This has made my point, almost exactly! The fact that the Holodeck is the ultimate fantasy getaway and what do we see? Period Piece Rentals, pre-existing set pieces from prior TNG episodes, or movie sets, as well as earthly settings, most of the time. Even Captain Proton, or whatever it was Tom Paris played was exactly that "hastily constructed cardboard 'alien architecture'" of which you speak, only for jokey purposes. For all of the imagination and fantasy that this room afforded a gifted writer, Holodeck fantasies tended to be rather mundane and co$t-effective, despite what it was advertised as being capable of.
Anomalies... battles... aliens.... No wonder these people need something mundane to relax after a hard day's work. Anyway, in my opinion the holodeck adventures were not any less imaginative than the "normal" episodes.
Like anything else there is nothing wrong with using the holodeck to tell a story, as with anything it's the application of the device that is key. Just as with anomoly of the week episodes some are better than others.
I enjoyed most of the Holodeck episodes. I'd have to say my favorite uses of the holodeck were for any DS9 episodes that had Vic Fontaine. I was surprised to read (can't remember exactly where) that he has something of a disliked-character status. The one thing about the holodeck that did bug me after a few times it was used as a plot device was that not even one episode was ever devoted to an exploration of why and how the holodeck results in clear examples of AI at times. And not always after long/continual use, although that should have been explored as well; Moriarty was self-aware merely because of the parameters set, and as far as I could tell, Redblock had become self-aware. For that matter, it seemed like the cop (name escapes me) in the Dixon Hill setting also became self aware. Although I'm thinking in the cases of Redblock and the cop, the writers were still figuring the holodeck out. Still, it's canon. Doesn't all this AI creation strongly suggest that the capacity for AI lies in all holodeck-generating computers? Even if the holo-AIs are emergent systems arising from computer-holodeck-human interactions and not stand-ins for the computers that run the holodeck, still, the implication for the computers themselves is there. I just always expected that some day they were going to explore this.
Pretty sure they established the duplicate was a physical one. They had shots of crowds of people outside.
Absolutemundo, Rob, as it frequently was (TNG: "Code of Honor", "Where Silence Has Lease", "The Emissary", "New Ground", "Firstborn"; VOY: "Extreme Risk", "The Fight") ...but, certainly, also for recreation...
Supposedly, it would have been a capacity for large computers in the Trek universe for several centuries already - and something included in the design parameters of a starship. Either the computer is built with special limiters in place that hobble its ability to go excessively self-aware, or then it is given its own internal playgrounds where it can be just as self-aware as it pleases, as long as it agrees to playing the dumb old butler to the crew. Self-awareness would come in degrees, mind you. The computer could be as self-aware as a goldfish, a cat, a human, a god, something beyond - or all these at the same time, in different segments of its complex mind. It probably shouldn't concern the users except in the "uncanny valley" where the ability of the computer to be the perfect butler borders on intrusion of privacy. A computer as self-aware as a cat is cute; a computer as self-aware as a god is efficient. A computer that pretends to be a human is competition, and can be suspected of being as evil and perverted as humans tend to be (whereas our experience with evil and perversion in cats and gods is somewhat anecdotal so far). Doesn't rule out that it would have been enhanced somehow. Say, Kirk could have been high on drugs that cloud his judgement so much he doesn't even notice it is being clouded; the same potent drugs would be in the air awaiting for Spock or other intruders, making them buy into the illusion of a "perfect" replica (as this would be what these characters would want to believe - Kirk because he wants his familiar ship, Spock because he has cleverly deduced that a perfect replica is how Kirk is being fooled). Timo Saloniemi