Headscratchers / Star Trek: The Next Generation S6E11 "Ship in a Bottle"

• The way the Holodeck works is generally glossed over, but it uses projections and force fields and such to trick people. Is it really plausible that it works so well on Data too, that he only realizes the ruse because of Geordi’s handedness? In Encounter at Farpoint, he points out the wall to Riker.
  • He pointed out the wall because he knew enough about the way the holodeck worked to know it would be there, not because he had some extra sensory ability that allowed him to detect it. The holodeck projects visual and sensory information so it seems to your eyes, ears and hands like you're in the real world. Data still relies on visual, auditory and touch based information (just like humans) to interact with the world and has never shown an ability to look at a hologram and detect that it was fake. It's only really Geordi (due to the VISOR) who would have been likely to have guessed that the environment was fake and he wasn't involved.