And if the EMH back-up module being lost happen in the timeline where Voyager had to travel all the way to Earth without the benefit of the Borg conduit, there would heve been plenty of time to devise a back-up module and subsequently lose it.
The timeline diverged only when the crew used Admiral Janeway's help to get home, so the development and theft/loss of The Doctor's back-up module would've still happened within the 'timeline' of the series because the crew's actions in getting home didn't affect things they'd already done BEFORE making it home, and since the three episodes I mentioned reference The Doctor not having a back-up module, its creation and theft/loss would had to have happened after MiaB and before Blink of an Eye, which would put in in the past with regards to the crew getting home.
All the millions of greatest minds in the Federation devoting the totality of their drive to mess up the boundaries of science said "You can't copy an EMH, and you can't back up an EMH." That's weak? That's really weak. How about this. Zimmerman created the EMH as uncopiable, unmassproducable so that he could control the purity and dissemination of his program. Otherwise every asshole who thinks they found a back door into the EMH, can turn him into a disposable amoral infinite workforce. Worse yet, if Zimmerman feared his AI Pinocchioing (Which he clearly didn't.), he would make procreation difficult to avoid any bloody race wars of independence, just like those aliens did in Prototype, and those other Aliens in body and soul didn't.
1 in 20 habitable planets sporting a space age civilization seems high. In earth's 4 billion years, how much % did it have a space aged civilization? 0.000001375%? And that's just rockets. 0% for what the Federation would even bother contacting. Usually such things are not linear but exponential. Faster ships. Better sensors. Etc. If it's 8% in 300 years, one can perhaps deduce a double the area added to the original in 300 more. So: 300 16 = 24% of galaxy 600 32 = 66% 900 64 = 130% Especially with Voyager's logs being able to point to where these people are... It's more likely that the Federation either collapsed, raised it's bar for first contact (not just warp, but transwarp, etc), or lost interest in contacting Milky Way humanoids (they seem all the same after a while, no?) and are going to new galaxies for knowledge rather than species that can teach them little new.
The equinox episodes would seem to have directly counteract this when the doctor was sadistic. Plus the doc and belanna were regularly messing and adding subroutines on a variety of occasions. The whole thing runs into the same transporter original destroyed/copy made problem which culminated with the William/Tom Riker episode in which the writers brushed up with but didn't directly address the uncomfortable truth that we as individuals aren't that unique or special and can be copied. Or in case of the doctor, there can be as many copies as someone is willing to put in the energy and resources running the guy. That the writers allow a "backup" but not copies was a bit of because the two concepts are the same thing. It's like saying "I want to go on a diet so I can't eat french fries, but I'll eat the fried potatoe sticks at McD instead."
As I said, I'm going by the evident abundance of spacegoing civilizations in Trek, not by what's logical in the real world. Besides, the number of spacegoing civilizations in the galaxy would presumably increase over time, as more planets form with the conditions to support intelligent life, more intelligent species evolve and develop technology, more planets are colonized by spacegoing races, more planets get spacegoing technology sold or traded to them by species that don't have a Prime Directive, etc. So I'm speaking of the current abundance, not the average abundance over the entire history of the galaxy.
Is it possible that the Preservers seeded the galaxy to produce new clusters of civilizations staggeredly every couple million years, so that despite life dying out, there's always more life that'll spring forward eventually?
Well, yeah, all I'm saying is that Trek doesn't need 100M contactable races in the galaxy to support its canon. If we go by the Borg numbering scheme (and assume it's sequential), the highest number I recall is 10026. Let's assume they mapped out their home quadrant pretty well (they knew the Kazon, just didn't consider them worth assimilating - those coral reef head keep breaking the glass in the regeneration chambers or some such), ignore the outer dimension creatures like 8742, and remember that they started on the alpha quadrant. Assuming that the whole galaxy is similiarly weighted in species, just multiplying by 3-4 quadrants seems to bring that number in the 30-40k spacefaring species range. With universes able to live and die, and galaxies as well, I would see it as a Bellcurve, probably dependent on dilithium availabilty or something.
They did, however, understand that without all that extra, the Doctor would have been a godawful boring character. Interesting tool, the Drake Equation... Depending on what numbers you arbitrarily start with and which assumptions you make, the end result can be as varied as 1 or billions. Didn't the Borg give a number to every new dominant planetary species they encountered, whether they were spacefaring or not?
To the Drake equation, Star Trek itself gave some variables. According to T'Pol and Archer, 1 of 43,000 planets is populated. I just don't remember now if this was advanced civilization, or life in general. Also I suspect that this number corresponds only to regular "carbon based" civilizations. After all the Vulcans and Humans would not suspect other beings (energy based, silicon based, Cosmozoans, ...)...
As I recall from the sequence of Cosmos where Carl Sagan explains the Drake Equation, the dealbreaker is the development of radio telescopes and avoiding nuclear annihilation. If a civilization makes it past those two points, it gets counted.
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I'm currently watching the episode and have a very different explanation for the apparent inconsistency re: The Doctor's backup module: the episode is set in an alternate version of the Mirror Universe, and The Doctor is pulled into it ala Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura.
^ I haven't seen anyone else in this thread suggest that LW offers a glimpse into a second canonical MU that is different from the TOS, DS9, and ENT one.
Sorry, I thought you were telling a joke, and I was playing along. I honestly thought I was laughing with you. My bad. Similar I have posited that it is the evil Mirror Doctor starring in this story and all his stories about a nice Voyager are massive and cunning fabrications. The Doctor's back up module falling through a portal is similar.
^ It's all good. BTW, we've already seen that the Star Trek universe is a canonical Multiverse, and a second MU existing would be totally in line with that. It would also be totally in line with what the episode shows us.
We have no reason not to think that there are many mirror universes than just the ones that always keep crossing over.