...we will have no means of communication except talking. No keyboards, no writing implements or writing surfaces. No ability to use either (were they to exist) without looking directly at them and/or announcing to everyone listening (including nosy obese aliens) what's happening so you can't do anything surreptitiously.
I get the intention here. Create an exciting caper with elements of a comedy of errors. But the entire episode hinges on the fact that it made no sense whatsoever unless you assume one of (or both of) two things:
1) the Doctor is a complete idiot who can't possibly think of any alternatives than doing everything he's ordered (except, of course, when the orders come from someone who actually has the right and responsibility to give him orders) and can only come up with the most abstruse way to leave a relatively minor clue of very limited usefulness
2) In the World of Tomorrow, humanity (and the occasional representatives of vulcanity and klingoninity) has forgotten the concept of the written word and does everything a starship is capable of doing by pressing pretty pictures on a screen
It was just too distracting to suspend disbelief here long enough to relax and enjoy the caper plot. The actual events weren't uninteresting, as such. The fact that the viewer has to wrestle with the overwhelming impulse to cry out "Oh, for the love of God, is he stupid as fu...?" at the screen kind of neutralizes any interesting aspects to said events.
And in the end, at the very least, the Doctor should have been stripped of his ECH powers. Happy ending or not, he demonstrated quite ably that he could easily represent an existential danger to Voyager even when his program is technically performing properly. He also demonstrates why real command officers are chosen from people with experience -- he has thousands of tactical subroutines but has no idea how to act competently. He could destroy the ship just because he doesn't have the wisdom to see past the tactical subroutines that have been programmed into him and find a less-obvious solution.
This is a rare episode for Voyager: a bad Doctor episode.
I get the intention here. Create an exciting caper with elements of a comedy of errors. But the entire episode hinges on the fact that it made no sense whatsoever unless you assume one of (or both of) two things:
1) the Doctor is a complete idiot who can't possibly think of any alternatives than doing everything he's ordered (except, of course, when the orders come from someone who actually has the right and responsibility to give him orders) and can only come up with the most abstruse way to leave a relatively minor clue of very limited usefulness
2) In the World of Tomorrow, humanity (and the occasional representatives of vulcanity and klingoninity) has forgotten the concept of the written word and does everything a starship is capable of doing by pressing pretty pictures on a screen
It was just too distracting to suspend disbelief here long enough to relax and enjoy the caper plot. The actual events weren't uninteresting, as such. The fact that the viewer has to wrestle with the overwhelming impulse to cry out "Oh, for the love of God, is he stupid as fu...?" at the screen kind of neutralizes any interesting aspects to said events.
And in the end, at the very least, the Doctor should have been stripped of his ECH powers. Happy ending or not, he demonstrated quite ably that he could easily represent an existential danger to Voyager even when his program is technically performing properly. He also demonstrates why real command officers are chosen from people with experience -- he has thousands of tactical subroutines but has no idea how to act competently. He could destroy the ship just because he doesn't have the wisdom to see past the tactical subroutines that have been programmed into him and find a less-obvious solution.
This is a rare episode for Voyager: a bad Doctor episode.