Killing the EMH

[Greg Smith]

How do you kill an EMH?

I have an EMH player character in my Dominion campaign. Whenever he goes on an away mission, he backs himself up before he departs.

Not that I want to kill him, just place him in mortal danger from time to time.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Michael Barratt]

Originally posted by Greg Smith
How do you kill an EMH?

I have an EMH player character in my Dominion campaign. Whenever he goes on an away mission, he backs himself up before he departs.

Not that I want to kill him, just place him in mortal danger from time to time.

Anyone have any ideas?

Have the crew need to access his back-up on the ship when he's separated from the shipbound crew. Then, when he gets back, have his duplicate claim sentient rights: "You can't just "turn me off and wipe me clean! That's murder!"

Regardless of how it turns out, wiping the guy or not, the dilemma of "making copies" should take on a whole new meaning: he can't keep "Cloning" himself and then killing the clones - there's legal precidence for that being immoral/wrong/illegal (DS9: "A Man Alone.")

The Doc

[Anarchy Bob]

Well, i wouldn't have let him back himself up in the first place.. But i guess that's not helping eh?

The key here is offcourse to take away his backup from him...

Basically i see three ways:

1 - Damage the computer core
2 - Damage sickbay
3 - Destroy the ship.

Of course this has to work in tandem with a situation that's already dangerous to the good doctor.

Another trick would be to let the ability to back himself up stand... But structure the scenario where he is the only one capable of entering a room. And he can't communicate with the ship. So if he dies, yes the character can be reused... But he won't have the information needed..

Here's an example:

The crew encounter a big, big, big (did i say big) derelict ship. Sensors detect it's filled with radiation but there's still some life signs on board.

As the crew beam over, they become infected with strange radiation. They can't scan the engine room but know the answer lies there. The only one who can safely survive there is the EMH, but with no communications possible.

So he enters the engine room looking for a solution.. There he might encounter survivors who are hostile to him. If dies and tries again, remove all accumulated successes on his roll to cure the radiation poisoning and change the layout of the engine room. It's a dirty trick but simulates the loss of knowlege.

As a further trick, you could 'Start' an episode with a backup copy of the doctor activated. That sends the message accros that it's dangerous out there.

As a mechanics thing, you could remove any exp awards for sessions in which he dies.

Lastly, during a routine maintenance, you could have someone figure out that the EMH is slowly loosing photonic coherence or whatever. The glitch is present in the previous backup. If he's the kind to take numerous backups, (and you're kind enough to allow him to storage space.), tell him that it appears to be a conception glitch. No backup usage here.

[Phantom]

Simple...

Just remove the 20 AA batteries.

[Owen E Oulton]

Just remember how the EMH worked in Voyager - his personality engrams (i.e. what made him "him") were not "backed up" when the HoloDoc was downloaded into his mobile emitter (I'm assuming he has some sort of mobile emitter). If he "dies," he dies. The backup isn't him, it's just medical data. See Eye Of The Needle for an example, when Harry and Tom try to rig up a dupe.

I figure this inability to back up an AI or to run two copies at the same time is all part of a security precaution on Starfleet's behalf, to prevent an army of holograms from taking over the ship. Starfleet (and the Federation in general) has, after all, a paranoid streak where AI's are concerned. See most of TOS (especially any episode where Kirk destroys a computer through illogic), and TNG's Measure Of A Man and The Quality Of Life for examples of this paranoia.

Speaking of paranoia, you could just point out to the player that he's not playing Paranoia and doesn't get clones. If he dies, he has to roll up a different character. He can't resurrect the same one. GM's fiat.

[LizardQueen]

How about a virus that has lay dormant for the last several backups, then activates? So the backup is also infected.

[Perrryyy]

Why not just decompile his programming & base algorithms? or am I missing the boat here?

[Greg Smith]

Originally posted by Michael Barratt


Have the crew need to access his back-up on the ship when he's separated from the shipbound crew. Then, when he gets back, have his duplicate claim sentient rights: "You can't just "turn me off and wipe me clean! That's murder!"

The Doc

That is evil. I love it.

Anarchy Bob's idea for the derelict ship is a good one. I'm going to use that.

But Owen's point is valid. Yet I can't see why an EMH's personality engrams couldn't be copied. But I have 'Eye of the Needle' on tape. I'll watch it again.

Thanks for the ideas guys.

[Owen E Oulton]

There should be no technical reason, based on the little I know of how computers work. This is why I speculate that it's a security feature, likely written inextricably into the basic code for any A.I. system on a Starfleet computer.

[Captain Zymmer]

BTW...Since he goes on away missions, where did he get a mobile emitter from?

Just curious, not criticizing

[Greg Smith]

He designed and built it. It is large, about breifcase sized and has a limited duration (about 100 hours).

He was the EMH aboard the USS Boudicea during the Dominion war when the ship was crippled and abandoned. He taught himself about hollow technology from the ships computer and began to develop the mobile emitter. He was stranded for almost two years before the ship was salvaged.

Having been left alone for all that time has left him slightly unbalanced, but that has yet to truly manifest itself.

[Robbert Raets]

Originally posted by Greg Smith
... taught himself about hollow technology from the ships computer and began to develop the mobile emitter.

That says something about the player's obsession with survival. And is a possible answer to your problem; give him an obsessive tendensies (survival) disadvantage....

[Modem]

What if the duplicate came online, and decided to overthrow the ship (say a power surge, or a radiation leak altered the program...Hmm, could be another Kirk/Kirk Riker/Riker moments).

Variant to the above: what if he starts losing component of his program to the duplicate (the duplicate wants to 'live', and begins stealing what it needs to impersonate and survive). "Doctor, if you can't stop the bleeding, he'll die!" "I...I can't...remember...how..."

Likewise, how much memory does the EMH take up (especally one that 'learns')? So if he backed himself up each time...ever thought about what happens to a computer running multiple operating systems things either a) go very slow, or b) crash.
Basically, I could see the Capt. putting his foot down ("Memory allotment is too high...lose some things, like Z-G baseball")

Also; the entire computer core need not suffer; only the area that contains holo-info need be damaged.

Hope some of this is useful.

[C5]

I don't know the modalities of this backup, but if the player wasn't too precise when defining it, you could add some flaws in the restore system.
For instance, maybe the memories are kept intact, but the persona of the EMH could be altered after a restoring operation, thus conferring him a disavantage. It could be for instance discovered that, after too many restore, the persona of the EMH could become absolutely instable, thus rendering any further backup useless.
Or the backup would be in fact unable to restore the persona at all, thus having the player adopt a complitely different behaviour (a bit like Spock in ST3). Of course, this depend on the player's roleplaying abilities - and good will.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

A backed up EMH although nearly indestructible if he makes backups of himself continuasly has some flaws. First, he's just another computer program so if he takes up too much memory with his backups you could have an innocent ensign just wipe the "useless redundant backup". HE could lose xp for the session and some skills which he had before, gain disadvantages as his program begins to go crazy with the contanst retructuring of his algorithms.

If he says somethin' like "I'm a sentient being-I deserve equal rights!"; not true, he is still not a person under Federation law( I'm hoping you haven't changed this). So erasing his endgrams to make space for better processing material is within the CO's rights, unless you have a compassionate Janeway-like CO.

On the other hand, introduce him to an engineer who has a particular dislike for holograms who "think" they deserve better treatment. Have this character continually tell him that his frivolous use of precious memory for such useless abilities as ZG Baseball, tango or better manners will not go unoticed.