Why was the doctor Humaniform?

[Guy Gardener]

Having a non-humaniform program for the sake of it being a nonhumaniform, when the galaxy, seeded by the Preservers, is clearly stacked towards humaniform, seems more racist, pandering and self-congratulatory to me, than validating the most common form, which also just happens to be your own.

Objection: assumes a preponderance not in evidence. As Spock noted, humanoid life forms are a minority in the galaxy. The Enterprise (and Voyager) ran across more because they went places humanoid life forms could be expected, on the grounds that they would be more likely to be able to meaningfully interact with beings that share similar sensory and environmental factors, but that is not the same thing as the galaxy being mostly or even largely humanoid.

Sustained - to a point. I'll concede that the true contents of the galaxy can only be speculated about; but the point about who would be using the sickbay most often stands, it seems.

Which sickbay?

All of them?

On every ship and every station

And dozens if not hundreds in every hospital on every one of a thousand planets or outposts...

The casualties in the dominion war was being calculated in the trillions, and what sort of ratio should we suspect is there between the ugly bags of mostly water and their light bulbs?

Once the mobile emitter becomes common, because Starfleet doesn't care how illegal it is, you'd have to think that it wouldn't be a roaming device for a hologram afforded the illusion of freedom, but more so every being and entity and person in the federation at need would be able to manifest their own emh to ix what ever is wrong with them.

 

[KimMH]

For budgetary concerns in this life of course it makes sense to have a humiform EMH but it could have been quite entertaining to have a borgified dctr with edward scissorhand appendages to facilitate treatment. Given the advancement of medicine cutting tools didn't seem very necessary, though. A lot of subcutaneous work sans scalpels occurred - a lot of chemical and genetic manipulation.

As for the apparent excess of humanoid species in the galaxy perhaps an organization with a lot of humanoid species is going to attract more humaniod species and in spite of wishing to explore starnge new worlds may have more sucess in first contact situations with other humanoid species. Just like not all 21st century humans think eradication of racism is a good or necessary thng, other species may not at all wish to be equated with species that are not like them and may have no wish to interact with humanoid species. Racism is a perfectly acceptable state of mind to many people, heinious as it seems to most of us (I hope.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

I watched a tv show called Calling Mumbai last night and Richard E grant was playing a racist character whoe said quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever heard...

"Don't let anyone tell you any different, the Welsh ARE genetically doomed!"

But then laughing at racism was funny in the 70s and it still is because the wrongness is self evident.

I liked the Archie Bunker reference in A Night at the Museum II.

Have, most of you seen TNG The Chase, I've seen it mentioned in this thread, but I think a couple of you have no idea what the reference means, but the abundance of humanoid life was explained that 5 million years ago a race called the preservers seeded the galaxy with their own dna, and it seems that they in the fiction star trek universe all do have, albeit mortal, a prime mover after all.

When The crew went apeshit over that cardassian Doctor, couldn't Janeway have put the same medical information into an andorian and fibbed a little?

Remember the boner the Doctor had over that Borg arm he was claiming was the greatest medical tool ever, which we never ever saw again?

If used, that would have made him Edward Borghands,

 

[Triskelion]

Gah! Thanks Doc, it's just hemorrhoids! I'll live with it!

Objection: assumes a preponderance not in evidence. As Spock noted, humanoid life forms are a minority in the galaxy. The Enterprise (and Voyager) ran across more because they went places humanoid life forms could be expected, on the grounds that they would be more likely to be able to meaningfully interact with beings that share similar sensory and environmental factors, but that is not the same thing as the galaxy being mostly or even largely humanoid.

Sustained - to a point. I'll concede that the true contents of the galaxy can only be speculated about; but the point about who would be using the sickbay most often stands, it seems.

Which sickbay?

All of them?

On every ship and every station

And dozens if not hundreds in every hospital on every one of a thousand planets or outposts...

The casualties in the dominion war was being calculated in the trillions, and what sort of ratio should we suspect is there between the ugly bags of mostly water and their light bulbs?

Once the mobile emitter becomes common, because Starfleet doesn't care how illegal it is, you'd have to think that it wouldn't be a roaming device for a hologram afforded the illusion of freedom, but more so every being and entity and person in the federation at need would be able to manifest their own emh to ix what ever is wrong with them.

Yeah, you're right, not every ship in the fleet or in the Fed... I believe the Titan series of novels may have an alien doctor, it's got the most diverse crew to date.

Consider Voy's assignment pre-Badlands. They were never designed to venture too far from Fed space, isn't that about right?

Imagine if someone's in the hospital, they may not want a squid or a big drill press-looking machine working on them. They'd be all pretending to be passed out. Frankly I'd want Kes. You know, someone who understands humanoid pain and has compassion.

And maybe humanoid programmers don't grasp the complexity of nonhumanoid forms well enough to holo-program them into working brain surgeons?