Ship in a Bottle
Dr. Moriarty’s routine in Data’s Sherlock Holmes holoprogram is accidentally reactivated. The holovillain is angry that the crew have forgotten their promise to transfer him to the real world some day. He then puzzles Picard and Data when he walks outside the holodeck and stays in one piece. After a while Data discovers inconsistencies. He finds that everything is a ruse and he, Picard and Moriarty are still on the holodeck, so the rest of the ship is not real, including all other persons. Unfortunately Moriarty has now the access codes to the real ship, after Picard was forced to use them, which is especially dangerous since the Enterprise is very close to two colliding gas giants. The crew, however, outwit Moriarty using his own trick when they just transfer him and the Countess Barthalomew to the holodeck in the holodeck instead of beaming them out to the real world. Now stored in a small module, the two are provided with lots of adventures in what they think is the real world. summary by Ex-Astris-Scientia
Cool! Those of you who’ve been reading the previous entries would know by now that it must be another one of my favorites. Reality within reality within reality… ship in a bottle. Yeah! The countess was also an amazing character. I’m not sure if this actress had appeared somewhere else in the series (I may need to check this or rely on someone to privide a comment, please?) but it’d be nice to see her again. One fabulous woman.
The concept of virtual reality contained in a small device is certainly not new to sci-fi. My first encounter with it dates back to years ago when I started reading Stanislaw Lem. He’s mainly responsible, AFAICT, for the idea. It’s been recently made famous again with the release of Matrix but, as you all can see, it’s been here before. Matrix was, in fact, nothing but major redress. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. There are hundreds of such examples: old ideas, refreshed, read like new. How cool is that?