the revelation at the end of the star trek: voyager episode "author, author" that the federation operates a dilithium mine with a facility-wide holomatrix capable of projecting hundreds of clones of an obsolete medical hologram to serve as servant laborers breaking rocks, who nevertheless get a quota of leisure time in the holodeck to play through clandestinely-distributed holonovels that reveal to them the fact that they're an oppressed class, is truly one of the most baffling attempts at ending a television show with an uplifting social message that I've ever seen
also having the whole stirring "measure of a man" arc where it looks like the show is winding up to establish once and for all that yes, holograms are people, only for the verdict to be "well uhhhhhhhh we're not gonna decide whether holograms are people today, but also they can hold copyright in creative works so we're ceasing all future distribution of The Doctor's holonovel, except there's thousands of copies of it out in the wild anyway and also we need to hint at it starting a peasant revolt in the outro so [shrug] you figure it out man", is hilariously deflating
