Greetings, fellow citizen of the Federation! I couldn’t help but notice that you seem a bit fatigued. I suspect that the many demands of Starfleet service have worn you down, and you now require recreation to refresh you and restore your spirits to a nominal level of function. I know just the thing–a merry Elizabethan adventure on the holodeck!
Yes, the holodeck, the 24th century’s most wondrous invention! When its advanced three-dimensional imaging capabilities are working in concert with its steady-state transporter/replicator matter-manipulation arrays, this deceptively drab room is limited only by the power of the imagination. And we shall use our imaginations to whisk us away from the day-to-day cares of running a Federation starship and back to the late 16th century, to the English Renaissance during the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I!
Stress and care will disappear as the holodeck transforms your hum-drum, utilitarian Starfleet uniform into the gilt-sleeved, silken-hosed garb of the London dandy, complete with a scandalously ruffled collar! My science officer’s uniform instantly becomes a jerkin and doublet of the finest linen, and a plumed and tassocked beaver hat appears on my head at a jaunty angle. As we gasp in amazement at this magic, we note that our Type III phasers have been transformed into perfect replicas of English hand-and-a-half broadswords, for today, we sail with the Duke of Sedonia against King Philip and the nefarious Spanish Armada!
Or, if you desire adventures of a less martial nature, indulge my science officer’s curiosity, and let us join Sir Francis Drake in his circumnavigation of the globe! The holodeck shall delve into its prodigious memory banks to reproduce the skies of old Earth, so that we may navigate by sextant to the Straits of Magellan, reproduced in all their beauty and savagery by the Federation’s finest technological masterwork! We shall pass the long hours watching replicated gulls wheel in the rigging of Her Majesty’s ship Golden Hinde, forgetting the worries we have as crewpersons of the Federation’s flagship.
Ahoy! The shores of Tierra Del Fuego appear in the holographic distance! The natives approach with gifts and provisions, and if the First Mate is a Klingon, well, who is to care?
The tedium of hours spent mapping lifeless nebulae down in Stellar Cartography will melt away as we weather winter storms and head up the Thames to accept the Queen’s scarf as a trophy! That evening, after a parting ale with the convincing simulacrum of good Sir Francis, we take our seats at the newly opened Globe Theatre, where young Will Shakespeare’s fanciful comedies shall make us temporarily forget the many demands placed upon us by our stern commander, Will Riker.
Look ye! A fair lady has dropped her scented handkerchief and now laughs into her sleeve as I stoop to proffer the sundry to her coquettish hand. Is she the young and flirtatious Anne Boleyn, brought once more to life by the holodeck’s vast historical reference files and human emotion/behavior probability matrix? Or is she that comely ensign from Main Engineering?
Ah, yes, the holodeck! Balm to overtaxed junior officers everywhere. Let it ease your furrowed brow!
