Star Trek: 10 Best Holodeck Episodes
Even on a show about a science fiction future, there's plenty of room for holographic stories.
Members of Starfleet frequently find themselves on long missions into deep space, with few opportunities to get off of the ship. Since there doesn't seem to be movies or television in the future, there is definitely a need for some sort of entertainment. One can only play three dimensional chess before going insane.
Enter the holodeck.
A holodeck, or in the case of Deep Space Nine a holosuite, is literally a room that utilizes incredible holographic technology to create any being or environment. Everything is programmable and interactive, meaning almost anything is possible. It often gets used for relaxation but a holodeck can also be used for training and research
Introduced to fans in Star Trek: The Next Generation, other versions of the technology have been retconned into prequel series like Enterprise. But its biggest impact was in the generation of shows made up by TNG, DS9 and Voyager. It was on those series that the holodeck was put to the best use and fans got episodes that entirely focused on the holodeck.
Being able to move the environment to something off the wall and add in odd characters often changed the tone of an episode quickly.
10. The Next Generation: A Fistful Of Datas
Even in the future, there's a fascination with the past. That fascination led Deanna Troi and Worf to take his son Alexander on a holodeck adventure set it Deadwood, North Dakota in the American Old West.
This era was the Wild West at its wildest.
Unbeknownst to the holodeck users, LaForge and Data were running experiments that directly interfaced Data with the ship's main computer. A power surge caused aspects of Data to overwrite aspects of the main computer. The end result was Data accidentally imprinting all over the Deadwood holodeck program.
It started with the main villain, Frank Hollander, becoming Data-like. He looked like Data but maintained all of Wild West mannerisms of Frank. Unfortunately, he also maintained all of Data's enhanced android abilities. Slowly, more and more characters became Data. Worf and Troi realized they had to complete the story to get out, which meant defeating all the Datas.
They were successful but still could not get out, not until Worf received a kiss from is in story love interest, who now also looked like Data. It was a fun, inventive episode that showed a much different side of Worf.