I am halfway watching a Voyager ep where Torres deactivates holodeck safety protocols, meaning one can get hurt/killed(?).
Regarding Voy, TNG, etc, can a senior crew member do this?
She didn’t even use a command code, just said “Computer, deactivate holodeck safety protocols.”
Any precedents?
Data did this in one episode after he experienced a burst of emotion. Think he had to give his authorization code for the auto-destruct sequence or something.
I don’t know if there are any precedents but with Torres being the Chief of Engineering, I’m sure she could deactivate the safety protocols. Also, she might not need any authorization codes with voice recognition software but that’s just a wild guess.
In Trek there are no precedents when it comes to who has access to what and what procedures are followed. In every episode of TNG where a senior crewmember has to provide a secret password to do something, it’s completely different.
It is mentioned in Descent Part I, where the Lore-controlled individualist Borgs make Data feel anger, that disengaging the holodeck safety protocols (deliberately, hehehe) requires the authorization of two senior officers.
Naturally, regulations, such as they are, have likely changed between then and Voyager.
Wasn’t there an episode of TNG where a little boy is in danger of dying because he and his older brother were playing on the holodeck, and the younger boy got into some poison plants or something? Seems to me that the safety protocols weren’t even working if something like this could have happened.
I think this episode also involved Data’s brother. The title slips my mind, though.
If I recall correctly, they were on the surface of whatever planet the crew was spending shore leave on, not the holodeck. That said, I can’t imagine any sane captain leaving activated any system so prone to failure.
You are thinking of the episode “Brothers.” It has absolutely nothing to do with holodecks, but the episode summary does not specifically say what injured the younger kid. If I can recall correctly, they were in a restricted section of the ship’s farms that had a poisonous plant. The older brother pretended to shoot himself with a phaser as a joke and the younger brother ran away in a blind panic, getting lost among very poisonous plants. Why the plants were there and apparently accessable, I do not know. This was only the B-plot to the story though. The main “brothers” were Data and Lore.
For the main point of the thread, in “First Contact,” Picard disables the safety protocols with only the arch keypad. He doesn’t provide vocal authorization at all. I can foward a possibility on this, however. The Enterprise D was a ship that carried family and children, and therefore two officers to disengage the protocols would be a good idea. Voyager, as an explorer, probably requires only one officer to do so. The Enterprise E, as a full battleship designed for combat, probably has the policy: “Look, it’s your own damned neck, okay?” Therefore, it can be done by anyone. But that’s just my theory.
-Psi Cop