Doctor (Star Trek)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Doctor / Emergency Medical Hologram | |
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| Species: | hologram (Human Appearance) |
| Gender: | Male |
| Hair color: | Brown |
| Eye color: | Brown |
| Home planet: | None (was created at Jupiter Station) |
| Affiliation: | Starfleet |
| Posting: | USS Voyager chief medical officer |
| Portrayed by: | Robert Picardo |
USS Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram, or Zimmerman, better known as The Doctor, is a character on the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager. The Doctor was played by Robert Picardo.
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[edit] Overview
The Doctor started his service on the USS Voyager as an Emergency Medical Hologram built into the starship's sickbays as a stop-gap measure for use if the ship's doctor should be temporarily unable to perform his duties (In point of fact, The Doctor is not a hologram in the truest sense of the word, but a volumetric display). In the first episode, Voyager's entire medical department was destroyed and all medical personnel killed, and the EMH was called into duty. Given that the EMH was originally intended primarily as a medical expert system and not as an artificial life form as such, the Doctor essentially had to develop his own psychology almost from scratch, and this placed considerable strain on the character during the early parts of the series.
In order to try and develop a realistic personality, the Doctor not only manufactured learning experiences for himself, (the episode Real Life) but also had an increasing number of spontaneous experiences. (Heroes and Demons, Projections, Lifesigns, Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy among others) Because of these, over the course of Voyager's seven seasons, the Doctor's program evolved to become more lifelike, with emotions and ambitions, and developed meaningful and complex relationships with many members of the ship's crew. These developments are at first dismissed by the characters as impossible, then marveled at, and finally accepted as a side effect of the Doctor remaining active for much longer than he had been programmed for. The Doctor also developed talents as a playwright and artist, and became a connoisseur of the opera. He was also given a program upgrade that, in emergencies, allowed him to become the ship's Emergency Command Hologram. Starfleet tactics were added into his programming which allowed him to take charge of the ship when all other senior staff were immobilized, although this aspect of his program required practice to be truly effective.
A recurring theme in the series was the set of ethical questions surrounding an artificial, but apparently sentient being. One of the most interesting moments in this development was when the Doctor suffered an ethical breakdown when faced with two patients, each one with an equal chance of survival, and chose to rescue Harry Kim simply because he knew Kim better, letting the other patient die. Initially, the crew simply deleted the Doctor's memories of the experience, but when he discovered clues as to what had happened, they were eventually convinced that the Doctor had a right to learn to cope on his own rather be treated as though he were just another defective piece of equipment. The Voyager crew overcame their initial attitudes toward his artificial form of life, eventually treating the Doctor as a full equal; when Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres learned that they were going to have a baby, they even made the Doctor the child's godfather, despite both Neelix and Chakotay requesting the position.
However, both Starfleet and beings encountered by the Voyager crew did not always accept the Doctor as a sentient being with all the rights afforded to a living person. This sparked particular interest when he sent a holonovel to a publisher on Earth, detailing the manner in which holograms could be treated by Starfleet. Originally, his characters were closely based on actual members of Voyager's crew, but twisted to appear more vicious than they really were, leading to fears among the crew that people may assume that Voyager was really like that. Tom Paris managed to convince the Doctor to make adjustments without sacrificing his theme, but the Doctor was then forbidden to make any subsequent changes as he lacked legal rights. Although the crew's subsequent legal efforts didn't result in the Doctor being ruled a 'person', he was accorded the status of 'artist', and was able to rewrite the novel; four months later, it was known throughout the Alpha Quadrant as a very thought-provoking piece of work.
In the earlier episodes the Doctor always said "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" when he was activated, because it was hard-wired into his program. His program was later modified (at some point after The Cloud) so that he was no longer forced to say this phrase when he was activated, though for a time he kept using it anyway because he could not think of anything better to say, and he did not like the awkward silence while he waited for people to tell him why he had been activated (he mentions this in Tattoo).
The Doctor also acquired a mobile emitter (see "Future's End, Part 2") from the 29th century, which allowed him to move freely, unbound by fixed holographic projectors. Previous to this development, he had been confined to Sickbay and the Holodeck. Later, the holographic projector coverage was extended to the bridge, engineering section and other strategic parts of the ship to allow him to treat patients on-site, although there were initial problems with these (The first time he projected to Engineering, he was only a few inches high).
The mobile emitter made him ideal for missions where lack of oxygen or toxic materials would have killed the rest of the crew instantly, but even before this he managed to prove his worth, such as confronting an alien force on the holodeck in "Heroes and Demons" and contacting an artificial life form that fed on fear in an illusion created by a cryogenic suspension unit. The Doctor has been decorated for valor in combat, and has saved the ship many times from disaster, leading to the aforementioned addition to his programming of the Emergency Command Hologram, or ECH. His development even extended to him actually contemplating leaving the crew on a few occasions, although he always returned without anyone bearing him a grudge.
One recurring theme in the Doctor's life was his lack of a name. Starfleet did not give him a name, and for a long time the Doctor maintained that he did not want to have a name. Later, over the years, he adopted such names as Schmullus, Schweitzer (after Albert Schweitzer; "Heroes and Demons"), Van Gogh ("Before and After"), and others, before finally, in one potential future, settling on Joe ("Endgame"). For the holographic family he created for himself in the episode "Real Life", he went by the name Kenneth. The captioned dialog of very early episodes, and early promotional material for the series' premiere, referred to him by the last name Zimmerman, after his creator.
In the episode "Blink of an Eye", the Voyager became trapped in the orbit of a planet where time passed much faster than the rest of the galaxy. The Doctor went down to the planet, where he lived for three "years," had a relationship with a woman, and gained a son whom he named Jason Tabreez.
The Doctor's programming evolved to the point where he fell in love with Seven of Nine, though she did not reciprocate those feelings (there are hints that he had feelings for Kes in the early days, but they were subtle and never acted upon). In an alternate future shown in the episode, "Endgame", the future in which he adopts the name Joe, The Doctor eventually marries a human female, Lana (played by Amy Lindsay), who at first glance resembles Seven of Nine.
Robert Picardo also had a cameo in the movie Star Trek: First Contact, where he played the emergency medical hologram of the USS Enterprise-E. Doctor Beverly Crusher activated him as a means of distracting the Borg as they escaped. He replied, "I'm a doctor, not a doorstop", a homage to Doctor McCoy's famous line "I'm a doctor, not a...". (The Doctor also made this reference several times: when Neelix became an unwitting organ donor to the Vidiians in the first-season episode "The Phage", he was placed in sickbay while the crew pursued the organ thieves. Neelix made a disparaging remark about the infirmary's decor, to which the Doctor responded, "I'm a doctor, not a decorator." In "Gravity", he said, "I'm a Doctor, not a battery", while in "Bliss", he said, "I'm a Doctor, not a dragon slayer".)
Later on in the series, the Doctor took on a hobby that many doctors today play: golf.
His character's growth and gradual humanization throughout Star Trek: Voyager provided one of the more compelling arcs in the series. The Doctor often fills the role of the token "outside observer" in Star Trek: Voyager. His initial lack of understanding of human nature makes him in many ways a kindred spirit to characters like Mr. Spock, Data, Odo, and T'Pol, though in later seasons as the Doctor became more human-like this role was mostly passed on to Seven of Nine.
[edit] Another Doctor
Unlike 21st-century computer programs, the Doctor's program could not be copied or backed up. This was something of an awkward point in the show, but it was a necessary shortcoming from a literary point of view, because if the Doctor could be effortlessly restored from a backup copy, he could never really be in peril. There were many instances in the show when he worried about "decompilation" or "irreparable damage to his matrix" that would render him effectively dead. Also, although it is possible to run multiple copies of an ordinary computer program at the same time, there was never more than one instance of the Doctor running simultaneously, probably because this would be too easy a solution to any manpower shortage, and it would make the character seem inhuman and therefore unsympathetic.
The exception to this rule occurs in "Living Witness", where we get a peek into the future of a backup copy of the Doctor.
Captain Janeway had agreed to provide the Vaskans with medical supplies in exchange for dilithium crystals. The Kyrians, who were at war with the Vaskans, boarded Voyager to stop the deal, which they thought was a weapons deal of some sort. During their time on the ship, they stole a data module carrying a backup copy of the Doctor. 700 years later, this module was part of a Kyrian museum exhibit which showed their version of the encounter. This biased encounter showed Voyager as a warship, crewed by a savage and sadistic crew that was willing to commit genocide. Even the Vaskan in the simulation became horrified over the atrocities committed, but the simulated Janeway told him it was too late to stop now. A curator at the museum, always fascinated by Voyager's story even though they were "the bad guys", finally figured out how to revive the holographic doctor, and, despite some initial problems, the Doctor was able to finally set the 700-year-old record straight, although he always regretted that he would never see any of his friends again. Following that, the Doctor served as the surgical chancellor for the Kyrians and Vaskans for many years, but eventually he took a ship and departed for Earth; he said that 'He had a longing for home'.
[edit] Key episodes and milestones
Episodes in which the Doctor's character is expanded or plays a key role.
- Caretaker - Introduction to his character; first activated long-term
- Projections - Experiences identity confusion
- Future's End - Gains future technology to allow him to go anywhere
- Darkling - Attempts to graft other personalities onto his own
- Real Life - Creates a holographic family
- Message in a Bottle - Travels to Alpha Quadrant to deliver a message
- Living Witness - Must defend the memory of the Voyager crew in the future, when his back-up program is activated
- Latent Image - Discovers some of his memories have been blocked
- Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy - Adds daydreaming to his program
- Virtuoso - Influences a planet's development when he hums a tune
- [ Flesh and Blood part 1 and 2]-leaves the crew to help "his people"
sentient holograms created as 'prey' by the Hirogen, who escape their oppressors and seek vengence.
- Author, Author - Fights for his rights as a sentient lifeform after writing a holo-novel which is published in the Alpha Quadrant
- Endgame - Returns home to the Alpha Quadrant
[edit] External links
- The Doctor article at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.
- Official biography at StarTrek.com
| Regular characters on Star Trek | |||
| The Original Series | Kirk | Spock | McCoy | Scott | Uhura | Sulu | Chekov | Chapel | Rand — Animated Series: Arex | M'Ress | ||
| The Next Generation | Picard | Riker | Data | La Forge | Worf | B. Crusher | Troi | W. Crusher | Yar | Pulaski | ||
| Deep Space Nine | B. Sisko | Kira | J. Dax | Odo | Bashir | O'Brien | Worf | J. Sisko | Quark | Rom | Nog | E. Dax | Garak | Martok | Damar | Dukat | Weyoun | Winn | ||
| Voyager | Janeway | Chakotay | Tuvok | Paris | Torres | Kim | Doctor | Neelix | Seven | Kes | ||
| Enterprise | Archer | T'Pol | Tucker | Reed | Phlox | Sato | Mayweather | ||
