It just popped up in my mind.
- You could decorate any room as you like. You don’t even need to step out of it most of the times.
- Other people can be projected inside it like Voyager’s doctor.
- Also rooms could be much smaller. They only need to be big enough a human(oid) can fit inside.
- In emergency cases most holograms can be shut off to match increased energy demands by weapons and shields. You only really need seating/bed and a (non-exploding) console screen.
- Much of the specialized rooms like a bar, med bay, etc. won’t be needed anymore as a holodeck can imitate all of them.
It irritated me a bit that a Discovery gets fancy floating warp nacelles but holodecks are… wait, does Discovery has a holodeck? I don’t remember seeing one.
I remember a line in at least one episode that claimed holodecks consume so much power, they run on their own independent power system and aren’t connected to the warp core.
Can’t remember which episode it was, but it was likely one of the two parters where the Hirogen take over Voyager and have the WW2 sim.
only as separate as the plot demands, sometimes it’s more interconnected
This was an excuse to allow Voyager to use the holodeck, which would have been an extravagant waste of power otherwise.
The Enterprise D holodeck ran from ships power, as shown in “Booby Trap”.
Probably because it’d be too expensive and I’m not talking about money
Not everyone wants to sleep in a death trap.
Computer, set quarters to stun.
High energy use. Anytime the power goes out or gets diverted to other systems, you’d lose your bed, etc.
It’s also possible that the holodeck re-creations of things aren’t as realistic feeling as they look. It’s an illusion after all. So maybe a lot of it is just designed to fool the mind, not be comfortable/realistic.
Yep except that episode when Moriarty tapped them inside a holodeck and everybody was unable to tell it it wasn’t the real thing
Good point.
I was thinking about that. Isn’t it the holodeck that trapped the crew in the holodeck?
I imagine they prefer to be grounded in reality, as over-use of the holodeck is shameful.
Hey! You leave Barclay alone!
I always leave the Brocolli alone. :-)
Maybe they are and nobody has realised 🤯
I thought after s2 of Discovery, something exactly like that was already a thing?
Or am I misremembering, it’s been a while.
Power?
Holograms aren’t stable in the long term. They will start to come apart after some time. That, and they constantly require power to maintain. A bed and furniture does not, and will still work if the ship needs to go without power for one reason or another. Most things someone might put by hologram can be done by replicating the thing, instead of using a hologram. Most rooms have a replicator, and excepting furniture, which you might need to ask engineering to make for you, you can just make it yourself.
Starships aren’t lacking space by any means, so there’s no need to stick people into a broom closet.
Though there are things like that. The Ba’ul “migration” ship was basically that, where the entire ship was meant to be a holodeck. In the 32nd century, rooms are basically holograms, except that holography has been superseded by programmable matter.
