Changes: Warhead (episode)

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A sentient alien missile takes over The Doctor's program and tries to carry out its mission of mass destruction.

Summary

After receiving a distress call on the night shift, acting captain Ensign Harry Kim diverted USS Voyager to a nearby planet. After confidence-boosting approval from Commander Chakotay on "doing the right thing", senior command crew granted Kim the opportunity to expand his leadership skills, by leading an away mission for assistance. They found an artificially-intelligent probe-like machine, which crashed on the planet. At The Doctor's insistence that they beam the device aboard for repairs – after some debate, Kim prudently added security measures to the investigation, and transfered it to sickbay due to the probe's bio-neural circuitry. Lieutenant Torres discovered the device was actually a weapon of mass destruction, and the warhead then hijacked The Doctor's program, trapping Torres and Kim in sickbay with The Doctor's control abilities. Using persistent diplomacy, technical analysis and citing The Doctor's growth as an AI, Kim was instrumental in showing and reasoning with the warhead that its launch was a mistake, and that the weapon's intentions and stubborn denial of rescinded orders could cause it to fail its mission to protect its originating people, by inciting an accidental second war. The weapon failed to convince its newly-arrived identical warp-capable warheads about the rescinded orders – these new weapons then threatened Voyager's destruction if the damaged warhead was not re-integrated into their fleet for final blind destruction of their enemies. Kim's sadness was soothed, when despite the potential loss of its new-found enlightenment, the weapon found a new way to protect its people: destroying its brethren while traveling in subspace.

Episode plot

Teaser

In the mess hall of Voyager, Neelix assists Tom Paris. Paris is trying to use the replicator to create gifts for B'Elanna Torres. He sends a food requisition to her quarters and replicates a bottle of wine and some flowers to carry with him. At this point, Kim enters to order a pot of coffee.

Harry has bridge duty for the fourth night in a row, he has been working the night shift as acting commander of the USS Voyager. He says this will build valuable command experience that will assist him later in his Starfleet career.

On the bridge, everything is progressing as usual and Kim asks Ensign Jenkins, the helmsman, for an update. All of a sudden, Voyager receives an automated distress signal. Kim orders the necessary course alteration to investigate. The distress call is originating from a class M planet. Kim attempts to hail the originator of the signal, but they receive no response. They cannot detect any life signs.

Chakotay is informed of the distress signal, and places Harry in charge of the away team. He is accompanied by The Doctor and crewman Timothy Lang. When they beam down to the coordinates they find no evidence of any life. Kim orders the team to split up to cover more ground. The Doctor discovers a large metallic object protruding from a rock outcrop. As Kim scans it with a tricorder, its lights begin to blink and it makes some computerized sounds. They discover that it contains bio-neural circuitry. The object reactivates and proceeds to communicate with the Doctor, noting that many of its internal memory cores are damaged and cannot be accessed without reconstruction. The Doctor establishes a rapport with the intelligence and makes an appeal to Harry to try to help the intelligence regain its lost memory fragments.

Act One

After a bit of debate, and with the Doctor's insistence, the device is beamed aboard Voyager to salvage the device's artificial intelligence. It appears that the being is fully sentient, however it is housed in the body of some sort of device. The Doctor recommends that they not inform the device of its nature so as to spare it the psychological harm. When Voyager's day shift arrives on duty, Captain Janeway agrees with Kim's decision to beam the device to an engineering bay for analysis. The device states that it had a companion, but lost track of it on the planet. Janeway goes to astrometrics to attempt to locate it.

Meanwhile, the Doctor continues to get to know the alien intelligence. He takes this time to inform the device of its nature. It is startled to know that it is not a humanoid, it is a metallic cylinder.

In astrometrics, Seven of Nine is assisting the Captain in her search. They make a startling discovery on the planet's surface of a similar device causing an explosion, it is determined that the device is a warhead of mass destruction.

Act Two

In the briefing room there is a debate as to what should be done with the device, to still continue to salvage the intelligence, or to simply destroy the weapon. It is decided to try to salvage the intelligence, after the Doctor pleads passionately for its right to live. They must perform the complicated procedure of removing the intelligence from the warhead components. The Doctor suggests they download it into a holographic matrix like himself. After this procedure, they would attempt to contact the people who manufactured the warhead.

Ensign Kim and B'Elanna Torres begin the procedure to separate the intelligence. However, during the procedure, the device's auto-defense programming kicks in and the device arms itself. B'Elanna Torres makes an attempt, under Captain Janeway's orders, to disable the device by sending an EM pulse to shut it down. The device interprets this as an act of hostility, and unknown to Torres and the rest of the crew present during the procedure, the device's intelligence takes over the EMH Doctor's holomatrix during the interlink operation. The Doctor's holomatrix is now controlled by the warhead.

The warhead intelligence then begins to take steps to protect itself from the crew, and makes its intentions known. It barricades itself along with Torres and Kim inside sickbay. It was a dormant warhead sent on a mission to destroy a military base, and it has now resumed that mission. The warhead intelligence threatens Voyager with destruction if the Captain doesn't comply with transporting the warhead to its destination. The warhead intelligence demands that Voyager alter course, taking them to its intended target, a military installation on Salina Prime, approximately 2.3 light years away from their current position.

Act Three

The captain refuses to comply with an alien warhead, getting involved in this species' affairs is a violation of the Prime Directive. However, with the only other option being destruction of Voyager, she must play along. The warhead's programming makes anything that stands in the way of its target an enemy. That includes Voyager and her crew.

As the bridge crew attempts to formulate a plan to disarm the weapon, Neelix enters with a possible option. He acquired a power node from a merchant named Onquanii recently. It has a similar configuration to the warhead, it could have been made by the same species. Chakotay orders scans of the area for his starship and an encoded message sent if he is located.

Meanwhile, the prisoners try to come up with their own plan to disarm the warhead. Harry is depressed because he feels that his actions directly caused the current situation. Kim goes to the Doctor/weapon to try to get him to change his mind. He cites the progress made by the Doctor as proof that AI can overcome initial programming boundaries.

Back on the bridge, a cloaked vessel that could be Onquanii arrives. It is him, and he says the weapon was created by the Druoda. He has studied them and their designs and wishes to come aboard. Later, in Main Engineering, the Captain negotiates with Onquanii. He informs them that he would be able to transport the warhead off of Voyager using his sophisticated dampening field. However, in return he requires the warhead, to sell or salvage the parts. The Captain agrees on the condition that he does not get the Energy Matrix, this way it could not be used as a weapon again. Onquanii refuses, saying the Energy Matrix is the most valuable component. Neelix tries to offer him more items, but he has made up his mind.

Onquanii beams back to his ship, and proceeds to open fire on Voyager. In the first volley, weapons and shields are disabled. The Doctor/weapon demands a report from the bridge. Onquanii tries to transport the warhead to his ship as he offered before, but it sends an antimatter surge back through the transporter beam. The attacking merchant vessel is destroyed.

Next, the crew attempts to devise a plan to infuse the warhead's bio-neural circuitry with Seven's Borg nanoprobes to disable it. The Captain orders comprehensive scans of the nearby minefields.

A fleet of similar warheads flies through space as one pulls up an image of Voyager. They all enter warp to intercept.

Act Four

Before the plan is enacted they must get Seven into sickbay, to do this they will lead the warhead to believe that Voyager has entered a minefield. Using inertial dampeners, Paris will simulate the damage, while sickbay is fed false sensor readings. They will make it look as if Seven was injured in a plasma explosion.

The warhead intelligence then insists that Kim and Torres attempt to reconstruct some memory fragments just before its crash landing. Some of the memory fragments reveal the accidental launch of the device, along with 33 other similar warheads. Despite this evidence, the intelligence is convinced that it must destroy its target. It believes the order to cease attack was faked by the enemy. During the reconstruction, they determine that the warhead was sent a command by its creators, the Druoda, to disengage. Apparently their war ended about three years prior, and the command to terminate was received. The warhead intelligence doubts the reconstructed memory, citing possible meddling by Kim and Torres. Harry retorts that the algorithm used to encode the command would be extremely difficult to tamper with, seeding the warhead intelligence with some doubt.

The attempt by the bridge begins well, but is unsuccessful - Seven's direct contact with a defensive measure for the bio-neural circuitry on the warhead injures her.

Act Five

Next, the 32 other functioning warheads that were also accidentally launched contact the remaining warhead aboard Voyager. The warhead's intelligence, with Kim's help in reasoning with it, deduces that the command to rescind the mission is in fact legitimate, and attempts to corroborate with the other warheads. Since all the warheads have reached a two light year target threshold, at which point the mission cannot be canceled, they ignore the command sent by the warhead on Voyager. The warhead intelligence then realizes what must be done. Kim sadly says "I'm sorry," but the AI simply states that it now has a new mission to protect its people.

At the other warheads' request, the warhead aboard Voyager is transported alongside the fleet and a tractor beam carries the warhead into warp alongside the others to complete their mission. The warhead from Voyager self-destructs. Voyager detects a series of antimatter explosions, destroying all of the wayward warheads, eliminating the threat.

Memorable Quotes

"Assemble the staff. We're going to find a way to outsmart a smart bomb."

- Captain Janeway, to Chakotay

"Do well on this mission, Neelix, and maybe the captain will promote you to Senior Beautician."

- Tom Paris

"I have no intention of proceeding to my target. I will stop them."
"How?"
"I am a weapon of mass destruction."

- The Doctor/Warhead and Harry Kim

"Do me a favor."
"Of course, sir."
"No more distress calls."

- Harry Kim and Ensign Jenkins

Background Information

The Doctor (and the warhead personality occupying his body) wears his mobile emitter during the whole episode. Despite this fact, he's affected when the holographic emitters at sickbay are being destabilized.
The AI of the warhead has no information regarding its target, only that it is a large, manned military installation whose location is a certain planet/grid/vector. We never get to find out the identity of the race that the creators of the warhead were targeting, if indeed the target was a preprogrammed target, and not just a computer artifact generated by the same accident that launched the warheads.
The episode might have been inspired by John Carpenter's 1974 movie Dark Star. In this movie a crew member of the space ship Dark Star also tries to convince an AI equipped bomb not to explode, by teaching the bomb the rudiments of phenomenology. The dialog is similar to that in the episode between Kim and the AI, with the bomb insisting it's doing its job, not believing the new information, etc.
During Janeway's negotiations with Onquanii she offers him a replicator, despite her previous refusals to share that technology with the Kazon in accordance with the Prime Directive.

Video and DVD releases

UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment): Volume 5.13, 27 December 1999.

The first Voyager volume distributed by PHE.

As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection.

Links and references

Previous episode:
"Relativity"

Star Trek: Voyager
Season 5

Next episode:
"Equinox"

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 |         nSerialAirdate = 19990519
-|                 wsDate = ''Unknown'' ([[2375]])
+|                 wsDate = ''Unknown'' ([[2376]])
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 |     aPrevReleasedInAll = Tacking Into the Wind (episode)