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Latent Image (episode)

  • View history
  • 1.2 Act One
  • 1.3 Act Two
  • 1.4 Act Three
  • 1.5 Act Four
  • 1.6 Act Five
  • 2 Log entries
  • 3 Memorable quotes
  • 4.1 Continuity and trivia
  • 4.2 Apocrypha
  • 4.3 Video and DVD releases
  • 5.1 Starring
  • 5.2 Also starring
  • 5.3 Guest stars
  • 5.4 Co-star
  • 5.5 Uncredited co-stars
  • 5.6 Stand-ins
  • 5.7 References
  • 5.8 External links

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 "prized pupil", won't talk to him either. Seven tells him to state his request, and The Doctor tells her about the surgery (which supposedly occurred before she joined the crew) 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 holo-scans, 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 from his short term memory buffer . 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 unknown 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 (not necessarily in that order).

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 Ahni 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 while they erect a force field around the main computer, and encrypt all the pathways that lead to The Doctor's program, and promises to keep him informed.

The Doctor returns to sickbay and prepares to deactivate himself, but then decides to take precautions. First, he has his memory files from the previous 48 hours copied and tells the computer that if his program is tampered with to reactivate him and restore the duplicate files. He then has the computer interface with his holo-imager, having it take images in five second intervals if anyone enters the room. With the trap set, The Doctor then deactivates himself.

Soon after deactivating, someone indeed enters sickbay and deletes all of The Doctor's recent memory files, not realizing the holo-imager is catching them in the act. Once their work is done, the person leaves the room.

The computer reactivates The Doctor and immediately restores the recently deleted memory files. The Doctor, knowing he can find out who's been tampering with his program, sets the holo-imager to display the culprit. Slowly, the image appears and the identity of the tamperer is discovered… Captain Janeway.

Act Three [ ]

On the bridge , Chakotay and Tuvok are arguing with Janeway about a Sumo match when The Doctor interrupts and accuses the crew 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 the doctor would disagree and muses that as a borg, she is also part machine, much like a replicator, and wonders if she might someday be treated in a similar fashion. Seven goes onto to describe how Janeway has been her "guide to Humanity", and then suggests she may have chosen the wrong person. Seven leaves Janeway's quarters, leaving Janeway with the realization what she has done to the doctor.

Janeway goes to sickbay and offers to show The Doctor what happened eighteen months ago. The Doctor agrees.

Act Four [ ]

Ahni Jetal, The Doctor, and Harry Kim pose

" …This is the last one. " " Say cheese! "

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. Both are equally critical, with equal chance of surviving with treatment, and dying without it. Paris tells him that he must choose one of them while remaining neutral himself, not indicating any personal preference of either officer, so as not to affect The Doctor's decision. The Doctor chooses to operate on Kim. The procedure saves Kim, but as expected while they are working on him, Jetal dies. Unable to look away while operating, a look of grief crosses The Doctor's face when he hears Jetal flatline.

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 due to being closer to the latter, which is not supposed to happen to a computer program. 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; his program unable to reconcile with his decision to treat Kim first. 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 admits that he chose to operate on Harry because he was his friend. As he becomes more frantic, Janeway deactivates him. Janeway wonders if her original solution to reprogram The Doctor was wrong. She tells B'Elanna that The Doctor 's original programming is in a struggle with the personality that has evolved in their time on Voyager . Do they have the right to override that struggle?

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, despite the pain and difficulties she went through to regain her individuality, she would not change what happened.

Janeway's log entry says that The Doctor has become their patient. They have reactivated him, and for two weeks crew members have kept a round the clock vigil, trying to help him cope with the decision he made. They are uncertain of the chances of recovery.

On the holodeck, Janeway is sitting vigil with The Doctor, reading a book as he stares blankly ahead. The Doctor begins talking. He tells Janeway that the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that he couldn't have done anything differently because everything in the universe is pre-determined. Tuvok arrives and 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 of poetry she is reading: La Vita Nuova . Janeway says that it is relevant to his situation. The Doctor scoffs at the title and ruminates on infinite possibilities before he notices that Janeway has fallen asleep. He wakes her up, and then realizes that she has a headache and a fever . They argue about how sick she is.

She says she can't go to sickbay, she's busy helping a friend. He tells her that he'll be fine, that she should go get some rest, and they can talk in the morning. The Doctor says that if he needs anything, he will call someone. Janeway leaves and he 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. "

Log entries [ ]

  • " 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. "

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Perhaps you should accompany me to sickbay, doctor. " "Et tu , Tuvok? You're conspiring against me, all of you. Why? "

" Why should I? What if I don't want to return to Sickbay? What if I decide not to return to Sickbay? No, I don't choose this. Leave me alone! Let me go! Why did she have to die?! Why did I kill her?! Why did I decide to kill her?! Why?! Somebody tell me why! "

" Are you having a little trouble regenerating? " " My alcove is functioning properly. I am having trouble with the nature of individuality. " " There's a time and a place for philosophical discussion. Two in the morning in my quarters isn't one of them "

" 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? I have always looked to you as my example, my guide to humanity. Perhaps I've been mistaken. Good night. "

" I'm having trouble with the nature of individuality. " " You require a philosophical discussion. " " There's a time and a place for it. This is one of them. "

" 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! " " There is a certain logic to your logic. "

" 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. "

Background information [ ]

  • The idea of an episode about The Doctor's holo-imager was conceived by intern Eileen Connors . This thought was added to by Brannon Braga , who came up with the concept of a "latent image" holding the key to something secretive in The Doctor's past. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, pp. 41 & 43)
  • While writing the episode's teleplay, Joe Menosky – who wanted the episode to have "some kind of dramatic resolution" – struggled with the scripting of the conclusion. Menosky recalled the original version: " Janeway is holding this vigil, and because of her exhaustion, she just drifts off to sleep. [The Doctor] has something dark and sad and also moving to say. He looks up and she's asleep. He gets up, picks up the book and he reads a little, end of story. " Extremely uncomfortable with this version of the final scene, Brannon Braga made changes to it. Menosky commented, " He just cut out a bunch of dialogue. He restructured certain things […] In the newer version, despite the fact that 90% of the dialogue is there, the structure of the scene was different. [Janeway] ends up leaving. " The used edit of the ending was not selected until later in the installment's evolution. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 43)
  • It was Joe Menosky who first informed Robert Picardo , the actor of The Doctor, about this episode. Picardo recalled, " He first told me about the script saying, 'I'm working on something where The Doctor basically discovers he has a soul.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'Well, The Doctor has to make a ' Sophie's Choice '. " ( VOY Season 7 DVD , "Voyager Time Capsule: The Doctor")
  • Robert Picardo was delighted with this episode, citing it as "perhaps my favorite show, dramatically" and expressing his reasons for liking it so much as "because it was so different […] and I love the writing in [it]." ( VOY Season 7 DVD , "Voyager Time Capsule: The Doctor") The actor additionally enthused, " I was proud of that show. I thought it was a great idea to have The Doctor's adaptive programming double-cross him, so to speak […] That he would relive [a strictly objective] moment of decision over and over again, and torture himself with the guilt of having saved one of two equally injured people because of a personal relationship, was a great concept for an episode. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 30) A particular scene that delighted Picardo was the one in which The Doctor changes from conversing with Neelix in the mess hall to questioning, aloud, his reasoning for "killing" Jetal. " I think it's as nice a dramatic moment as I've had on the show, " enthused Picardo. ( VOY Season 7 DVD , "Voyager Time Capsule: The Doctor") Another of his favorite scenes from the installment was the final version of its conclusion. " In trying to reconcile those feelings [of tragedy and guilt or doubt about choices], people create art, which is why I love the last scene. I think it had a very unusual ending for one of our episodes. The poem [that The Doctor reads, from the book La Vita Nuova ] says something like, 'Here begins a new life.' I think it worked on two different levels. The poem was suggesting how, having had this experience, the rest of The Doctor's 'life' would be changed. The other level is that, I think that you could say that it's his true, first-hand, emotional discovery of art. That poem, which was written a thousand years ago, could reach across a millennium and touch his own experience deeply and perfectly […] It was not wrapped up in a neat package by the end. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 30)
  • Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew was one of several cast members who, according to Joe Menosky, particularly liked his original version of the episode's ending. " Kate said, 'That scene was perfection, perfection,' " remembered Menosky. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 43)
  • The confusion over the episode's ending had an impact on the installment's production. " I walked down to the set, " Joe Menosky reflected, " and everybody was looking at me like somebody had just drowned my puppy. " It was at this point that Kate Mulgrew voiced her appreciation for the conclusion's first version. Menosky continued, " Everybody loved it but Brannon [Braga] […] They were all very supportive. A few hours later, the director and the actors called Brannon and said they really wanted to do the original scene as it was written. Brannon relented and said, 'Go ahead and shoot both versions of the scene.' " The shooting company then filmed Braga's version of the scene. When (at 1 or 2 a.m.) it came time to set up for Menosky's version of the scene, the actors and director instead opted not to film it. " They just said, 'Let's just hope it works. Let's go home,' " Menosky explained. " I didn't fault them for that. You can expect people to fight for you up and to a point. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 43)
  • 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 )
  • Joe Menosky's opinion of this episode was influenced by his disappointment at having the final scene be rewritten. He said of the original version, " [It] was one of the better scenes I have ever written […] I think [Brannon Braga] made it slightly less effective. " Concerning the fact that Braga's revision had Janeway ultimately leave the holodeck, Menosky remarked, " In my mind [it] is absolutely against the premise of the scene. " He concluded by saying of the episode, " I just will never be satisfied with it because of that process. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 43)
  • Robert Picardo noted that, as far as he was aware, the ambiguity he sensed in the episode's conclusion was not a major hurdle for most fans. " I was happy that the fans, the ones I have spoken to, seemed to accept the ambiguity, " he said, at about the end of the fifth season. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 30)
  • 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]

Continuity and trivia [ ]

  • In the episode teaser, whenever The Doctor takes a picture of the crew members, the diaphragm effect is actually a mosaic of Ensign Jetal's face.
  • The quotation that The Doctor reads at the end of this episode 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. ( citation needed • edit )
  • The episode is set eighteen months after stardate 50979, which places Jetal's death chronologically between " Worst Case Scenario " and " Scorpion ". However, all of The Doctor's memories show Janeway with the new, short haircut, despite the fact that she doesn't get this hairstyle until " Year of Hell ", nine episodes after "Worst Case Scenario". Paris' haircut is also not in keeping with the suggested timeframe and Kes doesn't appear in any of the memories, even though she was still on the ship and serving as The Doctor's assistant at the time, she was replaced by Paris to assist The Doctor during the treatment of Kim & failed treatment of Jetal.
  • Janeway repeats Admiral Kirk 's line at Spock 's funeral from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for Ensign Jetal's funeral: " We come here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. "

Apocrypha [ ]

  • In the Voyager relaunch novel The Eternal Tide , after Janeway is brought back to life – following her assimilation by the Borg and apparent death in battle with the Enterprise -E – The Doctor is the first member of the Voyager crew to meet her, referencing their conversation here to test her and be sure that she is Janeway rather than an impostor or fake of some sort.

Video and DVD releases [ ]

  • UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 5.6 , catalog number VHR 4796, 21 June 1999
  • As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

  • Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

  • Robert Beltran as Chakotay
  • Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
  • Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
  • Ethan Phillips as Neelix
  • Robert Picardo as The Doctor
  • Tim Russ as Tuvok
  • Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
  • Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Guest stars [ ]

  • Nancy Bell as Ahni Jetal
  • Scarlett Pomers as Naomi Wildman

Co-star [ ]

  • Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

  • Marvin De Baca as Patrick Gibson
  • Hostile Alien
  • Erin Price as Renlay Sharr
  • Shepard Ross as Murphy
  • John Tampoya as Kashimuro Nozawa
  • Stuart Wong as Voyager civilian
  • Unknown performers as Two security officers in mess hall

Stand-ins [ ]

  • Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan and Nancy Bell
  • Stuart Wong – stand-in for Garrett Wang and cover stand-in for Robert Beltran

References [ ]

77th Emperor's Cup ; acetylcholine ; annual physical ; antigen ; atom ; auto-navigation ; Big Bang ; bio-electric field generator ; birthday cake ; birthday party ; bowl ; canapé ; cellular regenerator ; chicken soup ; choline compound ; Class 2 shuttle ( unnamed ); coffee ; cognitive subroutine ; coin ; conspiracy ; cranial meninges ; cup ; cyto-metabolism ; Dante ; deep body scan ; deflector dish ; dozen ; dura mater ; Earth ; electronic pathway ; endocrine system ; ethical subroutine ; fever ; flattery ; friend ; funeral ; headache ; heart ; herb ; holobuffer ; holodeck ; holo-imager ; holo-scan ; hors d'œuvre ; house call ; Intruder alien vessel ; hydrogen ; Kar-pek ; knee ; La Vita Nuova ; logic ; medical database ; medical emergency ; medicinal plant ; EMH memory core ; microlinear incision ; microliter ; modified Voyager shuttle ; mutiny ; neocortex ; nervous system ; neural membrane ; neurosurgery ; occipital plexus ; paranoia ; personality subroutine ; photon torpedo ; photonic energy ; physical ; plasma conduit ; plasma relay ; plasmic energy ; playing card ; probability ; pupil ; referee ; replicator ; retrovirus ; sand ; sake ; short-term memory buffer ; shutterbug ; sickbay ; sickbay system ; soup ; spinal cord ; spinal shunt ; subatomic level ; subdermal scalpel ; Sumo ; synaptic failure ; synaptic shock ; Takashi ; temperature ; third person ; toast ; triage ; Wildman, Samantha

External links [ ]

  • "Latent Image" at StarTrek.com
  • " Latent Image " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
  • " Latent Image " at Wikipedia
  • 3 Hoshi Sato

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Star Trek: Voyager

“Latent Image”

3 stars.

Air date: 1/20/1999 Teleplay by Joe Menosky Story by Eileen Connors and Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky Directed by Mike Vejar

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"Our doctor is now our patient." — Janeway's Log

Review Text

Nutshell: Hmmm...

My feelings on "Latent Image" might best be summed up as above, with the elusive, all-purpose "hmmm..." The question is what kind of vocal inflection goes with that "hmmm." Is it (1) a "hmmm" that starts at a somewhat high pitch and comes down slightly in pitch in a sort of thoughtful, melodic way? Or is it (2) a more disturbed and skeptical "hmmm," which has a lower pitch than the first "hmmm" and sounds more like an annoyed whine—a "hmmm" that, in inflection but not in consonant structure, comes across much the same way as "ehhhh"?

Or something.

As "Latent Image" unfolded, this episode had me mentally tallying both types of "hmmms." Type 1 probably wins out, but not without plenty of Type 2 cropping up along the way.

It's an episode like this one that makes me wonder just who and what the Doctor really is. Is he really sentient, or does he just appear to be so? If his claims of self-awareness are simply programmed "personality subroutine" responses, does that change his status or entitled rights as an individual? Hmmm... (Type 1).

Do the writers know the answers to these questions? I had long thought the Doctor was considered sentient, but after this episode, I'm wondering whether that was the intention. And I'm also wondering if the writers simply changed their minds before writing this episode. Hmmm... (Type 2).

The mystery arises from some gaps in Doc's memory when he discovers that Ensign Kim had been treated with an emergency medical procedure that Doc had obviously performed yet cannot remember. With Seven's help, he uncovers some buried, incomplete memories that had at one point been erased. He goes to the captain to report the mystery, at which point we realize the plot is playing a few tricks on us. These tricks capture attention early on, although the plot comes off a little uneven as a result.

First is the quasi-mystery McGuffin (i.e., no one knows why Doc has these memory lapses), and then the story reveals a dose of paranoia (i.e., they know why—because they did it—but won't tell him) before settling into the "actual plot" (his memory had been erased because the events in question had caused him to malfunction). It's the nature of the "actual plot" where the story's real issues lie.

"Latent Image" has some evident frustrations, one being that it seems to come at a time much later in the series than it should have, and another being that it seems to contradict what we had previously known about the Doctor. The two objections are interrelated to some degree, but I'll focus on the latter objection, as we can find evidence to support it.

My central challenge to this story is this: Hasn't the Doctor already grown past the "pre-programmed" point in question? Isn't this a question that has been asked if not answered long ago, in one way or another? Doc has experienced a lot over the years, whether it was falling in love in " Lifesigns ," swapping jokes on cue and battling Romulans in " Message in a Bottle ," or moralizing social situations in " Living Witness ." You'd think the question of whether he can make choices that go beyond his original programming is something that has been answered affirmatively on many occasions. For that reason, I have my skeptical "hmmms" about whether this story is a daring stretch of past material or a total disregard of it.

BUT ... alleviating somewhat from this problem—which makes "Latent Image" overcome the inconsistencies that one would decide are problem areas—is the following argument: Suppose all of Doc's behavior in the past has managed to avoid the complexity of thought that the central crisis of "Latent Image" brings forward—the idea of sentient growth, of pondering the nature of existence, limitless choices, and an infinitely unpredictable number of possibilities. That's a "hmmm" (Type 1) that really kept my attention as "Latent Image" unfolded.

The central crisis is simple, yet not: A year and a half ago, an alien attack left two patients, both in mortal danger, both (we presume) of equal importance to the ship, with an equal chance of survival ... but there was only enough time for Doc to save one. Which patient did he choose? Harry Kim, a crewmate he is closer to, with a regular working relationship; or Ensign Jetal (Nancy Bell), a crewmate from below decks whom Doc had met once?

Time was short. Doc made a decision: Harry Kim. Jetal died. Later, Doc began trying to figure out why he made the choice that allowed her to die. A conflict arose between his independent thought process and his pre-programmed "first duty" of treating patients with total impartiality. The conflict grew and consumed him. To erase the problem, Janeway erased the memories of those events. Now, the problem has presented itself again.

The big question is, does erasing Doc's memories stagnate his ability to grow as an individual? Should he instead be allowed to work through the crisis and confusion? That's the whole point of the story, and with the cycle repeating itself, Janeway is forced to rethink her original decision.

On a plot level, the specific dilemma that brings the conflict to the surface is pretty contrived. For one, just where did this Ensign Jetal come from? It always amazes me that even though the Voyager crew has a finite number of members, the producers still manage to pluck people at random out of the sea of infinite actors looking for short-term work. Why can't Voyager have some semblance of a consistent guest cast? DS9 , which doesn't even have to be as self-sufficient as Voyager in terms of crew, has a dozen or more recurring characters outside the regular cast. Yet Voyager can barely muster Ensign Wildman once or twice a year. (But I'll stop now; I've been down this road many times before.)

The episode will also have us believe that Jetal has never been mentioned in conversation near Doc since her death, and that all records Doc might encounter pertaining to her presence have been either hidden or deleted. That's quite a stretch. I wonder how the captain pulled it off.

But never mind. I said there were some significant problems here, and there are. I also said this episode works, so let's get back to the reasons why. The way Doc's program goes haywire provides Picardo with a great chance to go slightly berserk, with a strong performance that teeters on the edge of distress and insanity. And it isn't merely a trick; it works on story terms, showing a character torn in a conflict that, because of his programming, becomes irreconcilable.

The fragmented thought process is carried into a final scene where Doc's confusion has him ranting in circles, pondering the nature of the formation of the universe 20 billion years ago, which leads him to conclude his decision was inevitable, as was the ultimate formation of "starships, holodecks, and chicken soup." I found the final scene interesting because it's unconventional and borderline-schizophrenic in a way that perfectly conveys Doc's confusion. A lot of people will likely find it weird, but I think I see exactly what Menosky was going for.

Another thing I really liked about this episode was the way it worked as an ensemble piece, even though the focus was generally on Doc. Just about everyone gets some good, well-motivated screen time, most notably Janeway and Seven of Nine, whose arguments on the nature of Doc's individuality supply the episode with many of its tantalizing questions about his rights and needs as an artificial intelligence, sentient or otherwise. (Alas, Chakotay is still getting severely shafted, receiving little screen time and no significant dialog. The writers have got to give this guy a voice, because he has become far and away the show's most underutilized and purposeless character this season.)

Perhaps my biggest dread concerning this episode is that the writers will simply ignore it later—which would be extremely wrong. Given the end of this episode, I would expect Doc has a long way to go in overcoming this challenge, and if we never see it again, I'm going to be angry. The Voyager writers have a knack for disregarding long-term character continuity, especially when it comes to the Doctor—and especially when it involves the Doctor in a situation that demands follow-up consequences. There have been far too many instances where a significant problem Doc has experienced has been simply thrown away. Most notable instances that come to mind are his loss of memory back in " The Swarm " and his life-building scenarios in " Real Life ." Both demanded follow-ups, and neither received them. "Latent Image" demands a follow-up even more, yet I have this fear that we'll never get it. As always, judgment will be reserved and temporary optimism maintained.

On the technical side, Mike Vejar's direction was effective. He has never been afraid to use slow-motion when appropriate, and here it brought a surreal edge to some of the flashback scenes.

On the other hand, Paul Baillargeon scored no points with me this week; the completely inappropriate music during the crucial surgery flashback nearly managed to sink the entire scene. He did a great job with the theme for DS9 's " The Siege of AR-558 ," but Baillargeon's tendency to underscore urgent scenes with seemingly random, serene notes (see also DS9 's " Valiant ") is inexplicable and detrimental. I've been a long-time critic of new- Trek music, and although I've mellowed in recent years, this score was ineffective enough for special mention.

Despite my qualms and fears with "Latent Image," however, I'm going with a marginal recommendation—mostly for the ideas and implications it creates, not always so much for how it goes about doing it. This is an episode that prompted me to ask questions about Doc, and in turn had me pondering the nature of our own existence and the sometimes-arbitrary choices we make. It's in many ways a fascinating thought piece. But with some script tweaking it could've been much more. "Hmmm" indeed.

Next week: Do you THINK you stand a CHANCE against the evil CHAOTICA, ruler of the UNIVERSE?

Previous episode: Counterpoint Next episode: Bride of Chaotica!

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Comment Section

166 comments on this post.

I have a conceptual problem with one of two things: Either I don't buy the Doc not being programmed with a "tie breaker" protocol, or I don't buy that with the complex mental triage system that they must have built into his program, that Kim and Jetel have the exact equal chance of survival. While the writers used the Doc "emotional" decision to attempt and analysis of the social dynamic of helping someone you're closer to over a stranger, I don't think he's the right character for this kind of analysis. A more interesting premise might have been having a random-choice algorhythm (50/50 chances) and have doc (or someone) pondering the implications of having the decision come down to pure chance. But maybe that wouldn't have that much impact either. I just don't believe the premise: If Doc's system is so precise as to calculate these two patients as having the exact same chance of survival and having no idea how to solve the decision, I would expect his programming to also be so precise that he would never ever waste treatment time by stopping to converse during any treatment (which if he's a computer program, he probably shouldn't do anyway, but I give that up to creative license). I also have a bit of a problem with Doc's program second-guessing his decision. To me it sounds like a computer calculating 1+1 and outputting "1", but then later going into a feedback loop in wonder of whether the user wanted the calculation in decimal or binary. If there was a logical conflict, a computer as powerful as Voyager's should have taken all of that into account (his ethical subroutine should have analyized his decision before he acted on it - not days after, and it shouldn't change its mind later on). But I guess the point of this epiosde is to portray Doc as more human than program, and I suppose that's how humans think. But I don't quite buy that even Doc's expanded program can avoid analyzing his decision in a moment before he makes it, and not after, and if that's the situation, perhaps he should be reprogrammed.

This was another example of "Artificial Intelligences are people too." TNG and Voyager did this repeatedly. TH is absolutely right. The Doctor/EMH was a computer program. That means he would have calculated all of the factors nearly instantaneously. This episode, along with Kes always defending the Doctor's rights and the Nothing Human episode, shows that the Voyager crew was incapable of telling the difference between a humanoid and a hologram. They are simply computer programs with holographic bodies. Seven of Nine's claim that Captain Janeway's initial decision to reprogram the Doctor was the same as denying Seven her rights sounded asinine to me. Finally, wouldn't it have been simpler to add a resolution of the conflict to the Doctor's programming? That way the Doctor wouldn't have had a problem with his decision. Of course that would have gone against the "Doctor is really a person" theme of the episode.

When yopu say that this episode should have come at an earlier time in the series, you might be missing the point that the original decision by Janeway came 18 months prior to the actual episode.. so maybe now Janeway's thoughts about his sencience has, to use Seven's word evolved.

By the way, I thought that the major problem with this episode is that it did not spell out two things : 1) The problem was that the Doctor was dealing with the consequences of an ethical decision with only 4-5 years of actual "life", and 2) The issue that the Doctor was dealing with was not his sentience, but his conscience. And yes I'm aware that I spelled sentience wrong in my last comment.

Man you people complain about EVERYTHING. The only problem I had with the "equal choice" thing was the fact that Ensign Kim was a bridge officer. Doesn't that count for anything? It's all spitting hairs though. Regardless of how airtight the setup was, it was a valid and interesting story, and well-executed. I agree with the 3-star rating, though it doesn't seem to match the endless criticism below it...

Bill T: You complain about us complaining and then state your own complaint about this episode. Just amazing.

This worked well enough, tho only if you went with the flow and relied on Robert Picardo to sell it. Clearly it was crass programming that an EMH - designed to be activated in an emergency! - would fail catastrophically when having to make an essentially arbitrary choice of life and death due to limited resources. Anyhoo, the came was up for this ep with "Renaissance Man" - why didn't the Doctor speed himself up or activate the back-up EMH. It's as if it works on first blush but when you think it thru you have discard the premises you've accepted to justify the artificial situation it relies on for its premise.

I had no problems with this episode, it's one of Voyager's best. The quibbling about programming and priority resolution, etc, wasn't an issue for me, because the characterization (Picardo) and the narrative was of such high calibre. Yes, it's a common Trek theme - AIs are people too, but it's the telling of the story that counts, and this was done very effectively. The scene in the mess hall when the Doc goes into meltdown, alone was worth the price of admission.

Damien's comment seems to be more about Robert Picardo than this episode. Picardo did an excellent job in this episode and Voyager in general. However, that only improves this episode from unwatchable to poor.

Yes, I praised Picardo's performance, and seeing how he was the focus of the episode, that in no small part contributes to the enjoyment of the episode as a whole. I think some people get too hung up on unimportant detail and fail to appreciate the bigger picture. For example, if I wanted to be pedantic, I could have taken issue when the Doctor spoke about the primordial atom bursting 20 billion years ago to create the universe. Well, the universe is actually about 13.7 billion years old and it wasn't an 'atom' that burst open. Those (and other) details weren't important to the overall enjoyment of the story and its telling, which was very well done.

@Damien "unimportant detail" are the "the bigger picture" "Well, the universe is actually about 13.7 billion years old and it wasn't an 'atom' that burst open." If i wanted to be pedantic : Voyager doesnt take place today.It takes place in the future,funny thing about the future is that history is older then it is today :S (i.e the age of the universe)

Stefan wrote: "This episode, along with Kes always defending the Doctor's rights and the Nothing Human episode, shows that the Voyager crew was incapable of telling the difference between a humanoid and a hologram. They are simply computer programs with holographic bodies." This is not true. The Doctor hologram is not a traditional computer program. It has been given the ability to 'go beyond the programming', basically rewrite parts of itself as it gains knowledge. That makes it indistinguishable from a humanoid intelligence, apart from actually having a lot of benefits such as perfect memory and a lack of an expiration date. As Data once said: "I *am* better than you."

Remco wrote: "It has been given the ability to 'go beyond the programming', basically rewrite parts of itself as it gains knowledge." That's makes the EMH an adaptive program, not human. Besides, it isn't going beyond its programming if the programming includes the ability to adapt.

Humans are also simply adaptive programs, so the only difference between humans and adaptive holograms is that humans are programmed in DNA and made of carbon, while holograms are programmed in C and made of photons. When we use our cerebral cortex, we're also not really going beyond our programming.

Scientists have built an android in Asia (this really happened). If they dismantle the android, would they have committed murder? Based on your preceding comments, I believe you would answer "yes" to that question. Am I mistaken?

I am assuming that the android is very primitive. I'd say it is some kind of scientific killing, like animal experiments. As long as it is necessary and humanely executed, that's generally accepted and not called 'murder'. Of course, animal experiments are controversial in their own right. A group like PETA does not approve of animal killings. I would consider a primitive artificial brain of the same class as animals, regardless of whether I approve of those kinds of killings or not. When the brain becomes more sophisticated, like humans, then it becomes generally unacceptable to dismantle it, yes. So only then it would be murder. I have a question for you: would you consider killing an extra-terrestrial life-form with humanoid (or above) intelligence murder? If yes: what if that life-form does not have a quaternary code such as our own DNA, but a binary code? What if its nerves are made of copper? What if its brain is made of silicon? What if its limbs are made of steel? If no: what if that life-form represents a civilization proposing an interstellar trade agreement? What if it told humanity that the repercussions for killing him would be interstellar war? Oh, another question: what would you do if an alien with an off-the-charts IQ proved that humans have not evolved from dancing amino acids, but have been artificially created 200,000 years ago by them, and made to look like monkeys? Would you grant him the right to kill humans for scientific purposes?

Those questions are far-fetched hypotheticals. I asked you about something that is fact. I do believe that as technology improves in this area, all societies will need to decide the status of AIs. I believe androids will either be considered nothing more than human looking machines or will not be widely made. People will not create a large number of androids if those androids are to be considered the legal and/or moral equivalent of humans.

You asked me about something that is fact, but your android is not of human-class intelligence. So that kind of intelligence is still hypothetical. We will eventually create something that equates or surpasses our own intelligence, but we will also at some point discover intelligent life, evolved here on Earth, or on a planet of Alpha Centauri. Those questions are relevant, whether they are hypothetical situations or not. As for artificial life: if they won't be regarded as equivalents of human beings, you'll have a hard time keeping them enslaved. A fully functional AI will develop a need for survival and a moral system. Just like humans they will think about what it means to exist and what they want to do with their life. The only way to keep them in check is to destroy what makes them a human-class AI: limit or reset their brain if they become troublesome. So either they will become real-life Cylons, breaking free and starting their own life, or they will be decimated at the first sign of trouble. I would protest against the latter. What I'd do: Forbid mass-production of human-class androids. Create two androids and try to integrate them in society. Then take 20 years to learn from their lives and consider all aspects of what it means to be an android. After that, use that knowledge to build more, if that is appropriate.

Funny you should mention "Living Witness", an episode that occurs 700 years after this one. So any development in his character that occurred in this episode could not have an impact on future episodes. Confusing? Reset-button-ish? Maybe, but that would be a fault of "Living Witness" more than a fault of "Latent Image." In my opinion, one of the best installments of the series, definitely deserved at least four stars.

The time frame here would have been when Kes was still aboard. This would have been a much better episode for her to guest star in rather than the abysmal Fury.

A.k.a. Red Dwarf's S2 "Thanks For The Memory", only not done as well. Good (if stolen) idea with real potential... poor execution, IMO (typical Voyager plot-holes and idiocy abounds).

Oh god... Forget continuity and all that. What I kept, increasingly exasperately and vocally, repeating during the entire episode is: He's a H-O-L-O-G-R-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-M!!!!!! I expect technology to advance quite a bit within the next four centuries but the notion of a computer-generated projection being self-aware, self-conscious and sentient is preposterous. Add to that a computer program grappling with an ethical dilemma over the course of several days, and the entire premise is beyond ludicrous. Computers will no doubt become increasingly human-like in terms of their interface and capabilities, but they'll remain just that: Computers. That hologram is no more human than the ship's plasma conduits, and - so far - we did not have counseling for them. While the episode's beginning was very engaging and provoked curiosity, pretty soon we ended up basically having a HOLOGRAM with a self-confidence crisis throwing a tantrum. Why couldn't they just knock up a virtual Dr. Phil, like they did with the temporary Cardassian sub-doctor a few episodes back? A total abortion of an episode; I'd give it one and a half maximum.

I agree with Michael. The EMH is a hologram. The only medical officer Voyager has. I like Picardo's performance. He's probably the most consistently good actor of the VOY ensemble. And he does stellar work here again. The scene where he breaks down in the mess hall is one of my favorite EMH moments. I just have problem with all of the EMH "trying to better myself" episodes. He is a computer program, made specifically to assist in emergency medical situation. In "The Swarm" it was shown how all of his recreational add ons were degrading his program. I agree with Janeway's decision 100%. The EMH is the only doctor they have (I don't buy it, but fine). As a program the moment he starts degrading, medically speaking the crew is in real trouble. Paris is a medic only, Kes is gone and they have no other medical staff. The EMH was breaking down and without it they would have no doctor. Yes, the EMH is a bit different because he does have personality and adaptive algorithms, etc. But in the end he is a medical tool, and the tool needed to be fixed. And to leave the EMH pondering the his fate at the end was a bad decision. The possibility exists for this to happen again. A well acted episode, but yet another example of VOY not taking the ship's unique and dangerous situation seriously.

A minor annoyance: I thought it was lame that the dead woman's name on her birthday cake was "Ensign Jetal." OK, she's a totally disposable character, never seen before and never seen again, but there's no reason not to give her a first name. And in fact she did have a first name, Ahni -- Janeway said it during her memorial service. It would be like John Smith's work colleagues' throwing him a birthday party and having "Mr. Smith" written on the cake. Otherwise, an enjoyable and affecting episode. I agree with many of the comments above, but that's why they call this science fiction -- sometimes it's more fiction than science.

Okay...this episode IS a followup to real life. What did Paris say? Doc would miss the whole point of having a family if he didn't deal with his daughter's death... Just because the flipping Grand Nagus keeps showing up does not constitute "development." And conversely, the fact that old plots aren't always revisited doesn't mean the points behind them aren't drawn together: Generally, the Doc's development as a character haven't been at odds with his duties as the CMO--the exception being "The Swarm," which this episode also follows up. So, the crew has had no reason to inhibit his acting sentient as they have no personal motivation to do so. Locking up Paris is one thing, but no one can come close to replacing the Doctor's duties and his dilemma is so easily solved by wiping the slate. Just because the early seasons' issues aren't tiresomely pushed to the surface (DS9) doesn't mean they've vanished. For the first time, the broader ramifications of the Doctor's development become clear, "We gave him a soul," says Janeway. This is a grave metaphysical issue and there's nothing out-of-place about it here. Not to mention, the Doctor stumbled upon it by accident 18 months after it occurred. Surely the crew had ceased worrying about it by then. My biggest beef is that Janeway's hair is wrong in the flashbacks :p

I complained about the massive complaining because most of the other complaints are unfair. I could take the best episode of Star Trek and drone on endlessly about minor details. The cake? Janeway's hair? Seriously? This is at least a 3-star episode. I'd now maybe push it up to 3 1/2. The story was engaging and plausible, the characters were in-character and believable. The topic was unusual and thought-provoking. Where else could we have this kind of morality tale? This is Star Trek at its best, when instead of focusing on "the battle of the week" and the shields being at 29 percent, it tells a real, human story that wouldn't be possible in our real, human world.

This episode should really have been two episodes. The first should have aired before Seven joined the crew, when the issue of the Doctor's nature was still vague. It would have focused on the 'flashback' portion, but told in real time. Dealing with the issues then and there. Then Janeway erases the memories causing her to feel guilt which can play into many episodes after because it's left unresolved. Then Seven joins the crew then the following season should be the Doctor discovering the past and confronting Janeway and all the drama that follows. But, alas, this is Voyager we're talking about.

"If i wanted to be pedantic : Voyager doesnt take place today.It takes place in the future,funny thing about the future is that history is older then it is today :S (i.e the age of the universe)" Hmmm. By about three hundred years. Remind me - what IS the result of the sum 13.7 billion + 300 Isn't that 13.7000003 billion years - or rounding to 6 significant figures - 13.7 billion? Sorry, but if someone's trying to out-pedant someone else, they should say something quite so silly as to suggest that an extra 300 years makes a significant difference to how old the universe is.

Paul: But I thought the universe was barely 6,000 years old! ;-)

Definitely a 'hmmm' episode. I liked the way it was built up, it was intriguing even though the mystery reminded me a lot of TNG's "Clues". Robert Picardo acts his socks off. It fell apart at the end for me though. I simply didn't buy the Doc's 'breakdown' over Jetal's death. He's been in far worse predicaments and been unaffected. As the key component of the plot, I just didn't quite buy it. I also agree that the way the other characters treat him - especially Janeway, who is coming across very unsympathetic this season - is an inexplicable regression. This story might have worked in the first or even second season but didn't quite fit at this point in the series. It kind of annoys me when the Voyager writers bend characterisation and what little progression there is in the narrative just to fit this week's plot. The episode started off so well - it all just fell apart a bit...

If they throw surprise birthday parties for everyone on the ship, then with a ship of 150 that amounts to about 3 of them a week. I think I'd get tired of attending them.

Also, if this is before Seven came on board, then Kes was still around. She had become quite a capable medic - pretty much surgeon - by then...she could have operated simultaneously with the Doctor. In fact, it was right towards the end of Kes's tenure on Voyager...she might have been able to perform the operation just by staring like she did when she dissolved that Borg implant in Seven's brain.

"Computer, give me four arms."

I'll grant that it would have been fun if there were continuity clues built in to other episodes; like if Jetal had been someone in VOY's real history, or if, as Jay said, Kes had appeared in the flashbacks. However, the philosophical core of this episode is absolutely rock solid. Built around that is an impeccable piece of character work regarding Doc. Framing that is a truly remarkable combination of acting, directing and scoring (Jammer didn't make note in his review of these latter two which, even among Voyager's usual good production, were standout here). That's how you build an episode of Star Trek, and that's why this episode is one of the best. 4 stars.

Re: the age of the universe. I think what the poster meant was that in 300 years, scientific advances would have given a new age for the universe.

Chris Harrison

To all those incredulous about the EMH having sentience: what do you think is so magical about skin and flesh?

I love that this episode has got so many comments! Anyway I'm a huge fan of this one- the mystery at the beginning, and the second half that deals with the Doctor's breakdown. I personally agree more with Janeway's 'he's a toaster' argument, but I think this episode certainly gave a good argument as to why he is not just a hologram anymore, and I'd definitely give it four stars.

Jammer: "I have my skeptical "hmmms" about whether this story is a daring stretch of past material or a total disregard of it." The answer is neither. It's perfectly consistent. I agree with Damien and Elliott on this one. People liken this episode to other episodes of Trek, like "Clues." Sure, but I daresay it's a lot better. Yet Jammer's review and many of the comments above heap a load of irrelevant, unfair criticism on this episode. From the mysterious teaser opening right down to the poignant literary reference at the end, "Latent Image" is indeed a 4 star episode that gets right to the heart of what Star Trek is all about. This is one of those episodes where the moral dilemma presented in the story, and the character development that results from it are SO compelling that it transcends its own plot contrivances, minor continuity gaffes, and any viewer's attempt at nitpicking. An exploration of the nature of guilt and our relationship with it is always a worthy subject. And yes, the Doctor IS sentient. Whether its synapses or subroutines, guilt is guilt. It is something that is at the root of the human condition and it can consume any person just like it nearly did the Doc. Also, Jammer's question about whether or not Doc's decision making was adequately explored prior to this episode is immaterial. The events over which his guilty conscience is torturing him took place before Seven came on board, when the nature of Doc's programming/personality was still very much in question. It was season 3 at the latest, possibly earlier. Jammer, based on some of your S5 ratings and forays into questionable nitpicking I'm wondering if your objectivity regarding Voyager had become more than a bit clouded by this point. It's like you're giving it 3 stars, but you feel have to rationalize why it deserves even that much, despite the worthy subject matter. And honestly, unless it's downright awful who really cares about the music? The music in the flashback scene you mention wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't awful, or even inappropriate. Then there's the fact that you knew that there would never be a followup, yet you don't provide a reason why it needed one, except to say that it really, really did. It didn't. The ending was meant to be ambiguous and yet convey to the viewer that the issue of Doc's guilt was settled for the most part. At least to the point where it was understood he'd be OK, but he'd be probably be carrying this emotional baggage around for the rest of his life. Just like a human would. If that's not enough, then hey, just use your imagination. On the same token, if this review is partially the result of prejudice against VOY, it's certainly understandable. VOY had been at best mediocre and at worst terrible through most of the first 4 seasons. However, at this point in the game they were on THE BEST run of quality shows they had ever aired. And the hits will keep on coming. VOY S5 is right up there with TNG S3 and DS9 S4, imo.

@Michael, once again your comments illustrate that Star Trek in any of its forms really isn't your thing. If exploring the human condition doesn't hold your interest, try watching Transformers or Clone Wars instead.

In the late-90s, 20 billion was the accepted figure for the age of the universe, which is why that figure is used by the Doctor. It was only several years after this episode was produced that scientists brought down their estimate to 13.7 billion. I can understand them not bringing back Kes just for one surgery scene where she wasn't really needed, but they could at least have changed Janeway's hair and Tuvok's rank to match the time frame. It also would have been nice for the dead crewwoman to be someone we'd seen before. Finally, I agree it would also have been nice to see some follow-up, but that is a fault of the series, not the episode. I think DS9's "Hard Time" had a more pressing need for follow-up than this one.

This episode starts out fantastically. Then, I found it just petered out and the ending was such a letdown. I mean, after a neat mystery plot, the resolution is to let him rant until he figures it out on his own? Let's sit in the bare holodeck for hours? I really dislike this episode now. I agree with another poster how Kes should have been mentioned and Janeway's hair and Tuvok's rank altered to reflect the time period. It's like they didn't even try. And Ensign Jetal comes out of nowhere even though she was so liked that the crew, including the senior staff, throw her a birthday party. I think what drives me crazy is how this decision that the doctor can't come to terms with is so weak. He's dealt with way worse. Two patients will never be the same and have the exact diagnosis and prognosis. The Doctor goes on and on about the decisions in life yet he's been programmed to make decisions and we've seen him do it before. Every time I see this episode, I say, "Kim is a frickin bridge officer! He's part of the senior staff!" Kim takes priority if both patients are the 'same'.

Eighteen months before this show, Kim's life really was in jeopardy... in "Scorpion part 2." The tiebreaker was, of course, People magazine. And that's why Doc was ashamed. I can easily believe that Menosky would spice up an Asimovian robopsychology tale with backstage metahumor.

Cail Corishev

Very little about the EMH makes sense. Since sickbay is apparently a specialized holodeck, it should be able to produce multiple doctors and nurses. If you say it was only provided with enough memory to hold one doctor for emergency purposes, they should move sickbay to one of the holodecks. Failing that, Doc could at least copy himself into the mobile emitter and have two versions of himself going at once. And he could certain do functions faster than he can tell a human what to do. (But once you go down that road, you start to realize that the ship itself could navigate, fly, and diagnose itself better and faster than the crew possibly can, so they should all be in the holodecks partying except for the occasional need for an engineer to plug something in.) Having said all that, I enjoyed the show. Picardo does a great job of making the doctor human. I think instead of having him get "stuck" on the issue of a 50/50 decision, he should have just been affected by being unable to save someone close to him. Normally it wouldn't bother him, but because he's been "expanding his programming," especially by having a family, he's now affected by death and isn't equipped to handle it. I didn't have a problem with Janeway's solution, though I didn't think it needed to have anything to do with Doc's "rights as an individual." If a human crew member had a mental breakdown because of some trauma and couldn't seem to get over it, and they determined that they could excise that one memory and make the person healthy again, wouldn't they do it? And mightn't it be the kindest thing?

Youre forgetting one thing.... What does God need with a starship?

Two things: 1) I'm surprised no one has mentioned the great job they did to get one to actually care about Ensign Never Seen Before. I guess it was a combo of the actress being so cute and charming and the job make-up did of really effing her and Kim up, as opposed to the usual char mark on the chest. 2)Man I miss Star Trek. Even kinda crappy Voyager. The new movies are fine for what they are, but it's a dead-end. I feel no emotional connection to those people. I was more moved by Winona Ryder biting it then I ever would be by any of the regulars.

But dale, we have Trek... Unauthorized, but Trek: Cawley's (I love that man!), Russ', Caves', Broughton's, Cook's et.c. Cawley's New Voyages (or Phase II) episode "World Enough and Time" (with Takei, Majel's voice and beautiful Christina Moses) was Hugo and Nebula Nominee (just like '09). And - last but not least - "Into Darkness" premiere is planned for next year's May.

It seems like in military/command terms, Kim would have been the correct patient to save. This is how the real world military works, and most likely it would have been a very simple decision. But the EMH was a pretty new invention, right? And it wasn't meant to run all the time. It's quite possible the logic to choose between patients based on military value either wasn't yet in the Doctor's programming, or it was flawed. Even if it worked perfectly and he chose to save Kim for the correct technical reasons, his new personality subroutines and relationship with Kim may have made him suspect his judgment. Definitely though the episode should have occurred far earlier in the series. Janeway's replicator comparison seemed absolutely ancient. Despite the issues though it was worth it for a great episode.

I really don't get why so many people don't accept Doctor as human. If we are willing to accept Data as human, why not Doctor? Much like with Moriarty, it doesn't matter how it happened, the point is that it happened. He is a person.

I agree, Mad. Janeway is an artificial life form racist, as are many of the people who have commented here. If DNA can create sentience, why not any other program?

@Adara: Wow, "racist." I guess the term means nothing anymore when it gets bandied about like this. DNA *CAN* create sentience, but does it? The watermelon has DNA; does that make it sentient!? Fact is, the Doctor (who, alongside Tuvok, is by far my most favorite character) is acting and indeed *existing* pursuant to the subroutines programmed into him and not by virtue of -- for want of a better word -- a soul. Does he have self-awareness and, if so, did it evolve or was it programmed? The E.M.H. is a very advanced computer. What makes resetting his program any different from reinstalling Windows on our workstations? The fact that Windows doesn't (yet) come with a self-awareness .dll? Now THAT is a racist proposition!

So no one had a problem with the last scene where they're sitting in an empty hollodeck with eons of space between them? Why wouldn't they have replicated a living room or other cozy locale. Have the Captain sit near by maybe even call up his hollodeck family to provide him some comfort. It was almost as if they decided to ditch the ending and came up with this part on the fly. I also hated the "he's like a toaster" analogy that Janeway uses. I thought it was cruel and not indicative of how she interacts with the Dr. Kinda like her feelings stepped back a couple of years or something. Like they used an old script they'd previously put on the discard pile? I wasn't much of a fan of this episode but with all of the comments I'll have to watch it again. Hmmmm.

The episode was good for what it was, another "what is humanity/individuality,"(TM) episode. But frankly NOTHING is ever exactly equal in real life... A real, if rather cold-blooded solution, to the dilemna would be which officer is more useful to the crew? A trained bridge officer like Harry Kim or whatever the other officer did?

This episode had me emotionally engaged from the get-go. The Doctor is one of my favorite characters in the entire Star Trek canon. I was invested in his memory restoration. The mystery intrigued me. When Janeway compared him to a replicator, it angered me, as did the crew's treatment of him with the exception of Seven. I was relieved when Janeway changed her mind. The ability for an episode to move me like that is how I gauge it. I can't argue with many of the plot holes pointed out in the comments (although a few are suspect). Like Justin, however, I believe this episode transcends them. I typically notice such things as well, but this episode had me so engaged they didn't occur to me until I came here. Even the one moment that I thought dragged a bit - the Doctor sitting in a barren holodeck with a bored/sleeping Janeway - was redeemed by the beautiful moment when the Doctor picks up the book to help him understand himself better. As a professor of literature who sometimes has to deal with students majoring in science, math, etc. complaining about such literature courses having no "practical" value, I see in that moment an expression of why i feel they do indeed, and why I chose my career. Picardo is brilliant, and while this episode isn't perfect, I find it to be evocative at a very deep level. As such, I applaud it regardless of its relatively minor flaws. An excellent episode.

I want to address a comment made earlier by Cail Corishev that I doubt he'll ever see, but I feel compelled to say something. To justify the deletion of the doctor's memory, he argues it would be the "kindest" thing to "excise" the memory of a human crew member who'd had a "mental breakdown." We'll, that's something that's been tried before. In the past, mentally ill people were often lobotomized against their will to "cure" them. Their argument was exactly the same a yours: it was "kinder" to have them rendered incapable of higher cognition, since their thoughts were so disturbing to them. Now medical professionals see how terribly misguided that was. I personally can think of few things more horrifying than someone "excising" bits of your brain to "cure" you of mental illness. One is made better by dealing with trauma, not by operations. Your casual promotion of this outdated philosophy frankly appalls me.

I get what the story's supposed to be about, but I still think that Janeway may have done the right thing for the wrong reason. Forget rights for a moment, and remember we've seen dilemmas like this KILL AIs before. Remember Rayna Kapec from Requiem for Methuselah? Or any of the other AIs from TOS that Kirk paradoxed to death. Maybe The Doctor would come out of this all right, and maybe it would've destroyed him. They had no way of knowing. Is it worth letting him die just to "prove" that he's "human?"

This is an ambitious but bad episode; everything about it is contrived. The Doctor's "going crazy" is overwritten and overplayed to a ridiculous and campy extreme, and is unrealistic. The plot specifics - the ensign we've never seen before and the evil alien of the week - are also highly contrived. Moreover, the Doctor could have easily treated both patients at once. There's no reason he must be restricted to humanoid form - he could easily have lengthened his arms, pointed one eye in each direction and treated both Kim and Ensign Redshirt at the same time. After all, we saw that the treatment involved little more than holding a device to the patient's head - so the dialogue about the procedure being too complex for Paris to perform also rings hollow. The ending, with the doctor rambling on and on in the holodeck while the ship's captain "monitors" him (for 16+ hours on end, no less) is terrible. Seven is superb as usual and her dialogue is brilliantly written and delivered.

I don't get it. Why does everybody keep getting worked up about unimportant details, such as the plausibility of The Doctor being a sentient being? Can't you just enjoy the show for what it is? People have to learn to suspend disbelief when watching a freaking TV show, for god's sakes. Stop complaining already. This episode is clearly one of Voyager's absolute best character pieces. Easy 4 stars from me.

It makes me sad that so many people do not appreciate this episode fully. As Bill said, it's episodes like this one where Star Trek shines the most. If you can't enjoy this one, then why do you watch VOY at all? It can't be for "The Killing Game", after all.

Man, Janeway's comparison of the Doctor to a food replicator made me cringe. I thought we got past that after the first season. A fine example of the inconsistent writing that we've all talked about. Despite this, I found it a good episode the first time I saw it. Unfortunately it doesn't stand up that well to repeated viewings. Also, regarding Harry Kim's reaction...he could have been playing dumb but perhaps he really didn't remember the surgery? Maybe they never told him? It is indeed a bit of a loose thread.

This episode covered a lot of ground in a remarkably short amount of time. Several observations: - Seven is once again used to defend the rights of individuality, this time of the doctor, to the protestations of the rest of the 'human' crew. - While captain and crew clearly care for the doctor's well-being, they display a distinct prejudice against the notion a computer program can be sentient...at least by their initial hasty decision to lobotomize the Doctor, rather than working out the 'bugs' in his programing in a more elegant fashion. - the Doctor must fight for his right to live with the consequences of his choices, the knowledge of his failure...not unlike the legal battle Data fought to be recognized as an individual in 'The Measure of a Man'. In fact, the fight for survival of the Doctor's 'essence' is much like the replicants fight in Bladerunner. - the Doctor reacts realistically much like a computer program that has two competing bits of data that must be resolved. He freezes, just like a computer would, and his program goes into an infinite loop, forcing a shut-down and restart. --for once a Voyager episode relies on some actual Sci-fi, and not magic or fantasy! Bravo! - the ending was innovative, showing the crew coming to terms with their initial mistake to 'erase the pain' of the doctor (echoes of star trek V there!), and shoes them devoting their time to listen to his existential angst in the hope he eventually reaches a catharsis---thereby adding that little extra bit of complexity to his program and becoming a better doctor, a better sentient life-form for it. A very good episode in the fine tradition of ST:TNG.

I'd really like all these "he's just a computer program!" people to define what they think sentience is. The dictionary defines is as such: "responsive to or conscious of sense impressions". Then the doctor is definitely sentient. And if it's "to be aware of one's self", then the doctor is also perfectly sentient. The fact is, most humans don't like to be reminded they're just animals, and like animals they're "programmed" by their genes. A human will never do something that their genes don't allow them to do. Never. Just like the doctor cannot do something his programming doesn't allow him to do. What is the difference, except that we know how to modulate technology better than we know how to modulate our genes?

4 stars; brilliant episode. Picardo ranks this as his favourite incidentally.

Amazingly good episode, terrific questions being raised. Very solid acting and pretty strong dialogues. Picardo is fantastic and the speech Seven gave to the captain is one of the best I've seen in any Trek show. Sure, it is outrageous that the captain was willing to erase Doc’s memory without him even having the chance of (re)knowing why. Actually, to even consider imposing that to someone who is already taken as a person, is morally absurd. So, in this case, also out of character. Let’s face it: it does not matter how important the Doc is for Voyager because he is the only doctor around. Either he is considered a living being (although non-biological and therefore different just as Data) and should have more rights than a replicator. Or he is as a machine as a replicator and they should stop letting him grow as an individual and develop “a soul”. Within Trek’s moral standard, it cannot be something that varies according to the crew's necessities, like some people here seem to think. It means, it cannot be a matter of mere pragmatic choice. As well as it cannot be a matter of "enough-philosophy-authoritarian-is-in-his-best-interest" decisions. In fact, the captain once again shows how much she is capable of making wrong, bad decisions. In the beginning it was looking like the episode would be just one more case Voyager bringing good episodes, very good main plots, built over an irritatingly bad initial plot device. However, all of that came full circle in the end, since it was nice to see that at least in this episode the captain was able to address and recognize that she may have done a moral mistake. That was a marvelous touch! Very moving and actually ended making the episode even better. How moving it was to see her taking care of the Doc, her talking with Seven, he assuming to the Doc that she was biased by his nature. What a contradictory (in a good way) episode. What a deep questioning both on Doc's hand and on the captain's hands. What a mature ending. Certainly 4 stars, a score of 10 out of 10. Easily easily. One of the bet episodes the how Trek.

Comparing the Doctor to a replicator seems to contradict the previous seasons, as they have treated the Doctor as if he is a person; their actions over the course of the series make no sense if they thought he was "just" a machine. Yes, the Doctor is running on a computer, what about it? If you think that means he's no more a person than a toaster is, then you reject AI, and you have to throw a whole lot of Star Trek out the window to so so. There's nothing wrong with thinking that strong AI is impossible, but that just isn't the way it works in the Star Trek universe. Both Data and the Doctor run on a computer, what their bodies are made of isn't important. Just because the doctor is a person with a mind, doesn't mean that anything that runs on a computer is a person with a mind. This is one of my favorite episodes. The Doctor wasn't intended to be used over the long term. "Coin flip" decisions wouldn't have been a problem for an EMH that was being used as intended, that is, only for short periods. The key part of this episode is when the Doctor raves about having chosen to save Kim because Kim was his friend. That's an ethical situation which could drive a flesh-and-blood doctor crazy. If the EMH had been used as intended, he wouldn't have any friends, and thus there wouldn't have been the distress over choosing his friend.

The Professor

Jammer. This episode deserved higher than three stars.

My 2 cents about "how" the dilemma happened. Those criticizing that the Doctor should have been programmed with tie breaking software/etc... how do you know he wasn't. Perhaps he was designed to toss a mental coin in those cases and instead made a decision to not do so. That explains quite a lot about what happened and is how I choose to see it. I doubt very much a freshly activated EMH would have any issue resolving this, if a computer program can't pick between A and B because they have equal priority a good programmer would have just let the EMH toss a coin. But OUR EMH doesn't handle problems in that fashion anymore because he's grown. And that's why he started freaking out. Because he made a decision and somebody died. It's easy when you're programming made the decision to sleep at night, but when you decided? Because he was your friend? I'm not saying there aren't issues, but the concept holds up to me.

Wow, watched this again after having watched it a few months ago. Still 4 stars Jammer! 4 stars! If any Voyager deserves your love, it's this one. Counterpoint, which precedes it, is a wonderful episode as well.

You know, looking at the Voyager reviews on here and the comments to those reviews it is apparent that you people just *dont* *like* *Voyager*. There are a lot of people on here who right out think the show took an entirely wrong direction and therefore is supposedly not as interesting or deep or sophisticated as TNG or DS9. If that is your sentiment, then I am not surprised that every review on here is just anther way for you people to bash Voyager altogether and show how, based on each episode, this is just a crappy show in your opinions. Knowing this about you, does not make reading the reviews interesting as these are no longer reviews by basically a summary of why it is apparent, once more, what terrible show Voyager is.

@Ellen - agree with your comment. I miss the old style of having a show you didn't have to watch every week, and not miss a thing. These episodic shows are too easy to disengage from. @Jammer - The end of this episode is over long and pointless. The doc, over and over, talking the same. It would be better if they programmed him to believe that she lived by jumping through a wormhole, then became a borg.

HolographicAndrew

Love this episode. Something I was wondering... couldn't the EMH just split itself into two simultaneously running versions of itself? I'm sure there's a technical reason why it can't, but it'd be a handy feature.

I liked the episode because (1) it tackles an interesting dilemma for the Doc and (2) it raises how pre conceived notions influence decision making. I agree that statistically speaking, it is unlikely that Harry and Jetal had the exact same probability of surviving. They received the same injury but they are different people and I am sure one had a better chance mathematically. However, it probably wasn't significantly different to warrant Doc's choosing Harry over Jetal (in Doc's mind). A human doctor may have had the same dilemma of choosing a friend over an acquaintance but they would have been allowed to work through the problem. Whether the doc is sentient or not is not the issue for me. On numerous occasions Janeway has said that everyone on board is an important member of the crew and that comes with certain rights and expectations. But she has shown that this isn't really true. Biological crew members are afforded more liberties. Comparing the doc to a toaster or replicator doesn't make sense after calling him a valued member of the crew for 3-4 years. Janeway's tendencies for bias go back to Season 1 Parallax when she basically placed Chakotay as her first officer because she needed the Maquis but would have relegated all of them to secondary status if Chakotay hadn't called her on it. She did this after stating that they were all one crew that needed to work together. Even after saying that, she had no intention of treating everyone the same. This is a similar situation with the doctor. Janeway would never try an unauthorized procedure on a biological crew member. Even Suder, the sociopath, got better treatment. I'm sure there is a way to surgically remove or alter the part of the brain responsible for violent impulses in the 24th century. However, this wasn't even considered and Suder posed a safety risk to other crew members. After all, he bludgeoned a man to death just for looking at him the wrong way. I know he was confined to quarters but he seemed smart enough to break out if he really wanted to. I understand that the doc is the only medical officer and needs to be functioning, however, Janeway didn't even explain this viewpoint to him. She just altered him without his knowledge. So, in my view, Janeway either needs to stop pretending she thinks of the doc as legitimate crew or she needs to walk the walk.

So, where was Kes? If this happened before Seven joined the crew then that means this was during the time when Kes was the nurse. Yet we see Tom running around as Doc's assistant. Chronologically incorrect. Whether she would have been able to perform the procedure or not, she should haven been there.

With all due respect to the Doc, he cannot age and die (in the traditional sense) like the rest of the crew.

Sandwichbar

Very nice Episode. The only thing I didn't like was that it was so obvious who was in on the conspiracy.there really was no shock when I saw janeway leaning over the console. Ah well. People go out of their way to bash voyager.

You can always tell the best episodes, as they seem to generate the most commentary on this review site. 74 as of this writing, and I think all of the bantering, debating, and questions being posed are just more proof at how good this episode is... I'd give it 3.5 stars, as I really didn't care about some of the plot contrivances. This story is about the human condition, which is classic Trek, as Janeway realizes that the Doc IS sentient, and therefore needs to learn how to deal with the consequences of the decision that he made... Loved it, great stuff! And Picardo was absolutely brilliant!

I've been struggling through Voyager having not watched it in years, Latent Image was the first episode of season 5 that grabbed my attention, very touching and true for those of us unfortunate enough to battle with not having saved a life.

towering performance from the doc.

Science fiction tends to be at its best when dealing with real-world issues via metaphor. In this case, PTSD caused by guilt. Picardo sells being a sufferer of PTSD wonderfully. That the story has certain scientific problems is trivial to me.

We know that this will not be the last episode to delve into the humanity of the doctor (S7's Author, Author closed the books on that). The program was designed to adapt and to expand. I found myself caught in the middle of the comments. I can see how if it is adaptable how it eventually would develop this feedback loop. Whereas humans can be contradictory by nature and can change minds in a heartbeat it only stands to reason the program would adapt to a degree that it would behave in the same fashion. On the other hand, that level of adaptation would not serve the crew's interests and perhaps some tweaking of it would be necessary to where it would not need to adapt to where it would cause a conflict as to "I'll choose my favorite to save first." Certainly not to where it would become self destructive behavior. Of course, this all hinges on whether or not one sees the doctor as sentient. And this argument goes back to TNG's The Measure of a Man. Even though Data was an android he was nonetheless man-made and also designed to adapt to the human condition. It stands to reason those same parameters would be applied to the doctor, who clearly had grown from what he was in Season 1. (Note however in S6's Life Line Dr. Zimmerman said he never overcame the inherent flaws of the Mark I. He remained arrogant, egotistical and a bit of a jerk. All the way thru the series.) Watching S7's Author, Author the phrase "I think, therefore I am" kept coming to mind. He can (and did) fight for his right to publish under his own free will. He could only do that thru experience. He grew into that experience. Not much different from a child growing up to become a man (or woman). They are man-made too. Experience is the best teacher. And in some ways the benchmark of maturity. And hopefully they become a pillar of the community rather than a blight on it. This is the reason I am caught in the middle. Because I clearly see both sides. It's easy to say "well we programmed him we'll make him into a whistling teapot if we want to, or just decompile it and start all over." Especially if it becomes a potential threat to others. Think also that supercomputer from the Terminator series known as Skynet. There always was (and maybe still is) a deep rooted fear they may develop self awareness and decide in the blink of an eye what's best for humanity. And that choice may be extinction. On the other hand it wouldn't really learn from its mistakes if we stop to reset the clock if you will every time his program did something the crew didn't like. Adaptation is what it was programmed to do. It can only do that thru experiencing and subsequently dealing with conflicts. In that instance think the supercomputer in "War Games". It realized in the end after x amount of Tic Tac Toe attempts the only winning move was not to play. A solid 3 stars just for the introspective mode this puts me into. 74 reviews deep confirms it really stirred emotions in others as well. Easier to do with episodes like this than "False Prophets" :)

Middle of the road. Fine for Janeway to have initially made and stand by her decision (even though Doctor arguing with Neelix and resisting security officers is actually far from his program almost self-destructing) but it's too much to shortly thereafter have her call him a friend.

Y'know, if Janeway had just deleted the Doc's memory of that day, then told him that it was due to the alien's beam-o ray, and then said Ensign Plotpoint was already dead. If that had happened, the plot would never have happened. And, of course, it's rather silly that Paris was the medic instead of Kes, but that was just a necessary error since Seven was out of the loop. All things considered, though, I am willing to suspend my disbelief at these issues, since, quite honestly, I think this is the best Voyager episode so far. All too often, Trek writers don't really treat aliens as aliens, they're humans with a funny hat on, whether it be logic, honor, etc. Same with AI. It's just a human with funny tendencies like not using contractions. What this episode does is actually explore the issue of what a sentient AI would be, and how that AI could deal with its own coding. I was upset at how quickly the EMH seemed to gain sentience in Seasons 1 and 2, but given the way he's written it makes sense for him to be that evolved now. And yet, he's still stuck by a logic bomb. And more importantly, because he's a computer, a tiny flaw expands and takes over his personality. Not in a technobabble way, but in a real way. And the ending takes a bold stance. Instead of programming the problem away, as the crew did last time, the Doctor must think his way through the situation. Just like we, occasionally, have to muddle through our own flaws. If he can pass this test (which the episode suggests he will), then he essentially passes the test of sentience. By being able to simultaneously overcome his programming as well as accepting the limitations of his being. He needs to understand that sometimes we don't understand, or to understand that some things just are. He needs to find his own way of getting an escape hatch in this endless loop he's on. Philisophical notions of AI aside, the episode is absolutely fantastic, character-wise. The episode is written from the EMH's perspective, and so initially Janeway's actions seem unacceptable to us. And although this is probably an accident, the fact that Janeway's been a fascist dictator this season may have heightened this sense. But then it flips entirely when we see what the result is of this seemingly innocuous event. The EMH really was on a feedback loop. And more importantly, at this point, the EMH actually agrees with Janeway! He himself is seeing himself as a mere program, incapable of handling the logic. He himself is arguing for a reprogramming, when just beforehand he felt as if he was a condemned prisoner. In that instance, Janeway suddenly starts looking more reasonable. And yet she still wasn't entirely convinced, and changed her mind after her discussion with Seven. That, too, showed a smart side of Janeway. I felt that she wasn't entirely convinced of her arguments to Seven as she made them, as I think there was something in her conscience nagging at her about this situation. It took Seven breaking her own logic to bring it to the forefront, but I think it was there to begin with. Like I said earlier, Janeway's been portrayed very negatively so far this season, so seeing this change of pace of hers was nice. As was her final conversation with Seven. I think that really helped to sell Janeway's side of things, that she's weighing huge decisions in the realm of AI and Borg sentience, and she's simply muddling through the best she can. We know that Seven's individuality was the big topic of last season, and Janeway was always portrayed as being absolutely firm in her decision. Seeing her asking Seven about it proves that, well, it was all a hunch on her part. She didn't know what the end product would be. She didn't know that Seven would eventually come around to accepting the gift that she was giving her. So asking Seven for reinforcement of that decision, when she is now going to undertake a similar decision with the Doctor, to force a human response on him. I found it quite touching. And I found Seven, the cold abrasive one, giving Janeway that reassurance to be just as touching. So yeah, I can forgive a few quibbles. This was a masterpiece, making the absolute best uses of the EMH, Janeway, and Seven. The initial mystery was gripping, the way all the characters acted was quite understandable, and the final resolution worked. I even liked the ending. We never see the Doc finish his wanderings, but I think we saw a glimpse of it. He stopped his internal deliberations long enough to tell Janeway to get some rest. While it's a bit silly given that Janeway sent Tuvok off just 2 minutes earlier, it still worked. Why? because the EMH broke out of his logical conundrum to get back to his true personality, aiding others. There was a subtle message there: don't be so over-obsessed with your own self that you ignore others. Perhaps that is how he escapes his conundrum. That he realizes that obsessing over his decision is in fact harmful to others, and harmful to himself. To realize that the universe isn't fair or perfect or whatever, to realize that he himself has limitations, and to accept that. Bravo. Easily 4 stars to me. Also, some rebuttals to some of the comments here: - I think Janeway's initial attitude toward the Doctor is absolutely justified in-universe without calling her racist or anything. We are comfortable around the EMH and Data, because we know this is a sci-fi show and they are placed as main characters who are supposed to gain our sympathy and because we know, deep down, that Spiner and Picardo are real people just playing a game. But to the characters, sentient AI is still brand new. Before the EMH, there was a grand total of one known sentient AI (2 if you count Lore) in existence. Most Starfleet personnel felt awkward and uncomfortable around Data (most notably Pulaski and Hobsen, but even Riker in Encounter at Farpoint). Why should she readily accept the EMH as fully worthy of all rights, even if she comfortably interacted with him for years? It's not an easy thing to wrap one's head around. Analogy time: I've watched Star Trek as a kid. I've seen characters interacting with the computer for years, and it always seemed natural to me. Despite that, I still think it sounds stupid when people use Siri or Google or whatever. And I hate it when I call someplace and get a recording run by a voice-operated program. It doesn't feel right to me, even though it feels perfectly normal for the characters on Star Trek. Likewise, I can perfectly understand if the characters are not fully vested in AI sentience, even if we the viewers are. - Janeway's analogy to the replicator was perfectly fine to me. She was making an argument in the extreme, and as such simplified the argument down to its basic part. I can perfectly see someone else use a similar analogy of comparing a human to an animal to make their point. - Janeway's decision to excise his memory may go against his being sentient with equal rights, but only partly. It's understandable to consider all possible treatments to his condition. Today, we chemically treat psychological problems with drugs. We physically alter our brain chemistry, in other words. Yes, that's less extreme than physically altering memories, but I think it's tangentially related. We often see psychological problems as a technical issue that must be sorted out, so why wouldn't the kings of technobabble see the same thing with AI? - I think the situation stated - the EMH's own no-win scenario, was perfectly valid. We've never seen him copy himself before like that, so to use that as a solution is patently unfair. His limitations may be a problem with the EMH concept in general, but it's too late to change that now. Also, the absolutely equal chance of survival was set up well. Basically, each person had minutes to live with identical wounds. Presumably, the chance of healing was 100% for both if treated properly. The only problem was that the method of healing took much longer than minutes, hence why treating one would mean the other would necessarily die. I mean, this is a nitpick anyway, but this setup was reasonably plausible. Certainly more plausible than Janeway's solution, but whatever. Like I said, I can forgive that for allowing this awesome setup.

@Justin Can you please stop whining about Jammer's opinion's about an episode? You act like your feelings are hurt over a TV Show review.

"Justin Wed, May 2, 2012, 2:11pm (UTC -6) @Michael, once again your comments illustrate that Star Trek in any of its forms really isn't your thing. If exploring the human condition doesn't hold your interest, try watching Transformers or Clone Wars instead." Can you post without sounding like you have a stick up your *ss?

The real question this episode brings up is why have the Doctor be a hologram at all? Practically all of his behaviors and experiences are equivalent to humans'. Data proved to be different: he had a difficult time understanding a lot of human peculiarities. In Voyager, the Doctor is just a human made up of photons and forcefields. Data is a true artificial lifeform forced to work from the ground up, showing difficulty in understanding human behavior & thought processes while proving to be sapient in his own right. Sapience =/= being human. There are many species in Star Trek with sapience, all considered "people", many having difficulty understanding each other, and some without human emotions. One could argue the Doctor was designed to be "more human", but Data was too. This is where the continuity is really inconsistent: they can have a hologram experience real emotions but not an android? Even when Data's proven to be faster and more advanced than any other computer in Starfleet? Don't get me wrong; I like the Doctor. But there was no point in making him anything other than human except to use his holographic "powers" as a deus ex machina on occasion. If the writers really cared that he was a hologram, we'd see something unique in his experiences that almost no human has experienced - something specific to AIs. Instead, we see the Doctor experience common human peculiarities like PTSD.

Diamond Dave

To me, this is one of those episodes that has a storming set up and then drops the ball with the conclusion. The mystery element is extremely well done, as is the conspiracy element. But while I did gain some satisfaction from the Doctor going off the deep end as soon as it's explained to him why they deleted his memory to stop him going off the deep end, from this point on the episode just went a bit flat. Having the Doc left alone to rant a bit and then come to his own conclusions didn't seem like the most satisfying dramatic conclusion. 2.5 stars.

This review is so old, but I see people still comment, so I will as well. I have PTSD and to me this episode appears to strongly allude to it. Similarly, the episode with Seven where she freaks out about the doctor evaluating her and has flashbacks... But I was very disappointed with the last half of that episode and that PTSD was not more of an issue for her. Anyways... I loved this episode and it made me cry. I felt sick and angry for the doctor when it was revealed that Janeway was the one behind it. I thought that it was a view Janeway would have in season one, not now, but I guess that's why she changed her mind. Deleting his memory files is a simile for lobotomy/avoidance/suppressed memories and recovering them like flashbacks or resurfacing. I see people saying that the doctor over reacted and it wasn't realistic, but they are very wrong. Often times I have felt just like the doctor and I felt his anguish like my own.. His acting was really amazing here. I almost wonder if Picardo has PTSD himself. Sometimes I have even felt more desperate, crazy, and alone than he acted in the mess hall. I have wanted to claw my eyes out and scream "WHY DOES'NT ANYONE UNDERSTAND". I have also had insomnia for days and weeks and intruding thoughts about the trauma and guilt trying frantically to make it make sense like the doctor in the holodeck. I likedthe end as well with the book, like it's not going to end soon but there is hope. Really amazing and touching episode.. My favorite of voyager so far.

I enjoyed this episode for the performance and the it's thought provoking nature. Very "trek" in that regard. But man, a couple head scratchers here. #1. In no way were they "equal". Harry is the "operations officer" (which if you think about it is a joke), a member of the senior staff for gods sake. Not dissing Ensign Jetal here, but there ARE folks more vital to the operation of a star ship than others. Voyager can't pull into a Starbase and get replacements. She hasn't had the training Harry has. #2. The decision should have been easy for Janeway. He's the ship's only Doctor. Can you really risk him going bat-shit in a crisis in the future? He should have been "fixed". She split Tuvix, she told B'Elanna to "get over it", etc... this should have been a no brainer. #3, and probably the most important.... to think we could have had Ensign Jetal (Nancy Bell) instead of Kim.... opportunity lost. Trek never made Data sentient and I doubt they will make a determination concerning the good doctor either. But like I said, it was an enjoyable mess. 3 of 4 stars. ...and for all you ranting about the epicness of season 5.... so far I've rated season 4 higher.... we'll see how this pans out.

@Stefan Please stop. You are a moron. Everyone pretty much is complaining. Anyways. This episode deserves 4 stars in my opinion. Always liked the Doctor and when it comes to the argument about is he a real person or not, well, he is not. But this crew is allowing his program to develop and adapt. End the end, it is still a hologram that is prone to malfunctions. Malfunctions that need to be fixed. I think that the crew took a very humane approach by not completely restoring it to the original EMH software. They did the best they could for it. Very intriguing episode.

And please stop comparing this series to DS9. We do not want to sit here and read about why you think DS9 was a superior show.

Interesting start, boring ending, no conclusion (*)

Love it. 3.5 stars At first I had a problem with the doctor not being able to deal with his decision but I actually think it makes perfect sense. He was programmed for emergency use, with the expectation that he wouldn't have to deal with the after effects of situations like this. And if any problems arose it was expected that he would simply have been reset. It would make no sense to programme all the extra detail that he would require to deal with a situation like this. The only drawback I saw with this episode was janeway suggesting he is more like a replicator than a person. I don't buy that she would think that way at all. In response to all those people who believe that a computer programme can't be a person, I absolutely disagree. We are simply flesh and blood computers. Our brains operate using electricity. Our DNA is complex code. In the very near future we will have sentient computer programmes, able to learn and question their existence. How far we allow that sentience to develop is a very difficult question. Science has pretty much always taken the approach that if something can be done, it will be done. I believe we will be tackling the question of what constitutes a person far sooner than most people realize.

Ps: why oh why didn't he save the cute new ensign :(

Living Witness indicated that the Doctor had a backup. This would have been a good time to activate it. If they lost the backup in the aforementioned LW, they likely would have re-backed the Doc up again after that. So, again, this would have been a good time to activate it.

@Dave - Lt. Carey was assigned by Torres back in S1 to design a backup for the Doctor. It took him 4 years to do and then it was stolen during the summer between S4 and S5 (for LW). He then spent the rest of his life trying to make another.

Robert, I wonder what LT Carey thought when Harry drummed up another in a day? :-) I guess we now understand when B'Elanna got picked for Cheif Engineer.

dave johnson

I didn't like Janeway's arrogance here. Look, if any sentient being had this problem... you would not lobotimize them.... you would use counselling, therapy, etc... if they are violent they can be confined to quaters....... you let them work it out. So, if Doc is self aware, and thus sentient..... it seemed odd that she would essentially lobotimize him. The end solution was right, let him deal with it however long it takes Interesting episode. What would a human do... a human would likely treat the person he/she had a relationship with if both patients were "tied in level of severity". That decision alone makes it pretty clear the Doc has evolved beyond just computer programs and instant programmed decisions.

Just something I thought of... if computer programming could create a hologram with emotions, ethical subroutines, the ability to learn and develop.... why would you have problems with Data and emotion chips... why not create and android body and put the computer program of a hologram into the brain and off you go.....

One of the best Doctor shows on Voyager, poignant therapy at the end really really good.

Loved it one of Voyager's best and I hear Picardo's favorite ep as well.

@Bill T I agree wholeheartedly. all these people are doing is complaining. not only that. i find it odd that not one person has pointed out the fact that the Doctor's program has degraded once. (the swarm) when the options were to either Reset to factory defaults (basicall) or keep going and they used the EMH's Diagnostic Subroutine program to graft a new HoloMatrix. So add to that that with this new Holomatrix that the doctor became more human more like the crew, that seeing Kim in this situation and not knowing what to do he would have gone into a loop like that. It was an okay episode not the best but i did like where this went. Also i'mjust gonna say this now and i don't give a care what kind of grief i get or if anyone even pays attention to this page or not. But Voyager is way more Interesting than DS9 or TNG could have ever hoped to be. I know just about everyone here probably sucks TNG's ass but whatever Voyager is extremely underrated compared to those other 2 shows. You're welcome.

@Jai - I don't usually feed trolls, but I'll assume you aren't one and give you the benefit of the doubt once. You're on the internet complaining about other people's complaining on a new username that has never posted before. Complaining about complaining is odd to say the least. It makes me question why you're here if this site is making you so angry. But beyond that "Voyager is way more Interesting than DS9 or TNG could have ever hoped to be. I know just about everyone here probably sucks TNG's ass but whatever Voyager is extremely underrated compared to those other 2 shows." is a really, really odd statement. If you're interested in explaining why you think Voyager is underrated, I'm happy to hear it. I've gone on record multiple times to say that it was the weakest of the three, and I totally stand by that... despite it having some of the strongest episodes in some cases. This actually is one of them (IMHO). In fact despite being down on Voyager in other places on this site I defended this episode above around 3 years ago. That's because I have a nuanced opinion about Trek. I think Voyager is underrated in places because despite having a number of standout gems and an outstanding cast I judge it more harshly for some of the things I gave TNG a pass on because the crew pumping out 18 years of straight Trek onto TV should have learned some lessons that I gave them some slack for in the TNG years after a decade. Some of it is because TVs landscape was evolving and DS9 evolved with it while VOY didn't. Some of it was because the ensemble was poorly used even though I really loved them. My favorite thing about DS9 is how it uses it's ensemble. So for me (and I think I speak for many), VOY is a lot of missed opportunity and near hits. And so it colors some talk of VOY and, in many cases, people don't talk about some of the extreme triumphs in VOY (like Eye of the Needle, Jetrel, Prototype, Alliances, Meld, Deadlock, Lifesigns, Remember, Before and After, Distant Origin, Scorpion, Mortal Coil, Message in a Bottle, Muse, Drone, Thirty Days, Counterpoint, Latent Image, Someone to Watch Over Me, Dragon's Teeth, Pathfinder, Blink of an Eye, Child's Play, Critical Care, Shattered, Lineage, The Void, Workforce, Author Author and Homestead). But that's 30 episodes I'd stick up against the best stuff TNG has to offer and think that they'd hold up. For me VOY (as a series) is less than the sum of it's parts whereas the other two are a bit more. For what it's worth... all 4 of the episodes you defended today are fairly well received and Jammer rated them fairly high (except for Course : Oblivion, which I also enjoyed). So I wonder... where is the anger coming from dude? Because a few comments are down on them? Because people are nitpicking Trek? (welcome to fandom btw) If I'm being totally honest, nobody said anything nearly as negative as "Voyager is way more Interesting than DS9 or TNG could have ever hoped to be" or "everyone here probably sucks TNG's ass". In one breath you're screaming "WAAAAH WAAAH WAAAH" and in the next telling Paul Allen he "really needs to cool his jets". I think you need to look in the mirror. The last 2 comments before that Paul Allen made about VOY were positive too. Deep breaths before posting dude! :P

Never liked this episode. This is the first time I'm watching Voyager back-to-back, though I have seen a few episodes on TV before, this one included. I usually don't have a problem with Janeway when compared to the rest of the Internet/Trek fandom, but in this episode, she just comes across as a grade-A cunt in regards to her treatment of The Doctor prior to the ending. And comparing him to a replicator, really? I too thought we had long-ago come to the conclusion that he was a sentient being. Without a fulfilling conclusion, this episode ultimately feels like an almost offensive waste of time. What sucks is that this episode had the makings of something great. Would probably give this half a star, just for the solid all-around acting.

Awesome episode, loved the score and the ending. The therapy scene and the doctor reading about a "new life" we're especially poignant. I took that to mean he was overcoming his original limitations and finally achieving real sentience. Picardo's acting is without flaw and Ryan's suppressed anger and disillusionment are shown brilliantly. 10/10

Should have used the two twin sisters for this episode if they are still around.

"Should have used the two twin sisters for this episode if they are still around. " The amount of VOY episodes that would have been kicked up a notch with just a splash of continuity... ::sigh::

Probably weren't prepared to pay/get the actresses (or maybe I am giving them too much credit)... but since this episode really needed twins to work perfectly, it's a real shame.

JANEWAY: It's as though there's a battle being fought inside him, between his original programming and what he's become. Our solution was to end that battle. What if we were wrong? TORRES: We've seen what happens to him. In fact, we've seen it twice. JANEWAY: Still, we allowed him to evolve, and at the first sign of trouble? We gave him a soul, B'Elanna. Do we have the right to take it away now? TORRES: We gave him personality subroutines. I'd hardly call that a soul. For me, this episode pretty much hit all the right notes. Doc is one of my favorite characters. But he started out as a hologram, not a sentient being. How and when did he become sentient? When his crewmates recognized him as such. He was created as a program and when that program did not operate as specified, files were deleted. However that solution did not last and another solution was necessary, one which recognized the uniqueness of the situation. My only quibble with the end, Janeway seemed intent on keeping watch over Doc herself. Doc probably would have benefited from interaction with all of the pertinent crew members, each sharing a unique perspective and offering differing coping mechanisms, and friendship. And yes, Kes should have been present at that point in time (of the original event), but the result would have still been the same: Like Paris, Doc would have known that Kes would not have been able to properly perform the operation. It would have been Kes standing there where Paris had been.

Here again, for the umpteenth time, I find myself agreeing with Seven when she debates/argues about ethics of humanity/individuality with Captain Janeway. At least, this time, the Captain seemed to take her point to heart, at least writers make it so she does. Usually, it's the "Janeway turns out right" or "Janeway proceeds anyway" scenarios.. Great review Jammer.

I think that this is an excellent episode (3.5 stars). Watching the doctor grapple with his conscience is heartbreaking. Feels like a lot of other comments are very nitpicky.

Prince of Space

I barely made it out of the comments from 2009. I apologize to all those of you that commented from 2010 on. But seriously, go back and read the 2009ers. They’re like reading the entries for a contest to see who can be the most pretentious by people that used a stolen credit card to pay the entrance fee. Yeah, that’s a run-on sentence and now I’m coming across pretentious. Well, at least I’ll never be part of that 2009 crowd. haha I liked this episode. I didn’t love it. It had a few flaws. So do I. I like me, too. My next pass through the Voyager library I intend to read all the comments past the 2009 ones. I look forward to them!

It's arrogant for flesh and blood beings to say that, just because AI are programmed, they know how they work, then it means that they are lesser-class lifeforms. There is no mystery involved in their creation, meanwhile, humanoids are a mystery! Our evolution was processed over billions of years! Our brains are impossible to manipulate on such a level! Therefore, we are superior beings that can create life and toss it away just because they're not the same, and that we have the ability to, makes it so. Going on an extreme end, how do you think the Q see humanoids and other intelligent life? The Q have shown the ability to rewrite, toy with, and utterly erase people like us and our brains, our memories, our function, and yet, despite their superior knowledge, they treat fleshies like actual lifeforms, allowing them to evolve and flourish. And humans call themselves enlightened. AI prejudice is a pretty tired trope I've seen over the years, but hopefully there will be a nicely written story for their acceptance in society in ST someday!

Decent episode on the face of it, but like a lot of others it suffers from some logical or just annoying errors/annoyances; Janeway’s plan to sort the Doctor out by deleting all record of Jetal (and presumably ordering everyone never to speak of her) is rather cruel to her memory and surely her friends wouldn’t be happy not being able to talk about her. Aside from how difficult that would be to maintain, Janeway seems to go about it the hard way. Instead of basically covering the incident up (as opposed to any of the many other questionable things she’s done) by deleting the Doctors memories, why couldnt she have just changed his memory of the incident such that Jetal was dead when she returned to Voyager or was more badly injured or something? Since when did any medical procedure in Star Trek leave visible scars such as the one Kim had that set the whole thing off? Dermal regenerators have been around a while. I’ll buy that the Doctor couldn’t save both people even with Tom’s help (where was Kes anyway?). Ok so have Tom, holodeck expert he is, quickly conjure up a holodeck sickbay and have a fake Doctor that follows his movements exactly so it’s doing surgery on one person while he’s doing the other. Ok be more complicated than that but they made a fully working Cardassian hologram just to annoy the Maquis crew members, so it should have been doable. Why another random Ensign? It seems Voyager has an endless supply of Ensigns for being killed off as though no other ranks exist. Would have been nice for her to have been seen before (Voyager doesn’t do continuity though). Speaking of continuity, Jetal’s death is remarkably similar to how Ensign Ballard died (shuttle mission with Kim, alien attack, killed), so how good would it have been for Jetal to have been Ballard? Doctor develops his crisis because he saved Kim over Ballard, then later Ballard returns having been resurrected by the Kobali and the Doctor has to deal with his feelings over it again especially now she isn’t actually dead! Wouldn’t have needed much, just a bit of thought put into it.

Startrekwatcher

2 stars I was intrigued about the mystery until the reveal thrn I lost interest. First the reveal was lame. Then the crew come as hateful thrn once you see how whiney the s doctor becomes then the crew is more sympathetic. And that final scene is awfully pretentious and silly in my opinion.

John Harmon

I thought this episode was fantastic. 4 stars. I've been told by many that this episode beautifully illustrates what it's like to live with mental illness and it means a lot to them. I usually don't get caught up in the technicalities of the story if the drama is good. I mean, it's Star Trek. Yeah it's sci-fi, but it's always mostly been an excuse to tell stories exploring the human condition and make social and political commentary. This is a great human condition episode.

@Martin You ain't never lied. I had the exact same thought. In fact, I originally went looking for Latent Image after watching Ashes to Ashes, thinking they had to be the same Ensign, but when I watched it I was like dafuq? Why pull a random Ensign out of your anus, when you already have a perfectly good one available? It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. @DLPB I didn't even think of that. That would've been absolutely perfect, especially if the other twin blamed the doctor for choosing her. Damn this needed one rewrite to iron out the flaws in the story. For instance, I was disappointed with the so-called crisis the doctor went through. I thought it was going to be something like The Swarm, were his program was actually degrading and they were about to lose him completely, when in fact all that happened was he through a fit. B'Elanna does that every Tuesday.

EMH: I don't mean to seem unfeeling, but I'm programmed to accept the loss of a patient with professional detachment. Why would he go insane over it then? Because he had to make a choice? Seems a bit farfetched. And in 'Darkling' the Doc also goes insane, after adding things to his program, and has no problem altering his program to fix himself, removing the thing that was causing him to go mental. So what's the big deal about altering it now and removing something to avoid going insane yet again? And when Janeway asks Seven for advice.... JANEWAY: I'm having trouble with the nature of individuality. SEVEN: You require a philosophical discussion? JANEWAY: There's a time and a place for it. This is one of them. After I freed you from the Collective, you were transformed. It's been a difficult process. Was it worth it? SEVEN: I had no choice. JANEWAY; That's not what I asked you. SEVEN: If I could change what happened, erase what you did to me, would I? No. After that, Janeway decides not to interfere with the Doc's program, when she just got the exact opposite advice from Seven. She was asking if Seven regrets being forced to be altered, and Seven says she wouldn't change what happened, in other words saying 'I'm glad you forced me'. So after that, Janeway should have forced the Doc to be altered for his own good. Not the complete opposite. Makes no sense. And this episode should never have existed anyway, because he could have let one of them die, then use Borg nanoprobes to bring the other back. But Voyager forgot that episode exists I guess. Or how about put one in stasis for a few minutes? There is no reason for one of them to die at all, except to force this insanity on the Doc. 2 1/2 stars.

I Hate Janeway

Robert Picardo episodes are the best. I have come to accept that he's a sentient being, even though in the real world, we should not believe that about computer programs we create. Janeway acted like a real bitch to him. Totally out of character? Or who knows what her character really is? Personally, I don't buy the BS about his computer program "degenerating" or whatever it was doing. But Robert Picardo did a great job with the script.

SouthofNorth

Voyager does "Sophie's Choice" And did it very well. The best dramas are not the action-packed battles in which we're left wondering whether the crew will DIE (here's a spoiler: they won't) but rather putting the characters where they have to make a decision and usually a question that challenges their complacency and beliefs. This is just that kind of an episode for both the Doctor and Janeway. I'm glad they didn't pull any rabbits out of the hat and for the Doctor to grow beyond his programming, he has to resolve the conflicts that will arise between the rules that govern his medical decisions and those that he built for himself in forming friendships. And those two parts of his programming are going to come into conflict as they did for Meryl Streep's character in Sophie's Choice where she has to make an impossible decision. So kudos. 4 - stars. Now they just have to build upon it like Babylon 5 did when they would put their characters through the ringer. The future episodes in which the Doctor finally resolves this issue should be fascinating. Oh wait, this is Voyager ... well, it was good while it lasted.

RandomThoughts

Hello Everyone! Boy, after all of these years, I still ponder this one... My random thoughts... Doctor (his name, not The Doctor), is simply a fantastic program that has gone so far above and beyond its original programming it is essentially another person on the ship. But I say essentially. It is still a program. Just because it is aware that it can leave the holodeck (Moriarity as well), does not mean it is alive. It must have a soul, that inner spark that leaves upon death and heads out to a higher realm. When his (I say that only because his image is male) programming came upon the improbable circumstance of both crew members having the unlikely perfect 50.0 percent chance of living, Doctor said he chose the one that he liked the best. But I think it was his programming saying this one is a bridge officer, and this one is not. And... done. Whether Doc knew it or not, that was his game-changer. He doesn't know all of the things that go on with the programming, just that he follows it. If there had been even the slightest indication (.001 or so, for arguments sake), he would have saved Jetal, if she was the .001+. I love Doctor in Voyager, and in this episode. Always have and always will. But when it comes down to it, he is still a program, and can be edited, deleted or enhanced (as shown here). 7 talks about individuality, but at her base, she is still human, and has been brought back into the fold over time. She has computer parts in her, but the thinking is she is still human at her core. And still has her soul. At the end of time, when there is no more power for Doctor, he will simply blink out of existence. No Valhalla, no Heaven... just nothingness and done. End of program... Regards... RT

I thought this was a really good episode with Picardo putting on a terrific performance showing how his programming would struggle with the decision of which person to save. That's a good problem to examine for a doctor -- no matter the kind. It's pretty well conceived as we're wondering what could have happened such that Janeway would decide to erase Doc's memory -- and sure enough, it was an event that caused Doc to malfunction (i.e. not some lame payoff). So Janeway kicked the can down the road and now has to deal with the issue -- or really, Doc has to deal with the issue. Some heavy issues about Doc's sentience here and the extent of his personality subroutines etc. I've gone on the assumption that Doc has some pretty advanced subroutines and his AI has gone to new levels. So I didn't have any hangups as far as the self-questioning of making decisions, the existential questions etc. The fact that he looks at things in a very algorithmic way added some good logic to the struggle he went through. I was impressed with the writing. The scene where Doc decides to perform surgery on Harry (and let Jetal die) -- the music for this was so inappropriate. What a massive oversight! I'm really glad Jammer also points this out as well. WTF?? Aside from this blunder, I'm again reminded by how shit soundtracks from the later Trek series (TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT) all are compared to the excellent soundtracks from TOS. [I don't think I could bring myself to purchase any TNG, DS9, VOY soundtracks, yet I have purchased many TOS ones.] Good episode for Janeway too -- nice to see that she doesn't have all the answers and doesn't pretend to. She comes to 7 for a philosophical discussion after 7 had earlier said she was unsettled -- after all Janeway had given her her humanity. It struck me as wrong for Janeway to say Doc was more like a replicator than human -- so maybe that suggests this episode should have come in S1 or S2. The ending scene with Doc reading Janeway's poetry book and the line "Here begins a new life" was spot on for me. This is a turning point for Doc -- wonder what his AI will learn about this. Solid 3 stars for "Latent Image" -- good examination of Doc's crisis and Picardo really delivers. His scene with Neelix trying to understand decisions using the fruit and nuts was excellent. Didn't seem to me that there was any excessive suspension of disbelief required -- just decent writing, great acting and a pretty compelling story for a very likeable character.

"What harm can a few photons do?", the Doc asks Naomi, in the beginning, when she's worrying if the imaging procedure will hurt. And then we're off . . . toward finding out just what harm a few photons (Doc!) can do. The ep is an interesting exploration not just of individuality but of honesty, of the need for honesty to respect the individuality of another. When, if ever, is it ok to withhold the truth from someone? And if you do it, are you really doing it for them, or for yourself, because it's inconvenient (at 2am!) and unsettling for you to deal with another's breakdown? Janeway realizes that Doc's photonic existence makes it simpler for her - she can make it easy on herself and the crew by deleting his memories. But Seven's intervention helps her see that he deserves the same respect she'd give any other member of the crew. She'd balk at curing regular crew members, of their angst and guilt and internal conflicts, by deleting their memories, after all. Lots of eps this season about survivor's guilt, and guilt in general: Janeway's guilt for stranding Voyager, B'Ellana's survivor's guilt when she learns so many Maqui are dead, Harry's guilt when he kills them all during the slip stream attempt, and now this. Seems to be a recurring theme this season, as an aspect, I think, of an overall season theme about individual growth and maturity. Nice, subtle ending for the ep, with talk of a new beginning for Doc.

Whoa, boy! I've taken to writing my comment first, then reading the review and comments. I enjoy the surprises this brings. So, a few more comments, now that I've read the review and most of the comments: --Ep also asks the question, to what extent are we defined by our memories? Notice that Janeway, Chakotay, and Tuvok are on the bridge, disagreeing about what happened in an event they all witnessed, challenging each other's memory of it. This isn't coincidental in this ep, but meant to get us thinking about where the line is. When is a memory consequential to who you are, to how you define yourself? And how reliable are your memories, anyhow? What makes you, you, anyhow? -- I thought Janeway compared the Doc to a replicator as a way to try to justify her decision to herself. Yes, she knows better, but her decision was practical and convenient, and she hated to have to get into the messy, time consuming business of helping Doc actually recover. We see her looking tired a lot in this ep. And she is that: Tired. Speaking of taking the "easy way out," the way that's easiest on everyone else, I thought the ep was more analogous to the overuse of psychiatric drugs than to lobotomies. Not that the lobotomy thing doesn't work as an analogy, just that that isn't so much what is being abused these days. Janeway made the same decision a tired, overworked mother of many might make, about that one, hyperactive, very unruly child. But then she sees the zombie he's become, then, for various reasons, she is forced to face up to it - and she loves her kid, after all, so, tired and exasperated as she is, she does the right thing. Adding: I'm not of the Tom Cruise "psychiatric drugs are all bad!!" opinion. Not at all. They can be great. But they are sometimes abused as . . . restraints, for the convenience of everyone else, not to truly help the patient. And this ep speaks to that sort of abuse. Noticed that Doc shows some concern for Janeway toward the end. He's making a decision, and he's putting her first. A deliberate sign, I'd say, that he's on the road to recovery - he's starting to focus outside himself and his own confusion and pain. Good ep.

I was just thinking about this episode again for some reason. So first off, I think that the Doctor's own crisis is played very well. Of course as a doctor he's trained with triage, prioritization, etc., but the point is that here there was no help from his original programming, because both patients were in the exact state. Probably his original program would have defaulted to a random number generator or something. But instead what he's learned since -- including his friendships with the crew -- ended up being the deciding factor. What this does is expose him to the abyss that we actually both all live with, and somehow all manage to live with: the realization that he can appeal to objectivity only imperfectly, and that sometimes this means someone dies who shouldn't. As long as he does everything that is "reasonable" to save people's lives, he's in the clear, but at this point he made an "unreasonable" (irrational) decision of who to prioritize, and this breaks him because he's confronted with not only his own frailty but also the injustice of the whole universe. It all comes crashing down on him at once. One thing that really just occurred to me now is that this is also a Janeway episode. So okay, Kathryn: you're in the Delta Quadrant, far away from your Starfleet training and rulebook. You're in totally new situations, so have to create your own rules out there. Now you come across a situation where you either choose your crew or a stranger. What do you do? And how do you live with that decision, when it's not entirely based on your "original programming" as Captain? In fact the Doctor makes the opposite choice to the one Janeway made in Caretaker -- he saves Harry, whom he knows better than Jetal -- but it hardly matters; if the Doctor had chosen Jetal, he would beat himself up just as much. Janeway is an adult rather than a newborn babe program, and so it doesn't manifest in the same way. But of course Janeway has also made a number of decisions prioritizing people she cares about over strangers, or even over other members of her own crew (Tuvix). None of them were as stark as the Sophie's Choice the Doctor had, where there was no way to make an "objective" decision according to his programming, but a lot of them were close enough, especially given the time constraints involved. So check out her solution for *the Doctor*: she erases his program. I think it's *not just* a matter of her not treating him as a full person, though that is part of it. I think it's also that this gives us insight into how Janeway deals with the number of calls she's made over the years, many of which hurt her people and many of which hurt strangers, many of which are really far from clear-cut? She forgets. She focuses on the work. Until she can't forget anymore. This is what Night was about, in part, and what Equinox is arguably about -- in that she deals with Random the way she does because she cannot make herself face what she's done. So in that sense, Janeway is doing to the Doctor in a clean and clinical way what she does to herself in a fuzzier, less efficient way. And then when she decides to try to help the Doctor come to grips with it at the end, it maybe is a sign that she might someday try to face up to what she's done, too.

Sean Hagins

Ok, Jammer-this time I agree with you. This episode came much later in the series than it should-I agree The feedback loop the doctor is in seems to negate what we know of him-I agree The producers pull actors out of thin air-I agree again-In fact, even the extras are different almost each time-and they total more than 150 during the series run! The most amusing thing in this episode to me was the little girl annoying the doctor and then taking a holoimage of him! It was cute-and fun The story was ok, but kind of out of place-should have been in season 1

This episode took episodicness, lack of continuity, way too far. It could have worked at the start of the third season, maybe the end of it (six months after the Doctor go his mobile emitter), not really this far into the series. We did already see broadly similar stories/themes especially "The Swarm" and at the end of "Retrospect", this feels much less credible. Mulgrew tries her best to make the characterization of Janeway work and it comes close to working but doesn't, Dawson tries but less so for Torres and for her it works even less. There are way too many obvious contrivances (wiping the memory more than turns out to seem needed, the Doctor turning out to not be so bothered by the initial event, wiping the recent memory but not informing Seven). The best part is Seven challenging Janeway, to her Oh, we'll talk about it later, with direct, obvious yet strong response-That will be too late. Picardo plays the Doctor in distress as way too malevolent and crazy (to make the problem feel like a dilemma, maybe he can't live with the memories, Janeway was at least reasonable, instead it just feels like forced overstatement) and yet the initial dilemma seems way, way too obvious, there wasn't anything wrong with his decision, be it that he had to save one patient, better one than neither, on its own or combined with that yes Kim was more important to Voyager's operations. The placement of this episode is particularly bad coming after and right after "Nothing Human" where the Doctor did (and Janeway trusted him and authorized him to) deal with ethical dilemmas very reasonably.

It isn't even directly claimed that the Doctor did choose Kim because they were friends and was bothered by that, just that he chose one and that that meant he murdered Jetal. If the chance of survival really were the same, choosing one for some reason (Kim's position in the crew or personal friendship or just randomness) seems obviously valid and if it involved a lack of randomness, lack of complete impartiality, far from troubling.

This episode has one of my favorite Tuvok quotes: "There is some logic to your logic." I swear I heard him or another Vulcan say that somewhere else, but Google only brings up this episode.

Sleeper Agent

I wholly enjoyed the first third of it. It had an aura of thriller to it, which later turns to a character drama with some intriguing philosophical dialogues. It's all very good, but I can't help wishing that the episode would've been of a more sinister kind. 3 Stars

Voyager had improved significantly at this point in its run. It may never hold a place in my heart like DS9 but 'Latent Image' and to a lesser extent last week's 'Counterpoint' are worthy episodes that provide a satisfying back-to-back viewing experience on this umpteenth rewatch. Something that was rare in a single episode from seasons 1 - 3. Yes, the over-reliance on three key characters is a major problem (Janeway, Seven and The Doctor remind me of Kirk, Spock and McCoy carrying the whole series in the las season of TOS), but nevertheless the last season and a half has been such an improvement in general. My memory insists this wears thin eventually and seasons six and seven sag in comparison, but considering how much I generally deride Voyager, at this point in season five I'm enjoying it more than I'd expected to on this latest visit. FWIW I think the young Jammer was a little stingy with this one. I'd definitely give it a solid 3.5. Next week we're back to whocaresville with Chaotica , but I've been pleasantly surprised that a show of which I have so middling an opinion has been so frequently enjoyable over the past thirty-odd episodes.

This has been an extremely strong run for Voyager and I would absolutely include Latent Image as part of that. An essential chapter in Doc's story that asks the classic Trek questions of the nature of sentience, while challenging our characters' preconceptions with smartly written interactions. 4 stars.

As a conspiracy episode that becomes a "nature of existence" episode, I really enjoyed the questions that it raised. It's good for the show to occasionally remind us that the Doctor is not in fact a real person, but a simulated person. The question is, has he become such an enormously complex simulation that he is now essentially like Data, an artificial lifeform that is self-aware and as close to being genuinely alive as he can be? Have the Voyager crew, by treating him just like all the living flesh and blood crew members, in fact given him a soul, as Janeway asks? Would they have been right to wipe his memory back when he was first activated, but is is wrong now, after he's grown so much? It's little wonder the show returned to these questions again and again, particularly in the last season, and it's no wonder "Picard" has been exploring the implications of artificial life forms as advanced as we see on Star Trek. It's fascinating sci-fi material for storytelling.

Many of the comments above miss the point by saying that the EMH program should be able to flip a coin without flipping out. Janeway explains that they determined the first time around that his original program (presumably capable of a coin flip) was interacting poorly with his personality subroutines (which presumably picked Kim because of their friendship). The issue he is stuck with is his later self-assessment that picking Kim for that personal reason is wrong and not consistent with his "training" (i.e. his original coin-flipping programming). Basically it shows the Doctor has reached so far beyond his original program that he can't keep it together. His new personality is outgrowing his basic functions and purpose. Jammer misses the point on this, and underrates the episode accordingly. ****

Hmm... Indeed! LOL! At once a tough one and an easy one. First of all, I don't know why I was so annoyed when I watched this a decade ago. "He's just a gosh darn hologram!," I thought back then. End of discussion. I was either having a bad day then or I've matured since, dunno which. I still think the whole idea is ridiculous. One of the advantages of having a hologram as the ship's doctor is that it's infallible. It's not given to human error, including emotionality. An "ethical subroutine malfunction"? Puh-lease. Surely an ethical subroutine includes sophisticated calculations, which go beyond "both had identical injuries." Surely those calculations include variables such as rank, position, job description, intellect, qualifications, experience (i.e. "usefulness" to the vessel and crew complement), the relative age and health of the patients, the likelihood and speed of recovery, and so many others. After all, Harry "Can't-Get-A-Lock-On-Nothin" Kim and Jetal (a real cutie, BTW) were not identical twins! Even if they had have been, any programmer worth his salt would've provided for such a scenario and instructed the Doctor to flip a binary coin. Patient = DetermineBetterCandidate(x,y) If Patient = "neither" Then OperateOn(random(x,y)) Else OperateOn(Patient) EndIf So yeah, a provocative idea being explored but on very contrived foundations. A human going through this would make sense; a collection of subroutines doesn't.

Janeway risked the doctor's existence by returning his lost memories to him. She also risked the whole ship, since they had no other doctor available. Better alternatives would have been: 1. Make the doctor aware of what occurred, but without restoring the actual memory. As a trained physician, he should understand it as equivalent to amputation of a gangrenous limb: sacrifice a part to save the whole. 2. Agree to return the memory upon the return to the alpha quadrant. The doc is no longer needed at that point, and if he implodes, no one else suffers. 3. Rewrite his program to allow for "no clear right call" decisions of this nature. Had he not liked Harry Kim, he might have frozen up, losing both patients.

@Mark It would be quite a bit more complicated than you imagine. 1. You had to not only cut out the actual experience but also every memory that involves that crewmember. That means every direct contact, every conversation about her and that extents into the future ergo everybody had to always remember to not talk about her when the doctor is around. They also had to limit his access so that he not by accident stumbles over her medical files or when he checks the list of dead crewmembers. The list goes on.

There's a missed metafictional potential to this episode. Jetal was erased not only from the Doctor's memories, but from all of our memories too! It would have hilarious to go back and edit her into reruns.

The episode's dilemma is intensly contrived. We've seen the Doctor during Year of Hell go into a bit of a funk when he decided to condemn three crewmembers to death. All it took to get over that was one stern peptalk from Tom Paris. The plot would have been served if he writers had established the initial alien attack also destabilized the Doctor's holomatrix. That would explain his sudden inability to accept Jetal's death.

Leon Jimenez

Red Dwarf's episode Thanks for the Memories inspired 2 Star Trek episodes (one TNG and this one) and they both blew it. TNG tried to focus on the mystery of the Red Dwarf Episode and this dealt with the "emotion" and both were pale comparisons.

I absolutely loved this episode. It is right up there with “Measure of a Man” for me. Brilliantly written, acted, and directed. (And I am fine with the score.). FWIW I am convinced that both the Doctor and Data are indeed sentient. ****

Couldn’t they just put Jetal in transporter suspension like they did with the telepaths they were smuggling?

I thought this was a great episode. Watching the EMH melt down in the mess hall was an awesome sight. If I had one complaint its that Janeway's decision to delete the EMH's memories was unraveled so easily by one single conversation with Seven. It just seemed like such an obvious counterpoint to Janeway's choice that its almost unbelievable that she didn't think of it first. Now that I read the comments, the points about Kes are also correct. She probably could have been of some use here. Or maybe not. The EMH did say that the surgery was extremely complex.

Tannhaeuser

I like this episode a great deal. When the plot is fully revealed, my first reaction was that I wish I could forget some of my experiences by deleting them and my life would have been better. My second reaction was that the doc is a vital member of the crew being the only physician on board and he can't go insane. In that case, they needed to point that out and the doc should have realized that himself, if not at first, at least later when he stops functioning. I would like to see the conclusion to be that the doc realizes this and asks the insanity memory to be removed and thoroughly like in TNG:Clues.

Everybody wants to be human so bad I honestly don't see the appeal. Like the person above me said I wish I could delete bad experiences from my memory and continue on. As a hologram by all means reprogram me I won't put up a fight. I'll just happily exist in my naive little world, but that wouldn't make for an interesting character I guess.

Bob (a different one)

Probably already been pointed out but the basic premise of this episode is flawed. If the Doc's memory can be altered, why not 1) do it in a non half-assed way to begin with or 2) just do it a second time Seems a lot easier than a massive ship wide conspiracy that nearly drives the EMH insane.

Bob, because Seven threw Janeway for a whirl. Also, Janeway did first do the erasure procedure again. She just didn't count on the Doctor's ability to keep unwrapping it. I think this is a great episode. There are flaws, of course. I think the biggest is Janeway's seeming regression by saying the Doctor is just like a replicator. I wish that had been handled better. I really liked Janeway refusing to even TELL the Doctor what had happened because that might set it off, and that's absolutely right. I also like how he didn't instantly go crazy when they started giving him back his memories, which also made sense. I assume the Doctor Mark I was never given triage procedures. It doesn't seem to ever be mentioned other than maybe Janeway saying he did his duty. That said, I don't think it would have really changed the story if he did have those procedures. . The Doctor might still believe he was not being objective. The weirdest thing for me is probably the last scene, where the Doctor says he can't live with the knowledge of what he had done (while Janeway was asleep) then after she wakes up he tells her to go to bed because he doesn't want to cause any more suffering. I assume it wasn't the intention, but that sure as hell is alarming talk that suggests he's contemplating suicide. Then she leaves him alone, which further implies the episode is going there in some manner.

"I assume the Doctor Mark I was never given triage procedures. It doesn't seem to ever be mentioned other than maybe Janeway saying he did his duty." I think it was. The problem was that he had two patients who had the same chance of survival and he chose the one he was friends with. It is a classic ethical dilemma. I would assume that they didn't plan for the EMH to form friendships, otherwise RNG would have decided, I think.

@Booming said, "The problem was that he had two patients who had the same chance of survival and he chose the one he was friends with. ... I would assume that they didn't plan for the EMH to form friendships, otherwise RNG would have decided" Very interesting. We humans would use RNG because we're afraid that the friendship would affect our ability to generate a probability of survival. Meaning that even if our friend has slightly less chance of survival, we might feel he has more - enough to make it equal to the other guy. And then once it is equal, we can pick our friend to save. But our incentive to subconsciously skew the prognosis is checked (somewhat) by knowing that even if the chances of survival are equal, the RNG might still pick the other guy to save. The theory being that incentives matter, even in unconscious bias. Would the EMH's feelings skew his calculations of chances of survival? If you answer yes, I think he should probably still use RNG. But if, because The Doctor is a program, the answer is no - he doesn't have a "subconscious" bias making him feel his friend is more likely to survive than is actually the case - well in that case, what the EMH did - picking his friend, when the two had the same chance of survival - is perfectly acceptable.

@Mal To me it was implied that the doc wasn't sure if he chose because of the personal relationship. Does that make sense for a computer. I'm not sure but it certainly makes for some interesting character drama.

While 3 stars is a positive review, I feel that you are short changing this episode. The doctor delivered an amazing performance, the story was compelling and it made the viewer think, not about the doctor's emotional crisis but how it relates to ourselves which the best Star Trek episodes always deliver. It took me some time to warm up to the doctor as a sentient hologram but episodes like this one are what I need to come to grips with his evolution as an individual.

I agree, @TeeBone, Are you guys saying triage docs and medics use random number generators to decide whom to save? I've never heard of this but then I don't work in the medical field.

When they "buried" Jetal in space, the crew wore their regular uniforms. When they "buried" John Kelly in space in "One Small Step," they wore their dress uniforms. No one on Voyager knew Kelly, and he wasn’t even a member of Starfleet. If he was getting full honors, Jetal should have gotten them too.

@John Pate "why didn't the Doctor speed himself up or activate the back-up EMH" It’s been said many times on the show that the Doctor's program cannot be backed up (I’m stating a premise of the show, not answering John's question), despite his putative backup's being activated in the 31st century in "Living Witness." But sometimes the Voyager crew needs another doctor. Holographic characters and even holographic representations of real people seem to have the information and experience needed to reliably represent the real people of whom they are simulacra. Suppose they went to the holodeck and told it to create a hologram of the Doctor. Of course, it would be a hologram of a hologram and I guess it wouldn’t have all of the Doctor's knowledge of 47 bazillion medical texts, but I’m thinking it would be better than nothing.

Anyone notice Janeway seemed depressed for all of Season 5? She was in the season opener, but I noticed it actually lingered through all these episodes. She seems bored and sad in a lot of episodes, and I think it was done intentionally.

@TeaBone I agree with you. Despite the problems noted by Jammer, Latent Image really deserves a higher rating than 3 stars. The writers knew what they were doing. They offer us a mystery, and a controversy about the EMH's status as a sentient being. I liked the revealing glances between Janeway and Tuvok who are part of the mystery...from the start. The episode features some great dialogue and really effective performances. Seven is at the center of several of the best of these. (1) When the EMH comes onto the bridge and accuses the staff of conspiracy, Seven looks up and says simply "Doctor." It's perfect in the context--Wow moment #1. Jeri Ryan is so classy in her delivery. (2) Seven confronts Janeway at 2 a.m., about the nature of individuality /humanity, her individuality and the Doctor's. Janeway stands her ground, defending the notion that the Doctor is closer to a replicator than 'a person,' but Seven gets the last word in--Wow moment #2. (3) Janeway, affected by Seven's rebuke, speaking of the Doctor says: "We gave him a soul, B'Elanna. Do we have the right to take it away now? B'Elanna replies: "We gave him personality subroutines. I'd hardly call that a soul." Janeway makes no comment--Wow moment #3. I have a lump in my throat at that point. I am in the camp that has lived long enough to realize that I personally display all manner of personality subroutines. If I make any progress in life, it is by recognizing weaknesses in my standard reactions to stimuli, and then begin working on altering those. I wonder about other people sometimes....are they as conscious of their ossified personality subroutines as I think myself to be? Perhaps we all flatter ourselves by believing that we have souls....and that our individuality will persist after death. Know one knows for certain. These are the ideas the episode plumbs. As I said, the writer knew what they were doing. What sets the whole thing off is a triage decision on the Doctor's part resulting in the death of a woman so that Harry Kim could live. The deceased is Ahni Jetal, who dies on her own birthday.** The final scene between Janeway and the Doctor, whom she now calls "friend" is great. Wow moment #4. The music finally works and Picardo's reading of the proem to Dante's La Vita Nuova brings down the curtain--Wow moment #5. Here a tear exudes from my left eye. How much more a member of our species knew about the soul in 1294, than anyone knows (or at least writes on publically) today. Incipit vita nova. **Ahni Jetal in Hindi, as near as I, poor linguist, can make it out, means something like: "Day-Winner." Irony deliver us. The heart breaks. [But maybe I have it all backwards...because I'm from the wrong world. Perhaps she is in death a winner because she is the one now free to begin a new life].

*No one knows for certain* Latent Image (VOY season 5 ) is a great episode.

One thing that is bothering me on my 3rd rewatch in 3 decades is this. They said they had 148 crew members when they started. One or two no names or red shirts die almost each episode. Yet they still say they have 150 crew members. Like when Janeway gives some of her speeches about getting 150 people home.

TheRealTrent

Though I agree with Jammer's chief complaint - Janeway and the Doctor's behavior would have made more sense if this episode had occurred during season 1 - I think this episode is nevertheless close to four stars. Still, I thought one scene should have been tweaked . Instead of having Janeway immediately be "tough" and "tight-lipped" with the Doctor when he discovers that he's had his memories deleted ("Shut up and obey my orders!"), she should have played things quietly and with more compassion. She should've attempted to better assure the Doctor that the deleted memories were done in his best interest, and for the best interests of the crew. Empathize with the guy. Appeal to his "instincts" to be a caretaker. Have the Doctor reject these rational pleas by Janeway, and THEN have Janeway become tough and hard-lined. I understand we're meant to assume that Janeway's been through this all before with the Doc, and she's tired of pandering to him, but it IMO would have played dramatically better. I especially liked the final scene of this episode. It's probably no coincidence that Voyager's pilot is called "Caretaker"; Janeway's a maternal, protective figure, tasked with taking care of her flock. But here, in this scene, the Doctor recognizes his duty of care as well, much akin to Neelix's realization in "Mortal Coil". And so in both "Mortal Coil" and "Latent Image", characters enter a kind of mental free-fall, "suicidally" losing faith in their abilities before eventually "curing" themselves with a kind of personal code of responsibility whereby they shunt their personal suffering aside in favor for ameliorating the suffering of others. Both episodes then end with a character sleeping, Neelix "comforting and tucking a child to bed", and the Doc fawning over a sleeping Janeway. The series is constantly saying that Janeway's role (or burden) as a caretaker requires her to put her crew, and the lives of others, before herself. But it's also constantly reminding us that this ethos extends to the crew as well.

This is a good episode. Most of the Trek episodes that approach this type of question usually are, all though this one isn't quite as good as some of those others.

I would just like to point out that in the previous episode, Counterpoint, storing people in the transporter pattern buffer was a thing. I guess they forgot. As previously mentioned, they forgot stasis as well. Quite frankly, there are so many plot holes and inconsistencies in this episode I just concluded that we were in another mirror universe.

David Staum

I don't know what the writers had in mind, but my personal solution to understanding how the EMH could have evolved in such an advanced way is that once he was enhanced by 29th century technology (his mobile emitter) it enabled his program to far exceed its original intention, and made him much more "real" than, say, the holodeck DaVinci. And yes, there's a weak spot in that argument, because he's often transferred back to Voyager's computers when he doesn't need the mobile emitter in sickbay. But we can imagine that the 29th century technology isn't limited to the hardware of the emitter, but maybe is inherent to the program itself, even when transferred back to 24th century hardware. At least that's how I personally choose to reconcile it.

Voyager & continuity ... This show definitely was way more casual with continuity than you might expect considering it was the flagship of Paramount's new network. That said... I'm personally gotten rather tired of every tv show being a soap opera. And just think of how long the set up would be for a plot like this. This could easily span 2 or 3 seasons.

I would have given this episode 4 stars, or at least 3 1/2. The Doctor is borderline sentient, and it still makes sense for there to be some debate as to just how sentient he is. Also, if he goes kaput, that would spell bad news for the entire crew. Meaty issues, great performances by all the actors.

@Joel: I agree--as I said above, this is a four star episode for me. I will say that I don't know if, when I watched this and commented in Nov. 2020, I actually went back and rewatched the surgery scene specifically when I said the score sounded fine to me. I did rewatch the scene just now, and the score is inappropriate, agreed--although not so much so that it stood out to me when watching initially.

The Answer is Picard

The fault is Tom Paris. He was closer to Kim, therefore the Doctor chose Kim to please Tom. Blame Tom.

Tannhaueser

I see a lot of interesting discussions of the nature of AI. We are much closer to that now with ChatGPT. On the other hand, I would like to add a human psychology to this. People can get obsessed over something and the mind gets stuck in a loop trying to solve a problem and end up with a nervous breakdown. I once had a mild experience of that and it took some work to get out of the loop.

I found it hard to believe that the doctor could be drawn into such an ethical dilemma that it would cause him to short circuit. To me, this is based on a classic premise put forward on the limitations of AI, which is that, if given a certain problem, it will get caught in a heuristic loop and fail to resolve it. Humans can get caught in heuristic loops too, until they become neurodepleted and get what we call depression/anxiety. The thing is, humans, and presumably AIs, can be shown to step away from the problem so that this short circuiting does not occur. This premise was used in TNG's "I, Borg" when they created a Borg virus based on a unique multi-dimensional shape that was unsolvable. If send back to the Borg, they would analyze it endlessly until the Borg self-destructed. Except that... any computer program in our 21st century would simply pronounce the error and STOP TRYING. To put it simply: why does the problem HAVE to be resolved? Some problems in life are unresolvable and you just have to live with that fact. No amount of circular thinking will change what can't be fixed. And that's what I didn't understand about Latent Image. I could accept that the doctor's program had expanded to such a degree that it created heuristic feedback loops that the original "foundation" of his program couldn't resolve. But why would he become trapped in them? Why could he not decide (or be shown how to decide) to just surrender to it? This implies that the doctor's program is 100% pure logic, without any emotional capability or self-reflective capacity to practice acceptance or equanimity. But we know that isn't true because he has schooled others, like Seven, in how to practice those qualities. And therein lies my core issue with this episode. Until now we have accepted that the doctor is a sentient program and treated as any other member of the crew, but the script implies that he is no more than the sum of his (apparently malfunctioning) parts. That reduces him back to a tool. Janeway's approach in the end, which presumably saves the doctor because in future episodes this is never talked about again, implies that given enough time of "spinning his wheels," the doctor would drop it or see his way out of it in some nuanced way. We are left wondering if the doctor is a "real" person or just malfunctioning software and it isn't in any way resolved for us.

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This episode provides examples of:

  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot : During a medical emergency, the holographic Doctor is confronted with a choice between two patients with an equal chance of survival . He ends up choosing based on the fact that he was a closer friend to one patient than the other, and because it was outside of his original programmed parameters , he ends up obsessing over making the "wrong" decision .
  • Amnesia Loop : The Doctor finds evidence his memories were tampered with and asks Seven to help. She shows up in in sickbay to find that someone's tampered with his memories, so he doesn't even remember asking.
  • Armor-Piercing Question : During Seven's What the Hell, Hero? speech to Janeway. Seven: 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?
  • Backstory Invader : An inverted example. Jetal has never been seen before this episode, but she always existed , it was just that the Doctor's memory of her was erased. This probably isn't just because Voyager lacks a B-Cast, however, since the episode relies on creating a mystery about her identity that wouldn't have been possible if they'd used a recognizable person like Lieutenant Ayala. A possible reading is that the entire series up until that point reflects the EMH's edited memories, and Jetal could have been around and involved in major plot points.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy : The Doctor uses his holocamera to reconstruct Ensign Kim's body from the skeleton up, proving what some fans have been saying all along — the man has no balls.
  • Big Damn Starship : Voyager turns up to save the shuttle from the mysterious alien attackers.
  • BFG : An alien beams onto the shuttle and fires a triple-barreled energy weapon that hits all occupants simultaneously.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good : Captain Janeway favors keeping the Doctor in the dark about anything related to the incident that caused his Logic Bomb breakdown...until Seven of Nine calls her out on treating the Doctor like he's Just a Machine .
  • Call-Back : Jetal's body is disposed of inside a photon torpedo casing ejected into the sun .
  • Closest Thing We Got : Given that Voyager lacks a Ship's Counselor (and as a hologram can't do a Vision Quest ) various crewmembers volunteer as a sounding board while the Doctor talks through his problems.
  • Contemplate Our Navels : The Doctor on the holodeck, pondering the nature of his decision, starts going into existential issues of You Can't Fight Fate .
  • Continuity Snarl : The events of the Doctor's breakdown apparently took place prior to Seven joining the crew. Yet in the flashbacks, Janeway is wearing her hair not in the bun of steel or the ponytail she wore during season three, but in the loose bob she has in the present, and Tom is acting as the Doctor's nurse in Sickbay, with no mention of Kes.
  • Crazy-Prepared : After his program is deactivated and altered once, the Doctor duplicates his memory files and orders the computer to reactivate him and restore his memories from backup if something like that happens again. He also sets up his holo-camera to record whoever tampers with his program.
  • Dramatic Irony : In her eulogy to Ensign Jetal, Captain Janeway says she'll live on in their memories.
  • Dull Surprise : The crew has a poker-faced reaction to the Doctor's tale of wiped memories and mysterious ensigns. It's almost like they're trying to hide something...
  • Et Tu, Brute? : The Doctor is outraged when he discovers that Janeway is behind his reprogramming, storming onto the Bridge and confronting her directly. When Tuvok tries to shut him up, he even says, "Et tu, Tuvok?"
  • Face Palm : The Doctor while trying to make Naomi hold still for her medical scan.
  • Flashback Cut : Seven of Nine retrieves some not-quite deleted memories and plays them for the Doctor out of sequence.
  • Flatline : The Doctor has just succeeded with Harry's treatment when Jetal flatlines.
  • Seven of Nine is the only member of the crew opposed to the forced wiping of the Doctor's memories.
  • The Doctor realises Janeway is staying with him even though she's got a fever. He asks her to take a break and insists he'll be alright.
  • Freudian Couch : Inverted, with the Doctor sitting on a chair while Janeway lies on the couch half-asleep. After she leaves however, the Doctor goes and sits on the couch.
  • Friendship Favoritism : The core of the Doctor's guilt trip.
  • Halfway Plot Switch : At first the episode seems like a standard Crisis of the Week involving hostile aliens and wiped memories, then changes into a debate on the rights of artificial lifeforms.
  • Hard Truth Aesop : Multi-fold. The Doctor finds himself in a situation where someone will die and he HAS to make a choice who he is going to save , a reality of any medical professional. He was aware of the chances of this happening, but that didn't make the decision any less difficult. In the aftermath he is wracked with guilt and unable to process that decision which was causing him to lash out randomly, jeopardizing his relationships with the crew and ability to do his job. Janeway's decision to reprogram his memories, akin to jumping through hoops to avoid agitating him, only worked as a temporary measure and he needed time to process his emotions.
  • Here We Go Again! : B'Elanna says this word-for-word after the Doctor gets his memories back and starts beating up on himself again. This time they're convinced to let him try and process it.
  • Heroic BSoD : The Doctor is revealed to have done an almost literal (as he's a computer program) version of this following an incident in which two patients were equally at risk and equally treatable; he chose the one he was better friends with, which was contrary to his programming . The memory was erased from his program, and when it was restored he suffered the same condition but eventually recovered.
  • Hurl It into the Sun : Jetal's Burial in Space .
  • I Did What I Had to Do : Janeway says that she had no choice but to tamper with the Doctor's memories and hide all references to Jetal because he got caught in a feedback loop between his cognitive and ethical programming afterward. Seven convinces her that what he really needs is the chance to work through the conflicting feelings, like any other person .
  • I'll Kill You! : Jetal jokes that she'll kill Neelix for arranging the Surprise Party , but as the scene is first seen as a Flashback Cut taken out of context, it seems to the Doctor like an example of this trope.
  • Immune to Bullets : The alien would have successfully seized the shuttle if the Doctor hadn't proven impervious to his energy blast.
  • Inconvenient Hippocratic Oath : Arguably responsible for the Doctor suffering a programming breakdown; as a doctor, he is programmed to choose which patient he should save based on a logical assessment of which one has the best chance of survival, but in the scenario presented here he is faced with two patients who have an equal chance of survival and makes a choice based on the fact that he was a closer friend to one patient than the other.
  • The Insomniac : Janeway is mildly annoyed that Seven wants a discussion at two in the morning—never mind that Janeway was already awake, reading a book instead of sleeping.
  • Jerkass Ball : Janeway cruelly compares the Doctor to a replicator to justify tampering with his memories, which might have been believable in the first or second season but certainly not after all these years of knowing him and watching him evolve. There's some implication that it's a desperate attempt to continue to justify her years-old decision that she now well knows wasn't right.
  • Just a Machine : Janeway: Coffee, black. (she takes a sip) Lukewarm. Now I've told that replicator a dozen times about the temperature of my coffee. It just doesn't seem to want to listen. Almost as if it's got a mind of its own. But it doesn't. A replicator operates through a series of electronic pathways that allow it to receive instructions and take appropriate action, and there you go. A cup of coffee, a bowl of soup, a plasma conduit, whatever we tell it to do. As difficult as it is to accept, the Doctor is more like that replicator than he is like us. Seven: He would disagree. Janeway: I'm sure he would, but I can't let that change my decision. I learned that the hard way when his program almost self-destructed.
  • Little Miss Snarker : Naomi Wildman. "Try to hold still, please."
  • Logic Bomb : What the Sadistic Choice ends up being for the Doctor. He's stuck between having to make the impartial decision as per his ethical subroutines, and his personal attachment to his friends aboard Voyager . When he does the latter, it causes a breakdown because he can't square that choice with his own programming.
  • Madness Mantra : See Logic Bomb above. In the past and the present, the Doctor asks himself the same question over and over again. Doctor: Two patients. Both injured. Both in imminent danger of death. Both with an equal chance of survival...
  • Meaningful Echo : When Janeway goes to see Seven in her regeneration booth, she repeats the words Seven opened their discussion with in her quarters. "I'm having trouble with the nature of individuality."
  • Meaningful Look : When the Doctor first notes the signs of surgery, Harry Kim is casting worried looks not at his own hologram, but at the Doctor. Later when the Doctor tells the captain of his discovery, Janeway and Tuvok exchange a silent look after he leaves the room.
  • Mind Rape : Captain Janeway to The Doctor. Janeway even justifies her actions because technically the Doctor isn't human, so she was just fixing him. It takes a What the Hell, Hero? speech from Seven before she sees why the Doctor is so horrified by her actions.
  • Montage : The opening scene of the Doctor taking holo-photos of the crew. Until he has to lower the camera to get little Naomi in the frame.
  • Mood Whiplash : The Doctor goes from comically bantering with Neelix to being wracked with guilt.
  • Morality Chain : Janeway reconsiders when Seven tweaks her guilt node.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business : Seven is consistently calm and collected, and even when she's rattled, she tries to pretend that she's fine. So when, during her conversation with Janeway, she admits that she finds Janeway's stance "unsettling", it's enough to make Janeway sit up and take notice.
  • Plot Armor : Deconstructed. Even though there's no way the show would allow Harry to die, that doesn't mean there aren't any consequences to the Doctor's decision to save him.
  • Plot Twist : The Doctor's antagonist is not a Villain of the Week , but his own crewmates acting for what they think is his own good.
  • Posthumous Character : Ensign Ahni Jehtal. The Doctor's decision to save Harry's life instead of hers leads to his breakdown.
  • Even after Janeway promises to secure his database and investigate the matter, the Doctor prepares a backup of his memories to be downloaded after anyone accesses his database, and sets up his holocamera to photograph anyone who enters Sickbay. Sure enough someone enters Sickbay and purges his memory buffer. The computer activates the Doctor a short time later as per his instructions, then downloads the backup memories. The Doctor goes to see what the camera recorded. It turns out to be Captain Janeway.
  • Janeway's reasons for doing this stemmed from the Doctor's actions in those deleted memories. It turns out it was a Sadistic Choice where the Doctor had to choose between two patients who had identical fatal injuries, Harry and Jetal. The deciding factor ended up being the Doctor himself as he's more acquainted with Harry than Jetal, something he's strictly not supposed to do as an impartial life-saver. The resulting Logic Bomb reduces the Doctor to a ballistic, grief-stricken Broken Record . Janeway has been deleting his memories so he doesn't go through that again... and upon his memories coming back, he goes through the exact same breakdown. While the crew adopts a more humane method to help him after that, the Doctor himself admits that Janeway made the right call back then.
  • "Ray of Hope" Ending : Probably the most realistic way this could end. There's no easy answer to what happened to the Doctor, so he stays in the holodeck, on watch (mostly from Janeway), so he can work this out himself.
  • Red Shirt : Like the TNG episode "The Bonding" this episode deconstructs it by revolving around the death of a minor, previously-unknown crew member and making it matter. In fact, the main reason for the Doctor's Heroic BSoD is because he chose to save a main cast member who he knows over someone who, to him In-Universe , is just a Red Shirt .
  • Remember the New Guy? : Done quite literal, as Jetal had never been seen on the show before but was a beloved crewmember before her death. This trope was a necessity, as the first part of the episode is structured as a mystery because the Doctor had all memories of her wiped from his program.
  • Rule of Symbolism : During his breakdown, the Doctor took two fruit, one red and one yellow, to illustrate his decision-making process to Neelix, throwing the red fruit aside as he decides to pick the yellow one .
  • Sadistic Choice : The Doctor is forced to choose either Ensign Harry Kim or Ahni Jetal to save, and ultimately chooses Kim over Jetal.
  • Series Continuity Error : At the time of Jetal's death, Kes was assisting the Doctor in Sickbay, not Tom Paris.
  • Shaped Like Itself : "There is a certain logic to your logic."
  • Short-Distance Phone Call : Jetal enters the messhall but the lights won't turn on. She contacts the Chief Engineer on her commbadge, only to hear B'Elanna's voice in the darkness saying, "Err...go ahead Ensign, or should I say... (everyone) SURPRISE! "
  • Shout-Out : Captain Janeway is reading Vita Nuova , and the Doctor quotes from it at the end of the episode. EMH: 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.
  • Slow Motion : At the funeral, Janeway's voice slows down as she says Jetal will live on in their memory because this is the Doctor's recollection of it.
  • Small Role, Big Impact : The aliens who attacked Voyager , mortally injuring Ahni Jetal and bringing about the dilemma that leads to the Doctor's breakdown.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Mortality : In-Universe . Jetal is popular and likable, but the Doctor doesn't know her as well as he does Harry, so when it comes time to choose whose life to save she is the one who dies.
  • Stepford Smiler : After Jetal's funeral, Perpetual Smiler Neelix is subdued as he helps the Doctor restock with some Healing Herbs . The Doctor however is smiling cheerfully until he starts Produce Pelting , by which time he's transitioned into a Slasher Smile .
  • Suddenly Shouting : The Doctor, when security shows up to restrain him during his breakdown in the Mess Hall. The Doctor: Leave me alone! LET ME GO! WHY DID SHE HAVE TO DIE?! WHY DID I KILL HER?! WHY DID I DECIDE TO KILL HER?! WHY?! SOMEBODY TELL ME WHY!
  • Surprise Party : One is thrown for Ensign Jetal to show that she was liked enough by everyone to merit a fairly sizable gathering.
  • Take a Third Option : Defied when the episode's Sadistic Choice comes up, as the Doctor immediately realizes he doesn't have time to operate on both Kim and Jetal. The only alternative, as Paris suggests, would be the Doctor walking Paris through the procedure so that they can operate on the patients simultaneously, but the Doctor rejects that on the grounds that the procedure is too complicated to explain to someone uninitiated. In light of all that, Paris shouts at the Doctor to make a choice, and he chooses Kim.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill : The Doctor beams the attacking alien back to his ship instead of Tele Fragging him, then gets annoyed when they open fire on the shuttle in response .
  • Triage Tyrant : The Doctor is faced with two patients (Harry Kim and a Red Shirt ) who have an exactly equal chance of survival. He can only treat one of them in time, and the other will die. Because his program cannot find a logical way to decide, he chooses to save Harry because he's a friend. This causes a severe malfunction in his program that forces the crew to erase his memory of the event or risk losing their only medical officer.
  • The Triple : EMH: One particle collides with another, gases expand, planets contract, and before you know it we've got starships and holodecks and chicken soup.
  • Un-person : Ahni Jetal. All records of her are purged from the database, and the crew have been careful not to mention her near the Doctor. Unfortunately the Doctor is taking subatomic scans of each crewmember, and recognizes the microsurgery scars on Harry Kim.
  • The Unreveal : Who the aliens were, as well as why they attacked the shuttle and then Voyager . They appear to be Space Pirates , but we don't know as Voyager never encounters them again .
  • Vengeful Vending Machine : Lampshaded by Captain Janeway, who points out that her replicator is not alive, even though it seems determined to frustrate her with lukewarm coffee.
  • Was It Really Worth It? : Captain Janeway asks Seven of Nine whether the suffering she put her through, by forcing Seven from the Borg Collective, was justified. Seven says that it was.
  • Wham Shot : Janeway being revealed as the one reprogramming the Doctor's memories.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human? : The episode asks the question of whether a sentient hologram should have the right to know everything about their lives, even if it may affect them in the long run.
  • What Measure Is a Mook? : To the crew, Jetal is a valued member; to the audience she would be a Red Shirt in any other episode. The Doctor's choice to save a main character's life because he values them more brings to mind this question.
  • What the Hell, Hero? : The Doctor is pissed at Janeway once her actions are revealed. Seven Of Nine backs him up on this. Janeway eventually softens up, though notably, once he hears the whole story, the Doctor actually agrees with what Janeway did and is fully prepared to accept it happening again.
  • Workaholic : Janeway as always. She doesn't bother showing up for her medical examination, is reading at 3 in the morning instead of sleeping, and stays up with the Doctor until she catches a fever.
  • Worst Aid : Those scoop stretchers used to place Harry and Jetal on the biobeds are used incorrectly—they're designed to unhinge at one end, then close on either side of the body like scissors, to avoid spinal damage when lifting the casualty onto a normal stretcher or operating table.
  • Wound That Will Not Heal : A sci-fi version; the energy discharge that is used against Harry and Jetal stays inside their body and works up to the brain.
  • You Won't Feel a Thing! : For once this is true, as the Doctor assures Naomi. To demonstrate, he allows her to take a holo-photo of him.
  • Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 10 Counterpoint
  • Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
  • Star Trek: Voyager S5 E12: "Bride of Chaotica!"

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Latent Image

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The crew of the Starship Voyager are in the Delta Quadrant, far away from the safety of the Federation, when their Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) goes haywire. The EMH, known as the Doctor, begins to act erratically, attacking crew members and sabotaging vital operations.

The Doctor believes that he has been intentionally been reprogrammed, by someone or something, to make him act this way. He fears that he might be becoming too “human”, causing him to be confused and paranoid about his own actions. The crew are unable to locate the source of the Doctor’s malfunction, and are left with no choice but to ask him to try and fix it on his own.

The Doctor’s investigation leads him to the discovery of a “latent image”, an image buried deep within his programming that his unknown programmer had left behind. The latent image is a message from a long-lost Voyager crewmember – Lieutenant Dawkins, who had been presumed dead after an away mission gone wrong. Dawkins had been using a “holo-projection” device to project his consciousness into the EMH’s program, and had been trying to warn the crew about a strange alien vessel that was following them.

The crew soon find themselves in a desperate battle against the mysterious alien vessel, and it’s up to the Doctor to save the day. With the help of Lieutenant Dawkins’s holo-projection, the Doctor is able to reverse the reprogramming and restore himself to his normal functioning state. In the end, the crew are able to successfully fend off the alien vessel, and the Doctor is able to restore his original program with Dawkins’s help.

Through his self-repairing and self-preserving capabilities, the Doctor is able to find solace in the fact that his “humanity” is more than just a computer program, and that he is in fact more than capable of being a human-like character. The Doctor’s “humanity” is then used to save the day, and the crew of the Starship Voyager are able to continue on with their journey.

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You Talking Trek to Me? (Best of Voyager) – “Latent Image”

“Latent Image” Star Trek: Voyager – Season 5, Episode 11

latent image star trek

The Doctor was one of the most interesting aspects of Star Trek: Voyager’s premise – a holographic character on the main cast. The Next Generation had an android character, but the Doctor felt like an entirely different animal than Data in practically every way (except for their personal explorations of the humanities). The show would occasionally spotlight the inherent oddities of the Doctor’s nature (for some reason I always like seeing him walk through forcefields), but “Latent Image” feels like the first time that the true weirdness of what he is is laid bare in a major way.

What he is, first and foremost, is a computer program. It’s extraordinarily complex and sophisticated, but it’s still a computer program. Holographic beings and sentient machines/computers/programs have been a mainstay of Trek since The Original Series , but they’re usually portrayed (and regarded by the stories) as fully sentient beings that are equal to the “real” biological characters. The Doctor has always been treated as a real person by the show (although not by the other characters initially), but the story of “Latent Image” introduces a wrinkle that highlights the artificial vagaries of what the Doctor is, and melds it with a study of who the Doctor is.

latent image star trek

The Doctor is bugging the crew with his camera again, except there’s a medical purpose this time – he’s taking full internal body scan images with it as part of the crew’s annual physicals (the gigantic, clunky prop is kind of hilarious). While showing Kim his scan, the Doctor notices some scarring at the base of his skull, and realizes that someone performed surgery on him a year and a half ago. The weird thing is that the Doctor recognizes it as his own work, but he has no memory of ever doing it…

He informs Janeway about the discovery, and then asks Seven to perform a scan on his program. An hour later, she meets with him to do it, but he has no memory of ever asking her to. Looking at his program, she sees that his short term memory files have been deleted. Starting to feel suspicious, the Doctor decides to look through his camera photos from 15 months ago to see what they can find. Again, Seven discovers that photos from that period have been erased, but she’s able to recover some of them.

latent image star trek

There’s a lot of computer stuff in the episode, and it’s kind of cool to see. None of it is super crazy or unrealistic, but rather mundane file management and recovery, which kind of makes it more compelling. I’ve often used deleted file recovery programs to scan my hard drive for things I’ve erased, as well as backup software. NERD ALERT.

On the holodeck, Seven and the Doctor see a series of recovered photos – a birthday party for a female crewmember the Doctor has no recollection of, a shuttle mission with her and Kim, an attacking alien ship, as well as an alien brandishing a weapon at them.

Investigating further, Seven finds the Doctor’s missing memory files from 15 months prior. They weren’t deleted, but his program was denied access to them. She restores them, and the Doctor’s mind (as it were) is flooded with a series of disjointed scenes. It’s an interesting sequence that draws attention to the Doctor’s artificial nature in a way the show never has before. The Doctor is a piece of software that contains many, many files – his knowledge, his personality, his skills, and his memories. As Seven uncovers these files he suddenly has knowledge of them again. In the background of one shot, a diagram of his memory scrolls across the monitor, while in the foreground he mentally flashes back into the recollection. It’s weird, but cool.

latent image star trek

The Doctor experiences the memories surrounding the uncovered photos, all out of sequential order – a birthday party in the mess hall for the mysterious woman (Ensign Jetal), the shuttle mission, an alien attack, Voyager launching a torpedo pod, a medical emergency with an injured Jetal and Kim.

The Doctor and Seven share their findings with Janeway and Tuvok, and they vow to get to the bottom of it. The Doctor suspects that the aliens might have altered everyone’s memories (and his program), and that this Ensign Jetal may be one of them. And of course there’s apparently someone on the ship now tampering with his program. These plot points are heavily reminiscent of a couple of Next Generation episodes – “Schisms,” with the crew being operated on without their knowledge, “Conundrum,” where the entire crew’s memory was wiped by a nefarious alien posing as one of them, and “Clues,” where… the entire crew’s memory was wiped by nefarious aliens… who also posed as one of them.

Janeway orders the Doctor to deactivate himself so they can protect his program and figure out what’s going on. After the Doctor and Seven leave, she gives Tuvok a knowing look and we immediately know something else is up…

latent image star trek

As always, Picardo shines in the episode. He returns to sickbay and is visibly frustrated and helpless over the situation. That is, until he gets the bright idea of setting up his camera to face the sickbay computer console. He programs it to take photos in brief intervals if anyone enters, and tells the computer to backup his recent memories in protected storage and restore them if they get deleted. It’s all quite clever and resourceful, and again, is fairly basic computer stuff that’s not far-fetched at all.

latent image star trek

He deactivates himself, and sure enough, someone enters sickbay and deletes all his recent memories. Upon reactivation, the Doctor is confused. But the computer restores his memory files and he suddenly recalls everything that’s happened. It’s a really smart and fun sequence.

What’s not so fun is that he projects an image from his camera of the saboteur and it’s… Bagabond P. SkullFace.

latent image star trek

I mean Captain Janeway. Those eye sockets really threw me for a loop.

latent image star trek

Confronting Janeway on the bridge, he realizes that everyone except Seven is conspiring against him and demands and explanation. In private, Janeway admits to messing with his program. The alien attack happened, and it caused damage to the Doctor’s program they couldn’t repair. She doesn’t elaborate, and explains that the only way to fix the damage was to simply deny him access to the memories of the incident. The Doctor is enraged and feels violated. “How would you like it if I operated on you without your consent?” he asks. “If they operation saved my life, I could learn to live with it,” Janeway shoots back.

latent image star trek

Janeway really, really, does not look good here. As she did in “Nothing Human,” she’s once again operated on a crewmember without their knowledge or consent, believing it to be in the best interest of the ship. Furthermore, her attitude towards the Doctor is incredibly bursque and entirely unsympathetic. If her decision was in the best interest of everyone’s welfare, that’s understandable and very consistent with her personality. Janeway closely adheres to Federation principles, but also is guided by a blunt and unyielding moral imperative to safeguard her ship and get her crew home, at almost any cost. Sure, cool. But her demeanor towards the poor Doctor really paints her in a shitty light and is a bold choice of the show. And it gets worse!

Waiting in sickbay, an agonized Doctor is panicked when Chakotay, Paris, and Seven enter. They need to inspect his memory files and have Paris fill in for him while he’s offline. The Doctor begs Tom for an explanation, and you just feel so fucking bad for him. In this way, the episode also recalls Deep Space Nine’s “Whispers,” where everyone acts shitty and weird to O’Brien for mysterious reasons. Paris confirms that he remembers what happened and how bad it was, and that he agrees with what the captain did. Thanks, buddy.

Seven is diturbed by this and visits Janeway in her quarters. Her inclusion in the story is done very smartly – the original events they’re covering up happened before she came aboard, so she’s learning about all this along with the Doctor (and us, the audience). Because of that (as well as another important detail), her sympathies lie with the Doctor and she questions Janeway about her decision. Janeway smugly orders coffee from the replicator, noting that it never gets the temperature quite right, almost like it has a mind of its own. But it doesn’t, it just operates based on commands and its own software. Ergo, the Doctor is more like the replicator than he is like you or me, she states.

latent image star trek

It’s… just awful of her. To be fair, she may be trying to convince herself of this viewpoint more than she actually believes it, but it’s just such a jarring and horrible thing to say about an individual who’s been a respected member of her crew for 5+ years. The Doctor is a person, period, and has always been portrayed as such by both Picardo and the show overall. To flippantly deny him his personhood after so long is several quantum space fridges too far. Seven is appropriately unsettled by this, and by the fact that although she’s human, she’s also partly mechanical, not so unlike the replicator or the Doctor. At what point will Janeway fuck with her in a similar way, she wonders aloud? Although Janeway comes off really awful in this scene, Seven conversely shines as she expresses her solidarity with artificial beings and their inherent rights.

(I mean, if only one of the previous Trek series had a highly well-regarded courtroom episode dedicated to this issue and its settled legal argument that Janeway could refer to. No? Well, they should definitely make one. Maybe call it, “The Yardstick of a Dude.” OK, that’s terrible and surely X-rated. Moving on…)

latent image star trek

Seven’s harsh words seem to sway Janeway, and she and Torres pop in on the depressed Doctor. The somber close-up shot of the Doctor is evocative and potently communicates his emotional state. Janeway admits that she allowed her preconceived notions of the Doctor’s nature color how she chose to handle the situation. A little late maybe, but it’s better. She offers the Doctor the chance to access the memories, and he accepts.

latent image star trek

The Doctor is able to experience the memories sequentially – a surprise birthday party for Jetal, followed by the shuttle mission in which they’re attacked by an alien who fires a snazzy three-pronged kill beam at all of them. It severely wounds Kim and Jetal, with seemingly no immediate effect on the Doctor. Beamed to sickbay, Kim and Jetal are near death, but the Doctor figures out a way to protect their brains to repair the damage (with Paris’ assistance). Unfortunately, it’s too complex a procedure to do on both simultaneously, and he has to choose who to treat. He starts on Kim and the procedure works, but there’s no chance for celebration as they hear the telltale flatlining sound of Jetal dying right next to them. It’s a haunting moment, punctuated by the askew overhead shot of both patients, one alive, and the other left to die.

latent image star trek

Upon reliving the memories, the Doctor is confused about what the big deal was – he’s programmed to accept the loss of a patient with clinical detachment. But Janeway and Torres give him the next chapter, and he’s in the mess hall with Neelix. Phillips is good in this scene, playing Neelix without his trademark chipper attitude. He’s clearly still distraught over the loss of a well-liked member of the crew and his mood is subdued. The Doctor, on the other hand, is unusually upbeat. Ruminating on the nature of decisions, he quickly descends into a manic, crazed state over the decision he made to save Harry and kill Ensign Jetal. It’s the most unhinged the Doctor has ever been as he pounds on the bar top and screams out. A security team has to be called to deal with him.

latent image star trek

Janeway recounts that he experienced a feedback loop between his cognitive and ethical subroutines, and continued having the same repeating thoughts. There was nothing they could do except delete the memories of the incident. Having full knowledge of the events, the Doctor understands Janeway’s decision and is thoroughly disgusted with himself for choosing his friend over another patient in a triage situation. He starts to freak out all over again before being deactivated. Torres resigns to the option of having to delete the memories yet again, but Janeway is not so sure this time around. She questions their original plan and considers that they were perhaps wrong to not allow the Doctor to wage this battle with himself and his conscience.

Instead, they allow him to keep the memories but arrange a round-the-clock vigil for the Doctor – with him as the patient, the crew take turns keeping him company and acting as a soundboard for his self-berating musings. Two weeks pass. On the holodeck, Janeway reads while the Doctor continues to flagellate himself over the decision he made. It seems that even after two weeks he doesn’t seem to be making any progress in resolving his conflict. Picardo’s performance runs the gamut of emotions in the episode, and here he seems beaten down, weak, and almost on the verge of tears. “Too many possibilities…” he mutters softly to himself. “Too many pathways for my program to follow.” He’s really going through it, and what he’s become seems to be straining the design limits of his program’s parameters. The algorithms he needs to deal with this aren’t there, and he’s on his own.

latent image star trek

“I can’t live with the knowledge of what I’ve done, I can’t,” he pleads, but notices that an exhausted Janeway has fallen asleep. Not only that, but she has a mild fever. She vows to stay with him, but he dismisses her to rest, not wanting to cause any more suffering. It’s interesting that her minor medical need is what jolts him out of his morose state – at the end of the day, he’s still a doctor, and he can’t let that duty slide. The pain of others must come before his. After Janeway leaves, he starts reading her book, The New Life by none other than Dante:

“ 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. “

latent image star trek

The exploration of humanity by artificial beings was a major component of The Next Generation , courtesy of Data’s various studies. The Doctor continued similar exploits on Star Trek: Voyager , but they were as different as the Doctor is from Data. One of the main contrasts is the singular focus of what the Doctor is – a medical hologram designed to heal and treat patients. Just as in “Nothing Human,” there’s a strong and compelling criss-crossing of ethics and medicine in “Latent Image.” The damage from an alien’s weapon gives rise to a seemingly insurmountable conflict in the Doctor’s program. But it’s essentially a battle within his soul over actions he can’t change. Non-artificial lifeforms don’t have the luxury of just deleting unwanted memory files – it’s a painful aspect of being alive and sentient, and one that Janeway allows the Doctor to experience and deal with. To do otherwise would deny him his humanity, a mistake she made with him once already.

The pain of losing a patient because of a choice he made gnaws at the Doctor and drives him into a kind of psychosis. As much as the episode draws attention to the artificial/digital nature of the EMH, it also illustrates the humanity that all those algorithms and lines of code have given rise to, which is very on-brand for Star Trek . As Captain Picard once said, we’re all machines of differing natures. Some of us are machines of cells and chemicals, some are positronic relays and circuits, and others are software and holographic projections. But the emergent property of these complex building blocks is the same – sentience, and all the roses and thorns that go along with it. The Doctor has as much of a soul as any of the other biological crewmembers of Voyager , and he suffers a deep emotional wound to it here. It’s the kind of pain we all have to endure and overcome at times, no matter what we’re made of.

Stray Observations:

  • Deleting the memory files surrounding this one incident seems straightforward enough, but what they also did was delete any memories of Jetal for the last five years . They would presumably also have to get rid of any other traces of her. Did they also forbid anyone from ever speaking her name again? This approaches Armin Tanzarian territory. It seems like an extraordinary amount of trouble to protect the Doctor, and loops around to being kind of disrespectful to Jetal. She dies and everyone has to pretend she never existed because it will freak someone out?
  • It’s too bad there isn’t some way of reactivating a dead body up to 18 hours after death . Maybe a special technique one of the ex-Borg members of the crew know how to do? Shame, really.
  • The sixth season would have an episode where a resurrected (female) member of the crew comes back to the ship. It’s a totally different person than Jetal though, which seems odd and a missed opportunity.
  • Before the Doctor accuses Janeway of conspiring against him, her, Chakotay and Tuvok are having a conversation about Sumo championships. Tuvok reveals that as a student of all martial arts, he has always been a fan of the sport. I love that detail; it is pretty fun to watch.
  • LOL, who are these guys?

latent image star trek

  • It always bothered me that the Doctor has zero medical staff outside of Tom Paris. After Kes left no one stepped up to replace her, which is just stupid. How many people work in engineering? How many people work in security? Tons, right? And yet the medical staff of Voyager is exactly one person? The situation in this episode illustrates this problem starkly. Maybe if there were another trained medical person on the ship Jetal would still be alive. Or how about just creating a holographic nurse? In “Nothing Human,” they’re able to create an entire doctor without much hassle. C’mon, people. Do you just not want to be alive? Tom took CPR once, that’s the best we can do!
  • The cinematography on the episode is on point and there’s some great shots here.

latent image star trek

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Star Trek: Voyager

Latent Image

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Latent Image Stardate: Unknown Original Airdate: 20 January 1999

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Screen Rant

Best star trek: voyager episode of each main character.

Star Trek: Voyager had many great ensemble episodes, but every main character on the show also got their chance to shine in the spotlight.

  • Each main character on Star Trek: Voyager had standout episodes that showcased their individual strengths and storylines.
  • Episodes like "Before and After" (Kes), "Mortal Coil" (Neelix), "Latent Image" (The Doctor), and "One" (Seven of Nine) brought depth and development to these characters.
  • Captain Janeway's standout episode was "Year of Hell," which demonstrated her heroism, loyalty, vulnerability, and complexity.

Each main character on Star Trek: Voyager got a chance to shine during the show's run, and all of them have an episode that stands out as their best . Voyager was the fourth series in the Star Trek timeline and featured a cast of diverse characters, including Star Trek 's first female Captain, Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). During Voyager 's run, Janeway led her crew on a journey through the Delta Quadrant after the USS Voyager became stranded on the other side of the galaxy in the show's pilot episode, "Caretaker, Parts I&II."

Like many Star Trek series, Voyager 's cast of characters acted as an ensemble, with no single character standing out as the "lead." Although Janeway was technically the show's main character, every member of the core cast had episodes that focused on them, delving more into each character's backstory and enriching them so that episodes where everyone worked together were made that much more enjoyable . All of Voyager 's main characters had multiple episodes centered on them, but certain episodes undeniably stand out as each character's best of the series.

Every Voyager Character Who Has Returned In Star Trek (& How)

10 kes (jennifer lien), "before and after" - voyager season 3, episode 21.

"Before and After" was a tour de force for Kes, who up until that point had been underutilized . The episode focused on Kes traveling back in time from the moment of her death, showcasing an alternate future as she attempted to determine what was happening to her. Although some of the storytelling choices were surprising, such as Kes's future self being married to Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), the character got to shine in a way that most other episodes didn't allow her to. "Before and After" also foreshadowed an important Voyager season 4 storyline, the "Year of Hell."

Honorable Mention: "Warlord" (Voyager season 3, episode 10)

9 Neelix (Ethan Phillips)

"mortal coil - voyager season 4, episode 12.

Neelix-focused episodes of Voyager were often hit or miss, but "Mortal Coil" stands above the rest as the character's best story. The episode explored questions of spirituality, existential issues, and psychological trauma when Neelix was brought back to life after being killed in a shuttle accident. "Mortal Coil" is a beautiful exploration of Neelix's past, culture, and trauma , and grapples with very real questions of life and death. The episode was also the first time Neelix was shown in the role of Naomi Wildman's (Brooke Stephens) godfather, kicking off one of the show's sweetest and most genuine father-daughter relationships.

Honorable Mention: "Homestead" (Voyager season 7, episode 23)

8 The Doctor (Robert Picardo)

"latent image" - voyager season 5, episode 11.

The Doctor was lucky enough to have several stellar episodes throughout Voyager 's run, but "Latent Image" was the character at his finest. The episode dealt with questions about the Doctor's humanity, which came into conflict with his original programming when he saved the life of Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) while allowing another Ensign who he did not know well to die. The Doctor's right to autonomy was also explored as the crew grappled with whether to erase his memories to keep his program from degrading.

The Doctor was always at his best when the question of his sentience was explored , and "Latent Image" was a wonderful example of this. The episode allowed Robert Picardo to stretch his acting talents and provided a gripping storyline that hooked audiences from the start with a mysterious twist. "Latent Image" also marked a real step forward in the Doctor’s journey to becoming more human and a shift in how the crew treated him, as an equal rather than a tool.

Honorable Mention: "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy" (Voyager season 6, episode 4)

7 Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan)

"one" - voyager season 5, episode 25.

Seven of Nine was another character with many exceptional episodes during Voyager 's run, but "One" combined the best aspects of several of them to make a winner. Watching the character grapple with being alone as she was forced to pilot the USS Voyager across a dangerous nebula by herself while the crew is in stasis truly drove home Seven's Borg nature coming into conflict with her reemerging humanity . "One" was hilarious and terrifying by turns, and explored an emotional side of Seven that not many other episodes did, showcasing the duality of her strength and vulnerability perfectly.

Honorable Mention: "Someone to Watch Over Me" (Voyager season 5, episode 22)

Jeri Ryan, Voyager’s Seven Of Nine & Star Trek Future Explained

6 ensign harry kim (garrett wang), "timeless" - voyager season 5, episode 6.

"Timeless" showed a completely different side of Harry Kim after a miscalculation during an attempt to return home caused Voyager to crash into an ice planet, killing the whole crew except for Harry and Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran). The bitter, jaded, future version of Harry Kim in "Timeless" was such a departure from the character's usual personality and allowed Garrett Wang to show a different side of his acting talents, which was a big part of what made the episode so compelling . "Timeless" was also a classic Star Trek time-travel episode with a truly engaging storyline from start to finish.

Honorable Mention: "Emanations" (Voyager season 1, episode 9)

5 Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson)

"barge of the dead" - voyager season 6, episode 3.

Voyager episodes didn't often feature B'Elanna Torres, but the ones that did were always guaranteed to be great stories. "Barge of the Dead" was no exception, tapping back into what made B'Elanna such an interesting character: her half-Klingon heritage. The episode grappled with questions of life, death, and spirituality while thoroughly exploring B'Elanna's relationship with her Klingon mother, something that had only been hinted at before. The mother-daughter relationships in B'Elanna's life, including her relationship with Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) acted as the episode's emotional core , and the expansion of Klingon lore was a welcome addition.

Honorable Mention: "Faces" (Voyager season 1, episode 14)

4 Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill)

"thirty days" - voyager season 5, episode 9.

Tom Paris is arguably the character with the most dramatic arc during Voyager 's run, and "Thirty Days" demonstrated just how far he had come. "Thirty Days" was a fascinating character study of Tom's psyche and motivations as he dictated a letter to his father while stuck in the brig after violating the Prime Directive. The episode showcased how forceful Tom's convictions could be for things he cared about, a far cry from the apathetic, jade man he had been in Voyager 's pilot . "Thirty Days" was also a wonderful exploration of Tom's most important relationships, including Captain Janeway and B'Elanna Torres.

Honorable Mention: "Bride of Chaotica!" (Voyager season 5, episode 12)

3 Lt. Tuvok (Tim Russ)

"riddles" - voyager season 6, episode 6.

Some of Star Trek 's most interesting episodes involve a Vulcan losing control of his logic. "Riddles" was one of these episodes for Tuvok, showing the character's emotional side after an alien attack caused Tuvok to suffer brain damage. Seeing a vulnerable, childlike Tuvok was hilarious and heartwarming by turns, but the deeper emotional power of "Riddles" came through the bittersweet exploration of Tuvok's complicated relationship with Neelix . Tuvok and Neelix had always been portrayed as hilariously antagonistic, but watching Neelix's dedication to helping Tuvok navigate his new personality and the true friendship that blossomed between the two packed a punch.

Honorable Mention: "Innocence" (Voyager season 2, episode 22)

All 5 Star Trek Characters Played By Tuvok Actor Tim Russ

2 commander chakotay (robert beltran), "shattered" - voyager season 7, episode 11.

Most Chakotay-centric episodes were in Voyager 's early seasons, but "Shattered" was a rare late-season treat that followed the character navigating through different time periods after Voyager became temporally split. Besides being a wonderful retrospective of Voyager in its final season, having Chakotay be the episode's point-of-view character was perfect . As the ship's First Officer and former Captain of Voyager 's Maquis crew, Chakotay was the ideal person to rally everyone to bring the ship back into temporal sync. Additionally, "Shattered" offered a great take on Chakotay and Captain Janeway, and brought back characters like Seska (Martha Hackett) for one more outing.

Honorable Mention: "Tattoo" (Voyager season 2, episode 9)

1 Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew)

"year of hell, parts i&ii" - voyager season 4, episodes 8&9.

As Voyager 's Captain, Kathryn Janeway was at the center of almost every episode, but "Year of Hell, Parts I&II" was Janeway at her absolute best. The episodes demonstrated Janeway's greatest strengths and greatest flaws as she and Voyager's crew weathered a brutal year-long attack by the Krenim Imperium. "Year of Hell" pushed Janeway to her limit, portraying her as a true hero and demonstrating her unwavering loyalty to her crew while also beautifully capturing her vulnerability and complexity . "Year of Hell" is one of Star Trek: Voyager 's best episodes , and this is largely thanks to Captain Janeway's performance.

Honorable Mention: "Counterpoint" (Voyager season 5, episode 10)

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series)

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The 10 best Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked

Dylan Roth

As much as fans love to praise Star Trek as groundbreaking science fiction, it’s important to remember that, for most of the franchise’s history, Trek was weekly procedural television. Until the streaming era, each series was churning out roughly 26 episodes a year, and by the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager , some of the creative crew had been in the business of making Star Trek for over a decade. The franchise was a crossover commercial success, the kind of success that the money men like to leave exactly as it is for as long as it’s doing steady numbers.

10. Counterpoint (season 5, episode 10)

9. the thaw (season 2, episode 23), 8. mortal coil (season 4, episode 12), 7. latent image (season 5, episode 11), 6. bride of chaotica (season 5, episode 12), 5. living witness (season 4, episode 23), 4. prime factors (season 1, episode 10), 3. year of hell, parts i & ii (season 4, episodes 8 & 9), 2. blink of an eye (season 6, episode 12), 1. timeless (season 5, episode 6).

The operation was essentially on rails, and there was a lot of pressure from the studio and the network to keep it that way, which accounts for the general blandness of Voyager and the early years of its successor, Enterprise . The waning years of Trek’s golden era were plagued by creative exhaustion and, consequently, laziness. Concepts from previous series were revisited, often with diminishing returns, and potentially groundbreaking ideas were nixed from on high in order to avoid upsetting the apple cart.

That’s not to say that Star Trek: Voyager isn’t still a solid television show, and even many Trekkies’ favorite. The saga of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her gallant crew finding their way home from the farthest reaches of the galaxy may not be as ambitious as it could have been, but it is steadily entertaining, which is why new and nostalgic fans alike enjoy it as cozy “comfort viewing.” For our part, however, we tend to enjoy the episodes that have a certain emotional intensity or creative spark, that feel like conceptual or stylistic risks. As such, you might find that our list of the 10 best Voyager episodes differs greatly from some of the others out there. We like when Voyager dared to get heavy, or silly, or sappy, or mean. So, without further ado, let’s raise a glass to the journey …

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Counterpoint drops the audience into the middle of an ongoing story,in which Voyager is boarded and inspected by agents of a fascist government, the Devore. The Devore treat all travelers through their space with suspicion, but are particularly concerned with capturing and detaining all telepaths, who they view as dangerous. Despite the risks, Captain Janeway is attempting to smuggle a group of telepathic refugees to safety, all while putting on a show of cooperation for smiling Devore Inspector Kashyk (Mark Harelik). Much of the plot takes place in the background, obscured from the audience in order to build suspense. The real focus is on the evolving dynamic between Janeway and Kashyk, a rivalry that simmers into one of the Voyager captain’s rare romances. Kashyk works in the service of what are, transparently, space Nazis, but when he offers to defect to Voyager, can his intentions be trusted?

Beyond its intriguing premise, Counterpoint is a particularly strong production with a lot of subtle hints of creative flair. Director Les Landau and director of photography Marvin Rush, who had been both working on Star Trek since the 1980s, shoot the hell out of this story, breaking from Voyager ’s even lighting and predictable camera moves to make some very deliberate choices that build a great deal of tension around what is essentially a bottle episode. The makeup team, supervised by equally seasoned Trek veteran Michael Westmore, supplies a memorable and imaginative makeup design for an alien astrophysicist who appears in all of two scenes in this episode and is never utilized again. Most of all, Kate Mulgrew provides what may be her most subtle, human performance in the entire series, embodying Janeway’s famous conviction and strength of will while also granting a rare glimpse at her more vulnerable side without ever straying into melodrama.

If you look back at Star Trek: The Original Series , in-between the deep dramas and camp classics, you’ll find a lot of episodes that are just plain weird. The same is true for the best Star Trek spinoffs, and there’s no Voyager story as boldly off-putting as The Thaw , which guest stars This is Spinal Tap and Better Call Saul ’ s Michael McKean as a maniacal AI who literally scares people to death. In this episode, Voyager comes across a group of aliens who have been trapped in suspended animation ever since an environmental disaster struck their planet two decades earlier. To pass the time while in hibernation, the survivors have hooked their brains up to a virtual reality, where they are supposed to be entertained by a wacky character known only as “the Clown.”

Unfortunately, what the Clown finds most entertaining is probing their minds for their innermost fears and turning it into weird performance art, and he refuses to let his audience leave. When the Voyager crew attempts to rescue them, the Clown takes Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) hostage and proceeds to menace him for most of the episode. And, folks, it’s a trip.

The Thaw is a colorful, not entirely comprehensible, totally unclassifiable episode. It’s sort of horror, it’s sort of comedy, it’s sort of character study, but mostly it’s just entertaining. And for however much of it is up to interpretation, it’s a rare glimpse at the psyche of Harry Kim, one of Voyager’s least explored characters. Above all, however, it’s a delight to watch McKean perform what’s essentially his take on the Joker, a homicidal clown with a genius intellect and a poetic flair. Mulgrew, consequently, gets to play Batman, facing down his gleeful menace with stillness and determination. It’s one of the few real treats from the early seasons of the series, one whose reputation among fans has only grown since its premiere in 1996.

Aside from maybe The Next Generation ’s Wesley Crusher, no Star Trek character was as immediately reviled as Voyager’s chef, ambassador, and morale officer Neelix (Ethan Phillips). On most episodes of Voyager , Neelix is the goofy comic relief, performing folksy, unfunny antics around the mess hall or annoying the stoic Vulcan Lt. Tuvok (Tim Russ) with his naivety and effervescence. His unsettling long-term romantic relationship with Kes, who is technically a two-year-old when the series begins, is also part of Trek’s most irritating love triangle.

And yet, when Neelix is the center of an episode, it often reveals him to be one of the show’s most textured and interesting characters. Neelix is a survivor of a devastating war that destroyed his home and claimed the lives of his entire family. Beneath the persona of a “happy wanderer” resides a deep sea of melancholy and a predisposition towards depression. It’s a performance for his own benefit, as well as for the weary Voyager crew, and if it seems like he’s trying too hard, that’s because he is.

In the episode Mortal Coil , Neelix is killed on an away mission, only to be resuscitated 18 hours later by Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and her advanced Borg medicine. The crew is happy to have him back, but the experience rocks Neelix to his core. Neelix has always believed that he would be reunited with his family in the afterlife, but upon his death, he experienced no such thing. Neelix’s crisis of faith provides Phillips an opportunity to really dig his teeth into his character, and to take a heavy, nuanced look at belief, mortality, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Writer Bryan Fuller, who would go on to create NBC’s Hannibal , puts his psychological horror chops to great use here, and director Allan Kroeker sustains a feeling of dread that places the audience on edge and off-balance. The story resolves itself a little too quickly and is never mentioned again, but that’s par for the course on Voyager. But when evaluated on its own, Mortal Coil  holds up against some of Trek’s best character studies.

Following up on the popularity of Data on The Next Generation , Voyager debuted with its own artificial crewmember, the Emergency Medical Hologram (Robert Picardo), usually just called “the Doctor.” Rather than a supposedly emotionless android , the Doctor is a hologram based on the grouchy engineer who designed him and endowed with the medical knowledge of the entire Federation. At the start of the series, everyone — including the Doctor himself — considers him to be a tool intended for short-term use, rather than a person, but since he’s left online for years rather than hours, he gradually develops his own personality and preferences, becoming a sentient individual.

Unlike in Data’s case, however, it takes the crew a long time to get used to the idea of the Doctor being his own man, and they continue to infringe on his rights, his privacy, and his very programming for much of the series. Sometimes the Doctor’s indignity is played for laughs, sometimes for sympathy, and in our next episode, for horror.

In Latent Image , the Doctor discovers evidence that he performed a delicate neurosurgery on Ensign Kim 18 months earlier, but he has no memory of the event, and neither does the rest of the crew. With the help of Seven of Nine, who joined the cast in the intervening year, the Doctor attempts to unravel the mystery of what really happened, leading to a terrible discovery that calls his relationship with Capt. Janeway and the rest of the crew into question. We won’t give away the answer here, but the story digs deep into the complexity of the Doctor’s character and his nature as an ascended artificial intelligence, and offers Picardo his meatiest acting challenge. You won’t find it on a lot of Best of Voyager lists, but it remains one of the show’s greatest hidden treasures.

Lest we leave you with the impression that the best of Voyager is all gloom and doom, our next entry is one of the lightest and funniest episodes of the series. Despite being set aboard a Starfleet vessel blasted to the far side of the galaxy with limited resources and no support, Voyager assures the audience early on that the ship’s holodecks are still fully functional, allowing the crew to go on their LARPing (live-action role-playing) adventures just like on The Next Generation . Most of the crew’s fantasies proved to be pretty forgettable, until the introduction of Tom Paris’ (Robert Duncan McNeill) new favorite holonovel, The Adventures of Captain Proton . Modeled after the classic Flash Gordon film serials — right down to the cheap effects and black-and-white photography — Captain Proton became a recurring treat during Voyager ’s fifth season, and is at the center of the No. 6 pick on our list, Bride of Chaotica!

In this episode, Tom and Harry’s latest excursion into the monochrome world of Captain Proton attracts the attention of photonic beings from another dimension, to whom the fictional villain Doctor Chaotica (Martin Rayner) is terrifyingly real. War breaks out between the photonic sentients and the 1930s-style bad guys, and the only way to save the day is for the crew to play along with the campy program. And because no Star Trek series is complete without the captain getting into a silly outfit and hamming it up, Janeway must pose as Chaotica’s evil bride, the devilish Arachnia! Mulgrew and the rest of the cast are plainly having a ball with this episode, and the fun is contagious. Keeping the holodeck around for the run of Voyager  may have been one of the signs that the series was going to play things relatively safe, but it did give us one of the franchise’s best holodeck episodes.

History is written by the victors, and subject to countless revisions over the passing centuries. How much of what we think of as historical fact is actually widely accepted conjecture or outright fabrication? We’ll probably never know, unless some eyewitness from the distant past turns up in our present to set things straight. This, naturally, is exactly what happens in Living Witness , as a backup copy of the Doctor is reactivated on an alien planet 700 years after Voyager participates in a pivotal political conflict.

For the Kyrians, it’s a well-known fact that the Warship Voyager eagerly aided their aggressive neighbors, the Vaskans, in unleashing a weapon of mass destruction against their homeworld. Captain Janeway is a cutthroat who will stop at nothing to get her crew home, Seven of Nine habitually assimilates her enemies and maintains her own small Borg collective onboard, and the Doctor is an android. When the holographic Doctor is awakened, he is aghast at the way his friends have been mischaracterized and sets out to prove what really happened, or else be punished for the genocide they’re accused of committing.

The Voyager cast never got the chance to play in the famous Star Trek Mirror Universe, home to the over-the-top evil versions of our Starfleet heroes, but Living Witness offers Mulgrew, Robert Beltran (Commander Chakotay), and company the opportunity to go full cartoon baddie, all in the name of poignant satire. It’s a bizarre comedy episode with an uncomfortable, but undeniable lesson: Time flattens everything. From a distance, every person, group, or thing becomes either all good or all bad, and that evaluation changes depending on who’s looking, and from where. In order to preserve the nuance of truth, we have to be willing to treat history as a process rather than a product, or else lose all sense of reality.

For fans who hoped that Voyager would lean into its intriguing premise of a motley crew of officers and terrorists having to rough it in the wilderness of space, much of the series turned out to be a real letdown. Almost immediately, the tension between the upstanding Starfleet and scrappy Maquis crewmembers, and the added tension of having to scrape and forage to survive, began to dissolve until Voyager was more or less the same familiar Trek that fans had been getting for the previous seven years. However, early on, there are a few episodes that truly capitalize on the show’s potential. The best example of this is Prime Factors , which introduces a dilemma that divides the crew between those who hold Starfleet’s principles as sacrosanct and those who didn’t sign up for this and just want to go home.

The setup is a terrific reversal of a classic Star Trek problem. A group needs help, but helping them means violating the Prime Directive, which forbids interfering in the internal affairs of other cultures. The twist? This time, our heroes aren’t the technologically advanced institution debating the virtues of foreign intervention, they’re the party in need. The friendly, benevolent Sikarians have the technology to send Voyager home instantly, but their own Prime Directive dictates that they not share it. How do Janeway and company feel when the shoe is on the other foot? How will a divided crew take the news, and will they all be inclined to abide by the Sikarians’ ruling?

It’s a fascinating study of ethics, ethical relativism, and the smugness often projected by even the most well-meaning of privileged do-gooders. How many planets have been a Federation ship’s “problem of the week” to be solved (or not solved) and then forgotten? In Prime Factors , our Starfleet stalwarts experience what it’s like to become someone’s pet cause, and learn that the charity of the privileged and comfortable only lasts as long as it’s convenient and self-gratifying.

If Prime Factors exemplifies the potential of Voyager ’s beginnings, Year of Hell  is a glimpse of what the show could have become if it had stayed the course. In this episode, which was initially envisioned as a season-long arc , Voyager’s long journey home takes them through the Krenim Imperium, whose brutal militaristic regime treats them as invaders and repeatedly kicks the crap out of them for 12 long months. The situation aboard Voyager gets increasingly dire as the crew takes casualties and the ship falls into disrepair. Hard choices have to be made about how to survive, and whether or not their goal of reaching Earth is even attainable. Janeway and company are pushed to their limits and left with permanent physical and psychological scars.

Or, they would be, if this wasn’t also a time travel story. The thrill of Year of Hell is undercut somewhat by being a “What If?” story whose events are erased from the timeline before the credits roll on Part II, but the actual time travel mechanics of the episode are fun and interesting. From the outset, the audience knows that the timeline of the story is in flux, as the power-mad Krenim scientist Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) selectively erases entire civilizations from time in order to restore his planet’s empire to full strength and rewrite his wife’s untimely death.

However, the characters don’t learn this until nearly nearly a third of the way through the story, after we’ve already seen their circumstances suddenly change a few times. Year of Hell  becomes a story about causality, about the reverberations of the smallest actions upon the grand tapestry of history, and the futility of trying to curate one’s own fate. It’s a terrific two-hour epic, and even if we’d rather have seen it play out over the course of an entire year, we wouldn’t dare try to go back and change it.

If Voyager isn’t going to be about a struggle for survival in the wilderness of space, then it damn well ought to be about exploring its wonders. Blink of an Eye is the kind of episode that could easily fit into any Star Trek series (or a non-Trek one, as its premise is suspiciously similar to the 1980 Robert L. Forward novel Dragon’s Egg ). Here, Voyager becomes trapped in the orbit of a planet with a strange property — for every 1.03 second that occurs in normal space, a year passes below. As the civilization on the planet evolves over centuries from a pre-industrial society to a futuristic one, the starship Voyager remains a fixture in their sky, inspiring religion, folklore, and a cultural obsession with reaching the stars.

The story cuts back and forth between the Voyager crew’s attempts to escape the planet’s orbit and generations of scientists and philosophers as their understanding of their celestial visitor evolves. Where some Trek episodes such as A Piece of the Action or Who Watches the Watchers frame accidental interference into an alien culture as a irreversible calamity, Blink of an Eye  takes a more subtle approach, showing the often inspiring ways that a civilization grapples with the great mysteries of life.

The highlight of the episode is guest star Daniel Dae Kim (pre- Lost ) as one of the first astronauts from the planet to set foot aboard Voyager. Through his eyes, we get to experience the joy and overwhelming emotional power of discovery, the very thing that inspires our Starfleet heroes to explore space in the first place. Star Trek is, ultimately, a show about curiosity, about humanity’s irrepressible drive to learn and understand our universe. There are few episodes in the entire Star Trek canon that capture this feeling more perfectly than Blink of an Eye . It’s the kind of story that, though simple and relatively low-stakes, should tug on the heartstrings of anyone who has sought inner peace through knowledge and appreciation of their outside world.

For Voyager ’s 100th episode, producers Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, and Joe Menosky decided to crash the ship into a planet and kill off almost the entire cast. We’re kidding! Well, sort of. Timeless  follows future versions of Chakotay and Harry Kim, the only survivors of Voyager, which was destroyed during a test of a new form of propulsion. This new technology brought Chakotay and Kim’s shuttle all the way home, but the rest of the crew was condemned to an icy grave. Racked with guilt over his role in their deaths, Kim becomes obsessed with going back in time to undo the disaster.

The story is told across two time frames, splitting between the present of the show and a future in which Kim and Chakotay’s quest to fix their mistake has made them outlaws. It’s a thrilling time travel episode that puts the focus on the show’s most neglected regular characters. Chakotay gets to be roguish again, a quality he’d long since shed along with the rest of his personality. For his part, Wang actually gets to show some range, playing a brooding, self-loathing wreck with nothing left to lose.

Even though it’s a foregone conclusion that the time travel mission will succeed and none of this story will have happened, Timeless truly feels like an event. It’s emotional, it’s visually striking, and occasionally very funny. (Seven of Nine’s first experience with alcohol ranks among the most quotable and memetic scenes in the series.) It’s only an hour long, but it plays like a movie. The stakes are high, the scope is vast, the characters are rich, and there’s even a cute cameo from Next Generation star LeVar Burton, who also directed the episode.

Voyager is often feather-light, and occasionally, as the rest of this list demonstrates, super heavy. Timeless perfectly captures the balance of intensity and fun of a great “Star Trek” feature, akin to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or Star Trek: First Contact . It probably shouldn’t be anyone’s first Voyager , but when we’re in the mood to check out just one of the show’s episodes, this is the one we reach for.

For more Star Trek content, please check out the best Star Trek: The Original Series episodes , the best Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes , and the best Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes .

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Dylan Roth

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We’re sure we could debate all day about whether or not Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a superhero show, but if it is, it’s the best one ever. The saga of high school student (and later, college dropout) Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her double life as the magically empowered Slayer still holds up as one of the great action-adventure series in American TV history. The show broke ground in several ways, including its user of carefully plotted seasonal arcs, its explorations of gender and sexuality, and its unique and quirky dialect. As Buffy and her best friends Willow (Allyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicholas Brendan) grew up, so did the series, becoming more emotionally and structurally complicated. It’s a formative text for an entire generation of viewers and storytellers, to the extent that its pervasive influence has actually become a problem. (Must all heroes be superintelligent quip machines?) Its legacy has also grown more complicated, as allegations of creator Joss Whedon’s casually cruel and unprofessional behavior toward his cast — particularly its female actors — has tarnished his legacy as a television innovator and feminist ally. TV is a collaborative medium, but Whedon is impossible to separate from his work -- he wrote and directed the entire top half of our list of favorite episodes and a lot of the bottom half, too. Make no mistake: There is no level of quality that Whedon’s work could attain that would excuse his alleged mistreatment of his subordinates and co-workers. However, speaking for ourselves, the work still holds up incredibly well, and it’s a series we can’t help but revisit again and again. Editor's note: Spoilers ahead.

10. Chosen (season 7, episode 22)

While you may not think of genre storytelling as the most fertile ground for developing fascinating, complex characters, sci-fi TV proves the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Over the long history of sci-fi on television, we've gotten a number of hugely compelling characters who have grown and changed over the course of seasons and years.

Whether these characters are human, alien, or something else entirely, each one of them has compelled us, and sometimes, they've even managed to worm their way into our hearts forever. 10. Kerr Avon (Blake's 7)

Memory Beta, non-canon Star Trek Wiki

A friendly reminder regarding spoilers ! At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the finale of Picard and the continuations of Discovery , Lower Decks , Prodigy and Strange New Worlds , the advent of new eras in Star Trek Online gaming , as well as other post-56th Anniversary publications such as the new ongoing IDW comic . Therefore, please be courteous to other users who may not be aware of current developments by using the {{ spoiler }}, {{ spoilers }} or {{ majorspoiler }} tags when adding new information from sources less than six months old . Also, please do not include details in the summary bar when editing pages and do not anticipate making additions relating to sources not yet in release. ' Thank You

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  • 2.1 Characters
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  • 3 Information
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Summary [ ]

References [ ], characters [ ], starships and vehicles [ ], locations [ ], races and cultures [ ], states and organizations [ ], other references [ ], information [ ], related stories [ ].

Seven of Nine

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Connections [ ].

  • " Latent Image " article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
  • 1 Odyssey class
  • 2 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
  • 3 Wesley Crusher (mirror)

IMAGES

  1. Star Trek: Voyager 5 X 11 "Latent Image" Harry Kim, Seven Of Nine, Jeri

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  2. Star Trek: Voyager 5 X 11 "Latent Image" Nancy Bell as Ensign Jetal

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  3. 5-11: Latent Image

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  4. Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Latent Image”

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  5. Screenshot: CBS

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  6. Star Trek: Voyager

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VIDEO

  1. Hackers

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COMMENTS

  1. Latent Image (Star Trek: Voyager)

    " Latent Image " is the 105th episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager airing on the UPN network, the 11th episode of the fifth season.

  2. Latent Image (episode)

    When The Doctor discovers evidence that his memory files may have been tampered with, it sets in motion a chain of events that lead to the recollection of the death of a crew member, one The Doctor believes he was responsible for. Contents 1 Summary 1.1 Teaser

  3. "Star Trek: Voyager" Latent Image (TV Episode 1999)

    Latent Image Episode aired Jan 20, 1999 TV-PG 46m IMDb RATING 8.3 /10 2.2K YOUR RATING Rate Action Adventure Sci-Fi The Doctor discovers a profoundly personal mystery when evidence of performing surgery on Ens. Kim eighteen months ago arises - for which the Doctor has no memory. Director Michael Vejar Writers Gene Roddenberry Rick Berman

  4. "Latent Image"

    Directed by Mike Vejar Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan "Our doctor is now our patient." — Janeway's Log Nutshell: Hmmm... My feelings on "Latent Image" might best be summed up as above, with the elusive, all-purpose "hmmm..." The question is what kind of vocal inflection goes with that "hmmm."

  5. Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 11 Latent Image / Recap

    Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 11 Latent Image Fridge Headscratchers Recap Trivia WMG YMMV Create New The aftermath of this would be the death of one ensign, and the descent into madness of one hologram. The Doctor is surprised to find evidence of an old surgical procedure he did on Harry Kim that he cannot remember.

  6. Latent Image (Star Trek: Voyager)

    "Latent Image" is the 105th episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager airing on the UPN network, the 11th episode of the fifth season. The show has stories about a spacecraft, the eponymous USS Voyager, traveling back to Earth after being lost on the other side of the Galaxy; the episodes typically focus on problems encountered by its crew.

  7. Latent Image

    January 18, 2022 Latent Image The crew of the Starship Voyager are in the Delta Quadrant, far away from the safety of the Federation, when their Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) goes haywire. The EMH, known as the Doctor, begins to act erratically, attacking crew members and sabotaging vital operations.

  8. You Talking Trek to Me? (Best of Voyager)

    "Latent Image" Star Trek: Voyager - Season 5, Episode 11. The Doctor was one of the most interesting aspects of Star Trek: Voyager's premise - a holographic character on the main cast.The Next Generation had an android character, but the Doctor felt like an entirely different animal than Data in practically every way (except for their personal explorations of the humanities).

  9. "Star Trek: Voyager" Latent Image (TV Episode 1999)

    39 out of 43 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote. Permalink In this superior episode of Voyager the Doctor discovers that he has performed major surgery on Harry Kim but has no memory of it and when asked Harry claims to have no memory of it either.

  10. "Star Trek: Voyager" Latent Image (TV Episode 1999)

    Latent Image (1999) Plot Showing all 2 items Jump to: Summaries (2) Summaries The Doctor discovers a profoundly personal mystery when evidence of performing surgery on Ens. Kim eighteen months ago arises - for which the Doctor has no memory. The Doctor uncovers evidence his memory was erased eighteen months ago.

  11. Latent Image

    When The Doctor discovers that his short-term memory has been tampered with, he launches an investigation.

  12. Episode Preview: Latent Image

    © 2023 CBS Studios Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, and CBS Interactive Inc., Paramount companies. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

  13. The Voyager Transcripts

    Latent Image Stardate: Unknown Original Airdate: 20 January 1999. [Sickbay] (The Doctor is taking portrait photographs of the crew with his holo-imager. He has even put it on a tripod.) EMH: (to Neelix) Turn ninety degrees to the left, please. (to Torres) Turn ninety degrees to the left, please. (to Paris) Turn ninety degrees to the right ...

  14. Watch Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 Episode 11: Latent Image

    Latent Image Help S5 E1145MTV-PG When The Doctor discovers that his short-term memory has been tampered with, he launches an investigation. Watch Full Episodes Full Episodes Season 5 SUBSCRIBE S5 E1 Oct 14, 1998 Night SUBSCRIBE S5 E2 Oct 21, 1998 Drone SUBSCRIBE S5 E3 Oct 28, 1998 Extreme Risk SUBSCRIBE S5 E4 Nov 04, 1998 In The Flesh SUBSCRIBE

  15. Why Voyager

    83 2.5K views 2 years ago Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, this is one of 50 episode reviews of the 4th live-action series in the Star Trek franchise. Show more Show...

  16. "Latent Image" is such a good episode. It is also why people ...

    Some of my favorite Star Trek episodes ever are from Voyager -- Blink Of An Eye, Muse, Counterpoint, Timeless, Living Witness, etc -- but it's also got a lot of stuff that didn't quite land (both Fair Haven episodes, Threshold, Fury, that one where Neelix gets PTSD from Naomi's Flotter program, etc). By large, though, Voyager is mostly okay.

  17. Best Star Trek: Voyager Episode Of Each Main Character

    Each main character on Star Trek: Voyager had standout episodes that showcased their individual strengths and storylines. Episodes like "Before and After" (Kes), "Mortal Coil" (Neelix), "Latent Image" (The Doctor), and "One" (Seven of Nine) brought depth and development to these characters. Captain Janeway's standout episode was "Year of Hell ...

  18. "Star Trek: Voyager" Latent Image (TV Episode 1999)

    Latent Image (1999) Full Cast & Crew See agents for this cast & crew on IMDbPro Directed by Michael Vejar ... (as Mike Vejar) Writing Credits Cast (in credits order) complete, awaiting verification Produced by Music by Paul Baillargeon Cinematography by Marvin V. Rush Editing by Daryl Baskin Casting By Junie Lowry-Johnson Ron Surma

  19. Latent Image

    The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week's episode is Latent Image. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.

  20. The 10 best Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked

    Star Trek: Voyager is a spinoff that usually played it safe, but that doesn't mean there weren't some exceptional episodes that made us laugh, cry, or scream. ... Latent Image (season 5, episode ...

  21. Latent Image

    The EMH (Emergency Medical Holograph) suffers a "mental breakdown" after he is forced to choose between treating two mortally wounded patients (and he choose...

  22. First time with Voyager, just watched Latent Image...

    And this is by far one of the best episodes of Star Trek I've ever seen. The concept, the doctor having essentially faced a Trolley Problem-type situation, and the way that completely unravels him, as a program that's evolved to the point of having to deal with real emotions. ... Latent Image is a huge turning point for the Doctor. I feel it ...

  23. Latent Image

    A friendly reminder regarding spoilers!At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the finale of Picard and the continuations of Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds, the advent of new eras in Star Trek Online gaming, as well as other post-56th Anniversary publications such as the new ongoing IDW comic.