/strek/ - Star Trek ★

>>15483 (OP)

>Why is this hated?

The slow auto sliding door? It's ok but one of the few things SW did get right is the fast acting auto slide. Trek has the more comfy sound tho.

But seriously. This is the first I heard that the holodeck as a concept is hated. That sounds like an exaggeration.

>>15485

>This is the first I heard that the holodeck as a concept is hated. That sounds like an exaggeration.

OP is the eternal faggot once again. I meant holodeck episodes rather than the 'deck itself, a lot of people seem to take issue with VR Adventures episodes.

Hated? Not really. The most that happens is people calling out all the logical and technological inconsistencies of it.

>>15489

>I meant holodeck episodes

Because they almost always involve space magic locking the doors and turning off the safeties and voice commands. The actual dimensions of the room are also ignored, meaning you could be riding a dirt bike through Valles Marineris, while your buddy is climbing Olympus Mons all in the garage sized room.

Technically speaking the holodeck was a retcon, since the Federation considered illusion technology so dangerous they banned travel to Talos IV, suddenly they decided to include it on their ships.

Even when you accept the plausibility of all the underlying technologies (forcefields, replicators, light distortion), it's still like, how are three people in this thing at once?

>>15503

From a logical point of view it would have to render a scene based on how many people are present and there is a limit on how many people you can shove onto the holodeck at once based on distance.

Say if there was three people and they were together it could render a large scene but if everyone splits off it can render 3 small scenes. Here's when it gets tricky as while it could render maybe a hundred people sharing the same scene at once if everyone splits off and does their own thing it will struggle to have the room to make a scene for everyone and eventually someone will hit a wall or the entire holodeck will crash.

Was the holodeck just an excuse for them to do more ToS style "the crew visits a planet that resembles a period of Earth history" episodes, without it being quite so silly?

>>15504

And don't forget sound. When you can be a kilometer apart in the simulation but only ten meters in actuality there's really no good way to prevent two people just yelling at each other.

>>15495

this, plus it can be used a very easy plot device to do really stupid bullshit

>>15528

You're forgetting the power of force fields. The holodeck can easily surround you with a razor thin sound proof field. Remember you only hear the vibrations that get to your inner ear, and only see light that enters your eye. You only feel pressure that hits your nerve endings. When multiple people are on the holodeck, they could each be surrounded by a unique bubble of experience. Everything the experience would be 100% unique until.the got close enough to someone for their "experience bubbles" to merge.

Given the processing power of the future, I don't think it's at all unreasonable.

>>15483 (OP)

>>15489

Everyone loves the holodeck, but every holodeck episode seems to involve the computer going insane and the simulation trying to kill you and blow up the ship/station with it. In the handful of episodes where that ISN'T the case (Booby Trap, for example) it brings up some really interesting stuff. Hell photonic shit in general increasingly becomes the most interesting aspect of Trek as time goes forward, in particular when it comes to self aware entities like the Doc or Moriarty; or even holo-Brahms, as either an example of a synthetic personality developing over the course of a short time based on documented information of a real person, or in that particular context as being damn near the avatar of the ship trying to help troubleshoot a real life problem.

Question is who has to clean up the semen after Riker has used it?

>>15532

>as either an example of a synthetic personality developing over the course of a short time based on documented information of a real person

Riker's waifu is another example of interesting cases of photonic personality that plausibly surpasses 3dpd.

>>15544

They probably have ensigns on rotating shifts for holodeck cleanup. That, or the computer just phaser sweeps the whole thing once he's done.

Because they just came out of nowhere without even an attempt to establish earlier versions of the tech.

>>15544

>Question is who has to clean up the semen after Riker has used it?

Their boyfriends and husbands. I mean the women he uses. Riker doesn't need the holodeck.

>>15622

Riker would step over any non-photonic to get his hands on Minuet.

>>15624

Why didn't he get the little purple midgets that created her to bring her back? Damn near as I can figure out from what I recall the only reason he didn't is because Picard basically said don't bother with photonic bush, but if he was really into her…

>>15532

I think the holodeck represents a lot of interesting potential, but it's one of the most poorly explained aspects of Trek-tech, because it continually gets more complex and gaining new abilities the longer each show went on. The first episode of TNG even tries to explain that the holodeck is literally using transporter and replicator technology to create trees, water, and other objects from patterns stored in the computer, but the walls of the holodeck are constantly present, which they demonstrate by throwing a holodeck rock at at the wall. They later have the holodeck upgraded and off-handedly explain that things are different and that everything is just photonic energy and such, but it was a pretty bizarre idea to begin with.. Seemingly implies that the holodeck could have functioned as a cloning bay, or maybe that it could do something like creating a full garden with real, edible plants growing in it, recreated from transporter pattern data, should the ship ever need more food, or something.

The other part that's pretty weird is how easily the ship's computer can create fully self-aware characters with only a few voice commands, begging the question of what might happen if they simply issued the command, "Computer, become self-aware"… Doesn't help that the holodeck is seemingly interconnected with everything else on the ship, so whenever anything breaks, the holodeck inevitably ends up with a wonky new feature.

I find the whole concept quite interesting and full of possibilities that would make for really cool plot hooks and worldbuilding, but it feels like they never really wrapped their heads around it enough to give the technology enough internal consistency and logic. Somehow it can take years to program a hologram like the EMH, just so he can function properly.. but Tom Paris can throw together an entire town of Irish countryfolk in his spare time and have them all become nearly entirely self-aware entities. But that's just nitpicking, I guess.

>>15640

Well, what can you do? It has infinite potential but if you are trying to run to an overarching story (as post-TNG stuff very loosely did) you can basically take a whole season on the holodeck by itself. Something you'd like to do, you can't because of budget as well. It's just not going to be a setting you'll ever have adequately explored on TV or the movies.

I personally think it'd be sort of interesting to have a series where there's only the bridge crew of a starship and they get it automated in an emergency ala Search For Spock but using the self-aware ship's computer with a photonic avatar so it doesn't suck at everything unlike Trek 3's patchwork solution that Scotty supplied on Enterprise's last flight.

>>15640

I'd kind of like to see a show that fully explores the potential of all of the technology that Star Trek just tosses out there willy nilly. What happens if someone weaponises holograms or replicators, and so forth.

>>15639

All he had to say was “Computer, create a female opponent capable of defeating my cock” and she would have reappeared.

>>15640

I can throw together a believable character for a novel in my spare time, too, but they won't have any ability to perform millions of precise surgical operations.

Although, ARGUABLY, being able to do something like that is several orders of magnitude LOWER than the requirements to be able to carry believable conversations with humans, and even fall in love. We have robots right now that can perform surgical operations, but at the same time we have no AI that can so much as pass the Turing Test.

>>15616

I never really had trouble accepting that. TNG is set about a century on from TOS.

>>15498

>Technically speaking the holodeck was a retcon, since the Federation considered illusion technology so dangerous they banned travel to Talos IV, suddenly they decided to include it on their ships.

This is the Federation we're talking about here right, the ones that had an experimental prototype phase cloaked ship in violation of some treaty? I would not be surprised if they use some san fran hq weasel clause that it's technically not illusion tech, it's just photonic projections with some small tweaks.

>>15646

Kirk tried that program. He was always disappointed.

>>15681

The reason I point it out as especially weird is because there's another episode where Harry and Tom attempt to program a replacement EMH for some reason or another.. and it takes them hours just to get it to appear correctly and speak, and they even fuck that up and give up.. But in other episodes, they're like

>holodeck, give me a character with these exact traits and abilities

and the holodeck just spits it out. In Voyager, the Doctor creates a complimentary Exobiologist to help him solve a medical problem, only using the vague and limited information from the Federation database, including the appearance, voice, mannerisms, and even personal philosophy of the real Cardassian the exobiologist was based off of. Yet again, just with a few voice commands, and suddenly they have a new hologram capable of complex surgeries and have level expert skilled labor. The hologram even helps the Doctor perform surgery and conducts research and experiments on his own until he's shut down. Later we meet Zimmerman and find out he spent years of his life working on one hologram and slaving over the most basic features, which can apparently be shit out on a whim in other episodes.

Ultimately, the answer to why they are so inconsistent and why the rules change from episode to episode is because they were making it up as they went along, and had to retcon and ignore things as they went, otherwise the scripts and storylines they wrote could not work.

>>15691

Well no, the point is in-universe illusion tech destroys your society in TOS, but then in TNG it turns out it’s okay.

>>15713

>Well no, the point is in-universe illusion tech destroys your society in TOS, but then in TNG it turns out it’s okay.

I wonder about that, although it's only mentioned in passing and the most blatant example they use is Barclay. Something about holodeck addiction is mentioned. Though I think there is something of a double standard going on in their universe.

>Barclay is shown as the "ugh creepy autist nerd lol"

For someone like him, underneath the concern brought up by Troi of him escaping too much into the holodeck instead of dealing with his 3dpd issues and anxieties. He's still treated as something of a social outcast until later.

>Chad Riker falls hard for Minuet

Fucking Picard plays it off as "incroyable! hon hon hon belle paris baguette mon cherie"

DS9 at least shows a more plausible glimpse of the commercial side and application of a holosuite. By VOY era, sheeeit. Hear me out for a second here. In TOS era they did not have for example a holodeck gym. What if by VOY time, the dangers of illusion tech has become more ingrained. Aside from that episode of Chakotay undergoing alien VR brainwashing for their war training and suffering heh virtual ptsd. I mean VOY own use of the holodeck. If their situation is as dire as the original concept envisioned ie: ship's energy and resources are strictly managed, Janeway would not frolic with Davinci and Paris would not fuck around with Captain Proton.exe, not when they are bellyaching about transporter ration cards and have to resort to hiring neelix as a chef.

The EMH not withstanding since a medical hologram that never tires is a good thing. Though even that brings up other issues, personally I don't want an EMH to develop it's own personality. I don't want him running off to try to pursue a career in alien opera singing since his role as a ship doctor takes precedence. That dilemma is more interesting to me than him getting the singing bug.

>>15717

> transporter ration cards

Durr that should be the *replicator ration cards. Honestly that always sounded weird to me in VOY, unless the tech has advanced to such a degree I thought even in their universe replicated food is meh tier to just ok, but it will never truly replace real food. Yet in VOY that seems to be the reverse. Or maybe it's just Neelix.

>>15703

>another episode where Harry and Tom attempt to program a replacement EMH for some reason or another.. and it takes them hours just to get it to appear correctly and speak

It's probable that the holodeck was DESIGNED to easily and efficiently create "storybook" characters with simple personalities and interactive capabilities, but can't grant them actual deep knowledge and skills like the Doctor has. Although, that episode was totally worth it just for the utter hilarity of when they turned the damn thing on, and Replacement-Picardo just starts reciting Gray's Anatomy, and THEY CAN'T MAKE IT STOP.

Like many other things in Trek, though, it's mostly a case of "it works perfectly until it doesn't".

>>15718

I think it was more a case of "everyone on the ship who has ANY cooking experience was killed in the first episode" so it was either replicators or starve to death (until Neelix, anyway). It is completely sensible for the vast majority of people to have no idea how to boil water if they lived in a society where replicators were free and ubiquitous. Just look at how most people, today, can't even make boxed macaroni, and just eat fast-food every day. Now imagine if they can simply tell their microwave "make me a hamburger". It might be a shitty hamburger compared to even McDonalds, but the majority would still do it.

>>15646

Careful now, that's damn close to how the Data/Moriarty situation came about.

>>15713

Gene: "Humans are super evolved now etc etc but back in TOS they were only mostly evolved, whatever, lets talk about Ferengi sexual positions"

>>15741

>Careful now, that's damn close to how the Data/Moriarty situation came about.

Uh, pretty sure that anon is intentionally referencing that episode.

>>15682

Implying that the animated series is canon.

>>15751

>Implying anything other than the animated series is canon

>>15751

It occupies the space between non-canon and canon.

The episode about Spock going back in time with the Guardian of Forever and saving himself is regarded is "canon" while most of the show isn't. Enterprise wanted to reintroduce the Kzinti too.

>>15753

After reading some of the Man-Kzin war books, the Space Viking Klingons finally made sense- they were a stand-in for the Kzinti. Take the Klingons, de-communism them and ridge up the heads. Then have all the insane stab-yourself and yell about honor and your House and the Empire and it's all Kizinti behavior. Right down to the klingon mating snarling. The klingon opera might be russian, though. But the obsession with the Kahless story is about the same as Lord Chmee. There's no real design description for the kzinti's w'tsai blades, but those DS9 era klingon knives the klingons carry would be a good expy match for the w'tsai- you've got a 7 foot tall one ton bobcat man who carries around a monoblade knife even though he could tear a human apart like a chicken leg from a thigh at the same distance.

>>15744

Eh 4/10

And one of those points is a pity point.

You were trying too hard.

>>15852

>he thinks that Gene decides what is and isn't canon.

>>15858

No, what I said was the exact opposite.