Barclay: "How are you, Dr Z?" Zimmerman: "Nice of you finally to drop by." Barclay: "I've been extremely busy, the er Pathfinder project." Zimmerman: "Still searching for that ship? What's it called, the Pioneer?" Barclay: "Er, Voyager." Zimmerman: "Voyager. Any luck?" Barclay: "Actually, we're on the verge of a breakthrough, a communications link." Zimmerman: "Congratulations, the first transgalactic phone call." Barclay: "Is there any word from Starfleet Medical?" Zimmerman: "Doctors. I've been scanned and probed a hundred times and they still can't tell me what's wrong." Barclay: "I'm sure it's only a matter of time-" Zimmerman: "I'm dying, Reginald, and there's nothing anyone can do about it!"

The "communications link" that Barclay refers to is successful in establishing contact with Voyager: Project Pathfinder uses a cyclic pulsar to amplify the signals from the MIDAS Array. The cycle only peaks every 32 days so once a month they can send a short burst of information and Voyager has about 17 hours to respond. To start with Pathfinder transmits tactical updates, letters from home and news about the Alpha Quadrant. When Janeway briefs her senior staff, she says:

"We don't have much time to prepare a response and we'll have to keep it short. But I want to give everyone an opportunity to send something, even if it's only a brief note. Inform the crew. ... Lt Barclay, the Pathfinder Project - they didn't give up on us. So when you write those letters, you might want to thank them."

In the first ever datastream to Voyager, Barclay includes a message to the Doctor, knowing he would be interested in his news because Dr Zimmerman is, so the Doctor tells Neelix "the father of modern holography. He invented the matrix that made my program possible."

Extract from Barclay's message: "[Dr Zimmerman is] suffering from acute subcellular degradation. The doctors here are having trouble finding the cause much less the treatment. I've included his medical files. As you'll see, the prognosis isn't good. They say he's only got a few months. I'm sorry I don't have better news to report but I thought you'd want to know."

The Doctor is convinced that Dr Zimmerman's disease is similar to the early stages of the Vidiian phage (Voyager encountered the Vidiians in 2371-72), and believes that he can adapt a variety of Borg regeneration techniques to arrest the cell damage, maybe even reverse it. He obtains Janeway's permission to have his program sent to the Alpha Quadrant (minus 12 megaquads of his program in order to reduce it to a small enough size to manage transmission) so that he can administer the treatment himself, as none of the Starfleet doctors are familiar with the procedure.

Barclay to Zimmerman: "I've found a friend waiting for me at home." Zimmerman: "You don't have any friends." Barclay: "Well, I guess er you could say he's a friend of yours." Barclay activates the containment device and the Doctor materialises and announces with pleasure: "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." But Zimmerman is merely irritated and definitely not pleased to see him.

Zimmerman refuses to co-operate with the Doctor and indeed goes out of his way to be irritating and difficult to what he considers to be a lowly Mark 1 EMH. The Doctor tells Barclay: "I can't treat a patient who won't let me near him. He's deranged, what he needs is a Counsellor!"

Barclay contacts Counsellor Deanna Troi and says that Zimmerman sounds like a complex person and would need to speak to him in person. Barclay persuades her to visit Jupiter Station. (Deanna Troi Index)

Troi arrives during an argument between the Doctor and Zimmerman, and encounters a demanding challenge for her mediating skills.

Troi: "Doctor, imagine that your program was seriously damaged and the only person who could repair you was an engineer from, say, a hundred years ago. Would you feel comfortable with that?" Doctor: "If he were skilled, intelligent, creative." Troi: "Honestly, Doctor? A hundred years ago?" Doctor: "Well, I suppose it would give me pause." Troi, to Zimmerman: "Now, put yourself in the Doctor's shoes. Imagine you were asked to treat someone you cared about, say, an EMH Mark 12." Zimmerman: "There is no Mark 12." Troi: "But if there were and you wanted to save his program. He probably wouldn't let you near him. He wouldn't care that you'd won the Daystrom Prize for Holography. From his perspective, you'd be out of date. But what if you knew you could save him?" Doctor: "Thank you, Counsellor, for extending that olive branch. I'm willing to see past our differences, if he is." Zimmerman: "Alright. He can start by purging the plasma conduits on deck 6." Troi: "Dr Zimmerman." Zimmerman: "I will not put my life in the hands of a primitive!" Doctor: "You'd need a phaser drill to get through that thick skull of his!" Zimmerman: "Get out!" Troi: "Gentlemen-" Zimmerman: "Oh spare us your psychobabble!" Troi: "I came here thinking you were opposites sides of the same coin, identical but different. Now I see you're both exactly the same: you're both jerks!"

Troi sums up the situation: "A hologram, fighting to save the life of his creator, who just so happens to be the same man his own personality's based on. Think I'd need a whole team of therapists just to get them in the same room." But she manages to ascertain what Zimmerman's real problem with the Doctor is.

Troi to Zimmerman's holographic assistant: "Any idea why Lewis made him [the EMH Mark 1] in his own image?" Haley: "...He was extremely proud of the Mark 1. He used to dream about hundreds of holograms in every corner of the Quadrant, saving lives. He put so much of himself into its development. I suppose it only seemed natural that it should look like him too." Troi: "But the Mark 1 failed to meet Starfleet's expectations." Haley: "He was devastated." Barclay: "He locked himself away, in this lab, for 2 years trying to repair the defects. Finally he just gave up, started from scratch, a whole new matrix." Troi: "The Mark 2." Barclay: "Followed by the Mark 3 then erm Mark 4. He, he was obsessed with perfecting it." Troi: "But none of the later models resembled Lewis." Haley: "He made that mistake once, he wasn't about to repeat it." Troi: "And now after all this time a Mark 1 shows up. It must be like staring in a mirror at a reflection you don't want to remember."

Alone in his lab late at night, unbeknownst to Barclay, Zimmerman dictates part of his last will and testament:

"Subsection 8, the Trojan Horse project. I hereby bequeath my latest research in holographic infiltration technology to the only engineer I trust to complete the work, Lieutenant Reginald Barclay. Subsection 9, holographic art. I hereby bequeath my entire collection, including the 23rd century masterpiece Woman in Four Dimensions to the person who has appreciated it the most. I guess that would be Lieutenant Barclay too."

The will's clauses give an insight into Barclay's character and his likes - he is determined and can be trusted to finish a project, and he appreciates certain holographic art.

But then the Doctor's program starts to malfunction. Barclay gives the Doctor this doom-laden diagnostic: "Your primary matrix is degrading and there's nothing I can do."

Zimmerman: "Good riddance to bad photons." Barclay: "He's dying, Lewis." Zimmerman: "He's not dying. His files are just degraded." Troi: "There are people on Voyager who count on him." Zimmerman: "Well, send them a Mark 4. They're more reliable." Barclay: "They don't want a Mark 4. They want their friend."

Zimmerman decides to repair the Doctor. Doctor: "I'm going to be ok?" Zimmerman: "No, you're going to be better than ok." Zimmerman tells him that is just the beginning - he will give him new subroutines for compassion, empathy, patience, decorum. "Reginald was right about you. You have exceeded the sum of your programming. You've accomplised far more than I would ever have predicted, but let's face facts, you never overcame the inherent flaws in your personality subroutines. You're arrogant, irritable, a jerk as Counsellor Troi would say." Doctor: "I believe she was describing you as well." Zimmerman: "Don't change the subject. I may not be able to turn you into a Mark 4 but I can make you a bit more presentable." Doctor: "What if I'm happy with the way I am?!" Zimmerman: "I'm doing you a favour." Doctor: "I don't want any favours! And I don't want your new subroutines. Why can't you accept me as I am?!" Zimmerman: "Because you're defective!! Emergency Medical Hotheads, Extremely Marginal Housecalls - that's what everyone used to call the Mark 1s until they were bounced out of the medical corps. I tried to have them decommissioned but Starfleet in its infinite wisdom overruled me and reassigned them all to work waste-transfer barges. That's where you'd be too if you hadn't been lost in the Delta Quadrant. Do you know how humiliating it is to have 675 Mark 1s out there, scrubbing plasma conduits, all with my face?" Doctor: "I'm sure they're doing a fine job." As the Doctor scans him, Zimmerman: "What are you doing? I'm not finished with you." Doctor: "I'm trying to do my job, and if you give me a chance you'll see that I'm pretty good at it. Frankly, I'd hoped that if we ever met you'd be proud of me." Zimmerman: "I guess it is comforting to know that at least one of you is still doing what I designed you to do." Doctor: "Your intra-cellular proteins are at a dangerous level. We should begin the procedure. Please, give me a chance to make you proud of me." Zimmerman: "Maybe we could try it, see how it goes."

After 32 hours, the Doctor appears in the living quarters to report.

Barclay: "Well, you, you're not fritzing any more." Doctor: "No thanks to you. Dr Zimmerman ran a diagnostic on my subtronic relays and he made a very interesting discovery. Apparently I was the victim of foul play." Barclay: "Wh-what, what do you mean?" Doctor: "He found an algorithm designed to disrupt my matrix. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Troi: "Well, traditional therapy wasn't getting us anywhere." Doctor: "Well, your little scheme worked. Dr Zimmerman has agreed to the cellular regeneration procedure. It requires several more treatments but I'm optimistic he'll make a full recovery."

Dr Zimmerman does make a full recovery. Barclay and the Doctor remain good friends afterwards. Later, in 2377, when the facility for live daily contact between Voyager and Project Pathfinder is created as a result of Operation Watson, when the Doctor draws an early call-time slot Tom Paris assumes that he will call either Barclay or Zimmerman.

 

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