Donik: [paraphrase] I programmed them under direction from my Alpha.
B'Elanna: And that makes it right?
In a word, 'Yes'. Yes, it does B'Elanna. B'Elanna seems very mentally deficient in this episode.
And Janeway needs a serious asswooping for even contemplating the changes she suggested making to the holograms. We are several years beyond that closed minded B.S.
Who the hell designs these ships? Frickin imbiciles? Who thought it would be a good idea to allow a com system in the mess hall to be able to lock out the bridge? Some of the more protected and critical parts of the ship, maybe, but the mess hall? Really? Nobody thought that was a bad idea?
The inevitable "holograms become self-aware, sentient and now endanger Voyager episode". Speaking of recurring patterns: Shmullus is abducted once again. And once again Shmullus explores the possibility of picking the big carrot that is dangled before him.
Not sure if that's how holograms work though. The doctor and maybe Vic Fontaine should be an exception - strictly for the sake of entertainment. It's sci-FICTION. But to my liking this happens far too often in this show: let a holo program run for more than 24 hours (or like in this case tinker with the Holo technology) and boom: a new sentient being is created. In this episode, one of the holograms turns out to be a cruel megalomaniac (we had a murder hologram before). Hmmm .... Things are getting out of hand.
And when this happens the show virtually always tells the same story: the possibility of artificial life forms and their rights vs. the dangers to Voyager. At this point, this philosophical topic has become boring. And so is the whole episode. In season 2 or so that would have been a decent episode, but now it's too late. (Meeting the Hirogen "engineer", I even believe that the Hirogen could have been a formidable and interesting major foe for Voyager over the course of the whole show, but they never invested enough effort into this race and thus they'll always stay this stupid, one-dimensional hunting people). This back-to-back episode maybe still works as an action story but it's certainly not awesome. It's core could have been told in one episode.
PS: Will they ever stop to misuse their pilot as a nurse?
This returns to the question of whether holograms are actually sentient or just mimic sentience really well. Janeway obviously doesn’t think they’re sentient which is probably the right conclusion until a decision is made one way or the other to formally give them rights.
Shout by MamaSaucyVIP 5BlockedParent2022-04-17T02:57:30Z
Why do we keep seeing the doctor revisit this problem over and over. He always has a hunch and it’s wrong. At some point he has to learn his lesson :upside_down: