Laria Herren

It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Someone has to do something now and when all is said and done, hopefully Starfleet Command can see the necessity of the action. If not I'd say that guarding against the potential loss of millions of lives is worth whatever punishment Starfleet settles on.

I would probably enjoy having Data on the ship more, but just in terms of sickbay I would love to have Anath work with Dr. McCoy.

Given that these holodeck characters have already demonstrated that they are aware of their nature as holograms and that they do not possess control of their environment, they clearly possess some degree of self-awareness that can't be ignored. Depending on how many holodecks are available I would either give them the holodeck they currently inhabit or create another holographic environment using holoemitters in another room, a cargo bay for example. I would however tell my engineers to isolate the computer systems of whichever holodeck they inhabit from the rest of the ship for the time being. I wouldn't want them to have access to the ship's systems until learning more about where they came from and what their nature is. Furthermore, it seems that given their demands for control these newly sentient holograms might appreciate their holodeck being given a degree of autonomy and independence from the main computer. Until establishing their origin and working on a more permanent living arrangement, this would be my holding pattern to prevent a conflict.

I've always felt that the Federation holo-communicator used in DS9 exactly twice was such a missed opportunity! Every Starfleet officer can't have (or may not want to have, depending on the mission) any of their family or non-Starfleet close friends aboard their ship with them. It is of course important to bond with your crewmates, but Starfleet has always seemed to be very understanding of the fact that people appreciate being allowed to maintain relationships with those they knew before joining Starfleet, even allowing civilian families on the Starfleet flagship. It is possible to accidentally create a hologram on a holodeck that takes on a life of its own, so why should people in the 24th century be forced to settle for the closest they get to seeing their families while away on assignment be a computer monitor? It's such a shame they cut the device after only a few episodes! I know they did it for production reasons, but it would still be nice for Starfleet ships to have.

I decided to try my hand at pasting this together myself, so please excuse the relative lack of image-editing ability.

Beam down a camera crew to document the incident, then market it as a science fiction movie trilogy? But in all seriousness, I think that interference would be unwise regardless of the Prime Directive. There are just too many unknowns about this situation. Where did the machines on this world come from? Do they have some ulterior motive besides using the native population for computing power (were the machines at one point the slaves, perhaps)? Would they really be better off free and either at war or having to start anew from the ground up? Unless I saw direct evidence of harm being inflicted on the aliens, there's not enough information and too many value judgments necessary to make a logical choice for the good of all involved.