Star Trek: Voyager may have missed an opportunity to name The Doctor

Star Trek: Voyager missed a chance to name The Doctor

The Doctor was easily one of the best characters on Star Trek: Voyager. Played wonderfully by Robert Picardo, we got to see him develop and grow throughout the season. Developing his personality, sense of humor, and even potential love interests. And while he had everything from crushes to a family, the one thing he never got was a name.

Voyager kept him nameless for many reasons, but none of them really ever made a ton of sense. While he was an Emergency Command Hologram and one of many, he became wildly unique due to how evolved his holographic memory had become. It got to the point where he resembled a real person by the end of the show.

At one point, he even suffers from guilt for choosing to save Harry Kim over another crew member, who both had near identical odds of surviving their wounds. They wrote him magnificently but the one thing that he deserved was a name.

The Doctor’s name was a huge storyline for him during Star Trek: Voyager

The first few seasons of the show really centered around him looking for not just a name, but an identity. And while the storyline is “resolved”, it’s only due to him giving up on ever finding a name. Even though in an alternate future, we do see that he’s taken on a name; Joe, after his wife’s father. Yes, in the future he has a wife.

And while some will argue that his name, revealed in the series finale “Endgame”, should count, I argue that it doesn’t. As that future never existed. I think they missed out on a prime opportunity, especially early on in the series, to discover a meaningful name.

Not that I have any really good suggestions, but The Doctor found out that he was as unique from the other EMH Mk 1s as any person was from their own family. It was a little sad that the series ended and this unique being was still referred to as his job title.

Life is more about being what you do, and while the writers certainly didn’t intend this to be the case, not naming him made it feel like his entire being was his job. And, especially by the end of the show, he was so much more than that.