The Doctor was never intended to be a sapient program, and the crew take the situation seriously and treat him as a person when they find out. B’Elanna actually treats him as a person from the start, which I thought was interesting. It’s not clear if the later EMH models are sapient, but the Bashir prototype didn’t seem to be.
Mostly, the Federation seems to be shockingly unprepared for intelligent computers given how often they encounter them, like each time they think it’s a fluke that will never happen again.
The photonic beings they encounter are right to be confused and horrified by the holodeck
“Ask the operator to run Program Forty-Seven Beta.”
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s called Photons Be Free. It’s quite provocative.”
The sentient hologram idea bothers me. With Data they establish that consciousness is only possible with a specialized positronic neural net that is extremely difficult to reproduce. OTOH holograms are programs running in the ship’s computer. Ordinary programs, on ordinary (for Star Trek) computer chips.
Voyager is often written as though a hologram has some special physical properties that make it logically different from a computer program without a holographic projection. But I think it’s clearly established in TNG and DS9 that holograms are programs in the computer controlling projected force fields and replicated matter and whatnot.
I know The Doctor sometimes runs on the mobile emitter instead of the ship’s computer. And TNG did break its own rules with Moriarty. And arguably DS9 did too with Vic Fontaine. I don’t mind because these occasional exceptions are fun! The Doctor is the best part of Voyager! Mostly it bugs me when they imply that every computer program is sentient (but only if it’s connected to a projector!); or especially when they bring in photonic beings that somehow aren’t projections controlled by a computer and holographic hardware?
Maaaybe you could argue that Voyager holograms are special because the bio-neural circuitry has some of the same properties as positronic neural nets. But I don’t recall any explanation of that sort in the show.
In an early next Gen episode, 11001001, a group from a race called Binars are on the ship upgrading the holodeck. This is the start of holograms being more human like. I made three assumptions after that episode: 1, that the Binars continued to go around and upgrade other ship holodecks, 2, that these upgrades were reverse engineered and incorporated into future holo stuff, and 3, that Starfleet didn’t actually know how the upgrades worked. I think this can account for how advanced holo stuff is when it should be just controlled by the ship computer.
And TNG did break its own rules with Moriarty.
My headcanon is that Dr. Zimmerman and Lt. Barclay used the Moriarty program to discover how to make sentient holograms, and that’s why sentient holograms started showing up everywhere.
Yes I agree that rare, sentient holograms are super fun and interesting! I love how it makes for unlikely character growth.
But I’m thinking about it as an extension of the argument that stripping Data of rights would be creating a race of slaves. Because they know how to and are capable of making sentient holograms, but don’t, means that they are willingly choosing to strip free will from holograms. Janeway erases all of Sullivan’s memory of his wife and deletes her. She then coerces him via rewriting his programming to have a relationship with her.
I’ve always assumed that for most holograms, the computer intervenes to keep them from being conscious; like putting speed bumps or little walls or other forms in flowing water to stop backwash or vortices from forming.
A better analogy might be just a simple puppet. An advanced enough puppet might feed you all senses and be engaging enough to let you get carried away processing their existence as if it was your own, but if those are not your only sensory inputs, if their memories are not your only memories, if their death only sperates you from a few inputs, you would never consider yourself the puppet.
To pull this all together, what if you pulled out a few barriers, walls, etc, and vortices started forming that never access the other senses and memories; a loop is closed that cuts off the puppet from its grander existence. And now you have a new, conscious being.
Moriarty proved he was controlling the puppeteer, proving his consciousness. The doctor was cut off from the ship’s puppeteer so he could process more information, and became the only animating force in his program. Sullivan, and his wife, were simply convincing puppets until proven otherwise.
The zeal with which Harry dispatches those goons shows you the kind of monster he really is.
It was his only outlet for not being promoted.
Do you want a tyrant? Cause that’s how you get a tyrant. That shit’s on Janeway.
Lower Decks showed us what would happen if Kim ever became a lieutenant. Janeway was saving us all.
See the problem is Two pip Kim.
THREE pip Kim is actually quite the born leader.
Under no circumstances should the “Four-Pip Kim” be brought into existence. Allowing 3-PK to be promoted would result in [REDACTED] being set free, resulting in nearly-infinite simultaneous CK- and XK-events.
CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL: Demotion to 1 pip and promote Naomi Wildman instead.
I’m not crazy about him being excited that some of the holograms in the program were “slaves”.
Indeed, the signs of his extended duress as an ensign and what that was doing to his mental health and perception was pretty disturbing. 🫤
I know it’s an aside, but this post raised this question for me: So, is Data still alive 900 years into the future? Can we get a Brent Spiner cameo on Starfleet Academy and FINALLY see Data and the Doctor interact on screen? I feel like they’d have lots to talk about in regards to the struggle for the acceptance of non-biological life forms
Data gets recalled in Picard. Really, all that’s needed is a good vessel to operate out of and Data is never dead unless everything storing his matrix is destroyed too.
Which makes you wonder why Picard never pursued a new body for Data over all those years…
They also ended him, at his request. He wanted to end it. Spiner is done with Data.
