Who's the best Star Trek Doctor?

Actually, I had a bit more respect for him when he started "daydreaming" about getting command programming.

I once wrote my own crossover novel with the old "Lost in Space" characters. In it, Jupiter II pops out of a wormhole, and intercepts Voyager. Predictably, Zachary Smith, in the middle of trying to chat up Naomi Wildmon (no doubt planning to create a black market with the guileless "Captain's Assistant" to help him), abruptly finds himself under arrest and confined to the brig. For sabotage and murder, in the death of an MP and the off-course veering of Jupiter II. Security Chief Tuvok prepares to prosecute, and Will Robinson prepares to defend, Doctor Smith (actually Colonel Zachary Smith, United States Army Medical Corps), before a summary court-martial consisting of Capt. Janeway, Cdr. Chakotay, and Lieutenants B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim. Will enlists then-Ensign Paris as co-counsel, but then drops him after Paris cynically suggests permanently destroying some key evidence: the not-quite-erased memories in the memory banks of the Robinson Robot.

The Doctor befriends the Robot and gives him a direct commlink to his holographic program. So that when Capt. Janeway orders Seven of Nine to retrieve a not-quite-deleted memory of some deadly orders that the Robot got from Smith, the robot goes nuts ("WARNING! WARNING! THOSE MEMORIES DO NOT COMPUTE! THEY CANNOT COMPUTE! WARNING! WARNING!"). And The Doctor says, "Robot B-Nine! You have a direct channel of communication with my program! Use it now!"

The Doctor calmly shows the Robot that he was acting under the influence of a program that ran beneath his Hardware Abstraction Layer. It therefore was an *irresistible impulse*, so the Robot had a *dissociative reaction* and should not hold himself responsible for his actions on that fateful day.

With the result that the Robot can now "testify" that he received some deadly and un-countermandable orders ("At exactly launch plus eight hours, destroy!"), and that Smith killed an MP who was trying to arrest him for unauthorized entry. Janeway and the court find Smith guilty as charged, and sentence him to confinement in the brig until such time as Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant. At which time Janeway will turn him over to the Starfleet Inspector General, with a recommendation to send Smith to Botany Bay (Australia) as a permanent "rehabilitative" resident.

The Doctor takes Smith's place in the circle of friends that also included Will and the Robot. Prof. John Robinson signs on to an improvised command course (and even does the Kobayashi Maru test with Tom Paris to accompany him, at which time he kicks some feathers out of Paris' head, to Janeway's unmitigated delight). Maureen signs on as the first flesh-and-blood doctor that Voyager has had since that mission to the Badlands, and The Doctor accepts command training under the direction of Professor (now Commander) Robinson (as Chief Project Officer) and Lieutenant Kim. Don West signs on as a relief helmsman and shuttlecraft/fighter pilot, Judy joins the botany section, and Will and Penny are sent to a faithfully recreated Harvard University on the Holodeck, where they can get as close to a college education as Captain Janeway can give them.

Eventually, Voyager makes it back "home," and John Robinson meets Admiral Paris for the first time. In gratitude for John's making a man out of his wayward son, Admiral Paris offers John a promotion and the leadership of a colony mission to a satellite galaxy--the very place where Jupiter II ended up after she spun out of control on her first day.