Something to keep in mind is that in "The Big Goodbye", the characters are all wow-ed by the sophistication of the Dixon Hill simulation because it's said to be the result of an upgrade to the holodeck prior to the episode.
...Indeed, it was supposed to be the result of the upgrade in "11001001" (for some reason, I never had trouble memorizing the binary sequence); essentially, Picard would have thought that everything was safe again, and he would have been wrong. The episodes were ultimately produced in a different order, though, necessitating a different excuse for things going haywire.
Which brings up the question of how the TNG Season One episodes should really be organized. We know we have to deviate from production order in one place already: "Skin of Evil" has to take place after "Symbiosis" due to Tasha Yar's death. But we could just as well shuffle the episodes to proper stardate order, the one that works the best for all the rest of Star Trek (bar TAS). In that order, holographic personalities would be present in many episodes before "The Big Goodbye" which is almost a season finale in stardate terms. (Alas, Tasha has a forgettable but still canonical mini-appearance in that episode, making the shuffling less attractive.)
Prior to that episode, the only person we'd seen created by the holodeck was the practice fighter that Tasha conjured up in "Code of Honor", and it behaved in a very awkwardly artificial manner. "11001001" (Will I ever not have to look that title up?) is just a few episodes later, so it's very possible that Riker had never interacted with such sophisticated holographic people before.
Certainly true. But Riker seemed enthralled by the possibilities of the holodeck; if Picard could call up these wonderful simulations of realistic people in "The Big Goodbye", why would the enthusiastic Riker not have done so during his very first half an hour off duty already?
We might assume that the Bynar upgrade made Minuet more realistic in subtle ways, not in the coarse terms of her being the first-ever speaking role in a holoplay, and that both Picard and Riker considered this an improvement over what "The Big Goodbye" and its unseen Riker counterpart had offered. That would cover all the bases the best IMHO.
It's the difference between "There's the wall." and "This is incredible, I can't tell where the wall is!"
Well put!
The one problem brought up regarding the "Practical Joker" environment, the fact that our sidekicks could "dig" their way out of the pit, isn't actually a canonical problem; onscreen, the way to cope with the practical joke is to simply climb out of the hole!
The simulation could have been a crude one, then, a primitive forcefield construct shaped like a hole in dirt but in fact rock solid and thus about as much a challenge as an indoors rock-climbing wall, not a true quagmire that collapses on you. Heck, the sidekicks don't even get dirty for their experience!
Which would indicate that the holodeck in the TOS era were lacking the TNG era "treadmill" feacture that keeps you in the middle of the room
On the other hand, the room does have the ability to move its occupants to a level below the apparent original (seamless) floor... A vertical treadmill of sorts there, evidently. Plus, even if the original view into the recreation facility were a real, vast hall rather than a simulation of one, it shouldn't take more than a minute to reach the wall if no treadmill effect existed to thwart the attempt of our valiant sidekicks...
We might argue that Uhura did not completely understand the technologies involved when suggesting a walk to the wall - which might indicate that "gloves off" VR technology of this sort was truly novel at the time.
Timo Saloniemi
Still, the implication stands in "11001001" that he hadn't gotten around to doing it yet, whatever his excuse. FWIW, I think that pre-Minuet Riker saw the holodeck as a place to take a date, not to get one. And there's still the theory that the holodeck was shut down between "The Big Goodbye" and that episode (which would explain why it needed two "upgrades" so close together).
