Star Trek didn't need the holodeck for films and the reason is pretty clear

The holodeck wasn't necessary for Star Trek films

1996 Patrick Stewart stars in the new movie "Star Trek: First Contact".
1996 Patrick Stewart stars in the new movie "Star Trek: First Contact". | Getty Images/GettyImages

Have you ever realized that one of Star Trek's most used concepts, the Holodecks, rarely ever feature in films? There are really only four films that could've featured the concept, as the original series and Kelvin Timeline have not really shown to have the technology, at least at the time of the films. Still, even in those four Next Generation Era films, we didn't see much of the holodeck.

The only time we did, as ScreenRants pointed out, was in First Contact. In the scene that used it, Picard uses a gangster program that features most of the film's cameos (including Voyager's Ethan Phillips, aka Neelix.) The scene sees Picard use the hologram to obtain a Tommy Gun and after disengaging the safety protocols, shoot down two Borg drones.

It was a brilliantly effective use of the concept, but it was the only time the film series ever used the Holodeck. Yet, why is that?

Simply put, the Holodeck is a crutch for storytelling purposes. When you're on a ship like Voyager or the Enterprise-D or the Deep Space Nine space station, sometimes you may need to shake up the concepts you see every week. That may mean a baseball game, a trip through Robin Hood-era England or even chatting about life with Leonardo Di Vinci.

Yet, with an endless space to explore, having a program that allows you to live some of the most fantastical scenarios seems rather redundant. Why go to a Holodeck if you could just venture to a new planet? It made more sense in Voyager, as they have a fully unexplored quadrant that they had to keep safe from. So limited shore leave made sense.

Plus, the ship had to be in a near-constant state of movement just to help get the crew home as fast as possible.

Yet, in other shows, it made little sense. Other than to change up the format of an episode. When you're producing 20+ episodes a season across 21 combined seasons, yeah, you're going to need help creating new ideas.

Even if it is, in essence, a creative crutch. Still, with that in mind, the idea that the Holodeck was done to shake up the week-to-week formula of the show, it becomes very clear why the Holodeck was never really a point of emphasis among the films that could've been used; it wasn't necessary.

You weren't making 20 movies in one year. So you don't need to shake up the formula when you're only producing one new story every two to three years. So when you don't have to stockpile stories, you don't need to over-rely on a gimmick like the Holodeck.