Fridge / Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 11 Latent Image

• Fridge Brilliance: The flashbacks are set in late Season 3. This means that the Doctor had his breakdown during a time when Voyager knew they were nearing Borg space. Ensign Wildman also has a very young child onboard. And they do not yet have the benefit of Seven of Nine's knowledge and abilities. Keeping the Doctor online and functioning would be crucial. This makes Janeway's decision to wipe the Doctor's memory of the incident more understandable.
• Janeway justifies the Doctor as equipment by making comparisons with a replicator giving her the wrong temperature coffee, however the replicator almost always requires the user to specify a temperature for drinks or liquids before dispensing, something Janeway doesn't do. She's rationalizing and she knows it.
• Fridge Horror: Ensign Jetal's friends have been seeing the Doctor daily for the last year or so, having to act like their friend never existed, and nothing was wrong.
  • Janeway must also have secured all files in the ship's computer concerning Jetal so the Doctor could not accidentally stumble on them, so that lower-level crew members can't even look up her records or picture. In a way, Janeway erased everyone's memory of Jetal, not just the Doctor.
  • The memory wipe would have had to go far beyond just the incident that killed Jetal - Janeway would have had to remove all of the Doctor's memories that even peripherally involve her, going back years. No wonder he felt so violated.