How far woudl the Doctor go?

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Last night I had a dream where the ship was in a battle situation and the Doctor was wounded and in sickbay with Kes and Deanna Troi hovering over him. Troi was a doctor in my dream. Suddenly Kes said, "oh doctor, he's wet himself!" and Troi replied, "that's impossible, he's a hologram.. oh my he HAS wet himself. He must have programmed himself for maximum realism in this kind of situation." Then they discussed if they should start cleaning him up or try and get him to de-urinate himself by changing his hologram reality and whether he would have locked himself out of changing that reality.

I think the doctor is a wimp. Sure he put himself into situations where bad stuff happened to him, his holo-daughter died and other stuff. But it's all just staged scenarios, not years of life with tragedies or physical injuries with consequences. He wants to be human and everyone panders to this but he and Data are only ever going to add a slice of understanding what humans live with. Everyone will applaud them because, oh, something seemed more real to them so now they are real boys but it's never going past that.

Would the EMH ever make himself capable of real injury that took time to heal and caused daily difficulties and psychological scarring? Yes I know everyone gets insta-healed in Trek but something like Nog's leg, that was a hard thing to deal with. I can't see the Doctor ever allowing himself that much real life. His "Real Life" was something he was able to turn on and off.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The Doctor has enough struggles being bound to technology and having to fight to be considered a person. It's not wimpy not to program himself to experience more pain than he needs to. No human would do that.

Any human would turn off their pain if given the opportunity, so turning it off is a very human thing to do.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLzJAebfEIg[/yt]

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Kirk needs the pain naturally afforded to him as a human being, he doesn't artificially add more for the experience.

 

[Lynx]

Well, we did see how he reacted when Kes prolonged his simulated flu without his knowledge in "Tattoo". He freaked out totally.

The same when he started to yell at B'Elanna and Harry about the malfunction with the holo-emitters in "Persistence Of Vision" when he became smaller than his usual self when projected to sickbay. Or in "The Swarm" when he suffered from amnesia.

I won't call him a wimp but it's obvious that he isn't used to human disadvantages, diseases, injuries and such and since he's first of all a program, he won't be that either as long as his problems and malfunctions can always be fixed in some way. Just like Data, he might strive for being as human as possible but he can't be totally human.

 

[at Quark's]

Just like Data, he might strive for being as human as possible but he can't be totally human.

The more interesting question being (in my opinion at least):

Why would he strive to become as human as possible ?

I mean, I can understand that he would like to be able to identify with his patients, up to a point, to become 'a better doctor', or even 'a better person' (whatever that would mean, exactly) . I could also imagine that he would like to work away some 'deficiencies' human's don't have (like data tried to, in his social interactions).

But why add other human "deficiencies" (like pain and ilness), beyond the goal of sharing "the human experience and learning what it means to live with human limitations" ?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Because at some point he is going to realize that his cherry picked "human experiences " are lacking because he chose them rather than fell before them, unplanned.

 

[2takesfrakes]

The EMH isn't written as a Living Hologram, unfortunately, he's written as a Human being who's social skills and personal growth are non-existant. He just started trying stuff, not knowing what the hell he was doing, or what the result would be. Data, for instance, knew he was made to pretend to be Human, so his case is different. The Doctor, though, being written as "Human" is capable of surprising us, just as any Human is, of their own volition. But this would never be the norm with him, no. He likes exits clearly marked and easily accessed and that will always be his first impulse, to maintain that.

He has been known to be "talked" into going "further" than he originally wanted to, with certain simulations, though, yes. But again, he could always pull the plug on it. When Voyager was overtaken by aliens who replaced the crew one-by-one, with them ending up on a holo-ship, the EMH was cut off completely from Voyager, as the ship took off for parts unknown. Unfortunately, this wasn't a "Doctor" episode, so what effect it could've ultimately had wasn't even brushed on.

Also, he had plenty of familiar faces and B'Elanna was there to "fix" him if he had problems. But still, the situation was completely unknown to him and he was written as being able to "handle" it. Even when he started degrading and was about to lose his solvency, that one time, he coped with that surprisingly well. Would he ever choose to face any of this, without coaxing, arm-twisting and a reset button? I want to say "no," but he's faced "reality" so well, in various episodes, that my feeling is he might just go pretty damn far. Maybe even ALL ... the way!

 

[Lord Manitou]

It is only humans that go to the bathroom. The programmers did not program the non-essentials into the EMH. The program for human-robot interaction was very practical and also useful and educational for everyone concerned.
The doctor programmed himself with aesthetics and sex. I don't think he programmed himself with sex but naturally that was what he wanted. B'Ellanna and Janeway are not the type to hold back and they aren't fools either. How much sex he had culminated until the end of Season 7 in Renaissance Man.

 

[Mudd]

"Real life" is something that everyone in Trek turns on and turns off. Mostly "off."

 

[meow point1]

I think the doctor might program himself to feel pain, but only for a day. I don't think he'd program himself to urinate, as he'd probably find that undignified!

 

[Vandervecken]

I don't remember the Doc trying to become more human a la Data so much as his wanting to expand his program's abilities. He argued (Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy) that he doesn't have human limitations. He has human interests, but he wants to be more than human (as he already is), not human.

 

[bbjeg]

Who knows what he'll experiment with after they got back home. To better explain what to expect from a flu, or excessive sweating, or being bloated, etc., the Doctor would have to experience it. I wouldn't be surprised if the Doctor tried using the bathroom, at least once.

 

[CatAteMyTribble]

Any human would turn off their pain if given the opportunity, so turning it off is a very human thing to do.

I wouldn't. If I'd gone through my life flipping the 'off' switch every time an action or decision had painful consequences, I'd never have learned a damned thing from any of them. My emotional and psychological development would have ground to a screeching halt in pre-adolescence, or even earlier. I suspect that's true of most people.

 

[topcat]

I don't see any of that happening. Voyager wont let the core functions be damaged. After all,, if you let your only medical personel suffer a broken neck,,, do you have a functioning doctor?

 

[meow point1]

Who knows what he'll experiment with after they got back home. To better explain what to expect from a flu, or excessive sweating, or being bloated, etc., the Doctor would have to experience it. I wouldn't be surprised if the Doctor tried using the bathroom, at least once.

Using the bathroom, maybe, but wetting himself?

 

[bbjeg]

Eh, maybe? He'll probably live for hundreds if not thousands of years. He might get that bored along the way and create a heavily drunken state protocol, complete with wet pant mornings.

 

[Vandervecken]

I wouldn't. If I'd gone through my life flipping the 'off' switch every time an action or decision had painful consequences, I'd never have learned a damned thing from any of them. My emotional and psychological development would have ground to a screeching halt in pre-adolescence, or even earlier. I suspect that's true of most people.

Not to mention that without pain we'd end up dead or maimed pretty quick, too; if from infancy we wouldn't live past the first outside-the-crib excursion. But that's because our flesh is vulnerable, unlike the Doc's. For that matter, his mind is infinitely reparable if some holoengineers help him out, although I guess some events/experiences might cause him to decompile and be beyond salvaging.

 

[Drone]

The EMH isn't written as a Living Hologram, unfortunately, he's written as a Human being who's social skills and personal growth are non-existant. He just started trying stuff, not knowing what the hell he was doing, or what the result would be. Data, for instance, knew he was made to pretend to be Human, so his case is different. The Doctor, though, being written as "Human" is capable of surprising us, just as any Human is, of their own volition. But this would never be the norm with him, no. He likes exits clearly marked and easily accessed and that will always be his first impulse, to maintain that.

He has been known to be "talked" into going "further" than he originally wanted to, with certain simulations, though, yes. But again, he could always pull the plug on it. When Voyager was overtaken by aliens who replaced the crew one-by-one, with them ending up on a holo-ship, the EMH was cut off completely from Voyager, as the ship took off for parts unknown. Unfortunately, this wasn't a "Doctor" episode, so what effect it could've ultimately had wasn't even brushed on.

Also, he had plenty of familiar faces and B'Elanna was there to "fix" him if he had problems. But still, the situation was completely unknown to him and he was written as being able to "handle" it. Even when he started degrading and was about to lose his solvency, that one time, he coped with that surprisingly well. Would he ever choose to face any of this, without coaxing, arm-twisting and a reset button? I want to say "no," but he's faced "reality" so well, in various episodes, that my feeling is he might just go pretty damn far. Maybe even ALL ... the way!

I really like your comparison of the intent behind the creation of the Doctor and Data. Those distinctions, and the consequences that are made manifest because of them are quite apt. I'm wondering if you're referring to Renaissance Man in citing an episode where the Doc was threatened with decompiling? He didn't panic exactly, but was mindful enough to say farewell by rendering some of his most private thoughts, most obviously to Seven, in what I think is one of the funniest sequences of the series. Now alternately, you may be pointing to The Swarm, in which one would have to say that his ability to cope, along with being able to do just about anything else, was pretty compromised. Or, perhaps you're thinking of another example altogether. Please spell out, if you would, which production you had in mind here?

I can recall two examples of the Doctor suffering physical pain, neither of which he found compelling as an enviable experience. However, both Projections and Future's End came before the end of the first half of the series, so may not serve as valid markers of his evolution in being willing to unreservedly seek out new experiences. In Real Life, though, I think the Doctor implicitly accepted the possibility, or perhaps even likelihood, of coming to face emotional trauma in accepting B'Elanna's offer to chang the program. He heard her, and Kes's, unambiguous objections after dining in Pleasantville, and had to understand the implication, if not ultimate reality, of living through such changes. It would seem to me that, at some level, he perceived that he wanted to be challenged in this construct in a way that his own realization of it would never afford, even though outwardly he expressed satisfaction with that slice of fantasy.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Yes, I should've been more specific in that I was referring to The Swarm, as it pertained to the degradation of the EMH. The question posited by the original poster is a very interesting one, because there are implications involved with how "far" the Doctor would go ... on multiple levels. The main one being, of course, what is the "truth" of the character. In terms of the show, itself, does the EMH having limits on what he'll freely experience make him "entertaining"? Interesting? Relatable? Even disappointing?

Why do these limits exist, in the first place? Superman who can literally do anything, is impervious to pain and the whole bit has limits that he chooses and we appreciate that about the character. We want him to care, because of the escapism his situation represents. He cares about the things we do, in other words, and has the power to make sure everything turns out "right," in the end. The EMH is 80% there, himself, but what about the escapism? Does it work, when he's in a position to be supremely confident, because of his very nature and yet ... chooses to be swayed by emotional considerations? (Even Data, whose purpose is to "become 'more' Human" can freely choose to turn his emotions on or off, at will.)

Clearly, this is for the audience's benefit, but story-wise, where does this come from? USS Voyager's rusty innards? His original program? B'Elanna's tinkering? Kes' friendship? He really should be intellect, only, what Human doctor is going to want to deal with an emotional EMH? Take that out of the equation. But the show can't. How far he can go is not to the limits of what's possible, but rather to the limits of how The Human Condition might apply to a given circumstance.