800 years after originating The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Picardo reprised his iconic holographic alter ego in live-action. However, the original Emergency Medical Hologram is older in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy after installing an aging program. The Doctor also evolved in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1, becoming the father of Series Acclimation Mil aka SAM (Kerrice Brooks).
Guesting on The D-Con Chamber podcast hosted by Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating, Robert Picardo was asked about clips he showed his colleagues of The Doctor digitally de-aged in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. This prompted Picardo to reveal his pitch for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 3, where the EMH would meet his backup program from the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Living Witness.” Read Bob’s in-depth story below:
Robert Picardo: “I wanted to do an episode… Now, we can talk freely about it because the show’s canceled… When Discovery was on the air, and Discovery jumped into the 32nd century, all of these fans were saying ‘Picardo can be on the show now. Remember in the Voyager episode “Living Witness” when his backup program is discovered 700 years in the future. And then he goes off in the end helping people.’ So the fans remembered this one episode, this one detail.
Well, I wanted to meet my Voyager backup, my old self, and be as I looked at 41, and play off myself as 71 or now, 72. So, I wanted to play opposite my younger self and basically have my younger self ruthlessly insult my older self, saying, ‘Why would you possibly want to alter your appearance? Why would you want to look like that?’
Dominic Keating: “Were you jumping out of the bushes at Alex Kurtzman the way you did with Brannon Braga?”
Robert Picardo: “I did. I was jumping out of the bushes. I pitched this whole idea. [Co-showrunner] Noga [Landau] asked, and I told them, and they loved the story, and they said something like, ‘It sounds like a season 3 story.’ They told me a long time ago. So now, season 3 won’t happen. So now you’ve heard the story.
And I would have loved to have done it, to digitally correct my one performance, to look like that and to insult myself, but then it would turn into something else. My idea was it would turn into kind of a… because my two characters are technological brothers. They’re the same program, they started out with the same basic programming, but they’d had different experiences in the interim that have changed them, but they’re still like identical twins that have been raised separately, right?
So, the idea is that because we both had a conflict-laden relationship with Daddy, who was our programmer, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, my character on Starfleet Academy resolved that. Because we did a Voyager episode that was very much where The Doctor tries to save his programmer, who’s dying. And the programmer treats him terribly, like he’s a failed experiment. And The Doctor has to prove himself to [him].
It’s the play I never sang for my father, borrowed and put in Star Trek. And that was my story idea on Voyager years ago. But I wanted to do a riff of that. And these two, The Doctor and his backup program, are children of the same parent. One has resolved the issues, the other hasn’t. And even after 800 years, those daddy issues, those parental conflicts, they don’t go away if you don’t deal with them, right? So it was kind of a therapy message, right? The baggage never goes away, folks, unless you deal with the baggage.”
Watch Robert Picardo’s complete interview on The D-Con Chamber below:
It sounds like Robert Picardo’s pitch was far enough along that it was earmarked as a possible episode in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 3. Many fans originally believed that Picardo would be playing backup EMH from Star Trek: Voyager season 4, episode 23, “Living Witness,” when he was first announced as a cast member of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Robert Picardo’s ‘Doctor meets backup Doctor’ pitch would have not only quelled fans’ questions about what happened to the backup EMH from “Living Witness,” but it would have been a sequel to The Doctor trying to save the life of his ‘father,’ Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, in Star Trek: Voyager season 6, episode 24, “Life Line.”
Robert Picardo is a rare actor from Rick Berman’s Star Trek era who was able to pitch a story and have it made into an episode. Bob has a “Story By” credit for Star Trek: Voyager season 6, episode 24, “Life Line.”
Picardo’s Doctor pitch would have fit in nicely with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s loving genuflection towards Star Trek: Voyager. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1 included numerous nods, quotes, and direct callbacks to Voyager, from a running joke about a Talaxian fruit fly, to The Doctor facing his trauma over losing his holographic daughter in Star Trek: Voyager season 3, episode 22, “Real Life.”
Also on The D-Con Chamber, Robert Picardo revealed the exact circumstances of how he and the cast of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy were told that the show was canceled. Along with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s troubles finding a large audience, Bob feels their progressive show, which reflected Gene Roddenberry’s values, was out of step with today’s changing political and cultural climate.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 2’s 10 episodes are in post-production and are expected to premiere on Paramount+ in early 2027. After that, and following Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiering its fifth and final season, Star Trek seems poised to take a hiatus. Sadly, fans will never see Robert Picardo playing his older EMH meeting The Doctor’s backup program.
- Release Date
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January 15, 2026
- Network
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Paramount+
- Showrunner
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Alex Kurtzman, Noga Landau
- Directors
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Douglas Aarniokoski, Alex Kurtzman, Andi Armaganian, Larry Teng
- Writers
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Gaia Violo, Alex Taub, Jane Maggs, Tawny Newsome, Kirsten Beyer, Kiley Rossetter, Eric Anthony Glover
