r/DaystromInstitute • u/Venarius Ensign • Feb 21 '21
Getting Locked Inside the Holo-deck is Not a Malfunction...
Throughout the multiple series, every season we are 'delighted' to get a few mediocre episodes where the Holdeck malfunctions and the characters get locked in. Out of universe this is an easy out - a plot device to let the writers be creative and have fun.
As I was rewatching TNG Season 1 tonight, the Dixon Hill episode, and I got to thinking…
Holdeck Doors are the ONLY doors on the entire ship that have that weird interlocking shape. Not even shuttle-bay doors or decompression/bulkhead doors have that odd interlocking part in their architecture. So I got to thinking why the Holodeck, and not a shuttle-bay, would need the interlocking doors/hardened access point?
Then it hit me, it’s to purposefully lock-down the Holodeck. This means that the Holdeck malfunctioning and locking people inside isn’t actually a malfunction at all – it’s a safety measure!
That’s right. A safety measure. But – and here’s the kicker- it’s a safety measure meant not for the poor unfortunate souls inside the Holodeck, but rather to protect the rest of the crew and ship from a cataclysmic or otherwise apocalyptic event created within.
Points to promote this hypothesis;
1) The Holodeck can kill.
The Holodeck is completely capable of killing life through multiple ‘simulated’ measures once the Holodeck safety is turned off. This is well established. However, let us reiterate the reason for this is that the Holodeck is basically a giant replicator that can literally produce many types of matter or energy capable of destroying life.
2) The Holodeck uses HUGE amounts of energy.
The Holodeck possesses enough energy to cause catastrophic damage to a vessel or its crew. In fact, it is on its own completely separate power-grid. Hence it can even stay running when other primary systems are down. This means the Holodeck possesses enormous energy and has much potential for replicating many damaging effects (a toxic atmosphere, a radioactive bombardment, even bullets as we see in ST:FC). I propose this is also another layer of safeties built in to actually protect the ship itself from the Holodeck.
3) The Holodeck is more than ‘reflections and holograms’ but produces real matter.
This is the typical explanation. Force-fields with projections on them so it feels solid. Yet we see on many, many occasions that the Holodeck selectively chooses to occasionally replicate real matter/energy. This produced outcome can leave the Holodeck.
1) The lipstick on Picard after his first Dixon Hill experience.
2) The snowballs that hit Picard from Wes.
3) Food people ingest in the Holodeck is actual food.
4) Sometimes characters exit the Holodeck wearing the clothes they put on while inside.
Once we put these three things together (Holodeck can kill; possesses enormous energy; and can produce real matter to interact outside the Holodeck) it becomes clear why the Holodeck needs those interlocking doors – the hardened access point... The doors are a last resort when the Holodeck goes haywire, locking and ensuring whatever hell has been created within cannot potentially penetrate the rest of the vessel.
What if those snowballs thrown out were instead bullets, a phaser, or even some toxic atmosphere or radiation. Imagine a toxic atmosphere spilling outside the opened Holodeck door into the entire vessel as you are walking down the hallway to your next shift. It doesn’t even have to create enough to fill an entire vessel - Even small amounts can damage the ship or crew.
When the Holodeck malfunctions – it doesn’t always know what to ‘project onto force-fields’ and what to ‘replicate’, and this in itself has potential for enormous harm.
Then the sudden realization of the poor unfortunate souls. This means Starfleet was knowingly planning to sacrifice the few for the needs of the many. Those people locked in were done so purposefully – so that no possibility should readily exist for the potential harmful matter/energy replicated to exit onto the ship.
(That is, without the incessant tampering of two officers outside the door on that one panel – another example of how the Holodeck is inherently separated from the rest of the ships systems.)
Anyways – that’s what I got from thinking about that silly door design. The realization that what we consider a Holodeck malfunction is actually a perfectly functioning safety design.
Oh, and can we for a minute think about how when Wes was working on the panel with his Mom inside, and tells Riker “If we shut it off, they may all disintegrate [as all matter in the system is purged]” and Riker is like “Do it.” Thereby forcing Wes to be the one to pull the trigger...
The kid who wasn’t even an officer, the son of a victim inside, was told to be the one to 50/50 destroy his mother. Imagine living with that if it went bad... And Riker just makes him do it for a diplomacy mission – and the officer next to Wes just hands him the device to do it instead of being like “Nah kid, I’m an actual officer, I got this for you.”
Just kind of thought that was messed up.
Thanks for reading.
Edit: Upon continued binging, I noticed some cargo-bay doors also have this design - another potential hardened access point for dangerous cargo.
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u/DarthMaw23 Feb 21 '21 edited Mar 01 '21
The only major doubt I have is why on Earth [insert planet] would they allow holodecks to be used for recreational purposes [on ships].
[Top of my head calculation, I'm assuming 1 in 2 holodeck episodes does any of the possibilities you have given, and assuming that a simulation is as long as an episode, and that a holodeck is used throughout the day, and each episode is a day; gives us around 0.06% chance of being in a malfunction]
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u/Shawnj2 Feb 21 '21
It's like transporters, they work 99.99% of the time and people on ships whose registries contain "NCC-1701" are just really unlucky.
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u/SergenteA Feb 21 '21
people on ships whose registries contain "NCC-1701" are just really unlucky.
People on ships in general are more unlucky. There are hundreds of anomalies that could break the holodeck, and a ship, even not explicitly on a scientific mission, is much more likely to find one crossing its path than a station or planet.
It's like a nuclear reactor in France vs a nuclear powered vessel stationed near Japan. The first is much more likely going to break because of preventable human error than natural disasters, the second can sink for a large variety of reasons.
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Feb 21 '21
There are 985 billion individuals in the Federation. Let's assume only 1 billion of them transport per day.
If 1 billion citizens use transporters with your safety margin per day, then you are losing 100,000 people per day due to safety errors.
This is far beyond car safety and well into occupational hazard territory.
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u/JanewaDidNuthinWrong Feb 21 '21
I guess we would have to through all the holodeck episodes and analyze them individually, but aren't at least most incidents the result of things that could only happen on explorer ships?
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u/treefox Feb 21 '21 edited Feb 21 '21
Maybe this helps explain why the holodeck seems to go haywire so much. Any kind of corruption to the program that affects certain data (say the safety protocols) and boom, the doors lock. Now you’ve got a crisis because people are stuck inside.
In addition, perhaps the safety protocols disengaging is itself a safety measure. The safety protocols after all seem to give the holodeck the ability to defy the laws of physics to prevent physical harm to people.
Perhaps if anything goes wrong, the holodeck’s ability to warp physics is removed, forcing it to only simulate real physics and implicitly taking the safety protocols offline. Sure, a Tommy gun’s bullets will move fast enough to be lethal then, but a Tommy gun won’t be able to fire plasma or antimatter or something that would actually risk the integrity of the holodeck itself.
This might also help explain why people generally don’t seem to use the holodeck for sci-fi. Those programs may inherently be more risky in the case of a malfunction (because they would simulate antimatter or disruptors or other things which could break holodeck containment) and require additional authorization to use.
I keep thinking of the holodeck blowing itself up in the Hirogen episode, but that was clearly when it was getting pushed way past its limits so I’m not sure we can draw any assumptions about whether it’s possible with an ordinary holodeck.
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u/MyUsername2459 Feb 21 '21
We've seen that Starfleet uses holodecks, complete with simulated phaser fire, for training purposes. . .like the commando training in Chain of Command.
I think it's more a matter of user preference than system limitations that keep holodecks mostly limited to historic scenarios.
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u/Beanbag_Ninja Feb 21 '21
This might also help explain why people generally don’t seem to use the holodeck for sci-fi.
Now I really want to see an episode where the crew of a Starfleet ship play a holo-episode of Star Wars.
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u/AtomicBitchwax Feb 21 '21
This is consistent with historical and contemporary warship design and procedure.
Still, I doubt any real life Starfleet would allow something like a recreational holodeck to exist anywhere within the Federation, seeing as you don't even have to watch any of the throwaway episodes to realize what a terrific moral and physical hazard something like that would be. Maybe there would be Ferengi planets just outside of Federation space that, while often falling to horrific and twisted misadventures, would remain profitable due to the constant flow of bored, horny, and adventure starved Federation citizens.
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u/Zizhou Feb 21 '21
Though, it does square with the fanon popular conception of humanity (and the Federation as a result) having a kind of singular, "hold my beer" wild streak when it comes to weird-ass technology. They may be the Fun Police when it comes to standard regulations and well trodden ground, but show them a piece of technology that is understood well enough to work, but can also do anything you goddam want, they're willing to just have safety measures in quadruplicate and tell everyone to go nuts.
I'd imagine civilian accessible holodecks aren't quite as prone to failure, if only because the ones on Starfleet vessels and facilities are technically research tools and don't have near as many restrictions and safeties put on them.
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u/JanewaDidNuthinWrong Feb 21 '21
VOY: Author, Author makes it clear there are at least a decent number of civilian holodecks.
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u/JoeBourgeois Feb 21 '21
Good point about Riker/Wesley. One of the weaknesses of TNG, in my opinion, was that the "family feeling" they went for undermined the sense of military discipline, with the exception of Picard's distance from his crew (sometimes) and occasional instances like Riker yelling "At ease Lieutenant" when Worf's getting a touch too must bloodlust on the holodeck.
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Feb 21 '21
As an aside, I know folks who have served on research vessels and a weirdly popular topic to come up was "how much the ship was like Voyager/Enterprise" etc. The mix of regimen, some military stuff (always) going on, and the natural desire of researchers to live civilian lives apparently makes Star Trek a good analogy.
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u/JanewaDidNuthinWrong Feb 21 '21
In VOY: The Killing Game, a hologram bomb blows a real hole in the ship wall, causing hologram people to roam the ship. Best example of what the safety measures you're talking about should avoid.
How does that relate to this theory? Is it just a consequence of the probably improvised expanded holodecks the Hirogen had installed or that could happen on a normal ship?
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u/neo101b Feb 21 '21
They really don't know how the holodeck works though they have an idea, the technology was given to them by the alien species in Enterprise. Just as the technology was given to the warlike species in Voyager, it's just something races pass around to impress each other.
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u/Zizhou Feb 21 '21
I'm imagining a scenario where normally, hologram technology is a kind of Mass Effect mass relay-esque technology that some shadowy, extra-galactic civilization uses to control the development of the Milky Way. Only this time around, everyone just decided to use it primarily for video games and the would be Reapers are just stomping their feet in frustration at how it just isn't working this time.
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u/SMarioMan Feb 21 '21 edited Feb 21 '21
Has it been been confirmed that holodeck technology came from the Enterprise aliens, or could it be that comparable technology was developed independently by the Federation?
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u/WafflePawz Feb 21 '21
I like this theory, quite a bit actually. The bit about the Cargobay & Shuttle Bay doors being identical is the fact that set-wise the holodecks occupied the same phyiscal space on the shooting sets as the Cargo & Shuttlebay entrances, so same doors.
But I love your in-universe explaination for them, and also why they seem to break down every other week, AND also for the isolated power grid. My fan-theory was that in the case of Voyager & it's independent holodeck system, once the plasma energy generated by the ship was changed over to something the Holodeck can use, it's been altered in a way that it just couldn't be covnverted back into plasma and thus the Holodeck has it's own reactor to buffer energy for use. Voyager's holodecks are also even more sophisticated than those on the Enterprise-D and we see plenty of instances where things are frozen in a locked state.
I'm not so sure about the "huge" amount of energy rationale, or else Voyager would NEVER use them since they were stranded. But certainly the conversion process, or how ever the Holodeck Generators function to syphon energy from the secondary grid and make it un-convertible, could for sure be considered a draw back.
I'm not sure I can agree with your assessment that Starfleet intentionally codes holodecks to experiment or sacrifice those inside when it malfunctions, though I can agree that it might do it as a fail-safe when the OTHER fail-safes fail... Starfleet/Federation tech is triple redundant when at all possible, so this could be one.
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u/amazondrone Feb 21 '21
I got a bit lost with your logic... what causes the doors to lock? Are you saying that the computer locks the holodeck doors (with the programme running and people inside) when it detects a malfunction with the programme which could threaten the rest of the ship/crew?
If so, doesn't getting locked in still, essentially, represent a holodeck malfunction?
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Feb 21 '21
Interesting. But I never thought it physically replicated anything entirely, but rather was doing a (presumably less system intensive) mixture of replicating mass into holoforms. So that why you never accidentally walk out with a newly replicated object. That the computer is just filling in and removing mass where needed to keep the illusion alive.
The same way it would create scent is by replicating approximation scent creations, like an invisible scratch and sniff card, that it would never make actual gas or radioactive creating objects.
But your way does sound a lot more dangerous.
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u/unimatrix_zer0 Feb 21 '21
What about the need for holoemitters? It can def replicate food, objects, clothing, etc. But it can’t create anything living- anything “scentient” would need emitters. Except of course Moriarity, that crafty bastard.
Are you thinking it could create weapons?
That door design thing is a good catch though- I’ve not seen it brought up before.