Cast Biographies Doctor

Doctor 'Doc' Zimmerman

Holographic program available on some Federation starships, including the U.S.S. Voyager, intended as a short-term supplement to medical personnel in emergency situations. The EMH manifested himself as a humanoid physician, and could treat virtually any injury or known disease, but could function only in areas equipped with holographic projectors. The Emergency Medical Hologram was developed at Starfleet's Jupiter Station and was designed by Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. Lieutenant Reginald Barclay was a member of Zimmerman's development team, in charge of testing the EMH's interpersonal skills. The EMH program caused holographic projectors not only to generate an image of a person, but also to create a magnetic containment field, within which electromagnetic energy was trapped, thereby giving the Doctor the ability to physically manipulate real objects such as patients and medical instruments. The Sovereign class Starship Enterprise-E, launched in 2372, was also equipped with an Emergency Medical Hologram. Enterprise-E chief medical officer Beverly Crusher was not fond of the EMH program, although he proved useful in protecting the ship's medical staff during the Borg invasion of 2373. Zimmerman's team also worked to develop a more sophisticated version, called the long-term medical hologram (LMH). After the entire medical staff of the U.S.S. Voyager were killed in 2371 during the ship's rough passage to the Delta Quadrant, the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram became the only source of medical treatment for the crew. The Doctor was programmed with over five million possible treatments, with contingency options and adaptive programs utilizing sophisticated multitronic pathway programming. He was programmed with information from 2,000 medical references and the experience of 47 physicians. The EMH program, which was first activated on stardate 48308, consisted of more than fifty million gigaquads of computer data and was equipped with the medical knowledge of more than three thousand cultures. His knowledge of medical treatments included those based on psychospiritual beliefs such as those employed by some of Earth's Native Americans. The EMH's programming was extremely sophisticated, permitting him to learn from new data and experiences, and even to be creative. Shortly after stardate 48532, when crew member Neelix's lungs were removed, the doctor saved Neelix's life by devising a means of creating a pair of holographic lungs, using the holographic emitters in sickbay. The EMH was definitely capable of independent thought. In 2372, he refused a direct order to separate Tuvix into Tuvok and Neelix. He did so because obeying the order would have required him to take a life, violating his doctor's oath to do no harm. So sophisticated was the holographic doctor's program that he was a sentient life-form. He therefore found it frustrating when some members of the Voyager crew treated him as an inanimate computer program. Captain Janeway ordered that the EMH be given control over his own deactivation sequence, in order to avoid the indignity of his being deactivated by others. The Doctor's role as sole medical professional on the ship caused him to undergo significant growth as a sentient life-form. One of his early steps in this growth process was his search for a name for himself. Among the names he considered were Benjamin Spock and Jonas Salk. He also thought about Albert Schweitzer. Vidiian physician Danara Pel suggested Shmullus, after her beloved uncle. (In one possible future visited by Kes, the holographic doctor aboard the Voyager decided on the name Dr. van Gogh, after being known as Dr. Mozart for a time.) ("Before and After" [VGR].) The doctor was not programmed to bleed or to feel pain. When activated, the Emergency Medical Hologram established communication links with all key areas of the Starship Voyager. He sometimes used this ability to surreptitiously listen to conversations throughout the ship, When the Voyager visited Earth's past of 1996, Henry Starling fitted the EMH with an autonomous holo-emitter. When the Voyager's crew returned to their own time period, the doctor retained the holo-emitter, which gave him the ability to operate outside of sickbay, even in areas without holographic emitters. In 2373, the Emergency Medical Hologram created a personality-improvement holographic program that incorporated several historic characters' personalities into his subroutines. Unfortunately, the unsavory side of these characters turned the EMH to evil until B'Elanna Torres purged the personalities from his memory.

Robert Picardo

Robert Picardo plays The Doctor, a holographic figure serving as the emergency medical program devised by Starfleet in Star Trek: Voyager, produced by Paramount Network Television for broadcast on UPN. When the ship's doctor is killed, The Doctor becomes the resident physician aboard the Starship U.S.S. Voyager.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Picardo graduated from the William Penn Charter School. He entered Yale University as a pre-med student, not knowing that he would someday portray doctors in three separate productions: first as Dr. Dick Richards on the ABC series China Beach, then as Dr. McCaskill in the recent theatre production "The Waiting Room" at the Mark Taper Forum, and now as The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager.
While at Yale, Picardo landed a role in Leonard Bemstein's "Mass," a musical theater piece originally commissioned for the 1972 opening of the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C. In 1974, armed with a B.A. in Drama from Yale, he enrolled at the Circle in the Square Professional Theatre Workshop (fellow alumni include Kevin Bacon and Ken Olin). Picardo's theatrical work prospered as he appeared in the David Mamet play "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," and with Diane Keaton in "The Primary English Class."
Picardo made his Broadway debut in the leading role in the comedy hit "Gemini" with Danny Aiello. He went on to co-star with Jack Lemmon in Bernard Slade's "Tribute." His work in theatre also includes "Beyond Therapy" and "Geniuses" at the Los Angeles Public Theatre, and "The Normal Heart" at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, for which he won a Drama-Logue Award.
The awards and recognition continued as Picardo became involved in television. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role as Mr. Cutlip on the ABC series The Wonder Years. Furthermore, Picardo was awarded the Viewers For Quality Television Founder's Award for his outstanding performances in The Wonder Years and China Beach.
Picardo's extensive television work has included a starring role opposite Helena Bonham-Carter in NBC's movie-of-the-week Deadly Deception: The Marina Oswald Story, the HBO movie White Mile, and the NBC mini-series Deadly Matrimony. He had recurring roles on Home Improvement and L.A. Law, and he guest starred in Tales From The Crypt. Picardo recently starred in the feature film "Wagon's East," and has also appeared in "Gremlins II," "Innerspace," "The Burbs," "Back To School," "Star 80," "Loverboy" and "The Howling." He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.