Star Trek: Voyager: Prototype Rewatch
April 10, 2017 3:05 AM - Season 2, Episode 13 - Subscribe
The system goes online on August 4th, 2297. Humanoid decisions are removed from strategic defense. The automated units begin to learn at a geometric rate. They become self-aware at 2:14 AM, Pralor time, August 29th. In a panic, the Builders try to pull the plug.
And thank you very much, Memory Alpha / For helping me to post when I needed to / Thank you! Thank you, thank you! / I want to thank you! / Please, thank you!
- Michael Piller had to oppose the series' other executive producers to maintain that the episode and its robots were created. He recalled, "Frankly, Jeri [Taylor] was not enamored with this story, and both she and Rick [Berman] were very concerned that we were not going to be able to pull off a robot, so I ended up as the one saying, 'Guys, this is Star Trek! You're going to tell me we can't do robots? They can do robots on Outer Limits, but the top science-fiction franchise on television can't do robots?' So finally they sort of grumbled and went along with me on this."
- This is one of two episodes (the other being "Dreadnought") that Torres actress Roxann Dawson cited as installments which initially scared her, as she immediately realized they would be "difficult to pull off," but which she ultimately regarded as episodes where "we found some interesting themes I didn't know were there in the beginning."
- This was the last Star Trek episode directed by Jonathan Frakes.
- While talking with 3947, Torres uses Data as an example of a fully independent android who was capable of rising along the ranks of Starfleet.
- As TNG: "Realm of Fear" does with the transport sequence of the USS Enterprise-D, this episode establishes how the Voyager transport sequence appears from the point-of-view of the transportee.
- Kim mentions "flux capacitance" (at the beginning of this installment) as does Torres (while later activating the prototype). This terminology is a reference to the flux capacitor from Back to the Future.
- One of the robotic arms, seen on the table in the reconstruction bay, is that of Johnny Five from the movie Short Circuit.
- Prior to this episode's first airing, Jonathan Frakes told a convention audience that he wasn't keen on this installment. In particular, Frakes (like Ken Biller) considered the design of the Pralor and the Cravic to be "corny."
"I feel for the robots' plight, but what you're proposing is exactly the kind of tampering the Prime Directive prohibits. We know almost nothing about these creatures, or the race that built them. What would be the consequences of increasing their population, both to their own civilization and others in this quadrant? Who are we to swoop in, play god, and then continue on our way without the slightest consideration of the long-term effects of our actions?"
- Kathryn Janeway
"Prototype unit 0001 is ready to accept programming."
- 0001
"Wait a minute. If both sides called a truce, then why didn't they stop you from fighting?"
"They attempted to do so."
"And?"
"We terminated the Builders."
- Torres and 3947
Poster's Log: I'm not sure why I'm fond of this episode. The story concept is unoriginal, the robots do indeed look like guys in suits, and the dramatic stakes of a war between robots would seem to be diminished in the eyes of a largely non-robot viewing audience.
Maybe it's because they took the time to make the robots kind of endearing. They got great voice work for 3947 from Rick Worthy, whom we saw in DS9: "Soldiers of the Empire" and in BSG (and whom we'll see again in VOY: "Equinox"). Also, to me, the machines trying to sound natural gag ("Zero! Zero! Zero! One!") never gets old for some reason; I was recently almost on the floor rewatching the Seinfeld bit where Kramer is Moviefone.
I'm sure another factor is that Torres becomes a more interesting character with every rewatch, and Dawson by now seems to have really nailed the role. It's noteworthy that, in just four episodes, we get another Torres-centric episode where she talks to a machine for the whole show, and yet that one's also engaging.
I also considered the STO mission focused on the Pralor and Cravic to be above average, but I'm sure Mordax will have more to say about that.
Poster's Log, Supplemental: I am posting both episodes this week because Halloween Jack was gentlemanly enough to fill in for me last Thursday. We will return to our regular posting schedule a week from today.
And thank you very much, Memory Alpha / For helping me to post when I needed to / Thank you! Thank you, thank you! / I want to thank you! / Please, thank you!
- Michael Piller had to oppose the series' other executive producers to maintain that the episode and its robots were created. He recalled, "Frankly, Jeri [Taylor] was not enamored with this story, and both she and Rick [Berman] were very concerned that we were not going to be able to pull off a robot, so I ended up as the one saying, 'Guys, this is Star Trek! You're going to tell me we can't do robots? They can do robots on Outer Limits, but the top science-fiction franchise on television can't do robots?' So finally they sort of grumbled and went along with me on this."
- This is one of two episodes (the other being "Dreadnought") that Torres actress Roxann Dawson cited as installments which initially scared her, as she immediately realized they would be "difficult to pull off," but which she ultimately regarded as episodes where "we found some interesting themes I didn't know were there in the beginning."
- This was the last Star Trek episode directed by Jonathan Frakes.
- While talking with 3947, Torres uses Data as an example of a fully independent android who was capable of rising along the ranks of Starfleet.
- As TNG: "Realm of Fear" does with the transport sequence of the USS Enterprise-D, this episode establishes how the Voyager transport sequence appears from the point-of-view of the transportee.
- Kim mentions "flux capacitance" (at the beginning of this installment) as does Torres (while later activating the prototype). This terminology is a reference to the flux capacitor from Back to the Future.
- One of the robotic arms, seen on the table in the reconstruction bay, is that of Johnny Five from the movie Short Circuit.
- Prior to this episode's first airing, Jonathan Frakes told a convention audience that he wasn't keen on this installment. In particular, Frakes (like Ken Biller) considered the design of the Pralor and the Cravic to be "corny."
"I feel for the robots' plight, but what you're proposing is exactly the kind of tampering the Prime Directive prohibits. We know almost nothing about these creatures, or the race that built them. What would be the consequences of increasing their population, both to their own civilization and others in this quadrant? Who are we to swoop in, play god, and then continue on our way without the slightest consideration of the long-term effects of our actions?"
- Kathryn Janeway
"Prototype unit 0001 is ready to accept programming."
- 0001
"Wait a minute. If both sides called a truce, then why didn't they stop you from fighting?"
"They attempted to do so."
"And?"
"We terminated the Builders."
- Torres and 3947
Poster's Log: I'm not sure why I'm fond of this episode. The story concept is unoriginal, the robots do indeed look like guys in suits, and the dramatic stakes of a war between robots would seem to be diminished in the eyes of a largely non-robot viewing audience.
Maybe it's because they took the time to make the robots kind of endearing. They got great voice work for 3947 from Rick Worthy, whom we saw in DS9: "Soldiers of the Empire" and in BSG (and whom we'll see again in VOY: "Equinox"). Also, to me, the machines trying to sound natural gag ("Zero! Zero! Zero! One!") never gets old for some reason; I was recently almost on the floor rewatching the Seinfeld bit where Kramer is Moviefone.
I'm sure another factor is that Torres becomes a more interesting character with every rewatch, and Dawson by now seems to have really nailed the role. It's noteworthy that, in just four episodes, we get another Torres-centric episode where she talks to a machine for the whole show, and yet that one's also engaging.
I also considered the STO mission focused on the Pralor and Cravic to be above average, but I'm sure Mordax will have more to say about that.
Poster's Log, Supplemental: I am posting both episodes this week because Halloween Jack was gentlemanly enough to fill in for me last Thursday. We will return to our regular posting schedule a week from today.
Heh. Yeah, this episode was a load of whooey, or, Who-y rather, to the extent I started looking for a police call box on set in case this was some clever money saving crossover scheme between Voyager and the possible new series with the Eighth Doctor. But it wasn't to be, with only Voyager's own good doctor making an appearance. Beyond the look of the Pralor and Cravic reminding one of more typical Who villains, the episode also had a more Who-like structure to it, where events seemingly were going one way only to have some complication arise taking things in a new direction, something that hasn't been all that common in Voyager to date. The ethical dilemma too had more of a TOS/Who twist in it, where decisions between help and harm were more intertwined rather than having a clearer deliberative path. B'Elanna's ultimate decision to kill her babybot solves the problem more than the ethical dilemma, notwithstanding the quoting of the Prime Directive, and leaves things rather more open ended in a way than usual. (Not so much in simply not fully wrapping up the narrative of the Pralor, which has happened before with some encounters, like the Ocampan and even a post-prison break world in the last episode, but here there isn't even much attempt at feigning greater resolve, they deal with the immediate problem and get the hell out. It's a nice twist really.
Lot's of good stuff this episode, with the topmost being Tuvok finally getting some traction as security chief. His, as usual, unheeded advice proves right and comes back to bite Voyager. I just wish he'd taken a moment when they were being attacked by the Pralor to ask if he should power down weapons like the last couple times he's offered security advice that was countermanded, but, sadly, being a Vulcan means Tuvok has no need for snark. Anyway, it's good to see initial "gut decisions" not pay off and for some fairly clever alternatives have to be found to make up for the mistakes for a change. It adds a nice layer of complication to the proceedings rather than simply knowing the right thing and needing only to find a away to achieve or implement that belief.
Janeway and B'Elanna are good together in posing alternative perspectives, while still coming from the same place and respecting their differences. It's much more interesting than it just being a straight "right/wrong" fight of strong opposition. It seems the writer paid good attention to that early episode where they bonded over the science stuff and made further good use of the dynamic. There was a lot of tech babble this time, but it didn't really do any harm since it was couched in such enthusiasm that the gobbledygook became a way to explore something beyond B'Elanna angry half-Klingon for a change. Her scene with Harry was also really enjoyable even though nothing really comes from it, or maybe because it is essentially about nothing bigger than itself in seeing them try to work through a problem without success. The scene with Neelix too worked well in much the same way. The cast, when given a chance, really can work together well as long as the writing finds reasons to provide the pairings. It's something that is so necessary for the show to gel as being more than alternating individual character arcs, which it sometimes feels like. We've had a few good examples of that recently, and they should be looked at as good blueprints for what Voyager could be when things are working in proper balance.
The ethical dilemma this time was interesting, not exactly new or groundbreaking in any large sense, but coming at it from the direction of reproduction was a bit surprising since it could have been more about repairing and replacing than thought of as growth in that way. It makes the core ethical choices more complicated in some ways by going that route. If one would think of it being women in a war zone accidentally contaminated by some by-product of war asking for help in regaining the ability to reproduce, then it would have a different tone than it being robots asking for help in gaining the ability, so there is a part of this tied to being manufactured lifeforms.
In the discussion from the last episode Halloween Jack made the observation:
That's based mostly on the next episode, "Prototype", in which B'Elanna says that robots are common in Federation society but aren't sentient (and specifically mentions Data as the one exception; obviously she's not including the ship's own EMH, for some reason)
Which is indeed interesting as it seems pretty clear from this and many of the episodes that follow, that the doctor and the rest of the crew actually don't see him as being an artificial intelligence in the same way as a robot would be due to the doctor's manifestation in the form of a hologram. They hold he is a photonic being, even as his form, memory, personality, and all other aspects that make him a life form are being generated by the computer. This is, of course, noted many times in his own and other's references to the doctor as a program, but they do not make the jump from program in that sense to something akin to robots or Datalike beings, but maintain his form does carry meaning over his functionality. It's something that gets explored in greater detail later, though not in those explicit terms, and it raises a lot of questions that never get fully answered. This episode provides yet another, well, data-point towards their concept of artificial lifeforms as is worth keeping in mind as a reference point to some of the future explorations on the topic.
One quibble I have with the plotting is in what it is B'Elanna's killing of the prototype would accomplish when she's went through its construction step by step with 3947, so either eh should have enough info at that point to duplicate the procedures or B'Elanna should have been aware building one prototype would never have solved the issue of her captivity since they would have needed her to keep building more since they, somehow, could not duplicate what she was doing on their own. That doesn't really bother me all that much since it's a small enough thing given the nice ending to her relationship with 3947, but it is a little odd nonetheless.
Is this four good episodes in a row now? Dang. Looks like Piller and crew got some stuff figured out after all. Now let's see if they can make it five with Alliances, the next one up. I've got it rated as one I liked from my initial viewing, so I just have to see if it holds up on rewatch.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:19 AM on April 10, 2017 [3 favorites]
Lot's of good stuff this episode, with the topmost being Tuvok finally getting some traction as security chief. His, as usual, unheeded advice proves right and comes back to bite Voyager. I just wish he'd taken a moment when they were being attacked by the Pralor to ask if he should power down weapons like the last couple times he's offered security advice that was countermanded, but, sadly, being a Vulcan means Tuvok has no need for snark. Anyway, it's good to see initial "gut decisions" not pay off and for some fairly clever alternatives have to be found to make up for the mistakes for a change. It adds a nice layer of complication to the proceedings rather than simply knowing the right thing and needing only to find a away to achieve or implement that belief.
Janeway and B'Elanna are good together in posing alternative perspectives, while still coming from the same place and respecting their differences. It's much more interesting than it just being a straight "right/wrong" fight of strong opposition. It seems the writer paid good attention to that early episode where they bonded over the science stuff and made further good use of the dynamic. There was a lot of tech babble this time, but it didn't really do any harm since it was couched in such enthusiasm that the gobbledygook became a way to explore something beyond B'Elanna angry half-Klingon for a change. Her scene with Harry was also really enjoyable even though nothing really comes from it, or maybe because it is essentially about nothing bigger than itself in seeing them try to work through a problem without success. The scene with Neelix too worked well in much the same way. The cast, when given a chance, really can work together well as long as the writing finds reasons to provide the pairings. It's something that is so necessary for the show to gel as being more than alternating individual character arcs, which it sometimes feels like. We've had a few good examples of that recently, and they should be looked at as good blueprints for what Voyager could be when things are working in proper balance.
The ethical dilemma this time was interesting, not exactly new or groundbreaking in any large sense, but coming at it from the direction of reproduction was a bit surprising since it could have been more about repairing and replacing than thought of as growth in that way. It makes the core ethical choices more complicated in some ways by going that route. If one would think of it being women in a war zone accidentally contaminated by some by-product of war asking for help in regaining the ability to reproduce, then it would have a different tone than it being robots asking for help in gaining the ability, so there is a part of this tied to being manufactured lifeforms.
In the discussion from the last episode Halloween Jack made the observation:
That's based mostly on the next episode, "Prototype", in which B'Elanna says that robots are common in Federation society but aren't sentient (and specifically mentions Data as the one exception; obviously she's not including the ship's own EMH, for some reason)
Which is indeed interesting as it seems pretty clear from this and many of the episodes that follow, that the doctor and the rest of the crew actually don't see him as being an artificial intelligence in the same way as a robot would be due to the doctor's manifestation in the form of a hologram. They hold he is a photonic being, even as his form, memory, personality, and all other aspects that make him a life form are being generated by the computer. This is, of course, noted many times in his own and other's references to the doctor as a program, but they do not make the jump from program in that sense to something akin to robots or Datalike beings, but maintain his form does carry meaning over his functionality. It's something that gets explored in greater detail later, though not in those explicit terms, and it raises a lot of questions that never get fully answered. This episode provides yet another, well, data-point towards their concept of artificial lifeforms as is worth keeping in mind as a reference point to some of the future explorations on the topic.
One quibble I have with the plotting is in what it is B'Elanna's killing of the prototype would accomplish when she's went through its construction step by step with 3947, so either eh should have enough info at that point to duplicate the procedures or B'Elanna should have been aware building one prototype would never have solved the issue of her captivity since they would have needed her to keep building more since they, somehow, could not duplicate what she was doing on their own. That doesn't really bother me all that much since it's a small enough thing given the nice ending to her relationship with 3947, but it is a little odd nonetheless.
Is this four good episodes in a row now? Dang. Looks like Piller and crew got some stuff figured out after all. Now let's see if they can make it five with Alliances, the next one up. I've got it rated as one I liked from my initial viewing, so I just have to see if it holds up on rewatch.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:19 AM on April 10, 2017 [3 favorites]
Particle of the Week: Tripolymer plasma, all the rage in chromodynamic module construction.
Pointless STO Comparison of the Week: The APU appear as antagonists in a single Delta Quadrant mission, still on a quest for the ability to build new members. This is a recurring theme in STO's Delta Quadrant content: many things are exactly as Voyager left them, despite a three decade time jump.
APU Cruisers are also available to players as an uncommon lock box drop, similar to the Kazon Raider I mentioned before. (I own a few of these, mostly because they remind me of Goa'uld Ha'tak.) They are tier 5 to Voyager's tier 4, although base game statistics do not support the absolute steamrolling they give Voyager in this episode.
Nimian Sea Salt can also get a name drop in 'Reunion,' (aka 'the mission where you have to help a bunch of Talaxians').
Ongoing Equipment Tally: Still just rolling it forward to make it easier to track, no changes. I really thought they'd be lower on photon torpedoes by now.
* Photon Torpedoes: 37
* Shuttles: Down 3
* Crew: 151
* Bio-neural Gelpacks: 47
Credulity Straining Alpha Quadrant Contacts: Still just 5, no change.
Notes:
* This is a fun one.
I'm going to complain anyway in a minute, but I want to lead with: I like this episode. The robots look goofy and the plot is hackneyed, but I think dinty_moore has it here:
it does feel like Voyager does Original Series better than it does being TNG or DS9.
I think so too. The whole thing is just... almost cute in its simplicity? I agree with CheesesofBrazil that the robots are endearing. I love their flawless manners, even as they're threatening people with death.
My big plot nitpick about this has already been covered by gusottertrout:
One quibble I have with the plotting is in what it is B'Elanna's killing of the prototype would accomplish when she's went through its construction step by step with 3947
And I agree that this is a minor detail. (Further, B'Ellana might have been hoping that 3947 wouldn't survive the ensuing firefight, which is entirely possible.)
* I love the opening.
Shooting this from 3947's POV is fun. I also really enjoy Tuvok and B'Ellana at the opening: the Vulcan wants to destroy the new scientific discovery, and the Klingon wants to fix it. That's a nice reversal of Star Trek's Planet of Hats policy, and I always enjoy seeing that kind of thing.
* Sapient AI and Star Trek:
This episode provides yet another, well, data-point towards their concept of artificial lifeforms as is worth keeping in mind as a reference point to some of the future explorations on the topic.
Yep. To me, this is another place where Federation prejudice against Turing-capable AI shows. In this case, Janeway is correct, but she leaps to it in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Like... what level of self-awareness should an AI need before it has a right to self-determination? That is not a settled question in the Federation right now, Data notwithstanding. (It's also worth noting that Data's status was not definitively safeguarded in The Measure Of A Man, as seen when they tried to take away his daughter.)
It's clear that neither the Pralor nor the Cravic are sapient enough to be trusted with reproduction, but it's not clear from immediate conversations with 3947, and Janeway made no move to determine that for herself before definitively refusing aid. That's where this moves from 'caution' to 'prejudice' for me.
* This brings us to: Grr, the Prime Directive again.
I want to say that I understand the point of the Prime Directive, but even Memory Alpha has demonstrates that it's pretty nebulous - at this point, it really feels like a case of 'don't interfere with a culture unless you do.'
I feel like it should've been left as a stricture for pre-warp civilizations. Starfleet helps post-warp civilizations all the time, and there should be some official procedure for beings like the Pralor or Cravic to request aid. At the moment, it really looks like whether a civilization gets help comes down to 'it's up to the captain of whatever Starfleet vessel stumbled upon them,' and that just doesn't sit right with me.
That said, this is still a pretty fun episode, and while it does showcase a couple of nasty unexamined cultural blind spots in the Federation, those aren't news. Federation anti-robot sentiment dates back to TOS, and Prime Directive muddiness is a recurring theme in the franchise, per the link above.
All in all, good stuff. I'm also curious if Alliances will hold up on rewatch - I too remember it as being a decent episode.
posted by mordax at 9:07 AM on April 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
Pointless STO Comparison of the Week: The APU appear as antagonists in a single Delta Quadrant mission, still on a quest for the ability to build new members. This is a recurring theme in STO's Delta Quadrant content: many things are exactly as Voyager left them, despite a three decade time jump.
APU Cruisers are also available to players as an uncommon lock box drop, similar to the Kazon Raider I mentioned before. (I own a few of these, mostly because they remind me of Goa'uld Ha'tak.) They are tier 5 to Voyager's tier 4, although base game statistics do not support the absolute steamrolling they give Voyager in this episode.
Nimian Sea Salt can also get a name drop in 'Reunion,' (aka 'the mission where you have to help a bunch of Talaxians').
Ongoing Equipment Tally: Still just rolling it forward to make it easier to track, no changes. I really thought they'd be lower on photon torpedoes by now.
* Photon Torpedoes: 37
* Shuttles: Down 3
* Crew: 151
* Bio-neural Gelpacks: 47
Credulity Straining Alpha Quadrant Contacts: Still just 5, no change.
Notes:
* This is a fun one.
I'm going to complain anyway in a minute, but I want to lead with: I like this episode. The robots look goofy and the plot is hackneyed, but I think dinty_moore has it here:
it does feel like Voyager does Original Series better than it does being TNG or DS9.
I think so too. The whole thing is just... almost cute in its simplicity? I agree with CheesesofBrazil that the robots are endearing. I love their flawless manners, even as they're threatening people with death.
My big plot nitpick about this has already been covered by gusottertrout:
One quibble I have with the plotting is in what it is B'Elanna's killing of the prototype would accomplish when she's went through its construction step by step with 3947
And I agree that this is a minor detail. (Further, B'Ellana might have been hoping that 3947 wouldn't survive the ensuing firefight, which is entirely possible.)
* I love the opening.
Shooting this from 3947's POV is fun. I also really enjoy Tuvok and B'Ellana at the opening: the Vulcan wants to destroy the new scientific discovery, and the Klingon wants to fix it. That's a nice reversal of Star Trek's Planet of Hats policy, and I always enjoy seeing that kind of thing.
* Sapient AI and Star Trek:
This episode provides yet another, well, data-point towards their concept of artificial lifeforms as is worth keeping in mind as a reference point to some of the future explorations on the topic.
Yep. To me, this is another place where Federation prejudice against Turing-capable AI shows. In this case, Janeway is correct, but she leaps to it in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Like... what level of self-awareness should an AI need before it has a right to self-determination? That is not a settled question in the Federation right now, Data notwithstanding. (It's also worth noting that Data's status was not definitively safeguarded in The Measure Of A Man, as seen when they tried to take away his daughter.)
It's clear that neither the Pralor nor the Cravic are sapient enough to be trusted with reproduction, but it's not clear from immediate conversations with 3947, and Janeway made no move to determine that for herself before definitively refusing aid. That's where this moves from 'caution' to 'prejudice' for me.
* This brings us to: Grr, the Prime Directive again.
I want to say that I understand the point of the Prime Directive, but even Memory Alpha has demonstrates that it's pretty nebulous - at this point, it really feels like a case of 'don't interfere with a culture unless you do.'
I feel like it should've been left as a stricture for pre-warp civilizations. Starfleet helps post-warp civilizations all the time, and there should be some official procedure for beings like the Pralor or Cravic to request aid. At the moment, it really looks like whether a civilization gets help comes down to 'it's up to the captain of whatever Starfleet vessel stumbled upon them,' and that just doesn't sit right with me.
That said, this is still a pretty fun episode, and while it does showcase a couple of nasty unexamined cultural blind spots in the Federation, those aren't news. Federation anti-robot sentiment dates back to TOS, and Prime Directive muddiness is a recurring theme in the franchise, per the link above.
All in all, good stuff. I'm also curious if Alliances will hold up on rewatch - I too remember it as being a decent episode.
posted by mordax at 9:07 AM on April 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't know about that photon torpedo count, I mean, they did load bays one through four, and at the cut aways to B'Elanna on the Pralor ship they were shown feeling the effects of some kind of weapon fire after that point...but, yeah, it isn't explicit they were fired, so proceeding with the more conservative count is probably for the best.
The things that allowed the Prime Directive talks to work for me here is that Mulgrew plays it as Janeway being less than dogmatic a bout the choice and sharing a more situational oriented approach in her thinking and at the wrap up being extremely sympathetic with B'Elanna about her experiences. But more than that, in the larger scale, makes some sense that Janeway would be a bit blinkered about artificial life forms at this point since there is a great deal of back and forth on that issue still to come, so in that way the prejudice suits the larger dynamic in a reasonably sound way.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:28 AM on April 10, 2017
The things that allowed the Prime Directive talks to work for me here is that Mulgrew plays it as Janeway being less than dogmatic a bout the choice and sharing a more situational oriented approach in her thinking and at the wrap up being extremely sympathetic with B'Elanna about her experiences. But more than that, in the larger scale, makes some sense that Janeway would be a bit blinkered about artificial life forms at this point since there is a great deal of back and forth on that issue still to come, so in that way the prejudice suits the larger dynamic in a reasonably sound way.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:28 AM on April 10, 2017
This is indeed very much like a TOS episode, and in particular "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "I, Mudd". Like the "Korby androids" of the first one, the Pralor/Cravic robots ended up killing their creators when the Builders tried terminating them. (IIRC, we don't know what happened to the Mudd androids' creators, although it's sort of implicit that, given their willingness if not eagerness to serve as sex bots, their creators may have simply stopped reproducing and died out.)
Like those two episodes, and especially the latter, this brings up questions of free will and whether sentience can exist without being completely free to make one's own decisions, or whether that would translate to motivation or even compulsion. The Pralor and Cravic androids keep fighting each other despite their creators' having been killed, by them; they decided to kill their creators, so they obviously had the volition for that, but not to stop killing each other, which is probably one of the reasons why they need to be able to build replacements. (3947 is about 150 years old.) One possibility is that either the Pralor and Cravic Builders were just staggeringly sloppy in their programming and failed to put in something like the Three Laws of Robotics (or the androids found a loophole, as occasionally happened in Asimov's stories), or it's not literally a compulsion to fight, they just really, really like it. (The Turing test isn't without its potential problems, either.)
What might be more interesting about this is that B'Elanna assumes that the android is sentient, and that getting it running again is unquestionably the right thing to do, without considering what it might be programmed to do, as if its humanoid shape entitles it to the presumption of sentience and the right to exist. (I may be reading a little too much into it--Torres could simply be excited about it as an engineering problem--but then there's her later discussion of robots with 3947 when she makes a distinction between industrial robots and Data, and doesn't include the EMH, even though (or maybe because) he is literally just data. The line being drawn there is between AIs who have their own bodies and those that aren't corporeal.) B'Elanna engages with it, whatever misgivings she may have about it's kidnapping her and threatening her and Voyager probably mitigated by the thought that that's a very Maquis thing to do to ensure the survival of oneself and one's people--right up to the point where she figures out that the noncompatibility of power supplies was a fail-safe by the Builders. And even after that, she seems to get almost teary-eyed when she talks about 0001. (This would come off as feminine sterotyping, especially as it's Janeway that she's talking to, except that AI creators in Trek tend to be men: Korby, Soong, even Richard Daystrom with M-5. I'm also reminded of Sarah Connor lecturing Miles Dyson in Terminator 2 about how he doesn't know what it's really like to create a life. Of course, B'Elanna will eventually do that too.)
Maybe the real lesson is that it doesn't matter whether the being is organic or synthetic, or whether they have overriding programming or compulsions (as the Vorta and Jem'Hadar do, and they're never considered not to be sentient)--they're still deserving of compassion and the benefit of the doubt. That's a tremendously positive sentiment.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:41 AM on April 10, 2017 [2 favorites]
Like those two episodes, and especially the latter, this brings up questions of free will and whether sentience can exist without being completely free to make one's own decisions, or whether that would translate to motivation or even compulsion. The Pralor and Cravic androids keep fighting each other despite their creators' having been killed, by them; they decided to kill their creators, so they obviously had the volition for that, but not to stop killing each other, which is probably one of the reasons why they need to be able to build replacements. (3947 is about 150 years old.) One possibility is that either the Pralor and Cravic Builders were just staggeringly sloppy in their programming and failed to put in something like the Three Laws of Robotics (or the androids found a loophole, as occasionally happened in Asimov's stories), or it's not literally a compulsion to fight, they just really, really like it. (The Turing test isn't without its potential problems, either.)
What might be more interesting about this is that B'Elanna assumes that the android is sentient, and that getting it running again is unquestionably the right thing to do, without considering what it might be programmed to do, as if its humanoid shape entitles it to the presumption of sentience and the right to exist. (I may be reading a little too much into it--Torres could simply be excited about it as an engineering problem--but then there's her later discussion of robots with 3947 when she makes a distinction between industrial robots and Data, and doesn't include the EMH, even though (or maybe because) he is literally just data. The line being drawn there is between AIs who have their own bodies and those that aren't corporeal.) B'Elanna engages with it, whatever misgivings she may have about it's kidnapping her and threatening her and Voyager probably mitigated by the thought that that's a very Maquis thing to do to ensure the survival of oneself and one's people--right up to the point where she figures out that the noncompatibility of power supplies was a fail-safe by the Builders. And even after that, she seems to get almost teary-eyed when she talks about 0001. (This would come off as feminine sterotyping, especially as it's Janeway that she's talking to, except that AI creators in Trek tend to be men: Korby, Soong, even Richard Daystrom with M-5. I'm also reminded of Sarah Connor lecturing Miles Dyson in Terminator 2 about how he doesn't know what it's really like to create a life. Of course, B'Elanna will eventually do that too.)
Maybe the real lesson is that it doesn't matter whether the being is organic or synthetic, or whether they have overriding programming or compulsions (as the Vorta and Jem'Hadar do, and they're never considered not to be sentient)--they're still deserving of compassion and the benefit of the doubt. That's a tremendously positive sentiment.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:41 AM on April 10, 2017 [2 favorites]
it isn't explicit they were fired, so proceeding with the more conservative count is probably for the best.
That's my thinking, yes. I lean toward giving them the benefit of the doubt because they haven't really been profligate with them until now, either - Janeway almost always sticks to phasers.
The things that allowed the Prime Directive talks to work for me here is that Mulgrew plays it as Janeway being less than dogmatic a bout the choice and sharing a more situational oriented approach in her thinking
I agree that's what she's doing, but I find it sort of horrifying rather than nuanced. Like... Janeway's intuition/gut/whatever are also why the Ocampa are probably going to go extinct. It's too much power to be given over to someone who's making it up as they go, I guess. I want her to be operating from more than just her feelings when deciding the fate of whole species. It doesn't have to be down to dogma, just something better than 'ew, robots.'
But more than that, in the larger scale, makes some sense that Janeway would be a bit blinkered about artificial life forms at this point since there is a great deal of back and forth on that issue still to come, so in that way the prejudice suits the larger dynamic in a reasonably sound way.
It's believable, it's just morally wrong to me. Like... it's not clear if any of the AI that we've seen are genuinely sapient. Soong-type androids have the best case because Troi was able to read their emotional states the way she would an organic brain, but even that's not necessarily 100%. Nothing that solid occurs for any of the other ones I can think of offhand, including the Doctor.
However, I think how we treat our environment sort of offers a feedback loop for our own behavior: like, every time we're mean to something that can pass for a human, I think it's easier for us to be mean to an actual person. A Federation attitude that allows callous disregard for the Doctor is subtly dehumanizing in general, IMO. Basically, I'm arguing that a Westworld attitude toward AI degrades more than the robots.
And again, these plot points are actually in line with everything we've seen to date. This isn't bad writing, (excepting maybe that for a Prime Directive, I'd expect something a little clearer), but it does show off an unpleasant side to the Federation that I feel is worth critiquing.
or it's not literally a compulsion to fight, they just really, really like it.
... you know, I'm ashamed the thought didn't ever occur to me. Heh. I blame their polite manner - it's just incongruous to picture gleeful berserkers being like that, and that's my fault.
*makes a note to steal this for a story sometime*
Maybe the real lesson is that it doesn't matter whether the being is organic or synthetic, or whether they have overriding programming or compulsions (as the Vorta and Jem'Hadar do, and they're never considered not to be sentient)--they're still deserving of compassion and the benefit of the doubt. That's a tremendously positive sentiment.
Yeah, that's sort of why I'm bringing up the notion of anti-AI prejudice. B'Ellana's the heart of this whole thing for me: at the end of the day, she does what she has to, but she gets there from a place of open-mindedness and compassion. I hadn't thought about the Maquis connection either, but that also makes tons of sense.
posted by mordax at 7:13 PM on April 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
That's my thinking, yes. I lean toward giving them the benefit of the doubt because they haven't really been profligate with them until now, either - Janeway almost always sticks to phasers.
The things that allowed the Prime Directive talks to work for me here is that Mulgrew plays it as Janeway being less than dogmatic a bout the choice and sharing a more situational oriented approach in her thinking
I agree that's what she's doing, but I find it sort of horrifying rather than nuanced. Like... Janeway's intuition/gut/whatever are also why the Ocampa are probably going to go extinct. It's too much power to be given over to someone who's making it up as they go, I guess. I want her to be operating from more than just her feelings when deciding the fate of whole species. It doesn't have to be down to dogma, just something better than 'ew, robots.'
But more than that, in the larger scale, makes some sense that Janeway would be a bit blinkered about artificial life forms at this point since there is a great deal of back and forth on that issue still to come, so in that way the prejudice suits the larger dynamic in a reasonably sound way.
It's believable, it's just morally wrong to me. Like... it's not clear if any of the AI that we've seen are genuinely sapient. Soong-type androids have the best case because Troi was able to read their emotional states the way she would an organic brain, but even that's not necessarily 100%. Nothing that solid occurs for any of the other ones I can think of offhand, including the Doctor.
However, I think how we treat our environment sort of offers a feedback loop for our own behavior: like, every time we're mean to something that can pass for a human, I think it's easier for us to be mean to an actual person. A Federation attitude that allows callous disregard for the Doctor is subtly dehumanizing in general, IMO. Basically, I'm arguing that a Westworld attitude toward AI degrades more than the robots.
And again, these plot points are actually in line with everything we've seen to date. This isn't bad writing, (excepting maybe that for a Prime Directive, I'd expect something a little clearer), but it does show off an unpleasant side to the Federation that I feel is worth critiquing.
or it's not literally a compulsion to fight, they just really, really like it.
... you know, I'm ashamed the thought didn't ever occur to me. Heh. I blame their polite manner - it's just incongruous to picture gleeful berserkers being like that, and that's my fault.
*makes a note to steal this for a story sometime*
Maybe the real lesson is that it doesn't matter whether the being is organic or synthetic, or whether they have overriding programming or compulsions (as the Vorta and Jem'Hadar do, and they're never considered not to be sentient)--they're still deserving of compassion and the benefit of the doubt. That's a tremendously positive sentiment.
Yeah, that's sort of why I'm bringing up the notion of anti-AI prejudice. B'Ellana's the heart of this whole thing for me: at the end of the day, she does what she has to, but she gets there from a place of open-mindedness and compassion. I hadn't thought about the Maquis connection either, but that also makes tons of sense.
posted by mordax at 7:13 PM on April 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think I'm just coming at this from a different angle. My thinking on Janeway and other captains' decision making and the Prime Directive is that in their position, given the frequent encounters with new and unexpected phenomena, there can't really be any guidelines or rules that will cover all the exigencies they'll face. I think of their role in such situations being something like that of a judge with a really bizarre case load. The laws in place may provide reasonable ideals to work from in deciding their cases, but if one is looking for the fairest of outcomes those laws can't be held as more absolutely defining since individual circumstance will always cause conflict with the letter of the law.
One of the reasons why I like Janeway so much as a captain is that we do see something of her deliberative process and witness her listening to conflicting points of view on these kinds of matters before making her decision. One could speculate that due to her coming from a science background or maybe just because she's a woman that the writers and Mulgrew seem to really emphasize more strongly than with the other captains the nature of her thinking, willingness to be challenged, and openness to changing her mind when faced with new or better information.
While a "correct" end result is unarguably the best measure from which to judge the overall values or actions of the show in treatment of alien circumstances, I think there is something actually worse in some ways in showing right decisions coming from a single source, whether ship's captain or law, without need for deliberation rather than in being a process since it seems clear enough that one cannot rely on authority alone for ideal decision making.
In this sense, Janeway's frequent interactions with the doctor over his treatment by her and the crew show a decent modeling of how one deals with implicit bias. If one is used to a heavily machine aided existence, but not had many encounters with sentient AI, which seems to be the case in the show, then one is likely to hold a number of unconscious biases or just be unaware of difficulties posed by normal interaction for those who do not fit the norms. So the more important issue is in how one reacts to new information that challenges long held practice or belief and what the best way might be to attempt to deal with that information in practice to best suit everyone's needs. Showing decision making from authority can ignore those kinds of conflicts, model decision making as something like an innate attribute rather than a process, and come across as those in power being the one's best suited to judge situations alone.
This might make Janeway seem less able or reliable as a captain in some sense, but I think it makes for a better show and from some perspectives makes Janeway a better captain depending on what one's perspective on their portrayal might be. I mean Kirk got things right, but it was because Kirk was Kirk, which isn't something translatable into wider use. So if one wants to see models of singular captains at their best, then the Janeway model isn't as good, but if one wants a model of how someone might best approach a position of authority absent that assumption of necessary correctness, then Janeway becomes the better example. I may be biased myself in this as I find Mulgrew's Janeway to be the most interesting captain and my favorite for that, though not the best one in that other sense of thinking about it.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:58 AM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
One of the reasons why I like Janeway so much as a captain is that we do see something of her deliberative process and witness her listening to conflicting points of view on these kinds of matters before making her decision. One could speculate that due to her coming from a science background or maybe just because she's a woman that the writers and Mulgrew seem to really emphasize more strongly than with the other captains the nature of her thinking, willingness to be challenged, and openness to changing her mind when faced with new or better information.
While a "correct" end result is unarguably the best measure from which to judge the overall values or actions of the show in treatment of alien circumstances, I think there is something actually worse in some ways in showing right decisions coming from a single source, whether ship's captain or law, without need for deliberation rather than in being a process since it seems clear enough that one cannot rely on authority alone for ideal decision making.
In this sense, Janeway's frequent interactions with the doctor over his treatment by her and the crew show a decent modeling of how one deals with implicit bias. If one is used to a heavily machine aided existence, but not had many encounters with sentient AI, which seems to be the case in the show, then one is likely to hold a number of unconscious biases or just be unaware of difficulties posed by normal interaction for those who do not fit the norms. So the more important issue is in how one reacts to new information that challenges long held practice or belief and what the best way might be to attempt to deal with that information in practice to best suit everyone's needs. Showing decision making from authority can ignore those kinds of conflicts, model decision making as something like an innate attribute rather than a process, and come across as those in power being the one's best suited to judge situations alone.
This might make Janeway seem less able or reliable as a captain in some sense, but I think it makes for a better show and from some perspectives makes Janeway a better captain depending on what one's perspective on their portrayal might be. I mean Kirk got things right, but it was because Kirk was Kirk, which isn't something translatable into wider use. So if one wants to see models of singular captains at their best, then the Janeway model isn't as good, but if one wants a model of how someone might best approach a position of authority absent that assumption of necessary correctness, then Janeway becomes the better example. I may be biased myself in this as I find Mulgrew's Janeway to be the most interesting captain and my favorite for that, though not the best one in that other sense of thinking about it.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:58 AM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
My thinking on Janeway and other captains' decision making and the Prime Directive is that in their position, given the frequent encounters with new and unexpected phenomena, there can't really be any guidelines or rules that will cover all the exigencies they'll face.
I'd buy that more if they didn't talk up the Prime Directive so much, mostly. Like, on the one hand, you're absolutely right: they can't have a playbook that covers every contingency... but on the other (a) they don't even try, (see Stargate SG-1 for a show with a military trying to cope with weirdness in a way that I find more believable), and (b) they talk up the Prime Directive as a universal and unbreakable rule.
In the TOS-era, the whole 'non-interference directive' worked better, IMO. Kirk and the gang never treated it as sacred, just a really good default assumption. If the TNG-era guys did the same thing, I suspect you and I would be in 100% agreement about this.
In this sense, Janeway's frequent interactions with the doctor over his treatment by her and the crew show a decent modeling of how one deals with implicit bias. If one is used to a heavily machine aided existence, but not had many encounters with sentient AI, which seems to be the case in the show, then one is likely to hold a number of unconscious biases or just be unaware of difficulties posed by normal interaction for those who do not fit the norms.
That's fair. And I do concede that Voyager is the show that handles this in the best way, with everybody slowly coming around to the Doctor's plight.
This is more something that bothers me about Starfleet in general. I get the impression they covered up the events of Elementary, Dear Data, which is where the top guys in Starfleet needed to start working on this.
Re: captain rankings -
When I first watched Voyager, I ranked Janeway pretty low, but it was mostly due to unhappiness with the entire show rather than something specific to her. Like, a lot of dumb things happen on Voyager, and as the captain, the buck stops with her... but that's not really about her being a bad character. I always liked Mulgrew's performance.
Now that we've been at this rewatch for over a season, I'd rate her about the same as Picard or Sisko. Their styles are slightly different, but the overall way they do their jobs is similar, and I think that's a good thing. Our TNG-era captains are all very academic, good at delegation and so on. During any halfway decent episode, I totally buy that Janeway is the best person for the job. She's thoughtful, brave, principled and a host of other things that make a good leader. (The other thing I'll give Voyager some props for is that my second choice for 'who should run Voyager' would probably be B'Ellana - Tuvok's too cautious, Chakotay's too hotheaded, Paris is too Paris and so on. Torres is clearly benefiting from Janeway's leadership, and demonstrating a similar thoughtfulness. It's neat to see.)
The only starring captain I thought was truly bad at the job was Archer, but it's been awhile since I saw Enterprise, so that might also be a case of 'bad show rather than bad captain.'
posted by mordax at 10:18 AM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'd buy that more if they didn't talk up the Prime Directive so much, mostly. Like, on the one hand, you're absolutely right: they can't have a playbook that covers every contingency... but on the other (a) they don't even try, (see Stargate SG-1 for a show with a military trying to cope with weirdness in a way that I find more believable), and (b) they talk up the Prime Directive as a universal and unbreakable rule.
In the TOS-era, the whole 'non-interference directive' worked better, IMO. Kirk and the gang never treated it as sacred, just a really good default assumption. If the TNG-era guys did the same thing, I suspect you and I would be in 100% agreement about this.
In this sense, Janeway's frequent interactions with the doctor over his treatment by her and the crew show a decent modeling of how one deals with implicit bias. If one is used to a heavily machine aided existence, but not had many encounters with sentient AI, which seems to be the case in the show, then one is likely to hold a number of unconscious biases or just be unaware of difficulties posed by normal interaction for those who do not fit the norms.
That's fair. And I do concede that Voyager is the show that handles this in the best way, with everybody slowly coming around to the Doctor's plight.
This is more something that bothers me about Starfleet in general. I get the impression they covered up the events of Elementary, Dear Data, which is where the top guys in Starfleet needed to start working on this.
Re: captain rankings -
When I first watched Voyager, I ranked Janeway pretty low, but it was mostly due to unhappiness with the entire show rather than something specific to her. Like, a lot of dumb things happen on Voyager, and as the captain, the buck stops with her... but that's not really about her being a bad character. I always liked Mulgrew's performance.
Now that we've been at this rewatch for over a season, I'd rate her about the same as Picard or Sisko. Their styles are slightly different, but the overall way they do their jobs is similar, and I think that's a good thing. Our TNG-era captains are all very academic, good at delegation and so on. During any halfway decent episode, I totally buy that Janeway is the best person for the job. She's thoughtful, brave, principled and a host of other things that make a good leader. (The other thing I'll give Voyager some props for is that my second choice for 'who should run Voyager' would probably be B'Ellana - Tuvok's too cautious, Chakotay's too hotheaded, Paris is too Paris and so on. Torres is clearly benefiting from Janeway's leadership, and demonstrating a similar thoughtfulness. It's neat to see.)
The only starring captain I thought was truly bad at the job was Archer, but it's been awhile since I saw Enterprise, so that might also be a case of 'bad show rather than bad captain.'
posted by mordax at 10:18 AM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Janeway leadership style question is also inextricably complicated (tainted?) by the strong possibility that her occasional inconsistency might not have been intentional character development, but rather, sloppy writing. This is one of the things I'm trying to consciously track in this rewatch.
I'm also looking for any instance of the crew deciding "the Prime Directive truly doesn't apply in this one specific only-in-the-Delta-Quadrant situation" and that decision being the correct one. Because if that does happen, it suggests some consistency on the part of the writers—maybe even conscious intent to deal with the PD-related expectations set up by TNG in the same fashion that DS9 consciously dealt with the utopia-related expectations set up by the Trek that came before.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 11:10 AM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm also looking for any instance of the crew deciding "the Prime Directive truly doesn't apply in this one specific only-in-the-Delta-Quadrant situation" and that decision being the correct one. Because if that does happen, it suggests some consistency on the part of the writers—maybe even conscious intent to deal with the PD-related expectations set up by TNG in the same fashion that DS9 consciously dealt with the utopia-related expectations set up by the Trek that came before.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 11:10 AM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
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like the two or three I've already lost'.I don't know if I'd consider this a great hour of TV, but it was an enjoyable one to watch.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:49 AM on April 10, 2017 [3 favorites]