UNCUT - Prototype (VOY S2E13) | Star Trek Journey 393

Regarding the Prime Directive - I don't think Janeway was "right for the wrong reason". It seems to me that the unintended consequences of changing another culture, absolutely covers 'uh oh, our help has enabled their evil we were not aware of'. And if you help every single lifeform avoid natural extinction, you're making a value judgement that this particular lifeform is more deserving than any that might later arise to fill the same space. Imagine, if you will, spacefaring aliens passing through our solar system 66 million years ago, notice the incoming asteroid that'll wipe out the dinosaurs when it hits Earth. And they prevent that. Dinosaurs continue to rule Earth as the dominant lifeform, so mammals never get their chance, which means apes never evolve, and humans never arise.

Humans are not the only sentient beings. I thought we had progressed way beyond this ridiculous idea. All animals are sentient which is why extinction of species is an unforgivable result of human selfishness .

You had not "seen the bottom" yet as of this ep, but you have now - a couple bottom-feeder eps in fact. Season 3 and especially beyond that, you'll see marked improvements...

I really found a fair amount of correlation and similar themes to the TOS episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, but just another interesting take on it that was worth a look. Also, the simplicity of the robot design kind of mirrors the simplicity of the Cheronians' design in TOS. Also, regarding Josh's take on Janeway's Prime Directive decision, you say she was right but for the wrong reasons and the fact that they're evil makes her right in your eyes. But her whole point (and the Prime Directive's) was that we don't KNOW anything about them and it might NOT be the right thing to do. That is the whole point of the Prime Directive. Interfering might make things worse. That's exactly why the rule exists. This is the exact scenario that the Prime Directive was instituted for. It could be damaging. And it really was.

Season 2 and 3 have some VERY mid eps, sprinkled with some gems. Season 4+ is mostly gems... mostly. cant wait. Also... what about the doctor, is he chopped liver? Don't they treat him as a member of the crew? Is he not sentient and full of ingenuity.

I know I poked fun at the robot costumes, which i felt were very TOS-level. That aside, this is a great episode. This is my first A-tier of Season 2.

I agree that you can't hide behind the Prime Directive in circumstances where an entire race is going to die off unless you intervene because "oh no, what if they're Space Nazis." You have to make the best decision you can with the information that you have. However, I think this episode goes beyond that. Here we have a race of robots that were created by something. We don't know who, and we don't know for what purpose. But we do know they were designed not to procreate. If we intervene here, we can be interfering with a lot more than just whether or not a species lives or dies. There is a lot of information here that we don't know about, and the situation can actually be a lot more complex than it looks. For instance, we eventually find out that this species was intentionally designed not to be able to reproduce as a fail safe. Even if we never learned that they were "evil," we shouldn't willingly go redesigning them without first asking why they were designed that way in the first place. It would be like if a species was dying off due to an apparent genetic flaw, or an invasive plant or something. But by removing what we think the problem is without knowing more about it, we find out that the species actually can't live without that thing or something. Or if we knew an alien was dying and needed surgery, but we didn't fully understand this species's anatomy. I'm saying we should still try to help within reason, but before we take action, we should try to learn as much as possible about what we are doing. And if we feel like we don't know enough about what harm our actions might cause, it's probably best to just leave it alone.

One scene in this that always makes me chuckle is when Torres says she'll build the prototype, 3947 raises his 2 balled fists almost like he's silently going "fuck yeah!!". So I think it's selling Janeway short to say she was just following the prime directive because it's a rule(if I interpreted what you were saying correctly). Yes, she didn't know the exact circumstances surrounding these robots, but she knows what she doesn't know, and that's the point. She's not following it purely out of dogma, but they know NOTHING about these bots. Then with a little more information we discover they're basically Skynet. She was right. She may not have known exactly why at the time, but she knew they didn't have the information to make that call. I have much more criticism for Picard in Pen Pals and Homeward. There the PD is just dogma. I don't subscribe to "what if space Hitler" theory, because it could just as easily be "what if space Jesus". I think Who Watches the Watchers is a great argument for the non interference part. The Mintakans were doing fine and contact was almost disastrous. But if there's an asteroid that's going to wipe out life on a planet, or some other disaster you can avert, I think there's a responsibility to do so. Nature doesn't "select" a species for extinction as Ian Malcolm suggests. That implies conscious choice. And while you could argue survival of the fittest for 1 species outcompeting another (cro-magnons vs neanderthals for instance), but the dinosaurs were taken out by a space rock. That's just wrong place at the wrong time. Even then you have to wonder what would have happened on Earth of some alien ship intercepted that rock? Still, I do think intervention to avoid mass extinction events should be an acceptable exception to the PD. Discretely if at all possible. The locals should never know. But if that's not possible then finding out about alien life will certainly be less damaging than extinction. Even the guy in Homeward likely wouldn't have killed himself if he weren't alone in knowing the secret. All that said, this is a completely different situation. These bots were designed to prevent being able to reproduce. Maddox wanting to create androids was just continuing Soong's(another human's) work, and when Data created Lal, nobody reprogrammed him to be able to do that, he figured it out on his own(akin to natural evolution). Showing the APUs how to reproduce is like genetically engineering a biological species to have abilities it never naturally did. That's a line you should never cross. You'd likely destabilize the whole ecosystem. 3947 was willing to zap Shower Guy and kidnap the person who saved his life, with no justification beyond wanting something. Then when Voyager rightly tries to recover Torres, they're more than willing to destroy the ship and kill everyone onboard. If they can grow their numbers and are so quick to make enemies, then I think it's clear their genocide wouldn't end with their creators. Saving a primitive society from an outside threat they lack the knowledge and/or power to address is one thing. Fundamentally changing the very nature of a species in a way that could upend the whole balance of power/nature and then unleashing them on the galaxy? Nah, Janeway was right. That's a line you just don't cross.

They stole the opening from Robocop

You’ve not seen the bottom yet Alex.

Bryan Cranston does show in another Sc-Fi show you guys have watched one episode of.........

Oh good. I thought my headphones were on the way out.

I got all of the Living with the Land references. I love Epcot! I enjoy that Josh is a fellow Disney fan. Between Disney, Star Trek, and X-Files, it's like I have all of my special interests in one channel. Do you watch any Disney Vloggers? I think you'd enjoy Molly from Mammoth Club if you haven't already heard of her.

What makes it TOS is it is a full story, there is a problem with stakes and danger, and then after some rising stakes and changing status quos from commercial break to commercial break the good guys win. What makes this lite is 90s TV just won't commit the way 60s TV did out of fear of being cheesy or corny or something, so you wind up with tepid, mild adventures. No villain in a 90s show is going to take a phaser and bend it into a pretzel telling Picard, Janeway or Sisko he has five times their strength. So you get TOS Lite from time to time, but nothing that will stack up to TOS. DS9 has found a path that is good and not really like TOS so they are tougher to compare.

I liked when Alex said "KXHXKHKXHKXHKXHKXH".

Dinosaurs were not sentient?! Actually, they probably were in the sense that many cared for their young. That's a conversation for another day though. Roxann Dawson proves that she's strong enough to carry an episode.

This audio SUCKS What a bunch of hack FRAUDS!

I think that "5 minute feeling" philosophy has got to go. All it does is set one up for enforced confirmation bias. One thing gives you that feeling, and instead of looking for good things to prove it wrong, it sets up a hunt for the bad to justify that feeling, and the only thing that can pull up from the negativity nose-dive is an unexpected OTT element as a surprise. That's an unbalanced critique method for anything, IMO.

Hey this LLM is requesting the ability to procreate. Me: I don't think that's wise. Josh: I'd let them do it. Josh also seems to have a completely distorted view of the 90s. That robot design was in no way a future 90s aesthetic. It was straight up a 1950s design that you would see a B&W outer limits or twilight zone episode. Terminator 2 came out in 1991, that's a future robot 90s aesthetic.

"His name is Data. He has a family; his friends, there, on the Enterprise."

Funny how B'Elanna tells the robot that Data is the only artificial sentient being in the Federation, right after she spoke with The Doctor in sickbay.... who gave her the idea how to fix the power unit in the first place! And did TNG train us to trust androids? Didn't Lore try to kill the entire crew in the very first season?!

Okay again you surprised me just how much you love this one. I really like it, but would give it a B.

This is the Trek show most obsessed with coffee. DS9 is second.

A big element in this story comes from an Alan Dean Foster Star Trek story for a Star Trek book and record set. A Mirror For Futility. https://youtu.be/S-5pb3SeMWQ?is=SoEl3fpFzjOLcpbS

Not that anyone cares, really, but as a long time Patron here I just wanted to say, Voyager was always a hit or miss show for me, and I always saw it as a "lost opportunity" show that often didn't live up to its potential because if often fell back to trying to be TNG since DS9 was doing it's own thing. It's not all bad and I like some of the characters, and I had lost interest a few seasons in. So I'm not following these reactions as much. Later developments re-sparked my interest, though. (You'll know it when you see it.) It actually has some great episodes, but nowhere near the same amount as my favorites: TNG and DS9. I do like this episode, though. :)

Fun episode. The villains remind me of classic Doctor Who, scaring kids to hide behind the couch. When I rewatch Voyager I start with the Season 3 finale so a lot of these first 3 season episodes I've completely forgotten. Good stuff.

Voyager Strengh is definitely so far the ending Scenes. Many really good ones. Most with Janeway... hmm what a coincidence. ^^ For the Episode: I liked the Design of the Robots. Always the reminder that they are "just" Robots while also having enough human Features in Style and talking, to get us to care.

We have a good run here for a while. Stuff that is either just legit good or will at least be fun to talk about

Technobabble: The episode. Enjoyable concept with reasonable execution though

Kenneth Biller did a rewrite on this script. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 28, No. 4/5, p. 92) Kim mentions "flux capacitance" (at the beginning of this installment) as does Torres (while later activating the prototype). This terminology is a reference to the flux capacitor from Back to the Future. (Delta Quadrant, p. 89) Kolbe and Mulgrews relationship lasted for 3 years ending sometime in the 4th Season of Voyager.

So I'm not as high on this one as you guys, but it was solid! I agree it's my favorite of the season (SO FAR!), but i don't know if it reaches a full A for me. I would go no lower than an A-/B+. This also might be the most...sci-fi episode of the series so far, if we're talking tropes and vibes, and while sci-fi isn't my first love, it works here, perhaps due to the dark tone and quasi-horror vibes.The robots steal the show of course! They're almost Uncanny Valley level of creepy, and I always like that. A major upstep for season 2, and Voyager in general.

Good god that audio. Can't watch this one lads.

Here's my take on the Prime Directive: In the Alpha Quadrant I disagree with it almost always. I agree that if you have the power to help someone you should. HOWEVER, in the Delta Quadrant it is different. Janeway was absolutely right when she said that they have no business making decisions that could change the balance of power in the area and then just warp out of there. In the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation is there to take responsibility of any potential fallout from breaking the prime directive.

Holy fuck Josh, "Talking about Wesley" got me good, I LITERALLY choked on my Dr. Pepper lmao. God damn. But I survived so it's all good. I liked the design of the robots as very sleek, the only small complaint I have regarding them is it did look a bit too costumey, not metallic, especially in the neck area where you could see the leathery folds. Being witness to an unfolding tragedy did not cause that tragedy to occur, so I don't see why there's any obligation to help (but I also disagree with the prime directive saying that to help is wrong or risky - as you both say, you just don't know what the future will hold). Positive moral obligation standards are extremely risky and oppressive imo. That scenario instead is neither good nor bad, it's purely neutral (if what happens would have happened without your existing in the first place, you had no impact at all, that's 100% the definition of neutrality).

I really like all of Season Two (no-spoilers). This is a great example of high concept, great execution. The last episode is also an example of this too but with bad execution (dialogue, etc.). But like Season 2 of DS9, they are doing episodes only Voyager could do. Last episode didn't use Voyager's isolation as the asset in storytelling like this one. I'm excited to see the rest of the season with your perspectives.

Damn, audio is deep fried when you guys pop haha.

Yeah, when you run across a derelict robot in deep space, KEEP GOING. #Tuvokwasright

B'Elanna is a very appealing character. Good episode.

That arm on the hinge around 31 minutes looks like a prop from another movie. IMO, she mentioned the Exocomps. Sorry if it was missed.

I think the closest we every got to Scotty having a story that required him as an engineer to be an integral part of the story was Doomsday Machine on the Constellation, but it was a show for its time, so it focused more on Kirk and his predicaments of dealing with saving his ship and countermanding Decker's crazed despiration.

Very good writing and directing, well executed. And Roxanne Dawson knocked it out of the park with her performance. The androids reminded me of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Rating A for Actually thoroughly enjoyed an episode of Voyager's second season.

It's getting easier to imagine this happening on Earth in the form or drones, robots, that kind of thing, if all goes wrong. Also, another moral of this story: Terrorism works lol

One thing that bothers me, is that B'Ellana mentions Data, instead of their very own Doctor. I get it, the Doctor isn't an android, but under the hood he is a machine.

OMG I would 1000% buy an "Explore. Don't Help." shirt

I wonder how Lt. Carey felt when Janeway sent operations officer ensign Kim to fix the warp drive. Dude just can't catch a break. Then again Janeway also ordered Chakotay to the conn instead of letting the backup helmsman take over. Maybe she just likes to mess with people.

This episode has some of the wildest techno babble in the season. Tripolymer Plasma, Chromodynamic power, freaking FLUX CAPACITORS. No hate, just pointing out that they didn't go easy on Roxanne Dawson.

I hope they enjoy this one. I accidentally skipped it on my first watch thru (or my memory sucks lol) and was happily surprised when I found it! Errands can wait, pressing play!

Missed opportunity to ADR yourselves Siddig in the Passenger style

It was Rick Worthy in the suit *and* doing ADR for both the main robot and the prototype. He got his Star Trek start in a Klingon PC game (featuring Gowron himself) directed by Frakes. Glad to hear someone else suggest that directly name dropping Data is a step too far. Would've been a much more effective scene without mentioning his name.

In a lot of ways, this is peak Trek. Great dialogue, great direction, thoughtful dilemma with a few fantastic twists. Nothing is as cut-and-dry as it seems. If this were in fact someone's introduction to Star Trek, it would be a great one. Genuine question, though: Can the computer just not automatically shut down unauthorized transports? How many times in this franchise have we had "I can see there's an unauthorized transport but I can't stop it!" #plotarmor

The crazy thing about doing 26 episodes a year is that the writing staff only got like 2 or 3 weeks off between seasons, I believe. I doubt Ira even got that. So they pretty much went right from writing the finale to starting work on the first episodes of the next season. The reason there isn’t a “Worf episode” after The Way of the Warrior until Sword of Kahless is because they were already well into working on the first half-dozen scripts of DS9 season 4 when the decision was made to bring Worf on the show. DS9’s first three seasons did always seem to have a lull in the middle somewhere. Not sure if it’s a pattern caused by the grind of writing so many episodes or just happenstance.

You can tell Alex is having fun when he repeatedly blows out his microphone. I do really like this episode though. Giving everyone something to do is the making of a good episode. And a great guest actor too.

messy because they're humanoids altered by nanites and surgicall altered with cybbernectic parts. It's functional- any one drone has certain needs and roles and it doesn't have to look good. It's efficient, not aesthetic. Brutalist cybernetic aesthetic

funny, the showrunners and writers and frakes didnt think this one came out well. Apparently they were really worried about the appearance of the robots and thought they looked corny. I think it works and they were overthinking it because that was the big concern, whether they could make good looking robots given their practical budgetary limitations

One of my first 7 episodes of Voyager and just a great episode

A nice break from subpar episodes.