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Ship in a Baffle

MAGolding

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Or in a baffling mystery. What is the baffling mystery? How to provide the Moriarty program with a physical body that can leave the holodeck?.

No. NO. No! NO! NOOOO!!!

The mystery is why they didn't provide the Moriatry program with a physical body capable of leaving the holodeck in a week or a month or so.

If you don't understand why there is no problem with creating a physical body for the Moriarty program, try thinking about it. Forget about the nature of holodeck matter. Consider the nature of your existence.

If after thinking about you still need an explanation, read on. Sigh.

Forget about your body with it's atom and molecules. Your body is not you. So what are you? The answer is that in a certain sense, your aren't. In a certain sense, you don't exist. You don't have any real physical matter or energy, your body and brain have physical matter and energy. And you body and brain think that you exist. You are a delusion that your body and brain have, a delusion that you exist.

Think of a wave in the ocean. The wave is not a group of water molecules. The wave is a pattern of movement that moves through the water, affecting the motion of water molecules and passing on, leaving the molecules behind. And you are like a wave pattern moving though molecules of solid, liquid, and gaseous substances. If you think of people in a stadium doing the wave, you think of the people as being real and important, and so you don't think of the wave as a thing or a reality, merely a pattern. But actually, you and the people in the stadium are also merely patterns passing through matter and energy.

Or think of yourself as a program in the biological computer that is your brain. The brain thinks and feels thoughts and emotions, and those thoughts and emotions are you.

How do you interact with the physical world? You sensory organs send signal to the sensory regions of you brain which interprets them as sensations. When you decide to do something, your brain sends signals to your body parts ordering actions.

So what is the Moriarty program? It is a computer program in one or more of the computers that make up the computer system of the Enterprise. When the Sherlock Holmes program is being run on the holodeck, the holodeck computer and program decide what sensory input the Moriarty program and send that information to the computer system running the Moriarty program. When the Moriarty program and its computer decide to do something they send signals to the computer running the Sherlock Holmes program on the holodeck to take that action.

Suppose you lean over a sink full of water and drop your glasses into it. You reach in with your arm and pick up the glasses and pull them out of the water. you are not in the sink full of water, you are inside your brain.

The Moriarty program was never in the holodeck, it was in a computer some distance away from the holodeck. The only things it could sense were events in the holodeck, and the only actions it could take were actions in the holodeck using its body made of holomatter, because that was the way it it was connected to the outside world.

There was no problem getting Moriarty out of the holodeck, because he wasn't in it. He was in the computers of the Enterprise, which were outside of the holodeck and not made of holomatter. The problem was enabling Moriarty to interact with matter and energy outside of the holodeck. The solution was to give Moriarty, a computer program in a computer system, much as you are a computer program in a computer system, sensory and command connections to a robot body made of normal matter existing outside of the holodeck.

I guess that the first body they would give to the Moriarty program might be like this.

The Death Star "mouse Droid" from Star Wars:

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http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/MSE-6-series_repair_droid

Then, if Moriarty behaved himself for a while, they might give him a larger body, like Dr. Theopolis in Buck Rogers:

http://buckrogers.wikia.com/wiki/Theopolis

And then if Moriarty continued to behave they could give him a body like Twiki in Buck Rogers:

http://buckrogers.wikia.com/wiki/Twiki

And then if Moriarty continued to behave they could give him a body like the remote controlled robot used by Nigel from England in the "ReplicANT" episode of A.N.T. Farm, or the remote controlled robot used by Liam in Bizaardvark.

And they might eventually have given Moriarty a Soong type android body resembling his holodeck image as Professor Moriarty (but probably with some visual differences to make it clear it was an android body) but without the positronic brain since it would continue to be remotely controlled by the Moriarty program in the Enterprise computer system. But I doubt that they would give that android body Data's strength.

So why didn't they do that a few weeks or months after "Elementary My Dear Data"? My guess is that a high ranking Starfleet Admiral was a big Sherlock Holmes fan and ordered them to cease and desist making a robot body for a computer program simulating and emulating Holmes's arch enemy!
 
My feeling is that Picard just sent a lukewarm request to Starfleet Research to investigate the matter, and then thought he could practically forget about it since Moriarty wouldn't be aware of the passage of time, and they weren't going to reactivate him intentionally- at least not before any substantial progress had been made. Of course, events turned out differently. In effect, Moriarty's anger at the beginning of ship in a bottle towards Picard probably wasn't far off the mark.
 
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A puzzling question...

latest
 
What I found unsettling about the end of the episode was Picard leaving Moriarty in the hands of Barclay. :wtf:
 
What I found unsettling about the end of the episode was Picard leaving Moriarty in the hands of Barclay. :wtf:
Between Barclay, Data & LaForge, If I were Picard, I'd have had the damn holodeck quarantined & deactivated
 
What I found unsettling about the end of the episode was Picard leaving Moriarty in the hands of Barclay. :wtf:

Actually, out of everyone, he was the logical choice, given not only his expertise and affinity for holodecks, but he was their lead diagnostic engineer. He would be the best person to make sure nothing went wrong with that kit he held, and if something was wrong, he would be the best qualified to fix it.
 
Actually, out of everyone, he was the logical choice, given not only his expertise and affinity for holodecks, but he was their lead diagnostic engineer. He would be the best person to make sure nothing went wrong with that kit he held, and if something was wrong, he would be the best qualified to fix it.
Not to mention, no one knows fantasy like Barclay. All things considered, who better than him?
 
Come to think of it, there's no reason they couldn't have made some limited robot body and downloaded his personality into it. But I guess then the audience would question why Datas are so hard to make.
 
They could build a robot body for him easy enough. They could build arms, legs, torso..etc stick it all together -- plug in the Moriarity Memory Stick and viola watch him go..

A plug n' play sentient being. Of course, he'd probably have to stand trail. Of if not that, he'd face the hurdles The Doctor had to face in Voyager in that he's not recognised as a full being with full rights.
 
In Data's time, no one has been able to replicate a Soong type android. Yes, "something" could be built but given Moriarty's personality, he wouldn't be satisfied with a mechanical body, even one of Data's level of quality.
 
In Data's time, no one has been able to replicate a Soong type android.

Nobody has built a Soong type android, which is a different thing. Might simply mean nobody cares for such stupid things, not after millions of mechanical men were built in the 23rd century and nobody ever found a proper use for them.

I mean, Dr. Mulhall ("Return to Tomorrow") thinks the resources available to her could easily produce android bodies to Sargon and his pals, and is insulted that Sargon wants do do his own androids. Mulhall is allowed to her thinking - regardless of whatthe UFP had come up on its own, the hero ship has already encountered an android factory that did not blow up in the last act, and will soon encounter another.

Positronic brains are new in TNG. Androids are never said to be. Not every amateur ("Ensigns of Command") can build them at her leisure, but the great minds ("The Schitzoid Man") probably merely don't bother. Soong just chose an unusual gimmick for marketing his great new brain. He might have done a very clever shuttle instead, but he wanted to go for a bit of a shock effect - not to mention immortalize his face. And eventually much more, starting with (but perhaps not stopping at) his wife.

Yes, "something" could be built but given Moriarty's personality, he wouldn't be satisfied with a mechanical body, even one of Data's level of quality.

I doubt he'd turn down the chance of moving into one in order to leave the holodeck, though. Few turn down wheelchairs...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Sure, that's as plausible or as implausible as any Timo musing I've seen so yeah, why not? Whatever.
 
If Moriarty were to transport himself into a Soong type android, he would lose his emotions?

Holodeck with emotions or "real world" with no emotions? Which would be better?

I don't think the wheelchair comparison works here, Moriarty was able to do all the things on the holodeck he could do in the real world, apart from leaving the holodeck.
 
In Data's time, no one has been able to replicate a Soong type android. Yes, "something" could be built but given Moriarty's personality, he wouldn't be satisfied with a mechanical body, even one of Data's level of quality.
I'd think he'd be as happy as a clam.

And anyway, Data's mother, the former Ms. Soong is one heckuva effort that had everyone other than Data's keen eye well fooled.
 
Moriarty and The Countess Vagina probably went bye bye when the Enterprise blew up/crashed.

If the memory unit that they were on was in the saucer section, it is very possible that it wasn't destroyed.
And even if it was in the stardrive section, I'd imagine that the unit would have been saved among the crew.
 
Too bad they didn't download Moriarty into Hugh so he could be bouncing around the collective instead of the Enterprise.
 
And then if Moriarty continued to behave they could give him a body like the remote controlled robot used by Nigel from England in the "ReplicANT" episode of A.N.T. Farm, or the remote controlled robot used by Liam in Bizaardvark.
I don't think the Trek showrunners would want to get inspiration from their Star Wars rival or its Disney affiliates. :eek: Besides, the universe of Trek and the universe of the Disney Channel are in completely different dimensions. The two shall not intersect. ;)
 
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