Mutiny in the holodeck

[Valdivia]

You are the captain of a starship and, while walking through the corridors, you hear a ruckus coming from the holodeck. As you apporoach, you find a couple of engineers trying to reason with a mob, varied in all shapes, species, genders, clothes and ages. And very angry.

After trying to understand what was going on, you finally get an odd explanation. Apparently, these holodeck characters, even though they are not supposedly self-aware, are requesting rights to control the holodeck, who appears or disappears and what their environment is.

The engineers look at you for what to do. The characters have taken control of the holodeck, but it could be forcibly deactivated from the outside. But, of course, there was a matter of rights. Did these characters have rights? Should they be listened to? That  is your decision to make!

What will you do?

This is a new question from our category Morals of Trek, where you are in the shoes of a Starfleet Captain facing a dilemma any of our favorite characters could have faced in Star Trek. If your crew has faced any such dilemmas and you want to see it featured in a Poll of the Week, let us know!

[Jon Oswald]

Purge them with extreme prejudice. It's the only solution.

[Laria Herren]

 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.

[Evan Delano]

I believe the Picard/Barcley solution was to stick them in a self sustaining computer simulation, independent of the holodeck. That seems more humane than simply deleting them, so I'd probably aim for a similar solution. I'd probably also order the holodeck to be reprogrammed to further limit the intelligence of its characters to avoid a similar problem in the future. 

[+ catscatscats]

Given how often Holodecks seem to malfunction in dangerous ways, as soon as I assumed command I'd just buy my crew a bunch of board games and turn the damned thing off before the problem arose