Yeah, I can see why you don't get it.
That example isn't even close to what the controversy in the ep. was about.
The EMH wouldn't be on trial for rape crime Dr. Zimmerman commited because that wouldn't be important information to download into a medical program. The EMH only contains his personality & medical text. It doesn't contain his memories or his aspirations.
The medical info contained in the Crell Mosset hologram was achieved thru the murder of innocent people. All his rescearch and the cures he obtained from them was done immorally. It doesn't matter if it's the real Crell Mosset or not, his rescearch was gained through mass genocide. The Crell Mosset hologram is an embodiment of that medical rescearch.
Sorry... but you're the one who doesn't get it.
I have no doubt that the writers intended the Moset hologram to be "the embodiment of that medical research". But this simply doesn't make any sense. First off, for him to be such an embodiment, he would have to be programmed by Crell Moset, or programmed on the basis of the info about Crell Moset's experiments. Let's remind ourselves again: the Moset hologram was programmed
by the Doctor, based on the data from the
Starfleet database about Moset, which didn't contain any info about his experiments. The Doctor must have liked what he saw there, or else he wouldn't have chosen to program his assistant on the basis of those data. So, if the Doctor disliked anything that the Moset hologram said, he only had himself to blame. The hologram was his creation.
Furthermore, the hologram can be treated as embodiment of the data that the Doctor might decide to delete, rather than a sentient being whose deletion would constitute murder, only if we presume that the Moset hologram was non-sentient. But if he was non-sentient, his arguments with the Doctor don't make sense, unless the Doctor knew about Moset's (un)ethical views and attitudes from the start, and programmed the hologram to mimic them. Which, of course, doesn't make any sense.
Instead, everyone in the episode treats the Moset hologram as if he was Moset himself, and the episode makes it seem like the Moset hologram somehow magically obtained Moset's personality and beliefs - as if it is Moset's spirit come to life, or something! Which, again, makes no sense at all.
It does to those who have been victims of those injustices and their decendants.
Try walking through a Black neighborhood holding a photo of Little Black Sambo. It isn't going to matter if your actually racist or not. If people in the community see you, their going to treat you as a hostile. Doesn't matter if it was the real Crell or not, it looked like him and that was enough.
... It looked like him because it was programmed that way by the Doctor. It could have looked like Tom Paris, Leonard McCoy, Spock, Louis Pasteur or B'Elanna Torres, if the Doctor had chosen that. He could have changed the hologram's appearance any moment he wished.
And to B'Elanna, it didn't matter that it looked like Crell Moset specifically - she didn't even know what Moset looked like, or who he was, and she never commented that she disliked that it/he looked like Moset. She hated that the hologram looked
Cardassian. (Then later, after a Bajoran crewmember reveals the truth about Moset's experiments, B'Elanna says: "So I was right". Eh, you were right about
what exactly, B'Elanna? You never said that Moset was evil, you didn't even care who the hologram looked like... You were right about what? That all Cardassians are evil? - And this is just one of the many serious problems with that episode. But nevermind, I'll leave this for another thread - let's focus on the issue of the inconsistencies of the presentation of holograms on VOY.)
Which could have been fixed easily, anyway: "Computer, change parameters: Apperance: Human"
Even though the hologram was programmed by the Doc., Crell was still using questionably ethical tactics.
His solution was kill or torture the creature to save Be'Lanna.
A creature who they both knew did intentionally mean her harm, it was only doing what it's instincts tell it to do. Then tried to justify his inhuman actions.
Which, as I said, didn't make sense, if the hologram was just an ordinary non-sentient hologram, why would he do anything that the Doctor didn't program him to do?
Even if he was sentient (which is very problematic as it means that the Doctor committed a murder), it's still unclear how did he develop that personality and those views? As I've pointed out, the episode ignores all those obvious questions and instead expects us to accept the hologram as a representation of Moset himself. None of it makes sense.
If they wanted to have Moset in the episode, they should have found a way to involve the real Moset....flashback, time travel, I don't care, but something that makes some sense... or maybe they just shouldn't have involved him at all.
Are the Voyager crew hypocritical in using Borg technology, sure but so are we as a people.
The topic of using cures created by these Nazi experiments have been a controversey in the medical community for decades, yet we still use those cures & research to add billions world wide everyday.
Showing that sometimes something good can come from evil.
If they only had acknowledged that fact in the episode itself, it would have made all the difference.
Imagine a dialogue roughly to this effect:
A: If we use the results of Moset's research, we will be justifying his methods. We must make it clear that it is not acceptable to torture and kill people in the name of science. We owe it to his victims.
B: But we cannot do anything for his victims now. However, this cure could help many people. Maybe the victims would be happier to know that something good has come out of their suffering.
A: But where does it end? What if future physicians and scientists decide that their medical research is important enough to sacrifice a few 'unimportant' people?
B: You have a point, but we are, in fact, already using results obtained through inhumane means: just look at the older history of Earth medicine; today we would consider those experiments deeply unethical and inhumane.
A: That was in the past. We have to draw the line somewhere. We must send the message that this is not acceptable anymore.
C: But...what about the Borg technology? Maybe we shouldn't be using it? Are we justifying what the Borg did?
(
C exchanges a glance with Seven)
etc.
There, the episode itself would have acknowledged all the issues and different viewpoints, asked some difficult questions, call the characters on their hypocrisy, and all in all, it would have been a better, more interesting and more honest episode.
