(factoid: we learn his maximum runtime was supposed to be 1500 hours.)

much more context with an episode list below the poll!

when does voyager's holographic doctor become sentient?

he came out of the box that way

season 1 (asks for a name; first time outside of sickbay)

season 2 (hallucinates about whether he's human or hologram; falls in love)

season 3 (mobile emitter time baybee; edits his own program; holo-family)

season 4 (textual evidence that the doctor can and has fucked)

season 5 ("here begins a new life")

season 6 (daydreams; lives off-ship for 3 years; quits medicine to pursue opera)

season 7 (defects from voyager to save other holograms; photons be free)

he never becomes sentient

other / idk man am i even sentient?? / i don't go here but want to click

See Results

more info below by episode (forgive me in advance if i forgot your favorite doctor-evolution episode) (also forgive me for all the mistakes i will immediately see once i hit post but will be unable to fix because we can't edit poll posts):

Keep reading

Theory: it's not that has program could break down after 1500 hours. 1500 hours is how long it takes for a hologram to become fully sentient and self-aware.

And Starfleet knows this.

when i saw the 1500 hours mark i definitely thought about how things start to go awry in "spirit folk," which aired about a month and a half after "fair haven" (but some episodes in there, including "fair haven," have some longer stretches of time... so we could safely say it has been about 1500 hours). those are pretty simple holograms, but the timing is interesting. if all holograms, regardless of complexity, start to display chaotic errors/program corruption after about that long... who knows??

TESTIMONIALS

"She's in every universe. She saved the multiverse. All by learning to accept her daughter, husband, and herself. She's everything. Everywhere. All at once. And she's played by Michelle Yeoh."

"When she was flirting with a shapeshifter and he was saying they were too different to be together and said 'Every 16 hours, I turn into a liquid,' she just shrugged and said 'I can swim."

GUYS VOTE LWAXANA

The Ackermonster, c. early 1960s