Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Doctor

9. Magnetism And Moriarty

'EMH' is an acronym by now as familiar to us as 'EPS' and 'LLAP'. First used in Cathexis, 'EMH' has enjoyed several three-letter spin-offs — from ECH to LMH, EEH to ETH. In the Star Trek: Voyager Series Bible though, the Doctor was an "Experimental Medical Program" or "E.M.P."

'EMP' was then also used in the "'STAR TREK: VOYAGER' Beat Outline by Rick Berman, Michael Piller & Jeri Taylor," dated 13 April 1994. Precisely why the term was dropped in favour of 'EMH' is unclear, though in the real world, 'EMP' also stands for 'electromagnetic pulse'. 'Computer, activate the EMP,' might have been a little confusing!

Speaking of magnetism, the Doctor was always more than a mere "projection of light held in a magnetic containment field," as Tom Paris put it in Phage.

In a series of notes from 1993, published in Star Trek Voyager: A Vision of the Future, Jeri Taylor pointed out that "the new, state-of-the art technology [of the Holo-Doctor] [had] capitalized on the serendipitous incident which created Moriarty".

The Doctor was, of course, never so 'evil,' except when he was. Without ethical subroutines, the Doctor was not Moriarty. He was Mister Hyde.