[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Kamog:
Yeah, the holographic doctor is a medical genius. He is just as brilliant as Dr. McCoy or Dr. Crusher or Dr. Bashir. If holograms are so smart, why do starships need any real crew at all?

Two reasons:
1) Power outages put holograms down, and they are limited to prepared areas (the Doctor on Voyager was limited to the holodeck until they picked up the mobile emitter from a visitor from the future - a unique piece of equipment.)
2) Humans are more creative: they turned the doc into a command hologram once or twice - Harry came up with the ideas to save the ship, not the doc.

Originally posted by Kamog:


By the way, I never understood how these "solid" holograms are supposed to work, because they are supposed to be made of light. You can pick up holographic objects in the holodeck and they feel solid, and the Doctor can operate real medical equipment, and so on. The only time the Doctor isn't solid is when some aggressive alien attacks him. Then the weapon or fist or whatever passes right through him.

They are made out of photons and force fields; the photons provide the color, the force fields provide the shape, solidity, and physics (all managed by a computer, usually offscreen). Weapons/fists/whatever pass through because he isn't a comparatively high powered force field; he is designed to move tricorders and the occasional unconscious person, not stop swords.