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| The Doctor discovers a fellow AI - but it's a weapon of mass destruction! |
Original Air Date: May 19, 1999. Teleplay by: Michael Taylor, Kenneth Biller. Story by: Brannon Braga. Directed by: John Kretchmer.
THE PLOT:
Harry Kim has bridge duty when Voyager receives an automated distress signal. Harry takes the ship to the planet and, with, Chakotay's approval, beams down with the Doctor to check it out.
They quickly find the source of the signal: a probe-like object that the Doctor ascertains is an artificial intelligence. Harry's first instinct is caution - when you're Harry Kim, you quickly learn that anything new is likely to kill you or at least humiliate you. The Doctor guilts him by pointing out that while this may be a device, it is still a lifeform that is in distress. Harry relents, recommending it be beamed to Voyager with security measures.
It turns out that his first instincts were right. The object is not a probe, but a weapon of mass destruction. When Doctor tries to separate the intelligence from the device, to save the life while nullifying the danger, the intelligence takes over the Doctor. It demands that Janeway transport it to its target to complete its mission - or else it will destroy Voyager!
CHARACTERS:
Capt. Janeway: She badly wants the weapon off her ship. Even so, when an unscrupulous trader(Steve Dennis) offers to take it off her hands, she refuses to allow him to take it fully intact. Despite his assurances, she recognizes that he'll just sell it to someone else, very possibly some kind of space terrorist. The warhead is a problem, but Janeway refuses to make it someone else's problem.
The Doctor/The Warhead: Robert Picardo pulls double duty as both the Doctor and the warhead. This is where I'd usually praise Picardo... except this time, I think he overacts. He's terrific as the Doctor, effectively conveying the kinship he feels at meeting a fellow AI. His sentient warhead, however, is more a case of Picardo "Acting Menacing" rather than being menacing, and the weapon's threat is further undercut by its apparent inability to track anything Janeway and the rest of the crew are doing, right down to somehow not noticing the alien trader beaming onto the ship.
Harry Kim: He's actually right about how to deal with the warhead: keep it on the planet until they're sure there's no threat. But the Doctor gives Harry a guilt trip about how he'd treat an organic life form. The correct response is: in the event of, say, a potential contagion, with the exact same level of caution. Harry being Harry, he naturally caves immediately. He tries to appeal to the warhead's better nature in the second half, but those scenes are among the worst of a subpar episode. Overall, I'm more than a little weary of Harry being written as the overeager, fresh-faced rookie after five years.
Torres: Taken hostage by the warhead along with Harry. Since she's the chief engineer, and they are dealing with a piece of runaway tech, you would naturally expect that she'd play a key part in the episode. But this is Season Five, and the writers have had little use for Torres since Seven joined the crew, so she's mostly just a glorified extra.
THOUGHTS:
Warhead is a mediocre episode, but it starts out promisingly. The teaser and opening Act move along nicely. The ship receives the distress call. The AI is discovered and taken aboard. The crew discover its nature as a weapon of mass destruction. After some debate, they decide to try to save the AI while eliminating the risk to the ship. All of this is well structured, there are potentially interesting concepts, and the episode moves nicely to the crisis point.
Then the warhead takes control of the Doctor, and the writers promptly run out of ideas.
From this point on, there isn't so much a structure as just a collection of scenes. The encounter with the trader takes up about ten minutes in the mid-episode... but this entire set of events doesn't actually do anything. There is no impact on the rest of the story, and if it were removed entirely there would be no sign that anything was missing.
After a lot of wheel-spinning, the final Act then feels badly rushed. All of the actual story gets stuffed into the last fifteen minutes. This leaves no chance for suspense to build, for the crew to deal with complications, or for characters to truly consider their choices. It doesn't help that Robert Picardo's performance is very far from his best - but I can't help but think that the whole episode would work better if the detour with the trader had been eliminated and the final Act expanded to take up the whole second half.
OVERALL:
Warhead is a frustrating episode. It's not just that it isn't good. It's that the opening Act is quite promising, making it all the more disappointing when the script deteriorates into a directionless mess at the twenty-minute mark.
It's watchable enough, and it's far from Voyager's worst. Heck, it's not even the worst of the last five episodes. But it feels suspiciously like something that's there less to tell a story than to fill a timeslot.
Overall Rating: 4/10.
Previous Episode: Relativity
Next Episode: Equinox
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