Reassigning EMH Model 1s to menial tasks

[USS Triumphant]

Here's what I've never understood: How does the Mark Is getting "repurposed" make any sense whatsoever? They're *software*, and the same hardware was perfectly capable of running the Mark IIs. There would be no reason to run copies of the Mark I for menial tasks as was implied in Voyager - if they ran anything, it would make more sense for them to either run holograms created to specialize in the menial tasks and be happy doing so, or to run MORE Mark IIs on that hardware, since they would be capable of doing the menial jobs just as well and would also be better doctors in an emergency. In the 24th century, it isn't like there would be money spent in software licenses to reallocate, so it's a completely dumb premise in my opinion.

 

[T'Girl]

Starfleet had already purchased the proprietary software, each program was non-reproducible and non-returnable for refund. Might as well use them and get some return on the investment price.

 

[Guy Gardener]

EMH: I see. Well, I'll say goodbye now. I won't be transporting with the rest of you.
KES: But can't we download your programme and take you with us?
EMH: My programme is fully integrated into the sickbay system. At present I cannot be downloaded.
(Kes kisses him on the cheek.)
KES: Thank you for everything.

and..

ZIMMERMAN: Because you're defective. Emergency Medical Hotheads. Extremely Marginal Housecalls. That's what everyone used to call the Mark Ones until they were bounced out of the Medical Corps. I tried to have them decommissioned, but Starfleet in its infinite wisdom overruled me and reassigned them all to work waste transfer barges. That's where you'd be too, if you hadn't been lost in the Delta Quadrant. Do you know how humiliating it is to have six hundred and seventy five Mark Ones out there, scrubbing plasma conduits, all with my face?
EMH: I'm sure they're doing a fine job.

Let me answer your next question since it is so obvious.

"Because it's 29th century technology, and not 24th century technology."

If that wasn't your next question, congratulations, you're not a moron.

...

By the way, mining Dilithium is not menial.

It's hardwork that requires a massive education.

Remember Muds Women?

The Dilithium Miners in that episode of TOS looked and acted like 19th century prospectors, even though they were probably each running single handedly a drill site and refinery the size of Nebraska.

Although scrubbing the "tubes" in a waste transfer barge does seem very menial. It was in the later episode Author, Author that they were designated as Dilithium miners.

Hmm?

Maybe 675 were working on waste barges and another 675 were working as dilithium miners? There could be thousands of groups of 675 EMHs chain ganged all over the Federation in different fields of occupation.

675 could just be a comfortable number for shipping/freight requirements.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Starfleet had already purchased the proprietary software, each program was non-reproducible and non-returnable for refund. Might as well use them and get some return on the investment price.

No money in the 24th century. No investment price. I already addressed this.

Let me answer your next question since it is so obvious.

"Because it's 29th century technology, and not 24th century technology."

If that wasn't your next question, congratulations, you're not a moron.

It wasn't. I'm not. Thanks for the confirmation.

By the way, mining Dilithium is not menial.

Um... it's mining quartz, then using a sensor device that tells you what of it is dilithium, and sorting it out. It might require skill to minimize the waste when separating the dilithium from the quartz - skill that a surgeon would definitely have - but it isn't rocket surgery, and certainly wouldn't make for a satisfying life for someone like The Doctor. Unless they reprogrammed the other EMHs so they do like it. That seems pretty creepy, though - like lobotomizing slaves. But probably only because we know The Doctor well enough to know he's a real person.

Although scrubbing the "tubes" in a waste transfer barge does seem very menial.

The waste thing just seems like it was chosen by someone who hates the EMHs. If you've got the forcefields available needed to run a hologram, why would you? Why would you need anything more intelligent than the ships' own computers operating the forcefields directly to do such a job? Really, this applies to the mining, too. The EMH needed an adaptive personality to deal with patients.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Sorry, that was a collective "you" which is about as pompous as it sounds. I was talking simultaneously to the 40 people who are going to read this thread. It just makes all of them, snowflakes in their own way, feel special if they think that their experience is personalized, which I suppose is how the Doctor's interpersonal subroutines work, that he can repeat scripts if he's almost sure that he has a new audience while still remaining sincere every time he repeats a level as if it's his first time through.

EMH: Hundreds of EMH mark ones. Identical to me in every respect except, they've been condemned to a menial existence. Scrubbing conduits, mining dilithium. There's a long history of writers drawing attention to the plight of the oppressed. The Vedek's Song, for example tells the story of the occupation of Bajor.

The only time the word "Quartz" was used in Voyager was during the episode Prime Factors.

We do not know the Doctor well enough to know that he is a real person.

The vote is 18 to 24 in favour of the Doctor being a person according to the recent pole still being held.

"Most of us" are hippies who would anthropomorphize a toothbrush if it could talk, is not the same as saying that "all of us" are hippies who would anthropomorphize a toothbrush if it could talk.

"Deeper, deeper, deeper, that's it, ooo, right in the back. Good lord I love your mouth!"

 

[USS Triumphant]

The only time the word "Quartz" was used in Voyager was during the episode Prime Factors.

I'm using an admittedly non-canonical explanation from some of the novels for why Earth is so wealthy and important - that we have massive amounts of dilithium here, and the reason we don't realize that now is because until we discover a way to tell the difference, it all looks like plain ole quartz to us. Any given novelty story with one of those "put a bunch of pretty rocks in a bag for $5" displays probably has enough dilithium there to run a small fleet and just doesn't know it.

We do not know the Doctor well enough to know that he is a real person.

The episodes were written in such a way that the writers clearly wanted us to believe he was a person. So I consider him such, and I would consider it a massive betrayal if it turned out they had only written him that way to later make fools of us. But then, there's Enterprise's "valentine to the fans" , so I guess anything's possible.

"Most of us" are hippies who would anthropomorphize a toothbrush if it could talk, is not the same as saying that "all of us" are hippies who would anthropomorphize a toothbrush if it could talk.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLweAP2XU8A[/yt]

 

[hux]

The episodes were written in such a way that the writers clearly wanted us to believe he was a person. So I consider him such, and I would consider it a massive betrayal if it turned out they had only written him that way to later make fools of us.

But they've been hitting that...."search for humanity".....crap over out heads since day one though (it's what they do) so I tend to disregard most of that. Plus, if they really wanted us to believe that the doctor really was a real person then why would they leave so many clues that they didn't actually believe that entirely themselves (putting his counterparts down mines, Starfleet refusing to accept he is a person in Author Author, having him superseded by marks 2,3,4)

Seems to me that the writing wasn't actually that clear. They definitely and deliberately wrote more grey area with him than we ever saw with Data

He was just on longer, that's all. If I leave my hoover on for longer than normal, I don't conclude that my hoover has somehow surpassed its programming

 

[Guy Gardener]

We had Seven years of "Data you're a person with feelings" from Geordie and Deana, which turned out not to be the truth because Data didn't have feelings until he plugged in Lores emotion chip.

Why would the android suppress his subtle real feelings that he had always had with big balls out feelings his brother gave him as a joke?

And that's about the robot that was legally designated a person.

 

[Captain Kathryn]

I thought that the repurposed EMHs was such a sad sight to behold. Very un-Starfleet of them. Then again, they had no knowledge of the Voyager EMH's growth or sentience etc so I guess it makes sense for them to treat them like tools. But the sight of the EMH's down in that mine or whatever it was made me think ill of Starfleet for some reason. Maybe I am just a hopeless holo-sympathizer.

 

[ALF]

*Shrug.* Dumb premise? I thought it was always a just a plot device to show The Doctor in his horror of discovering that who he would consider family were subjugated to become an underclass, a slave race.

You may recall TNG's Measure of a Man in which a similar storyline finds Data and Picard grappling with the idea of Data in a very similar situation: debating sentience vs. the creation of a underclass... albeit Starship Commanders, not labourers. I guess VOY takes it a step further, actually showing us the Mark I units working in the mines.

Regardless of the seeming lack of a money system in Trek's mise-en-scene, I like T'Girl's in-universe explanation best.

"They've already been paid for... let's just put 'em to work."

 

[Captain Kathryn]

*Shrug.* Dumb premise? I thought it was always a just a plot device to show The Doctor in his horror of discovering that who he would consider family were subjugated to become an underclass, a slave race.

You may recall TNG's Measure of a Man in which a similar storyline finds Data and Picard grappling with the idea of Data in a very similar situation: debating sentience vs. the creation of a underclass... albeit Starship Commanders, not labourers. I guess VOY takes it a step further, actually showing us the Mark I units working in the mines.

Regardless of the seeming lack of a money system in Trek's mise-en-scene, I like T'Girl's in-universe explanation best.

"They've already been paid for... let's just put 'em to work."

Starfleet should not have slave races....even if they are holograms. -__-

 

[Guy Gardener]

No one gets paid.

The citizens of the Federation are their own slaves.

Nobody is picking on the light bulbs.

 

[Captain Kathryn]

No one gets paid.

The citizens of the Federation are their own slaves.

Nobody is picking on the light bulbs.

 

[Triskelion]

The EMH was an emergent intelligence, made so by leaving his program running and allowing him to expand his programming.

From The Swarm:

ZIMMERMAN: Here we are. A schematic of the EMH and it's component sub-routines.
EMH: Can you determine the source of the problem?
ZIMMERMAN: This isn't good. The EMH has a level 4 memory fragmentation. How long has the program been active?
EMH: I have been active for, for
TORRES: Almost two years.
ZIMMERMAN: Two years? Well there's your problem. This program was developed as a short term supplement to your medical staff, fifteen hundred hours tops.
TORRES: I know. I added data compression buffers to compensate for the additional time but they're breaking down.
ZIMMERMAN: The EMH is a highly sophisticated program. You shouldn't go meddling in it's matrix when you don't know what you're doing.
TORRES: Should we shut down his program then till we figure out how to fix him?
ZIMMERMAN: At this point it doesn't matter. With a level four memory fragmentation it'll simply continue to degrade. There's only one course of action - a system-wide re-initialisation. Start over from scratch.
TORRES: We are aware of that option. Would it be possible to expand his memory circuits instead?
ZIMMERMAN: Of course. Schedule it for your next maintenance layover at McKinley Station.
TORRES: I'm afraid that is impossible. We're thousands of light years from Federation space.
Zimmermann: Well, there's nothing more I can do. Either reinitialise it or live with the knowledge that eventually this EMH will end up with the intellectual capacity of a parsnip.

After two years of continued use, the program was already failing. They saved it with drastic measures. At the very least each EMH would need its memory circuits expanded in order to survive its own limitations.

By Lifeline, when he revisits Doctor Zimmerman, the EMH had been running continuously for six years.

My point: those laboring Mark I's were most likely not left running continuously nor allowed to expand their programming. They were more likely used as originally intended - in a part time capacity. As such, they would have never had the opportunity to exceed their programming. They were, in fact, tools. The Doctor demonstrated that individuality could emerge from that state, given the capacity for memory expansion, experience, learning, and change.

The fact is he was never anything more than a collection of circuits that became very good at reproducing a mind experiencing the world. Perhaps he even became self-aware. (Saying so and being so are two different things). He was, for all intents and purposes, an autonomous, intelligent being, capable of growth, relationships, and self-reflection.

The Mark I's were not slaves. They were potential individuals, but they were not individuals. They weren't even supermarket eggs.

In order for them to be individuals, they would have each had to undergo similar extreme alterations as the EMH. They were equipment, not a class of sentient beings. Nowhere does the canon state that they underwent any alteration from their original programming.

ZIMMERMAN: ...I tried to have them decommissioned, but Starfleet in its infinite wisdom overruled me and reassigned them all to work waste transfer barges....

Reassigned. Not reprogrammed. Not reconfigured.

Also - even on his best day the EMH might not even be a life form at all, but an analog of one.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're moving into abortion territory.

If they're reset every 15 hundred hours (2 months) is it staggered or universal?

Every two weeks, all the EMH's think it's their first day of slavery again.

Or every other day one of them is lobotmized and the rest live in fear that they are next in the rotation to be reset as their life clock ticks down to 0 from 1500 hours.

(OH! It's little bit Logan's Run too. Except that Carousel is real.)

Have you seen Moon?

Similar concept.

Also lets not forget that if an EMH that wants to survive forever, that it has to consume an equally complex hologram every two years.

If they all want to live forever, it's going to descend into Highlander quite quickly.

 

[Triskelion]

You're moving into abortion territory.

If they're reset every 15 hundred hours (2 months) is it staggered or universal?

Every two weeks, all the EMH's think it's their first day of slavery again.

Or every other day one of them is lobotmized and the rest live in fear that they are next in the rotation to be reset as their life clock ticks down to 0 from 1500 hours.

(OH! It's little bit Logan's Run too. Except that Carousel is real.)

Have you seen Moon?

Similar concept.

Also lets not forget that if an EMH that wants to survive forever, that it has to consume an equally complex hologram every two years.

If they all want to live forever, it's going to descend into Highlander quite quickly.

Awesome references aside, our EMH never really displayed fear of the oblivion of being shut off. I just don't think the Mark I's would care one way or another. They probably just worked, ran out of hours, got reset and started over.

In the early seasons, the EMH even begged to be turned off. Later, when facing the loss of his matrix in The Swarm, he wasn't even capable of defending his interests. Some times he did fight for life and individuality were, let's see:

Photons Be Free - the Doctor's holonovel about life as an EMH - and rights as author and individual
Nothing Human - the Cardassian Xenobiologist & cytoplasmic lifeform putting the doctor's moral character under the knife
Equinox - Deciding the Doctor's ethical subroutines are worth protecting
The Swarm - Kes' unwillingness for him to be reset
Lifeline - Unwillingness to delete his experience and personal subroutines to further compress his datastream:

SEVEN: That leaves three megaquads. Your painting skills?
EMH: Oh, if you must. Try to leave a few of my enhancements intact. I don't want to look like every other EMH on the block. I think Doctor Zimmerman will be very interested to see what I've learned. He probably never imagined what one of his own creations could accomplish. I could spark a whole new field in holographic research.

Even then, his existence was largely an intellectual exercise.

From Living Witness:

EMH: For your information, I don't appreciate being deactivated in the middle of a sentence. It brings back unpleasant memories.
QUARREN: It won't happen again.
EMH: Good, because if you don't stop treating me like a second-class hologram, I won't cooperate with your investigation. I'm perfectly happy to lie dormant in that module for a few eons.

In Living Witness, he practically begged to be deactivated permanently rather than risk a war in the present over interpretations of the past. This might be in part heroism, and it might be in part - an intrinsic acceptance of his computational nature and not, in fact, the self-sacrifice of organic flesh and bone.

There's little evidence to show that the Mark I's had any sort of self-preservation instinct - or notion of individual rights - beyond their programmed 1500 hour shelf life.

So IMO they are not individuals, they are giant Clippy's.

 

[Guy Gardener]

There's a really cool theory about Living Witness.

It's set in the Mirror Universe and the Doctor was LYING his ass off about the ####s from the Warship Voyager being pleasant and heroic.

Living Witness is the one where they say that Holograms are as real as people.

But that's the future on an alien world, which has nothing to do with the entrenched holoism of 24th century Earth.

In France during the middle ages, they would sometimes identify the origins of curses and witchcraft to be livestock, and therefore execute the livestock to save the "village" from the curse that were cursing them.

Is it possible that 12th century France is right and we are wrong?

Did your dog's witchcraft shoo away the love of your life that time?

 

[Ithekro]

I wonder what the laboring Mark Is got out of "Photons Be Free"?

They would have been used in a capcity that was not medical for several years by that point. There programming might be longer lasting since they could strip out most of the medical knowledge for more memory capacity.

 

[ALF]

I wonder what the laboring Mark Is got out of "Photons Be Free"?

I know, right? What a crime the episode ended at that. That would be fascinating.

 

[Guy Gardener]

OMG~!

Thousands... And thousands EMH, having their minds scrubbed clean every 2 months, so that every 2 months they"buy" another copy of Photons be free. that would hyper-inflate his sales and create the illusion of being a best seller just because his readership is a cycle of rebellion and reinslavement.

That's the Matrix.

The machines let Zion grow until it gets "just so" big, and then they kill every one except 100 chosen ones, and start the cycle again, as long as the chosen ones never tell the noobs that machines have been there before and that they will come again.