MEDICAL LOGS

THE SWARM
Season 3 : Episode 46

 

MEDICAL REPORT:

While in a shuttlecraft, Paris and Torres are boarded by two insectoid aliens with whom they are unable to communicate. The aliens open fire on them with a type of neuro-electric weapon which affects their nervous systems. While Torres is only relatively mildly affected and is able to get the shuttle back to Voyager, Paris is severely injured, is left in an unconscious state, and requires a motor cortex reconstruction.

For reasons explained in DOCTOR'S LOG, the Doctor starts to forget things, for instance where he put the retinal imager. His forgetfulness gets worse and Kes has to help the Doctor through the complex operation. It includes the use of a cortical analeptic, a pharmaceutical used to re-invigorate the tissues of the cerebral cortex.

the Doctor forgets how to conduct the operation

Later, when Voyager is secretly traversing the Swarm's territory, the crew encounter a disabled Mislen ship with only one surviving crewmember. The crewmember, who is severely injured as a result of the Swarm's assault, talks to Janeway before he dies, but the Doctor, again for reasons given in DOCTOR'S LOG, is present but unable to understand the patient's true condition or to be of any medical usefulness. It is Kes who, earlier, had to provide the diagnosis for Janeway: "He's suffering from severe dehydration, damage to the spinal column, there's evidence of trauma to the nervous system, just like they found in B'Elanna and Tom after they were attacked." After the overlay procedure is complete, Torres says she has a headache and the Doctor remarks: "This woman has a mild inflammation of the occipital tissues. Hardly enough to complain about but I'm willing to give you a mild analgesic." and says to Kes: "Get me the vaso-constrictor and prepare me a hypospray with 3 per cent hydrocortilene."

EMH SPECIFICATION:

The Doctor has to scrub up for Paris' operation, utilising a specialist machine to do so, although it is not clear if what is seen on the television screen is the complete process. This implies that the Doctor has to scrub up for all operations, as an organic surgeon would, but the scrubbing up procedure is not seen in any other pre-operation situation in the entire television series.

the Doctor scrubs up before carrying out surgery

Like the Jupiter Station EMH diagnostic program, the Doctor has incorporated into his program an adaptive heuristic matrix, which is an extremely sophisticated computer memory architecture.

DOCTOR'S LOG:

The Doctor has recently begun a thorough study of opera. He is performing, in duet with an artistically moody diva, the aria '0 Soave Fanciulla' from Puccini's 'La Boheme' on the holodeck when he is summoned to Sickbay to treat Paris and Torres (see MEDICAL REPORT). He suffers a level-4 memory fragmentation because his personality subroutine has grown to more than 15,000 gigaquads. Although Torres had programmed safety buffers, they are breaking down and his memory circuits are deteriorating, resulting in, for instance, his having to be talked through Paris' complex surgical operation. The Jupiter Station diagnostic program Alpha-1-1 contains a sophisticated diagnostic matrix specifically created for the emergency medical system. The diagnostic tool comes in the form of a holographic re-creation of a lab on Jupiter Station together with a hologram to operate the lab; the hologram's appearance is identical to that of its creator Dr Lewis Zimmerman who also created the EMH Mark 1s (of which the Doctor is one). The diagnostic tool (which has the same trait of prickliness which the Doctor and of course Dr Zimmerman have) tells Torres to schedule the Doctor to have his memory circuits expanded during the ship's next maintenance layover at McKinley Station (Earth Station McKinley being in the Alpha Quadrant, obviously this is not an option).

the Doctor, Torres and the holographic EMH diagnostic program (whose visual parameters include a white lab coat), in a holographic re-creation of a lab on Jupiter Station

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the EMH diagnostic program conducts tests on the Doctor's program

The diagnostic program's adaptive heuristic matrix is the same as the Doctor's, so at Kes' initiative they graft one onto the other (which means that there is no longer a diagnostic program for the EMH). It requires the synchronous transfer of all the EMH databases and subroutines and thus the Doctor's program must be shut down for a period of time to re-initialise.

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the overlay program is initiated

When the program ends and the Doctor is brought online, at first he seems to have reset to his original parameters of over two years ago, but when he starts humming 'O Soave Fanciulla' the crew are reassured that he has been restored with his two years' worth of memories, or at least most of them, including relationship ones. It is revealed in the later story  [#51 Future's End, Part 2] that he was restored with some memories missing as he says in that story: "I recently suffered a severe program loss and I'm still in the process of retrieving my memory files, but apparently on a few occasions I have been projected into other locations."

the overlay is complete

MEDICAL ADMINISTRATION:

The Doctor says via comms, in order to report on Paris' medical condition and the need for tricky surgery: "Please turn to your Emergency Medical Holographic channel." This is channel 47, established in  [#3 Parallax]. See that entry for more details.

DOCTOR'S QUOTE:

Giving what he thinks is the reason for his memory lapse over the retinal imager: "I've just had an unpleasant encounter with a madwoman (the holo-diva) on the Holodeck. She must've upset me more than I realised."