Review of Emergence

As this episodes opens something goes wrong in the holodeck; a train almost hits Picard and Data as the latter works through a scene from The Tempest. It turns out the train was from another 'Orient Express' program. It is initially assumed that it is just a fault on the holodeck but it becomes obvious that something else is wrong when the Enterprise suddenly goes into warp. Nobody gave the order but the action saved the ship. Investigations lead to the discovery of an emergent intelligence in the ship's computer. The holodeck appears to be the centre of this occurrence so much of the investigation takes place there. The program running combines elements of several other programs with various characters aboard a train representing ships functions. With many systems, including life support, offline the crew will have to help get the train to its destination if they are to save the ship and its crew.

Holodeck episodes are usually weaker than average and this one was no exception… in fact it was weak even when compared to other holodeck episodes. Having various parts of the holodeck program representing parts of the ship's emerging intelligence wasn't too subtle so the characters came across as walking clichés… the story would probably have been more interesting we didn't have the metaphorical mumbo-jumbo on the holodeck and instead just had the crew on the Enterprise, outside the holodecks, working to find a solution. Overall I'd say this episode is a bit of a mess and quite a disappointment.