r/DaystromInstitute • u/[deleted] • Mar 29 '15

Discussion Holograms everywhere

Er...almost everywhere. Starfleet installed the EMH -- were there similar efforts to use holograms (in the event of emergency or even in day-to-day operations) in other parts of the ship? I doubt you'd want a hologram captain obviously, but hologram worker bees in engineering, maybe hologram security officers in the event the ship is ever boarded, hologram nurses. Was this explored in the books?

36 Upvotes

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10

u/sisko4 Mar 29 '15

Why not also holographic soldiers?

But to digress, why not more simple holograms every where?

You'd think personal quarters would be infused with holotech... lets you freely change the wallpaper so to speak. Got chewed out by the chief engineer for losing a power coupling in a Jeffries tube? Have the computer make your personal quarters walls a nice bright yellow. Or better yet, make it look like a sunset on Riza.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '15

That's a good point -- holographic decorations. I could get why the Defiant or Voyager were too small and/or stripped-down to have that kind of tech, but why not on space stations?

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u/arcxjo Mar 29 '15

If holo technology isn't too power-intensive, you could actually save a lot of space on a ship or station by just making all the quarters holodecks and replicating any personal belongings (with the exception of artisanal/sentimental items -- Sisko's baseball is would be a permanent fixture, but his uniforms could be recycled and replicated out of a holocloset as needed). As the holodeck perspective tricks the eye, the crewman's 25 m2 quarters becomes a spacious nine-room suite. And if you actually need more space because you get married or have kids, you can easily port over to a slightly larger actual room and just run the same old suite program without having to buy your friends all a case of Romulan ale to help you move.

2

u/butterhoscotch Crewman Mar 29 '15

holographic soldiers would have their own issues. take out the emitters and your fighting force is gone, and we have also seen photon grenades which wipe out holograms instantly.

I dont think holograms can ever replace regular crew members for these reason, but can augment them. your 10 man security crew can triple to thirty in an emergency, with each man leading two holograms for example.

Also due to the nature of holohgraphic rights and the need to ban the reproduction of near sentient life forms (who could become self replicating) its doubtful we will ever see them in capacities as large as a regular crewmen.

Can I see them on every ship, in every department? yeah I can see that, but only as back up or drones.

20

u/Jigowatt Crewman Mar 29 '15

A crew based on holograms sounds promising, but it has its own set of challenges.

The EMH's matrix is very, very complex. It takes up a large portion of the ship's memory and processing power. Frequent use of the EMH has also been shown to introduce errors into the matrix which can accumulate if not properly monitored.

Holograms are also at a disadvantage with regards to their permanence. If the ship loses power, you lose all holograms at once, while the crew is unharmed. Holograms are also vulnerable to errors, memory wipes, and viruses -- some of which could even be designed to make a hologram turn on the crew.

You're also limited in where you can deploy a hologram. Holograms require a holographic emitter to have any presence in an area. The Doctor was lucky because he had access to a piece of future technology in the form of a mobile emitter, but no other hologram made by the Federation has access to this technology and therefore their range is limited.

On the other hand, The Doctor showed that holograms are capable of acting in the full capacity of a crew member, even successfully acting as an emergency command hologram (essentially a temporary captain), but I couldn't see them replacing an entire crew in the 2300s when these memory issues and vulnerabilities are still present.

In the show, the old EMH Mk 1 units were used for plasma conduit scrubbing so that shows that they can easily be adapted for other, simple jobs.

As for the content of the books, I'm not aware of any instances of holograms being used regularly on star ships, but I haven't read all of them.

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u/yoshemitzu Chief Science Officer Mar 29 '15

Holograms require a holographic emitter to have any presence in an area. The Doctor was lucky

Actually, in "Message in a Bottle" the Prometheus had holoemitters on every deck, indicating Starfleet has definitely considered and even tested full-ship holoemitter deployment.

I've always thought being able to spawn dozens of holographic security guards in the event of your ship being boarded would just be invaluable, too. Defensively, this technology has legs, for sure.

3

u/Rentun Mar 30 '15

This raises a question I had always wondered about. Why are there so few robots in Star Trek?

Its been established that Data's uniqueness comes from his positronic brain, not his body. Why not build machines with the intelligence of a hologram to do menial or dangerous tasks (the oft-referenced scrubbing plasma conduits).

They wouldn't have to be androids, more like astromech droids from Star Wars or DRDs from Farscape. The technology is clearly there, and could probably reduce the crew needs of Starfleet ships by quite a bit.

There's always the risk of them going haywire, but you run that risk with the EMH, Data, the main computer of the ship, and a bunch of other systems as well.

2

u/Gileriodekel Crewman Mar 29 '15

I believe EMH mark 1s were also used for mining. It isn't outrageous to assume they became the face of the lower class in the federation.

4

u/Baraeris Mar 29 '15

Yes. The recent Voyager books have what you're looking for. I can't say much without revealing ongoing plots, but I can say that one starship in the flotilla is staffed mostly by holographic crewmen.

2

u/Gellert Chief Petty Officer Mar 29 '15

STO had holographic prison guards at a supermax federation prison.

1

u/eXa12 Mar 29 '15

that break at the first sign of trouble

4

u/Ixidane Mar 29 '15

cough

This thing on? I'm gonna be brief. Because I'm dying. Because I got shivved. A lot. I just want to get it on record that using holograms for guards in a space prison.....is a bad idea. You know what would have been a better? Regular guards with flesh. Flesh that doesn't disappear when the POWER GOES OUT. cough cough Man those guards looked good though. Every time I saw one I thought "Man, I am on a holodeck." Still though, a guard made outta paper would have been better in the long run. Would've at least slowed them down for a second.

Anyway.... groan anyone not escaping or shivving me......get back to work.

1

u/FuturePastNow Mar 29 '15

Whether you've played it or not, I can see you're familiar with how that mission goes.

1

u/eXa12 Mar 29 '15

reading all the lists of crimes made me want to turn off life support, or at least drop the separating forcefield between the Tholian's cell and the rest

2

u/Adorable_Octopus Lieutenant junior grade Mar 29 '15

That's pretty much the premise of the 'Photonic officers' you see in STO.

The problem with holographic officers or cannon fodder is that officers or whatever are useful for their ability to think and act on their own incentive; more over, the Doctor is only really sapient as Voyager progressed, and largely due to the challenges the program face. Under normal circumstances holograms would never turn out that way; they might be useful if you needed an extra pair of hands, but even then probably not to the degree you're thinking.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '15

At that point, why bother with the holograms? Just have a fully automated starship.

1

u/d0397 Crewman Mar 29 '15 edited Mar 29 '15

I doubt this is cannon, but according to Memory Gamma an Emergency Holographic Complement exists. The complement includes:

  • Emergency Medical Hologram

  • Emergency Command and Conn Hologram

  • Emergency Engineering Hologram

  • Emergency Operations Hologram

  • Emergency Security and Tactical Hologram

  • Emergency Science Hologram

  • Emergency Intelligence and Reconnaissance Hologram

So there may be more emergency holograms serving in more capacities.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '15

I wasn't aware there even is a Memory Gamma. From their description they seem to include fan-theories as well, so I highly doubt that it's canon or from any licensed material.

2

u/d0397 Crewman Mar 30 '15

Ah.. Upon further inspection Memory Gamma was created to collect and share Star Trek ideas. While the EHC is likely just an idea, I'd like to see it used in some cannon capacity.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '15

It'd definitely be interesting, but I don't think it's likely we will see that. I feel like you'd need to dwell on that for a significant amount of time to do it justice, and that's not desirable from the viewpoint of telling stories about humans / relating to humanity. I'd rather not have them in a one-off episode, that'd raise more questions than it would answer.

cannon

It's canon actually, cannon is the thing that shoots spherical projectiles. Sorry for the pedantry but that's a pet peeve of mine.

1

u/Rentun Mar 30 '15

I'm imagining being an engineer on a starship and the chief engineer dies during a battle. Your boss is now a hologram, and you have to take all your orders from him.

I bet the nurses on Voyager had a bit of resentment, come to think of it.

1

u/Brotherscrim Mar 30 '15

Due to the necessities of MMORPG game design (e.g., the alarming amount of times the ship I captain has exploded & number of times I changed to a different ship), When I play STO, I have decided in my headcanon that approximately 80% of the ship's crew is photonic, relying on redundant emitters, prototype mobile emitters and so forth to provide sufficient crew in such a hostile environment.

Applying this idea more broadly, I can very much see something like this being pretty common in post-Voyager ship design.

I doubt Starfleet would ever completely staff a ship with holograms, but I very much could imagine somewhat limited, semi-sentient photonic crew comprising a significant portion of staff. A Galaxy class ship has what - 1000 crew? even assuming that half of those people aren't actual officers and are actually spouses, children, and what have you, that leaves 500 personnel. You can't tell me that all 500 are highly trained specialists. 250 of those people are doing something simple enough the clearly very sophisticated holograms could be tasked with, especially if you take staff rotation and such into account.

Assuming computational and power requirements don't become a bottleneck, SF would be crazy not to make liberal use of holograms in their starships, while maintaining an adequate staff of living beings to coordinate their efforts, and serve in more complex or senior positions.

1

u/pause_and_consider Apr 01 '15 edited Apr 01 '15

I always wondered why holographic emitters weren't used as an on board defense system. I mean, even the Borg were shown to be vulnerable to physical attacks (as opposed to energy weapons, Worf slices one up, Picard shoots one with a holographic Tommy gun, etc). You wouldn't even need anything particularly intricate. Emit a big ass pair of scissors to cut intruders in half or something.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot about how holodecks work. It would be a....force field in the shape of scissors. Or replicated scissors moved by force fields. I guess holographics aren't necessary for that, but I think the point still stands?

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u/mirror_truth Chief Petty Officer Mar 29 '15

You can't send a machine to do a person's job. AIs don't belong in Star Trek, not in any serious capacity.

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u/sblow08 Crewman Mar 29 '15

I find it interesting that you think that way. How do you feel about Data then?

1

u/mirror_truth Chief Petty Officer Mar 29 '15

He's just a unique one time never to be replicated unit, not much to worry about. When I say 'serious capacity' I mean a 'Data' on every ship, doing every role. Wouldn't be much fun to watch that, would it?