Registration Act in the first X-Men film and how I was clearly supposed to side with the mutants over Senator Kelly despite his very reasonable point that people who can walk through bank vaults and kill people with their mind is something that cannot go unchecked. And the amusing thing is that every X-Men film after that seemed to go out of its way to try and prove Senator Kelly right given the amount of carnage mutantkind would cause in literally every single film - starting with X2 where Nightcrawler got within a foot of killing the president.

clearspira wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:43 pm But this is Voyager, where the Reset Button is always pushed and lessons forgotten.

Well I mean part of the problem is that the series literally ends a two-parter after this one. Changing things radically at this point would be untenable.

I wouldn't say the Doctor has "no problem" with sexual assault- it was Tom that kissed him after all, and the Doctor found the whole thing awkward.

I would also compare this to that time that Data went rogue and took over the Enterprise with no effort- so, yeah, Data and the EMH are actually terrifying enemies, potentially. Realistically, though, organics in Star Trek (and lots of other sci-fi) probably wouldn't be running or crewing ships, it would mostly be automated with humans et al mostly being passengers. But that wouldn't be very accessible or interesting television, and would probably unnerve people about the direction the future will probably be taking.

Re X-Men, X2 shows that Xavier alone can kill everyone on the planet, and later films show that Magneto, Apocalypse and Jean Grey can probably all do the same. It's an even bigger issue in the comics, where all the major mutant disasters like Genosha, M-Day and the Six Second War were caused by powerful mutants. I've long ago reconciled myself to the fact that the whole idea of a mutant community might really be as much about strong mutants manipulating weaker ones (knowingly or not) into a false sense of camaraderie for themselves as anything else.

The problem with having a command authorization for the ECH is obvious. The times it would be most needed would be when the crew is incapacitated and thus unable to provide such an authorization.

Chuck's not alone with his thoughts about this being the penultimate episode. Even I recall watching it at the time and being confused why THIS was the episode before the finale instead of Homestead or something else building up to the finale. I didn't hate it, but it was just an odd decision for THIS to be what we had before the ending.

Linkara wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:33 pm Chuck's not alone with his thoughts about this being the penultimate episode. Even I recall watching it at the time and being confused why THIS was the episode before the finale instead of Homestead or something else building up to the finale. I didn't hate it, but it was just an odd decision for THIS to be what we had before the ending.

I just had a look through the season 7 episode list trying to find a more suitable episode than this one to be the penultimate and I think ''Shattered'' is a good contender. That's the one where the ship is split into different time periods and we get callbacks to the likes of Captain Proton and Seska. Sounds like a pretty neat love letter to those who stuck with the show for seven seasons.

Linkara wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:33 pm Chuck's not alone with his thoughts about this being the penultimate episode. Even I recall watching it at the time and being confused why THIS was the episode before the finale instead of Homestead or something else building up to the finale. I didn't hate it, but it was just an odd decision for THIS to be what we had before the ending.

I thought so, too. Especially right after Homestead where it felt like it was doing exactly that.

I have an issue with the, "Voyager can survive without a warp core, but needs a captain".

What Janeway should have said is, "WE'RE IN A NAVY! Chakotay would be the Captain. That is how command structure works. What kind of a stupid thing is it to sacrifice immeasurably important resources to save a single person?! IDIOT!"

Also, this gets to be my thousandth comment on the board. What a milestone.

The Doctor is programmed to be a doctor. Of course he's going to value Janeway's life over a warp core. That's his nature. His naivete in believing they would release her once they got the warp core is less forgivable.