The Backup EMH.... New Theory maybe...

[Meredith]

I remember watching Equinox Part 1 and 2 and they had an EMH whose ethical subroutines were deleted.

The Voyager Holodoc deleted the Equinox EMH, in the course of the episode. But everyone knows that deleting things in computer space means they go into the recycling bin. Plus people delete Holographic characters all of the time on the holodeck, but they can re-call them. Delete in that context may mean "remove the specific Holographic Program from Active memory".

Now people have wondered where the "Backup EMH" in "Living witness" came from. I have a theory. "Living Witness" took place shortly after Equinox 1&2. They recovered the Equinox EMH from the computer's recycling bin and removed it's memories, basically re-initializing it. They also restored it's ethical subroutines. They then copied the Doctor's recent memories into it and put it in a "backup core" memory device. They probably had a small job that copied his memories into the backup core each time the "real EMH" was de-activated. Apparently the memories of the EMH are easy to copy "See the Episode: Latent Image" but their "Matrix" is not.

So that EMH was the "re-conditioned" EMH from the Equinox. Which explains why after losing it they weren't too worried about recovering it. They didn't trust it because of the evil stuff it did aboard the Equinox. They created it from the Equinox EMH as a "Oh crap we lost the EMH backup, send security in to supervise the possibly evil EMH." In case the original was lost. Living witness in this theory must then take place before "Virtuoso" as they were worried about the Doctor Leaving.

Good idea, bad idea or old idea?

 

[Timo]

But everyone knows that deleting things in computer space means they go into the recycling bin.

That's basically a bug, not a feature. I'm sure that if a 24th century computer operator wants something deleted, it will be deleted for good, with nothing of it remaining for later restoration.

"Living Witness" took place shortly after "Equinox 1&2".

Or then it didn't. The episode has no stardate, no continuity milestones we could compare the events against, indeed very little material from the 24th century at all. For all we know, the events that resulted in "Living Witness" (that is, the leaving behind of the EMH backup) took place twenty years after "Equinox", in one of those alternate timelines where "Endgame" didn't happen and Neelix and Seven stayed aboard for a long, conventionally propelled final leg of the journey to Earth. Or then they happened in the main timeline, at any arbitrary point between "The Gift" and "Homestead". But like you say, dates after "Virtuoso" are better than dates before "Virtuoso".

They recovered the Equinox EMH from the computer's recycling bin and removed it's memories, basically re-initializing it. They also restored it's ethical subroutines. They then copied the Doctor's recent memories into it and put it in a "backup core" memory device.

Nothing against that idea, really. Except that if future computers are that much like today's computers, then one should always have been able to copy the original EMH.

It seems future computers work very differently from today's ones. Copying an active program apparently is not an option at all, under any circumstances. Possibly an acceptable loss when one considers how much more complex these programs appear to be in comparison with today's stuff.

However, moving an active complex hologram from a storage medium to another has always been possible. Moriarty was transferred to a portable player of some sort. The original EMH was beamed around almost constantly, and easily hopped from the ship's grid to the portable emitter and back. Holosimulations of Barclay were moved across the galaxy, too.

Now all we need is some sort of a spatial anomaly duplicating the storage medium where the EMH was being held, and we have two of them without the supposedly forbidden "copy program" function...

Of course, no episode really claimed that the ship couldn't create a new EMH. In "Message in a Bottle", our heroes were given the job of doing this in half a disinterested sentence from their captain. They eagerly got started, apparently thinking there'd be no problems whatsoever. They didn't figure out they weren't exactly holograph engineers, though - so of course they screwed up initially. And they never had to try again because the original EMH soon returned. In "Nothing Human", it again was no trick to build a new holodoctor.

Indeed, the only problem seems to be in creating an exact duplicate of our original holographic hero, complete with his acquired memories and skills and feelings and idiosyncracies. Evidently, future computers refuse to copy programs that are very complex or very active or perhaps very large. Perhaps it isn't possible to reduce such a program into a "file" of data at all - perhaps the program only exists if it is allowed to "live and breathe", to remain active and consistent?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Meredith]

I like my "Equinox EMH Backup" Idea. Maybe because it gets around the silly, we can';t copy data issue that trek seems to have.

 

[Tallis Rhul]

Don't see any reason why not, other than the word "delete" being used. However in episodes of DS9 Chief O'Brien is often able to recover data that has been deleted, so while I don't know if I agree with the recycling bin idea (even though it's nice... "Captain the computer's failing, I don't think anyone's emptied the recycling bin since it was commissioned!") but I think you're on to a definite possibility!