Why should it be contradicted? Surely the holodeck can do both replicated and nonreplicated illusions? And surely it can unreplicate things that are no longer needed, or things that are about to perform against the rules of the program (such as flying out of the door).
The first mistake I remember catching, relating to a holodeck, is when Data and LaForge leave the 'deck after encountering Moriarty, and Geordi is aghast at the drawing he holds in his hand. When we flips it over so we can see it, it is right side up, meaning that he was looking at it upside down. D'oh!
This is a mistake in terms of the real world, yes, something they didn't catch when filming...
But consider this: Data is carrying and holding the paper in order to demonstrate it to a fellow officer. Data is
planning on flipping it over for somebody to see. Surely he
would then deliberately hold the paper upside down, so that it becomes rightside up when flipped!
So it's not really a mistake in-universe... Unless we want it to be.
Other than that, there are the numerous instances where characters in the holodeck go 'off-script' and notice things like Picard's Starfleet uniform. They're projections, not people - they don't have real eyes or anything; unless the holodeck is programmed to badger its users into costumes, the characters should respond to the player in the context of the story, rather than in the context of the player's reality.
I strongly disagree. The programs are interactive - the characters are supposed to comment if Picard, in the role of Dixon Hill, cracks a joke or stumbles on a body. It is only logical that they would and should comment on how Picard, in the role of Dixon Hill, combs his, uh, eyebrows, or holds his fork when eating, or dresses up. The uniform is a choice/action performed by the user, and the program
exists for the purpose of responding to the choices/actions of the user!
No doubt there is a user-selectable mode where the characters will ignore certain things, and will for example accept a Starfleet uniform as period costume, or Jean-Luc Picard as a 17-year-old girl. But when the characters do comment on uniforms or the like, it is in the context of programs where no such mode was selected.
Of course, the biggest mistakes are ones where the characters begin to question their existence - on a regular basis! - the holodeck computer must be really schizophrenic to project characters that then wonder how they got there, even though they're still only running inside the same computer!
It doesn't seem right to treat the computer as some single entity where everything is interlinked. Rather, it most probably
is suffering from multiple personality disorder, being at least a thousand different "people" at the same time. Some of those people/programs are sapient experts or entertainment characters. Some are stupid animals in comparison, with little or no intelligence. And the computer as a whole need not be either sapient or non-sapient: it all depends on what sort of programs it is running at a given moment in a given section of its self.
Timo Saloniemi
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