The Bad Science of The Next Generation

[jgf]

...
Also, was it Intelligent Design? I always thought of it more like, get life rolling downhill and let the forces of evolution shape the course of each planet.....

I hated that episode because it does not take into account environmental variation; it's just a cheesy explanation for why no "Star Wars" style variation in intelligent life. You seed a couple of dozen planets and a million years later they've all developed humanoids of the same size and proportions as earth humans, with only facial differences?

On earth all dogs descended from a "proto-dog", yet there is everything from chihuahuas to great danes, from greyhounds to bulldogs ...and they all developed on one planet.

 

[Discofan]

Bad science/tech in TNG always brings me to the holodeck. I can accept a warp drive, transporters, phasers, shields, etc., but not the holodeck.

When you see it "dormant" it is a solid room of finite dimensions, perhaps fifteen to twenty feet square with a grid of, I assume, holograph projectors on the ceiling, walls, and floor. Now I will accept that it can project an image of a scene, let's say a forest, that would appear to extend for miles in any direction, and that you could turn around and look up and down and that scene would appear perfectly naturally. But then you see people walk through that scene! ...for hundreds of yards! Logic says you would take about five steps and bump into the wall. Or does the holodeck allow you to walk through walls? ...and through the hull of the ship ...and stand outside the ship while it's moving faster than light ...all the while it looks like you are in the woods. Remarkable technology.

The alternative is that the holodeck does not function physically but mentally. Instead of creating the scene in that room it creates it in your mind; instead of you walking you merely think you are moving. Such mind control is possible in the Star Trek universe, remember the Talosians. But every time it is encountered the humans are astonished by it, so it is unlikely they have created a holodeck with such power. Especially since they get dressed appropriately for the holodeck scene ("I am NOT a merry man!"), totally unnecessary if the experience is completely mental.

I think the holodeck can be at least partially explained without resorting to mental tricks.

First, if you are alone in the holodeck and you move in one direction, you're not really moving but the simulated ground moves oppositely to you. so you can feel like you've walked for miles while in fact, you've remained at the same place.

Now if there are several people, it gets a little tricky because they can just spread out and so they'll fill a space superior to that of the room.

(I will post my solution to the several people problem later as now I am a little pressed for time)

 

[Mojochi]

Yeah... A situation like Moriarty holding Pulaski in a location down the street from where Picard & Data enter the program is a bit tough to sell taking place in a 50 ft box

 

[saladdays]

I think the holodeck can be at least partially explained without resorting to mental tricks.

First, if you are alone in the holodeck and you move in one direction, you're not really moving but the simulated ground moves oppositely to you. so you can feel like you've walked for miles while in fact, you've remained at the same place.

Now if there are several people, it gets a little tricky because they can just spread out and so they'll fill a space superior to that of the room.

(I will post my solution to the several people problem later as now I am a little pressed for time)

I think that the same workings for each individual person works when there are multiple people involved. The main difference being that there is some type of force field or barrier of sorts put in place around each other when they are supposed to be far away in the particular holodeck program. For example, the holodeck would have to allow for people being in relative close physical proximity (maybe perhaps 20 or 30 feet), but not be able to hear, see, or otherwise directly respond to someone who is, say a mile away within the holodeck program.

The trickiness is that multiple people routinely go near and far away from each other within a holodeck program, and there must be a seamless transition. Perhaps the holodeck can sense when multiple people are together and put whatever barrier it is around the whole group, and then separate out those barriers when they move apart.

Another issue is that once you get a certain amount of people in the holodeck, you would run out of physical room for people to be in the holodeck without touching each other if they are not that close to each other in the program. I suppose there could be a limit for how many people can fit into a holodeck, even though that's never come up before.

 

[Prax]

The holodeck in TNG is at least 600-1000 square feet, with at least a 20-25' ceiling. I believe they only built a miniature set of it, and composited the actors into it.
I imagine that TNG has many holodecks of varying sizes. I'm not sure what the highest numbered room is, but I know they mention "holodeck five" in an episode. On a ship so big and empty, there could be 20 holodecks for all we know.

Voyager only had two, and they were identical in size to each other, and they were an actual set(and smaller). The
DS9 holosuites were very small, and it's hard to imagine playing baseball on it, with everyone spread out, while still being able to see each other. It seems impossible.

I like to think that holodeck technology is not something humans invented(unlike Warp drive, transporters, phasers, etc), but some other alien race of the Federation.

 

[Discofan]

..... I suppose there could be a limit for how many people can fit into a holodeck, even though that's never come up before.

Well, that sort of comes up on Voyager with the Irish program, they had to extend the simulation to several holodecks to accommodate all the people who wanted to use that program.

So yeah, that's pretty much what I came up with. You have to assume that in a holodeck everything is under control and that includes the sounds you make and those you hear and same with the light. The light is actually simulated so that when for example you have a pocket torch and you use it to light another person, the program cancels that light (easily done even today) and shows you what you'd see if the person in question was say ten meters away, instead of being right next to you. Same thing with sounds and also smells (I mean if someone has garbage breath you don't expect to smell them a hundred meters away).

Plus if a woman wears perfume and walks by you, you expect that her perfume will follow a similar progression, from faint, to normal, to faint again as she walks away. So in order for the program to seem real, the holodeck has to take all of that into account but I see don't any impossibility.

I guess holodecks would be like elevators, they could accommodate only a certain number of people at most.

 

[Discofan]

The holodeck in TNG is at least 600-1000 square feet, with at least a 20-25' ceiling. I believe they only built a miniature set of it, and composited the actors into it.
I imagine that TNG has many holodecks of varying sizes. I'm not sure what the highest numbered room is, but I know they mention "holodeck five" in an episode. On a ship so big and empty, there could be 20 holodecks for all we know.

Voyager only had two, and they were identical in size to each other, and they were an actual set(and smaller). The
DS9 holosuites were very small, and it's hard to imagine playing baseball on it, with everyone spread out, while still being able to see each other. It seems impossible.

I like to think that holodeck technology is not something humans invented(unlike Warp drive, transporters, phasers, etc), but some other alien race of the Federation.

I don't think they had digital compositing in 1987.

 

[saladdays]

Well, that sort of comes up on Voyager with the Irish program, they had to extend the simulation to several holodecks to accommodate all the people who wanted to use that program.

Good point. I had forgotten about that. But I guess that does lend credence to the need for having a limit on how many can use a holodeck at once.

 

[Discofan]

Good point. I had forgotten about that. But I guess that does lend credence to the need for having a limit on how many can use a holodeck at once.

I am sure of that or they'll end up like sardines.

 

[Prax]

I don't think they had digital compositing in 1987.

They had optical compositing, and used it for all the vfx shots. They film the actors against a blue screen or green screen, then composit it into shots of the miniature holodeck set.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_printer

 

[Discofan]

They had optical compositing, and used it for all the vfx shots. They film the actors against a blue screen or green screen, then composit it into shots of the miniature holodeck set.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_printer

I see.

 

[Prax]

Said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw

 

[trekshark]

I think that the same workings for each individual person works when there are multiple people involved. The main difference being that there is some type of force field or barrier of sorts put in place around each other when they are supposed to be far away in the particular holodeck program. For example, the holodeck would have to allow for people being in relative close physical proximity (maybe perhaps 20 or 30 feet), but not be able to hear, see, or otherwise directly respond to someone who is, say a mile away within the holodeck program.

The trickiness is that multiple people routinely go near and far away from each other within a holodeck program, and there must be a seamless transition. Perhaps the holodeck can sense when multiple people are together and put whatever barrier it is around the whole group, and then separate out those barriers when they move apart.

Another issue is that once you get a certain amount of people in the holodeck, you would run out of physical room for people to be in the holodeck without touching each other if they are not that close to each other in the program. I suppose there could be a limit for how many people can fit into a holodeck, even though that's never come up before.

I like the force field sectioning it off idea. The max person thing seems like it would have happened in that Irish village Voyager had going

edit: should have kept reading before replying, I see it was mentioned they extended that into multiple holodecks.

 

[Prax]

So imagine you're just a regular grunt on Voyager. You've put in 60 hour work week. You have 2 hours reserved on the holodeck where you plan to take your girlfriend out on a date. You had to make the reservation 5 weeks in advance because the senior staff is always using the holodeck.

So you get off work and get cleaned up, go down to the holodeck to find that the obnoxious helmsman is running another 24 hour program, this time on both holodecks!

 

[Discofan]

So imagine you're just a regular grunt on Voyager. You've put in 60 hour work week. You have 2 hours reserved on the holodeck where you plan to take your girlfriend out on a date. You had to make the reservation 5 weeks in advance because the senior staff is always using the holodeck.

So you get off work and get cleaned up, go down to the holodeck to find that the obnoxious helmsman is running another 24 hour program, this time on both holodecks!

Yeah, and if you don't like Irish folklore you're screwed.

 

[MAGolding]

I’ll take that over a black hole with mass under a pound instantly sucking in an entire planet.

The trouble with having lots of non-humanoid aliens is that the audience will have trouble empathizing with a creature without relatable facial expressions, and writers will have trouble creating drama with characters who can’t have sex with the other characters.

Truly non- humanoid aliens work better in “Hard sci-fi” than they do in space operas.

As I remember, what used to be be considered the greatest science fiction space operas of all, E.E. Smith's Skylark series and Lensman series, had plenty of human aliens but also plenty of non-humanoid aliens, some of them very bizarre by human standards.

As I remember, there are a lot of nature movies and shows where audiences sympathize with non humanoid Earth animals, and movies about humans and their pets. As I remember, society has a lot of categories of relationships where it is considered inappropriate for persons in those relationships to have sex, and there were often rules and even laws forbidding the depiction of sex or romance between people in those categories of relationships, and yet a number of stories, novels, movies and television episodes managed to depict dramatic situations involving persons in those relationships.

Hence, the stupidity of red matter.

It is illogical to flatter red matter by calling it stupid. It is unknown whether the properties of red matter allow it to be organized into nervous systems and brains. Even if red matter can be organized into brains, only a tiny, minute fraction of it would be, as is the case with our type of matter. Therefore, calling red matter stupid is vastly exaggerating its intelligence level.

The holodeck in TNG is at least 600-1000 square feet, with at least a 20-25' ceiling. I believe they only built a miniature set of it, and composited the actors into it.
I imagine that TNG has many holodecks of varying sizes. I'm not sure what the highest numbered room is, but I know they mention "holodeck five" in an episode. On a ship so big and empty, there could be 20 holodecks for all we know.

Voyager only had two, and they were identical in size to each other, and they were an actual set(and smaller). The
DS9 holosuites were very small, and it's hard to imagine playing baseball on it, with everyone spread out, while still being able to see each other. It seems impossible.

I like to think that holodeck technology is not something humans invented(unlike Warp drive, transporters, phasers, etc), but some other alien race of the Federation.

A 600 square foot room would be about 24.5 by 24.5 feet if square, or 12 by 50 feet, etc., and a 1,000 square foot room would be about 31.6 by 31.6 feet if square, or 20 by 50 feet, etc. And they seem like rather small spaces to walk around in.

An Enterprise episode had an example of alien holodeck technology, while a TAS episode had a recreation room on the Enterprise with early holodeck technology. But about 90 years later in "Encounter at Farpoint" Riker was amazed by the holodeck on the Enterprise D.