Star Trek: Voyager's holographic Doctor and his fight to be seen as an individual was one of the show's best arcs, but the story of the Emergency Medical Hologram almost began in Star Trek: The Next Generation. TNG set up various plot points for its 1990s spinoff series such as the Cardassian occupation of Bajor that would inform Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's political context. TNG also shared various characters with Voyager and DS9 either via guest appearances or, in the case of Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) their promotion to series leads.
When Star Trek: Voyager was commissioned, producer Rick Berman and his team had to devise a way to distinguish the show from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Interestingly, they looked back through TNG for inspiration, settling on the episode "Q Who", in which the USS Enterprise-D was stranded in the Delta Quadrant. It was decided that Voyager would take that central premise and explore how the crew would get home without the assistance of an omnipotent trickster like Q (John de Lancie). Once the central story was decided, Berman and his writers looked into how their other Star Trek shows could set up the various plot points that would form Voyager's story.
