Star Trek Social Club

This is a fun thought experiment and I'm kind of surprised Discovery didn't do something like this with holodeck tech in the "future" since the writers weren't afraid to do other tech-taken-to-natural-conclusion like tiny phaser transporters (or whatever those were).

Semi-related but I always thought it would be cool to see a Star Trek future where things have advanced so far that it would appear to someone like Picard like he and the Enterprise appeared to the Mintakans.

When holodecks were introduced in TNG, they were presented as brand-new bleeding-edge technology that the characters had never even heard of before. This was reinforced by the fact that they almost immediately got a major update from the Bynars and also had a bunch of weird bugs and glitches to deal with.

Voyager, which was only a few years newer, had an obviously more advanced holographic system, with emitters in sickbay and whatnot.

IIRC, other, even newer, ships had holoemitters all over the ship. Clearly, the technology was rapidly advancing and proliferating in the TNG era.

As for Discovery nonsense, ¯\_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Take out a single hollow relay and the whole ship goes down lol

I feel like most of the objections could be satisfied by having non-essential holodeck stuff in rooms only.

So you have a bed and lighting and core furnishings without it. But you get to use the holodeck to adjust all that to your taste, decorate the room, and othewise make the space yours. Maybe you get a virtual companion if you are lonely.

OTOH, I think replicators are already capable of doing most of what would be done by the in-room holodeck in that case.

To me the energy needs don't really matter since energy consumption only matters in emergencies in Star Trek usually. If the first things you lose when there are power issues are your decorations and your virtual companion, I think that's OK...

Edit - and in the limited space available to a personal cabin even in the Trek universe - it would be cool for your kitchen to be able to become your movie room with a simple voice command, or a personal gym, or an extension to your main living area during a party, etc...

A) waste of energy

B) horrible source of possible complications, problems and Desasters.

Guess that's already enough reasons. Good idea though.

Warships need to be able to keep functioning even if they take damage, loss of power, etc. A holographic system seems to be fragile, and requires lots of other ship systems to be fully functional.

Not to mention energy use, purpose-built compartments probably use less energy just to exist

OG Discovery had some kind of combat simulator (kind of a proto-holodeck) that Lorca and Tyler used to train for a mission.

After the 31st century refit, the cabins used programmable matter for their furniture, etc. My understanding is that programmable matter is the transistor to the holodeck's vacuum tube (i.e. it made holograms obsolete). Ok, I said that, but there are advanced holograms at HQ, so I guess holography hasn't gone totally out of style. I don't recall if it was ever established as such, but my head canon is that programmable matter is more efficient for "static" objects since it doesn't need energy to maintain form, just when it changes (unlike holograms which require constant energy). That would explain why PM is used for furnishings/decor and holograms are still used for humanoid constructs.

As for why all rooms aren't holodecks/suites in the 24th century, probably due to power consumption. In VOY 4x18 "The Killing Game", the Hirogen had Harry Kim expanding the holo emitters throughout the ship which seemed to be putting considerable strain on the ship's power system (despite not being in battle or at high warp; perhaps not in warp at all -- been a minute since I saw that episode).

While the Prometheus had ship-wide holo emitters and seemed fine power-wise, there's a difference between projecting an EMH (or two) versus simulating an entire environment plus the associated NPCs.

Considering how often a single holodeck tries to take over the ship/kill its occupants/malfunctions, the fewer the better.