WHY WE LIKE IT: It's hilarious.
WHY WE DON'T: I guess no one wants to think of the Enterprise finale.
REVIEW: Holograms, All the Way Down is what believe is the absolute correct length for Very Short Treks. It's fast, furious, and under 2 minutes. The gag can't possibly outwear its welcome and in fact, I watched this one several times in a row. That gag? We revisit the idea from the much-criticized These Are the Voyages... with Riker experiencing the NX-01's adventures on the holodeck, but then THAT'S a simulation in Quark's holosuites, which in turn is a simulation watched by the Lower Decks crew, and so on until - if you count Picard as TNG - every show is covered, and there's voice talent from every one of them (George Takei's Sulu covers both TOS and TAS, and Jonathan Frakes was in Picard). Even the Prodigy kids show up as cardboard cut-outs of their normally "3D" selves.
This is a lot of fun, but Holograms does another thing well: It borrows from Lower Decks its goofy referential comedy, eschewing the bathroom humor of previous instalments. So Trip says it's been "a long road", Garak drinks root beer, and Sulu mentions The Practical Joker (which had the first holodeck, chronologically). And it ends on a bizarre non sequitur. Just the fact that Riker is "relaxing" by watching the original Enterprise's crew get blown up is funny and of itself.
And if you didn't like the Enterprise finale (as many didn't), this sort of justifies it! And that's a feat unto itself!
LESSON: Nothing's real. Confirmed.
REWATCHABILITY - High: A joke-a-second amusement, and the best of the Very Short Treks.
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