B'Elanna becomes obsessed with repairing an advanced robot found drifting in space. But when she gets "Automated Personnel Unit 3947" up and running, it soon abducts her and forces her to unlock the secret of building more robotic life forms. Outgunned by the robots' powerful spaceship, Voyager must find another way to rescue their chief engineer.
There was apparently some odd creative friction behind the scenes of this episode. Executive producer Michael Piller bought the premise from outside writer Nicholas Corea, even though he suspected that a "robot war" might be a corny idea. Piller just liked the notion of a different kind of villain from what the series had tried so far. But he was apparently alone in believing in the idea at all. Ken Biller, the staff writer who did an uncredited script polish, thought it sounded like hokey 50s sci-fi. Executive producers Rick Berman and Jeri Taylor didn't think they'd be able to depict robots convincingly.
I think they're basically all right: this is a vintage sci-fi idea. Robots fighting each other long after their creators are dead just looks, sounds, and feels like a story that's been remixed countless times before. And its treatment here is old-fashioned, with silver-plated robots on one side of the war and gold-plated copies on the other. The robots themselves -- minimally flexible silicon masks on a no-doubt-suffering actor -- seem cheap in exactly the way the premise suggests. Voyager indeed did not depict these robots convincingly on their budget.
And yet, if the premise weren't tantalizing in some ways, it wouldn't be so repeated and feel so familiar. It says something elemental about the human condition to strip emotion from war, depict it with cold logic and intractability, and then leave the viewer to quickly draw conclusions about just what war is good for. This take on the story weaves in some elements of Frankenstein too, casting B'Elanna as a mad scientist obsessed with creating life, who must ultimately turn on her own creation.
But at the same time, there isn't much to this story that makes it feel to me like Star Trek's take on the tale, rather than "another version." There's some half-hearted talk of the Prime Directive in the middle, but the episode isn't handling that bit of Trek lore with consistency; the Prime Directive is for non-warp-capable cultures, and these robots seem more advanced than that. Moreover, Janeway's characteristic curiosity is strangely absent here, as she displays no interest in learning more about the robot culture to add context to the debate about whether to help them.
"Star Trek," and Voyager in particular, only exists at the margins of this episode. The character of Data is briefly mentioned. Tuvok's concerns are shot down, as security chief concerns are always shot down by captains in order to further the plot. Neelix gives a strained analogy about spicing an omelet. We learn another thing the Doctor is not. (An engineer.)
And yet, it's not like the episode feels bad as you watch it -- just a bit corny. I think it has a lot to do with Roxann Dawson, who manages to make this out-of-nowhere obsession with robotics seem realistic. She actually has chemistry with an actor whose face you can't see. She has even better banter with Harry Kim, who revive their "Starfleet/Maquis" pet names for each other in a moderately flirtatious scene.
Other observations:
- The teaser of the episode is fun, telling the story in glitchy black-and-white and in the first person. (The episodes was originally delivered with the warning that nothing was wrong with the tape for the first two minutes.)
- Robots like this don't have to be hokey... or at least, that quality can be made to fit in a larger whole. I offer as evidence the character of Isaac on The Orville.
"Prototype" isn't really a bad episode of Voyager. It's just absolutely not the episode to show someone skeptical of Star Trek in general. It's never going to convert a new viewer. I give it a B-.
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