Star Trek’s Funniest Technobabble Was Never Actually Spoken Onscreen

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 minute ago

One of the most divisive elements of Star Trek is “technobabble,” the term given to characters’ pseudo-scientific explanations for all of the crazy stuff they are doing or saying. This is a franchise where two characters traveled so fast they became breeding-crazed lizard people; a franchise where everyone is addicted to a freak-friendly VR technology that tries to kill them every week. Heck, this is a franchise where a character is forced into a new body one day and forced into a musical the next day. No matter what happens, though, there will always be technobabble to make it sound like this craziness has a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation.

Amazingly, though, the best Star Trek technobabble of all time was never spoken onscreen. When various writers and producers were working on Voyager, they struggled to come up with a name for Robert Picardo’s cranky medical chief. Eventually, they gave up, and he simply went by the name of the Doctor. Originally, though, they thought they might name him Doctor Zimmerman. As a result, the stage directions for when he materialized out of thin air got an affectionate nickname in scripts: writers wrote how Picardo “zimmers in” and “zimmers out” of scenes.

The Hologram With No Name

The idea of naming Picardo’s holographic medical officer Doctor Zimmerman goes back to the original script for Voyager’s first episode, “Caretaker.” Regarding this character, the script mentioned that “He has no name for now… but we will get to know him in time as Doc Zimmerman.” Incidentally, this last name was meant to honor Herman Zimmerman, an art director and production designer who worked on the franchise throughout the entire Golden Age of Star Trek.

Writers took their cues from this early script, and they began describing Picardo’s character as Doc Zimmerman in every script for Voyager’s first season. They were really committed to this name, and they even released promotional materials to the public that used it. Because of this, the writers came up with a cheeky nickname for the distinctive sound effect of the holographic Doctor popping out of thin air. As an homage to the character’s intended name, stage directions included how the Doctor “zimmers in” and “zimmers out” of scenes.

Holo Physician, Heal Thyself

Early on in Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Picardo’s character considered taking on a name for himself, but he never found one that fit. Behind the scenes, the same thing happened to the writers. You see, by the time Season 2 rolled around, they took a page out of Doctor Who’s book and simply referred to this character as the Doctor in various scripts. However, the writers didn’t give up on the idea of introducing a Doctor Zimmerman into the show. Eventually, both Voyager and Deep Space Nine featured appearances by Lewis Zimmerman, the cranky scientist who created the Emergency Medical Hologram in his own image.

In the Voyager episode “Life Line,” the Doctor got to meet his maker, helping cure Lewis Zimmerman of what would otherwise have been a terminal illness. This gave the two a chance to reconnect, and while they clashed at first, they eventually reconciled. By the end of the episode, Zimmerman told the Doctor to keep writing subspace communiques whenever he got the chance. This made for a heartwarming reconciliation that brought this technobabble saga full circle: now that the EMH had “zimmered in’ to his maker’s life, his photon-loving father never wanted him to “zimmer out,” ever again.