Retro Review: Lifesigns

[TrekToday]

Voyager rescues a critically ill Vidiian woman who is given a holographic body by the Doctor while he treats her. Plot Summary:...

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[hux]

I have real problems with the doctor's putative self-awareness and I've expressed them on numerous threads. It's one thing to ask us to accept his sentience and move on (which I don't) but it's another to ask us to do the same thing regarding his capacity for emotions (especially love). It's not an uncommon trope in sci-fi to conflate self-awareness with emotion (if you have one then you have the other) but I've always been very cynical of that assumption.

Why must a life-form who has achieved sentience simultaneously become a being of emotion? Obviously, the audience prefers this and writers tend to go with the flow but I'm not a fan. I simply do not accept the notion that a computer program left on for a year or two will therefore, quite naturally develop the capacity for... love. I mean, for goodness sake.

Anyway, this isn't the place for that discussion and while I suspend disbelief for individual episodes (such as this one) I do not suspend it for the wider discussion of the EMH character. I just don't see the doctor as anything more than a computer programe designed to very convincingly mimic a human being (and this is my favourite character I'm talking about).

All that said, I do quite like this episode and think the chemistry between the two actors is very good. The Vidians don't excite me as much as they seem to excite others though and I regard them as only marginally more interesting than the Kazon.

The Seska arc gets another outing and Tom's continued malcontent behaviour is fun to watch but I doubt Janeway and Tuvok's decision to leave Chakotay out of the loop did a great deal for his sense of inclusion. I suspect he felt more like third in command rather than second but meh, I liked all that stuff.

A pretty good episode.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Chakotay may have felt like a "third in command" by their actions and yet isn't this exactly what many disaffected fans claim they wanted? Distrust between the Starfleet and Maquis crews and tension from same?

As much as Janeway trusted Chakotay to hand him the job of XO, a small part of her must have continued to worry about whether that decision was correct. Having Tuvok on board, someone she's known for years and who undoubtedly was playing devil's advocate probably didn't help her trust him 110% in the first 2 years.

It also didn't help that this was the year Chakotay defied Janeway's command, stole a shuttle and went after Seska without a single "by your leave".

I chuckled at one of the comments under the review that claimed TPTB dropped the "Vidians chasing Voyager to get Torres' DNA" as a plot line.

They obviously never saw season 2's "Deadlock" or "Resolutions".

 

[Terok Nor]

I loved the Vidiians. The best alien race Voyager created in my opinion. I would have said Species 8472 until that episode where they were shown to be teddy bears.

I liked the actress who played the Vidiian patient. She and Picardo worked well together. I sort of agree with Hux about the Doctor's emotions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense since he's just a computer program. Data was far more advanced and even he wasn't capable of emotions without that chip. The Doctor didn't even have that. Poor Moriarty was self aware and look what that got him.

 

[hux]

Chakotay may have felt like a "third in command" by their actions and yet isn't this exactly what many disaffected fans claim they wanted? Distrust between the Starfleet and Maquis crews and tension from same?

I think the criticism is more about how quickly the Maquis crew just accepted their lot and played nice from the off. More mistrust and cynicism from them would have made sense, more so than from the Starfleet crew.

But Janeway deliberately keeping Chakotay out of the loop when she's trying to engender trust and produce an atmosphere of equality and respect with the Maquis is somewhat strange. He represents the Maquis on the ship so using him as the patsy has a certain lack of respect to it (especially when Tuvok is the one who formulated the plan AND chose to keep Chak out of it).

 

[stardream]

Liked the Vidians much more than the Kazon. (an interesting aside, in one of the books it is mentioned that the Vidians, having been cured of the Phage by the Think Tank, are having to face the consequences of their organ harvesting ways by facing the wrath of the 'donor' species).

I had never really thought about one particular point. Why target B'Elanna specifically because Tom was on the planet and spent time with them. He didn't get sick either nor apparently did that Talaxian. What made Torres so special? Why didn't Denara just ask for samples of anyone on Voyager?

Keeping Chakotay out of the loop...maybe Tuvok and Janeway didn't think he was that good of an actor to pull it off. Seriously I thought the arc was interesting the first time around. After you know what's happening...not so much.

Season 2 is probably my least favorite of the series. Nothing horrible about it...I just like the other seasons better.

 

[Catarina]

Keeping Chakotay out of the loop...maybe Tuvok and Janeway didn't think he was that good of an actor to pull it off.

I had to hold my coffee in to snicker snort, but truthfully, I thought the same thing when it first aired that Janeway believed that. I mean he was SO gullible as a Maqui leader....

 

[Drone]

Chakotay may have felt like a "third in command" by their actions and yet isn't this exactly what many disaffected fans claim they wanted? Distrust between the Starfleet and Maquis crews and tension from same?

I think the criticism is more about how quickly the Maquis crew just accepted their lot and played nice from the off. More mistrust and cynicism from them would have made sense, more so than from the Starfleet crew.

But Janeway deliberately keeping Chakotay out of the loop when she's trying to engender trust and produce an atmosphere of equality and respect with the Maquis is somewhat strange. He represents the Maquis on the ship so using him as the patsy has a certain lack of respect to it (especially when Tuvok is the one who formulated the plan AND chose to keep Chak out of it).

I think most people think that an extended period of some kind of strife would have been much more plausible as well as dramatically entertaining, though I've definitely seen some opinions that it realistically couldn't have been maintained too long, as a joint acclamation and acceptance of the established order would have to happen no more than a season + in, lest the ultimate goal of getting back be endangered and/or differences not really needing to taking longer than that to be reconciled.

Given the reality that the network put the kibosh on this being any kind of continuing thread in the proceedings, it seems pretty pointless to bring it up as if it was something that was just volitionally decided against by the show runners, as another example of Voyager possibilities needlessly lost out on.

Keeping Chakotay out of the loop...maybe Tuvok and Janeway didn't think he was that good of an actor to pull it off.

I had to hold my coffee in to snicker snort, but truthfully, I thought the same thing when it first aired that Janeway believed that. I mean he was SO gullible as a Maqui leader....

I was beaten to the punch on the bad actor perspective, but as to your comment on Chakotay's fecklessness as a leader, he did pose such a self-evaluatory question to Tuvok at the end of State of Flux, to which the latter responded that he didn't consider Chakotay's qualities to be deficient in that manner. Tuvok wouldn't make such a statement in any way to buck up Chakotay's mood after the dispiriting experience he had just gone through, rather than the comment being an actual rendering of his opinion on the question.

 

[Lynx]

The third episode in the excellent Michael Jonas arc which starts with "Meld" and ends with "Investigations" and a rather nice and funny episode. Some funny conversations between The Doctor, Denara Pel and Kes are the highlights in this episode.

I'll give it 3 points out of 5