5.11 latent image

The doctor is taking holo-images of the crew as part of routine physical examinations. Cool effect, as Harry Kim’s body is revealed from the skeleton out. But the image also reveals that the doctor performed surgery on Harry – a surgery that neither of them remembers. With help from Seven, the doctor finds five holo-images that he snapped. They include a female ensign of which he has no memory. But further investigation fails when these images are wiped away. The doctor tells Janeway; she suggests that he deactivate himself, to protect himself from whomever may be tampering with his program. But before going, the doctor rigs up a little trap – and reveals that it is Janeway herself who is deleting his files. The reason? 18 months earlier, after a vicious attack by an alien, the doctor had to make a choice between saving Harry Kim and saving Ensign Jetrel. He only had time to save one. He chose to save Kim; and the decision caused him to completely lose his ability to work. Faced with what she considered to be a ‘malfunctioning program’, Janeway chose to erase all of his memories of the incident, rather than let him try to deal with it. She still stands by that decision, until Seven convinces her that she has no right to treat the doctor like a program when, like herself, who has outgrown her Borg origins, is so much more. Janeway reconsiders, and shares the memories with the doctor – who promptly goes back into the loop of self-deprecation. But this time, Janeway vows to help him work through it, if possible, and by the end of the episode, we can see the signs that he is beginning to recover.

Nit#1: Since the only physical proof of the attack were Kim’s scars, wouldn’t it have been better for Janeway, while she was erasing the doctor’s memories, to implant the memory that he had performed the operation for some other valid reason? After all, this is a program we are dealing with here.

Nit#2: I know you are getting tired of this one, but couldn’t Seven of Nine have brought Ensign Jetrel back to life using Borg nanoprobes, the way she did for Neelix in ‘mortal coil’?