Was the Mobile Emitter a Bad Idea?

[Drone]

I LOVED the mobile emitter. It allowed the Doctor to grow. If you watch Season 1-2 EMH and then watch, say Season 5 or 6 EMH...totally different. Still sarcastic and clever, but the bitterness is gone and him exploring his new life and gaining new experiences is what made his character arc so awesome.

I don't exactly agree with the last part of this statement. The sentiments that he fully and unambiguously expressed in Author Author, suggest that even at the end, he retained a keen appreciation of the limitations of holographic enfranchisement in Voyager's society, and to satisfy the greater reach that the episode aimed for, contemporary life in the Federation. Certainly, the degree to which Doc's persona and the perception of his ability to contribute to the ship's welfare beyond those four (or more) walls were given any credence, grew by leaps and bounds, but his recognition of his Otherness was still there, illustrated by any number of comments by him throughout the series run.


To have become one of the main axes of the show as I suppose became pretty clear early on needed to happen, we were going to have to see the introduction of the mobile emitter, as the homegrown solution wasn't going to cut it, even forgetting about the haha gaffe in Persistence of Vision. Besides, how on earth could an ECH possess any kind of gravitas if he was stuck performing those executive functions from sickbay!!!


By the way, kudos on your star turn, Cap'n!

 

[Guy Gardener]

If the mobile emitter was constructed by Starling in the past, from 20th century raw materials, then no it wasn't.

That seems to be the case. There wouldn't really be a reason that Braxton would have carried an emitter like that aboard the Aeon. Starling, OTOH, was intent on making use of the Doctor's program, so it stands to reason Starling built the emitter himself for that purpose.

Although Starling could have still used material salvaged FROM the Aeon to build the emitter. Indeed, "Drone" implies this, since the drone that arises in that episode is based on 29th-century tech.

The ship would have had a replicator and a technical database (which is just a stupid idea considering the liklihood of contamination). The emitter could have been fabricated as needed, and more importantly if the ship was going to find trouble, or lok for trouble, surely it would have had an EMH and an ECH to help the one wo/man crew out of any bind that he, or she might find themself in.

Then he still would have built it based on 29th century knowledge (which it clearly was since it was new and unheard of to Voyager), so yes, it would still have been a violation of the temporal prime directive.

29th century knowledge was used to kick start the microchip revolution of the late 20th century. If the Mobile Emitter is illegal tech, then so is the Datapoint 2200 and everything else that was based on Chronowerx's fraudulent inventions.

 

[picardo]

The fact that the technology served to incubate a borg is proof enough that it "polluted" the timeline.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Too stupid to live.

They died and deservedly so.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Janeway rarely gave the Temporal Prime Directive anything other than lip service.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Why are you always making blowjob jokes?

 

[JarodRussell]

Did Chronoworx exist in the original timeline?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Werx with an "e".



Ed has a lisp. I wonder if that factors into the spelling vs. pronunciation?

The title is on the nose.

It's like Hank was saying to the future and anyone from the future: "Go fuck yourself!"

Obviously, even without the the futuretech, Starling was a Genius who was going to be part of the brave new world to come... But the name of his company was a private joke only he got, that had no context with out the Aeon in his Garage.

There was no "original" timeline that we saw(, which isn't saying a lot.).

It was a time loop.

A leads to b leads to C leads to A.

"Starling" created the future that was Janeways past.

A timeline without Starling finding the Aeon, would not have lead to the Federation we knew, or Kirk or even Janeway herself... So Kathy would be a little suicidal to contemplate derailing the birth of her great grand parents.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Why are you always making blowjob jokes?

Don't look at me, it's Janeway fellating the timeline.

Did Chronoworx exist in the original timeline?

Did the Eugenics Wars happen in the Chronowerx timeline?

 

[Guy Gardener]

On Rain Robinson's desk, on camera, in the episode, which you would have seen if you were observant, which I wasn't either, there is a scale model of a DY-100 Class Sleeper ship.

So... Something like "that" happened.

There are novels.

 

[hux]

My own fault for reading the thread but it's too late now

At the end of Futures end, Braxton says he has no memory of that timeline so does that mean when Voyager returned to the future, it was a different timeline to the one they had just been in (one where Braxton had clearly been on earth)

Then in Relativity, Braxton does have memories of the timeline where he was trapped on earth so does that mean that somewhere between futures end and relativity, Voyager must have ended up back in the original timeline (maybe year of hell put them back there)

I could just be talking crap but i honestly don't know at this point

 

[Captain Kathryn]

My own fault for reading the thread but it's too late now

At the end of Futures end, Braxton says he has no memory of that timeline so does that mean when Voyager returned to the future, it was a different timeline to the one they had just been in (one where Braxton had clearly been on earth)

Then in Relativity, Braxton does have memories of the timeline where he was trapped on earth so does that mean that somewhere between futures end and relativity, Voyager must have ended up back in the original timeline (maybe year of hell put them back there)

I could just be talking crap but i honestly don't know at this point

That always bothered me that in Future's End, Braxton doesn't remember it at all and then in Relativity he's like "that's the reason I need to get my revenge on Janeway!!!" like a lunatic.

But in his century, they seem to have multiple timelines so it's entirely possible that he didn't remember and then another version of himself remembered....something like that.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Did Chronoworx exist in the original timeline?

Did the Eugenics Wars happen in the Chronowerx timeline?

Chronowerx IS the original timeline. Janeway herself recognized that most of the Federation's technology is based on Starling's work. She said that when they were snooping around his office.

 

[Vandervecken]

Hearkening back to earlier comments in the thread: there have to be some limitations on what replicators can do, or we'd have giant replicators spitting out whole starships instead of ships still being put together in shipyards. No doubt replicators figure importantly in that construction, but at no time do we ever hear of any race just churning out ship after ship from an "assembly line" of single, giant replications. During the Dominion War, I'm sure one side or the other would have loved to have done so, and they didn't.

I did notice that, after Future's End, there weren't a lot of episodes with the Doctor beating the crap out of peeps, which I'd half expected, as in FE the writers suddenly discovered that, unless you're set up with tech to actually disrupt photonic beings, a solid hologram could kick the living crap out of you and take no harm itself and you can't do thing one. Fortunately the writers did recognize the danger of having action-hero Doctor saving the day too often.

And I vote emitter good.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I did notice that, after Future's End, there weren't a lot of episodes with the Doctor beating the crap out of peeps

I would have LOVED to see the Doctor beating up Peeps.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's called "integration".

They take two or several temporal dopplegangers and squash them into a single composite life form.

JANEWAY: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. I'm going back in time to stop Braxton, but you already have him.
DUCANE: And there's a third one in our brig. I arrested him earlier today. But, don't worry, they'll all be reintegrated in time for the trial.

Old grampa Braxton, and Hot spacetime adventurer Braxton from Futures End where Tuvixed, and then sent back to work after the appropriate amount of rehabilitation.

Crazy grampa Braxton comes from a timeline where the Aeon and Voyager furiously squirted out of 1996 and rammed the 29th century Earth to it's explosive detriment.

Sexy space time adventurer Captain Braxton comes from a timeline where Voyager did not collide with the 29th century Earth to it's explosive detriment, but instead where Voyager continued it's mission home and eventually added to Earths technical know how that it now believes in multiple timelines, and not a single inviolable series of fixed paradoxes on one lonely immutable timeline.

(I think it wasn't just keeping the emitter that that changed everything. It was "having" the emitter period. The Doctor helped Janeway launch the torpedo, so Voyager did not have to ram the Aeon. It's just a question of why in an earlier cycle of this story that there wasn't a mobile emitter that Janeway failed to launch the Torpedo and Chuckes had to ram the Aeon (Or if the Doctor hadn't rescued Chuckles from the survivalists, Janeway would not have given up the bridge to the nobody dick heads still on the bridge (142 crew, and she only knows ten of them on a personal level, and probably not much more than that by name.) and she would have rammed the Aeon herself.)? It's pretty obvious that sexy space adventurer Braxon, or a still future Braxon had to have put the mobile emitter there in the Aeon to derail the destruction of the 29th century, and derail the absence of Voyager after 2372, because Voyager suddenly didn't die, and they bring home exploitable future tech that puts the Federation four hundred years ahead of the curve in some respects.)

 

[exodus]

So Voyager did have some industrial replicators on board? That didn't seem to really be explored. I never saw them doing anything about their supply troubles apart from rationing food, complaining, and visiting planets to get deuterium. They never said anything about having to build more shuttlecraft or anything, it just happened.

Remember how much crap O'Brien had to put up with to keep DS9 running? It should have been more like that.

DS9 is a large space station that holds over 300 people(Is that just staff or visitors too?), Voyager is a small ship of 150. The supply and demand issues for each would be vastly different. Understanding the size and demand issues, I would think Industrial Replicators aren't meant to indicate they use it to make larger items but rather use it to meet the supply demands of the large turn over of consumer use a port of call(bus stations, air ports, etc.) would have.(more people, higher use or energy and resources) The logical idea of how larger panels and hull plating are replicated on a Starship would be producing it on the holodeck, since the replicators are tided into them. Landing the ship on a planets surface(because Voyager doesn't need a space port for repairs like they showed in "Nightingale") and beaming that hull plating to the waiting repair crew on the outside of the ship. O'Brian had ALLOT more on his too do list on a fdaily basis than Be'Lanna did, kinda why O'Brian needed the help of both Starfleet AND Bajorian Engineers. His staff was probably equal to the entire crew of Voyager.

If they had the supplies and understanding to build the Delta Flyer, then that was our indication that they were also building Shuttles all along too. You can easily get the metal alloys for it from beaming debris from other destroyed shuttles or ships they encounter. In a replicator, nothing goes to waste and ANYTHING you put in it is useful.

They probably never felt the need to explain these things to us because they figured after watching TNG, DS9 & all the movies, we already should know this.

 

[Drone]

On Rain Robinson's desk, on camera, in the episode, which you would have seen if you were observant, which I wasn't either, there is a scale model of a DY-100 Class Sleeper ship.

So... Something like "that" happened.

There are novels.

As explanation, perhaps the Chronowerx timeline was one where Star Trek, or a production strikingly like it, was vastly popular and spawned the issuance of many models of spacecraft depicted in said program. Obviously, given Rain's interest in campy science fiction. such an item would be one of not inconsiderable interest to her to display at her workplace, n'est -ce pas?

 

[2takesfrakes]

I LOVED the mobile emitter. It allowed the Doctor to grow. If you watch Season 1-2 EMH and then watch, say Season 5 or 6 EMH...totally different. Still sarcastic and clever, but the bitterness is gone and him exploring his new life and gaining new experiences is what made his character arc so awesome.

... AGREED! Excellent post, Captain Kathryn! Very well-said ...

 

[Lynx]

For "Future's End" it was OK. In the long run it was a mistake. Honestly, I did find the whole thing with a living, talking, feeling moving image a bit over the top. To make him almost as a living, talking, feeling moving image who all of a sudden became so close to a human that he could move around without restrictions was even more over the top.

Maybe they should have made him an android, like Data.