Review of The Swarm

This episode has two entirely separate plots, the first involves a hostile race of aliens whose ships are small but act as a swarm to attack any vessel violating their territory. The second plot was the more important though; the Doctor starts to find that his memory is failing, it could be fixed by simply rebooting his program although that would mean a loss of all his memories since he was first activated in the Delta Quadrant. B'Elanna comes up with the idea of using a holodeck simulation of Jupiter Station where he was created to diagnose the problem. This program contains a holographic representation of Dr. Zimmerman who examines the Doctor's program but can't think of a solution. Ultimately Kes has an idea although they can only try it once as once it has run the Dr. Zimmerman program will be lost.

This was an interesting episode which looked at the nature of The Doctor, it was interesting that they worked hard to save his memories showing how much the crew's opinions about his nature have changed; in early episodes they wouldn't have believed he had feelings let alone worried about them. Robert Picardo put in a fine performance as the two Doctors and Jennifer Lien was good as Kes, her character always comes across as the most caring of the crew. The plot involving the Swarm of alien ships was less interesting but not bad, I liked the fact that even after Voyager managed to safely pass them we knew no more about them than we did to begin with.