7/25/2023 0 Comments Picard spock mind meld![]() But it was Voyager that made a sentient hologram part of the main cast and spent the next seven years exploring the concept of having a hologram as a full-time crew member - from his mobility limitations (he was confined to the ship until he obtained a mobile emitter in season three), his relations with his fellow officers and eventually, his legal rights as a synthetic being. Deep Space Nine ( DS9) even gave us a recurring holographic character, lounge singer Vic Fontaine. Over seven seasons various TNG episodes continued to explore what the holodeck could do. It wasn't long until we met a self-aware hologram (Minuet) in season one, and then the fully sentient Professor Moriarty in season two. (It was originally intended by the writers and producers as a money-saving plot device, to avoid having to build a shuttle set.) When TNG started up it explored the question, if we can convert matter to energy, why can't we convert energy to matter? And thus we got replicators and the holodeck, with the latter able to build people. The original series introduced the idea of transporters, which convert matter to energy and back, allowing for the transportation of people and objects without needing a ship. ![]() Sometimes those technological concepts go beyond just one or two episodes and become more of an ongoing theme, with each appearance building on the technology and its societal effects. ![]() The time-travel technique Spock used in the fourth film, The Voyage Home, was introduced in the original series ( TOS) episode 'Tomorrow is Yesterday.' In season six of The Next Generation ( TNG) we see a Ferengi scientist invent "metaphasic shielding" so ships can journey into a star's corona, and one season later the Enterprise-D employs this very technology to escape from an enemy. Concepts introduced in one episode may be used again later, and even iterated on. ![]()
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