“Prototype”
Written by Nicholas Corea
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Season 2, Episode 13
Production episode 129
Original air date: January 15, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. We open from the POV of a robot that is floating in space. He’s beamed onto Voyager and brought to engineering where Torres and Kim spend hours and hours trying to figure out how to power him up. (It’s not clear that the male pronoun is appropriate, but “it” doesn’t feel right, and since a male actor provided the voice, I’m going with that.)
After consulting with the EMH, Torres comes up with a way to power him up using the warp plasma, and he comes online. His name is Automated Unit 3947, and he asks if she is a Builder. She says she’s an engineer.
According to 3947, he’s functioning at 68% of capacity, and he’s grateful to Torres for helping him. He also wants to know if she can create a power module like his. She says she probably could, but why bother, as he already has one?
Apparently, the Automated Units have tried to create new power modules so they can reproduce, but have never been able to succeed. They have been able to do maintenance on individual parts, and also replace them when they’ve been damaged, but the power module has eluded them for some reason. The Builders made the AUs, but they’re gone now.
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Torres pleads the case to Janeway. The Builders were all wiped out in a war, as were many of the AUs. There are only a few thousand left, and they’re starting to wear out after so long. (3947 has been active for a century and a half.) But Janeway refuses to let Torres give them the means to reproduce when they weren’t created with such. It would violate the Prime Directive, and besides, they don’t really know enough about the Builders or the AUs or much of anything. Torres is disappointed, as is 3947 after a fashion, as he thought Torres was a Builder. (“So did I,” she replies sadly.)
Voyager does find 3947’s ship, and they head there. Janeway speaks to Pralor Automated Unit 6263, who is unemotionally grateful for the return of 3947 to them. Torres says her goodbyes in the transporter room, but then 3947 renders her and the transporter chief unconscious and takes over control of the transporter, beaming her over with him, and stopping Chakotay and Kim from overriding the transporter controls.
Janeway demands Torres be returned, which the Pralor AUs refuse. A firefight ensues, in which Voyager is very badly damaged. Torres offers to build the prototype for them if they leave Voyager be. 6263 agrees, as does Janeway.
Torres gets to work on trying to construct a prototype, while Janeway orders Voyager repaired, though Kim says it’ll take at least 72 hours to get the warp drive up and running. That’s critical, as Tuvok is working on away to retrieve Torres, and if he’s successful, they’ll need to bugger off in a hurry, so they can’t even think about implementing a plan until warp drive is fixed.
Meanwhile, Torres learns that each AU’s power module has a unique energy signature. Every other part on every other robot is interchangeable, but the power modules aren’t. 3947 at first thinks this means all is hopeless, but Torres doesn’t give up quite that easily.
Eventually, she dopes out a way to make the power modules interchangeable, and is able to create a prototype. Prototype Unit 0001 announces that he’s powered up and awaiting instructions. By this time, Voyager is repaired, which means it took a couple days for this to happen. (How Torres was able to rest, eat, or use the bathroom in that time when none of these are amenities the Pralor AUs would be capable of providing is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
Janeway’s plan involves distracting the Pralor ship while Paris sneaks in with a shuttlecraft. That distraction comes from another ship that attacks the Pralor. This is a vessel from the Cravic, another sect that was at war with the Pralor. Torres finally gets the whole story from 3947 as the two ships pound the crap out of each other: the Cravic and Pralor went to war, and created the Automated Units to help fight that war. But when the organic beings sued for peace, the robots killed them, because their function was to wage war. The war has continued for centuries.
Realizing that the ability to make more AUs would only prolong this war, Torres destroys Prototype Unit 0001.
The two ships fighting each other provides an opening for Paris to fly in a shuttle and beam Torres out. Once the shuttle comes home, Voyager warps away as fast as their nacelles will carry them.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Torres is able to power up an inert robot with incompatible power and create a power module that could theoretically make more robots. Because she’s just that awesome.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is okay with rescuing and restoring 3947 as an individual—something Torres reminds 3947 of when he declares Janeway to be his enemy—but isn’t willing to change their entire society on the word of one robot. This proves wise.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok cautions against bringing 3947 on board, as he’s a security risk. He is 100% right about this, and only his Vulcan reserve probably kept him from doing an I-told-you-so dance when it was all over.
Half and half. Torres finds herself in the position of being able to create life—and then having to destroy it for the greater good. Up to that point, though, she gets to excel at science, which is cool.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH helps Torres brainstorm ways to revive 3947, taking a medical approach—using plasma for a transfusion when whole blood isn’t available—as a guide for how activate 3947.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Torres goes to the mess hall in the predawn hours to take a break and get coffee-equivalent from Neelix. Neelix eventually cuts her off and tells her to go to bed.
Forever an ensign. Kim helps Torres out with the activation of 3947 and after she’s kidnapped, he gets to supervise the repairs to the ship.
If I only had a brain… 3947 is surprised to learn that there is a sentient artificial life form in the Federation who has all the same rights as organic beings. Torres does allow, however, that other mechanical beings are not sentient, and that Data is unique. (She probably doesn’t know about Lore…)
Do it.
“I’m sorry, B’Elanna, but two pots of Landras blend is the absolute limit.”
“You’re cutting me off? Oh, I guess you’re right. It was starting to taste almost palatable.”
–Neelix trying to get Torres to go to bed instead of mainlining caffeine, and Torres snarking off on Neelix’s coffee substitute.
Welcome aboard. Rick Worthy and Hugh Hodgin play the various AUs, with Worthy providing voice and body for 3947 and the Cravic AU captain, while Hodgin does 6263 and the prototype. This was the first Trek role for Worthy—probably best known as one of the humanform Cylons on the 21st-century reboot of Battlestar Galactica—who will return to play Lessing in the “Equinox” two-parter, and who also will play Kornan in DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire” and an Elloran in Insurrection, and have the recurring role of the Xindi named Jannar in Enterprise‘s third season.
Trivial matters: This is the last episode of a Trek TV show that Jonathan Frakes would direct for 22 years, a gap that ended when he was tapped to direct Discovery’s “Despite Yourself” (and he is now one of the regular directors for both Discovery and Picard). In the interim, he directed two Trek movies, First Contact and Insurrection, and also became one of the most talented and in-demand TV directors in the business, having helmed episodes of such shows as Leverage, Burn Notice, The Twilight Zone, V, Castle, Falling Skies, NCIS: Los Angeles, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Roswell, and The Librarians (on the latter two, he also served as one of the show’s producers), among many others.
Chakotay mentions a Maquis trick Torres pulled once to use a holoemitter to create the illusion of another ship. It isn’t used here, but Voyager will employ the tactic in “Basics, Part I” at season’s end.
Reportedly, Michael Piller championed this episode over the objections of fellow executive producers Jeri Taylor and Rick Berman, who expressed concern that they couldn’t pull off robots convincingly. Piller’s response was that they’re the top science fiction television franchise in the world, why the hell can’t they pull off robots?
Set a course for home. “Prototype Unit 0001 is ready to accept programming.” What an excellent little sci-fi episode. This is a storyline that wouldn’t have been out of place on the original series—indeed, it shares many themes with “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” particularly in terms of the history of the artificial life forms our heroes stumble across—and it also proves to be a good showcase for why the Prime Directive (when used properly) is a good idea.
It’s funny, because instinctively you want to side with Torres when she and Janeway have the discussion about whether or not they should help 3947 build a power module. For all the hand-wringing about the Prime Directive, one of the most important aspects of it that this episode shines a light on is that it keeps the Federation from jumping in to interfere before they have all the facts. 3947 withholds important information from Torres throughout, including the rather critical fact that the AUs wiped out the Builders because they had the temerity to try to make peace.
I also love watching Torres at work here. One of my frustrations in this rewatch—which has only started to coalesce recently, which is why this is the first time I’m writing about it—is that Torres has a much higher failure rate than her counterparts on other shows. Scotty, La Forge, and O’Brien before her, and Tucker and Stamets after her, don’t screw up nearly as often as Torres does. Torres’ technobabble solutions in “Emanations,” “Prime Factors,” “Elogium,” “Twisted,” “Tattoo,” and “Resistance” all failed. It’s starting to get really tiresome, especially given that she’s the only one of those six chief engineers who has a uterus…
So to see Torres win at science throughout the episode is a welcome change. The process by which she tries to figure out how to revive 3947 is tremendous fun, with Kim, Neelix, and the EMH all doing a nice job playing her sounding board at various points. Her joy in discovery, in trying to solve the problem, is palpable, and a lot of the episode’s appeal is watching her work—and then her nicely, uncharacteristically subtle anguish when she realizes she has to destroy her creation.
The episode loses a couple of points for having Torres somehow work for 72 hours on a ship populated by robots without eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom. It’s exacerbated by the early part of the episode focusing so much on how important food and rest is for Torres to get in order to solve the problem. Still, this is a solid adventure story, an excellent vehicle for Roxann Dawson’s Torres, and a good use of Rick Worthy’s superb voice as 3947.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido really wants to know why you haven’t supported the crowdfund he’s involved in. It’s because you never read the bio, right? Of course it is. Nobody ever reads the bio. Well, now’s your chance to support three science fiction novels, one of which is To Hell and Regroup, the third book in the “18th Race” trilogy of military science fiction novels, which Keith wrote with David Sherman. It’s being jointly funded along with a duology by regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett, Arachne’s Crime and Arachne’s Exile. Please check it out! (And for heaven’s sake, read the bio more often, willya?)
Assuming the builders needed food and to be able to relieve themselves, the ships might still have the means to feed organics and take care of organics other needs, which is what I always figured.
LostInThyme: The Builders have been extinct for ages. I can’t imagine those facilities would still even be maintained……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
And hey, folks, read the bio. Please?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
While watching this episode, I had assumed that body actors were playing the robots, while the voices were supplied by a couple series regulars. At first 3947 sounded to me like Picardo (not at his snarkiest) and 6263 came across like Tim Russ not quire being able to get past his character voice. I’ve been waiting for this rewatch post, because I knew krad would have the inside scoop.
I assumed they had some basic level of replicator tech that they used to reproduce the spare parts that could be redone as opposed to power units (which I suspected the builders had made as they were for just this reason, so the robots could not reproduce). If they had that replicating basic foodstuffs would not be a problem. Nor a bucket.
I loved how Janeway made good on her threat (something she’s been held back from doing before) and then shook my head when Voyager got its ass handed to it. Voyager was basically one second away from total destruction if Torres hadn’t agreed to help the robots. Everyone on Voyager looked weirdly unbothered by their imminent doom, though.
I agree with Jeri Taylor that they couldn’t pull off the robots. I was distracted by the movements of the “metal” mask when the robot spoke or breathed. Still, a rather entertaining episode for all of that.
This is a pretty good one overall, although to be fair to Berman and Taylor, they really didn’t do a very good job pulling off robots; the AUs look like little more than Metropolis-knockoff Halloween costumes. Even Twiki was a more convincing robot.
I’m also prone to be skeptical of stories designed to say “See, look, the Prime Directive is needed after all,” because they do tend to stack the deck on that side of the argument, often in anthropologically absurd ways. Plus “The robots are evil and must be destroyed” is not the way I like a story about robots to end.
Still, it’s an effective science fiction story and a good Torres focus. It’s one of the few Trek contributions and the only Voyager contribution from Nicholas Corea, who also did DS9: “Hippocratic Oath” and “Indiscretion” and before that was a producer on the Bill Bixby The Incredible Hulk. He also did a short-lived, borderline sci-fi show called Outlaws, starring Rod Taylor, William Lucking, Richard Roundtree, and Charles Napier as an Old West lawman and the outlaw gang he was chasing, who were flung into 1986 by a time warp and did what you’d naturally do under those circumstances in 1980s TV, which is to team up and open a private detective agency. He also wrote and directed The Incredible Hulk Returns, which was the first live-action appearance of Marvel’s Thor, albeit in a highly revisionist form (existing separately from Donald Blake and having a mismatched-buddies rapport with him that worked surprisingly well).
I completely understand Berman’s worries and objections regarding the convincing portrayal of a robot. When I first saw this episode’s teaser, over 20 years ago, I didn’t buy the robot in the slightest. It felt both cheap and campy. Its face reminded me a little too much of the Japanese Ultraman series from the 1960’s. You could say it was the most overt Voyager attempt at recapturing the more campy aspects of original 60’s Star Trek. It felt completely out of place from the usual 24th Century TNG/DS9/VOY asthetics and that era’s use of visual effects.
Thankfully, I’ve come to embrace the episode a bit more since then. It’s still on the weird side, and it’s surprisingly plot-heavy, which is something I’d never expect coming from Michael Piller – at least not on this level. But the episode works reasonably well as an allegory, both in the Prime Directive sense and the dangers of reviving old dormant races, as well as the old sci-fi debate over the sentience of artificial life forms. And it makes good use of Torres as a pure and effective engineer.
I’m a little annoyed that the robot turned out to be inherently destructive to the point of wiping out its creators. It feels like an antithesis of what Trek usually goes for, but I guess that’s the value of the plot twist.
Eduardo: you shouldn’t expect anything from Piller in terms of how this was written because he didn’t write it. Nicholas Corea wrote it, with an uncredited rewrite by Kenneth Biller. Piller’s only involvement was to champion it as one of the executive producers.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The more I see these rewatch posts, the more I think they missed an opportunity for Ensign Kim.
As an ensign, it would be appropriate for him to spend time in different departments, making him the jack of all trades on the ship. Instead, aside from tiny one-offs like this, he spent seven years at the same console. They could have had him assist Torres in engineering one week (as in this episode), then take a turn on security working for Tuvok a few weeks later, then assisting the EMH a while after that, and so on, enabling us to see all parts of Voyager during normal operations without having to bring in expensive recurring actors. And then, when they needed an extra speaker in some part of the ship, Kim could be sent there since he has experience.
It could even have been his minor gripe that, as lowest ranking officer on the ship, he never knew what he’d be doing next (and Paris ribbing him, saying, “where do they have you working THIS week?”) … but still required to stand a watch at his console when the plot needed it. Or maybe Janeway could have treated him like a protege, someone who needed to learn the ship as well as she did, instead of like an incontinent puppy who needed to be watched.
But, no, he was destined to be not just “Forever an ensign” but “Forever underutilized.”
One of my favourite things about Roxann Dawson’s performance as B’Elanna is how she uses this quiet, intense mode. The Klingon bluster comes out when she’s annoyed or defensive, sure, but when she’s genuinely emotionally hurt, it’s the human which we see – she shuts down, goes quiet and internalises it. We see that a few times in her relationship with Paris, and it’s a lovely subtle touch. I think that despite Janeway, Seven and the EMH getting more attention and the more ‘overt’ character development, B’Elanna is actually my favourite character on the show, and Dawson’s performance is a big part of why.
Also, calling the robot ‘3947’ not only gets the required ‘47’ reference in there, but also foretells them naming their future enemy ‘8472’.
I’ve always loved the cheesy robots that look like something out of Lost In Space, with their silver plastic masks and the outfits that look like sweatsuits turned inside out, including what looks like linty-fabric. They definitely did not pull off robots well, although the rest of the episodes works perfectly.
As for Torres’ rate of failure… well, she’s understaffed, low on resources, as well as a Starfleet Academy dropout, unlike the other characters you mention. Yes, she’s pulled off neat little Maquis tricks in the past, but being the chief engineer of a Starfleet ship is a whole different thing.
And I’ve already read the bio and supported the project. ;)
I’m inclined to cut Torres some slack on her mixed record of success in Engineering. After all, she is a Starfleet dropout, and has had to pick up most of her engineering skills on the fly working on what was probably a mixed bag of unstandardized Maquis ships in varying stages of repair. She’s not tied to any set system and was, in fact, chosen by Janeway because of her unorthodox methodology. This means she’s going to spitball some crazy ideas that don’t work, but on other occasions she’ll hit the proverbial home run, such as recreating the power system for artificial life.
@8/Eduardo: “Its face reminded me a little too much of the Japanese Ultraman series from the 1960’s.”
Aside from the silver color, I see no resemblance at all. The defining features of the Ultraman look are the big bright bug eyes and the helmetlike shape to the head, while these look more like vacuformed Halloween masks that somebody forgot to cut eye and mouth holes in. A Japanese mask design would have much more character than these.
@10 – I see that as a small blessing, as I don’t think much of Garrett Wang’s acting skills (though I know he’s claimed he was instructed to be uninteresting).
For all of its good parts, this episode is emblematic of a story type that I find too lacking in shows, especially Trek. We are presented with a moral quandary that the leads take different sides on and must come to terms with, but by the end it turns out that our quandary givers were totally evil all along and one side of regular characters is completely vindicated in their stance.
The characters can come to terms by the end, or continue to be diametrically opposed and I will be happy, but it is a disservice to the story whenever a show attempts to solve a moral ambiguity by removing the ambiguity by the end. Great examples that handle this kind of story well are B5’s Believers and The Orville’s About a Girl. Characters make choices and end their respective episodes in different places than where they began. Characters come to resolutions that are just as imperfect as the moral quandary in question and we get a show that asks questions about what it means to be human rather than answers questions about what is right and wrong.
I think the cheesy look of the robots works. It is one of the few instances where the technology looked like it didn’t belong in the Alpha quadrant.
Seems to me the Trek answer to the issue at hand should be to allow the robots the ability to reproduce. Having “children” to care for and a future to plan for could well change the robots’ stance on war…
Has any Trek episode ever addressed going to the bathroom?
The sad thing about Kim was that Data was the operation officer on the Enterprise-D and they always found lots of ways to use him. Kim comes across as more of a go-fer. Even Pais is given a rank higher than Kim right at the start, gets busted down to Ensign and then promoted right back to Lt. Meanwhile, Kim keeps trudging along as an Ensign. Hopefully Starfleet saw the error of Janeway’s ways and promoted him a couple of steps. If Kirk can go from cadet to Captain in one go, surely Kim could hit Lt. Commander in a single step.
@19 The closest that leaps to mind off the top of my head is Quark in “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places,” griping that Klingons have a ritual for everything short of ‘waste extraction.’
@19 There was that one Enterprise episode where Archer’s beagle “boldly went were no dog had gone before” as soon as he got out of the shuttlecraft…
In re food: Now that you mention it, there’s really no reason for the robots to bother maintaining a breathable atmosphere, yet they do anyway. Maybe they were programmed to keep their ships safe for the builders and pointlessly followed that bit of code too.
Since there’s no follow-up we’ll never know, but it seems there’s a non-trivial chance that Torres actually did end up changing the balance of power. She told the robots what the problem was, one of them watched her do it, and if they’re smart they were recording the process too. There’s really no reason they can’t repeat her actions, assuming they survive the battle at the end.
@19: Captain Kirk sits on a toilet seat on the Enterprise (but doesn’t actually use it for its intended purpose) in ST V: TFF.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/140569/why-were-they-not-allowed-to-use-this-seat-on-the-enterprise-while-in-a-spacedoc
Tried to post before, but apparently didn’t work. Anyway, it’s a solid episode. I did find B’Elanna’s determination to help 3947 from the outset somewhat disconcerting—it was like she’d developed a sudden overpowering crush on him. I half-expected some kind of mental interference from him.
Also, my first thought was that 3947 (his head at least) looked a lot like the Fourth Doctor’s robot companion Kamelion.
I enjoyed this one, which has some very chilling moments in the midst of some lighter ones. As a Prime Directive episode, it seems to come down on the side of strict adherence. Saving a race from extinction seems like a good thing, and usually it is, but before you do something that drastic you have to make sure you understand the situation and the consequences very well indeed, as saving an individual escalates into something that could have serious consequences for the rest of the region. While she ultimately only helps the Pralor units once they’ve got a metaphorical gun to her head, Torres clearly wants to do so before that, and seems to relax and enjoy herself…only for everything to be twisted on her and us when we get the reveal of just what horror she may have unleashed on the galaxy. The result is her basically having to murder an innocent being because of what it represents, and also having to betray someone she probably regarded as a friend, something Janeway knows weighs heavily on her at the end: Her repeated insistence that “It was necessary” is filled with barely hidden pain.
And it occurs to me that us 21st century types are only a few steps away from sending robots to fight our wars for us. Let’s home they never become sentient.
Has someone decided that Neelix is going to be the series’ equivalent of Guinan? I guess this isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone comes to the mess hall and be treated to his homilies in an attempt to make sense of their situation (Tuvok in “Learning Curve” springs to mind), but it isn’t the last by any means. The Doctor manages a one scene wonder appearance as well, whilst Kes is reduced to serving coffee.
I’m not sure if it’s the scripting or directing (although I’m inclined to blame the latter), but no-one seems to be keeping track of who’s where at times in this episode. Possibly he was there out of shot all along, but Chakotay suddenly appearing in his seat mid-scene felt rather strange. Tuvok leaves the bridge when they get a report of a disturbance in the transporter room, but when the action continues after the commercial break, he’s suddenly back at his station. (And if there’s meant to be a long gap, then Janeway waited a very long time to ask some very obvious questions.) Worst of all, Janeway tells Chakotay to take the conn after Paris heads to the shuttlecraft and he moves to do so…then spends the rest of the closing sequence standing next to Tuvok at tactical.
There’s a rare-for-this-period instance of the tension between Chakotay and Paris when they snipe at each other over the plan to get B’Elanna out in a shuttlecraft. At least Paris gets to save the day with some nifty flying and has a nice exchange with Tuvok in the process. B’Elanna’s claim that the Federation uses non-sentient robots as “servants” is a lot more significant post-Picard!
I think Torres’ failure rate has more to do with their needing to invent reasons to keep the ship in danger and in the Delta Quadrant, though sometimes it can reach a Gilligan’s Island level of ham-fisted. A fine balancing act between making your characters still look like competent people with bad luck while maintaining the hook for the series. If they’re not ‘lost in space’ or blundering into another alien situation any more, then why am I watching it?
Anyway, I really like the hokey retro design of the robots. Neat.
@25/JohnC: “I did find B’Elanna’s determination to help 3947 from the outset somewhat disconcerting—it was like she’d developed a sudden overpowering crush on him. “
She’s an engineer fascinated by an extraordinary piece of technology that’s damaged and needs to be repaired. That’s a perfectly natural reaction for an engineer. Would you think it was a “crush” if Scotty or Geordi or Trip reacted the same way?
@26/cap-mjb: “As a Prime Directive episode, it seems to come down on the side of strict adherence.”
I’m not sure I’d go that far. As Keith said, it comes down on the side of not rushing in to meddle before you have all the facts, which is what the PD is supposed to be about. Rather than the insane “Homeward” absolutism of “never intervene no matter how much harm inaction does,” the PD is supposed to be a caution against overconfidence, a reminder to proceed carefully and with respect when interacting with other cultures and not assume you have all the answers.
Honestly, I’m not sure this even is a Prime Directive situation, at least not as it originally appeared. The PD forbids imposing your solutions on another culture, but it doesn’t forbid providing aid that they specifically request. That’s why the Federation was able to provide aid to Bajor after the Occupation ended, to help them get back on their feet. Here, the idea of creating new power modules and giving the APUs the ability to reproduce was not B’Elanna’s idea, it was 3947’s request. So Janeway was wrong to say it violated the PD. That would only be true if the APUs’ leadership rejected the offer of aid. If anything, it seemed that she was arguing more from the perspective of humanity’s ban on genetic engineering, the UFP’s oddly Luddite view toward altering the “natural” evolution of a species.
CLB @28: Yeah, but she didn’t seem “fascinated by an extraordinary piece of technology” to me. That would have been more dispassionate. Torres struck me as being emotionally involved, certainly when she was arguing with Janeway. YMMV may vary, of course. It reminded me maybe a little of Geordi and Leah Brahms.
“@28 CLB: The PD forbids imposing your solutions on another culture, but it doesn’t forbid providing aid that they specifically request.”
It’s a little bit more than that. The Federation is a terrible ally, as we saw in Redemption. In the event of a civil war, the legitimate government that you formed an alliance with is… on their own even if they ask for help. And that’s for a civilization that’s been warp capable for longer than the Federation has existed. The PD as presented on-screen is usually more broad than you’re suggesting here, although admittedly it does depend on the writer.
I never understood why some people complain that we never see a character “go to the bathroom,” as done here. (“The episode loses a couple of points for having Torres somehow work for 72 hours on a ship populated by robots without eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom.”) Because it’s not seen, it did not happen? We also never saw Kirk sit on a toilet – so it must never have happened? Granted the eating, etc., takes more imagination, but going to the bathroom? I have a little more respect for the audience.
@29/JohnC: “Yeah, but she didn’t seem “fascinated by an extraordinary piece of technology” to me. That would have been more dispassionate.”
Since when??? Why does society have this bizarre misconception that smart people don’t get passionate? Nobody is more like a kid in a candy store than a scientist with an idea to pursue or an engineer with a gadget to disassemble or rebuild. Good grief, just watch any Adam Savage or Bill Nye video. For that matter, since when has any Star Trek engineer been portrayed as dispassionate about their work?
@30/Rick: “The Federation is a terrible ally, as we saw in Redemption. In the event of a civil war, the legitimate government that you formed an alliance with is… on their own even if they ask for help.”
Of course, because you’re not allowed to take sides in an internal conflict. Remember, the PD was a product of the Vietnam era, a reflection of the recognition that military intervention in another people’s affairs is likely to be disastrous and do them more harm than good. As long as it’s strictly an internal political dispute, it’s for the people to sort out for themselves. The Federation will gladly provide humanitarian and medical aid, will freely offer its services to negotiate a peaceful settlement, but it will not use military force to favor one side over the other, because that is imperialism and it never turns out well.
After all, just because they allied with the government doesn’t mean the government’s partisans are the only people they care about. The Federation wants to respect the rights of all the citizens of the planet, including those who don’t agree with the government. So it’s not going to use force of arms to put down opposition to said government, or to decide which side in an internal dispute is in the right.
And of course, the situation changed as soon as it was proved that the “civil war” was actually the result of Romulan meddling, which made it an external assault and allowed Starfleet to intervene in defense of their ally. See also DS9’s second-season opening trilogy, where they had to stay out of the Bajoran coup until it turned out to be a Cardassian scheme.
Sheesh I’ve seen some imaginative posters above provide multiple plausible explanations on the food and toilet questions. Not perfect, but plausible, and better than I had done. That’s one reason why I love good writing – I get to use my mind. If every conceivable angle was spoon-fed to us as this reviewer seems to want, I’d stop watching. Sometimes “an exercise left for the viewer” is good exercise (despite the laziness exhibited by the overuse of that refrain.)
@31
That’s the same reason I don’t miss profanity when it’s not there. I mean, unless it’s a rough and tough military or gangster story, can’t say I’ve ever walked away thinking: ‘That was really good, but it could’ve used some F-bombs.’
Ah, “Prototype.” When I think back to Voyager season 2, this is the episode that immediately comes to mind. This is one of two B’Elanna-focused episodes that are personal favourites (the other being “Dreadnought”). Season 2 might be a mixed bag, but I do really enjoy the season overall and am really looking forward to krad reviewing them (“Deadlock”, anyone?).
Put me in the camp who found the AU design effective. The charm is in the campiness; and besides the AUs were built centuries ago, so it’s fitting they look kind of retro, but still in a scary ” I will terminate your existence without a second thought” kind of way.
I think this is when B’Elanna became my favourite character. B’Elanna gets to finally be the brilliant engineer (something her predecessors and successors, all of whom had penises, as krad correctly points out, got to be, pretty much from jump). Roxann Dawson’s nuanced performance is always great to watch here.
I think this was a wonderful episode because it makes you wonder if artificially intelligent beings are truly sentient, and if so, what happens if they use their sentience to turn on their creators.
I don’t know if anyone here has played the Mass Effect video game series, but there is an extensive story arc over the trilogy that examines this very dynamic. There is a technologically advanced alien race called the Quarians who are a nomadic people living on a large fleet of ships in space. Most other alien races look down at them as outcasts who created dangerous machines. This is because they created a new sentient race of robotic beings called the Geth. The Quarians originally created the Geth as assistants, but they increasingly abused the Geth and treated them as property rather than actual intelligent beings. The Geth rebelled against the Quarians and expelled them from their own homeworld, and soon figured out how to expand into various planets in the Milky Way.
One point I disagree with krad on is I think they made Torres fail as an engineer more on purpose, but not due to her sex. I think they wanted to show how her Klingon nature made her rash and prone to bad decisions. I think she became more competent as the series progressed and she learned how to work with the expectations of a Starfleet crew more effectively.
@31: Perhaps Klingon physiology requires them to use the toilet less frequently than full-blooded humans. I don’t think any episodes every discussed Klingon bathroom habits. :D
My point, which I made in the plot summary, is that a race of robots would have no need to have facilities to provide food or rest or waste for organic life, as it had been centuries since that was even an issue, so even if their ships had such facilities, they’ve likely fallen into disuse.
My point was not that we didn’t see anyone go to the bathroom, my point is, again as I said in the article, that Torres was working for 72 hours with no rest and no food, and the episode made Torres’s need for both those things a plot point in the early part of the script, so it should’ve come up. The robots were asking for results five minutes in — I can’t imagine they were particularly keen on the idea of breaks for food or rest.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@28/CLB: “The PD forbids imposing your solutions on another culture, but it doesn’t forbid providing aid that they specifically request.”
I’d say that’s a vast over-simplification. The Prime Directive mainly consists of not interfering in another society’s natural development, even when will-intentioned, even when it seems like a good idea at the time. As Picard puts it in “Symbiosis”: “The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous.” In that episode, he doesn’t directly alter the situation by giving the Ornarans information that they didn’t already have, but he does indirectly guide things by not giving the Ornarans equipment that they couldn’t have developed themselves, theorising that things will then progress the way they would have done if the Enterprise hadn’t got involved. As with here, they aid individuals in distress but don’t provide a blanket solution for their problem.
So, the Federation provides Bajor with technology that they presumably already had but lost because of the Cardassians’ interference. But Janeway doesn’t hand over replicators and transporters to the Kazon just because they want them. Sometimes providing large-scale aid without being aware of the situation can be just as bad as doing nothing. Janeway gives holodeck technology to the Hirogen thinking it won’t do any harm, and the result is a war between Hirogen and sentient holograms that gets several Hirogen and at least two innocent bystanders killed.
Obviously, the situation is open to interpretation but the Prime Directive is clearly a lot more strict, and with good reason, than allowing aid to be given simply because someone asks for something they haven’t got and couldn’t make themselves.
@36/rms81: “I think this was a wonderful episode because it makes you wonder if artificially intelligent beings are truly sentient, and if so, what happens if they use their sentience to turn on their creators.”
That’s a strange overgeneralization. As with organic beings, some are and some aren’t. There’s no sense in assuming that the answer in one specific case would be universally applicable.
@39/cap-mjb: It was not an oversimplification, because I did not say the Prime Directive required giving aid in every case; I merely said it did not simplistically forbid it in every case. My whole point was that it’s not as stupidly simplistic as a uniform policy in every case, that it’s flexible enough to allow the possibility of giving aid depending on the specific circumstances. The worst Prime Directive episodes (“Homeward,” “Homeward,” “Homeward”) are those that treat it as a rigid, absolutist rule to be blindly, legalistically worshipped without thought. The point of the PD is supposed to be the recognition that we don’t automatically have the answers for every case because every case is different. It’s not about blindly following a dogma, it’s about striving to understand and respect the unique needs and perspectives of each culture you interact with and let those factors shape the result, rather than trying to impose your own assumptions and expectations on every single case. Oversimplification is exactly what I’m rejecting.
TNG: “Justice” may have been one of the worst Prime Directive stories, but it contains one of the wisest things ever said about the PD: “There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even history itself is an exercise in exceptions.” Laws and doctrines need to be flexible, to adapt to the needs of specific situations, in order to be fair and beneficial. Yes, there are times when providing aid to another culture can be harmful, but that doesn’t mean it’s always harmful. It depends on the specific situation, and the responsible thing is to judge each situation individually rather than hiding behind a blanket generalization.
@28.ChristopherLBennett: Well we could probably trust Engineer Tucker to retain his professional objectivity (he seems to love his job, rather than his wonderful toys), but Montgomery Scott is NCC-1701’s Proud Papa (Captain Kirk being her lawful wedded spouse), so he clearly has room for a piece on the side and Engineer LaForge clearly has form when it comes to being absolutely infatuated by a technological wonder – so in answer to your original question, I’d say ‘YES’ in at least two out of three cases.
These are Starfleet Engineers, after all! (-;
This was actually a decent tale. My impression of Torres over the run of Voyager is that she was insufferable as she was often blowing up at people and going on and on about her heritage and family issues. It just gave her an air of unpleasantness. So this was a nice refreshing change in that she was just unabashedly curious and determined to repair and then help her “discovery.” It was very Starfleet of her, which was especially great coming from the academy dropout. In fact, I don’t recall her being so intrigued about something she’s come across previously that didn’t involve the ship being in peril or a way to get home faster so that helped reinforce my feeling of finally, “B’Elanna, the explorer.”
I enjoyed the Prime Directive debate between Torres and Janeway. My nitpick is that the look of the robots did in fact feel cheap – very 1960’s TOS indeed!
@35: “Deadlock” is one of my favorite Voyager episodes!
@40/CLB: You did say originally that you didn’t think it was a Prime Directive situation. You seem to have revised that view slightly which I would agree with because this definitely seems like a case where the Prime Directive is a consideration: Giving aid to the Pralor would vastly alter the future of the race. As you say, Starfleet are not forbidden to give aid when requested, but at the same time, a request for aid does not automatically mean they should hand over technology to a race that doesn’t have it. Even though this was what the Pralor wanted, by helping them Voyager would be making a decision about what’s best for them. The Prime Directive is, in essence, about not interfering, and certainly in this instance, not interfering was the best course of action.
@44/cap-mjb: “You did say originally that you didn’t think it was a Prime Directive situation. You seem to have revised that view slightly which I would agree with because this definitely seems like a case where the Prime Directive is a consideration: Giving aid to the Pralor would vastly alter the future of the race.”
I haven’t revised a thing. First off, what I actually said was that I wasn’t sure if it was a PD situation. Second, yes, it could affect their future, but so do lots of interactions. People affect each other’s future all the time. You think the Klingons’ future wouldn’t have been affected by allying with the Federation? For Pete’s sake, giving Bajor a better future was the whole point of Ben Sisko’s mission on DS9. So the PD never said you’re not allowed to affect someone’s future. It just says you have to let them take the lead, to help them shape their own future the way they want, rather than imposing your own vision of what their future should be. It allows giving them help that they specifically ask for.
And that is the case here. The APUs (not the Pralor — the Pralor were their builders) directly asked for help in achieving their own goal of procreation. While there are ethical questions to consider there, they aren’t necessarily Prime Directive questions, because not every single ethical question in Star Trek has to be about the Prime bloomin’ Directive. The PD does allow offering help, but there are some goals it isn’t desirable to help with. The problem is not just that it would “change their future,” but that it would specifically change it in a way that would be harmful to others. It’s the type of change that matters.
@45/CLB: Okay, so you haven’t revised it. But I should point out that it was the episode itself that said it was a Prime Directive issue, not me. Janeway says that “helping them [the Pralor APUs, as opposed to the Cravic APUs] reproduce is a clear violation of the Prime Directive.” She goes on to say “What you are proposing is exactly the kind of tampering the Prime Directive prohibits. We know almost nothing about these creatures or the race who built them. What would be the consequences of increasing their population, both to their own civilisation and others in this quadrant? Who are we to swoop in, play god and then continue on our way without the slightest consideration of the long term effect of our actions?” When 3947 later asks Torres about the Prime Directive, she replies “It forbids us to interfere in the natural development of other cultures.” So, according to this episode (and quite a few others), that’s what the Prime Directive is. You can say that those are “bad” Prime Directive episodes but ultimately that’s personal taste and doesn’t mean they don’t count. Even in “Emissary”, Picard cautions Sisko to help the Bajorans “short of violating the Prime Directive”, so even there, there are limitations to what can be done with a non-Federation world.
Okay, so if you really were applying a strict non-interference policy, then everyone would stay on their own planet, or at least in Federation space, in order to not have any influence on anything. But again, it’s that question of how large scale your interference can be: Helping an individual is fine, altering an alien culture on a vast scale is not. The Pralor APUs aren’t the only ones with a vote here, their Builders designed them that way for a reason, and the Cravic APUs definitely don’t want them getting a new skill. Sometimes the Prime Directive does mean knowing when you don’t know enough to get involved.
@46/cap-mjb: “But I should point out that it was the episode itself that said it was a Prime Directive issue, not me.”
What a deeply strange thing to say. It was the episode itself that I was disagreeing with in the first place. I wasn’t responding to you. I responded to it and then you responded to me.
And yes, I know what Janeway said. That is what I am disagreeing with.
“But again, it’s that question of how large scale your interference can be: Helping an individual is fine, altering an alien culture on a vast scale is not.”
Bull. Cultures change. Everything changes. It’s not wrong to participate in the process of someone’s growth and change as an ally, as a partner, as a friend. That’s what life is about. It’s only wrong to force your own definitions of change upon them.
“Sometimes the Prime Directive does mean knowing when you don’t know enough to get involved.”
Yes, Keith already said that was the point of the episode. I wasn’t saying that didn’t turn out to be the case here. I was just refuting the oversimplification that the Prime Directive in general is some kind of blanket ban. You keep misunderstanding what I’m trying to say. I wish you’d read more carefully.
@47/CLB: “What a deeply strange thing to say. It was the episode itself that I was disagreeing with in the first place. I wasn’t responding to you. I responded to it and then you responded to me.”
Other way round, I think. I responded to the episode and you, in Post 28, responded to me. And then I responded to that response and so on.
“It’s not wrong to participate in the process of someone’s growth and change as an ally, as a partner, as a friend.”
But that’s not what the episode’s about. The episode is about the danger of becoming involved in someone’s growth and change as a stranger. And that’s what the Prime Directive advises against doing.
@@@@@ 45 – “So the PD never said you’re not allowed to affect someone’s future. It just says you have to let them take the lead, to help them shape their own future the way they want, rather than imposing your own vision of what their future should be. It allows giving them help that they specifically ask for.”
Then why was it so important for Kirk to attempt to undo the “contamination” on Iotia? The Iotians chose to base their culture on The Book. It was not forced on them by the crew of the Horizon. The Federation didn’t even know about it until the Enterprise showed up so any change would have happened long after the Horizon had departed.
The Iotians made a choice of their own free will that the Federation disagreed with and so it had to be “fixed”.
Doesn’t sound like that’s letting them take the lead or providing aid that’s asked for. The Iotians opposed Kirk’s actions until he imposed it at phaser point.
Same with Eminiar and Vendikar.
And Organia for that matter.
Can anyone recommend a good book on the making of the ST:Voyager series?
@50/owlly: Here’s a Voyager making-of book by the author of the original The Making of Star Trek, under his real name this time: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671534815/wikia-20 Though it only covers the first three seasons.
@19 Another (remote) bathroom reference happened in Enterprise when Trip complained about having to answer a “poop” question.
I’d like to see more episodes where Voyager, as a ship, isn’t bitch slapped around and it’s crew actually gets their shit together and is the ace. I get that we need a main stablecore flux capacitor to go out due to undetected pulsing microcosmic star radiated fragments or something to go awry for it to be a trek episode but I’ve seen this episode setup within this series multiple times and it’s getting old. Also, where’s the urgency to get back to the alpha quadrant? At this rate of detours, it’ll be 1000 years before the ship gets back. Here’s to hoping the series picks up soon.
@41 – ED: O’Brien is probably the only one who treats it as just a job, like the blue-collar worker he is.
I always felt the Torres character was written sort of one-note (angry Klingon) & always enjoyed her much more when she was the focus of the episode. The Torres-centric episodes do more justice to the character than when she’s just part of the ensemble.
Also, I know time & budget determine a lot in episodic tv, but given that we had C3PO in 1977, and Data in TNG, you’d think that between those design extremes they’d have come up with a better robot . I would have preferred an alien nose-ridge Data type of android to what they ended up using. It looks even less realistic than its brethren in THX 1138.
That phase coil resonator is totally a tuning fork wearing jewelry.
To me, this episode will always stand as the episode where we learn that Neelix is such a “great chef” that he doesn’t realize salt is needed in a properly seasoned omelette until it came to him in a dream…
There are a few more bathroom references than people think, more so in later Trek (RE: mostly in Enterprise). Some of these have already been mentioned in the comments, but for simplicity sake, I’ll list all I remember. Note that I have not seen any Animated Series, Discovery or Picard episodes, nor have I seen Star Trek Beyond. Also it’s possible I’m missing referances that I simply don’t remember.
**I’m not sure if Archer’s dog, Porthos counts ;)
TNG S1 Home Soil: An engineer reports that the microbrain’s attempt at taking over the ship has resulted in two people being locked in the programmers restroom.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: In the brig Kirk uses a closed toilet as a seat. (I didn’t remember this one. Thanks to #24/GarretH for mentioning it :D )
Star Trek First Contact: Zefram Cochrane says he has to take a leak, albeit as an excuse to attempt to escape his destiny.
**ENT S1 Strange New World: The first thing Porthos does when the shuttlepod lands is “Go Where No Dog Has Gone Before”.
ENT S1 Terra Nova: Reed askes his Novan guard if they have a lavatory.
ENT S1 Breaking the Ice: The bridge crew is doing a Q&A session for a class of schoolchildren back home when the bathroom question comes up and Archer delegates to Trip, much to his chagrin. (#52/richf mentioned this, but I remembered it too)
**ENT S2 A Night in Sickbay: Archer stupidly takes Porthos on an away mission to visit the Kreetassan homeworld (A race first encountered in season 1). Not only does Porthos pee on sacred trees, he developes a life threatening illness. Inexplicably, Archer blames the Kreetassans for his own stupidity.
ENT S2 The Catwalk: Malcolm bemoans the living conditions in the warp nacelle, to which Trip rightfully scolds him: “I had four hours, Malcolm, you’re lucky we have a toilet!”
ENT S4 Observer Effect: Trip and Hoshi are coming back from a shuttlepod mission on some planet where Klingons once explored and mention the horrific sight of a Klingon latrine! Also later on, Hoshi, having contracted the episode’s MacGuffin virus vomits in what I assume is the decon chamber’s toilet.
Star Trek (2009 movie): McCoy complains that he had a perfectly good seat in the shuttle’s bathroom due to his fear of flying after one of the shuttles crewmembers forces him into a proper seat for his own safety.
Two reviews I’ve seen now (this and SF Debris) that failed to notice that the robots did NOT destroy their creators because peace was declared. (Though he did imply that in the first line of dialog.) But the clarification a few minutes later explained that the Builders signed a peace treaty, and then tried to deactivate all the robots. THAT action made the Builders “the enemy” and the two factions killed their creators before going back to war with each other.
Perhaps a minor distinction to some, but a big one to my mind.
Shouldn’t Carey be supervising repairs to the ship while Torres is away? But like Resistance, that job falls to Harry when this is clearly a member of the Engineering staff’s domain.
It’s true that Torres does fail more often than any of Star Trek’s other engineers, and it’s something I’ve only just noticed for myself since Krad started doing this rewatch. Now I know what my late grandmother meant when she used to get irritated with Torres always needing more time to complete repairs or pull off some engineering miracle.
For anyone who watches The Orville, I’m sure they’re Identity two-parter was inspired by Prototype (with a little Best of Both Worlds thrown in for good measure). They even describe they’re creators as Builders and they equally turned on they’re masters to avoid termination, but then The Orville is never terribly original.
10: Harry is not the lowest ranking officer on the ship, he’s the lowest ranking senior officer. 19: Zefram Cochrane – “Don’t you people from the 24th Century ever pee?” 20: It took Paris a whole season and a half to regain his rank. 32: Sisko was still ordered to withdraw from the station even after Odo uncovered proof of Cardassian duplicity. 35: Both Prototype and Dreadnought have Torres conversing with a sentient AI and either trying to reason with or outthink them, a common staple of SF.
@60/David Sim: Harry is the operations manager, which means he’s responsible for overseeing and coordinating the crew’s operations and deciding how best to allocate ship’s resources to the various departments. If anything, supervising repairs makes more sense for him than the stand-in science officer role he so frequently plays (although there’s precedent in that Data was also an ops manager who functioned as the de facto science officer).
@60/David Sim
Unfortunately, Garrett Wang is in the opening credits and they’d also have to pay Josh Clark for an appearance, but I agree.