Star Trek: Photonic Lifeforms, Explained

Important takeaways

• Star Trek
  showcases encounters with non-corporeal photonic life forms, challenging perceptions of sentience in the universe.
• Sentient photonic aliens, encountered in the Alpha and Delta Quadrants and aboard Voyager and Cerritos, illustrate the complexity of recognizing intelligence in non-corporeal forms.
• Holograms such as the Doctor in Voyager and Vic Fontaine in DS9 challenge the concept of holographic sentience when they gain self-awareness and exhibit emotions.

Repeatedly, Star Trek presents the Starfleet officers exploring the galaxy – and by extension, the viewers – with opportunities to redefine their ideas about what types of life forms can be sentient. The crew of the Enterprise NX-01 encountered a sentient, symbiotic alien that looked like a white, sticky, web-like substance. Captain Jean-Luc Picard took on the legal battle to define androids as sentient beings. The Doctor, an emergency medical hologram aboard the USS Voyager, joined a rebellion of holograms fighting to prove their feelings. All these meetings in Star Trek the universe shows how beings that humans would not immediately recognize as sentient often are, including many photonic life forms.

Photonic life forms are non-corporeal life forms made up of light and energy particles. Because humans are accustomed to sentient life forms having physical bodies, it is often difficult to understand how a being without a body can have intelligence, self-awareness, and the ability to experience emotions. It is even more difficult to understand how something consisting of only energy and light can have feeling. But that one Star Trek the universe provides several examples of sentient photonic life forms.

Photonic aliens

In their travels through the stars, Starfleet officers have repeatedly encountered photonic aliens that either live in space itself or inhabit certain planets. The latest example is in the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks“Gods and Angles.” The crew of Cerritos hosts two different species of photonic aliens: the Spheres and the Cubes. These aliens both glow from within and reflect light, giving form to their particles of light and energy.

Photonic aliens appear to be more prevalent in the Delta Quadrant, as the crew of the USS Voyager encountered photonic lifeforms more often than any other Starfleet crew. When photonic aliens encountered the ship, they often realized that the ship's holodeck contained photonic beings. Because of this, they often came aboard the ship and hid on the holodeck with the holograms in the crew's program.

A photonic alien encountered by Voyager while studying protostars entered the holodeck and settled in Beowulf program, where the holograms named it Grendel. A few years later, a group of photonic aliens on their own exploration mission encountered Voyager. Unaware that carbon-based lifeforms existed, these photonic aliens assumed that the holograms in the holodeck were the only real lifeforms on the ship. The photonic aliens entered Lt. Tom Paris' The Adventures of Captain Proton program and started a war with the Chaotica hologram. The Doctor had to broker peace to end the war.

The only photonic aliens encountered by Voyager that were not confined to the holodeck were insect-like photonic life forms known as photonic fleas. They were brought aboard Voyager with a shipment of amber spice, and since their primary food source was plasma particles, they were happy to live in one of Voyager's plasma ducts. When they were discovered, the crew of Voyager moved them to a place outside the ship where they could thrive.

Are holograms photonic life forms?

All eager Star Trek the fan knows that the scenes in the holodeck, like the medical emergency holograms, are created with light and energy particles, just like photonic life forms. This raises the complicated question of whether holograms are photonic life forms. In Trek parlance, the word “life form” applies to sentient beings, not non-sentient beings. So the answer to this question lies in whether holograms are sentient beings, and the answer to that question is so complicated, Star Trek has not given a definitive answer yet; however, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager have all shown that holograms can definitely become sentient beings.

IN TNGData asks the computer to create an opponent worthy of his intellect for his Sherlock Holmes program. In response, the computer creates a version of the classic Sherlock Holmes villain Moriarty, who is fully self-aware and definitely capable of feeling emotions.

IN DS9Jadzia Dax and Odo discover an entire holographic simulation that a Yaderan man created after the Dominion destroyed his homeworld. These holographic beings have full, rich lives, and although they are not aware that they are holograms, they believe that they are real and feel a whole range of emotions. Deep Space Nine's holodeck program also has its own sentient hologram: Vic Fontaine. Vic's programming allows him to become self-aware and exercise free will regardless of commands in the holodeck programs. He can turn himself on and off, as well as transfer himself to other holodeck programs. He is also capable of emotional relationships, such as the one he had with Nog.

Voyager has the most prominent example of a sentient hologram: The Doctor. USS Voyager's original Chief Medical Officer was killed in the incident that brought the ship to the Delta Quadrant, leaving The Doctor as the only medical expert on board. As such, he had to work continuously for seven years, which his program was not designed to do. Having been active for so long, the Doctor begins to gain knowledge beyond his programming and works with the Voyager team to improve his programming to make himself sentient.

Several years into its mission, Voyager encountered several holograms made for different purposes that became sentient over time. The most notable example was the holograms created by the Hirogen, aliens who spent their entire lives dedicated to either hunting prey or being hunted as prey. Wanting to get as close as possible to a real hunt to train their alphas, the Hirogens programmed the holograms to sense fear, pain, sadness, and even death. After each “death”, the holograms respawned with the memory of the previous hunt so they could adapt and become more challenging prey. These holograms bonded and led a revolt against the Hirogens, which The Doctor briefly joined.

It's clear that holograms in the Trekverse could be photonic lifeforms, but as with most things in the Trekverse, it's not that simple. Not all holograms are photonic life forms because not all holograms are sentient. But those that develop emotions are photonic life forms.

Star Trek is excellent at asking its viewers to rethink their perceptions of the universe, and in turn, their perceptions of the current world around them. If particles of life and energy can be sentient, what does that mean about all the organisms currently on Earth? And how might a shift in perception change how people interpret the emotions of organisms they don't consider sentient? It's definitely something to think about.