Was there ever a scene in any Star Trek incantation that demonstrated what happens when a character “dies” in-game when the safies are actually working? Playing as a hardboiled private eye or geting into sword fights with weird skull monsters can’t be much fun if there isn’t some real danger to “you”, even if there is no real danger. However I can’t remember a scene where someone got damaged in-character that wasn’t also involving the bravado/glitch of the safties being off.
safeties
I can’t specifically name any episodes, but I feel like there were a few places where someone would have been killed and in those instances, it was treated like a Nintendo game when you lose. The game ends or pauses and tells you that “You Lost”. I’m pretty certain that there was some examples like this at the Academy, when they run through simulations of tough situations, just to have their ship exploded. I believe that in those cases, the holodeck would shut down and announce that they had lost.
Doesn’t really count as damaged, but there was the first episode, where Wesley fell into the water and was still soaked when he left the holodeck, thus demonstrating that things could actually be taken out of the holodeck (a fact they later ignored in multiple followup episodes).
I don’t recall what happened when Torres was basejumping from space with the safeties off… did somebody notice and yoink her out, or did she just pop her chute and save herself within the context of the simultation?
I’d think we can look at modern video games; the only real difference between say Call of Duty and Holodeck Call of Duty would be in the immersiveness of it; players would still want to respawn as often as they could, and would get pissed if they had to sit out for 5 minutes beforehand.
(don’t get me started on the arcadeish nature of play in most military-themed shooters, and the lack of adequate penalty for being killed/doing stupid stuff)
Surely there must have been some Red Shirts knocked off in the holodeck, at some point.
By the time the holodeck was introduced, the Red Shirts were the command staff. In any case, I think there were quite a few expendable crew members killed in the holodeck, when the safeties failed but that wasn’t what I was asking about
I recall one episode where they don’t realize the safeties are off, and a random red shirt gets shot. The rest of them stand around commenting on how realistically he’s acting, before they start to get worried that he’s not standing up, and someone checks his pulse.
So, I gather getting “killed” in a properly working holodeck largely depends on how much the player is willing to go along with it.
The episode where Geordi was using the holodeck to work on the engines - everytime he blew up the ship, the holodeck went blank.
Thats likely as close as you get - I’d also guess that depending on your activity at the time, you’re likely to be running/cussing/falling as appropriate.
If I ever command a Starship, I’m going to insist that everyone wear red shirts.
And the transporter room is going to be infested with flies.
I’m curious how that could be made potentially lethal - the holodeck has, what, a four- or five-meter ceiling? Assuming there is perfect control of local gravity coordinated with holographic scenery, so the holodeck could make a person hover, generate a wind force from below and adjust the scenery to create a perfect illusion of falling, but how much damage could you suffer from hitting the ground/floor? Can the holodeck hover you at 4 meters, then crank up the local gravity to 20g so you hit the floor in 0.202 seconds at 143 kph? Ouch.
The DS9 episode *Move Along Home. *
Several main characters are trapped in an alien game. It must be something similar to the holodeck. They all die in-game, the game ends and they re-appear in Quark’s bar.
Has anyone ever been shown eating or drinking in the holodeck? I think they have but am not sure, that raises all kinds of questions!
Why on earth would the holodeck even wit the safeties off be allowed to simulate a fatal situation?!? It makes zero sense, there would be no legit situation where you would need a holobullet to cause death, and in real life there would be unremoveable controls to stop that ever happening.
I wonder if the holodeck can create alcohol or drugs that actually lock into brain receptors!
People have been seen eating and drinking in the holodeck, but presumably it’s just replicated food (though Tom Paris once made a reference to drinking holographic wine on Voyager).
Sure, why not? They have inertial control throughout the ship sufficient to prevent the crew getting squished when they jump to warp (acceleration does appear canon in this context).
I guess the thing is meant to be the ultimate physics sandbox. The holodeck doesn’t know what a bullet is - just that it’s a simulated piece of matter moving in a certain way. I suppose the ‘safeties’ would be an additional layer of computing that needs to understand what’s actually happening, in human terms, inside the simulation.
In Encounter at Farpoint, Data tells Riker that a great deal of the material in a simulation is indeed real, manufactured using transporter/replicator technology. So it isn’t nothing but holograms.
As for situations where you’d want the safety protocols off, remember when Picard blasted the invading Borg with a Thompson produced in a Roaring '20s (IIRC) simulation? I think that happened in First Contact. So the holodeck apparently can produce not only real weapons but the ammunition to go with them. And everything works!
Here is what Memory Alpha says, which aligns with my memory:
Holodecks are equipped with safety protocols to prevent serious injury during their use, though these can be disengaged by the user when required. While active, a force field that is likely to cause a certain level of physical harm to a living humanoid collapses before making contact with them, allowing them to escape uninjured. When protocols have been deactivated holographic obstacles have the same effects on a person as the objects or instances they simulate; holographic bullets or a steep drop could be fatal in such a scenario. (TNG: “The Big Goodbye”; Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: “Extreme Risk”)
So, in other words, what would kill you just doesn’t work. That aligns with the actor they thought was pretending to die, as they would have expected it not to hurt him. I think scenarios where the system shuts down only happen when the whole system fails, which would not always be the case upon death.
Which is why Wesley is wet. Which is easier to do–replicate a small bit of water, or mimic all the dynamics of a fluid using force fields? Though I assume the safeties would prevent drowning.
Foodstuff is easily replicated and thus is always assumed to be real in the holodeck. Or at least, it becomes real before you eat it. Though I’m sure you could disable that and the safeties would just have the food disappear–if, say, you were going low on energy reserves.
What I’m saying is there is no way the recreational holodecks would have safeties you could turn off, there is no legit recreational reason a person needs to be impaled on a spear or have a bullet go through their skull. There would be no off switch, it simply wouldn’t allow a holo object to enter the space where the user is, this would be trivial to program with 3D scanning so the deck always knows the space where the user is cannot be entered by a holo object. If a sword was about to pierce skin it would just demateralize the part about to enter the body. Same goes for G forces or jumping from the Sears Tower, the deck would not allow an impact hard enough to seriously injure or harm and using inertial dampening it would feel like falling to the floor. There is no legit reason for “fatal mode”.
Engineering or other sections would have true ultimate physics sandboxes, but access would be strictly controlled and they would not be used for rec use.
It would be like if you could turn off the safety on the food replicator and have it make a cup cake with cyanide in it, or earl grey with a lethal dose of caffeine. There is no legit need for food with fatal poison in it, so it would be a hard coded limitation with no off switch because it would be used for suicide or murdering other crew.
Medical or science sections would have replicators that could replicate poisons or any substance, but this ability would not be present in a food replicator.
If anyone at Starfleet had a bit of sense that is!
But holodecks aren’t just toys. They are used in serious work too. Sometimes the work might be dangerous. You might, for instance, want to test a new weapon against the Borg. You’d want the gun to spit real bullets or real energy bolts and see their effectiveness. Any redshirt who wonders into the field of fire could get torn to shreds. Use normal procedures for safe weapon handling instead of relying on the holodeck to keep you safe.