Warhead

Voyager follows a distress call to an abandoned planet but only finds a rocket-like device there, which is able to communicate with the doctor and appears to be intelligent and sentient. The doctor sees it as his duty to bring this new life form on board Voyager and to help it. When it crashed onto the planet, this being apparently lost some of its memories and is not directly aware of being a machine.

Of course, this machine is not beamed into a specially secured cargo bay but directly into engineering, next to the warp core. Although secured with a force field, you should not beam an alien creature that looks very suspiciously like a rocket directly next to the warp core.

In any case, the crew realizes that this is an intelligent weapon of mass destruction. However, the doc is able to convince Kim and Torres not to simply beam the rocket into space. Instead, they try to transfer this machine's "brain" into a holomatrix, but this triggers a defense mechanism. Instead, the machine transfers its consciousness to the doctor, through whom it now speaks and acts. I found this artistic decision rather unfortunate. The machine now uses the doc to communicate with the crew and move around. I would have found it better if the machine's consciousness had been transferred into its own holomatrix. Kim has tried several times to convince this machine that with the right "body" it could be more than just a weapon. And it would have helped if this machine had had its own body, its own appearance and thus its own identity.

After that it's all about the weapon wanting to resume its original mission, namely the destruction of a military complex of an enemy of their people. However, Kim finds out in the machine's logs that the war is already over and that the crash on the planet was triggered by its own people, as the missile was mistakenly launched along with several others. We then see a back and forth in the best "Crimson Tide" style until this machine finally gives in and realizes that it has to stop the other rockets also.

When this episode was written, AI wasn't as hyped and part of everyday life as it is today. Unfortunately, Star Trek had several episodes about intelligent and autonomous machines that were then described as sentient life forms. However, a machine that has AI is not the same as a new form of life. Especially since who would build a weapon of mass destruction that is sentient and can not only make tactical decisions autonomously according to its programming, but also perceives itself as a living being, wants to develop and be more than what its programming dictates? That might make sense for a combat robot, but no one would implant a life-form-like consciousness into a rocket. Just imagine: At some point a sentient rocket will be sitting in the pub with the sentient vacuum cleaner and the sentient refrigerator, drinking beer and talking shop about Parrises Squares.

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.

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.

Another prime example among many other particular episodes where writers once again denote StarFleet "Principals" in usual confusion and immense frustration to the viewer!

So tired of the Star Fleet/Janeway making decisions off rationalizations. It's like find the most illogical idea and do that one.

The irrationality is nicely demonstrated here. Kim cites Starfleet protocol. Doctor cites is morality (anyone else want to add some philosophical construct that will make real consequences for the crew based on more abstraction, which can't ever be argued with?) Then the scientific fact of an explosion is noted, Ah, but any medical procedure has risk is countered with (What?) But of course the illogical nebulus comment is what drives the reality of the crew to keep explosive on board (What?) Then planets are at war. Janeway says won't help one against the other because... "we can't interfere with the affairs of planets (What was that contradiction?) If won't interfere with plants that have their own dispute... then you're actually interfering with the planets by not letting them dispute...?

Of course it does! Base real decisions on conjecture and irrational sayings and sentiments... it's the Starfleet way on Voyager!

Just off the wall thinking and it's like the crew says, "Ah, darn. Guess we got to do that silly thinking and base reality and harm on that!. Doesn't make sense from some general conjecture speculating thing. So... let's pick that one to base fact on!" Set a course....

Half the series has this conflict. Just another inconsistently irrational situation, or a benefit in being obtuse. You can't argue with an abstraction, conveniently so.

Ensign Kim has been given the chance to command Voyager during the 'night' shift (there's no night or day in space!). However, this shirt is anything but dull in this episode. It all begins with the ship receiving a distress call. When Harry and the Doctor land on a craptastic planet, they find that the call is NOT coming from a living being but a machine that THINKS it's alive! Naturally the Doctor is excited, as he thinks he'll have some new mechanical friend. However, when they bring it aboard they learn the truth--it's a type of smart WEAPON. Way to go, Harry!

This is a decent episode. It also gives Robert Picardo a chance to act a bit outside his normal range as he's soon taken over by the weapon and it makes him act a tad grumpy, to put it mildly. Original and worth seeing.