Regarding Access Codes

[Renvar]

In "Unimatrix Zero, Part II", the Borg use Tuvok's access codes to lower Voyager's shields. This seems incongruous with standard Starfleet procedures regarding lost personnel. Why didn't they change the access codes? They must have had a lot of (aparently unfounded) faith in those neural supressants they took to avoid joining the Hive mind.

 

[Dream]

What I thought was stupid was that only Janeway's authorization and codes were needed to activate Voyager's auto destruct sequence while it took two or three senior officers to do that each on three of the Enterprises that we've seen onscreen. If Janeway went crazy and decided to blow up the ship would the rest of the crew just be screwed?

 

[DonIago]

It's possible that either the auto-destruct system was damaged during Voyager's trip into the Delta Quadrant, or the chain of command as far as the computer was concerned broke down to the point where some emergency protocol kicked in under which two authorizations were no longer required.

Those are my guesses.

No argument here regarding the stupidity of not changing Tuvok's...and by extension everyone else's...access codes.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, we never heard that the Borg would have taken control of the shields and sensors by using Tuvok's codes. All we heard was that the codes were compromised. This could just as well be because the assimilated Tuvok, familiar with the ship's security systems, found a way to compromise the codes that had been duly altered.

As for requiring more than one person to set self-destruct, I don't think this would be a good idea. Anybody with proper authorization should be able to set it solo, or else the ship's secrets could be compromised when key personnel were killed at the moment the enemy boarded the ship. It's merely a matter of deciding who should have the authority - and surely the skipper should! If she goes crazy or joins the enemy, that's her prerogative. She's the captain, she's fully entitled to life-and-death decisions without the need to consult anybody.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vic Sixx]

I figured it was because the real first officer was dead, and Chakotay isn't really Starfleet. Maybe that's why Janeway doesn't need his permission to blow up the ship.

 

[LeadHead]

What I thought was stupid was that only Janeway's authorization and codes were needed to activate Voyager's auto destruct sequence while it took two or three senior officers to do that each on three of the Enterprises that we've seen onscreen. If Janeway went crazy and decided to blow up the ship would the rest of the crew just be screwed?

Wait, you mean Janeway didn't go crazy?

Seriously though it's just a big hole that the writers dug themselves into. It was established in TNG that when an officer is captured their codes are changed. Even though they were being sent on a mission to be assimilated, they should have canceled their codes across the board to be on the safe side. So offscreen we get to say that the writers really dropped the ball. On screen, Chakotay blew it.

 

[DanCPA]

Lazy writing!