Streaming service Paramount Plus releases the 24th episode of the Star Trek prequel series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet. Paul Wesley (The Vampire Diaries) guest stars. 
Stardate not given: While the Enterprise conducts a routine survey of a neutron star, La’an is assigned to test a new technology that Starfleet sees as a necessity for longer-term missions. The recreation deck technology – or, more informally, the “holodeck” – can provide holographic environments complete with interactive characters, though Scotty admits these characters are limited to being likenesses of frequent users of the Enterprise’s transporter. La’an indulgently asks for a mystery in the style of her favorite fictional detective, finding herself in the midst of familiar faces acting very oddly, as the cast and crew of a 1960s television science fiction show on the verge of cancellation become suspects in a murder mystery. As with any cutting-edge technology, there are bugs to be worked out. The simulation draws an increasing amount of power from the Enterprise’s other systems, leaving the ship and crew at the mercy of the neutron star, and worse yet, failsafes designed to keep visitors from coming to harm in their simulated environments fail very unsafely. La’an is now trapped on the holodeck with multiple suspects who are now capable of committing a real murder.
written by Dana Horgan & Kathryn Lyn
directed by Jonathan Frakes
music by Nami Melumad
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds main theme by Jeff Russo
Cast: Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Ethan Peck (Lt. Spock), Jess Bush (Nurse Christine Chapel), Christina Chong (Lt. La’an Noonien Singh), Celia Rose Gooding (Ensign Uhura), Melissa Navia (Lt. Erica Ortegas), Babs Olusanmokun (Dr. M’Benga), Martin Quinn (Lt. Scott), Rebecca Romijn (Commander Una Chin-Riley), Paul Wesley (Maxwell Saint), Chris Myers (Ensign Campbell), Rong Fu (Jenna Mitchell), Kira Guldien (Agonyan)
Notes: You’d think a century of R&D would lead to some common-sense failsafes, but La’an makes exactly the same mistake that Geordi makes in Elementary, Dear Data (1988): she asks for a
holodeck program that can outwit her, not her character, just as Geordi would later ask for a Holmesian mystery capable of outwitting Data. The holodeck existing – at least in a temporary test installation – on Pike’s Enterprise isn’t completely anahcronistic; the recreation deck technology exists on Kirk’s Enterprise in the animated series, and if one wants to accept fan productions as canonical, Scotty is still debugging the technology even earlier than that in Star Trek Continues’ Pilgrim Of Eternity installment. Scotty recommends that any future holodeck installations have their own power source and their own processing power independent of the ship’s computer; at least one of those suggestions will have been taken up by the time of Star Trek: Voyager, whose holodecks seemed to be immune to other power crunches aboard the ship.
LogBook entry by Earl Green