Does the ECH Have a Role in Regular Crew Rotations?
- Thread starter Captain Clark Terrell
- Start date
If they start making EH programs for every department head, there might be a Butlerian Jihad to consider. 
Again, it all depends on what becomes of the civil rights battle the Doctor sets off for hologram rights.
The permutations of questions and consequences are far-reaching, and could easily become the nightmare "slave race" Picard and Guinan discuss in "Measure of a Man" if not handled properly.
Is the Doctor a person?
- Are other EMH programs people?
- If they are, can they serve in Starfleet as more than just software programs?
- If so, will they all get mobile emitters?
- Can the mobile emitter be reverse engineered to make more?
- Who will be afforded the right to program/create holographic people?
- Will all holograms be self-aware?
- Will some holograms be relegated to manual labor?
The permutations of questions and consequences are far-reaching, and could easily become the nightmare "slave race" Picard and Guinan discuss in "Measure of a Man" if not handled properly.
According to Memory Alpha...
Eventually it was concluded that the EMH Mark I was defective, and they were bounced out of the medical corps. While an ashamed Dr. Zimmerman tried to have them decommissioned, Starfleet reassigned them to scrub plasma conduits on waste transfer barges. Later the Mark I's were also deployed in other menial tasks, like dilithium mining.
...the manual labor aspect actually happened! The first step on a slippery slope...?
^I'd be interested to know what Captain Louvois would have said about this, given the role she played in the dispute over Data's rights.
--Sran
--Sran
I would say it's somewhere inbetween a solid no, and "it depends."
If I got it right, when the EMH was activate in Caretaker it wasn't a person at that time. It gained sapience after being used extensively and just as a result of being left on for so long. There no guarantee that a identical EMP program in a similar situation would automatically gain sentience as well.
The EMH on Voyager could have been a one in a trillion fluke.
Or, if given the opportunity, other holograms - be they EMH programs or just characters in a holoprogram like Vic Fontaine - could expand and develop further based on their experiences. I find it hard to believe that the Doctor wouldn't champion that as a cause, given he is the poster child for it being literally possible to do so, and especially as Starfleet's mission is to "seek out new life," even if it's new life they create. See also: the nanites in TNG's "Evolution" and the exo-comps in "The Quality of Life." Why would the holograms be any different?
