DS9 Holosuites

[FPAlpha]

So i'm doing a light rewatch of DS9 and gotten to season 7's Take me out to the holosuite and i was wondering about space requirements.

The baseball field obviously makes no sense within the established parameters of Star Trek and how holodecks/suites work and they never did as the writers of the various shows were very flexible with the use of them and this episode is especially noticeable.

Does anyone know of any source with floorplans that even tries to explain how they can have an entire baseball game with all the trimmings inside a holosuite in the confines of a space station like DS9?

This is tongue in cheek of course - i know the writers conveniently ignored this to give us one of DS9's trademark fun episodes and i love it but we Trek fans love to nitpick stuff to death

 

[JesterFace]

When it looks like a holosuite might not be big enough I tend to think that they're in a bigger room, there might be different sized suites? And different sized holodecks, for example, on the Enterprise-D.

 

[JoseNoodles]

I always imagined people were walking/running in place and the holodeck/holosuite gave you the illusion of movement.

 

[FPAlpha]

I always imagined people were walking/running in place and the holodeck/holosuite gave you the illusion of movement.

That's how it works according to the show but what if 2 people are so far apart that it breaks the dimensions of the room like the baseball field?

I just don't think that DS9 has that much space dedicated to a holodeck that could fit an entire baseball field.

 

[JoseNoodles]

That's how it works according to the show but what if 2 people are so far apart that it breaks the dimensions of the room like the baseball field?

I just don't think that DS9 has that much space dedicated to a holodeck that could fit an entire baseball field.

Maybe there's some sort of visual or mental component to the holodeck that distorts perception, so if there are two people in a room they can "run" apart from each other and it will look like they are really far apart.

 

[Frontis]

Maybe the Holodeck also can give you the illusion that rooms or fields are bigger.

 

[FredH]

I’ve always assumed that between holographics, forcefields and light-bending, the holodeck/holosuite always makes it look—to each person inside, individually—like there’s enough room and people are at illusory proper distances from each other, even if the actual chamber is the size of a closet and fairly crowded. To each of them, there appears to be virtually infinite space.

If anything, the only thing that doesn’t make sense is a shot I seem to remember when someone throws something and it apparently hits the edge of the holodeck and disappears. From their perspective, that should never happen.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Hey, wait. Does that mean Kirk could have stuck the population of Gideon in a holosuite (if they had one) and the planet wouldn't feel as overcrowded as it was?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Space is available because the engineers inverted polarity on the Heisenberg Compensators from positive to negative.

Michael Okuda will be happy to tell you how well it works.

 

[Lynx]

I think that holosuites in a way looks like if you're watching a movie on a very big screen, like a Western movie when the hero rides away over the plains towards the setting sun. It gives an illusion of a wide area.

Maybe the baseball field in the episode also is like sports games on the computer, I mean they have holodeck bats and holodeck balls which gives the impression that they are playing a game when they actually use imaginary things.

If someone should switch off the power, they would just stand together in a room with game equipment whatsoever.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Hey, wait. Does that mean Kirk could have stuck the population of Gideon in a holosuite (if they had one) and the planet wouldn't feel as overcrowded as it was?

Maybe there's an upper limit to how many people a small holodeck/holosuite can fit. If I recall Insurrection, the Son'a needed a whole freighter whose insides were converted into one big holodeck to move the Ba'ku off world while maintaining the illusion they were still in their village.

 

[FredH]

Hey, wait. Does that mean Kirk could have stuck the population of Gideon in a holosuite (if they had one) and the planet wouldn't feel as overcrowded as it was?

Nah — illusions aside, the holodeck/suite is still an actual physical chamber. So it could make it look like there were millions of people inside — most of whom would be holographic NPCs — but you couldn’t fit more actual people in there than would fit in the physical room.

(EDIT: Now, in the 32nd century, when they appear to have some actual “transdimensional engineering” capability, they maybe could fit Gideon’s population into a starship. Yet to be determined onscreen, but it’s imaginable.)

 

[at Quark's]

As I see it, the holodeck uses all kinds of tricks to give the illusion of more space, but it cannot actually create a larger volume of space within. Such a feat would belong to a distinctly higher level of tech than the 24th century Federation has, most probably (like the 31st century ship Archer & co find in the 22nd century that's larger on the inside than from the outside).

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

But you could create the illusion for them that there's more open space and they wouldn't feel crowded.

 

[at Quark's]

^ Up to a certain point, I'd say.

Given a specific holodeck, you can perhaps give (up to) 200 people the illusion they have a lot more space than they actually have. If the natural size of the room is such that by really squishing people, you could put a 1000 in, I don't think the holodeck could prevent them from feeling pressing against one another, and you certainly can't put more people in when you turn it on.

 

[The Wormhole]

Holodecks are basically shipboard TARDISes. If anything, the fact that Data was able to throw a rock and hit the holodeck wall back in Farpoint is now the oddity. Given how holodecks have been shown to function since then, that rock should have continued on as it would in the actual outdoors unobstructed.

 

[Poltargyst]

I think these are good explanations, but really, if the holosuite is controlling everyone's perceptions so much anyway, then when you hit, catch, or throw the ball, you're not really hitting, throwing, or catching the ball according to your ability at all, it's really determined by the holosuite. And if that's the case then you could program the holosuite so that you are an all-star player, in which case it's pointless to try to hold a sports competition in a holosuite anyway.

 

[FredH]

I think these are good explanations, but really, if the holosuite is controlling everyone's perceptions so much anyway, then when you hit, catch, or throw the ball, you're not really hitting, throwing, or catching the ball according to your ability at all, it's really determined by the holosuite. And if that's the case then you could program the holosuite so that you are an all-star player, in which case it's pointless to try to hold a sports competition in a holosuite anyway.

Just instruct the suite to only show the effects of your actual skills and actions, not “bump them up” in any way.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Holodecks are basically shipboard TARDISes. If anything, the fact that Data was able to throw a rock and hit the holodeck wall back in Farpoint is now the oddity. Given how holodecks have been shown to function since then, that rock should have continued on as it would in the actual outdoors unobstructed.

Early show weirdness. Remember in "The Big Goodbye" when Cyrus Redblock and his minion were able to walk out of the holodeck and stand in the hallway for like a minute before they disappeared? Also in the same episode, Wesley makes comments about how the crewmembers trapped in the simulation couldn't be beamed out of the holodeck, like the holodeck altered them in some way or they were "merged" with the program.

 

[FredH]

(For some reason this discussion is reminding me of anbyojutsu, the “ultimate evolution of the martial arts”. When they had it on LD, I hoped it would continue to be portrayed as two people clumsily hitting each other with sticks, and have the characters comment on it — “This is the ultimate in martial arts? Really?” — but alas no.)