The Doctor (Robert Picardo) asks Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) to alter his program to allow him to captain the ship if an emergency occurs. Janeway refuses the request. Despite this, the Doctor alters his own sub-routines, allowing him to daydream, while "Voyager" is traveling through an apparently harmless nebula. Among other ego-fulfilling fantasies, the daydreams include one where he becomes the "Emergency Command Hologram" and defeats an attacking alien vessel using a fictional deadly photonic cannon. The Doctor finds that his daydreams are occurring when he doesn't want them to, a side effect of his faulty programming, and the crew disables the new routines.