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This article contains spoilers for the two-part premiere of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Like all new Star Trek shows, Starfleet Academy adds a host of characters to the franchise. There are the cadets like outsider Caleb Mir and giddy Kasqian Sam, alongside the half-Lanthanite captain Nahla Ake and her half-Klingon/half-Jem’Hadar first mate Lura Thok.
But, two episodes in, the best character in Starfleet Academy is one that we’ve known for a long time. Robert Picardo is back as the Emergency Medical Hologram Mark I, or as he prefers, Doctor, and he’s already established himself as the best part of the show.
Don’t believe me? Take a look his role in the show’s second episode, “The Beta Test.” While Nahla Ake and Admiral Vance (a returning face from Discovery) try to negotiate Betazed’s return to the Federation, the Doctor and a fellow Starfleet officer perform “Pa, Pa, Pa” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Of course, the scene is helped along by the fact that the Doctor’s duet partner is a) a member of a species we haven’t seen since the best Kelvin movie Star Trek Beyond and b) performed by actual opera singer Jamie Groote. But to see the Doctor actually become the beloved performer he always wanted to be, and to see Picardo play him with such gusto, we can’t help but be charmed.
The Doctor has always been one of the best characters in Star Trek. Even in those first very rocky seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, he stood out for a variety of reasons. First, he filled the requisite part of an almost-human person who tries to learn about humanity, but his status as a hologram let him explore the question in a manner different from Spock, Data, or Odo. Second, he got to play a cantankerous physician similar to McCoy, but with more highfaluting airs. Finally, he was played by Robert Picardo, a veteran actor who deftly navigated some of the Doctor’s more prickly and perhaps off-putting qualities, earning the audience’s trust and sympathies. So great was the Doctor that he continued to get attention after Seven of Nine joined the cast and she and Janeway became the main characters.
As has been directly stated in Starfleet Academy, much centuries have passed since the end of Voyager and the start of this new series, and the Doctor spent some time working with a different set of kids, the crew of the USS Protostar on Prodigy. The way that he freezes when he hears the name “Captain Gwyndala” tells us that something has happened to change the way he thinks about himself and his relationship to Starfleet.
In fact, his pause at Gwyn’s name is only matched by the way that the Doctor smiles when he learns about Sam, the first hologram or photonic to attend Starfleet Academy. For just a second, the Doctor’s usually grumpiness drops and he expresses genuine warmth and perhaps pride—and with good reason. Many Doctor stories in Voyager dealt with his slow development from either a function of the ship or a tool created by Dr. Lewis Zimmerman to a fully-developed person with his own sentience and who fought for the dignity of other holographs. Sam’s presence shows that he succeeded.
These two moments prove that this is the same Doctor who we met on Voyager, except older and more experienced. He’s grown beyond the sometimes annoying and grumpy person he used to be without sacrificing his love of the stage and his impatience with corporeal forms that don’t take care of themselves.
All of which is apparent in the opera scene from “Beta Test.” In Voyager, the Doctor’s singing impressed no one except the Qomar from the episode “Virtuoso,” and even then, their interest wasn’t about his talent. Worse, his insecurities drove him to make everything about his singing, even if Janeway and crew had more pressing matters.
But when the Doctor sings in “Beta Test,” he has a beautiful voice. He doesn’t demand that the cadets drop their romantic pursuits to watch him, nor does he interrupt the negotiations with the Betazoids to fish for a compliment. He just sings because he loves singing. He’s become a person confident himself.
This development and confidence makes the Doctor the ideal legacy character for Starfleet Academy. As we get to know the cadets, they’ll get to know themselves, learning about their foibles and trying to come to terms with their strengths and shortcomings. They have an outstanding model in the Doctor and, if they can follow his lead, maybe Caleb Mir and Kasqian Sam will someday be fan favorites as well.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy release every Thursday on Paramount+.
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