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| The Doctor consults with a war criminal: Cardassian scientist Crell Moset (David Clennon) |
A distress signal draws Voyager to a heavily-damaged vessel with a single, injured occupant. Janeway orders the survivor beamed directly to sickbay - but the alien is so different, the Doctor has no idea how to even begin treating it. When Torres walks in, it launches itself at her and fuses its body with hers - using her bodily functions to sustain its own life.
On Janeway's advice, the Doctor has Harry Kim create a new medical hologram, a representation of the best exobiologist in their database. The result is a recreation of Crell Moset (David Clennon), a Cardassian who worked on Bajor during the Occupation. Moset gained fame for curing a viral epidemic on Bajor, saving thousands of Bajoran lives...
But at a cost. His work depended on experiments performed on living Bajorans, people he deliberately infected in order to gather data. When this comes to life, both B'Elanna and the Bajorans on the crew react vehemently against the hologram, demanding that none of Moset's work be used - Even if that means condemning B'Elanna to death!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: It falls to Janeway to make the decision whether or not to use the holographic Crell to save B'Elanna. She makes her decision and gives no apologies. Given the tools to save a member of her crew, she does so, explicitly leaving moral and ethical debates for "later, after B'Elanna is back on her feet."
Doctor: He hasn't had anyone to truly discuss medical matters with since Kes left (and even then, their relationship was never one of equals). Little surprise that he enjoys collaborating with Crell, and makes plans to keep him operational after the crisis. When Tabor (Jad Mager) implicates Crell for the experiments he performed on Bajoran citizens, the Doctor initially tries to deny the charges. Only when he approaches Crell with the truth and the hologram defends those actions as pragmatic does the Doctor realize the lack of any moral sense in his new colleague... Though he continues to argue that he has no chance of saving B'Elanna without him.
Torres: Her reaction to the Crell hologram is instantly negative - Not because she knows about Crell's background, but simply because he's a Cardassian. "As far as I'm concerned, they're all cold-blooded killers." When Crell's past comes to light, she refuses to be treated by him, and she reacts with anger to Janeway overriding her wishes. Roxann Dawson is very good, even though she spends most of the episode latched to an unconvincing giant slug, and the final scene with Janeway is particularly strong.
Crell Moset: In his mind, his actions were justified by circumstance. After all, the real Crell killed hundreds in his experiments, but the results saved thousands. From the perspective of a pure pragmatist, which Crell certainly is, this is a win. What makes him frightening is that he is utterly unconcerned with morality, and completely devoid of compassion. There's no malice or sadism driving him to inflict pain or suffering - But inflicting pain and suffering doesn't bother him, either if it's a means to an end.
THOUGHTS
"You can erase my program... But you can never change the fact that you've already used some of my research. Where was your conscience when B'Elanna was dying on that table? Ethics, morality, conscience: Funny how they all go out the airlock when we need something..."
-Crell Moset (David Clennon), defending his methods.
At Nothing Human's core is a fiery debate about morality vs. pragmatism. The scenes in which Crell Moset and the Doctor argue the two sides of that are the episode's strongest, two very good actors enjoying a debate in which both sides are allowed to make a legitimate case. Crell's research is based on horrific war crimes, more than a little reminiscent of the "work" of Dr. Josef Mengele... but (and very unlike Mengele) Crell's work yielded genuinely life-saving results. The question becomes which is worse: legitimizing his methods by using his research, or refusing to use it and allowing a patient to die who could otherwise be saved.
Guest star David Clennon wisely plays Crell not as a villain, but simply as a pragmatist. From his point of view, the conditions of the Occupation forced him to "improvise," to make use of "what resources (he) had." That he stubbornly refuses to identify the living, feeling people he experimented on as anything more than "resources" condemns him as evil, but Clennon makes it clear that he regards himself simply as a scientist.
If only the entire episode was as good as the Doctor/Crell material, this would be up there with the series' best. But writer Jeri Taylor is so eager to get to the debate that she skimps on creating any convincing logic to the surrounding situation. If the information is easily assimilated into a separate hologram, why couldn't hte Doctor simply upload Crell's basic skill set into himself from the start? No explanation is ever given, and the script practically begs us to ignore this so that we can get straight to the creation of Crell. Had a little more care been taken to set this up more convincingly, then the full episode would rank higher than it does.
Still, those Doctor/Crell scenes are the episode's heart, and they are uniformly excellent. On the strength of those scenes and the performances by the entire cast, I do regard this as a good episode. But given the story weaknesses (and, yes, the unconvincing alien prop), it never threatens to break through into being a great one.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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