MEDICAL LOGS

WARHEAD
Season 5 : Episode 119

 

DOCTOR'S LOG:

Answering a distress call Kim, commanding his first away team, finds an artificial intelligence lifeform. The machine has bio-neural circuitry which, like Voyager's own bio-neural circuitry, mimics humanoid synaptic functions. It speaks in duotronic algorithms which the Doctor's translation matrix can interpret. With the help of the Doctor's translating, reveals it is suffering from a technical form of amnesia. The Doctor argues a case for bringing the machine aboard Voyager.

Doctor: "My translation matrix is interpreting. It says it's injured. It needs our help. It's asking why it can't see, or feel its arms and legs. It's terrified."

The machine thinks it is an organic being, but once it is beamed to Voyager the Doctor explains the truth. As they search for the machine's "partner" Voyager scans a planet's surface and finds a crater filled with radiogenic decay, leading the crew to realise they have beamed aboard a weapon of mass destruction. In Sickbay, Torres attempts to separate the bio-neural circuitry from the explosive and download its synaptic patterns into a holographic matrix. Suddenly, the weapon arms itself and Torres is forced to use an EM pulse to short it out. The machine commandeers the Doctor's program, giving it mobile corporealty, and now recalls that it is a long-range tactical armor unit, which was deployed at a target it never reached. The machine, speaking through the Doctor's form, orders Janeway to help him find his target or he will detonate and destroy her ship and crew.

	pictures: the warhead is brought into Sickbay, but the warhead commandeers the Doctor's program and thereby achieves corporealty

Seven realises her nanoprobes can be adapted to disable the weapon's circuitry and, as part of the devised plan, they create false telemetry to make the warhead believe Voyager is navigating a minefield. When Seven is brought into Sickbay pretending to suffer from third-degree plasma burns, which Neelix has simulated on her face using a dermal regenerator, Tuvok disrupt the Doctor's program and Seven tries to inject her nanoprobes into the weapon.

Meanwhile, Kim and Torres retrieve lost data from the weapon's memory files, which reveal its launch was a mistake and the order was transmitted to it to abort. The weapon refuses to believe this new information and soon realises the crew's plan to deactivate it, and incapacitates Seven. Shortly after, the crew finds thirty-two additional weapons have joined them in search of their "friend". The new weapons order the warhead to transport off Voyager and continue onto the target, but Kim persuades it to look for its people's confirmation code in the rest of his memory files. When it confirms the order to cease its mission was valid, the weapon tells the others to stand down. This close to the target they are designed not to be diverted, so the warhead reconfigures its bio-neural matrix and joins the others, relinquishing the Doctor's program. At a safe distance, the weapon detonates, destroying itself and its fellows, thus saving the target.

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Doctor, guilty at Seven's injuries: "I was the one who asked you to bring that device aboard in the first place. I even argued with the Captain to keep it aboard after we learned what it was. .....From what I heard, I wasn't much help."   Kim: "You were. I held you up as an example of how an artificial intelligence could exceed its programming. I didn't realise how true that was until today."

STAR TREK CONTEXTUAL MEDICAL GLOSSARY:

Dermal regenerator.

DOCTOR'S QUOTE:

To Kim about the away mission: "Of course, having me on the team will certainly compensate for any lack of experience on your part."