"Emergence" question

[TroiFan4ever]

The Enterprise turned off its own Holodeck safeties, meaning if he wanted to, the guy who shot the engineer over the brick could've shot Riker, Data, or Worf, too.

So, if the holodeck weapons could harm the Enterprise crew, then could their real phasers effect the passengers on the train, even though they're not real?

I just found it quite interested how Troi somehow learned the gunman killed the engineer over the brick but didn't bother boarding the train armed with a phaser in case he wanted to shoot her too when she sat down to talk to him about the brick.

 

[Christopher]

A holodeck character is just a projection of light given solidity by a shaped forcefield. Shooting it with a phaser wouldn't really have much impact. Look at Voyager -- the Doctor was immune to phaser fire unless it hit his mobile emitter. If you wanted to "kill" a holodeck character with a phaser, you'd have to shoot the holo-diodes in the holodeck wall, because they're what's generating the character.

 

[Tiberius]

Unless the holocharacter was programed to react as if shot if you actually shot the projection.

 

[Christopher]

^But we're assuming that's not the case in "Emergence," since the holodeck has stopped cooperating with the crew.

 

[Timo]

^It would have been interesting if the heroes had known certain tricks by which they could make an even halfway cooperating holodeck do their bidding - and then tested if "even a little bit of humanity" remained in the holodeck behavior, through oversight of the enemy. That'd be really classic Trek.

However, the technobabble related with these user tricks would probably have been phenomenally bad and in contradiction with everything we know (and the writers don't) about the way the holodecks behave...

A holodeck that wants to be indifferent to lightly armed humans can probably manage that easily enough. A holodeck that decides to be all-out hostile... Now that would spell quick and gruesome death to our heroes! In essence, the holodeck is automatically the match of any hero, as it can create the hero's evil twin in holographic form and equip him with everything the hero is carrying, too. Things can only get worse if the holodeck decides to upgun.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TroiFan4ever]

I recall a VOY episode where some security guys were chasing Barclay down the ship. I think it was in Engineering. That's when B'Elanna Torres took out a phaser and fired on the security crew chasing him, trying to protect him from them but the phaser didn't work on them.

So I see now how a phaser can't "harm" a holodeck character. But in "Emergence" the holodeck mess was because the ship's computer stopped cooperating with the crew, so why would it turn off its safeties? I'm surprised in a pleasant way that it let the crew enter and leave when they wanted to.

 

[Christopher]

It turned off its safeties because action-adventure television requires putting the characters in real danger. That's about all the justification there ever is for "the safeties are off." Really, why is it even possible to turn the safeties off? That only makes sense from a TV-peril standpoint, not a safety-engineering or legal-liability standpoint.

 

[Herbert1]

If you wanted to "kill" a holodeck character with a phaser, you'd have to shoot the holo-diodes in the holodeck wall, because they're what's generating the character.

Interesting how the characters never attempted to disable or destroy the holo-diodes when the holodeck malfunctioned.

 

[Tiberius]

It turned off its safeties because action-adventure television requires putting the characters in real danger. That's about all the justification there ever is for "the safeties are off." Really, why is it even possible to turn the safeties off? That only makes sense from a TV-peril standpoint, not a safety-engineering or legal-liability standpoint.

It's possible to turn the safeties off because they are a program. In just the same way one can turn off one's antivirus program while surfing the net, or set one's monitor to display only 16 colours.

 

[Christopher]

It's possible to turn the safeties off because they are a program. In just the same way one can turn off one's antivirus program while surfing the net, or set one's monitor to display only 16 colours.

But if it's a program that has the potential to hurt people, it's insanely irresponsible safety design to include the capability to deliberately choose to make it lethal. For instance, why is it even possible for holodeck guns to fire solid bullets? Bullets in flight are invisible to the eye, so there's no reason to include them in the program. Just simulate the muzzle flash and the impact, the way filmmakers do with blanks and squibs. Deliberately designing a holodeck program that's even capable of simulating a lethal firearm just doesn't make sense.

You know what Murphy's Law really means? "Anything that can go wrong, will?" It's actually a statement of a basic principle of safety engineering. If your system is designed so that it's capable of going wrong in a particular way, then that is the way it will fail when a failure inevitably occurs. So good design means trying to make sure that your system doesn't have failure modes built into its design -- or at least to make sure it fails safe, i.e. that if something breaks, it defaults to a mode that won't hurt anyone rather than one that will. If you design a holodeck program that's capable of simulating a gun that fires solid, deadly bullets at living beings, then you've completely failed as a designer to take common-sense safety principles into account, and you'd be held liable for gross negligence as soon as someone died as a result of your hideously inept design.

But fiction depends on things going wrong, so the demands of the storyteller are opposed to the demands of the safety engineer. Thus, systems in fiction tend to be deliberately designed to become more dangerous, not less, in the event of malfunction. I think perhaps we get so used to seeing that happen in fiction that we fail to realize how unrealistic and illogical it is.

 

[Timo]

But the very purpose of holoentertainment is to create thrills.

If you design (a holodeck program that's capable of simulating) a gun that fires solid, deadly bullets (at living beings), then you've completely failed as a designer to take common-sense safety principles into account, and you'd be held liable for gross negligence as soon as someone died as a result of your hideously inept design.

I just put into parentheses the irrelevant parts in the above sentence. Yet handguns are a popular and much-liked hobby, and the designing and manufacturing continues. There would be no hobby there if your mighty .45 fired a wimpy laser beam that told you that, yes, you have indeed scored eight out of ten today.

Many people going to the holodeck expect to die. If not there, then in the situation that they are training for through that simulation. If they are trained to a sense of security, their training has failed. Which is why light machine guns don't fire blanks above your head when you crawl through an obstacle course.

Holodecks don't really become more dangerous at malfunctions. They become more dangerous at user request. Which is perfectly logical and in accordance with what we know today of human psyche and entertainment. Entertainment is thrill, and thrill is risk. If the holodeck didn't sufficiently jeopardize you, you'd have to ask your very real roommate to come in there and do the hurting.

Timo Saloniemi