Star Trek: Everything We Know About Starfleet Academy

It was the one bit of news out of San Diego Comic-Con so big that we could have done with the services of a medical professional just to sedate us: Voyagers' (now plural) EMH would be returning to live action in Starfleet Academy, evidently to be played by the irreplaceable Robert Picardo, and as a series regular. We know nothing more than that, but we can — and will — speculate until the first semester begins!

There are 806 years (2385–3191), between the events of the very end of Star Trek: Prodigy's Ouroboros, Part II and the pre-coda of Star Trek: Discovery's Life, Itself. That's a gap of around 294190 days, or in other words, a lot of apples for anyone wanting to avoid the nature of the medical emergency. Unperturbed, however, and to be surpassing his mobile emitter in centuries, The Doctor can continue the house calls, and take to the lecture halls, for so long as he keeps his program in check.

There is also the non-negligible matter of the Living Witness backup copy. The time for his re-awakening on, and then departure from, the Kyrian-Vaskan planet fits, or, at least, can be made to fit, i.e. 31st century plus an unspecified amount of time. That version of The Doctor would equally come with the added dynamic of not knowing anything about Voyager (or Starfleet and the Federation) past season four. There's no particular reason, however, (other than recency, perhaps) that one version of the EMH should be favoured over the other. Moreover, Picardo has previously demonstrated his skill at playing two characters in the same episode and in the same scene, so why not bring back both?

Back-up or OG or both, he deserves to be head of Starfleet Medical, though perhaps The Doctor won't be teaching medicine at all, but creative writing instead. First module: 'Finding Your Rodrigo: The Heart of the Holo-Novel'. That or 'Social Etiquette for the Un-Confident Cadet'. Hopefully, there'll still be a (real) golf course around somewhere on Earth, too. After more than eight centuries, we wouldn't want to miss anything, let alone The Doctor's tee time!