That's one aspect in which The Orville was certainly more realistic than Star Trek. Their security officer was using their holodeck to fulfill his smutty gay sex fantasies.
This is a recurring theme in DS9. Quark is always offering new programs like "pleasure mazes" with a "surprise" at the center. Nog even has his own program with a "pleasure goddess".
I would make celebrity deathmatches in claymation.
Kahless vs Plato should be interesting.
Or Shran vs Napoleon
Her Most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo'noS, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius vs Elizabeth II by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Queen, Defender of the Faith
They shall never be forgotten. The Hitler vs. Vader battles are great, as is Hawkings vs. Einstein. The latter delivered one of the sickest rap battle lines of all time:
There are ten million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million particles in the universe that we can observe.
Your mama took the ugly ones and put them into one nerd!
Why wouldn’t just about anything be ok? Using real character of someone on ship would be some sort of violation, but after that, even knowing someone’s holodeck preferences could easily be a breach of privacy
Doing a random battle turns the characters into your puppets. I suppose there’s novelty but that’s boring.
Playing cards facilitates conversation, where the character’s supposed personality shines through, and strategy, where you can see how such a character might play. Much more interesting.
Star Trek characters, as you move to the later series are much more cerebral, fascinated by mental gymnastics more than physical
He was messing with his own core programming though, adding subroutines from holodeck characters to his own, rather than really doing cool things with the holodeck itself.
The holonovel episode of voyager would be a better example, imho, of using the holodeck for something interesting. It wasn’t even really intentional, but then it was implied that became a big intentional thing after.
I love that they had multiple members of the crew get into making holonovels, and they had different styles and tastes. One thing I wish Star Trek did more was look at what art would be like in the Federation. We only ever see Vulcan stuff really. I imagine it's hard to do art plotlines on a science show though