I just watched the (excellent) S4 episode 'Mortal Coil', where Neelix is revived by borg nanites after 18 hours of being dead- a new record.
At the time this first aired there was quite a bit of guffawing over the fact that Voyager now had the ability to 'cure death'. Now that the series is over (and assuming that Neelix's crisis didn't in fact convince the doctor that reviving dead people was not always the best course of action, which I think we can) is there a subsequent example of a crewman dying in a fashion that would avail them of this cure. So, in short, their dead bodies have to be back in sickbay within 18 hours of death, with both the Doctor and Seven present. The bodies have to be undamaged, as Neelix's appeared to be.
The two that occur to me off the top of my head are Jetal, who died in 'Latent Image'. Cause of death was synaptic shock- presumably this was a cascading failure of brain synapses that was insurmountable by nanoprobes, given the extremely complexity of brain synapses and their role in our intelligence and personality?
The other is Belanna in 'Nothing Human'- although she never dies, she is in great danger of dying from the creature attached to her. Would it have been a valid medical strategy to let her die, remove the creature, and then use the nanoprobes to revive her? I am going to say no, because it was established that the creature had interfaced with her organs and removing the creature may have removed the organs, which would have made her ineligible as a candidate for revival, as you can't exactly come back to life if you have no organs.
So, who else? There must be some redshirt who died somewhere near sickbay in the next three seasons!
At the time this first aired there was quite a bit of guffawing over the fact that Voyager now had the ability to 'cure death'. Now that the series is over (and assuming that Neelix's crisis didn't in fact convince the doctor that reviving dead people was not always the best course of action, which I think we can) is there a subsequent example of a crewman dying in a fashion that would avail them of this cure. So, in short, their dead bodies have to be back in sickbay within 18 hours of death, with both the Doctor and Seven present. The bodies have to be undamaged, as Neelix's appeared to be.
The two that occur to me off the top of my head are Jetal, who died in 'Latent Image'. Cause of death was synaptic shock- presumably this was a cascading failure of brain synapses that was insurmountable by nanoprobes, given the extremely complexity of brain synapses and their role in our intelligence and personality?
The other is Belanna in 'Nothing Human'- although she never dies, she is in great danger of dying from the creature attached to her. Would it have been a valid medical strategy to let her die, remove the creature, and then use the nanoprobes to revive her? I am going to say no, because it was established that the creature had interfaced with her organs and removing the creature may have removed the organs, which would have made her ineligible as a candidate for revival, as you can't exactly come back to life if you have no organs.
So, who else? There must be some redshirt who died somewhere near sickbay in the next three seasons!
