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***SPECIAL NOTE: Captain's Entry by Kathryn Janeway
While our "doctor" is indeed an Emergency Medical Hologram pressed into
service, his ongoing evolution due to his adaptive programming compels
me to open this file entry to catalog his numerous contributions to our
crew.
File Update: Delta Quadrant Addendum
Report by Cmdr. Chakotay, First Officer, U.S.S. Voyager
Our ship's Doctor is a holographic figure — an emergency medical program
devised by Starfleet programmers. When the ship's doctor and entire
medical staff were killed in the "Caretaker's" displacement wave, the
Doctor by necessity became the resident physician aboard the U.S.S.
Voyager, assisted by first Paris and then Kes, a quick study in medical
training.
The program's first statement upon activation is usually "Please state
the nature of the medical emergency;" the automatic command was altered
to allow his own creativity, but the Doctor preferred the known opening
to creating his own more clever and personable lines. Initiation is
automatic upon red alert status; the program is usually set for high
magnetic cohesion, but it can be lessened to a mere image. For
security's sake in a crisis it carries its own power grid separate from
the nominal ship's Holodeck system. His wide array of programming has
allowed him to keep Neelix alive with holographic lungs, save the
Vidiian hematologist Danara Pel via a temporary holographic body, and
even to alter DNA so as to remerge Torres' human and Klingon halves,
reform Paris and Janeway from their retro-evolution as amphibians, and
ensure the safety of Wildman's human-Ktarian baby at birth.
The AK-1 program indeed makes the Doctor is a genius when it comes to
medicine, but his bedside manner leaves something to be desired —
although he has already come far since he was first the joke and then
the bane of the U.S.S. Voyager crew. In fact, it's harder to tell what's
evolved more: the Doctor's own self-respect, or the respect he's given
by his colleagues — with thanks on both counts largely due to his
surprise assistant, Kes — though he still rubs Torres the wrong way and
usually can't stand Neelix. Prodded by her and the simple needs of their
predicament, Janeway has seen to it that not only is the Doctor accorded
more briefings and updates, but he can now turn himself off — a small
matter until seen in the light of independence.
Thanks to various crises, as when Harry's Holodeck program began
"devouring" the crew, the Doctor has even ventured from his
familiar and all-but-mastered medical world to real-life adventures and
even fear and heartbreak outside Sickbay. Also at Kes' urging he has
considered a host of names but most recently has tried "Schmullus," the
uncle of Vidiian hematologist Dr. Danara Pel, whom he saved and actually
fell in love with, leaning on Paris and Kes for romantic advice. The
experience even prompted the Doctor to open his own personal log on SD
49504.3, to learn to dance, and to borrow Paris' holo-program for
"parking" in an archaic '57 Chevy ground vehicle on Mars.
Due to the memory circuit degradation of extremely close kinoplasmic
radiation, an EMH malfunction occurred ca. SD 48892.1, caused by a
feedback loop between the Holodeck computer and the doctor's program,
which was running a holo-novel at the time to "relax" at the captain's
suggestion. No one was affected but the program itself, which was being
convinced that it was its human lead programmer, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman,
amid a holographic study simulation of a battle-damaged ship and crew.
Apart from the clinical and statistical notes on parenting, he felt
unqualified to help Kes with her decision on motherhood, but she still
picked him as an absent parental figure to perform the rolisisin
pre-mating ritual. He in turn took her advice to make himself sick,
literally, to better empathize with patients; his resulting holo-version
of Levodian flu lasted a day longer than he'd intended thanks to Kes,
and I think he "learned" a helpful lesson in patience.
File Update: SD 50500
Report by Capt. K. Janeway
I never would have believed it, but our "Doctor" now has more memory
and, thanks to the 29th century, is confined to Sickbay no more. It is
taking some getting used to, but he has only rarely been troubled by
glitches in the self-powered armband mobile emitter he wears after the
time-stealing technocrat Starling "donated" it to us.
Despite the scare he gave us when his memory overloaded and degraded, I
see no harm in continuing to allow and encourage his exploration of
humanity — as long as it does not endanger the crew's security and
B'Elanna assures me we have the technical support to allow it. I admit, I
was skeptical when we took the chance of initializing his memory and
then used the diagnostic program to add more, but I would hope — La
Boheme divas aside — that these experiences to come will have a
mellowing effect on his personality subroutine, which can only aide the
crew on our very long journey.
We could not get along without him, and I owe him my life more than once
— such as when he used his daring mix of diplomacy and tactics to retrieve the
Vidiians' antidote to the virus which quarantined Chakotay and myself on
a world to be left behind. His idea to emit holographic support ships
proved promising, but I must add that I especially commend his defense
of the ship with Crewman Suder against the Kazon-Nistrim, and against
the macrocosms, which we subdued together.
And while I opposed his choice, I will always remember and respect his
citing of the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm" when I made the difficult
decision to deintegrate the entity Tuvix into its original patterns for
Tuvok and Neelix.
The sum total of all these actions increasingly only leads me to examine
our preconceived notions of life and learning.
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