Why didn't Starfleet dismantle holodecks on all starships after.....

[Marynator]

I've never really understood holodeck safety settings, like I just can't quite wrap my head around how just turning off a setting makes something deadly? Like wouldn't weapons and things just be props? A ray gun isn't really a ray gun, right? It's just a sort of toy that looks like a ray gun for effects and your program has an appropriate reaction. Like if I went in and had my holodeck build me a time machine, and I turned off safeties, it wouldn't really let me travel through time would it? Maybe I'm not making sense, I guess it's just one of those things I just always found difficult to digest.

 

[Steven P Bastien]

That's the way it should be, but remember Picard turns holographic bullets into real bullets (not real bullets, but they kill?) in First Contact. It makes no sense to me, but that's how they did it.

 

[Qonundrum]

I agree, i never understood why there would be an option to turn off the safeties

Before Dr Crusher went to become head of Starfleet Medical for no reason, rumor has it that the previous head, Doctor Jack Kavorian the 17th, went missing. Unfortunately, and you know how bureaucracy is, this issue of the safeties simply got forgotten?

(Yeah, stupid it is, but I can't think of any more realistic reason to have safety features be allowed to be disabled apart from making "asshishted shuichide" easier (and more entertaining!)...)

 

[Greg Cox]

Why didn't Starfleet dismantle transporters after the first malfunction? A far more dangerous piece of technology.

But the transporters serve many vital functions. The holodeck is purely for recreation.

If Disneyland's PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ride malfunctioned and tried to kill you once a season, it would probably be shut down.

 

[The Wormhole]

Here's something that always stumped me. In the Voyager episode Pathfinder, when Barclay is on the run from his commander and the security officers, he runs into the holodeck and activates his simulated Voyager where the holographic crew try to defend him. The safeties are obviously active, at one point the Commander gets shot by a phaser which does nothing to him. However, the Commander's solution to the problem is to program fake Voyager's warp core to breach, which is enough to motivate Barclay to surrender before the ship can be destroyed. But if the safeties are active, he'd be safe from the warp core breach anyway. And I would prefer not to consider the idea the Commander disabled the safeties just to make the warp core breach a threat, as that would mean his solution to dealing with Barclay was to set of an antimatter explosion in the heart of San Francisco.

 

[Phoenix219]

Bullets are just physical objects traveling at an accelerated speed - a time machine or a ray gun are much more intricate things. Telling it to make something that doesn't actually exist in the Star Fleet Google/Wiki future interwebs should create nothing but an appearance (theatrics) while telling it to make something documented already should be possible.

No idea how it creates AIs....

 

[Shawnster]

I've never really understood holodeck safety settings, like I just can't quite wrap my head around how just turning off a setting makes something deadly? Like wouldn't weapons and things just be props? A ray gun isn't really a ray gun, right? It's just a sort of toy that looks like a ray gun for effects and your program has an appropriate reaction. Like if I went in and had my holodeck build me a time machine, and I turned off safeties, it wouldn't really let me travel through time would it? Maybe I'm not making sense, I guess it's just one of those things I just always found difficult to digest.

Right! As in Night when Seven deactivated holodeck safeties and shot the Night Alien intruder with the Captain Proton Ray gun, how did the computer choose what specs to give the gun? It was a prop from a 30s film serial. It didn't have specs like a Phaser.

 

[Tim Thomason]

They have plenty of rayguns in the future. They just call them phasers or disruptors or laser pistols or plasma rifles or what-have-you. The holodeck just saw what the raygun was supposed to accomplish, and replicated an approximate equivalent.

 

[Prax]

I'd imagine a simulated warp core breach would end the simulation.

Forget about holodecks, how does the computer know when you want to walk through a door, as opposed to standing in front of one conversing, and don't get me started on the psychic combadge.

 

[Phoenix219]

So what if you had your simulated Starship slingshot around a simulated sun? Would the holodeck somehow breech space/time?

 

[F. King Daniel]

So what if you had your simulated Starship slingshot around a simulated sun? Would the holodeck somehow breech space/time?

It brought Moriarty to life because LaForge asked it to. So I'm thinking maybe.

 

[Captain Rob]

You'd breech 'simulated' space/time. And the computer would create an environment appropriate to the situation. But only inside the holodeck.
In response to psychic doors and commbadges. The computer is spying and eavesdropping on everyone all the time. A top secret feature that would easily unravel most plots.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

But the transporters serve many vital functions. The holodeck is purely for recreation.

If Disneyland's PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ride malfunctioned and tried to kill you once a season, it would probably be shut down.

The same could be said about countless sports and other leisure activities that exist today where people have been seriously injured or killed, yet people still engage in them even knowing the risks. Even at home there are numerous ways people can be hurt, it's a fact of life that no where is safe but you accept those risks in order to live a life.

 

[Shawnster]

The same could be said about countless sports and other leisure activities that exist today where people have been seriously injured or killed, yet people still engage in them even knowing the risks. Even at home there are numerous ways people can be hurt, it's a fact of life that no where is safe but you accept those risks in order to live a life.

Amusement parks regularly close and dismantle rides if enough people get seriously injured or killed. Yet roller coasters continue to be used.

So to carry the analogy to Star Trek... the particular holodeck may be dismantled if enough people get injured or killed, but holodecks in general would continue being used.

 

[Prax]

Has anyone ever died in the holodeck?

If holodecks were real, I would always step out of it, before turning it off.

 

[The Wormhole]

Has anyone ever died in the holodeck?

Ensign Lynch and his Borg partner.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Can't be both a utopia AND a nanny state.

 

[fireproof78]

Can't be both a utopia AND a nanny state.

Then the Federation, or at least Starfleet, is not utopian, considering the computer is monitoring people's brain waves at all times, according to VOY.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Then the Federation, or at least Starfleet, is not utopian, considering the computer is monitoring people's brain waves at all times, according to VOY.

There's a difference between monitoring health and forcing people not to take their own informed risks.

 

[Mojochi]

But the transporters serve many vital functions. The holodeck is purely for recreation.

Tell that to every EMH, who could be programmed to have an additional triage area on the ship, in a holodeck... Or Geordi, who literallly saved the ship by using it for engineer modeling purposes.

It's an incredible tool. In fact, I really wish they'd done an episode that used the holodeck for some huge planetary medical emergency, hundreds of thousands of people filtering through for medical treatment

Edit: I just remembered another crafty use of a holodeck. Granted, the premise for the episode is lame, but when they used the holodeck to relocated that primitive colony in the Homeward episode