30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

I'm still pondering how an uncontrolled holodeck shutdown could vaporize everyone inside it. Even if you had to sweep the thing with baryons or something every time you turn it off, to complete the holographic reset, couldn't our heroes just unplug that part?

Then again, I'd hope that every holodeck would have a manual shutdown, probably a form of fuse.

The weird thing is that "The Big Goodbye" is supposed to tell us what the holodeck can do, while at the same time convince the entire audience that they are not fun and in fact are very dangerous. A scanning beam manages to lock the doors and deactivate the safeties and make the holodeck unable to shut down without killing everyone. And not even a weaponized scanning beam deliberately designed to do this thing, it's a random result! You couldn't get me within a hundred feet of this deathtrap!