Running through annual check-ups and playing around with a 24th century version of a digital camera, the Doctor spots some weird scars on Ensign Kim. Scars that could only have come from a surgical procedure he developed, but has no memory of ever performing. The surgery isn’t the only gap in the Doctors memory. What else has he forgotten? And how…?
No matter the show or the season, Star Trek loves diving into the lives of it’s artificial characters. Data explored everything from his basic rights to the meaning of dreams as he developed to become more of a person. For the Doctor, things had always been a bit more complicated. He was a program developed for short term use. A piece of equipment built into sickbay that could be turned off and on at will. While Deep Space Nine’s Vic Fontaine was content in the self awareness of being just a few lines of code in his own reality, the Doctor’s accidental development was a touch different.
In essence, the Doctor was never meant to be anything more than a basic tool. His persona was just a copy of his programmer and his purpose to supplement in emergencies thanks to all medical knowledge being programmed into his database. Coming into full time use, learning and experiencing a sense of independent self always opened up the question of where Starfleet tech ended and a person began. Or if that was even possible.
As a plot it starts with one of two Trek basics. Something weird happened and of course, no one believes it. It’s one of my favourite Trek tropes just for the sheer insanity of what goes on week on week and still everyone doubts the latest hijinks despite it being more believable than the last stupid thing that happened. But this time round the trope makes perfect sense and falls into a sinister vibe. For every answer the Doctor can come up with no matter how simple or insane, nothing quite fits and the memory gap feels wider.
With Seven’s help he realises that he’s lost a whole day and a bit more. They find snippets of memory, a crew member he doesn’t recognise, a birthday party that he has no recollection of. Convincing Janeway that they have been compromised by this mystery woman, she locks down the ship and orders him offline. But his fancy camera’s still recording and it shows someone again tampering with his program. Janeway herself.
Latent Image goes from a mystery to a very uncomfortable episode really quickly and in a fascinatingly brilliant way. A playful idea becomes a conspiracy and then a betrayal and each step unfolds wonderfully. By the time Janeway is revealed to be the one tampering with his memory you’re fully on board with the Doctor’s plight and as soon as it’s her face revealed it puts a moment of shock into the episode.
Janeway’s the Captain. Sure, she’s not always right or perfect, but there’s a trust that comes with being the figurehead of the ship, and the show. It’s that reveal that shows that it’s not about who erased memories from his program. It’s what could be so bad as his own crew to tamper with his memory?
Thats where things become more unsettling. Eighteen months before the episode, the Doctor was broken. Following an accident he had two patients in critical condition. With limited time, he could only save one and the decision broke his programming. The odds were identical, there was no option more optimal than the other to mathematically balance one over the other and faced with the option of saving Ensign Kim, or saving Ensign Jetal he did what no artificial intelligence was designed to do. He made an emotional choice. He chose the regular over the guest star. The one he knew best and felt the most affection for. Kim lived, Jetal died. The Doctor discovered guilt and in turn, caused his programming to get stuck in a loop where he constantly questioning every decision he made to the point of a complete breakdown.
In comparison to a show like Scrubs, where JD reminds his mentor Dr Cox that the second he starts blaming himself, there’s no going back – and Cox crosses that line to self loathing and depression. Janeway doesn’t let her Doctor go that deep, and she didn’t let him work it out. It wasn’t a psychological problem. It was just an IT glitch.
A lot of it falls back to what the Doctor is. A program. A tool. For all the learning and developing, deep down Janeway still thinks of him as a program that can be fixed to her the Doctor was broken and no matter what he thought, experienced or feared; he wasn’t really human. For a Doctor-centric episode, Seven gets one of the best scene’s in her bluntly telling Janeway she’s wrong. Seeing the Doctor being compared to a faulty replicator, and hearing her captains comfort in spite of her allowing and encouraging his evolution beyond his base program is a legitimate concern for her; the Borg who’s been given the same nudge.
It’s one of those rare episodes that’s happy to show the captain is wrong. The Doctor failed, yes. He breached his ethical program and suffered the consequences. But Janeway’s decision to treat him like a simple tool is just another example of hos flawed people are. Everyone makes mistakes and errors of judgement. Everyone at some point or another lets their emotional self interfere with their professional life.
When the Doctor broke down his ethical programming was merely acting in the same way that anyone elses conscience would. He made a human decision, and the fallout was just as human a reaction that could break any sane person. Where someone like Tuvok or Paris might be treated with empathy, support and care, Seven rightly highlights that the Doctor – who has evolved form a basic program into his own self – deserves to be treated with the same care and dignity.
Under the narrative, there’s also the subtlety there about how depression is handled. Joe Menosky wrote the episode as a Sophies Choice scenario, one that showed the Doctor had a soul in his words. In turn the treatment of his breakdown and how it was so easily shuffled aside instead of being faced head on with help and support can be a little too close to home for a large number of people.
There’s no real happy ending. And there shouldn’t be. Janeway listening to Seven’s advice and letting the Doctor make his own choice is a powerful one. The Doctor had slowly been developing his own personality and experimenting with his own development but in the end the one thing that made him truly human was to experience himself at his lowest and struggle with a deep emotional turmoil that proves, despite all the doubt and preconception the crew may still have about who he is, that he is still a person beyond the programming.
It’s easy to remember the big episodes in a series dealing with the big baddies and the big conflicts. But Voyager was always at it’s best when it put the humanity of itself at the forefront. Latent Image doesnt have the spectacle or drama of Year of Hell, Endgame or Scorpion but it’s small scale setting combined with it’s emotional story make it one of the series’ best.
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