Originally posted at Recaps in Hindsight. Check out the season 1 Next Generation recaps here!
Insert over-used Holmes quote here.
The short recap:
Honestly, the holodecks just have no actual safety features, do they?
The long recap:
Most places I’ve worked, everyone has a list of things which need to be done, but aren’t urgent, which you save for those random periods of downtime like the gap between New Year’s Day and Wellington Anniversary Day when no one else is silly enough to be at work. Apparently nobody aboard the Enterprise has such a list, because when they arrive early for a rendezvous with another ship, Geordi manages to construct a scale replica of an ancient Earth battleship and then suggest a Sherlock-Holmes-themed trip to the holodeck with Data.
Data, unfortunately, is the worst person in the world to play Sherlock Holmes because he knows all the stories inside and out, which provides a great opening for Dr Notbeverley to snark about his lack of true deductive intelligence.
Well. That’s interesting.
And it would all have gone so well from that point if Geordi hadn’t been silly enough to tell the computer to create a Doyle-esque opponent worthy of Data, and if the ship hadn’t been poorly-programmed enough to take him at his word and imbue a holographic Professor Moriarty with godlike ship-endangering powers.
Polaski gets kidnapped, Worf suggests storming the holodeck, but at the end of the day it just takes Picard having a philosophical discussion about the nature of life, existence and consciousness to convince Moriarty to relinquish control of the ship. Oh, and a promise that they’ll back him up in the ship’s computer so that one day when holodeck technology has progressed to the Red Dwarf level, they’ll bring him back.
Yeah, I can’t see that one going wrong at all.
Smug, smuggy smug smug smug.
The characterisation of Moriarty is fascinating compared to modern takes on him (links include spoilers for BBC Sherlock and US Elementary) – he’s much closer to the real thing, but the writers make it feel utterly plausible that he’d be able to gradually put together all the massive amounts of information dropped into his head without having an identity freakout about being a holographic projection of a fictional character.
Other points:
- I really, really hope we can get over this “characters stand in the holodeck remarking on how realistic it is” thing. Any day now.
- If you’re wondering why Moriarty …
- Apparently now you can shut down the holodeck without vaporising everyone inside.
- On the other hand, now you can remove objects (like a piece of paper) from the holodeck without it vaporising.
- And why can’t you just beam people out of holodecks?
- In conclusion, holodecks are dumb.
No f*cks given.
MVP: Dr Polaski
I don’t know how it keeps happening, but for a character permanently branded in my mind as the poor unfitting substitute for Beverley Crusher, Dr Polaski has been owning this season of TNG. She’s wonderfully to the point, keeps calm in a crisis, and takes tea with an omnipotent madman with aplomb.
