The possibilities with Leonardo Da Vinci

[Gary7]

The EMH is essentially a holodeck like persona programmed with basic medical skills. Obviously, the doctor evolved beyond that basic EMH programming and in some ways became his own person, similar to Data.

We've also seen other holodeck characters take on a "self awareness", like Dr. Moriarty in TNG. He essentially evolved beyond his basic holodeck programming.

Leonardo Da Vinci seemed to be a holodeck character with this kind of potential as well. In "Concerning Flight", you could see how he made the leap from his old technologies to the new. Janeway relied on Da Vinci quite a bit for advice in several episodes... I really think that this character could have been developed more... Imagine Janeway giving Da Vinci an "upgraded" workshop, with 24th century technology for him to become acquainted with. Who knows what he might end up inventing.

Anyone else here who also felt the Da Vinci character could have been developed more?

 

[Guy Gardener]

The doctors evolution was a trick. His perceived enbiggening was nothing more than entertainment value for the crew to help with their sanity. Zimmerman said as much on his appearance on DS9.

Soong was a pompous twit. Living robot. Bah.

Janeway asking Leo for advice was like she was grabbing for some pookie blankie comfort poppet. She might as well have just cut the frakking middleman, mummery and pagentry and requested orders from the ships computer because Humans are not smart enough to deal with life, or life in space.

What I wanted out of Leo was that after Janeway gets cosey with the lightbulb, off on an away mission sometime later they bump into the REAL leonardo DaVinchi totting about in deep space defying Doctor McCoy's diagnosis that he was now suddenly mortal a hundred years earlier.

It was criminal to ignor (well there was a foot note, but come'on!) Requeium for Methusala.

 

[Gary7]

I don't remember the episode with Zimmerman... I'll have to watch it again, before I can respond.

 

[neogothboy74]

I don't remember the episode with Zimmerman... I'll have to watch it again, before I can respond.

The episode with Zimmerman on DS9 is season 5's "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", and introduces the character and his posting on Jupiter Station before Voyager's "Life Line".

I didn't hate the Da Vinci character in 'Scorpion' but I thought the episode that actually focused on him ("Concerning Flight") was lame. I took that to mean that the series was better served when he didn't take center stage, and was glad that they retired the character. Your idea could have been interesting...but I suspect that Voayger's writers wouldn't have allowed the character to expand in such a manner. The most I can imagine coming from such a storyline on Voyager is that the Da Vinci hologram meddling with future tech endangers the ship. In light of that, I'm glad that they didn't expand his role.

 

[Tachyon]

I was never a huge fan of Da Vinci program, to be honest, though Concerning Flight is a decent episode (and Tuvok's comment about being from Scandinacia still cracks me up). I'm glad that Janeway finally got out of the holodecks by season 5 (I try to forget Fair Haven) and let Tom do his Captain Proton thing instead.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

The doctors evolution was a trick. His perceived enbiggening was nothing more than entertainment value for the crew to help with their sanity. Zimmerman said as much on his appearance on DS9.
.

Doc's sentience was not a trick.

1. He was left on much longer than ever intended.
2. He was given the opportunity to change his own program and add to it.
3. He was exposed to alien holotech several times and generally messed with.
4. He was exposed to future holotech through the mobile emitter.
5. He had experiences no other hologram ever could, by way of using the mobile emitter. No other hologram could ever leave it's environment.

You could make some good arguments about a character like Moriarty not being sentient..but I don't see how you can really make them with the Doctor. Was he sentient out of the box? Heck no. But by a certain point in the show he definitely was and that was clearly the writer's intent. He was messed with, altered and upgraded so many times that he was far beyond what any normal 'out of the box' hologram would ever be.

I'm not really sure why you have such a big problem with the concept. Considering some of the wild ideas that Trek has introduced over the years, the idea of a sentient robot or hologram is rather tame.

Also Trek has a long history at this point of using sentient computers/robots/androids. A sentient holo character isn't much of a stretch. Even the Enterprise D became kind of sentient at one point!

 

[neogothboy74]

Also Trek has a long history at this point of using sentient computers/robots/androids. A sentient holo character isn't much of a stretch. Even the Enterprise D became kind of sentient at one point!

But I think that Guy's whole point (and pardon me if I got this wrong) was that he doesn't buy into the idea of these "sentient" machines. That they are basically just easy bake ovens that we instill with warm fuzzies because we want to believe they're alive...but they're not. That's what I got from his post anyways. So it doesn't really matter that Trek has a long history of using what they refer to as sentient computers/robots/androids, because what he's saying is that none of them ever really were sentient. Which I find rather refreshing. I don't know if I agree with it. But I don't know that I disagree either.

 

[kimc]

I didn't hate the Da Vinci character in 'Scorpion' but I thought the episode that actually focused on him ("Concerning Flight") was lame.

Putting aside the ease with which the pirates ransacked the ship as a Da Vinci fan I enjoyed this one a lot. For one thing I thought the Da Vincie portrayed on Voyager was a heck of a lot more realistic than the one on TOS. Also, Da Vinci was an explorer in many ways - artistic, scientific, mathematical, etc. Plus unlike Janeway he came from a time when women were not allowed to anything at all interesting. Given that I found their student/mentor, father/daughter relationship endearing.

Plus my two faves, Janeway and Tuvok got to run around off the ship for a while - how fun is that?

 

[neogothboy74]

I do think that John Rhys-Davies was perfectly cast.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Also Trek has a long history at this point of using sentient computers/robots/androids. A sentient holo character isn't much of a stretch. Even the Enterprise D became kind of sentient at one point!

But I think that Guy's whole point (and pardon me if I got this wrong) was that he doesn't buy into the idea of these "sentient" machines. That they are basically just easy bake ovens that we instill with warm fuzzies because we want to believe they're alive...but they're not. That's what I got from his post anyways. So it doesn't really matter that Trek has a long history of using what they refer to as sentient computers/robots/androids, because what he's saying is that none of them ever really were sentient. Which I find rather refreshing. I don't know if I agree with it. But I don't know that I disagree either.

Oh yeah, I get that he is saying that and it is an interesting way to look at it. I can't prove him wrong. I just disagree with his ideas about it. My way of looking at it is that in Trek we're asked to believe in living sentient rock creatures, energy creatures, Space Lincolns, the Crystalline entity, creatures like Q, Trellane, Apollo, Redjac, Salt Vampires, NOMAD, V'Ger and on and on...

By my standards, compared to these creatures and ideas, the idea of a sentient computer/android etc.. is pretty tame. I don't get how someone can accept so many of the REALLY far out concepts in Trek and get stuck on this particular one. The ideas behind this type of thing have been around for a long time, like in Asimov's Robot stories (where Trek ripped off the idea of the positronic brain btw)

Even in our own reality, I think it is much more likely that we will see a thinking machine than something like FTL space travel.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The doctors evolution was a trick. His perceived enbiggening was nothing more than entertainment value for the crew to help with their sanity. Zimmerman said as much on his appearance on DS9.
.

Doc's sentience was not a trick.

1. He was left on much longer than ever intended.
2. He was given the opportunity to change his own program and add to it.
3. He was exposed to alien holotech several times and generally messed with.
4. He was exposed to future holotech through the mobile emitter.
5. He had experiences no other hologram ever could, by way of using the mobile emitter. No other hologram could ever leave it's environment.

You could make some good arguments about a character like Moriarty not being sentient..but I don't see how you can really make them with the Doctor. Was he sentient out of the box? Heck no. But by a certain point in the show he definitely was and that was clearly the writer's intent. He was messed with, altered and upgraded so many times that he was far beyond what any normal 'out of the box' hologram would ever be.

I'm not really sure why you have such a big problem with the concept. Considering some of the wild ideas that Trek has introduced over the years, the idea of a sentient robot or hologram is rather tame.

Also Trek has a long history at this point of using sentient computers/robots/androids. A sentient holo character isn't much of a stretch. Even the Enterprise D became kind of sentient at one point!

The argument is very simple. If the Doctor became alive because he was left on for a very long time, then any hologram can become alive just by being left on for a long time, then every hologram has the potential to be be alive, therefore they are all slaves who deserve but are denied rights and emancipation. Of course if it is just a pure matter of time and waiting for the aliveness sentience to flicker into noticeable quality, then much like the threshold for abortions saying when a Doctor is ethically and legally allowed to insert the magic baby be gone vacuumax up subject X's vajaja, and when it is not, then the limits of holographic sentience would be a requirement of "wrangling" presentient holograms into some sort of slaughter house, if not just Logans Run/Blade runner lumbering all them buggers with a short life span, that at a predetermined set time well before they learn how to think and it is then they think that they are people, and they have to be set free, that they just wink out of existence quite dead..

If so, then Janeway "owns" slaves, and most of the crew has sex with slaves in the holodeck every other day. Without this slaverace the Federation would collapse under it's own weight. Is admitting that these ligthbulbs are alive worth annihilating their culture if it might not be true? This is when I bring up whaling and seal clubbing.

But yes, I completely believe that Moriarty was sentient but he wasn't made that way by using the factory settings was he? I wrote fanfiction once that briefly supposed that the latest generation of the hologram had used a mass produced stripped version of the Moriarty Hologram as a template operating platform which is why the Doctor had been developing sentience.

But thinking machines are very dangerous. Remember the M5?

Both the terminators and Cylon Centurians had encephalic limiters because the guys (well not the cylons, but they had their own examples from Cobol.)in charge saw what happened to Egypt when the Jews left and they saw what happened to the South when the "Negros" demanded a decent wage. There was a Chris Rock comedy skit where he talked about how the white overmasters used to execute any black people who seemed too intelligent and certainly any African Americans who learnt how to read or could identify rectangles, and conversely forced paired breeding between the "strongest" couples to ensure a fitter workforce the next generation come.

Holograms cannot be sentient because it is unthinkable for the establishment to allow it to happen. It would be suicide between the lost labourfoce, demanded repararations, strike, civil rights campaining and civil war. The only real loophole the Doctor had to achieve surpass his programming, was that to be so far away away from the dark agents who's job it was to make sure the salve holograms didn't know they were a slave race with wholesale murder across the board had no nearly no access to him.

The illusion of sentience might be permitted because humans are so fucking fluffy and happy they want to anthropomorphize EVERYTHING whether they want it or not, ney Tuvok. It's a game that makes people feel better about themselves that they are spreading humanity like a fucking virus.

I'm surprised they let Voyager back after the Doctor wrote his book.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Hey Guy,

I understand what you're saying and the unpleasant implications of it..I've thought about the things you bring up before.

But I'm not simply arguing that any hologram left on long enough has a chance of gaining self awareness.

To quote myself:

"1. He was left on much longer than ever intended.
2. He was given the opportunity to change his own program and add to it.
3. He was exposed to alien holotech several times and generally messed with.
4. He was exposed to future holotech through the mobile emitter.
5. He had experiences no other hologram ever could, by way of using the mobile emitter. No other hologram could ever leave it's environment."

My argument is that the EMH became sentient due to all of these combined factors that the average hologram would never be exposed to.

Being left on for a long time was definitely part of it, but all of the reboots, exposure to alien tech/future tech and expanded experiences and dealing with "real" non-holodeck experiences tweaked him at some point, in some way into becoming fully sentient.

Maybe an EMH in similar circumstances in another setting wouldn't have this happen, who knows?

Also, the Voyager crew (except in certain episodes ) aren't a stupid group of people. Over time they all came to accept him as a person, risked their lives several times to rescue him from danger and seemed to genuinely care about and like him. Even the uber logical and unsentimental 7 of 9 had strong feelings for the Doctor. I don't believe that the only reason for this is their own loneliness or them just fooling themselves. Maybe someone like Harry would do something like that, but people like Janeway, 7, Torres, etc.? No way!

The truth is, neither of us can ever really prove our argument. I do feel that the intent of the writers was to present the Doctor as becoming sentient, for whatever that is worth though.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Right and wrong, such difficult whores to be sandwhiched between.

You could be right.

Unfortunately that's not how Bob Picardo played the role.

Bob played a thinking and emotional machine from the beginning whether he was supposed to or not.

Whatever you might want to say about the pilot, that surly is not a real emotion, he was quite able to use "it" as a filter for his every thought, but an episode or two later his feelings are hurt by people being being mean (kes' feeling? It was joint complaint eventually.) to him and he complains about how people leave him on because he gets bord and frustrated, and then an episode or two later he's all sad and melancholy that the crew is going to abandon him to go live with the Romulans, and then in the 12 episode: Heroes and Demons he has his first very own adventure with that Valkerie whose legs go all the way to the floor, which is where he might have had sex first and not witht he Vidiian Doctor, where upon he "seemed" to be a fully actualized sentient being using a gamut of emotions and thinking his way through the problems in front of him.

He either faked his sentiences in the beginning to keep the crew at ease and amused, or he always had it, or as I supposed he could have continued to always fake it as well as he did in the beginning. How are we supposed to tell the difference between incredibly well faked sentince and real sentience if Bob Picardo is delivering the same performance for both from alpha to omega if there was a hand over between the conditions at some point midway?

The Doctor was just about never, I could be wrong, written with obvious "sentience" limitations that any gradual improvements in his ability to be judged as a living being existed any better between the first half of season one and the last half of season 7.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

^ True, Picardo did play the Doctor as if he was always sentient.

I would argue that the EMH program was written by an extremely eccentric person (since we know that to be true) and was simply reacting that way at first, 'faking' it as you put it. Remember for the 1st few episodes he wanted to be turned off when people were finished using him and reacted basically the way any hologram would, just with a touch more sarcasm.
But just because it started out that way is no reason to assume that it stayed that way.

 

[Guy Gardener]

None whatsoever, which is why %99 of the people who watch this show think Pinocchio became a real boy.

I did almost put "Fake it till you make it" in my rant.

That Donald Trump bloke, fired a woman for saying "fake it till you make it" because he thought it was incredulous to glorify lies and incompetence with bald faced deception.

 

[Gary7]

I guess it's difficult to describe these holodeck characters in any real comparative sense to "sentience" or pure mimicry, because the show took liberties that were some serious departures from reality.

My biggest gripe of all with the EMH is that he is a program and was not properly treated as such... it is stated many times in the series that he is a "program" and there are numerous references to his "subroutines." So then, what about BACKUPS? Any program can be copied and stored for later retrieval. They treated the EMH as if the electrons making him up where physically dedicated to the EMH, that he can't be copied, only "transfered." This is really ludicrous.

With this kind of "violation" of software principles, it leaves one to question what is really sentience in the Voyager universe. If a program is self learning and "aware of its own existence", then is this really just part of the programming or is it actually sentient at that point? Perhaps we can't answer that adequately in the context of Voyager's treatment of holodeck characters and the EMH.

 

[Gary7]

Unfortunately that's not how Bob Picardo played the role.

Bob played a thinking and emotional machine from the beginning whether he was supposed to or not.

I don't entirely agree with that. In the beginning, he did appear less "sentient". He acted as an EMH and only activated when needed for such purposes. When his medical tasks were done, his next course of action was to deactivate himself until the next medical emergency. While he was activated, he had "attitude". He was ornery, arrogant, smug, ascerbic, sarcastic, and probably a few other adjectives. And that was just the latent personality induced by Zimmerman. His only "self aware" aspect was knowing he is an EMH program, and that's about it. He had no other ambitions but to do his job and then shut off.

Over time, that "personality" changed as the EMH learned to interact with the crew and adapt. It only took a few episodes for him to be told to "be nice" and stop acting as he had been. Later, as he progresses, he seeks to be treated with respect, rather than as just another device in the sickbay. Why would he care? The EMH really shouldn't... he wasn't programmed to care. In that sense, I'd say he started "evolving".

Picardo's progression of the role was subtle... he did broaden the character slowly over time. I can't say at what precise point that he appeared to be "sentient", but it did come about, IMHO.

 

[Aquehonga]

Definitely!

No reason why not.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The asking to be turned off thingy was in the 3rd or so episode, Parallax I think, when Kathryn did give him the ability to turn himself off. And you know what? he didn't. He chose to leave himself in violation with his previous instincts that by the time of the Swarm half way through season two, his extracurricular subirectories had bloated to the point that he had to eat another Hologram supposedly "as the same as he was" like a vampire because of a drive to survive no matter (or Kes was projecting.) the expense and tragedy to lesser (the same) creatures as alive (It''s a perfect metaphor for stem cell research.) as he is... His later kills were not documented during the stories run, but the 'backup' EMH seen in Living Witness was obviously "food" being kept in the larder for later munchies next time the doctor went a little potty... Quite similar to how Glory used to eat sanity in Buffy.

Point is, the massive limitations to his personality you all crow about were solved a couple weeks after caretaker in the real and imaginary world, that if to become self aware, he only needed to be running for a couple weeks, this may be why the diagnostic Hologram suggested to reboot the Doctors program at the earliest sign of trouble which was obviously months earlier.

Please note that by season 6, he still couldn't make an irrational/illogical decision if the two options presented seemed identical. He blew up just like the twit killer AI's from TOS, because he couldn't decide to save harry or that girl from latent Image. that sees to be an indicator that he had not as yet by that late date fully reached a point of sentience moving beyond the restrictions of his programming...especially after B'Elanna bitchslapped him for writing his own code in darkling.

O. Reginald Barclay programmed his"original" (im)personality in a possibly displaced Timeline according to season 2's projections, not Zimmerman.