Star Trek: Voyager®, "Warhead"

Star Trek: Voyager, "Warhead." Season 5, episode 24 (19 May 1999).[1][]

IMDb logline: "An alien weapon that possesses artificial intelligence links with the [Emergency Medical Holographic] program and begins to terrorize the crew."

IMDb Storyline

Voyager answers a distress call from an alien device with bio-neural circuitry and sentience. Voyager beams the 'survivor' aboard, and further scans show it is a highly-sophisticated warhead capable of mass destruction. The Doctor, who speaks its technical language, fights for its rights when the rest of the crew seeks to distance the ship before the warhead fulfills its purpose. His efforts are unappreciated when, facing shut down, the warhead's intelligence commandeers The Doctor's program and several ships systems. It's ultimatum is clear: Voyager will deliver the warhead to its target or be destroyed.—Meribor

Discussed by Victor Grech in Feature 101, "Brain and Dualism in Star Trek," SFRA Review #304 (Spring 2013), who quotes this as the crucial dialog (fuller version linked below).

You’ve been programmed with intelligence so you could make decisions on your own. Well, it’s time to make one. Countless lives are at stake. Ever since you took the Doctor’s form you’ve been learning what it’s like to be one of us. Now, try to imagine what it’s like to be one of your victims. Your first victim, you’ve seen her suffering. Increase that by a factor of one million, ten million and that’s how much suffering you’ll cause if you don’t end this.

Grech has the AI missile understanding the situation and responding with the key line, “You want me to see past my programming” — and even goes on to destroy the other remaining missiles (after Grech, p. 21).

See also Mariella Scerri and Victor Grech's "Sentience in Science Fiction 101." SFRA Review #315 (Winter 2016): pp. 14-18.[2]

Other references: "Memory Alpha" entry[3] and Wikipedia entry at links.[4]

From the annotation by Anna Kaplan, Cinefantastique 31.11 (April 2000): 55, lightly edited:

On Harry Kim's command shift, Voyager gets an automated distress call. Changing course, they reach the planet from which the call came. Kim takes down an away team along with the Doctor.[[5]] They find an apparently sentient [or sapient, AI] machine, stuck in rock, sending a distress signal. The Doctor is the only one that can understand its duotronic [sic] algorithms. He convinces Harry that despite the risk it is their moral obligation to help this distressed machine. Once this machine is on board, the crew use a variety of means to determine its purpose. They take it to sick bay to try to repair its damaged memory. But Seven[6] and the Captain discover traces of a similar machine in a blast crater on the planet. The artificial intelligence is a weapons, a "smart bomb"[7] in literal terms.[8]

Cf. and contrast dialog with warhead in DARK STAR. "Warhead" dialog quoted on IMDb here.[9]

RDE, finishing, 7Jul21, 17Aug21; 13Jul22