Emergency Medical Hologram
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- This article refers generally to the fictional Star Trek technology, the Emergency Medical Hologram. For the character in Star Trek: Voyager, see Doctor (Star Trek).
Image:EMH001.jpg In the Star Trek fictional universe, the Emergency Medical Hologram or EMH is a holographic program intended to support or replace medical personnel aboard a Starfleet vessel or installation in case of emergency. The EMH was most commonly seen on the series Star Trek: Voyager, as played by Robert Picardo. The program also made appearances on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the movie Star Trek: First Contact. It should be noted that the kind of holograms used in Star Trek in general and the EMH system in particular are "solid", and not mere three dimensional images (See: Holodeck for a more in-depth explanation of the technologies used to achieve this). The holographic personification of the EMH program can therefore manipulate objects and perform surgery just like a real doctor. The limitation however is that the EMH can only operate in an area covered by a compatible holo-emitter, with the standard EMH setup this means the EMH's "body" is usually confined to just the sickbay, though on larger, more modern ships like the Prometheus class ships, additional holo-emitters are often installed in other key areas of the ship, such as the bridge and the engineering section as well.
First activated on Stardate 48315, the EMH was created by Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, with assistance from Lt. Reginald Barclay. It possesses one of the Federation's most extensive medical databases, containing information from over 3,000 cultures and the personal experiences of 47 specific surgeons. The program itself is built on an adaptive heuristic matrix, pioneered by Dr. Zimmerman, which allows the EMH programs to learn and adapt quickly to new situations.
Four versions of the EMH series have been created to date, the Mark I, II, III and IV. While the status of the latter three incarnations is unknown, the Mark I programs, based on Dr. Zimmerman himself and possessing his short temper and numerous other character flaws, failed to live up to Starfleet expectations and were re-assigned to menial labour. Nicknames for the Mark I's include "Emergency Medical Hotheads" and "Extremely Marginal Housecalls".
The only Mark II to appear on screen was in the Voyager episode "Message in a Bottle" aboard the USS Prometheus. The Mark II believed himself to be far superior to the Doctor, but the two had to work together to help retake the ship from Romulan captors. The Mark II was played by Andy Dick.
Only three Mark I's avoided the aforementioned re-assignment to menial labour. The EMH's of the USS Voyager and the USS Equinox, both of which were stranded in the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker. Of these two, only Voyager's EMH (known as "The Doctor" to the crew) survived. Because Voyager's entire medical staff was killed in the initial episode, the EMH system was forced to take on the duties of a full time doctor, and ended up having a total run-time of approximately 10 years. He is the oldest EMH known to be in existence, and over the course of his long run-time he developed better people skills, overcame the many inherent flaws and limitations of his original programming (either though trial and error, or re-programming himself), he developed a complex personality with hobbies and ambitions, and eventually became accepted as an equal member of the ship's crew, a friend and fellow sentient being, not just an annoying expert system. The Equinox EMH was reprogrammed by the crew so that its ethical subroutines were removed, allowing the crew to use it to extract materials from a loving species to power their engines, but this EMH was deleted by the Voyager EMH after it tried to steal his mobile emitter and pose as him. The third Mark I to avoid re-assignment was actually a backup copy of the Voyager EMH, which the Kyrians had stolen in a raid against Voyager. It spent nearly 700 years dormant in a Kyrian museum exhibit showing their biased version of the encounter. Eventually a curator managed to re-activate the EMH, and after setting the historical record straight he served as a surgical chancellor for the Kyrians and Vaskans for many years before departing towards Earth. His ultimate fate is unknown.
Dr. Zimmerman has also been involved in a project to create a longer-running version of the EMH, the Long-term Medical Hologram. The status of this project is unknown following the discovery that Dr. Julian Bashir, the man selected to be the template for the LMH, was genetically enhanced.
In the Voyager episode Life Line, it is revealled that the mark II was replaced with a Mark III, and then a Mark IV. Neither of the two replacements programs have been seen on Screen. it is also unclear what happened to the Mark II or III though it can be assumed they were ether retired or reprogrammed like the Mark I.