Strange New Worlds Season 3 Explores The Origin Of A Classic Piece Of Star Trek Tech

This post contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 3, episode 4, "A Space Adventure Hour."

What would Spock do with a holodeck? This is the type of pie-in-the-sky theoretical question that has no doubt powered a thousand works of fan fiction and dozens of spec scripts, but until this week, it's not actually something "Star Trek" fans could answer. After all, the holodeck — a sort of multipurpose virtual reality space fueled by imagination and powerful programming — didn't exist in Gene Roddenberry's original 1960s "Star Trek" TV series.

That's never stopped "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" from getting creative before, though. In a season that's already added a new chapter to the history of the Gorn and confirmed a long-running theory about "The Original Series" scallywag Trelane, the natural next step is to somehow make a holodeck episode happen ... a century before holodecks were a thing. As such, "Strange New Worlds" has employed a unique loophole to continue on with the grand tradition of holodeck episodes, one that largely sidesteps any potential continuity issues. Rather than messing with pre-existing "Trek" lore, "A Space Adventure Hour" imagines a sort of lost chapter: a holodeck experience so wonky and dangerous that it's eventually purposely lost to history.

The fun starts when Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and Una/Number One (Rebecca Romijn) task La'an (Christina Chong) with testing out a new bit of tech. Since she's beat every battle simulator, she's been chosen to road test the new program, ensuring it's functional and doesn't suck up too much power. It's a playful premise for an episode that never quite reaches its full potential, instead juggling a semi-entertaining Hollywood murder storyline with a corny "The Original Series" parody and a dull subplot involving Spock (Ethan Peck) and La'an's love life. The episode does, however, show off the power of the holodeck, which soon begins to outfox La'an and very nearly kills everyone on board the Enterprise.

Like a cryptocurrency mine slurping up water, this rudimentary holodeck turns out to be a huge resource-sucker. As La'an investigates a fake mystery (while posing as fictional girl detective Amelia Moon), the Enterprise starts to lose critical functions, and the quickly evolving program learns to hurt real people. In fact, things go so wrong with the mission that La'an and Scotty (Martin Quinn) ultimately recommend the holodeck technology not be deployed lest it endanger the lives of other Starfleet officers. Pike concurs, joking that he'll recommend the tech be "locked in a box deep underground somewhere." Thanks to this disastrous first attempt, "Strange New Worlds" wryly implies, holodecks will be absent for the next several decades of Starfleet exploration.

As it enters the latter phase of its five-year mission, "Strange New Worlds" has made some choices that seem to be at odds with the canon of "The Original Series." The show's version of Spock, for example, has inexplicably burned through three lovers in three seasons, including one who is the descendant of his future nemesis Khan Noonien Singh. Despite its more loosey-goosey moments, though, "Strange New Worlds" is capable of nailing the complicated "Trek" timeline. This actually seems to be the case with the holodeck; though it was popularized as a starship feature beginning with "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the earliest reference to the concept came via a 1974 episode of "Star Trek: The Animated Series." In season 2's "The Practical Joker," an on-board supercomputer starts playing pranks on the Enterprise crew, and the malfunction threatens the Starfleet officers trapped in what was then called the "recreation room."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" pays homage to that deep cut in "A Space Adventure Hour," when Pike initially calls the holodeck a "recreation room" before Una corrects him. That episode of "The Animated Series" takes place in 2270, just a few years after "Strange New Worlds." The first previous use of the term "holodeck," meanwhile, appeared around 2364, when the series premiere of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" properly introduced the hyper-realistic dreamscape. Soon, "The Next Generation" would make holodecks the centerpiece for escapist adventures and dangerous encounters alike.

La'an's experience is also far from the last time a holodeck nearly killed someone. The technology, like any AI, has never been made truly safe or trustworthy. It has, however, made for some excellent episodes of "Star Trek." With the advent of "Deep Space Nine," holodecks reached their cynical final form, refashioned as exclusive, expensive rooms where capitalists like Quark (Armin Shimerman) could make a quick buck selling imagined sex, death, and luxury. Still, the urge to geek out in a holodeck seems to be timeless, as plenty of "Star Trek" characters have joyfully LARPed their spare time away no matter the century or context, making the tech one of the franchise's best-loved features. Signs indicate there won't be another holodeck episode of "Strange New Worlds," but if there is, I have three words for the series' writers: Wild West Pike.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" premiere Thursdays on Paramount+.