A group of criminals are brought on board Voyager when the ship that they're on explodes. Treating one of them, the Doctor inadvertently causes a major shift in his personality, leaving him feeling great remorse for what he's done.
Where to start? There's little, as usual, going on in this story. The prisoners are brought on board, put in cells, roughed up a bit to demonstrate prison brutality and we start to learn about their personalities. The prime directive finally comes into play as Janeway decides for once that the laws of an alien society are not hers to mess with, although she does have a good go a couple of times.
Of the prisoners, one of them befriends Neelix, claiming his species is persecuted and locked up even if they haven't committed a crime. Naturally, Neelix swallows it hook, line and sinker and we're left waiting for the inevitable break-out where Neelix gets killed. Wishful thinking, sadly, although the break-out does happen, and predictably enough Neelix's friend tries to kill one of the guards, meaning he loses Neelix's friendship. Oh, how upset he must be.
Menawhile, back in the main plot, the Doctor has discovered yet another use for Seven's nanoprobes: they can mend people's brains. When they fix malfunctioning parts of the prisoner's brain he becomes all nice and seeks to die until the others convince him that he should appeal against his sentence. The problem is that the audience doesn't care. All these men are criminals, and if they're guilty, they should be executed if that's the law. You can't just play the old 'I've been converted' card and hope people will let you off the hook. Thankfully the ending isn't as obvious as it could have been, and at least it's the more likely decision. Every time someone talks about an appeal, you find yourself thinking, 'But he still did it in the first place!' and failing to care if he lives or dies. It's a shame, as Jeff Kober puts in rather a nice performance (although Seven's feelings towards him aren't well dealt with), imbuing the now-guilty man with some humanity. It's just not enough to save this episode from being anything other than obvious.
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