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

5. Love And Mentorship

Platonic, romantic, and Shmullus to Danara Pel, the Doctor has had many loves over the years. His latest was a hint of something between him and Holo-Janeway in Star Trek: Prodigy. There was familial love for him too. In Real Life, he created his own family on the holodeck. Then, in Life Line, he travelled halfway across the galaxy for a paternal connection. Robert Picardo also received a writing credit for Life Line, becoming the first Star Trek cast member to do so in a live-action series, following Walter Koenig's credit for writing The Infinite Vulcan for The Animated Series. Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, and later Brent Spiner and Simon Pegg wrote for live-action scenes, though each of their credits was assigned to the Star Trek movies.

Inspiration for Life Line came from the 1968 play, later film, I Never Sang for My Father, which centres around the conflict and mutual disappointment between a father and son. The Doctor wouldn't sing for Zimmerman on Jupiter Station, but he did eventually earn his creator, his father's, respect.

A stranger to his own subroutines at first, the Doctor found a confidante in Kes. When the Ocampan left Voyager for higher planes, roles were reversed. Seven of Nine was the resistant pupil.

Behind the scenes, Picardo was once more the impetus for the change, this time in the mentor/mentee dynamic. He told StarTrek.com in 2022:

I went to Brannon [Braga] and suggested that we take the relationship that the Doctor had with Kes and we turn it around. So the Doctor thinks that the best person to teach Seven of Nine how to become human again is him. [That] he's a better teacher on how to be a human being than a real human being.

Picardo went on to note that "it would not have been appropriate at all" for the Doctor and Seven to end up together. Picardo did add, jokingly, that he thought it was "a little strange that they paired her with Chakotay at the last minute".