10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Voyager
7. Please State the Nature of the Medical Cuffuffle
Before Future's End, the Doctor is a character that is evidently difficult to manage.
Confined to either Sickbay or the holodecks the level of opportunities for the digital MD are, to a point, limited.
Even he asks to be included more as part of the crew and treated with more respect than a light switch resulting in his own ability to deactivate yet his early appearances just fail to find that spark that a mobile emitter immediately does. This limitation means characters either need to go to him or communicate via a monitor, reducing Picardo's range in the series. Something that was most certainly addressed.
It was a time where the series was finding its feet however and it's as though the crew are humouring him. The Doctor is given time off (yes, actual time off!) in Projections which goes horribly wrong and sent to tackle Anglo Saxon history in Heroes and Demons which also goes horribly wrong.
Yet those first seasons also tend to dumb down the character instead of building and exploring. The two worst example shows up in Parallax where his sickbay projectors play around with his stature turning what should be an evolving character into a comedy turn. Secondly there's the time his image is projected into space during the Kazon battle in Basics Part I. Again offering that "comedy turn" moment it displays alarming ineptitude of the Voyager crew at the most crucial time of the series to that point. Not only does it dumb down a high tension moment but also makes viewers wonder if there really is no hope for the crew at this pivotal time.