Robert Picardo is back in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, reprising his iconic Star Trek: Voyager role. The classic Emergency Medical Hologram became one of Voyager’s most delightful cast over the show’s seven-season run, as the Doctor learned to deal with emotions and become a sentient being in his own right. It’s the kind of classic story Star Trek has dealt with so many times (the most obvious example being TNG‘s Commander Data), and it pretty much always works.
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Now, a full 25 years after Voyager‘s end, the Doctor is back. Picardo is reprising the role in his capacity as medic for Starfleet Academy, and he’s clearly more than a cameo; as the second episode confirms, the Doctor is determined to make his presence felt. Picardo has joked that the Doctor is now a Yoda figure, an aged mentor to the students, given his vast experience and knowledge of Federation history. But why has the Doctor’s appearance changed?
The Doctor Has Changed His Program
From an out-of-universe perspective, of course, the Doctor’s appearance has changed simply because of the passage of time. In-universe, though, Starfleet Academy episode 1 drops a quick reference to explain why the Doctor looks older; he learned that humans don’t react well to someone apparently never getting older, and so added an aging program into his holographic systems to ensure his appearance would change. No doubt the aging is much slower, given the Doctor doesn’t exactly look like he’s over 800 years old.
Starfleet Academy‘s cast features a number of returning characters, but none with Picardo’s celebrity in the fandom. The Voyager veteran has taken joyfully to social media to celebrate his return, expressing delight that he’s been part of the Star Trek franchise for more than half its lifetime. He’s also used the opportunity to make his views known on social issues of today, standing for the Federation’s “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” theme.
Starfleet Academy may be boldly going further on in the timeline, but this is still the same Doctor. He’s perhaps a little more grumpy now than he was before, but that has presumably come from literal centuries of dealing with the same “fleshy” beings. There’s one delightful scene in the premiere where he expresses disbelief that a cadet has already swallowed their comm-badge, a moment that seems wonderfully in-character.
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Image Courtesy of Prime Video -
Image Courtesy of Netflix
