That’s not the case for the TNG Moriarty episodes. They ask the computer to create a villain that could defeat Data and the holodeck functions flawlessly to pull that off.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the episode: they don’t establish any weird situation that made the computer malfunction or something? Why is Data considered special if apparently any ship has a computer capable of creating a new sapient/intelligent person after working on it for a day?
Doesn’t Moriarty get sent off in a shuttle at the end of the episode? I don’t think the full Enterprise’s computer is needed to run his mind, but even still it’s still strange you don’t see more sapient artificial life if it’s apparently this easy to make. Data getting put on “trial” for his personhood shouldn’t have been a thing because the Federation should be swimming with artificial people, maybe just in a larger form factor.
There have been at least a couple more episodes where they play with the idea that holodeck characters could be sapient without spelling it out the way they did with Moriarty. Plus, both DS9 and Voyager have definitively sapient hologram characters.
It’s not “any ship.” This is a Starfleet galaxy-class flagship we’re talking about. You never truly learn whether or not
Tap for spoiler
Moriarty is truly sentient. But if Data was created, it can feasibly happen again in the same universe.
In the later episode, the computer simulates
Tap for spoiler
the ship, staff, and another holodeck. So while they think they’re interacting with the rest of the crew to solve the mystery, they are really just in the holodeck.
That’s not the case for the TNG Moriarty episodes. They ask the computer to create a villain that could defeat Data and the holodeck functions flawlessly to pull that off.
And then SNW did almost the same thing
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the episode: they don’t establish any weird situation that made the computer malfunction or something? Why is Data considered special if apparently any ship has a computer capable of creating a new sapient/intelligent person after working on it for a day?
The holideck on the Enterprise was special, the Binars upgraded it in the early episode 11001001.
I think there’s a matter of scale to consider. The computing capabilities of a starship (and possibly more) have been crammed into a humanoid form.
Soong worked some miniaturization magic to create Data.
Edit: spelling
Doesn’t Moriarty get sent off in a shuttle at the end of the episode? I don’t think the full Enterprise’s computer is needed to run his mind, but even still it’s still strange you don’t see more sapient artificial life if it’s apparently this easy to make. Data getting put on “trial” for his personhood shouldn’t have been a thing because the Federation should be swimming with artificial people, maybe just in a larger form factor.
There have been at least a couple more episodes where they play with the idea that holodeck characters could be sapient without spelling it out the way they did with Moriarty. Plus, both DS9 and Voyager have definitively sapient hologram characters.
It’s not “any ship.” This is a Starfleet galaxy-class flagship we’re talking about. You never truly learn whether or not
Tap for spoiler
Moriarty is truly sentient. But if Data was created, it can feasibly happen again in the same universe.
In the later episode, the computer simulates
Tap for spoiler
the ship, staff, and another holodeck. So while they think they’re interacting with the rest of the crew to solve the mystery, they are really just in the holodeck.