What we had here was a pretty good idea. A non-sentient bio-organic mimetic fluid on a world so inhospitable that it has literally never before encountered an intelligent lifeform (or any lifeform? one assumes so because there are, as far as we can tell, no other beings around that are obviously living creatures) Leaving aside for the second that this episode falls into the classic sci-fi cloning trap of assuming DNA contains short term memory, language, social graces, etc, the concept is nevertheless a compelling plot point to build a story around. The replicas raise questions of identity, self-preservation, and the power of sentience to appreciate its own existence. It's an interesting new take on old ideas in science fiction.
My primary problem is how the situation is resolved. The writers chose to create the central tension by making it a matter of either escape and harm a couple newly-sentient life-forms or....well, give them what they want. And here's where we come to a rather severe disconnect in how the episode treats the aforementioned issue of identity. The replicas clearly want to live, to explore their world as individuals. When Captain Janeway offers them a chance to increase their numbers by sampling the DNA of other Voyager crew, the philosophical and personal implications of such a resolution are every bit as compelling and staggering as the ones of the replicas, and it is just skipped over and Voyager leaves, with a few dozen replicas remaining on the planet. The idea of individuality is at the heart and soul of humanity -- Star Trek even makes it part of one of their most compelling aspect of universe-building in creating the Borg -- and it seems unlikely in the extreme that a significant number of Voyager's crew would willingly subject themselves to be duplicated in such a fashion. At the very least, they would likely require a *lot* of convincing, with plenty of existential angst involved. But the episode just brushes over this aspect despite it being necessary to make the plot believable and bring the issue to a full circle. And it strikes me as unlikely that Janeway would compel them rather than accepting their rejection of this proposal and blasting the ship's way off the surface, unhappy duplicates be damned. This ending was problematic enough for me that I was calling the entire episode's value into question despite the promising premise.
A question that has little to do with the plot -- the Demon-class planet is called the most hostile type of planet for humanoid life, which, unless the class covers a HUGE range of planets, is patently ridiculous. At least three of the planets in our solar system alone are measurably worse than the conditions described for this planet (Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus are all more deadly, with Jupiter being worse by an order of magnitude, not just degrees. Neptune and Uranus are pretty dangerous as well.) The fact that Tom and Jer...er, Harry felt okay leaving the back of the shuttle open to the environment while they wandered demonstrates this planet is relatively mild in terms of environment hostile to humanoids. All it would take is removing or amending a line of dialogue to fix this obvious flaw, but it still nags that any Starfleet officer, let alone a Vulcan, would be so wrong in his declarations.
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