Was Voyager fucking serious? Doc armband makes Borg baby?

[Superman]

So a couple of nights ago I decided to punish myself for all the wrongs I've done by leaving the Spike Network on during an episode of Voyager. Although I wasn't fully paying attention, I think I watched enough to gather the following:

Asshole crew decides to watch some space bullshit in a shuttlecraft.

Space becomes unstable, idiots need emergency beam out.

Voyager beams the douchebags back, but the doc's armband fucks up during transport. Holo Doc is stuck in sickbay while they try to fix it.

The fucked up armband is left in science lab overnight. Being fucked up and all, it sprouts Borg tentacles and grows into an incubation thingy, complete with baby Borg inside (metal implants and all).

Superman punches himself in the face before turning the channel.

Is it just me or did the Voyager writers just never really grasp the whole concept behind the Borg? If this were a TNG episode, it would have been the worst one of the entire series (worse than "Rascals," I think).

But you know what the craziest thing is? The plot line didn't make me as mental as the part where Torres covers herself in the "sonic shower" with a towel. Sure there's not a drop of water anywhere, but they keep towels nearby to cover up... apparently because the doctor likes to pull a Mel Gibson from Spaceballs. Can't Voyager EVER not suck? It can't even seem to go 5 minutes without sucking!!! Jesus H Christ that show was beyond bad... and it lasted HOW MANY seasons? What the ef is wrong with people...

[Bounty]

yeah totaly hur hur voyaegr sucksss ass

[Aaron]

This episode I didn't have much of a problem with (I guess I got used to the bizarre "science" by then) because IIRC it had some decent acting by the woman who played Seven and had some decent character development. The episodes concerning the Doctor or Seven always seemed to have the best acting anyways, regardless of the silliness of the plot.

[Enigma]

Mel Gibson? Did you mean Mel Brooks?

[Superman]

Mel Gibson? Did you mean Mel Brooks?

Shit. Yes, thank you.

I blame Voyager for that too.

[Ghost Rider]

yeah totaly hur hur voyaegr sucksss ass

You know instead of one line trolling, you could *gasp* actually demonstrate what is wrong with Superman's statement.

[tim31]

I'll tell you what's wrong with it. HE'S STEALING CHUCK'S BIT. Knock it off Supes, before Sonnenburg calls in the big boys.

[Big Orange]

"Drone" was not a particularily bad episode and it was Borg nanomachines (which are self-replicating and likely smart to a degree) which contanminate the Doctor's Mobile Emitter, taking Seven's DNA and melding it with the 29th century technology, making a Borg "super" drone. Nowhere near as terrible as Tom breaking the Warp 10 barrier and then melting into a turd shaped amphibian thingy that is supposed to be humanity’s distant future for no properly explored reason.

[Superman]

I'll tell you what's wrong with it. HE'S STEALING CHUCK'S BIT. Knock it off Supes, before Sonnenburg calls in the big boys.

You shut up. I know he's the professional around here; I was just wanting more info. I still don't think anyone is actually making sense out of that shit episode.

Nowhere near as terrible as Tom breaking the Warp 10 barrier and then melting into a turd shaped amphibian thingy that is supposed to be humanity’s distant future for no properly explored reason.

Sweet Christ, you win.

[Big Orange]

Even the more consistant Deep Space Nine dabbled in appalling science as well (more appalling than in "Drone") when you had a Starfleet Runabout get shrunk down to a few inches after going through another magical nebula and then zip about around the corridors of the Defiant blasting at Jem'Hadar in "This Little Ship" (dubbed "This Little Shit" by David E. Sluss from the Cynics Corner, who incidently gave "Drone" a passable C rating).

Although I thought "This Little Ship" was salvaged by the banter between Bashir and O'Brian when they're crawling about a giant circuit board, an insinuation to Jem'Hadar rivalries, in addition to the "Victory is Life!" ranting by the chief Jem'Hadar. This thread is not going to end well.

[Bounty]

yeah totaly hur hur voyaegr sucksss ass

You know instead of one line trolling, you could *gasp* actually demonstrate what is wrong with Superman's statement.

It would have been an awesome Testing post ("hey guys, look at this stupid thing I saw!") but I don't see the merit in yet another thread about how stupid Voyager is. He was doing a schtick about a shitty episode he saw, not offering any sort of new insight or criticism. I responded in kind.

But hey, you're the mod, you obviously know better.

[NecronLord]

Technically, I believe the concept is that the stupendously capable nanites got into the piece of 29th century technology, which just happens to be set up to run a local AI, and then hijacked Voyager's systems and built a drone with some of the Federation's C29th technology.

Yeah, that's a little silly that the mobile emitter somehow teaches them how to make a personal transporter and all that jazz, but it's a silly premise that's consistant with other examples of borg nuttyness (it's certainly less baffling than Enterprise where a drone can inject the computer with his nanites and the hardware is completely restructured in seconds)

I found Drone, after the silly premise of the Drone's creation (which is no small part to justify the ending, which you didn't see, and is pretty cool) quite good, despite silly science (and magic nebulas) it had some nice enough character pieces, and the Drone himself was one of the better Voyager minor characters.

that is supposed to be humanity’s distant future for no properly explored reason.

Believe it or not, this actually started its life as a valid scientific point.

The writers wanted to do a counterpoint to the impression given in Star Trek that evolution is a linear progression from bacterium to animal to ape to human to telepath to god. In reality, the process of evolution can make a species less capable, so long as that species prospers in its environment.

The idea of some kind of pseudo-newts being the distant future of humanity is not an automatically invalid one.

It's just every other thing about that episode that is stupid.

[RedImperator]

Yeah, there's plenty to shit on Voyager about, but this episode isn't one of them. The premise is silly, but so what? Half of Trek is based on silly premises. The character was good, the story was good. I'm with Bounty--this whole thread exists to go "hurf hurf, Voyager is teh suck!" I mean, Christ, if you're going to slag an episode, at least go through the trouble of watching the whole thing.

[Kodiak]

"Drone" was not a particularily bad episode and it was Borg nanomachines (which are self-replicating and likely smart to a degree) which contanminate the Doctor's Mobile Emitter, taking Seven's DNA and melding it with the 29th century technology, making a Borg "super" drone. Nowhere near as terrible as Tom breaking the Warp 10 barrier and then melting into a turd shaped amphibian thingy that is supposed to be humanity’s distant future for no properly explored reason.

IIRC, wasn't there a nameless "Blueshirt" that got assimilated as well? If the thing had only had Seven's DNA it wouldn't have been able to make a male drone.

[Darth Wong]

Let's face it though: Star Trek's crimes against science are so legion that I don't know if you can really single out Voyager for criticism on that score. The greatest criticism of Voyager has always been that it failed to adjust its stories and characters to account for their particular scenario. Many of its stories could have been dropped into TNG or DS9 with only minimal alteration, and they would have worked fine.

[Big Orange]

that is supposed to be humanity’s distant future for no properly explored reason.

Believe it or not, this actually started its life as a valid scientific point.

The writers wanted to do a counterpoint to the impression given in Star Trek that evolution is a linear progression from bacterium to animal to ape to human to telepath to god. In reality, the process of evolution can make a species less capable, so long as that species prospers in its environment.

But fundemental point of evolution is that it reacts to exterior circumstances, and even though evolution can regress like technology in a Dark Age and we're distant descendants of prehistoric creatures similar to newts, why would excellerated human evolution lead back to a newt type creature by default? In fact Tom Paris' goofy condition was more like a mutated devolution.

[Big Orange]

IIRC, wasn't there a nameless "Blueshirt" that got assimilated as well? If the thing had only had Seven's DNA it wouldn't have been able to make a male drone.

Oh yeah, but he wasn't fully assimilated but instead had some of his blood taken by a Borg valve which rendered him unconcious.

[NecronLord]

But fundemental point of evolution is that it reacts to exterior circumstances, and even though evolution can regress like technology in a Dark Age and we're distant descendants of prehistoric creatures similar to newts, why would excellerated human evolution lead back to a newt type creature by default? In fact Tom Paris' goofy condition was more like a mutated devolution.

Like I said. It started its life as a valid point which was then horribly mutated (heh) by the script-writing process into something that didn't at all resemble its original expression. Their way of expressing that point rendered it entirely illegible; evolution (devolution is what you have when you give Scotland its own parliament, evolution in a 'negative' direction is still evolution) does not work within one creature's lifetime.

[NecronLord]

IIRC, wasn't there a nameless "Blueshirt" that got assimilated as well? If the thing had only had Seven's DNA it wouldn't have been able to make a male drone.

I don't recall it having her DNA. It was her 'nanoprobes' - they did, as you say, blood-sample the first crewman that came into the room (assigned to try and repair the mobile emitter) in order to get genetic material for the drone. I forget if he survived or not.

[Junghalli]

But fundemental point of evolution is that it reacts to exterior circumstances, and even though evolution can regress like technology in a Dark Age and we're distant descendants of prehistoric creatures similar to newts, why would excellerated human evolution lead back to a newt type creature by default? In fact Tom Paris' goofy condition was more like a mutated devolution.

Or, put more simply, the stupidity of the episode is that they kept right on running with the utterly retarded pop sci brainbug that evolution is a teleological process that's working toward some kind of preconcieved end goal. They just changed the end goal from godlike being to newt while hanging on the same totally broken basic concept.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yeah, when Blueshirt McGee went to check out the power drain in the lab, it stabbed him in the neck and got his DNA. Ironically, we never saw the guy again for the rest of the episode, even though he didn't die. Would've been nice to see this guy dealing with his super-borg 'son' and all the baggage that entailed. That being said, I actually LIKED the character One (the Borg's name) just because he was REALLY well acted. Like Chuck says, if its well-done, your audience will put up with a LOT of silliness.

[Aaron]

Yeah, when Blueshirt McGee went to check out the power drain in the lab, it stabbed him in the neck and got his DNA. Ironically, we never saw the guy again for the rest of the episode, even though he didn't die. Would've been nice to see this guy dealing with his super-borg 'son' and all the baggage that entailed. That being said, I actually LIKED the character One (the Borg's name) just because he was REALLY well acted. Like Chuck says, if its well-done, your audience will put up with a LOT of silliness.

Not to nitpick but how could they make a convincing plot out of a guy who was "raped" (for lack of a better word) raising a Borg drone? That has the sound of a sitcom skit involving a woman showing up with a kid conceived from stolen sperm.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, when Blueshirt McGee went to check out the power drain in the lab, it stabbed him in the neck and got his DNA. Ironically, we never saw the guy again for the rest of the episode, even though he didn't die. Would've been nice to see this guy dealing with his super-borg 'son' and all the baggage that entailed. That being said, I actually LIKED the character One (the Borg's name) just because he was REALLY well acted. Like Chuck says, if its well-done, your audience will put up with a LOT of silliness.

Not to nitpick but how could they make a convincing plot out of a guy who was "raped" (for lack of a better word) raising a Borg drone? That has the sound of a sitcom skit involving a woman showing up with a kid conceived from stolen sperm.

Why was it even necessary to attack the guy anyway? The entire HoloDoc program was in the holo-emitter, as was an entire database of medical data on humans and other species. We've already started encoding entire genomes today: surely they should have a human genome in their database by the 24th century. If the nanoprobes can cause tubules to sprout from a holo-emitter, surely they can find a genome somewhere in the holodoc's database.

Oh wait, I forgot: in Star Trek, human DNA has some kind of magical quality.

[Aaron]

Why was it even necessary to attack the guy anyway? The entire HoloDoc program was in the holo-emitter, as was an entire database of medical data on humans and other species. We've already started encoding entire genomes today: surely they should have a human genome in their database by the 24th century. If the nanoprobes can cause tubules to sprout from a holo-emitter, surely they can find a genome somewhere in the holodoc's database.

Oh wait, I forgot: in Star Trek, human DNA has some kind of magical quality.

I only vaguely recall that part of the episode but perhaps the nanos are limited in their mobility and couldn't get to a console, this was more convenient in other words. Though I'm somewhat more taken aback by the fact that the thing created a fully functioning drone out of nothing.

[DarthShady]

Why was it even necessary to attack the guy anyway? The entire HoloDoc program was in the holo-emitter, as was an entire database of medical data on humans and other species. We've already started encoding entire genomes today: surely they should have a human genome in their database by the 24th century. If the nanoprobes can cause tubules to sprout from a holo-emitter, surely they can find a genome somewhere in the holodoc's database.

Oh wait, I forgot: in Star Trek, human DNA has some kind of magical quality.

IIRC the Doc's Program was transferred back to Voyager's computer because the emitter was damaged in the beginning of the episode(the incident that got it infected with the nanoprobes). So, there wouldn't be any data on the emitter. I could be wrong though, it's been a while since I've seen the episode.