Bry_Sinclair wrote:
The EMH and his God complex (it makes him a far more unbearable character than even Wesley).
Ríu ríu, chíu wrote:
Particularly that bit in "Latent Image" where the EMH apparently has convinced himself that he's the only doctor in history who has ever lost a patient.
I think what was trying to be communicated in this episode was a conflict between the machine (programming) and still evolving consciousness of the EMH. Obviously, he had lost patients before, as we've seen directly. However, this instance seemed to illustrate a limitation or flaw in his programming when presented with a situation with this kind of ambiguity, both patients having an equal chance of survival with the same treatment, but there only being the time to deal with one. It might seem unlikely, but this scenario may have been outside the protocols of what the Doctor's processes on triage were designed to engage. At the same time, the fact that as a member of the crew, he was undoubtedly closer to Kim (the first one he encountered) and that personal relationships had been playing an increasing role in the growth of his interests, biases, and general life experience, set up a situation that inevitably would pit his basic role as a healer with the realization that he had made a value judgement that was outside of what he was designed to process, with the outcome of a cascading paralysis and breakdown as was ultimately shown.
It's interesting that Janeway's consideration of the course of action to take is still primarily predicated on the sense of the EMH as being that "piece of technology", despite the changes that he had already gone through. It would have been interesting if a counselor, or Kes, had been available, if the decision would have at least broached the possibility of an interpersonal relational talk therapy approach, than what was done instead.
At any rate, I certainly don't see this as a representation of the Doctor as perceiving himself as being superior, quite the opposite, as he is ultimately shown working through a flaw or problem, in a quite human way, integrating the traumatic experience into his web of experience and incrementally clawing his way to understanding and acceptance of what was before, impossible to process. I think it was, in fact, a thoughtful effort at showing the accretion of sensibilities that bit by bit brought him to the level of human type awareness and consciousness that, by the end of the journey, I think it's more than plausible to attribute to him.
TheGoodStuff
A few more:
3. Random bad-guys also seem to quite easily be able to lock the crew out of random, essential ship functions. Transporters, internal sensors, force fields...all can be re-routed or disabled by random people in five minutes. Hell, there is a Voyager episode where Naomi locks Harry Kim out of transporter controls!
This piqued my interest. I couldn't recall any such incident and looking through, at least, the general synopsis of those episodes in which she appeared, again saw no evidence of it having occurred. Now she did encrypt the holodeck controls so Neelix wasn't able to make changes in the program playing during Once Upon a Time. Might you be thinking of that? If not, please see if you can identify the one you're referencing as it's kind of gotten under my skin now!!
