The Doctor begins his service on the
USS Voyager as the standard Emergency Medical
Hologram (EMH) built into almost every newer
Starfleet ship's
sickbay. The EMH is to be used should the ship's doctor be incapacitated or require emergency assistance. In the series' first episode,
Voyagers chief medical officer, along with his nurse, are killed, necessitating extended use of the EMH. The EMH eventually develops his own personality, although he generally maintains his acerbic wit and irritating "version one" bedside manner. As he was originally intended as a temporary medical backup system, not as a
digital life form,
Voyagers journey strains his programming to some limits. He gives himself a name during episode S1E12 Heroes and Demons, "Schweitzer". (This name did not carry throughout the entire series.) The Doctor becomes the chief medical officer, with
Kes and
Tom Paris at various times acting as nurses. Attempting to develop a realistic personality, the Doctor not only manufactures a holographic family ("
Real Life"), he also has an increasing number of other "human" experiences. This results in the Doctor's program evolving to become more lifelike, with emotions and ambitions. He develops meaningful and complex
relationships with many members of the ship's crew. The Doctor also develops talents as a
playwright, artist, and photographer, and even becomes a
connoisseur of
opera. He has multiple other experiences with "family", including having a son with a "roommate" while trapped on a planet for three years. During the episode "
Blink of an Eye", he asks an associate to inquire further about his progeny. A recurring theme are the ethical aspects of an artificial, yet apparently sentient, being. In the episode "
Latent Image", treating two patients with an equal chance of survival, with only enough time to treat one, The Doctor chooses Harry Kim, a friend. The other patient, Ensign Jetal, dies. The Doctor is overwhelmed with guilt, believing that his friendship influenced his choice. When the stress nearly leads to his program breaking down, Captain Janeway has his memories of these events deleted. When The Doctor later discovers clues as to what had happened, Captain Janeway is convinced by him and others that he has a right to learn to come to grips with the guilt in the manner of any other sentient being rather than be treated merely as a defective piece of equipment. The Doctor submits a holonovel titled
Photons Be Free to a publisher on Earth, detailing the manner in which holograms are sometimes treated by Starfleet. His characters are closely based on
Voyagers crew, but exaggerated to appear more intense and vicious, creating fears among the crew their reputations would be ruined.
Tom Paris convinces The Doctor to make adjustments without sacrificing his theme. The Doctor lacks legal rights as
Federation law does not classify him as a "sentient being". Thus he is forbidden to make any subsequent changes to the holonovel.
Captain Janeway's efforts result in The Doctor being accorded the status of "artist", although not a "person". This permits him to rewrite the novel. Four months later, it is known throughout the
Alpha Quadrant as a very thought-provoking piece of work. Several other EMHs, now relegated to mining duty, experience the novel. The Doctor's standard greeting is "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" when activated, though later modified to say whatever he chooses. In "
Jetrel", it is revealed that he was given the ability to activate and deactivate himself. The Doctor later acquires a mobile holographic emitter from the 29th century ("
Future's End"). Although he has previously been confined to
Sickbay or the
Holodeck, the mobile emitter allows The Doctor to move about freely, making him ideal for missions where the environment would be harmful or otherwise fatal to the crew. In one notable incident, when an away team is trapped on a radioactive planet, The Doctor is able to infiltrate the people and almost single-handedly rescue the team because, as he points out, being a hologram renders him immune to the radiation, stating that "being a hologram does have its advantages." The Doctor continues his use of the emitter in
Star Trek: Prodigy and
Starfleet Academy. In a 2020 interview, Picardo recalled his initial reticence to the concept of a mobile emitter: The Doctor's programming evolves from his first romance, Dr. Denara Pel, to the point where he falls in love with
Seven of Nine, though she is unable to reciprocate. In an alternate future episode, "
Endgame", The Doctor finally adopts a name (see below) and marries a human female named Lana. In the final episode of
Star Trek: Voyager, a future version of Janeway also informs him of his later invention of a device known as a "synaptic transceiver", something that fascinates The Doctor; he is cut off by the "present" Janeway, who is abiding by the Temporal Prime Directive, before he can learn more. In
Star Trek: Prodigy, the Doctor appears in season 2 as a mentor to the young crew of the
Protostar as well as the chief medical officer of the USS
Voyager-A and an accomplished holo-novelist. The Doctor is also shown on occasion manning a bridge station even without becoming the Emergency Command Hologram. At the end of the series, the Doctor saves a copy of Hologram Janeway's program and helps to install her on the new USS
Prodigy, upgraded to the ship's Emergency Command Hologram. He also continues his work as the
Voyager-A's chief medical officer under Chakotay. In
Starfleet Academy, set hundreds of years later, the Doctor teaches at the academy and is the chief medical officer of the USS
Athena. It's mentioned at one point that in the nearly thousand years that have passed, the Doctor has continued his service aboard various Starfleet vessels. In the episode, "The Life of the Stars", a student from a holographic race named SAM is experiencing glitching that threatens her life, so the Doctor and Academy director Ake take her to her homeworld Kasq in hopes that SAM's Makers can save her, but she is damaged beyond their ability to repair. The Doctor reveals that SAM reminds him of his daughter Belle and the Doctor has been trying to avoid making any more attachments to deal with the emotional pain of his infinite lifespan and the numerous losses that it carries. The Doctor and Ake realize that because the Makers programmed SAM without a childhood, she lacked the resilience that comes with it and was overloaded by her trauma. SAM is rebuilt with the Doctor spending seventeen years on Kasq -- equal to two weeks on Earth -- raising her as his daughter before they return to Starfleet. In the season finale, the Doctor is revealed to have begun hiding his mobile emitter rather than wearing it out in the open and projects a hologram of the
Athena being destroyed. However, the effort causes the Doctor to glitch and begin speaking in gibberish. SAM and her friends realize that the Doctor is trying to tell them how to stabilize the Omega-47 molecule and manage to decipher what he's saying. The Doctor is fully repaired after the crisis ends.
Emergency Command Hologram The "Emergency Command Hologram", aka "ECH", is first coined by The Doctor in the episode "
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy", in which he creates a program which allows him to daydream, such as adding routines which allow him to take command of
Voyager – including a command uniform – in the event of the command crew being incapacitated. At the end of the episode,
Captain Janeway promises to consider the idea. In the following season episode "
Workforce", the idea is realized when the crew is forced to abandon ship, and The Doctor takes over command functions. In
Star Trek: Prodigy, the Doctor helps to turn Hologram Janeway into an Emergency Command Hologram which he calls "something of a rare breed." In
Star Trek: Prodigy and
Starfleet Academy, the Doctor is shown to be able to man a bridge station even without becoming the ECH. While this is mainly on the
Voyager-A's classified mission that only Janeway's most trusted officers know about in
Prodigy, he also does so once during battle. In
Starfleet Academy, the Doctor takes the tactical station when he, Nahla Ake and Jett Reno are the ship's only crewmembers.
Backup copies The Doctor's program requires a custom-built photonic processor, and Starfleet outfitted
Voyager with only two. This hardware itself also cannot be replicated, hence the Doctor cannot be easily backed up, restored, or copied.
Voyager's computers cannot help run his photonic program, and cannot contain a usable backup of its image. The Doctor's entire program uses 50 million gigaquads ("
Lifesigns" and "
The Swarm" mention these limitations). The episode "
Living Witness" depicts a future Delta Quadrant civilization building a museum around
Voyager artifacts, including a backup EMH photonic processor, who blame
Voyager for a brutal war with another culture. The civilization eventually activate the backup EMH, who is able to redeem
Voyager for their alleged crimes.
Name A recurring theme in the Doctor's life is his lack of a proper name. Starfleet did not assign a name to him, and initially, the Doctor claims that he does not want one, until the episode "
Eye of the Needle", when he asks Kes to give him a name. He later adopts such names as "Schweitzer" (after
Albert Schweitzer); "Shmullus" (in "
Lifesigns" by
Vidiian patient Dr. Denara Pel); "Van Gogh"; "Kenneth"; "Jones"; and several others. His friends suggest the famous historical Earth doctors "
Galen" and "
Spock". The captioned dialog of early episodes, and early promotional material for the series premiere, refer to him as "Dr. Zimmerman", after his creator, Lewis Zimmerman. The Doctor is ultimately referred to as simply "The Doctor" and addressed as "Doctor" or "Doc", which he answers to without concern, and the issue of the Doctor's name virtually disappears over the course of the series. However, in the
series finale, in an alternate future timeline the Doctor has finally chosen the name "Joe" after his new wife's grandfather (and Picardo's
own father). Tom Paris remarks about this choice: "it took you
33 years to come up with '
Joe?". In
Star Trek: Prodigy and
Starfleet Academy, the latter of which takes place nearly a thousand years later, he continues to simply go by the Doctor. ==Characteristics==