Today's Thought Experiment: We're making holographic pets! I want to hear your choices, what the benefits are, and how it kills you when the tech inevitably malfunctions.
A pet that would normally pose some sort of physical risk for the owner is a good use-case. Monkeys in their presumably extensive Holo-jungle environment could be cool Kimono dragons, crocodiles, big cats a la Tiger King, all good holopets imho.
isomorphic fish. It doesn't kill you itself, but it alerts you to the fact that B'Elanna failed to shut off the holo emitters she claimed to when Leland Orser went crazy "cleaning" organics.
So, about 2 years ago, I started watching TNG with my then-girlfriend (her first watch, not mine). And I began examining all the various memes that get recirculated about each Trek show (I did the same when we first watched TOS). And I've gotta say, early TNG Troi (i.e., season 1 and 2, and even 3 to an extent) is actually *very* competent. Its just that by the time TNG starts to get better, the writing for Troi gets worse. Sadly, even after a certain other Captain tells her to put on a damned uniform, though post-pj Troi's writing is still better than in seasons 4, 5, and parts of 6. TL;DR: Troi is good when TNG was bad, and is mediocre when TNG was good.
Anything with this much Picardo is always a win. Although, yes, Starfleet using EMHs as menial labour makes absolutely no sense. Its like installing 3 different versions of windows on 3 partitions just to open 3 browser tabs.
To this day, the actress that played Haley, Tamara Craig Thomas, i have found without a doubt over the whole star trek universe, and even including the into darkness, to be the most beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, radiant female character ever. So much so that this episode is in my top 5 of all voyager episodes just because of her, even though its a doc episode. That little acting job she does with her creator when she admonishes him for admonishing her in the same breath as he berates the doctor.... you can see her heartbreak.... even though she was just a hologram.
The ethics of Troi's ruse is worse than making the doc think he's dying, as to fool Zimmerman he must have been in some real actual peril. They basically gambled with his life.
Current affairs with the Cardigans are probably not an issue with regards to the Maquis. The last battle of the Dominion War was fought at Cardiga Prime less than two years earlier. When the Cardigans turned against the Dominion the commanding Founder ordered the genocide of the Cardigans, 800 million (give or take) of them were killed on-planet before the war ended. Their fleet was basically wiped out and the planet was in ruins. They wouldn't soon be in any shape to make demands of the Federation. Also, the Maquis had ceased to exist as an organization years before that when the Cardigans first allied with the Dominion. The Jem'Hadar were pretty thorough in wiping them out. There were probably more former Maquis on Voyager than in the entire Alpha Quadrant.
The idea of the holograms being stripped down and repurposed rather than just having their personality fixed makes no sense. I watched the TNG episode recently where Soong dies and had the same issue with the idea of him not simply fixing the flaw in Lore. I really hope you do TNG next.
That seems more reasonable. Presumably giving a robot a personality requires a mind bogglingly complex program, it's not something you can just "patch". Given the components to build another Data-type robot are essentially free (thanks to replicator technology) after the failure of Lore Dr Soong probably thought it would be easier to simply start again with Data (as presumably he had done with the Prototype, B4).
From what I remember, Soong says something about Data being the next step after the failure with Lore. That suggests to me that he couldn't just fix Lore without first testing if the fix would work. And the fix seems to have been to add some ethical subroutines early on in development. And while this seemed to work, it also seems to have led Data not to have emotions, meaning the idea wouldn't work on Lore since he already has emotions. We know from the Lore/Borg episode that emotions could override the ethical subroutines in Data. I note that Soong didn't destroy Lore, just took him apart. Even all of his memories and personality remained in tact. So that suggests to me that he did eventually plan on fixing him, but only after he was sure it would work. Lore is an unethical AI. Those are very dangerous. Much better to keep them disabled until you are sure you can fix them.
Regarding sending multiple messages at once line... Maybe the bandwidth limit is on both the space wibbly they're using *and* voyager's transmission array, or whatever they're using to send it. As discussed, the doctor's program is chonky and they want to avoid degradation, error checking and all that (maybe not enough as it turned out). None of that is remotely mentioned in universe, of course, but it's no "nine deck detour to something three decks away", to me at least. Always liked the message of the episode in the end. The "estranged family coming together" part, not so much the "friends lying to make it happen". Thanks once again for making these.
A fun episode with alot of good work by Picardo - some plot holes I sadly list under generic 'Voyager crappy science' issues but otherwise fun and heartfelt.
The mark 1 EMH being used as sewage workers never sat right with me either. It really didn’t make any sense. Why would they need such complex holograms for such rudimentary work? They’d probably have to downgrade their program to allow them to work in such large numbers. Even delete parts of the personality subroutines to prevent interpersonal conflicts. Also, did they have to have them all put on a micro sd and sent from their respective ships? Or were they all deleted and the original program copy pasted a hundred times on the waste ship? It makes no sodding sense!
robert-great actor, possibly should have stayed doing shakespere on the stage to have got the cudos he deserves, but we are so greatfull he took this role
Can I be honest - I kind of want to see you tackle Galactica after this. I always saw it (the new one, lets be specific) as an example of "Voyager done right" - the difficult, lonely journey through the stars, with danger at every turn and thankfully, no reset button. Obviously Galactica is far more, and far less, than Voyager - it's a different show with different strengths and weaknesses. But I'm still curious to hear your play by play.
While I loved the first season of BSG, I found it very quickly became EastEnders in space. I managed to get through all the seasons but it was becoming more evident the writers had no idea what they were doing (From what I recall, they even admitted it in interviews, they had no plan so they were making it up as they went. Like Lost)
about your points on how it would have made sense in a military organizations but not StarFleet. Remember that this was during the Dominion war, Starfleet was fully military, and considering that the episode was during the times of section 31 arc and starfleet entering politics too much it makes more sense. and about holograms not making sense being in waste bargages, I believe they are perfect for it: they cant die, they are immune to radiation, even more than robots because the matrix is part of the ship itself rather than on some hard drive inside a mechanical body, and if a robot is damaged it has to be repaired both in hardware and software, whereas a hologram is almost entierly software, and when a holografic projector breaks it could simply be replaced with one "found" in storage and if a matrix is getting damage it could just be backed up. About why StarFleet decided to just throw away the MK.1 and remove everything medicaly about it that makes it inherintly an EMH, I had watched a documentary recently about an Israeli arms factory, and I saw how they repurposed old M113 carriers (Zelda in Israel) dispite them working as intended, and the reason why is because they are pretty much coffin carriers. You may add technology and spesifications to it but at the end of the day its one RPG away from 8 airlifts to the hospital, but they are still useful enough to not be scraped entierly, so they took the guns and the seats and made them carry equipment. And I think thats what they did with the MK.1 too, the EMH was bad enough apperantly to be removed but not too bad that he should just be thrown into the trash, so they reprogrammed him and sent him away to be somewhat useful. And again, its times of war, you dont have the luxery to throw away resources And about his face still being on the holograms, when I watched the episode myself 2 years ago, when he talked about how starfleet and their wisdom decided to repourpose it, it made me feel like Zimmerman wanted to remove those faces as well, but they didnt allow it, my guess is that their wisdom was that "well nobody gonna see that hologram so why does it matter anyways?", probably a Vulcan admiral at it too.
Remember for the repurposing that Star Trek tech from that era followed 80s and 90s rules. Back then, people weren't used to upgrades. Windows 95 had a few patches but they were largely unnoticed. Windows 98 had a Second Edition which was basically just some patches and a few goodies. But people bought it and replaced the old one. The 90s were also filled with incompabilities switching from 16 to 32 and then settling for 64bit. There was DOS, Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, MacOS and some early forms of Linux. All of these were incompabile and switching from one to another meant throwing away most of your stuff. Also, they switched connections for external devices and networks a lot, too. Coming from that perspective, it makes sense that there could have been thousands of reasons why the Doctor couldn't just be upgraded. Having seamless upgrades like we have these days would have been sci-fi indeed. It's also totally possible that the new Doctors started from scratch with new types of databases and storage and upgrading these could possibly conflict with old data or override it. So while there's possibly a way to retrofit some advancements doing more might cause the personality and the abilities of the Doctor to be overwritten. Coming to think of this right now if Starfleet knew how to upgrade everything, there's no reason why the Enterprises Constitution class would not be still operating for centuries later on. After all, it has enough space for any technology and did everything more modern ships did, too. For the holograms working in hazardous areas, there's a simple reason: Starfleet didn't have much success in creating robots during the TNG/VOY era. Data was basically the only robot in Starfleet and many trials failed or caused disasters. Coming from this way of thinking, it's much more simple to use a long proven concept of a hologram that was serving in Starfleet with few incidents and apparently no danger for humans to work at similarly critical situations. They did also have more rules programmed in them like to always protect life. So they were more advanced than just regular holograms in many regards.
I'm still bothered by the non-reasons why you can only have one copy of the doctor in any location and not leave one on voyager for medical emergencies. Apparently you can copy and repurpose other copies of the doctor, which somehow are easy to duplicate, but not our version of the doctor.
My headcanon with the EMH Mark 1s is that it is some petty higher up who did it. Someone who already doesn't like Zimmerman because he himself is so hotheaded, and got mad at the EMHs. There are tons of Admirals and such who seem to treat Starfleet more like the military, and who tend to be far more petty and arrogant. I'm sure they had excuses for it. The EMH does seem to be a special hologram that took a long time to make by a genius specialist. It is different than other holograms, seemingly more adaptable. I can buy that they needed something similar for the few waste barges, becasue it's some special waste that actually requires more than we'd think. And that it was easier to add to the EMH (like the Doc does all the time) than to create a new hologram from scratch. It would really only be keeping the face that would be the petty part. Some lie about how it could make it unstable to change the appearance too much, and take too much time to test out. Or just not mentioning it until they were already out there, and then saying it would be too difficult to change now. Sure, it doesn't fit our enlightened Federation ideals. But there are just so many Admirals and Section 31 agents and stuff that I can buy that someone higher up would act this way.
Honestly there's not much I can say about this episode that you didn't. The Doctor is far and away my favourite character and this episode is Robert Picardo at his best.
I mean the whole you can’t clone holograms doesn’t make sense to begin with. If they can transmit his program they can make a copy. But ok it’s for plot reasons works for me. Else the doc would basically be indestructible..
The problem I always had with Voyager's presentation of holographic technology is that a hologram is just a 3D visual representation of something. Having a "holographic" character is like having a "lithographic" character. It's obvious they were trying to inject an android into the cast of characters, but they wanted to do something different than Data. So I get an AI version of a medical officer, but they should have just described him as an AI person or something. Also, why does transmitting his program and memory across the galaxy erase it from Voyager's system?
Buyers remorse is a real thing and Zimmerman is a dying old man past his prime. When he was first told that the EMH 1 could be shut down or re-purposed. He probably wad on board. Holograms are tech to him, they are not sentient beings. Now he's regretting it and feeling bad. This isn't a Zimmerman in his prime being insulted. This is an old man sad about his legacy.
I believe you’re misunderstanding the nature Zimmerman’s Holograms. They aren’t just programs that you can just slap in a new face and personality over a medical software. The Face and Personality is integrated into the firmware. This is why the EMH mark 2 had an total different face and personality. It’s easier to just build up an all new EMH then to rewrite the original to remove the “unpleasant” parts. It’s easier to just delete the software dictating it’s purpose and writing in something new. And a simple maintenance is something basic that doesn’t need either a high degree of experience or social skills. As for why they didn’t decommission them as obsolete, that actually gets answered later in the series. But basically, doing so would has greater moral implications. Also, regarding the Maquis, I’m sure they’ll get a trial and their sentences would reflect their time as the crew of Voyager. The trials were likely be just a formality at that point but it would be a political nightmare to just lock them up as soon as they returned. This isn’t the 16th century navy we’re talking about here.
Feel free to correct me if i am wrong ....but i always assumed that the reason they didnt give the job to robots had something to do with Data and Lore being the only sucessful attempt at doing that? I mean i suppose you could create simpler models, but im guessing their must be a reason why you wouldnt want to do that
Eh. TOS is full of androids that are less capable than Data/Lore. I think they could. My suspicion is the opposite: that the job is actually more complicated than it seems, and they'd need a Zimmerman-level AI to pull it off. And it was much easier to add stuff to the EMH Mark 1s than to make a new one from scratch. (Doc seems to add subroutines all the time.)
You keep bringing up "confidentiality agreements" across several episodes but we really don't know how rules around client confidentiality on a starship work. I don't think they work the same way as they do today largely because we don't see any evidence for it and a lot of it is based around fears of stigma, denial of medical care, various financial implications, etc.
The Dominion war should have started by now, the marquis have a better chance of getting leniency. Who cares if the cardigans are pissed about "former" marquis joining Voyager on the other side of the quadrant?
To be fair, the Dominion War should've _ended_ by now. I don't think it makes much sense for a Starfleet admiral to start worrying about a handful of Maquis when most have been killed by the Dominion-Cardassian alliance. Even if the survivors decided to restart hostilities, Cardassia will probably have been occupied and as such unlikely to be supplying weapons to their colonists in the DMZ, so the Maquis' only remaining beef might be that they're on the wrong side of the border, as you'd imagine that the Federation didn't subsume any of the territory won, or allow the Klingons or Romulans to do the same. Hayes is a lucky bugger, as he apparently survived his ship being destroyed at Sector 001 in First Contact.
Another problem with this episode is that Lewis Zimmerman's appearance and age do not match his previous appearance on Deep Space Nine. He's aged far too much. Even his personality is extreme in comparison to what it was on Deep Space Nine.
Who's Murdock? Do I have to go back and skim through some videos? I usually only listen to these videos while gaming so these random names have no context unless explained at the start.
i have to wonder at starfleets application of resources, sure the MGH M1 is a bit bristly but if ive got my star dates right the dominion wars still on going, if in its last days or recently ended. surely a legion of highly skilled medical prefionals that never get tired, don need to sleep nor eat and can work so long as they have a working holo emiter and power supply is ideal for the triage of a war time setting. and even if im wrong and the war is now over, there are likely still millions displaced or suffering form the long term effects of a war on the scale of the dominion war. even if starfleet dosnt wont mark 1 doc, surely they could be deployed to worlds ravaged by the war, hell give them to the cardasions as apart of the rebuilding efforts. its not like their in a postilion to be snobby and im sure plenty of civilian medical centers would be happy for the help as well as just being deployed to isolated or automated outposts and such with mini crew but no, starfleet has them cleaning out plasma fliters and doing manual labour, a job made for space rumba not one of the most advanced AI's ever built. do you want an ai uprising becouse this is how we get an ai uprising and beusides its just wasteful
Especially considering Starfleet knows Voyager's Doc is around, and the EMH can adapt if left to get used to people. It really doesn't make much sense to retire the program.
Today's Thought Experiment: We're making holographic pets! I want to hear your choices, what the benefits are, and how it kills you when the tech inevitably malfunctions.
A Moopsy
The benefits are very simple. It is adorable. And it would drink my bones when the safeties fuck up
My holographic cat poops yellow on me after holodeck safety protocols fail inevitably.
A pet that would normally pose some sort of physical risk for the owner is a good use-case.
Monkeys in their presumably extensive Holo-jungle environment could be cool
Kimono dragons, crocodiles, big cats a la Tiger King, all good holopets imho.
My holographic cat has glitchy density simulation and I die when it sits on me with the weight of a neutron star.
isomorphic fish. It doesn't kill you itself, but it alerts you to the fact that B'Elanna failed to shut off the holo emitters she claimed to when Leland Orser went crazy "cleaning" organics.
Troi seems to be far more competent in her Voyager appearances than she ever was in TNG.
Its because after season 6, she wasnt a sexual object no longer. So yeah, voyager appearances are smarty troi.
So, about 2 years ago, I started watching TNG with my then-girlfriend (her first watch, not mine). And I began examining all the various memes that get recirculated about each Trek show (I did the same when we first watched TOS). And I've gotta say, early TNG Troi (i.e., season 1 and 2, and even 3 to an extent) is actually *very* competent. Its just that by the time TNG starts to get better, the writing for Troi gets worse. Sadly, even after a certain other Captain tells her to put on a damned uniform, though post-pj Troi's writing is still better than in seasons 4, 5, and parts of 6.
TL;DR: Troi is good when TNG was bad, and is mediocre when TNG was good.
She started wearing a proper uniform and her IQ increased. (That was the working theory from fans at the time.)
Also the doc’s wangus took up a lot of giggetybites of memory
Anything with this much Picardo is always a win. Although, yes, Starfleet using EMHs as menial labour makes absolutely no sense. Its like installing 3 different versions of windows on 3 partitions just to open 3 browser tabs.
😁👍
Thanks for another great review 💚🌹💚you are appreciated
Janeway's response to the Admiral should have been 'There are no Maquis on Voyager, this crew is Starfleet'.
To this day, the actress that played Haley, Tamara Craig Thomas, i have found without a doubt over the whole star trek universe, and even including the into darkness, to be the most beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, radiant female character ever. So much so that this episode is in my top 5 of all voyager episodes just because of her, even though its a doc episode. That little acting job she does with her creator when she admonishes him for admonishing her in the same breath as he berates the doctor.... you can see her heartbreak.... even though she was just a hologram.
Computer, deactivate iguana.
I like to save these up and binge them.
I think this is probably in my top 3 episodes of Voyager, seeing the doctor trying to get approval from his dad.
Just like real life! :)
Wow, i just commented that its in my top 5 for other reasons. But yeah. Its a doc episode.
The ethics of Troi's ruse is worse than making the doc think he's dying, as to fool Zimmerman he must have been in some real actual peril. They basically gambled with his life.
Lewis Zimmerman had a brief relationship with Leeta on DS9 and look how it aged him (it’s like one season before he was on DS9…!)
I absolutely love The Doctor
Current affairs with the Cardigans are probably not an issue with regards to the Maquis. The last battle of the Dominion War was fought at Cardiga Prime less than two years earlier. When the Cardigans turned against the Dominion the commanding Founder ordered the genocide of the Cardigans, 800 million (give or take) of them were killed on-planet before the war ended. Their fleet was basically wiped out and the planet was in ruins. They wouldn't soon be in any shape to make demands of the Federation. Also, the Maquis had ceased to exist as an organization years before that when the Cardigans first allied with the Dominion. The Jem'Hadar were pretty thorough in wiping them out. There were probably more former Maquis on Voyager than in the entire Alpha Quadrant.
damn I didn't know star fleet went to war with Cardigans, how far has clothing come (just teasing was just super funny to imagine )
The idea of the holograms being stripped down and repurposed rather than just having their personality fixed makes no sense. I watched the TNG episode recently where Soong dies and had the same issue with the idea of him not simply fixing the flaw in Lore.
I really hope you do TNG next.
That seems more reasonable. Presumably giving a robot a personality requires a mind bogglingly complex program, it's not something you can just "patch". Given the components to build another Data-type robot are essentially free (thanks to replicator technology) after the failure of Lore Dr Soong probably thought it would be easier to simply start again with Data (as presumably he had done with the Prototype, B4).
From what I remember, Soong says something about Data being the next step after the failure with Lore. That suggests to me that he couldn't just fix Lore without first testing if the fix would work. And the fix seems to have been to add some ethical subroutines early on in development.
And while this seemed to work, it also seems to have led Data not to have emotions, meaning the idea wouldn't work on Lore since he already has emotions. We know from the Lore/Borg episode that emotions could override the ethical subroutines in Data.
I note that Soong didn't destroy Lore, just took him apart. Even all of his memories and personality remained in tact. So that suggests to me that he did eventually plan on fixing him, but only after he was sure it would work.
Lore is an unethical AI. Those are very dangerous. Much better to keep them disabled until you are sure you can fix them.
Regarding sending multiple messages at once line... Maybe the bandwidth limit is on both the space wibbly they're using *and* voyager's transmission array, or whatever they're using to send it. As discussed, the doctor's program is chonky and they want to avoid degradation, error checking and all that (maybe not enough as it turned out). None of that is remotely mentioned in universe, of course, but it's no "nine deck detour to something three decks away", to me at least.
Always liked the message of the episode in the end. The "estranged family coming together" part, not so much the "friends lying to make it happen". Thanks once again for making these.
A fun episode with alot of good work by Picardo - some plot holes I sadly list under generic 'Voyager crappy science' issues but otherwise fun and heartfelt.
The mark 1 EMH being used as sewage workers never sat right with me either. It really didn’t make any sense. Why would they need such complex holograms for such rudimentary work? They’d probably have to downgrade their program to allow them to work in such large numbers. Even delete parts of the personality subroutines to prevent interpersonal conflicts.
Also, did they have to have them all put on a micro sd and sent from their respective ships? Or were they all deleted and the original program copy pasted a hundred times on the waste ship?
It makes no sodding sense!
Can you imagine if the Doctor chose the name for himself, Zim
robert-great actor, possibly should have stayed doing shakespere on the stage to have got the cudos he deserves, but we are so greatfull he took this role
Why does the file photo of Zimmerman change between it being on the Doc’s laptop at 1:33 and on Janeway’s at 1:53?
The Maqui will be seen as empathetic martyrs the first casualties of the Dominion war
Can I be honest - I kind of want to see you tackle Galactica after this. I always saw it (the new one, lets be specific) as an example of "Voyager done right" - the difficult, lonely journey through the stars, with danger at every turn and thankfully, no reset button. Obviously Galactica is far more, and far less, than Voyager - it's a different show with different strengths and weaknesses. But I'm still curious to hear your play by play.
While I loved the first season of BSG, I found it very quickly became EastEnders in space. I managed to get through all the seasons but it was becoming more evident the writers had no idea what they were doing (From what I recall, they even admitted it in interviews, they had no plan so they were making it up as they went. Like Lost)
This has probably been brought up before, but what's stopping them from doing a copy/paste with the doc?
Starfleet leadership is pretty consistently shown to be incompetent at best and malicious at worst.
about your points on how it would have made sense in a military organizations but not StarFleet.
Remember that this was during the Dominion war, Starfleet was fully military, and considering that the episode was during the times of section 31 arc and starfleet entering politics too much it makes more sense.
and about holograms not making sense being in waste bargages, I believe they are perfect for it:
they cant die, they are immune to radiation, even more than robots because the matrix is part of the ship itself rather than on some hard drive inside a mechanical body, and if a robot is damaged it has to be repaired both in hardware and software, whereas a hologram is almost entierly software, and when a holografic projector breaks it could simply be replaced with one "found" in storage and if a matrix is getting damage it could just be backed up.
About why StarFleet decided to just throw away the MK.1 and remove everything medicaly about it that makes it inherintly an EMH, I had watched a documentary recently about an Israeli arms factory, and I saw how they repurposed old M113 carriers (Zelda in Israel) dispite them working as intended, and the reason why is because they are pretty much coffin carriers.
You may add technology and spesifications to it but at the end of the day its one RPG away from 8 airlifts to the hospital, but they are still useful enough to not be scraped entierly, so they took the guns and the seats and made them carry equipment.
And I think thats what they did with the MK.1 too, the EMH was bad enough apperantly to be removed but not too bad that he should just be thrown into the trash, so they reprogrammed him and sent him away to be somewhat useful. And again, its times of war, you dont have the luxery to throw away resources
And about his face still being on the holograms, when I watched the episode myself 2 years ago, when he talked about how starfleet and their wisdom decided to repourpose it, it made me feel like Zimmerman wanted to remove those faces as well, but they didnt allow it, my guess is that their wisdom was that "well nobody gonna see that hologram so why does it matter anyways?", probably a Vulcan admiral at it too.
Remember for the repurposing that Star Trek tech from that era followed 80s and 90s rules. Back then, people weren't used to upgrades. Windows 95 had a few patches but they were largely unnoticed. Windows 98 had a Second Edition which was basically just some patches and a few goodies. But people bought it and replaced the old one. The 90s were also filled with incompabilities switching from 16 to 32 and then settling for 64bit. There was DOS, Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, MacOS and some early forms of Linux. All of these were incompabile and switching from one to another meant throwing away most of your stuff. Also, they switched connections for external devices and networks a lot, too.
Coming from that perspective, it makes sense that there could have been thousands of reasons why the Doctor couldn't just be upgraded. Having seamless upgrades like we have these days would have been sci-fi indeed.
It's also totally possible that the new Doctors started from scratch with new types of databases and storage and upgrading these could possibly conflict with old data or override it. So while there's possibly a way to retrofit some advancements doing more might cause the personality and the abilities of the Doctor to be overwritten.
Coming to think of this right now if Starfleet knew how to upgrade everything, there's no reason why the Enterprises Constitution class would not be still operating for centuries later on. After all, it has enough space for any technology and did everything more modern ships did, too.
For the holograms working in hazardous areas, there's a simple reason: Starfleet didn't have much success in creating robots during the TNG/VOY era. Data was basically the only robot in Starfleet and many trials failed or caused disasters. Coming from this way of thinking, it's much more simple to use a long proven concept of a hologram that was serving in Starfleet with few incidents and apparently no danger for humans to work at similarly critical situations. They did also have more rules programmed in them like to always protect life. So they were more advanced than just regular holograms in many regards.
I'm still bothered by the non-reasons why you can only have one copy of the doctor in any location and not leave one on voyager for medical emergencies. Apparently you can copy and repurpose other copies of the doctor, which somehow are easy to duplicate, but not our version of the doctor.
My headcanon with the EMH Mark 1s is that it is some petty higher up who did it. Someone who already doesn't like Zimmerman because he himself is so hotheaded, and got mad at the EMHs. There are tons of Admirals and such who seem to treat Starfleet more like the military, and who tend to be far more petty and arrogant.
I'm sure they had excuses for it. The EMH does seem to be a special hologram that took a long time to make by a genius specialist. It is different than other holograms, seemingly more adaptable. I can buy that they needed something similar for the few waste barges, becasue it's some special waste that actually requires more than we'd think. And that it was easier to add to the EMH (like the Doc does all the time) than to create a new hologram from scratch.
It would really only be keeping the face that would be the petty part. Some lie about how it could make it unstable to change the appearance too much, and take too much time to test out. Or just not mentioning it until they were already out there, and then saying it would be too difficult to change now.
Sure, it doesn't fit our enlightened Federation ideals. But there are just so many Admirals and Section 31 agents and stuff that I can buy that someone higher up would act this way.
Honestly there's not much I can say about this episode that you didn't. The Doctor is far and away my favourite character and this episode is Robert Picardo at his best.
Cluster c*** 😂
I mean the whole you can’t clone holograms doesn’t make sense to begin with. If they can transmit his program they can make a copy. But ok it’s for plot reasons works for me. Else the doc would basically be indestructible..
The problem I always had with Voyager's presentation of holographic technology is that a hologram is just a 3D visual representation of something. Having a "holographic" character is like having a "lithographic" character. It's obvious they were trying to inject an android into the cast of characters, but they wanted to do something different than Data. So I get an AI version of a medical officer, but they should have just described him as an AI person or something. Also, why does transmitting his program and memory across the galaxy erase it from Voyager's system?
Buyers remorse is a real thing and Zimmerman is a dying old man past his prime.
When he was first told that the EMH 1 could be shut down or re-purposed. He probably wad on board. Holograms are tech to him, they are not sentient beings.
Now he's regretting it and feeling bad. This isn't a Zimmerman in his prime being insulted. This is an old man sad about his legacy.
I believe you’re misunderstanding the nature Zimmerman’s Holograms.
They aren’t just programs that you can just slap in a new face and personality over a medical software. The Face and Personality is integrated into the firmware.
This is why the EMH mark 2 had an total different face and personality.
It’s easier to just build up an all new EMH then to rewrite the original to remove the “unpleasant” parts.
It’s easier to just delete the software dictating it’s purpose and writing in something new. And a simple maintenance is something basic that doesn’t need either a high degree of experience or social skills.
As for why they didn’t decommission them as obsolete, that actually gets answered later in the series.
But basically, doing so would has greater moral implications.
Also, regarding the Maquis, I’m sure they’ll get a trial and their sentences would reflect their time as the crew of Voyager.
The trials were likely be just a formality at that point but it would be a political nightmare to just lock them up as soon as they returned.
This isn’t the 16th century navy we’re talking about here.
Except we've seen Doc change his face before. Heck, we saw him do it in this very episode, when he pretended to be the masseuse.
Feel free to correct me if i am wrong ....but i always assumed that the reason they didnt give the job to robots had something to do with Data and Lore being the only sucessful attempt at doing that?
I mean i suppose you could create simpler models, but im guessing their must be a reason why you wouldnt want to do that
Eh. TOS is full of androids that are less capable than Data/Lore. I think they could.
My suspicion is the opposite: that the job is actually more complicated than it seems, and they'd need a Zimmerman-level AI to pull it off. And it was much easier to add stuff to the EMH Mark 1s than to make a new one from scratch. (Doc seems to add subroutines all the time.)
You keep bringing up "confidentiality agreements" across several episodes but we really don't know how rules around client confidentiality on a starship work. I don't think they work the same way as they do today largely because we don't see any evidence for it and a lot of it is based around fears of stigma, denial of medical care, various financial implications, etc.
The Dominion war should have started by now, the marquis have a better chance of getting leniency. Who cares if the cardigans are pissed about "former" marquis joining Voyager on the other side of the quadrant?
To be fair, the Dominion War should've _ended_ by now. I don't think it makes much sense for a Starfleet admiral to start worrying about a handful of Maquis when most have been killed by the Dominion-Cardassian alliance. Even if the survivors decided to restart hostilities, Cardassia will probably have been occupied and as such unlikely to be supplying weapons to their colonists in the DMZ, so the Maquis' only remaining beef might be that they're on the wrong side of the border, as you'd imagine that the Federation didn't subsume any of the territory won, or allow the Klingons or Romulans to do the same.
Hayes is a lucky bugger, as he apparently survived his ship being destroyed at Sector 001 in First Contact.
This is after the Dominion War. The war should have ended roughly a year or so before this episode.
Another problem with this episode is that Lewis Zimmerman's appearance and age do not match his previous appearance on Deep Space Nine. He's aged far too much. Even his personality is extreme in comparison to what it was on Deep Space Nine.
Yeah, on the other hand, he didn't know they'd change the guy's character 7 years or whatever later... :) We have to keep our head canons straight.
He is on death's door with illness. That will make anyone look older.
Who's Murdock? Do I have to go back and skim through some videos?
I usually only listen to these videos while gaming so these random names have no context unless explained at the start.
Reginald Barclay from TNG and previous Voyager episodes. The actor, who is a muppet, played Murdock on A-Team.
@@AngerAndScience I could totally picturing him trolling media like Statler and Waldorf
i have to wonder at starfleets application of resources, sure the MGH M1 is a bit bristly but if ive got my star dates right the dominion wars still on going, if in its last days or recently ended. surely a legion of highly skilled medical prefionals that never get tired, don need to sleep nor eat and can work so long as they have a working holo emiter and power supply is ideal for the triage of a war time setting. and even if im wrong and the war is now over, there are likely still millions displaced or suffering form the long term effects of a war on the scale of the dominion war.
even if starfleet dosnt wont mark 1 doc, surely they could be deployed to worlds ravaged by the war, hell give them to the cardasions as apart of the rebuilding efforts. its not like their in a postilion to be snobby and im sure plenty of civilian medical centers would be happy for the help as well as just being deployed to isolated or automated outposts and such with mini crew
but no, starfleet has them cleaning out plasma fliters and doing manual labour, a job made for space rumba not one of the most advanced AI's ever built. do you want an ai uprising becouse this is how we get an ai uprising and beusides its just wasteful
Especially considering Starfleet knows Voyager's Doc is around, and the EMH can adapt if left to get used to people. It really doesn't make much sense to retire the program.
Why is it that you have such difficulty pronouncing Crapassian?