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.
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.