Does nobody in the 24th century world of Star Trek back up their computer hard d!
Question: Almost every night on Star Trek Voyager, the EMH (holographic doctor) will suffer some catastrophic failure in his subroutines.
We then hear everyone saying that if they can't stop the degradation in his programme, he'll be lost forever.
Why doesn't someone just get out the installation CDRom that he came supplied with, and re-install him?
Or even more sensible, why doesn't someone make a backup of his programme?
I can't believe the Starfleet IT department would have overlooked such a basic principle of computer system maintenance.
Do you think the Starfleet IT department are as feckless, lazy and workshy as most present day IT departments?
Maybe that's why you never see anyone from the starships IT departments.
No-one can find them.
Can you imagine calling up the help-desk to report a problem with the life-support computers, only to be told by some disinterested geek that you have to *turn it off then back on again*...
Answers: Almost every night on Star Trek Voyager, the EMH (holographic doctor) will suffer some catastrophic failure in his subroutines.
We then hear everyone saying that if they can't stop the degradation in his programme, he'll be lost forever.
Why doesn't someone just get out the installation CDRom that he came supplied with, and re-install him?
Or even more sensible, why doesn't someone make a backup of his programme?
I can't believe the Starfleet IT department would have overlooked such a basic principle of computer system maintenance.
Do you think the Starfleet IT department are as feckless, lazy and workshy as most present day IT departments?
Maybe that's why you never see anyone from the starships IT departments.
No-one can find them.
Can you imagine calling up the help-desk to report a problem with the life-support computers, only to be told by some disinterested geek that you have to *turn it off then back on again*...
I guess they are as lazy as people in the 21st century. heh. I have never liked the thought of a computer animated doctor,what if something went wrong (as you mentioned) with it and it gave the wrong diagnoses and treatment? Give me good ol country doctor Doctor McCoy or Doctor Crusher anyday.
lmfao..oh you are so right,thanks this has cheered me up no end..and im a trekkiie,guess the makers of the programme didnt recognise that flaw....have a star..captain...lol...
all this high spec stuff and they still suffer from Klingon's.
lol... good point.
Actually I was watching star-trek re-runs recently so I've considered this.
There was one where the doctor was having problems like those you described and I think the problem was that they could simply reinitialise his original program but he'd have lost 4 (or was it 5) years of new information, his interests in opera and such, memories of voyager and basically those memories of existence, he'd be back to the unlovable guy they activated in the first episode.
I think one of the reasons they didn't back up the complete doctor was that his additions to the programming took up many many terabytes. Doesn't seem likely but never mind. If they can download him to the mobile emitter surely that counts as a storage drive? You could run two doctors at once, right? One in the holodeck and one from the emitter. Tom Paris would finally escape his duties as nurse! lol
I think they avoid such plot complications to keep the illusion of the doctor as a person and not a computer program. Its like the Matrix Reloaded, everyone was so amazed that Smith found a way to copy himself - yeah, a program that can copy itself - wow, what a miracle! Those films had such potential... oh well.
This is clearly defined by the series.
The Doctor has been hacked and modified so much, he has become his own person.
If you reinstalled from scratch, what you would be doing would be effectively "killing" the doctor and replacing him with a new one.
The experiences the doctor has had cannot be backed up as they would take up more CD-RWs than were ever made.