First of all, Happy 50th Birthday Star Trek. Second, 5 episodes left after this post.
Human Error
This episode is heartbreakingly frustrating. One thing I've always wanted in Voyager was the possibility that Seven would become Annika again, or just another step to become more human than Borg. This episode introduced the Chakotay/Seven relationship but it really didn't bother me. I loved the scenes in the holodeck, with Seven in a starfleet uniform, or the hair is down, or her being able to laugh and have personality. Yes, Seven is unique, but individuals are all unique. We all have quirks that make us human. What Seven was was kind of that middle between human and borg. Also, I love Jeri Ryan as an actress, and listening to her give interviews and I always loved when we got to see that personality on screen, in episodes such as this, Unimatrix 0, and The Killing Game.
Also, I have a question. The cortical node was the thing that caused the fail safe right? Well, in Imperfection, she got Icheb's Node and Icheb is a lot younger than Seven. Why would this new cortical node have that same fail safe, if that said node was not at full development. Maybe I'm just asking a confused question, but those last 5 minutes really made this episode not all that great. It's really a frustrating missed opportunity that I never forgave Voyager for.
Q2
This episode is full of cliches and not very good. It's a shame this ended up being Q's final episode because DeLancie (Both of them) deserved better. There's really not much to say other than that.
Author, Author
This episode is really interesting. It's hard to really justify a hologram having rights, but watching this episode I kept thinking about Dr. Moriarty (TNG's Elementary Dear Data and Ship in a Bottle) and how he is traveling in space as a free man, and I wonder if that could be applied to the Doctor's argument. When Moriarty was created, Geordi said to create a holodeck character to defeat Data. Well, Moriarty became that character and one can say he exceeded his original programming. Can't the same thing be said about the Doctor? The EMH was designed as a short term program, but due to unforseen circumstances, he was forced to expand from his original programming and he was not your ordinary hologram. One can argue that the Doctor and Moriarty are very similar and if one person can be free, why not the other?
As for the episode, this is such a great episode. I loved the Doctor's story, but I also liked the B-Plots, especially Seven talking to her grandmother. One problem I've always had with Endgame was we never saw Seven of Nine adapt to life on earth and that made me sad. At least a few episodes before that, we got to see some of that, which was nice. I also liked the follow up to Lineage (of sorts) with B'Elanna's conversation with her father. Still, this episode was about the Doctor and once again, Picardo was excellent, as was McNeil and that scene where they had the argument.
I will also say when I reviewed a prior episode, I made a mention about this episode and holographic rights. I think I made a comment about the Doctor feeling like he didn't have many and how untrue that was. Well, this episode kind of confirmed that, how the Doctor does have a lot of rights and became the individual doctor on the USS Voyager, but it was more in reaction to hearing about the other Mark 1's. It was a very interesting character episode and a very underrated one at that.