An alien weapon that possesses artificial intelligence links with the EMH program and begins to terrorize the crew.An alien weapon that possesses artificial intelligence links with the EMH program and begins to terrorize the crew.An alien weapon that possesses artificial intelligence links with the EMH program and begins to terrorize the crew.
Steven Dennis
- Onquanii
- (as Steve Dennis)
David Keith Anderson
- Ensign Ashmore
- (uncredited)
John Austin
- Voyager Ops Officer
- (uncredited)
Sylvester Foster
- Crewman Timothy Lang
- (uncredited)
Holiday Freeman
- Night Shift Tactical Officer
- (uncredited)
Maya Fujimoto
- Science Division Officer
- (uncredited)
Kerry Hoyt
- Crewman Fitzpatrick
- (uncredited)
Tony Jones
- Command Division Officer
- (uncredited)
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Featured reviews
Not a bad episode, but I struggled with a substantial amount of it
Voyager's night-shift receives a distress signal..
It has the feel of an original series episode, with a simple Cold War, sci-fi premise, but with 90s era technobabble.
The plot has a number of contrivances that I find implausible to the point of distraction. Certain characters get Voyager into a predicament with what feels to me like idiotic decision making that no amount of debate about sentience can justify. It might have helped my capacity to suspend the disbelief if the title of the episode was something other than "Warhead".
What follows is a body possession story where the central character is unlikeable and blinkered for the majority of the episode, until another plot contrivance suddenly changes their perspective to bring about what feels like an obligatory spectacular ending.
Robert Picardo gives a strong committed performance, but the writers make him so continually aggressive it is a hard watch for me.
Garrett Wang is required to be assertive and involved in some heated discussions, and I think he feels like the emotion is being unnaturally forced out at times. That being said it includes some reasonably good development for his character.
Some of the themes about sentient beings struggling to break free of their programming to think ethically feels an allegory of humanity at its most destructive. I like this aspect of the story a lot but little else.
It's a 5.5/10 for me but I round upwards.
It has the feel of an original series episode, with a simple Cold War, sci-fi premise, but with 90s era technobabble.
The plot has a number of contrivances that I find implausible to the point of distraction. Certain characters get Voyager into a predicament with what feels to me like idiotic decision making that no amount of debate about sentience can justify. It might have helped my capacity to suspend the disbelief if the title of the episode was something other than "Warhead".
What follows is a body possession story where the central character is unlikeable and blinkered for the majority of the episode, until another plot contrivance suddenly changes their perspective to bring about what feels like an obligatory spectacular ending.
Robert Picardo gives a strong committed performance, but the writers make him so continually aggressive it is a hard watch for me.
Garrett Wang is required to be assertive and involved in some heated discussions, and I think he feels like the emotion is being unnaturally forced out at times. That being said it includes some reasonably good development for his character.
Some of the themes about sentient beings struggling to break free of their programming to think ethically feels an allegory of humanity at its most destructive. I like this aspect of the story a lot but little else.
It's a 5.5/10 for me but I round upwards.
I was entertained in spite of some of the leaps in logic
I feel like this episode would have been improved so much if the bomb didn't look so much like a weapon when they initially encounter it and wasn't revealed to being a bomb until the doctor is usurped. I feel like it would be one of the better episodes of the season if the viewer wasn't scratching their head wondering why the hell they beamed an apparent alien weapon on board the ship and decided after learned that it's a weapon that they should salvage parts of it. It shows how unfriendly the physical appearance of a weapon seams when an AI personality becomes the friendly part of the weapon give that AI is so commonly the root of evil for science fiction stories.
Great episode, but...
Why was Kim in command? There's at least one more ensign who's been on Voyager just as long and is wearing a red command uniform.
Star Trek writers have seen Dark Star shock!
My review would give them 3 out of 10 for originality, anyone who has seen the 1974 indie film Dark Star would recognise the part of the story line that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon wrote all those years ago. Then it was written as a black comedy, this story tried to make it a serious subject, it doesn't work.
This episode reminded me why I skipped the series 20 years ago...
...I can excuse boring characters, which Voyager has quite a few, but it's a complete showstopper when the "heroes" act unbelievably stupid, over and over again. Which they do in this one, even more than in most other episodes.
This ship should have been destroyed at least a dozen times, by now, just because of their mind-blowing dumb "ah, lets do it, what could happen?" mindset.
Did you know
- TriviaMcKenzie Westmore (daughter of series makeup artist Michael Westmore) appears in this episode as Ensign Jenkins. This is her second appearance on a Star Trek show but her first as an adult. Eleven years earlier, when she was ten years old, she featured in The Next Generation episode "When the Bough Breaks" in an uncredited role. She played "Rose" one of the children abducted by a sterile but technologically advanced race.
- GoofsWhen Tuvok introduces a malfunction to the Sickbay Holo-emitters and we see it start to take effect, The Doctor is wearing the mobile emitter. The mobile emitter is completely separate from the sickbay Holo-systems and would not be effected.
- Quotes
Captain Kathryn Janeway: Assemble the staff. We're going to find a way to outsmart a smart bomb.
- ConnectionsReferences Star Trek: Voyager: Prototype (1996)
Details
- Runtime
- 46m
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
- 4:3
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