Episode 151: Critical Care

The Doctor comes online on a hospital ship after a con artist, Gar, stole him from Voyager despite their *cough* strict security. The administrator, Chellick, decides to use him despite the overcrowding and primitive equipment on the Red level. Meanwhile on Voyager Paris and Harry visit the Doctor after they’ve taken a leaf out of DS9’s Julian and Miles’ book and play juvenile holodeck games. The Doctor (Keiko) is usually annoyed but doesn’t care this time because it’s just an earlier copy they’ve been left with. Janeway sets off to find the perpetrator but doesn’t care about who’s responsible on the ship. At the hospital ship, the Doctor finds a patient, Tebbis, with a serious condition who hasn’t been treated because he hasn’t got a high Treatment Coefficient. Chellick then informs the Doctor he needs to go to help people with more medical need in the Blue Level. Can you possibly tell where this is going?! Can you?! Yes, the people on Blue have more money. Crazy isn’t it? Where do they get these stories from? Chellick will be becoming a patient in his own hospital next. But I’m skipping ahead. Doctor Drysek is content to just follow orders but the Doctor uses some of the medicine for Tebbis on the Red level who gets better. Voyager meanwhile goes from planet to planet attempting to find Gar in a quite amusing segment. Anyway, The Doctor is informed that Tebbis went to the White Level and finds out this is where the dead people are. Is this Torchwood now? The Doctor argues with Chellick about this and is then kept on the Blue Level. Voyager find Gar and interrogate him with spicy food to find out where the Doctor is. Really. The Doctor has had enough of Chellick and infects him, putting him in his own hospital. Doctor Drysek won’t treat him as the computer thinks that he’s Tebbis so Chellick agrees to move some patients from the Red Level to Blue. Yeah, like he won’t reverse that after the Doctor leaves.

I can’t believe the creators of Voyager don’t like the Original Series of Star Trek as this episode was as heavy handed with the morality as a lot of them. Gene Roddenberry would be proud.