A question has perplexed me since recently watching the episode for the first time. At the end It is apparent that The Clown did in fact have sentient life form based emotions as it feared its own demise.
Was Captain Janeway wrong in the way that she went about the first contact with Clown?
I believe that if Captain Janeway had been more insightful and used her intelligence in a better way she could have advanced areas of Holographic Treatment for many ailments. Reverse engineering Clown could have been used to help treat many emotional disorders as the Clown would have direct access to the patients inner most thoughts to help them.
The Clown would have been instrumental in assisting rebuilding Disconnected Borg minds from inside of the Borg mind itself. But in hindsight I believe that Captain Janeway succumbed to her own fear in that moment and allowed her emotions to save a fraction of people instead of millions. In this sense I feel that Captain Janeway failed the Kobayashi Maru test and under performed as a Star Fleet officer. By not understanding that if she was able to trick the Clown, the way that she did, to fall into its own darkness, she could have tricked the Clown into understanding hope by saving it at the very last moment. The Clown would then understand hope through its own fear and would have become sentient, wanting to live. Such a trait would have been very valuable in assisting people with fear and anxiety. The Clown would have become a new type of Holographic Medical Program.
I would even go so far as to say that the Clown could have been incorporated into the computer core of a ship to generate faster and more precise calculations that would allow for faster velocities, better ship scanners and weapons overall.
But hindsight is 20/20 and we might never know if the Clown could re-purposed for such operations.
Was Captain Janeway wrong in the way that she went about the first contact with Clown?
I believe that if Captain Janeway had been more insightful and used her intelligence in a better way she could have advanced areas of Holographic Treatment for many ailments. Reverse engineering Clown could have been used to help treat many emotional disorders as the Clown would have direct access to the patients inner most thoughts to help them.
The Clown would have been instrumental in assisting rebuilding Disconnected Borg minds from inside of the Borg mind itself. But in hindsight I believe that Captain Janeway succumbed to her own fear in that moment and allowed her emotions to save a fraction of people instead of millions. In this sense I feel that Captain Janeway failed the Kobayashi Maru test and under performed as a Star Fleet officer. By not understanding that if she was able to trick the Clown, the way that she did, to fall into its own darkness, she could have tricked the Clown into understanding hope by saving it at the very last moment. The Clown would then understand hope through its own fear and would have become sentient, wanting to live. Such a trait would have been very valuable in assisting people with fear and anxiety. The Clown would have become a new type of Holographic Medical Program.
I would even go so far as to say that the Clown could have been incorporated into the computer core of a ship to generate faster and more precise calculations that would allow for faster velocities, better ship scanners and weapons overall.
But hindsight is 20/20 and we might never know if the Clown could re-purposed for such operations.
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