If they are, then the same guys who own "real dolls" will be lined around to "volunteer" six months before the first public one opens ('cuz you know it would only come to us normal folk in an arcade, pay-by-the-minute type set up).
TNG "Transfigurations" showed that viruses (virii?) can be artificially designed and created in the 24th century. We're pretty certain that replicator tech is already incorporated into the holodeck for food and drink. So with safety protocols off, I don't see why that replicator functionality couldn't be used to generate a physical virus to infect a real person for real, right at the moment of reproductive activity, so effectively, it is an STD. Kor
It could be... that'd be a good idea for a plot to attack a federation ship... But I think that, arbitrarily (or because biological contamination is something they worry about more) the computer is programmed not to make biological agents (in the holodeck, without high clearance)... another good plot... while running holo simulations of viral experiments with the holodeck safeties off, an intelligent mega virus is created... the again... what discriminates between what is rendered in photons (and thus are biologically inactive) and which are replicated... then again we replicating living organisms (alive) so I guess even then the viral cells would be dead... either way no worries. Except for the guy cleaning it... even it's it's done remotely via matter deconstruction... just the thought of it... gross.
Maybe, after all the Mucking around in there, a bio-photonic VD evolved... I mean that's a lot of genetic material and energy... maybe crabs gone Xenomorph? ;-)
Since I don't think it was implied that most/all major diseases like this were eradicated until TNG (even the common cold was still a problem in TOS), then for sure Kirk was a pile of interstellar VD... could prob tell where he's been from whatever VDs he's picked up.
That's debatable. The holographic mother could in fact be a really stylized in vitro fertilization chamber. The show is really inconsistent about whether holograms can be chemically reactive with real matter. Neelix's holographic lungs in Phage certainly were.
A borg maturation chamber assimilated a real doll and dressed up in a hologram. Neelix's lungs are a major example, but only one, and could we imagine they in fact wok mechanically, along the lines of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation? and that holographic was maybe a misnomer... they were force fields... don't know what the photons were supposed to be doing, if no one actually needed to see the lungs. Maybe Wesley's mysterious Holo-cold... Though I feel like maybe it was even said it was probably brought on board before hand and then became active or however you'd put it in the cold (like the regular cold)
Unless Talaxian lungs are just tissuey pumps and actual metabolism happens in the windpipe, it was chemically reactive. Also the Doc had a child in Blink Of An Eye. Then abandoned his child giving him permanent emotional scars.
Can you get your toaster pregnant or catch an STD from your hoover? No. Same applies to holograms. They're tools, nothing more than that.
Could the replicator product a viable ova, while would be held inside a hologram, the ova is fertilized during sex with the hologram, the hologram then is left active providing the proper environment for the then baby to mature for nine months, the replicator would add biological material to the artificial womb, at which point the baby is born? Or the ova could be donated from a actual woman.
Well, a holo-virus (holo-flu for example) would interact with normal matter, I suppose. I mean, the holodeck can let its holo"matter" interact with real matter on a macro scale, so why not on micro-scale ? So a holo-virus would enter your cells, and replicate using real matter that already was in the cell, and the next generation that would come out would be 'real' flu viruses. So if you get infected with a holovirus, I suppose you are infected for real. However, holodeck bacteria in your body would simply disappear once you step off the holodeck ?
As a fan of SF&F, I'm ashamed to say I've watched hardly any NuBSG, so I don't understand these references. Kor