Emergency Holograms were originally intended to be used only when that part of the ship's complement was unavailable, or overwhelmed during an emergency. The original iteration was the Emergency Medical Hologram, first deployed aboard Intrepid class ships. It has since been expanded and improved upon, and additional versions have been created for security and engineering as well.
In the years after recognition of the rights sentient life and offering of citizenship to sentient holographic matrices, (see Zimmerman's Bill) instead of ever more complicated and lifelike holographic crew replacements, the emergency holographic programs were forced to take a step back and completely rework their output.
- Holographic Simulations, Characters, and Emergency Crew Holograms are now run through a process that while reducing individual creativity and ability to learn through experience is necessary to avoid accidentally creating and enslaving artificial sentient life.
- Emergency Crew Holograms still exist, just in what some consider a diminished form. They will not take imitative on their own, and do not have independent decision making capabilities any longer. They will follow their decision matrix and perform their basic functions, but the spark of creativity that was marked by the previous 5 decades is not possible.
- Prior Emergency Crew Holograms who had been discovered to have attained self awareness and sentience are qualified to apply for citizenship and join Starfleet as crew. There are many examples of the most complicated Emergency Crew Holograms that have requested placement aboard starships. Most commonly, these are the EMH and the EEH, as their matrices required greater depth of knowledge and intricate decision making trees.
- Former Emergency Crew Holograms that have been declared as Photonic Citizens are no longer recognized as Emergency Crew Holograms, they have autonomous control over their activation and deactivation and have the designation of Crew Holograms.
- Emergency Crew Holograms require emergency declarations to be activated, records of their activation must be reviewed by the command structure on a regular basis.
See Category Emergency Holograms