January 25th, 1993, "Ship in a Bottle"
Fiver by saxamaphone
The Episode
DATA: It takes a trained eye to notice certain discrepancies. For example, whether someone is right or left handed!
(Data throws a box of matches to the gentleman, who catches it in his right hand.)
DATA: Your brother was right handed! The alleged suicide note was written by a left handed individual such as yourself!
LAFORGE: Er, Data, it's in his right hand.
DATA: Curious. There seems to be a problem in the holodeck's spatial orientation systems.
Or your theory is total bunk. Whether someone catches something with their left or right hand depends on many more factors than just handedness. Which hand is closer to the object? What kind of object is it? Is it durable enough to survive a fumbling catch from the wrong hand? Is it a pillow that could easily be caught with either hand?
MORIARTY: But here I am. Tell me, has a way been found to allow me to leave the confines of this holodeck world?
BARCLAY: Leave the holodeck? No, of course not. You can only exist in here.
MORIARTY: Damn you, Picard. He promised me something would be done. I should have realised he would have said anything to get me to release my hostage.
Of course something akin to the mobile emitter is impossible with current tech, but I wonder why they can't make some sort of hovering pad that can create a hologram that stays "solid" within a small area. Imagine blowing up Tasha's holographic portrait and making it more sophisticated.
Or at the very least put holocommunicator booths in the corners of major rooms and allow him to observe and talk to people.
We'll talk about Reg's holocube at the end.
DATA: Since both planets are gas giants, neither possesses a solid surface. Their atmospheres, however, will come into contact in approximately seventeen hours nine minutes.
LAFORGE: If their collision causes a self-sustaining fusion reaction, this is what we are likely to see. The birth of a new star.
The math has been done. The minimum mass required to sustain fusion and become a brown dwarf (the least massive stars) is 80 times the mass of Jupiter. The most massive gas giant on record is b Centauri (AB)b orbiting Alpha Centauri, 11 times more massive than Jupiter. There's a bit of a gap there, but at least the idea is somewhat plausible.
MORIARTY: Do you really? When this is over, you will walk out of this room to the real world and your own concerns, and leave me here trapped in a world I know to be nothing but illusion. I cannot bear that. I must leave.
PICARD: That is not possible. You cannot exist outside this room.
MORIARTY: Are you certain of that?
PICARD: Computer, exit.
(the door opens onto the corridor)
PICARD: Although an object appears solid on the holodeck, in the real world they have no substance.
(Picard throws out a book. It vanishes)
Obligatory mention of those gangsters from "The Long Goodbye" that lasted for a few seconds before vanishing (completely implausibly).
MORIARTY: I have consciousness. Conscious beings have will. The mind endows them with powers that are not necessarily understood, even by you. If my will is strong enough, perhaps I can exist outside this room. Perhaps I can walk into your world right now.
The problem is that while a human being can exert their will on their body, Moriarty can't. His body has no substance, the holodeck is projecting a forcefield around his body. And frankly, his "will" doesn't interact with the body like a real persons. His "will" resides in his programming in the holodeck computers. The holodeck has virtual cameras where the puppet's eyes would be that feed visual data to the program in the computer, who then sends puppeting commands to the projection.
PICARD: How is this possible?
BARCLAY: It isn't.
DATA: This contradicts everything we know about holodeck physics.
So did the stuff in "The Big Goodbye", but you didn't complain then.
CRUSHER: As far as I can tell, he's real. He's human.
MORIARTY: What else would I be, dear lady?
CRUSHER: His DNA is a little unusual, but all the major systems are there and functioning normally.
LAFORGE: As far as I can tell there's no evidence that his molecules are losing any cohesion. They seem to be as immutable as ordinary matter.
So we're supposed to believe that the holodeck duplicates every biological system? Why? A puppet being controlled by force fields has no need for any of this nonsense. If events call for a holodeck character to be wounded and bloody, the wound and blood will appear then, because it isn't real!
MORIARTY: Extraordinary. Are we far from Earth? What is the range of this ship? What means of locomotion does it use? There's so much for me to learn. I hardly know where to start.
The term "lightyear" was coined by a German astronomer in 1838. Even so, I doubt even Holmes himself could truly fathom the distance in 19th-century terms. Could he even comprehend galactic scales?
As for "range", that's a tough one. Thousands of light-years, I suppose. Impossible for us 21st-century people to comprehend, much less Moriarty.
Power source, that's a good one. Antimatter wasn't even conceived of until 1928. At best you could describe it as "we replicate conditions inside a star to make solar flares that can be channeled into our engines."
PICARD: I can give you books that will help.
MORIARTY: Good, good.
Is there a reason why information can't be copied from the library computer into the holodeck computer to be accessed by Moriarty's program?
PICARD: Professor, I feel it necessary to point out that criminal behaviour is as unacceptable in the twenty fourth century as it was in the nineteenth. And much harder to get away with.
This is just stupid. The word "duh" comes to mind.
MORIARTY: Don't worry, Captain. My past is nothing but a fiction. The scribblings of an Englishman dead now for four centuries. I hope to leave his books on the shelf, as it were.
Let me repeat, duh. We established that this Moriarty isn't the same guy that Doyle concieved of back in "Elementary, Dear Data." Upon enlightenment his desire wasn't crime anymore, it was to defeat Holmes/Data.
MORIARTY: There is a woman, the Countess Regina Bartholomew. She was created as a holodeck character for one of Commander Data's programs. She was designed to be the love of my life. Could she also be brought off the holodeck?
Moriarty was written to be a nemesis for Holmes only. There's mention of two brothers, but never a love interest. One wonders why Data created one.
PICARD: Professor, I wonder why you're in so much of a hurry. Is this woman involved with you in some illegal venture?
Why is Picard still stuck on this plot point? What sort of "criminal enterprise" can he engage in? At worse he'll commit extortion and attempted assault, neither of wish requires an accomplice.
COMPUTER: Authorisation denied.
PICARD: Explain.
COMPUTER: Picard command codes are no longer valid.
I don't think "valid" is the right word here.
DATA: Perhaps we should consider the transporter system. It uses many of the same principles as the holodeck. Both, for example, are capable of converting energy into matter.
LAFORGE: Except the transporter reconstitutes energy in a permanent form. Holodeck matter doesn't have any cohesion unless it's inside the grid.
BARCLAY: I wonder, what would happen if we tried to beam a holodeck object off the grid?
LAFORGE: Nothing would happen. A holodeck object is just a simulation. There's nothing there to provide a pattern lock for the transporter.
Exactly. This isn't a transporter problem, it's a replicator problem. Turning code into something solid.
For that matter, "Time Squared" reminds me that they can take a physical pattern from Source A and a neural pattern from Source B and fuse them in the transporter. Creating a physical pattern isn't the problem. While the holodeck shouldn't create bones and organs for characters routinely, it would know how to if events require it. Converting computer code into a neural pattern is the problem.
LAFORGE: That's a big leap, Data. I just don't think the transporter is going to accept simulated matter.
BARCLAY: Unless, unless we could find a way to compensate for the phase variance. If we could modify the pattern enhancers we just might do it.
Yeah, this is nonsense.