MEDICAL LOGS

LEARNING CURVE
Season 1 : Episode 16

 

MEDICAL REPORT:

At the end of the episode, Crewmen Dalby, Chell and Henley help Tuvok and Crewman Gerron to Sickbay. Their arrival is not seen, but they will be treated for inhalation of noxious vapours following leak of plasma gas, which quickly becomes poisonous, into the cargobay where the four crewmembers were trapped for a time. A virus infects the biological components of the bio-neural gel-packs (these packs run half the critical systems on the ship and are almost impossible to damage; after the first bio-neural gel-pack is replaced there are only 47 left). The virus systematically attacks every cell in the gel-pack's biological matrix. The virus was carried in bacteria absorbed into the ventilation system when Neelix made brill cheese from the scplict he acquired from the Napinne.

the Doctor, assisted by Kes, analyses the cheese

To prevent the infection from spreading through the fel-packs, Torres takes the forward systems offline, resulting in the loss of replicators and the re-routing of primary systems. To cure the virus, the crew superheat the gel-pack system to raise its temperature by infusing the bio-neural circuits with a high-energy burst from a symmetrical warp field. To generate that heat they have to invert the warp field toward the ship by bringing warp engines to 80 per cent while they are standing still so that they can initiate the plasma burst. Before they implement the burst, the bio-neural network fails sequentially, leaving every system on the main grid inoperable. While the crew sweat due to the heat, the Doctor is of course unaffected.

the Doctor does not sweat, of course

DOCTOR'S LOG:

At the crew's request the Doctor is trying to become more sensitive to his patients' needs. He, rather jocularly, practices his bedside manner on a damaged bio-neural gel-pack.

DOCTOR'S QUOTE:

Diagnosing a bio-neural gel-pack: "The patient is sick."

the Doctor examines a bio-neural gel-pack