Voyager Reviewed! (by a pedant) S6E24: LIFE LINE

"Doctor Doctor! I think I'm a pair of curtains!"
"That's because you're dying of Space Plague."
"Oh. That's not a very good punchline."
*dies*

Space Dog prints now available here:
Character art by @anebulouspurpose on instagram.

[Unlimited_Lives]

Today's Thought Experiment: We're making holographic pets! I want to hear your choices, what the benefits are, and how it kills you when the tech inevitably malfunctions.

[DanteCorwyn]

Troi seems to be far more competent in her Voyager appearances than she ever was in TNG.

[xedalpha]

Anything with this much Picardo is always a win. Although, yes, Starfleet using EMHs as menial labour makes absolutely no sense. Its like installing 3 different versions of windows on 3 partitions just to open 3 browser tabs.

[chapsc]

Also the doc’s wangus took up a lot of giggetybites of memory

[zac]

Janeway's response to the Admiral should have been 'There are no Maquis on Voyager, this crew is Starfleet'.

[pedrocortez]

To this day, the actress that played Haley, Tamara Craig Thomas, i have found without a doubt over the whole star trek universe, and even including the into darkness, to be the most beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, radiant female character ever. So much so that this episode is in my top 5 of all voyager episodes just because of her, even though its a doc episode. That little acting job she does with her creator when she admonishes him for admonishing her in the same breath as he berates the doctor.... you can see her heartbreak.... even though she was just a hologram.

[jonyprepperisrael]

I think this is probably in my top 3 episodes of Voyager, seeing the doctor trying to get approval from his dad.

[TenniellesChannel]

😁👍
Thanks for another great review 💚🌹💚you are appreciated

[abdel-rahmansaid]

I like to save these up and binge them.

[chapsc]

Lewis Zimmerman had a brief relationship with Leeta on DS9 and look how it aged him (it’s like one season before he was on DS9…!)

[twixx]

The ethics of Troi's ruse is worse than making the doc think he's dying, as to fool Zimmerman he must have been in some real actual peril. They basically gambled with his life.

[bryancorrell]

Current affairs with the Cardigans are probably not an issue with regards to the Maquis. The last battle of the Dominion War was fought at Cardiga Prime less than two years earlier. When the Cardigans turned against the Dominion the commanding Founder ordered the genocide of the Cardigans, 800 million (give or take) of them were killed on-planet before the war ended. Their fleet was basically wiped out and the planet was in ruins. They wouldn't soon be in any shape to make demands of the Federation. Also, the Maquis had ceased to exist as an organization years before that when the Cardigans first allied with the Dominion. The Jem'Hadar were pretty thorough in wiping them out. There were probably more former Maquis on Voyager than in the entire Alpha Quadrant.

[han]

The idea of the holograms being stripped down and repurposed rather than just having their personality fixed makes no sense. I watched the TNG episode recently where Soong dies and had the same issue with the idea of him not simply fixing the flaw in Lore.

I really hope you do TNG next.

[Robolewa]

Regarding sending multiple messages at once line... Maybe the bandwidth limit is on both the space wibbly they're using *and* voyager's transmission array, or whatever they're using to send it. As discussed, the doctor's program is chonky and they want to avoid degradation, error checking and all that (maybe not enough as it turned out). None of that is remotely mentioned in universe, of course, but it's no "nine deck detour to something three decks away", to me at least.

Always liked the message of the episode in the end. The "estranged family coming together" part, not so much the "friends lying to make it happen". Thanks once again for making these.

[PaulGrahamRetroPaul]

The mark 1 EMH being used as sewage workers never sat right with me either. It really didn’t make any sense. Why would they need such complex holograms for such rudimentary work? They’d probably have to downgrade their program to allow them to work in such large numbers. Even delete parts of the personality subroutines to prevent interpersonal conflicts.

Also, did they have to have them all put on a micro sd and sent from their respective ships? Or were they all deleted and the original program copy pasted a hundred times on the waste ship?

It makes no sodding sense!

[kbdank]

This has probably been brought up before, but what's stopping them from doing a copy/paste with the doc?

[inthestudy]

Can I be honest - I kind of want to see you tackle Galactica after this. I always saw it (the new one, lets be specific) as an example of "Voyager done right" - the difficult, lonely journey through the stars, with danger at every turn and thankfully, no reset button. Obviously Galactica is far more, and far less, than Voyager - it's a different show with different strengths and weaknesses. But I'm still curious to hear your play by play.

[dm]

A fun episode with alot of good work by Picardo - some plot holes I sadly list under generic 'Voyager crappy science' issues but otherwise fun and heartfelt.

[mb]

Why does the file photo of Zimmerman change between it being on the Doc’s laptop at 1:33 and on Janeway’s at 1:53?

[fotofillholland]

I'm still bothered by the non-reasons why you can only have one copy of the doctor in any location and not leave one on voyager for medical emergencies. Apparently you can copy and repurpose other copies of the doctor, which somehow are easy to duplicate, but not our version of the doctor.