41
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
41 points (100.0% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
7354 readers
723 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So is TNG's entire plotline with Moriarty. One could argue that the Federation knew about the sentience of holograms long before the Voyager era, and actively encouraged their slavery despite their clear sentience.
In fact the final "solution" Picard & Data work out for Moriarty in TNG is pretty fucking evil if you think about it.
So, summary is that Moriarty is holding the Enterprise hostage (he's gained the command codes) in exchange for his freedom from the holodeck. Picard trades it for control of the Enterprise, and Moriarty and his love, the Countess, depart the Enterprise on a shuttle.
The resolution of that story is presented as Picard, a representative of Starfleet, genuinely expressing a desire to find a more permanent and real solution for Moriarty. Unfortunately as established by Lower Decks (and indeed hinted at in the second Moriarty episode itself) Starfleet is actually really, really bad at follow-through.
To be fair, they had a team at Starfleet HQ working on granting Moriarty independence from the holodeck for four years and simply didn't have the technology for it. They also didn't know he was aware that whole time and thought he was basically asleep. Picard is also very reasonable and encouraging when it looks like he's left the holodeck, and only starts on the prison box when it's clear he's willing to destroy the ship if they don't get him off the holodeck.
They trapped Moriarty and the Countess inside a velvet prison, yes, but with every intention of finding a way to release them into the universe.
I like to think that in the future, they give the two a reverse engineered holo-emitter the doctor uses in Voyager. They know how it works, but they can't yet duplicate it due to technological limitations.
So at some point in the future, some science Ensign is gonna come across the Moriarty Cube in storage and give them bodies. Hijinks will ensue as Moriarty is not happy with having been trapped so long, as he DID eventually figure it out, and has to be reminded of his "humanity" to accept things again. Then they give the happy couple their mobile emitters, and a small ship equipped with emitters everywhere, including on the hull to allow for limited travel near the ship without a mobile emitter being necessary.
Claimed they had every intention. That intention is never followed through, even after they gain the capacity to create holo-emitters. Overall, it's kind of a horrifying fate, because canonically, without another resolution, eventually they reach the limits of the fake universe, and discover they've been imprisoned the entire time.
But how does it differs from our reality which could just be a simulation altogether?
Because they're immortal, and thus will eventually find the limitations of the simulation over time, thus knowing they are forever trapped in a box. Because the Star Trek writing never wrote a conclusion for them beyond being trapped in the simulation, canonically they eventually meet this fate.