Star Trek: 10 Weirdest Holodeck Episodes

10. Emergence

No, it's not another one of Kenneth Branagh's Agatha Christie adaptations; it's just a holographic mash-up on the Orient Express. Have your tickets at the ready for Keystone and (New) Vertiform City!

As detailed in The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, Brannon Braga had wanted one last trip to the holodeck before the end of TNG. His idea to revisit Dixon Hill was rejected in favour of the "ultimate holodeck show," and that's certainly what we got. When Data, Worf, and Riker re-enter the holodeck in Emergence, Data estimates that one scene alone "consists of portions of seven distinct holodeck programs"!!

As if the final product weren't odd enough, the first draft of the script was apparently "even weirder," as producer/showrunner Jeri Taylor is cited as saying in The Next Gen Companion. Cliff Bole, the episode's director, further commented: "I thought [Joe] Menosky [who wrote the teleplay for Emergence] mighta had a couple of mushrooms when he wrote the first script." For the sake of the filming schedule, things had to be pared down from extremely mad to just mad.

The nub of the episode is that the Enterprise-D itself is becoming sentient and is, in essence, having a 'baby.' The holodeck then becomes a manifestation of the ship's rudimentary, but developing, psyche. Ultimately, the weirdest thing about Emergence is that we've never seen, nor heard of, the Enterprise-D's 'offspring' since it flew the nest.