In Thy Image 6/16; Doctor Who/Star Trek: Voyager crossover

[scarfman]

Back in the days when I regularly posted fanfiction to Usenet, this was my story that inspired more discourse on alt.drwho.creative than any other. It's set just after Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant in the series finale, so the Doctor is David Tennant's and the girl companion is the one who won't debut till next spring.

This story is a work derivative of intellectual properties owned by the BBC and by Paramount Pictures, but it infringes on no market of theirs, and no other profit has been made.

Chapters will be posted daily.

In Thy Image
Chapter 6

"Prosecution calls to the stand the Emergency Medical Hologram of the USS Voyager," said the Starfleet JAG.

The EMH rose from the defense table and sat in the witness stand, placing his hand on the scanner called, for traditional reasons, the polygraph.

"'The EMH of the USS Voyager'," the JAG repeated.

"Yes."

"'Doctor'."

"Yes."

"Do you have a name?"

"I've yet to decide on one. I may not."

"People," said prosecution counsel, "have names, don't they?"

"Normally, yes," conceded the EMH, "people are given names by their parents - their creators - at their entry into existence. I was not provided this elementary courtesy by mine."

"And so you just go by 'doctor'."

"That's so."

"Doesn't your refusal to use a name, to be known by anything but that title, betray a conscious or unconscious realization that you are an object rather than a person?"

"Objection," drawled defense counsel.

"Sustained."

continued

Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Wow, the prosecution betrays its provincialism. There are many human cultures where children are given temporary names until they adopt an adult name in their coming-of-age ceremony -- and even a few that don't even bother to name a child until it's a few years old, in part because of high infant mortality.

I'm sure such circumstances occur in alien races, as well.

[scarfman]

I suspect that's more the author's provincialism than the character's.

Actually, it's not the JAG but the EMH whose dialog assumes people are named at birth. It could be argued that, in context, it's apparent that he means the society he was born into.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Point.

On the other claw, this is the sort of thing that crops up in Star Trek all the time; I just assumed you were staying faithful to the source material.