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I just don't get it.
I mean, the writers of Star Trek had 529 episodes and four movies to go into more details with how holodeck technology was shaping the world of the future, and they never once got into it. Time after time the holodeck is simply used as an excuse to tell a non-continuum fantasy story with the regular cast characters doing some sort of repertory theater. Every once in a blue moon the writers might do a little work with having the deck develop an artificial intelligence (so much so DS9 had recurring holo characters, and Voyager even had one as a primary cast members). But they never really explored the places that the holodeck would take a society, how it would change day to day life. I mean, there should be all the little parts of day to day life that the holodeck changes. For instance, take a visit to the dentist. I'm sure we've all had times when the dentist is rattling off where we might spend more attention to our teeth. They can tell us which quadrant of our mouth the problem's in, they can show us x-rays, and some modern dentists can even show us digital pictures of problem spots. But how cool would it be to be standing inside your own mouth with your dentist as he points out where problems lie. Given the supposed power and precision of the holoemitters, Star Trek Dentist could even hold virtual large scale tools while standing with you in your mouth and the holodeck would mirror his actions inside your own mouth while you watched. I imagine the truly geeky could even clean the tarter off your own teeth with a virtual MK I Phaser or Bat'leth. Then again, maybe, in the future, dentists have been made redundant. But judging on the state of Ferengi and Klingon smiles, I'm betting they're still in demand. (1) Heck, even the common mirror could be replaced with a holo-mirror. "Mirror mirror, on the wall, what would I look like in an Armanti Pinstripe Blazer?" Hook that mirror up to an RSS feed and you could even then have a replicator sell you today's latest fashion before you even stepped outside. Time and again various members of the crew are hurtled across the cosmos in tiny shuttlecraft to attend conferences. Sure we all know that this was done as an excuse to tell a story about them away from the rest of their crewmates -- but ignoring that I ask why the hell everyone didn't just simultaneously step into a holodeck and have a virtual conference. If there's tech enough to have a video conference call between two people on different starships and planets, then there's got to be enough bandwidth so that people all over the universe could attend the same conference using holo tele-presencing. And finally, since I just got done watching the final season of DS9 which my Tivo thanklessly recorded for me - and I've got to ask myself why the hell Garak or Bashir didn't challenge Odo to solve a perfect crime in the holosuite? Here you've got an ideal platform for someone to attempt the perfect theft, the perfect murder, or what have you, and have the holosuite record all the physical clues. The detective would then be invited into the scene of the crime and challenged to prove how the closed-room murder was committed, or where the stolen loot is cached. i,jasona Footnote 1 - sure, I seem to recall that Barclay managed to use the holodeck as a virtual tool when he Algernon'd-out, but after plummeting from his 1025 IQ he and the rest of the Star Trek universe seemed to forget about using the holodeck as a tooldeck. |