“Emergence” is episode twenty-three of season seven of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Data is playing Prospero on the holodeck and notices that the captain’s attention has wandered. Because it’s too dark. Data thought the lighting level was appropriate for what Prospero was doing, but the captain points out it’s a play and the audience has to see him. Data increases the intensity of the torchlight. He asks the captain for help in understanding Prospero and Picard is explaining when Data starts staring into the distance. The captain joins him. There’s a train coming and the holodeck program doesn’t end, and they have to dive out of the way.
Outside the holodeck, Data reports the program was temporarily linked together with one of Dr Crusher’s about the Orient Express. The captain orders all the holodecks shut down as Data will look into it. The captain heads to sickbay, where Dr Crusher treats his slight injury, and they talk about the Orient Express.
The Enterprise is searching for new potential sites for Federation colonies. Riker reports no M-class worlds. Before they can move on to another area, the ship enters warp. Without instruction. Helm and navigation aren’t functioning. Geordi is trying to take the engines offline, but the only option is an emergency core shutdown, which would leave them without warp for a week. The captain orders this be done, but before Geordi can do it, they come out of warp.
Investigation shows that it was lucky they went to warp. There was a theta flux distortion, and the system isn’t designed to detect that, though it’s in the sensor logs. If they’d remained where they were for 1.7 seconds longer, the warp core would have ruptured.
Data and Geordi are pondering this as they head into a Jefferies tube. Data suggests that as the sensors detected a dangerous anomaly, maybe they triggered a safety device. Geordi says there’s no direct link between the engine and the sensors. They open a panel and discover new circuitry. Which, amongst other things, links the sensors and the warp engine. And a forcefield is protecting it.
Geordi and Data tell Riker they have found several nodes around the ship linking systems together, and they’re increasing. Controlling the ship will grow more difficult. All the connections intersect at holodeck 3.
Riker, Worf and Data head to the holodeck. The holodeck is already in operation, running several programs. They enter an old-fashioned train and see a wide variety of different people, some working on a puzzle. Data reports at least seven programs running. A conductor comes, asking for tickets. Data has found a large concentration of nodes, but the conductor objects when he goes to them. He wants their tickets. The engineer comes and argues with the conductor, then gets shot in the back by a mobster.
In engineering, Geordi is knocked back as the navigation relay overloads. The conductor of the train pulls something and they head into warp again, with no engine or helm control. The mobster takes a brick from the engineer. Worf, Riker and Data are told to be leave or be thrown off. And, of course, the holodeck safeties have been disengaged.
Data and Geordi brief Riker. The nodes are working almost independently of the main computer; what happens on the holodeck affects the ship. Data asks Geordi if he sees something similar about how the nodes are connected. Yes; it’s a little like the structure of Data’s positronic brain. Data believes the Enterprise may be forming an intelligence.
The holodeck is significant, but what happens there often seems allegorical more than anything else. The ship is clearly trying to do something; the main question is what.