Strange New Worlds Just Unpacked A Thorny Star Trek Canon Problem

Every single time you use AI to create bespoke images or videos, you’re using a tremendous amount of power. This is an open secret about AI in the 21st century: that the power required for both electricity and cooling systems both contributes to greenhouse gases and consumes immense amounts of water. But what about in the 23rd century? Or what about the 24th? Before generative AI was even a thing in real life, the Star Trek franchise has been playing fast and loose with just how much power very advanced, immersive AI simulations would require. Starting in 1987 with The Next Generation’s debut episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” we learned about the holodeck, a place where you can simulate any environment, and seemingly any person who ever lived. And now, 38 years later, in a sneaky way, the Trek canon is addressing the one thing that TNG never quite nailed down: What’s the deal with the power drain?

The just-released Strange New Worlds episode, “A Space Adventure Hour,” uses a rudimentary version of the holodeck to wax nostalgic about old-school Hollywood whodunnits, but also about the origin of Star Trek itself. And yet, by the end of this episode, Captain Pike, La’an and Scotty conclude that the holodeck itself is too glitchy, and requires a ton of power, with La’an saying to Pike: “While holodeck technology certainly holds promise, the risks outweigh the potential benefits... we do not recommend the device be installed on active ships at this time.” In theory, this one sentence lets SNW have its holodeck cake and eat it too: Yes, the technology for a holodeck, of course, existed in the 23rd century, but it wasn’t until the 24th century that Starfleet considered it reasonable or safe.

Scotty also notes: “It just needs a dedicated server room and power source.” This one line tap-dances with a few concepts in the Trek canon at the same time. First, in Star Trek: The Animated Series, which takes place about a decade after the events of Strange New Worlds, the Enterprise does have a kind of holodeck called “The Rec Room.” In the episode “The Practical Joker,” Sulu, Bones, and Uhura are all trapped in this proto-holodeck when the Enterprise computer takes on a prankster personality. Events of The Animated Series are broadly viewed as canon, though there is some debate on details like this. Plus, details about the warp drive velocities of the Enterprise in the 2240s, and the nature of Captain Robert April in TAS are a bit fuzzy relative to the rest of canon.

But, you could squint and imagine that maybe, just maybe, Scotty worked out that server and power drain problem by 2270, since we see here, in 2260, that he’s interested in fixing it. On top of that, Scotty is actually telegraphing out a concept introduced in Voyager, and very recently, highlighted in Picard Season 3. In “No Win Scenario,” Picard explains to Jack Crusher that even though the USS Titan is dead in space, the holodeck still works because it has an independent power source, which is not integrated with the rest of the ship at all. Basically, in this SNW episode, it seems that Scotty’s offhanded comment can be seen as the origin of a TNG and Voyager-era plot convenience; that the power drain of the holodeck is solved by an independent power source, that, unlike generative AI of today, isn’t destructive or harmful. (TLDR: We need a Scotty-esque miracle to make AI green and safe in our century.)

Still, in the 23rd century “present” of Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike is fairly anti-hologram tech. In fact, the idea that an over-reliance on holographic tech can break Pike’s Enterprise goes all the way back to Discovery Season 2. In the Discovery episode “An Obol for Charon,” we learn that one system-wide failure on the Enterprise was, yes, partially caused by holographic projectors. In that episode, Pike tells Number One to have the old Enterprise chief engineer — a guy named Louvier, who we never see — to “Rip out the entire system. From now on, we'll communicate using good, old-fashioned viewscreens. Truth is, I never liked the holograms.”

This retcon helped to explain why the holographic projector technology in Discovery didn’t match the way the Enterprise viewscreens worked in The Original Series. But it also established that Pike liked to throttle back some innovations, in favor of maintaining tech that was already reliable. As Pike says in the new episode of holographic tech, “How about we recommend it be locked in a box deep underground?”

Holographic technology has broken his ship twice now in two different TV shows. Can you blame him?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+.