I realize this has been commented on ad nauseum, but still I don't feel like enough has been said about how weird it is that a core Star Trek plot is "for some reason our entertainment system is able to disrupt key systems and also kill the people using it, and yet we keep using it."
"For some reason our popular sports game can kill a player with a fast ball line drive, and yet we still keep playing."
another catastrophe narrowly averted, with only two ensigns lost the captain orders another revision to the holodeck safety protocols the science officer suggests "or we could stop using it" and everyone laughs, including her
The big irony s that the core of the holodeck programming interfaces derives from the THERAC-25
At the very least, having the entire bridge crew and senior leadership gathered to use a system with that rare but well-known fault seems like something there would be rules against.
Senior Galley Assistant Staff Sgt. Crusox, highest ranking crewmember available, pulls out the Emergency Response Plan, flips to Section 12: Ranking Officers Trapped on Holodeck, and shakes their head: "I can't believe I'm doing this again."
See, also: away missions with almost the entire senior staff at the same time. Seems like everyone is really bad at delegating.
I feel like this is much more understandable now that we've seen people react to generative AI.
Last week's Strange New Worlds ends with the characters concluding that the holodeck is way too dangerous and should be shelved, and apparently a hundred years later everyone decided the entertainment value was worth the risk. And you know what, that's relatable.
Abigail - spoilers! I watched the first couple of minutes and lost the will to live but I know I’ll watch it this week.
What gets particularly insane is VOYAGER, where they establish pretty conclusively that holograms are sentient beings with all the rights thereof, and then absolutely nobody changes their behavior or usage patterns at all.
The change seems to have been "well, TRY not to create new artificial life; oh, you did? whoopsie"
And that’s after they’d gone through the effectively the same process with Data.
Scotty offering to fix things by giving the holodeck its own computer and power was funny. I love the suggestion that TNG holodecks are even harder to control or turn off because people who weren't Scotty tried to finish his half-formed ideas
I did wonder why they still had largely the same problems almost a century later.
This is basically social media and current tech and entertainment
"People get horny in space. This is a more critical system than life support".
To be completely fair, the whole point of the episode is that they are testing for this sort of nonsense, hence the recommendations for dedicated servers and power supplies that presumably enboldens them to try again in a few years...
All Star Trek writers are fans of Max Headroom and every holodeck episode is secretly a reference to the Max Headroom episode where earthquake survivors rescue their TVs and start watching them in the ruins because one of the networks has found a way to make TV addictive.
And Matt Frewer played a time traveling grifter
GLAUCON: "It's a strange prison you describe, and strange prisoners." SOCRATES: "They're like us."
The other big plot hole is how many problems could be solved by instantly beaming the threat out into the vacuum. Or even the warp core!
Reality Television
So…the internet
Have you seen social media?
The entertainment system keeps creating sapient lifeforms when given the slightest leeway and one time the entertainment center itself "became sapient" (probably already had been) and almost killed the whole crew trying to make a new body to escape... ...but we still keep using it for silly games.
