The holodeck is also just a plot device. Instead of the TOS penchant for time travel and "oh no, we ended up on Earth in 18XX/19XX" plots, they could hit the Holodeck as the release valve. Lower stakes, lower contrivance barrier to get the crew into the situation.

You want real life? The safety protocols keep people from breaking the damn thing. It wouldn't render half the dangerous stuff, like bullets flying too fast to bother rendering. The emitters wouldn't be able to render objects inside a body, so bullets would only penetrate a few cm at best if they did render. Knives and sharp objects might not render sharp enough to cause real harm, and might not render into the would, either, so also low penetrative range. Chemical reactions are visual simulations, so acid doesn't really burn. Poison isn't real poison because it's a hologram that feels real, not real chemicals. Blunt force trauma, crushing force, and maybe heat, might be the only guaranteed ways to do violence in the Holodeck with the protocols turned off.

This isn't Nam Donnie this is bowling, there are rules.

It depends what Star Trek you are watching as well.

Defiant is very definitely a military vessel. Next Gen Enterprise has like a thousand people on it or something so it's less clear.

I think that people who say that Starfleet is not a military organization must just have a different definition of "military" than I do.

In addition to all of the things you mentioned, when Earth is attacked, Starfleet frequently orders ships to return and fight.

So, they're either a police or a military, and the fact that they may face court martial for disobeying orders to fight really decides it in the direction of military for me.

That's by my own definition of military. I was looking at the Star Trek wiki and it seems that Roddenberry was very much against Starfleet being the military. He must just have a different criteria.

You'd also see massive investments in transporter blocking, including passive blocking built into the hull.

Which is completely possible based on half a dozen episodes.

For sure. Its just a thing we have to accept to keep the writers from having to spend all day working through this shit to the point where its just boring reality.

Like how "the ability to destroy a WHOLE planet" is treated as some kind of significant technological advantage in so many universes that also treat propelling a hundred thousands tons of spaceship well beyond the speed of light as a trivial every day thing. A star destroyer or galaxy class ship traveling at a multiple of C is a thousand times more devastating than any super-weapon that has ever threatened to upset the balance of power in a science fiction story.

They would just have to find a reason to disable it via plot devices before every battle.

Kinda like in action movies where the heroes come out shooting guns at each other but immediately get them batted away so that they can begin hand to hand fighting.

I assume you can re-use the cinder blacks. Though I imagine pretty much anything that will roughly fit into a body cavity or skull would do.