Ship in a Bottle

TNG Season 6 Episode 12
Air Date: January 25th, 1993

Working on a holodeck, Lt. Barclay discovers a hidden program in protected memory and activates it. The program is Professor Moriarty. He asks to talk to Captain Picard which surprises Barclay since holodeck programs are not supposed to know they are holograms.

Moriarty is angry that no progress had been made to get him off the holodeck but he things that his consciousness alone is all he needs and he walks off the holodeck. Only it is a trick. Moriarty creates an Enterprise inside the holodeck and keeps Captain Picard, Lt. Cmdr. Data and Lt. Barclay trapped unknowingly on the holodeck. They investigate a way to get his holographic love off the holodeck using transporters.

Eventually Data discovers that they are still on the holodeck and rig a trap for Moriarty. They create yet another holodeck inside the holodeck that simulates the Enterprise again and uses the simulated transporter to transport Moriarty's love. They give him a shuttlecraft and let them go explore the galaxy.

Quotes

"Professor, I feel it necessary to point out that criminal behavior is as unacceptable in the 24th century as it was in the nineteenth - and very much harder to get away with." - Professor Moriarty
"Don't worry, Captain. My past is nothing but a fiction, the scribblings of an Englishman dead now for four centuries. I hope to leave his books on the shelf, as it were." - Captain Picard

"What does a woman like you see in a man like Moriarty?" - Captain Picard
"He's an exciting man, Captain. He's brilliant. Incisive. He's ruthless. He has, an almost irresistible appeal." - Countess Barthalomew
"He's also an arch-criminal." - Captain Picard

"In a sense, you did give Moriarty what he wanted." - Counselor Troi
"In a sense. But who knows? Our reality may be very much like theirs, and all this might just be an elaborate simulation, running inside a little device sitting on someone's table." - Captain Picard