Voy - Renaissance Man

[Madner Kami]

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.

The Doctor is literally 7 years old by the time of this episode...

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

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.

The Doctor is literally 7 years old by the time of this episode...

Yeah but he ages in dog years.

[clearspira]

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.

The Doctor is literally 7 years old by the time of this episode...

That is an odd thing to say given how he is also an extremely advanced AI.

[Robovski]

Like he wouldn't be familiar with the concepts of lying, betrayal, and capricious behavior.

Yeah, this isn't a bad Voyager, but yeah, shouldn't have been in this run slot. And that was something that totally could have been changed any time they wanted to before showing the episodes.

[Nealithi]

Like he wouldn't be familiar with the concepts of lying, betrayal, and capricious behavior.

Yeah, this isn't a bad Voyager, but yeah, shouldn't have been in this run slot. And that was something that totally could have been changed any time they wanted to before showing the episodes.

I think he was. Why go to the trouble of leaving a trail for Voyager to follow if he trusted Janeway's captors?
But it is also in his programming to do what he did. He must have known his actions were being monitored. So he can't tell any of the crew what he has to do. And he is programmed to save lives. So he values Janeway's life more than equipment. Following those parameters it all makes sense and is a workable plot. I do think Chuck is right however and maybe they could have swapped this episode and Homestead on release. Though there is an unfortunate implication to doing that. Neelix leaves, next episode we get home. If only we dumped the anchor sooner. . .

[Nealithi]

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.

I said my piece on the episode itself. But here you bring up personal power and the mutant issue in Marvel. What is the point of the Registration Act? So we have a list of who you are and what you can do.
So what? If the bank loses money out of the vault do they go check out the highschool student first because she can walk through walls? Or maybe check the bank manager who has the combination to the safe and keys to the security system?
Ability does not automatically equal desire. So to do anything you need to do something with this subset. Lock them up because they potentially could cause harm? Kill them, same motive?
Hey lets see them as weapons and train them for national defense while we distrust them. That has no chance of backfiring.

Do people with powers have the potential to cause great harm. Yes.
But you need a better answer than put their names on a list.

As to the Doctor and his shape changing. . . I have to work hard to come up with an excuse for not locking that down. Because it is a Huge security flaw that can and has been exploited. The best I can come up with is his ability to change form is tied to how he moves and interacts with objects. Thus locking his form is impossible and allow him to continue to function. Or more likely, beyond what the Voyager crew can do to lock that function out. Noting they could not recreate the Doctor when he was sent to the Alpha quadrant with a message. So occasional repairs but nothing too extensive?

[AllanO]

As to the Doctor and his shape changing. . . I have to work hard to come up with an excuse for not locking that down. Because it is a Huge security flaw that can and has been exploited. The best I can come up with is his ability to change form is tied to how he moves and interacts with objects. Thus locking his form is impossible and allow him to continue to function. Or more likely, beyond what the Voyager crew can do to lock that function out. Noting they could not recreate the Doctor when he was sent to the Alpha quadrant with a message. So occasional repairs but nothing too extensive?

I think this falls into the redundant problem that theoretically anyone can do it not just the doctor.

Anyone can use a holo-disguise not just the doctor, although good luck disguising yourself particularly convincingly as someone smaller than you (although as long as you could avoid showing your extra volume you could probably do something). If you are on the holodeck you can wear holodeck clothes and so indeed have the holodeck put a shell around you (need not even be a solid hologram if no one is touching you), so perfect disguise potential (if the computer can map on to well enough for you to wear clothes it can match the disguise etc.). Sick bay also has holo-emitters so someone could reprogram them to achieve the same trick, whole ships are holo-emitter equipped throughout in later years of voyager and the portable holo-emitter is likewise programmable, so in theory one could grab it and use it as a disguise device and so on. The doctor is slightly more flexible in that he has no limit to how small he can get in terms of his actual solid size.

This is like how technically any human could reprogram the ship to have the internal forcefields flick on and on if split second as needed to enhance their combat potential (along with phasers and the like). However most fights and opponents don't make full use of the potential of technologies we have seen and likewise with holodeck tech and so on.

Basically anything any technological marvel like the Doctor can do any person with access to ship systems or the portable emitter etc. should be able to do equally easily. However that will only happen if the plot requires it.

[Sir Will]

I really like this episode. I agree that they could have done more to lead up to the finale and at least Homestead would have made more sense in this spot. But still, I really liked it. The Doctor is great and all his scheming is fun. His reasoning of needing Janeway over the core is eye rolling but other than that.

[Enterprising]

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.

Voyager being Voyager though, the show actually contradicted itself as they used command codes to activate the ECH. Janeway has to give Omega 3 clearance in the Workforce 2-parter, to let The Doctor function as ECH.

As we know though, continuity was never a strong point of the show, especially on functional thinks like the above.

[Jonathan101]

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.

I said my piece on the episode itself. But here you bring up personal power and the mutant issue in Marvel. What is the point of the Registration Act? So we have a list of who you are and what you can do.
So what? If the bank loses money out of the vault do they go check out the highschool student first because she can walk through walls? Or maybe check the bank manager who has the combination to the safe and keys to the security system?
Ability does not automatically equal desire. So to do anything you need to do something with this subset. Lock them up because they potentially could cause harm? Kill them, same motive?
Hey lets see them as weapons and train them for national defense while we distrust them. That has no chance of backfiring.

Do people with powers have the potential to cause great harm. Yes.
But you need a better answer than put their names on a list.

That falls a bit flat when they do in fact cause great harm, which happens often, and in many cases (such as Rogue) the abilities are inherently harmful. They are as dangerous to other mutants as they are to humans- I think most people would want to know that there is a bald man out there who could easily kill everybody on Earth if he literally just put his mind to it, and the same man regularly invades the privacy of people across the planet.

Worse than that though, Xavier has his own list of mutants and what they can do drawn up without the consent of anyone. He can identify mutants who don't even know they are mutants. Senator Kelly is obviously a fearmongering, short-sighted politician, but the reality is that even Magneto and the X-Men already do what he is proposing the government does, and the already turn mutants into weapons (so does the US and Canadian governments, mind).

It's more of a problem in the third movie where the mutant cure is treated as a bad thing even though, yeah, many mutants are basically walking talking arsenals, and Magneto and Phoenix both cause MASSIVE amounts of damage and kill lots of people, human and mutant alike. Given how unpredictable mutant powers are and how much personality and moral character of most mutants is a life-or-death matter, it is not unreasonable at all.