Warning: contains spoilers for Star Trek Annual 2023!The "holodeck gone awry" cliché repeats across the Star Trek franchise, but now a new spin has made this idea fresh once again. Numerous episodes have centered around something going wrong while on the holodeck, to the point where fans became critical, calling out the overuse of the trope. In Star Trek Annual 2023, Sisko and the crew of the Theseus must contend with a malfunctioning holodeck, but it plays out far differently than anything seen on TV.
The issue is written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, drawn by Rachael Stott, colored by Charlie Kirchoff and lettered by Clayton Cowles. Scotty detects a disturbance on the holodeck, and assembles the Theseus crew to investigate. Entering, they find themselves on a recreation of the bridge of Kirk’s Enterprise. The holo-Kirk tells Scotty and the rest there is a problem they must fix; soon after, the holographic Enterprise is attacked, disrupting the holo-matrix and sending different members of the crew to different scenarios: Ensign Sato meets a distant ancestor, Data and T’Lir find themselves in the Engineering section of Discovery and Sisko faces Captain Pike. As the Theseus crew work with the holograms, they learn they have achieved sentience. Rather than deleting them, Sisko and Scotty find a nearby planet; they set up an array of holo-emitters and computer cores, and the newly sentient holograms can live out the rest of their lives in peace.
Star Trek's New Hologram Planet Is a Genius Twist 
The Star Trek universe is full of amazing technological innovations – such as warp drive, the transporter, and the holodeck. Working on the same principles as the transporter, the holodeck can rearrange energy into near-perfect holographic simulation of almost any environment or person. Introduced in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the holodeck would become central to not only that show, but its spin-offs Deep Space Nine and Voyager. All three shows feature a story of a hologram gaining sentience: Professor Moriarty in The Next Generation, Vic Fontaine in Deep Space Nine and the EMH or 'the Doctor' one of Voyager’s main characters. There were also episodes featuring holodeck malfunctions – enough for it to become an overused trope, often parodied in other media.
