Critical Care

A trader named Gar steals the Doctor's mobile emitter and sells him to an overcrowded alien hospital run by Administrator Chellick, where he is put to work on Level Red. There he learns that a computer called the Allocator rations medicine by each patient's Treatment Coefficient, a measure of their value to society rather than their medical need. His patient Tebbis is denied the drug that would save him because his rating is too low. Moved up to the better-supplied Level Blue, the Doctor secretly diverts extra doses to the patients below until Chellick confines him there. When Tebbis dies, the Doctor infects Chellick with Tebbis's illness, and the Allocator promptly gives the administrator a low rating and denies him treatment. The Doctor then forces Chellick to move Level Red patients up to Level Blue, as Voyager arrives to collect him. Afterwards Seven confirms that his ethical subroutines did not fail: he acted entirely of his own accord.