‘PROTOTYPE’ (VOY)
Please feel free to comment on my review.
This episode is one of my favourites from Season 2 of ‘Voyager’. It’s about B’Elanna Torres meeting a robot and repairing it. Very soon, it captures her, and she’s made to build a brand-new type of robot.
The writer of ‘Prototype’ is Nicholas Corea, who you may recognise for his work on ‘The Incredible Hulk’ TV show. He has also contributed to the ‘DS9’ TV series in ‘Hippocratic Oath’ and ‘Indiscretion’.
‘Prototype’ is also directed by Jonathan Frakes, well-known as Riker in ‘TNG’. I like how Jonathan Frakes handled this episode, especially with the opening sequence from the robot’s point-of-view. 🙂
This is especially when the robot scans its surroundings in black-and-white; when it’s drifting in space before it gets beamed aboard Voyager; and when B’Elanna, Tuvok and Janeway are examining it.
When the robot is brought into and examined in engineering, B’Elanna and Harry Kim struggle to find a way to revive it, due to its quickly dying plasma-based energy source within its control unit. 😐
B’Elanna tries having coffee to help her work out the problem and that runs out when Neelix tells her to go to bed. She soon consults with the Doctor so she can compare it to a medical emergency. 🙂
Once she has the answer, B’Elanna manages to revive the robot by modifying its energy source to accept plasma directly from Voyager’s warp core. The robot is activated and it grabs B’Elanna’s arm.
It introduces itself as Automated Unit 3947, played by Rick Worthy, and thanks B’Elanna for reviving it. The robot explains how it came to be drifting in space, since it was in a mining pod that exploded.
The design of the Automated Units, particularly 3947, is an interesting one. It looks old-fashioned, or at least a robot design from the 1950s and 60s, with its blank expression and no mouth moving at all.
It’s not anything like Data, who is an actor covered in gold-white make-up. This is like a completely robotic design. Even Data gets a mention in this episode when B’Elanna shares to 3947 about him. 🙂
3947 soon asks B’Elanna if she could duplicate the energy source she made to create a prototype Automated Unit – another robot. The robots were first designed by what 3947 labels as ‘the Builders’.
B’Elanna is keen on the idea, but when consulting Janeway on this, she’s reminded that it would be a violation of the Prime Directive. It’d give them the capability to reproduce a race not designed to do so. 😐
Despite B’Elanna’s objections, Janeway overrules her and 3947 is disappointed, as without B’Elanna’s assistance, the robot race will die out. Soon, Voyager makes contact with a ship full of robots.
The robots are the same Automated Units as 3947. Just when B’Elanna says goodbye to 3947, she gets captured and taken aboard the ship of Automated Units where she’s made to work for them. 😐
Eventually, B’Elanna reluctantly agrees to work on the prototype unit in order to keep Voyager safe. Voyager tries to find ways of getting B’Elanna off the ship and stop her building the robot prototype.
B’Elanna works her way in the laboratory to build a new prototype for the robots. She manages to succeed in completing a functional prototype robot and it repeatedly asks to be given programming.
I like how it keeps on repeating, “Prototype Unit 0-0-0-1 is ready to accept programming” in that monotone voice way. Meanwhile, Tom Paris pilots a shuttle in order to save B’Elanna from the ship.
Very soon, a second robot ship attacks the first robot ship. The robots that B’Elanna has been working with are for the Pralor race. The robots attacking the Praloran robots are for the Cravic race.
It’s revealed why the robots are at war with each other, as they were designed to be soldiers for their respective alien races. Once the Pralor and the Cravic called a ceasefire, the robots killed them.
Realising what she’s done, B’Elanna soon destroys the prototype unit she built with an electrical knife. 3947 knocks B’Elanna down, and B’Elanna tells them that she never wanted to be their enemy.
Saved by Tom Paris beaming her out of there, B’Elanna is returned to Voyager where the two robotic ships continue their war with each other. Overall, this is a very compelling ‘Voyager’ episode indeed.
‘Prototype’ (VOY) rating – 9/10
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