this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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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.
It's been a while and I might not remember correctly. Wasn't there an episode in Voy? with holographic lifeforms that rebelled against their creators and lived inside a flying holodeck ship? And there was that Insurrection movie in which a whole village was teleported into a giant holodeck ship.
It seems possible.
Yep. But the ship was just projecting the holographic lifeforms and not an entire environment. Probably used a bit less power than a full-blown, ship-wide holodeck. Life support (which seems to require a lot of power in the Trek universe) on the ship may also have been minimal since they didn't need it. It was still online, at least in certain areas, since B'Elanna was able to survive when she was shanghai'd aboard.
Also yep. There was also a TNG episode with the whole village Worf's (human/adopted) brother was embedded into that was was stealth transported into the D's holodeck and moved to a new planet.
I'm not saying it's impossible to make every cabin a holo-suite, just that in most cases, it would seem to be impractical. i.e. Awesome, but Impractical
Edit: If you've seen PIC, they actually do make at least some of the cabins holo-suites. The cabin Picard is assigned is made up to look like a room in his chateau. I think that room is special, though (might even be the captain's quarters that Rios gave up/didn't use) since Raffi's and Rios's cabins seemed standard for a starship of that size/class. I don't think we saw any other cabins aboard La Sirena. That, or they didn't have enough cabins and just stuck Picard in the ship's holodeck lol.
Came here to mention La Sirena from Picard.
Hologram bridge crew with fully hologram passenger quarters, the introverts starship par excellence 👌
The holo-crew is a really smart idea for a solo freighter captain.
@Krik @ptz Yeah, the Hirogen made a Holodeck ship. I think the ship the holograms took over was more just a regular Hirogen ship with holographic projectors in it but the hologram ship really demonstrated the possibilities.