Yes, the idea of a holodeck safety protocol that can be turned off or broken without shutting down the program is really dumb, but everyone knows that by now. Star Trek is rife with holodeck-related stupidity, which is a shame as theyre certainly one of the more attractive propositions of life in the 24th century. The Enterprise-D in particular has over a thousand people on board, many of whom are civilians, and a total of sixteen holodecks, which works out at less than three hours holodeck time a week unless you can buddy up somehow. The Enterprise also has a dedicated fencing arena, which is probably Picards fault, but if I were a bored teenager stuck on the Enterprise Id be pretty annoyed at the space taken up with calisthenics, Parrises squares, swimming and other athletics that you could do on the holodeck, freeing up space to build more holodecks so my friends and I can holo-Minecraft more often. Except you wouldnt be doing that, of course, because there are apparently no laws or privacy protocols to stop you making accurate duplicates of real people in the holodeck. Quite apart from being creepy for the obvious reasons, theres a weirdly invasive aspect to this if I can ask holo-Picard what his favourite wine is and get an accurate response, can I ask him for his command codes, too?
