How The Doctor got his mobile emitter in Star Trek: Voyager is bonkers

The Doctor got his most impressive asset in Star Trek: Voyager thanks to the 1990s.

Star Trek: Voyager created a great character simply known as The Doctor. The Doctor was a character who was completely holographic. He was known as the Emergency Medical Hologram, only meant to be used short-term as an aid in case the ship’s chief medical officer was overwhelmed, incapacitated, or, sadly, dead. Of course, all of those scenarios would have the ship within a few days to weeks away from Starfleet space.

In the case of the Voyager, the ship The Doctor served on, they were about 70 years away from Federation space, making the EMH far more vital than any other EMH in Starfleet.

The difficulty with the Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager was that, as a hologram, he could only go from his medical bay, and the holodecks, as those were the only rooms on the ship that were outfitted with holographic emitters. Otherwise, there was no other way to see The Doctor. The Voyager was considered the most advanced ship in the fleet upon its launch, and yet, the Doctor wouldn’t get the ability to roam freely until they went to the past.

The Doctor was able to walk off of The Voyager thanks to the 1990s

The mobile emitter was not a piece of technology that the folks on the Voyager could properly conceive of, due to power restraints, but thanks to Henry Starling getting his hands on the timeship Aeon, the Doctor gained mobility.

After ending up traveling back to 1996, the Voyager met Starling, who was using future technology to revolutionize the modern world. He did this a few times for things like the internet, barcode readers, and laptops, and more than likely found the mobile emitter in the Aeon after finding it crashed landed in the 1960s.

When the Voyager finally caught up to him, he had been using future tech for about 30 years and was finally put to a stop thanks to Voyager and its crew. Yet, if it wasn’t for Sterling stealing tech from the future, and giving it to Doctor, the hologram would have never been able to leave those two specific locations on the ship.

Now, the end of the episode seems to imply that Starling never goes on to get his hands on the Aeon and that a different future (and past) is created. Yet, The Doctor retains the emitter. Does that make sense? No, but then again, time travel never does.