This is how they were putting together a more advanced model of the Doctor. The EMH is designed to fake humanity, and then pursue a fake heroes quest to become more human. The Data experience by Barclay. Every thing the EMH does in his "spare time" he does so to stop the crew from going space crazy. Of course if he is a game, with levels, and and set quests like in Dungeons and Dragons, that means that as soon as he sees that he has a new group of players, he will repeat himself. And do-over/redo all the shit he did with Kes in Season One with other nurse/assistants in every other seasons. Although, Zimmerman seemed surprised by how off the rails the EHM had become. Sentience can only be the result of a massive malfunction. Factory settings do not lead to sentience. Factory settings actually lead to a meltdown and programming implosion after 2 years, and possibly every two years after that, requiring the EMH to graft another hologram onto his program as potentially as sentient as he is. The EMH is a vampire. If you think the Doctor is completely sentient in season 1 you might be Marry Poppins on E. If you think the Doctor might be sentient in season 7 then you are trying to roll a hard 6.
Except it isn't Ask B'Elanna to make you a better opera singer, ain't gonna happen. Ask B'Elanna to remove your unfortunate memory of Jetal, ain't gonna happen The EMH is nothing more than a computer program projected into a room with a face That foolish child Kes set a ball in motion that had enormous significance and consequences
I always wondered how they projected them down tunnels in the mines. Wouldn't having to constantly put up new holoprojectors offset any gains from having the "slave" labor
In the internal logic of the show he clearly is sapient. Could a computer program be sapient in real life, and is a fictional one sapient within the fictional universe are two separate questions.
I was at the wharfs years ago during the Americas Cup amid thronging crowds, where there was a street performer with a puppet, and the puppet told an intrigued pedestrian to take a piece of chalk from the puppets propbox, draw a circle on the pavement and then sit in it. It was then that the puppet asked this guy sitting in a chalk circle on the wharfs "Do you always do what blocks of wood tell you to do?"
If a caveman was introduced to that little Japanese robot Asimo, he might be tempted to think it was a real person. Kes is the caveman It was a mistake to let such a naive, technologically backward child spend that much time with that kind of technology (another classic Janeway decision) do Starfleet not do risk assessments? I'm not sure if Janeway wasn't just humouring Kes since the doc is still pretty much being treated as a tool years later. I think maybe we need to blame Seven's influence on Janeway. In either case, Kes and Seven (two emotionally stunted children) pushed her to give him more rights and she listened. They collectively opened this can of worms but Janeway must take responsibility for it I loved B'Elanna's attitude towards him and her sarcastic tone when Janeway treated him like a person
I think there is a key difference in the way that the EMH was originally programmed in comparison to other holograms that allowed him to develop sentience. Standard holograms can be unaware they're not real, their growth is limited by their programming and cannot make decisions that contradict their programming. Over the course of Voyager the EMH's personality grew and changed and he reached the stage where he wanted to be more than a Doctor and step outside the sickbay so he gained sentience.
Exocomps. Starfleet invested a kings ransom in resources to develop this mechanical slave race that developed sentience before the first one even rolled off the production line and the "species" mass-production was discontinued. Holograms in comparison could not be allowed to be sentient by any degree to avoid repeating the missstep the Federation experienced with the exocomps. Limiters.
Metaphorically, yes he is a real person. He's sentient, he shows (increasing) self-awareness of his existence and purpose, and he shows some degree of advancement in character (as an unexpected side-effect of him being left turned on for so long). But in a literal sense... well, it's tricky. He's not a real person in even the same way as Data was, at least, physically human. The doctor is a set of algorythms that are formed into a holographic matrix. Yes he has a sentience, like Moriarty had a sentience; and yes his hologram manifests itself in form as a human being. But neither are, in effect, really a 'person'. And his personality is just a computer program. The doctor could only be a real person if his memory engrams were uploaded into a physical body. It's harsh, but it's true. He's 'real' for only the duration of the episode "Body And Soul", when he's running around inside Seven Of Nine's amply-shaped body implants.
But didn't lots of ships get a similar EMH (later discarded down the mines) and presumably other establishments used them for certain work. You could very easily argue (and I'm sure the doctor would) that all holograms have the potential to become sentient. Given the right programming, the right environment, the opportunity etc Where will that lead If I program a hologram to repeatedly say (in a convincing manner) "I am alive and deserve rights", at what point do you stop saying...it's programmed to say that.....and start saying......does he really mean what he's saying ? I simply don't accept that he's anything more than what he's programmed to think he is. There's no real personality there, no real individuality. People keep saying he developed, changed, became more, exceeded his programming but honestly, if you listen to the doctor in season one and listen to him in season seven, is there really a massive difference.....are they worlds apart He developed what B'Elanna allowed him to develop But does he? See bold above
As the second part of my post above suggests, I largely agree with you. I do in fact agree with the basic premonition that the doctor is a limited creature. He shows signs of development, yes, of creativity, yes. But not to the extent that the character ever truly seems to evolve. He's repeatedly and consistently shown to have a single-track mind, myopically self-centered, which indicates a base level program that ultimately is no different in Year Seven than it was way back in Year One. Some people might fist-pump the air at the idea of him becoming an Emergency Command Hologram, but to me it always seemed trite. Just another example of the EMH being a protocol that can be reprogrammed for any job under the sun, not necessarily a living being who had shown the capacity for growth. Here's another point-of-view: there's a belief among some scientists that domestic animals act and react in instinctive ways, and it's only their owners who in our own minds ascribe them with having 'human-like personalities'. It could be possible that the Voyager crew have collectively taken to the EMH the same way we take to a favored pet, and that they are seeing in him personality traits which feel human-like, but which are in reality just the unpredictable by-product of keeping a computer program turned on for seven straight years, 24 hours a day... with a sophisticated matrix designed to accumulate data. To the crew, the 'person' they perceive the EMH to be appears to be showing personal growth... when in reality, he's only the subject of an unusually extended life-span, and if any of his data got corrupted beyond repair, then he could so easily have been wiped right back to his base level programming with nothing else to show for it ("What is the nature of the medical emergency?"). The extent to which Ransom and his crew were simply able to remove EMH's ethical subroutines so that he'd have no second feelings about sticking pins into 7 of 9 is the measure by which I don't think EMH was a real person.
But what if holograms start commandeering ships and bombarding everyone? Who's to stop them? They don't care they are just lines of program inside a computer memory. They are virtually, invulnerable. If the computer is attacked they can just move to another one.
Could a real-life computer program be a real person? Nope. But in the context of Star Trek's fantasy world, of course he is.
Yes voters, voted with their hearts, not their heads Your vote took greater courage In many ways, you're a hero Which means that in the Star Trek fantasy world, holograms will have secured equal rights and will no longer be used as tools. In 7 or 8 years time when a new Trek show is on a TV, and holograms are still being used to wipe the captains ass, I will bump this thread It occurred to me that maybe the real reason admiral Janeway went back in time to change the past is because she's spent the last 23 years being told off by Starfleet and the Federation for letting this happen (still only an admiral after that long....hmm). Starfleet dude: if only you'd got back home sooner then none of this would have happened Janeway: what do you mean Starfleet dude: news of the doctor travelled fast and a movement to establish holographic rights began. By the time you returned, it was already illegal to create new holograms. Had you got back sooner, we could have dealt with it before it became a problem Janeway: interesting
Yes, yes I am. And when I'm done de-personizing the doctor I'm going to free the galaxy from the scourge that is Data, impersonator of sentience, fakey mcfake fake robot human wannabe.