Wednesday December 2, 1998
Unknown
When an alien attaches itself to B'Elanna's nervous system, the Doctor enlists the help of a holographic recreation of an expert. However, when B'Elanna learns that the expert is a Cardassian that performed immoral medical experiments during the occupation, she refuses treatment.
Write a Recap »Plastic looking Alien grabs and sucks B'Elana by the neck and pseudo moral dilemas hide show
The Alien is awful, but his ship is cool. That's it, frightened and needingto survive, what he does? Right! The same all of us would have done. Grab B'elana in a big hug and biting her on the neck to suck the life out of her. Seems more like some kind of symbiosys than killing the host. Anyway, there's the flaw regarding the use of teletranspot and then Doc decides to request support from data in their database related to a Cardassian Xenobyologist.
Unfortunatelly he decides to summon also the Cardassian avatar and that spoils the trick as that Cardassian supposedly got many of his skills and knowledge from experiencing with Bajoreans. What a dilema! Should we accept using that knowlege?
My question is, if the avie of the Xenodoc even though being cardassian was done to look like human or klingon or any other, would it have made any difference his past actions?
And after all we are talking database here. Even though that knowledge aws related to a mass murdered, his victims are dead and if that served to any cause it would be that it helps to save lifes. In my oppinion this doesn't mean justify in any sense the deeds of the cardassian, long before dead.
Nonetheless, the crew takes lots of time discussing like children the possible morality of using that knowledge. History of Medicine is full of examples of that. The nazi did experiments and also many english and american doctors to tell about some. Many times empiric, many times intentional like for examples sterilize people with mental handicap.
If you like this kind of dilema so, that's for you.
The cast and crew must have had a hoot with the completely phony-looking alien hanging around Roxann Dawson's (B'Elanna) neck for the better part of week while they filmed this episode. hide show
The cast and crew must have had a hoot with the completely phony-looking alien hanging around Roxann Dawson's (B'Elanna) neck for the better part of week while they filmed this episode.
At its core, this episode is one of those works to challenge us about contemporary issues. This is something Science Fiction does very well as long as the presentation is good and they don't have to compromise their own "science" in order to bring it about.
In this case, the question is whether medical research (and its benefits) should be rejected and not used because the people who engaged in that research did so under what could be called "cruel/inhumane" circumstances. Our contemporary debate at the time this episode was filmed and even today is whether we should reap the benefits from tests for medical research being conducted on, and often killing, animals. Or should we ignore those benefits as a way protesting that practice. Voyager encounters an alien ship with one "non-humanoid" survivor. They beam it to sickbay. It looks like a green cockroach. The ungrateful alien launches itself through a force field and attaches itself to B'Elanna's neck, where it will spend the rest of the episode, apparently feeding off of her body. Think of the movie "Alien" but here the alien is always outside the body, fully in it. First up, the alien looks dreadfully fake. It looks like someone's warped idea of a stuffed toy for a kid. It's hard to suspend belief that this is a real creature. The problem here belongs to the people charged with making aliens believable. Second problem is that they sacrifice some science. It's immediately determined they can't transport the alien off of B'Elanna. Nonsense, that's exactly what the transporter would do. Split the two based on the B'Elanna's last transport record.
Nevertheless, the Doctor, needing assistance, has a secondary hologram created to assist him. The hologram is based on sketchy Federation records of a Cardassian doctor known as Crell Moset. Supposedly, this man is the best expert on exoskeleton life forms. And, the Doctor is initially impressed and inclined to want to keep him around for future consultations. Turns out though that Crell has a bad reputation of having experimented directly on "humanoid" subjects. This sets off a series of debates between the Voyager crew. Even B'Elanna (periodically conscious) refuses to have him assist in the operation to save her. There's a lot of back and forth about the hologram being just a hologram and not the individual who actually preformed the atrocities. Eventually, Janeway says B'Elanna must be saved. An "operation" is preformed and both B'Elanna and the alien are saved. The Doctor decides that the Crell hologram must go. Does the episode work? I couldn't get past the silliness of the alien to appreciate the "stakes" involved. Also, the early elimination of using the transporter didn't work. If they had tried the transporter and it failed, I might have bought it. However, it makes the whole thing seem contrived to push the ultimate social point.
The "debates" between the crew seemed overly repetitive. They all seemed to be saying the whole thing over and over and no new enlightenment comes of it. The audience "got it" without having to constantly beat us over the head with it. So, it was a good idea for a story but not well executed.
a 20-minute episode padded with nonsensical moral dilemmas and out-of-character behavior. hide show
This could have been a lot better.
The idea is good, the alien is cool (Umgah ?), but the whole Cardassian doctor problem was just ridiculous. He's a hologram, yet the crew acts like they've got a mass murderer on board. Janeway seemed to be the only one making sense for half this episode. The Bajoran officer who mysteriously appears is absurd and a pathetic plot device. There's no moral dilemma here; use the knowledge to save your crew member.
Without the waste of time presented by the cardassian doctor, this could be a really good episode. I get the feeling after the script was written, Taylor realized he needed a subplot to pad time and came up with this one.
B'Elanna is attacked by an alien. hide show
This episode is well written. At first it starts off shakily with a fake-looking alien attaching itself to B'Elanna and starting to kill her. The Doctor struggles to deal with the problem and gets some help from another medical hologram - Crell. This new hologram seems quite likeable (even more than the Doctor!) - but soon defects in his character appear. Tabor recognises him from medical atrocities on Bajor and B'Elanna/Chakotay don't like him either. From here begins a great discussion on benefiting from medical science if the roots come from something unethical. With Tabor/B'Elanna fighting against the use of the new hologram and Tom/Kathryn fighting to keep B'Elanna alive and the Doctor/Crell having arguments on how to keep medical procedures ethical - there are lots of sides to the storyline shown. Even in the end, with B'Elanna alive but mad at the Captain - and the Doctor choosing to delete the Crell hologram, there are still a lot of unresolved issues. Great episode (apart from the plastic-looking alien)!
Voyager encounters a massive energy wave. The ship receives a download of information. An audio transmission is also in the data stream. Janeway sets course for the area that the transmission began. The crew discovers and alien ship with an injured alien. hide show
Voyager encounters a massive energy wave. The ship receives a download of information. An audio transmission is also in the data stream. Janeway sets course for the area that the transmission began. The crew discovers and alien ship with an injured alien. The alien is beamed directly to sick bay. Torres is in sickbay helping The Doctor. The alien attacks Torres, and pierces her neck with its mouth. The alien is using Torres’s body to live. The Doctor conjures up a hologram named Crell Moset, a Cardassian scientist. Crell is known by some of the crew as a mass murderer.
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