There are a lot of things to regret about the cancelation of Starfleet Academy, but one of the biggest is that it now means there are two Star Trek shows, between it and Prodigy being cut short, that were giving us an opportunity to catch up with one of the franchise’s most fascinating characters: Robert Picardo’s Emergency Medical Hologram from Voyager. Now that regret is even deeper, because according to the man behind the Doctor, Academy‘s third season was preparing for an incredible opportunity to go even deeper.
That opportunity is “Living Witness”, the season 4 episode of Voyager that takes a wild, one-off turn. Set in the 32nd century, the episode focuses on a backup recreation of the Doctor being activated by an alien museum curator hundreds of years after Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, only to find the curator’s exhibit about Voyager to be based on wildly biased untruths, depicting the vessel as a cruel warship staffed by a sinister, militaristic crew. The episode ends with this backup version of the Doctor, years later after he has sorted out Voyager‘s real history and used it to unite the two alien species at the heart of the mystery, departing the Delta Quadrant in a ship of his own to try and get back to Earth.
Naturally, this has made Trek fans believe that, ever since Picardo was confirmed as returning to play the Doctor on Starfleet Academy, the show simply had to pick up on “Living Witness”. After all, the timing was perfect, given the series’ own 32nd-century setting. But Starfleet Academy‘s first season surprised fans instead by doing a surprise follow-up to “Real Life”—the episode where the Doctor learns the tough challenges of creating himself a holographic family—to serve as the bridge to bond the Doctor and one of Academy‘s young cadets, Sam.
Alas, the second, and now final, season won’t do it either—but Picardo did attempt to get the series’ producers to try it, only to be told it’d be an idea for season 3. Speaking this week on the D-Con Chamber podcast (Enterprise stars Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating’s very own Trek podcast), Picardo reflected on the untimely news of Starfleet Academy‘s end, and revealed his idea for the “Living Witness” sequel… which would’ve featured not one Robert Picardo, but potentially even three.
“I wanted to do an episode—now we can talk freely about it, because the show’s canceled […] I wanted to meet my Voyager back up, my old self, and be as I looked at 41 and play off my self.” Picardo began to explain (the relevant section is around 28 minutes into the video above).
According to Picardo, his episode idea would’ve seen the two Doctors at odds with each other at first, with the “younger” Doctor—despite their programs being the same age—lambasting his academy self for having programmed aging into his subroutines. But the two holograms would’ve come to work together to try and bond over their relationship to the EMH’s surly creator, Lewis Zimmerman (also played by Picardo across multiple appearances in Voyager and Deep Space Nine—starting a story idea that Picardo himself initially pitched back on Voyager!).
“The Doctor and his backup program are two children of the same parent; one has resolved the issues, the other hasn’t, and after 800 years, those daddy issues, those parental conflicts, they don’t go away if you don’t deal with them,” Picardo added.
Alas, it’s not to be. We’ll have to wait and see if the idea can live on in another form, if we can’t get more Starfleet Academy on TV—Picardo himself is clearly still interested in it!
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