MEDICAL LOGS

LIFESIGNS
Season 2 : Episode 35

 

MEDICAL REPORT & DOCTOR'S LOG:

The crew answers a distress call from a small spacecraft and beams its occupant into sickbay. The deathly ill Vidiian female is suffering from the phage, which has ravaged her people. To postpone her oncoming death, the Doctor puts her decaying body into stasis and transfers her synaptic patterns into Sickbay's holobuffer. He then creates a holographic body that reflects the way the female would look if she were not afflicted with the phage. The patient is Dr Danara Pel, a haematologist. She is surprised to see her "healthy" appearance and is most grateful for what the Doctor has done for her, even though he admits it is just a temporary fix as she cannot survive long in this form. The Doctor tells her that he still has hopes of treating her ravaged physical body.

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above 16 pictures: the Doctor creates a "healthy" holographic body for Danara's being

Embittered by her own harrowing experience as a prisoner of the Vidiians, Torres first baulks at the Doctor's request that she donate some of her brain tissue to help Danara, since Klingon DNA is resistant to the phage (a fact established in  [#14 Faces]). But after Danara has a chance to show Torres that all Vidiians are not like her former captors, she relents, and allows the Doctor to proceed to take her donated tissue and graft it onto Danara's brain.

Because it will take several days before they know whether the graft works, the Doctor and Danara begin spending time together.

the Doctor and Danara enjoy the time they spend together in the Chez Sandrine holoprogram

The Doctor is confused by his affection for Danara, but Kes urges him to tell her how he feels. Yet when the Doctor blurts out his interest in her, she says she would prefer to keep their relationship strictly professional. While the disappointed Doctor seeks Paris's dating advice, Kes gets Danara to admit she really does like the Doctor. When the Doctor discusses his troubles with Paris, Paris says he knows the perfect romantic getaway. Accordingly, the Doctor and Danara have a lovely date, in Paris' holoprogram, on Mars in a '57 Chevy.

the Doctor and Danara enjoy their first date in a holoprogram where they can spend romantic time together under the stars

Not long afterwards, the Doctor is shocked to discover that Danara's brain is rejecting the graft. He does not understand what could have gone wrong until she admits to sabotaging the treatment because she does not want to return to her diseased body, even though the alternative is death. The Doctor convinces her that he will love her no matter what she looks like, and convinces her to survive.

the Doctor is surprised that Danara's brain is rejecting the grasp

the Doctor persuades Danara that he loves her as she really is

They have about 22 days to travel ten light years to reach the vicinity of her home planet, at which time she must leave to continue caring for her sick compatriots. She returns to her body and shares a tender dance with the Doctor in the Chez Sandrine holoprogram after the Doctor downloads into his program a dancing subroutine for the occasion.

the Doctor and Danara share a dance on the holodeck

MEDICAL REPORT (IN DETAIL) AND PATIENT PROFILE:

Danara Pel has an implant in her parietal lobe that is a very complex web of bio-neural circuitry and nanofibers. The device stores her synaptic patterns, processes them, and transmits neural-electrical impulses to the rest of her systems. The Doctor compares it to a neuro-cortical stimulator, designed to supplement the higher brain functions. The implant itself is functioning, but it is connected to mostly dead nerve cells that, if left untreated, will leave her brain dead in a matter of minutes.

the Doctor investigates Danara's parietal lobe

The Doctor transfers her synaptic patterns into the holobuffer before they degrade. He creates a model of healthy a Vidiian that will aid in treating Pel. He uses the undamaged chromosomes in her cerebellum to re-create her original DNA code then programs the computer to project a holographic template based on that genome. To conclude the procedure, he uses transporter records to re-create her clothing. The Doctor's plan for treatment relies on the information learned when Torres was taken hostage by the Vidiians (in  [#14 Faces]) - he plans to drill an opening into Torres's skull precisely 2 millimetres in diameter, and use a neuralyte probe to extract a sample of her parietal lobe, weighing approximately 1 gramme. Once he finishes grafting the Klingon neural tissue onto Danara's cerebral cortex, he then has to create an axonal pathway between that tissue and her basal ganglia. The exact procedure was developed by Starfleet legend Dr Leonard McCoy in the year 2253. One of the instruments which the Doctor uses for that procedure is a submicron suture. Later, Danara's body rejects the graft because of elevated levels of nytoxinol in her body. She injected herself with the nytoxinol because she wanted to remain in holographic form. Cervaline is used to reduce the rate of tissue rejection, administered every four hours.

OTHER PATIENTS:

On the day that the Doctor and Kes check to see if Danara's graft is effective, Kes reports that only two crewmen have been in Sickbay - Crewman Foster came in for some analgesic, and Ensign Wildman was there for her regular antenatal visit.

EMH SPECIFICATION:

The Doctor is equipped with the collective medical knowledge of more than 3,000 cultures and his program contains over 50 million gigaquads of data. Since he was activated on stardate 48308, he has performed 347 medical exams, healed 11 compound fractures, performed three appendectomies, and cured Neelix of an acute case of hiccups.

DOCTOR'S LOG:

The Doctor makes his first personal log entry on stardate 49504.3. Dancing is not part of his programming until he downloads a dancing subroutine in order to dance with Danara in the holodeck. Kes notes that since the Doctor's programming is adaptive, it is possible for him to fall in love. It is also possible that he and Danara make love during or sometime after this episode (but obviously before she leaves Voyager) because in a future episode ( [#82 Message in a Bottle]) he says that he has engaged in sexual relations (but who with he does not say, and it is a matter of speculation whether, if with Danara, with her holographic form or her real form). Danara gives the Doctor the name Shmullus, after an uncle who used to make her laugh.

LECTRAZINE:

This drug, administered to stabilise cavdiovascular and renal systems in humanoid patients, is used in this episode, in  [#49 Sacred Ground],  [#52 Warlord] and  [#75 Scientific Method], and a mixture of lectrazine and hyronalin is administered in  [#64 Real Life].

DOCTOR'S QUOTE:

"Doctor's personal log, Stardate 49507.2. The more time I spend with Danara, the more my programming continues to adapt. I look forward to perfecting my romantic skills once we've completed the synaptic transfer."