I didn't expect an episode about medical ethics in VOY, but here you go. Honestly the Doctor is the most prominent doctor character in Trek, especially in regards to actually practicing medicine. Bones is pretty much as prominent a character, but often when he is most present in an episode it isn't actually spent practicing medicine. Beverley on the other hand is pretty much only a doctor other than the few episodes about her specifically which are a bit hit or miss. Julian is more in the Bones model but the EMH is as big a character in his series as any of the others in theirs and mostly for his medical skills. Putting him in an ethical quandary is especially interesting since as a computer program he isn't exactly autonomous which raises the question of how he rebelled while being run by the central computer, but that isn't really a bit problem for the episode.
We open with the a merchant named Gar trying to pedal some wares to a doctor on a hospital ship of some sort. His latest offering is impressive, the Doctor in his mobile emitter. He is very upset and refuses to be treated as property, but also can't resist starting to treat patients. Back on Voyager it doesn't take long for them to realize the Doctor has been replaced by a training program that looks like him but lacks his skills and knowledge. Back on the hospital ship the Doctor is appalled by the lack of supplies but it seems everything is doled out by the computer including communications with the outside. He befriends a hurt miner named Tebbis who manages to diagnose himself and ends up working to help the Doctor with other patients. Eventually the Doctor is taken to the top of the hospital which is super clean and modern and where healthy patients are receiving the drug they have shortages of in the lower levels to theoretically extend their lives because they are more valuable members of society. They all seem pretty cool with it but the Doctor is appalled.
The crew of Voyager start backtracking to figure out where the Doctor ended up but keep running into people Gar cheated along the way. The Doctor though is having some luck. He tricks the computer into giving him extra doses which he starts using on the patients in the lower levels. One of the Doctors catches him but he convinces that guy that if they keep using less medicine in the high level each month they will be given less and if they ever really need it they won't have it and the guy seems to get it. The administrator though isn't having it and when he finds out he links the Doctors program to the central computer so he can't choose what to do. This pisses the Doctor off so he kidnaps the administrator and infects him with the disease from the lower level and convinces the computer that the administrator is a low priority. He forces him to accept a bunch of the lower level patients into the higher level just as he is rescued by the crew of Voyager.
Review: I kinda left out the bit about Tuvok and Neelix breaking some ethical rules of their own when it came to interrogation, but I kinda think Neelix had the right idea given that the dude literally stole their Doctor. The Doctors dilemma felt a little forced, but overall worked fine.
6 out of 10
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