Really after the first Holodeck malfunction they should have installed a cartoonishly huge plug you could just pull out to cut power to it entirely.
- He/Him
I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.
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in reply to @pendell's post:
I'm pretty sure the plot to multiple episodes in a few different Star Trek series involved external power forcing the holodeck to stay active
I'm sure there's been the suggestion at least once that doing so would kill the people inside or something
Just recently finished the first "holodeck goes wrong" episode, "The Big Goodbye" and Wesley at one point says "if we screw up this repair, the program could abort and everyone inside could disappear" which like holy shit WHAT are you telling me there are situations where the Holodeck can't discern between program and human and will just Delete Real People? Has someone used a Holodeck for execution in the canon yet? Jesus.
Thinking about when Picard lured the Borg into the holodeck in First Contact so he could turn the safeties off and shoot them with a tommy gun, now I'm wondering if it would have been more effective to say "computer make the Borg disappear"
The holodeck is such a weird idea on almost every level. Like, narratively, do they expect the audience to tune in and say "oh, thank goodness they're not doing any Star Trek stuff, this week"? Then there are the constant logic contortions of why they need to keep this dangerous technology in service, even when people are dying. Then, the end of almost every holodeck episode has a hologram character express concern about what happens to their inner lives when the program ends, but they only worry about the implications of their interactions, with the guy who hijacks the ship. The plug would at least show that they're aware of some of this...
How they deal with the holodeck is so strange. Like, the idea of the holodeck is cool and interesting and ripe for sci-fi stuff to happen. But for some reason a holodeck episode almost always has it break or malfunction. As if it's not interesting enough? They can't conceive of how it might fit into the crews lives other than when it traps them?
Deep Space 9 has the best holodeck episodes by far because they have people using them like Bashir and Nog with Vic. Which is to say how it was meant to be used. Because it's awesome and doesn't need something else to happen to it.
I really want a holodeck.
And it makes each instance of the Holodeck going haywire have less impact. Imagine if the super intelligent Moriarty program was the only time the Holodeck went berserk like that, it would have so much more weight to it, and be more easily accepted as a "nobody could have predicted the Holodeck would go wrong like this" scenario.