It just popped up in my mind.
- You could decorate any room as you like. You don’t even need to step out of it most of the times.
- Other people can be projected inside it like Voyager’s doctor.
- Also rooms could be much smaller. They only need to be big enough a human(oid) can fit inside.
- In emergency cases most holograms can be shut off to match increased energy demands by weapons and shields. You only really need seating/bed and a (non-exploding) console screen.
- Much of the specialized rooms like a bar, med bay, etc. won’t be needed anymore as a holodeck can imitate all of them.
It irritated me a bit that a Discovery gets fancy floating warp nacelles but holodecks are… wait, does Discovery has a holodeck? I don’t remember seeing one.
I thought after s2 of Discovery, something exactly like that was already a thing?
Or am I misremembering, it’s been a while.
Power?
Considering how often a single holodeck tries to take over the ship/kill its occupants/malfunctions, the fewer the better.
Surely The Year of The Holodeck Desktop would arrive eventually?
OG Discovery had some kind of combat simulator (kind of a proto-holodeck) that Lorca and Tyler used to train for a mission.
After the 31st century refit, the cabins used programmable matter for their furniture, etc. My understanding is that programmable matter is the transistor to the holodeck’s vacuum tube (i.e. it made holograms obsolete). Ok, I said that, but there are advanced holograms at HQ, so I guess holography hasn’t gone totally out of style. I don’t recall if it was ever established as such, but my head canon is that programmable matter is more efficient for “static” objects since it doesn’t need energy to maintain form, just when it changes (unlike holograms which require constant energy). That would explain why PM is used for furnishings/decor and holograms are still used for humanoid constructs.
As for why all rooms aren’t holodecks/suites in the 24th century, probably due to power consumption. In VOY 4x18 “The Killing Game”, the Hirogen had Harry Kim expanding the holo emitters throughout the ship which seemed to be putting considerable strain on the ship’s power system (despite not being in battle or at high warp; perhaps not in warp at all – been a minute since I saw that episode).
While the Prometheus had ship-wide holo emitters and seemed fine power-wise, there’s a difference between projecting an EMH (or two) versus simulating an entire environment plus the associated NPCs.
As for why all rooms aren’t holodecks/suites in the 24th century, probably due to power consumption.
It’s been a while and I might not remember correctly. Wasn’t there an episode in Voy? with holographic lifeforms that rebelled against their creators and lived inside a flying holodeck ship? And there was that Insurrection movie in which a whole village was teleported into a giant holodeck ship.
It seems possible.
Wasn’t there an episode in Voy? with holographic lifeforms that rebelled against their creators and lived inside a flying holodeck ship?
Yep. But the ship was just projecting the holographic lifeforms and not an entire environment. Probably used a bit less power than a full-blown, ship-wide holodeck. Life support (which seems to require a lot of power in the Trek universe) on the ship may also have been minimal since they didn’t need it. It was still online, at least in certain areas, since B’Elanna was able to survive when she was shanghai’d aboard.
And there was that Insurrection movie in which a whole village was teleported into a giant holodeck ship.
Also yep. There was also a TNG episode with the whole village Worf’s (human/adopted) brother was embedded into that was was stealth transported into the D’s holodeck and moved to a new planet.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to make every cabin a holo-suite, just that in most cases, it would seem to be impractical. i.e. Awesome, but Impractical
Edit: If you’ve seen PIC, they actually do make at least some of the cabins holo-suites. The cabin Picard is assigned is made up to look like a room in his chateau. I think that room is special, though (might even be the captain’s quarters that Rios gave up/didn’t use) since Raffi’s and Rios’s cabins seemed standard for a starship of that size/class. I don’t think we saw any other cabins aboard La Sirena. That, or they didn’t have enough cabins and just stuck Picard in the ship’s holodeck lol.
Came here to mention La Sirena from Picard.
Hologram bridge crew with fully hologram passenger quarters, the introverts starship par excellence 👌
The holo-crew is a really smart idea for a solo freighter captain.
Warships need to be able to keep functioning even if they take damage, loss of power, etc. A holographic system seems to be fragile, and requires lots of other ship systems to be fully functional.
Not to mention energy use, purpose-built compartments probably use less energy just to exist
I remember a line in at least one episode that claimed holodecks consume so much power, they run on their own independent power system and aren’t connected to the warp core.
Can’t remember which episode it was, but it was likely one of the two parters where the Hirogen take over Voyager and have the WW2 sim.
only as separate as the plot demands, sometimes it’s more interconnected
I thought the same. It helps to watch the first episode of the next generation. Will talks to wesely about it and its a rare thing at that time and sounds like it takes a lot of resources. Later episodes the holodeck using a lot of power comes up. People have to sign up for them and I took it there is no point in making more holodeck rooms than is prudent for the amount of power they draw just for leisure (mostly) activities. All the rooms have replicators but if someone was running it constantly it would become quite the power drain and we see in voyager that with no source of resupply have to ration replicators (although curiously I don’t recall them rationing the holodecks, but maybe they did). As far as discovery in the future you see the energy issues and they use that programmable matter which I think is supposed to be more energy efficient.
They hand waved away the holodeck power thing in Voyager by days something along the lines of it is a different type of power that wasn’t worth trying to convert to normal power for some reason. Basically just another Voyager excuse to ignore the premises of the show unless they happen to be bored that day.
yeah its funny because the way I understand it the holodeck uses a compination of holgrams, tractor beam type thing, and replicator tech. Feels like in their situation a competent engineer could get it utilized for the more important just replication or heck they are always rerouting power. they can’t do that???
I’d say the biggest reason is energy, like everyone else. But also, being able to make your room into any fantasy scenario you want would probably lead to problems with adjusting to everyday life. They don’t need a whole ship full of Barclays screwing up at their job.
As people said, the Holodeck uses a lot of energy, “Homeward” is an episode who show this.
wait, does Discovery has a holodeck?
They actually seem to have what you’re describing, more or less - Burnham was able to run complete holosimulations in her quarters.
They didn’t go into depth at all, don’t believe we even have one with a name, but they talked about seeing federation ships made entirely of ‘holographic containment walls’ in Discovery Season 3. Pretty sure it was when they first arrived at federation headquarters in the future.
There was also that ship in insurrection where it was just one giant holodeck, but still existing inside a regular ship. The concept just hasn’t made it into something that’s broadly popular in the mainstream trek fandom.
Good catch, I’d completely forgotten about that line:
Some of these hulls are organic. Some…some are completely comprised of holographic-containment walls.
Probably because it’d be too expensive and I’m not talking about money
Prodigy has holoemitters on every deck and is able to reconfigure the bridge using them. It is possible but they just need a reason.
This is a fun thought experiment and I’m kind of surprised Discovery didn’t do something like this with holodeck tech in the “future” since the writers weren’t afraid to do other tech-taken-to-natural-conclusion like tiny phaser transporters (or whatever those were).
Semi-related but I always thought it would be cool to see a Star Trek future where things have advanced so far that it would appear to someone like Picard like he and the Enterprise appeared to the Mintakans.
This is a fun thought experiment and I’m kind of surprised Discovery didn’t do something like this with holodeck tech in the “future” since the writers weren’t afraid to do other tech-taken-to-natural-conclusion like tiny phaser transporters (or whatever those were).
They kinda did, they just didn’t go into detail. There were ships that were made entirely of holodeck at the new federation headquarters in discovery season 3ish, we just never got beyond being mentioned briefly and people going ‘Oh, thats cool’.
a Star Trek future where things have advanced so far that it would appear to someone like Picard like he and the Enterprise appeared to the Mintakans.
This was my major gripe with the 900+ year jump in Disco. The premise of TOS is that 300 years from now, we have developed warp speed, transporters and evolved past scarcity.
In the 32nd Century of Discovery… looks like shoulder pads are back? 🤷
I got a strong impression that the future of the Federation we saw in Disco was specifically built around the values of keeping “humanity” (and inalienable species) at the center of everything.
I imagine they prefer to be grounded in reality, as over-use of the holodeck is shameful.
Hey! You leave Barclay alone!
I always leave the Brocolli alone. :-)
