Star Trek: Voyager — 6x24 — Life Line

Aired 2000-05-10

SpaceOpera.com rating:9

Average reader rating:6.56

Synopsis

The Doctor's creator is dying.

Remarkable scenes

Janeway regarding Zimmerman: "Unusual man. I met him once at a conference. Managed to offend just about everyone there. But he was certainly brilliant."
Zimmerman to Barclay: "You don't have any friends."
EMH: "What were your initial symptoms?" Zimmerman: "Radical hair loss."
The doctor meeting his creator.
The speaking iguana, Leonard.
The doctor: "I'm a doctor, not a zoo keeper." Count 33 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
The doctor squishing the holographic spy fly.
Troi's appearance.
Troi: "You're both jerks!" Leonard: "Jerks."
The revelation that Haley is a hologram.
The doctor regarding Barclay's Voyager recreation: "For one thing, Neelix doesn't purr." Nice connection with Voy: Pathfinder.
The doctor regarding Troi: "She's a counselor, Lieutenant, not an engineer!" Not exact, but I'll count it. Count 34 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
Zimmerman trying to improve the doctor.
Zimmerman: "Emergency Medical Hotheads! That's what everybody used to call the mark ones."
Zimmerman: "Do you know how humiliating it is to have 675 mark ones out there, scrubbing plasma conduits all with my face?"

Review

An episode loaded with goodies. Another Barclay and Troi guest appearance giving us a nice sequel to Voy: Pathfinder, an update on Starfleet's efforts to bring Voyager home; apparently two deep space vessels could reach Voyager in five to six years! Yeah, well Voyager isn't going to be running five or six more years. I think we're going to get another speed boost. ;) Also we get to see that wonderful Dr. Louis Zimmerman again, for probably final time. The whole story is wonderfully entertaining and quite funny without degrading the seriousness of Dr. Zimmerman's condition. I enjoyed Janeway's short line about her impression of Zimmerman when she met him. But the devil is in the details. You've got to love all the little things in this episode, like finally seeing Jupiter station, or seeing Zimmerman's holographic lab, or Zimmerman's holographic iguana Leonard, or his holographic companion Haley, or his holographic spy fly, or the various one liners throughout the episode that just make you laugh. Because of all these things, this episode remains one of my favorites. Even if some of the details are a rehash, the basic story isn't. And both of Robert Picardo's roles steal the show. :)

6 reader comments

Can someone explain to me why, in this and perhaps other episodes, they have such an dilemma with sending the doctor's data somewhere? He's data - what's the problem sending a copy? At worst there'd be a delta between the experiences of him having two experiences at the same time, which could surely be merged later. Have they ever described it as being some kind of ethical issue? I'd think not, as he doesn't seem to have the same rights as, say, Data had. I'd have been happier if they hadn't made an issue of not wanting to sending him because Voyageur'd be without him, and it was dangerous.
by Steve R. Mohns | 08/27/2010 at 3:20 am

Upfront disclosure: I don't think the writers had their computer science fundamentals quite locked down when they wrote this stuff. The same problem is happening on the new BSG series Caprica right now. The writers on that show make frequent computer science errors, unfortunately. I suppose tech errors are a fact of life on science fiction shows.
That said, the "copy the doctor" issue on Voyager isn't as bad as you might think. It's well established that he takes up so much computer memory that they can't have more than one copy of him on Voyager's computer at any one time. In order for two doctors to delta their experiences and merge into a single codebase, they'd have to be diffed, which requires having both copies of the doctor in computer memory at the same time.
Voyager simply lacks the computer memory for this, so after they transmitted him, they must have deleted him from their computer as a safety precaution so they'd have enough room for him when he got back.
You might wonder why they didn't keep a copy of the doctor around just in case of emergencies while the original was gone and then delete the copy on Voyager just before the other doctor got back, but that raises ethical issues. Should the doctor that remained on Voyager be deleted so that the other may live? Doesn't sound very Federationy.
They can store him in a backup module, but again, in order for two doctors to diff and merge their experiences, they both have to exist in the memory of a single computer at the same time. So, on the whole, it seems like the writers accidentally managed to get this one right, just barely. Throughout Voyager's run, I was constantly worried that they would break this rationalization. But they never did! :)
by Eric Newport | 08/27/2010 at 8:09 am

This may or may not be an episode problem: Zimmerman tells the doctor, "I didn't program you for sarcasm!" But if that's true, then the doc learned it exceptionally quickly. I'm pretty sure he was sarcastic from day one, (literally). Rather than an actual episode problem, one could interpret this as a good example of Zimmerman's conflicted and somewhat myopic nature - he's conflicted about his own personality and accomplishments just as he's conflicted about the Mach One (and by extension about the doc). Sarcasm is probably one of those character traits he wasn't quite aware of when he designed the Mach One, and that slipped into the programming unintentionally (like his own arrogance and hot-headedness and all the rest).
(Good epside, btw.)
by dillingham | 01/04/2012 at 9:32 am

Loved this episode. Picardo is brilliant in this episode. The more I watch Voyager, the more I love Picardo
by packman_jon | 06/09/2012 at 5:23 am

It always bothered me too that they can’t copy the doctor. I can’t really accept the explanation that Voyager doesn’t have enough memory for more than one copy at a time, when they had enough to run the whole town of ‘Fair Haven’ continuously for days (or was it weeks?)!
This particular episode has bigger problems, though. E.g. why in the world would 675 EMHs be used to scrub plasma conduits? There’s gotta be less resource-intensive ways to do this – like simple robotic arms or holograms designed specifically for scrubbing (that don’t require extra memory to run subroutines for “faces”). It’s not like the Mark One copies were pieces of equipment that they had to repurpose because they didn’t know what else to do with them. These are just computer files, why not just delete?
Also Troi losing her cool and calling her patients “jerks” was totally absurd. She’s a veteran counselor, with a distinguished career on the federation’s flagship, and she can’t handle a couple of squabbling patients without throwing a tantrum herself? Annoyed the hell out of me.
by Jadzia Guinan Smith | 07/11/2015 at 2:00 pm

I was going to skip this episode, but I saw our host gave it a 9, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Glad I did. They did a good job of keeping it light, adding some drama in, but not overdoing it.
And of course you get Picardo vs Picardo, which I should have known would be fun. It's somewhat a shame that the plot necessitates that he couldn't play Zimmerman very differently than the Doctor (as opposed to, say, Data vs Noonian Soong or Lore), but he got some subtleties in there.
I felt like Barcalay and Troi kind of got shoved in the background, which is odd for TNG characters, but I'm not wild about either of them (though I am a Dwight Schultz fan), so no major loss. That said, their role reversal plan between Zimmerman and the Doctor was pretty great.
And really, Zimmerman's whole plight of his personality being deemed faulty (essentially) was a great hook for the plot.
by tigertooth | 01/07/2017 at 3:57 pm