Living witness, Implausible?

[Christopher]

But it's missing the point of the story to assume that the "evil Voyager" seen there represented an objective fact of that universe. The point was that history is always written with an agenda and a bias, often a very political one, and thus is often a misrepresentation of reality. Especially when it's based on fragmentary data, leaving people to fill in the gaps with their own preconceptions and pet theories.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ I don't think it misses the point at all; it just puts that point into a slightly different context.

Re: that post from 3 years ago, what I'm proposing is slightly different in that I'm proposing that LW shows us a MU that is not the same one we saw in TOS, DS9, and ENT, but an alternate one that, Parallels-style, exists alongside it, whereas, if I'm not mistaken, that post is proposing that LW takes place in the MU from Mirror, Mirror, et all.

 

[Christopher]

^ I don't think it misses the point at all; it just puts that point into a slightly different context.

Err, if the point is that history is inaccurate, and you're assuming that the episode is set in an alternate timeline where that portrayal of history really did happen as shown, that's not just a different context, that's erasing the message altogether. It's making the very mistake the episode warns against: taking history at face value rather than examining it critically. So yes, it is absolutely, humongously missing the point.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Voyager had messages now?

Sure I used to tear up at the end or Living Witness, but it didn't teach me anything.

 

[Tyberius]

In regards to this "copying" versus "backing-up" debate:

There must be something particular about holographic quantum computing that disallows simultaneous processes from the same core. Kind of a conservation of process/energy.

Which means that the doctor was not active 700 years in the future, or computer science achieved a workaround to the problem.

I have also thought that the Living Witness doctor was not really a backup at all, but just an echo in the storage medium that the aliens managed to activate.

 

[Mistral]

In regards to this "copying" versus "backing-up" debate:

There must be something particular about holographic quantum computing that disallows simultaneous processes from the same core. Kind of a conservation of process/energy.

Which means that the doctor was not active 700 years in the future, or computer science achieved a workaround to the problem.

I have also thought that the Living Witness doctor was not really a backup at all, but just an echo in the storage medium that the aliens managed to activate.

Here's the problem. The Doctor, in one episode, almost crashed out of existence due to a lack of available memory. That is, he got so complex he was using too much of Voyager's on board memory. So how could you have a back up with all of his experiences, thoughts, etc? Unless the code can be compressed when it isn't active, taking up far less room.

 

[Mistral]

Its hard for me to imagine, given the way technolagy works in Star trek, that by the 32 century, the federation hasnt colonized most of the galaxy, if not most of this galactic cluster.

Leaving that aside... Any ideas what kind of welcome the Archive of the doctor, would recieve when he got home?

Reintegration with the doctor himself, perhaps, if hes still online?

Here's my take on it: http://adastrafanfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=62

I can't help banging my own drum on the subject. It contains a lot of answers to the questions asked here that would take too long to re-write.

 

[Tyberius]

In regards to this "copying" versus "backing-up" debate:

There must be something particular about holographic quantum computing that disallows simultaneous processes from the same core. Kind of a conservation of process/energy.

Which means that the doctor was not active 700 years in the future, or computer science achieved a workaround to the problem.

I have also thought that the Living Witness doctor was not really a backup at all, but just an echo in the storage medium that the aliens managed to activate.

Here's the problem. The Doctor, in one episode, almost crashed out of existence due to a lack of available memory. That is, he got so complex he was using too much of Voyager's on board memory. So how could you have a back up with all of his experiences, thoughts, etc? Unless the code can be compressed when it isn't active, taking up far less room.

I don't think there actually is a backup. Or at least a backup as we know it.

I think the Living Witness was anything but. He was just a small subset of the real doctor, an echo, electron residue in some storage medium somewhere. Of course he believed he was everything the real doctor was, there was nothing to compare him to.

Holographic computing itself would be difficult to back up. You are using a universe creating trick of physics to make an otherwise uncreatable process. How do you back it up when it really doesn't exist? If you shut it down, it goes back to square one.

Throw in a little quantum computing where the pathways that hold the process cannot be the same, or even measured, lest they be altered and an actual backup or true copy become literally impossible. The act of initiating the backup would change the process and the final output would then also not be the same.

 

[T'Girl]

I don't think there actually is a backup. Or at least a backup as we know it.

My take is that while it's true that they failed in a previous attempt to backup The Doctor, they didn't quit after that falure and continued to try, eventually (at some point) creating a backup.

If at first you don't suceed, try try again.

 

[F. King Daniel]

In an unseen adventure the Voyager crew aquire magical alien tech with which to backup the doc.

Then they get space-mugged and it's stolen.

"Living Witness" happens a gajillion years later.

 

[Guy Gardener]

No, it happened in Futures End.

You don't think that stuffing him into something the size of an ipod nano had "real world" applications?

29th century software.