VOY: “Warhead”

Date: January 5, 2021

Season 5, Episode 24

Music Video of the Day:

Interstellar News: Today I worked my first “full” day in quite a while. My email wasn’t too terrible and it was nice to see some folks over Zoom.

TL;DR: Kim is on his fourth night shift in the big chair when they receive an automated distress call and change course. He leads the away team, with the Doctor, and find a warhead that believes it’s a person because it’s memory is damaged and it’s a very advanced artificial intelligence. They beam it aboard and discover it’s actually a weapon of mass destruction, but the Doctor advocates for transferring the AI into a holomatrix. During the transfer he’s taken over, the AI takes over Voyager, and eventually memories are restored where it realizes the war is over and it was launched accidentally. Kim eventually convinces the weapon to stand down, transfer itself back into the warhead, and destroy the other missiles that were also accidentally launched.

Favorite Quote:

Kim: I hope I made the right decision.

Chakotay: About changing course or waking me up?

Kim: Sorry, sir, but I thought…

Chakotay: Relax, Harry, you did the right thing on both counts.

Chakotay ribbing Kim, because Kim is still green around the edges.

“Just promise me one thing. When you reach the top, you’ll remember all the little people you climbed over to get there.”: What promises to be an interesting side plot (the anniversary of Torres and Paris’s first date and Paris forgetting) is totally dropped after the first two minutes and that made me sad. The rest of the episode is interesting. Again we have the EMH getting excited for another AI entity, like in “Revulsion“, and again things get out of hand while the Doctor is trying to advocate for artificial life. This also has bits of “Prototype” in it, where Voyager is trying to do good and help a being in need… no matter how much organic material it does or does not have, and then they get held hostage. The difference here is that Kim is able to make a difference, which I really liked. He makes a lot of good decisions along the way and his commanding officers encourage and trust him. I didn’t hate this episode, but I also feel like it’s not really a “new” and exciting plot that I didn’t see coming. Well, I didn’t see it taking over the Doctor and that was fun… so that earns this episode 6 minutes and 28 seconds of “Two Step” by the Dave Matthews Band.

TA Out!