With the number of episodes in Star Trek The Next Generation where the Holodeck seems to act as an outright hostile entity towards the crew of the Enterprise, I’m convinced that it’s because it was written in Q-BASIC. And I mean “Q” as in “QUUUUUUEEE”.
In “Q”-BASIC, you don’t get overflow errors, you get warp core breaches.
POKING improper memory addresses comes with the risk of accidentally summoning the Borg.
And the classic GOTO command has been upgraded to:
WARP <destination>, <speed>
In “Q”-BASIC, the time it takes for the interpreter to jump to a new section of code is directly proportional to how far away it is in the BAS file hence the speed parameter.
The higher the warp level you use, the more likely you’ll need to press the Turbo button located on the front of your 486 Packard Bell computer. But if you reach for warp 10, there’s a small chance that even with the engines giving it all they’ve got the computer will abruptly shut down, ejecting the warp core and also any floppy disks.
Perhaps most importantly, BEEP has been replaced by the keyword QAPLA.
Here’s a BAS source file featuring John de Lancie’s head in glorious 16 COLOR RESOLUTION. He’s less realistic because this likeness was captured during the brief period when he was made mortal and as an added humiliation they also decreased the visible spectrum of light reflected off his newly corporeal body.
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