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 lead water pipes of the future?
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.
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.
three words
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 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.
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 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”.
So is TNG’s entire plotline with Moriarty. One could argue that the Federation knew about the sentience of holograms long before the Voyager era, and actively encouraged their slavery despite their clear sentience.
In fact the final "solution" Picard & Data work out for Moriarty in TNG is pretty fucking evil if you think about it.
So, summary is that Moriarty is holding the Enterprise hostage (he’s gained the command codes) in exchange for his freedom from the holodeck. Picard trades it for control of the Enterprise, and Moriarty and his love, the Countess, depart the Enterprise on a shuttle.
Unknown to Moriarty, Data and Picard had created a program within the program, allowing Moriarty to believe he had departed the holodeck despite actually remaining within it. Picard and Data then ended the program the moment the command lockouts were removed, and left the holodeck a few minutes later. Moriarty and the Countess Regina Barthalomew would spend the rest of their lives inside a memory module, unaware of their situation, for as far as they were concerned they had left the Enterprise to live their lives in the real world.
The resolution of that story is presented as Picard, a representative of Starfleet, genuinely expressing a desire to find a more permanent and real solution for Moriarty. Unfortunately as established by Lower Decks (and indeed hinted at in the second Moriarty episode itself) Starfleet is actually really, really bad at follow-through.
To be fair, they had a team at Starfleet HQ working on granting Moriarty independence from the holodeck for four years and simply didn’t have the technology for it. They also didn’t know he was aware that whole time and thought he was basically asleep. Picard is also very reasonable and encouraging when it looks like he’s left the holodeck, and only starts on the prison box when it’s clear he’s willing to destroy the ship if they don’t get him off the holodeck.
They trapped Moriarty and the Countess inside a velvet prison, yes, but with every intention of finding a way to release them into the universe.
I like to think that in the future, they give the two a reverse engineered holo-emitter the doctor uses in Voyager. They know how it works, but they can’t yet duplicate it due to technological limitations.
So at some point in the future, some science Ensign is gonna come across the Moriarty Cube in storage and give them bodies. Hijinks will ensue as Moriarty is not happy with having been trapped so long, as he DID eventually figure it out, and has to be reminded of his “humanity” to accept things again. Then they give the happy couple their mobile emitters, and a small ship equipped with emitters everywhere, including on the hull to allow for limited travel near the ship without a mobile emitter being necessary.
Claimed they had every intention. That intention is never followed through, even after they gain the capacity to create holo-emitters. Overall, it’s kind of a horrifying fate, because canonically, without another resolution, eventually they reach the limits of the fake universe, and discover they’ve been imprisoned the entire time.
eventually they reach the limits of the fake universe, and discover they’ve been imprisoned the entire time.
But how does it differs from our reality which could just be a simulation altogether?
Because they’re immortal, and will eventually find the limitations of the simulation over time, thus knowing they are forever trapped in a box. Because the Star Trek writers never wrote a conclusion for them beyond being trapped in the simulation, canonically they eventually meet this fate.
Unless there’s provision in their programming for them to age normally within the simulation, and eventually die at the end of a life well lived.
Except that there’s not, canonically, until Starfleet Academy. The Doctor from Voyager develops it roughly 200 years after the end of the Voyager series - and that only ages his appearance on a voluntary basis. He’s still effectively immortal.
Plus, previously to this “final solution” in TNG, when they turned the holodeck off for a number of years, Moriarity was still conscious, frozen in a dead world and aware of the passage of time, but did not age.
While it’s not a hologram, it’s established in TNG that another artificial lifeform was created with the capacity to naturally age and die on a human timescale.
The same is later established in Picard for
spoiler
