DS:9 "Extreme Measures"

[TGLS]

Course, that doesn't work given Janeway and Picard can summon hot beverages.

[Madner Kami]

Course, that doesn't work given Janeway and Picard can summon hot beverages.

The implications of "not being able to replicate energy" "Tea, Earl Grey, hot!" - Replicator drops a frozen solid cup of tea and suddenly it gets very very cold in Picard's ready-room, as the 0°K Tea sokes up the ambient heat energy.

[Naldiin]

I rather liked the idea from some of the early DS9 novels that replicators can create matter but not energy, as in they could create a phaser, but the phaser would be dead.

The physics of that don't really work. Any physical object still contains energy - stored in chemical bonds, in the structure of the atom, and potential energy related to local gravity, etc. To give you an idea of just how many forms of energy (and how impossible it is to have a meaningful object without them), see the chart on the wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy#Forms The problem is that all matter has energy, has to have energy - just to be matter. Even if you replicated your objects at absolute zero (no heat - which would, it should be noted, make almost all of them useless, because the extreme low temperature is going to ruin the material properties of the object), they'd still have potential energy, rest energy, etc.

And that doesn't even get into mass-energy equivalence.

The big problem with replicators (and transporters) is that the energy requirements for them are *way* out of proportion with the energy demands of most everything else we see in the series. Replicating 1kg of material (perhaps a full meal on a tray?) would require - at *perfect* efficiency (which is impossible) - energy equal to 21.5 megatons of TNT (89.9 petajoules). Yield calculations on weapons in Star Trek are pretty much impossible, but given that this is a context where sub-light ramming is a viable tactic (see DS9 Jem'hadar ramming) against shielded vessels, it's a safe bet ship-mounted disruptors and phasers probably don't have energy yields in the 20+ megaton range.

Compare the energy yield for the impact of a Jem'Hadar Fighter. Their mass is unclear, but I'm going to spitball c. 10,000 tonnes, the weight of an equivalently big modern naval vessel. You could frame-by-frame calculate the speed based on how long it takes the wreckage to traverse a known distance - like the length of a klingon battlecruiser - but that would produce a silly-low speed. If the impact speed of that jem'hadar fighter is 25 miles per second (the fastest orbital speed we've achieved - the Juno spacecraft slingshotting around earth), the energy yield from impact is *still* only 1.75 megatons of TNT. But apparently does more damage than a full phaser-blast.

Based on the damage we see, I'd guess phasers and disruptors (on ships!) are probably in the mid-kiloton range.

For comparison, Janeway's coffee (c. 12oz of coffee in a c. 13oz mug) would require 15 megatons of TNT equivalent in energy in order to replicate. Suddenly, that explains why Janeway's precious coffee was the first thing to get rationed - her morning cup of joe has the same energy cost as an extended space-battle!

So, in short, there is no way to rationalize replicators to be anything but silly. You've just got to take it as one of the fictional bits of the show, like everything about how transporters work, or Star Trek's wonked out economics.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, Chuck did bring up the idea that replicators use a raw-matter feed and reassemble/rework it instead of creating matter from pure energy. That would make them a bit more like 3D printers.

[CharlesPhipps]

RE: Genocide

There's an early episode of Babylon Five called "Deathwalker" which had the last member of a species of Space Nazis die at the hands of the Vorlons. This was, essentially, genocide on the part of the Vorlons because she's the last of her race. However, she's a Space Nazi and I actually am adapting the moral dilemma now to a Star Trek tabletop RPG game where the PCs have to decide whether to let a monstrous war criminal rebuild his race with technology.

What does this have to do with the Founders?

Well, the genocide point runs into a moral dilemma which doesn't exist in RL issues because the Founders are all Space Stalin. Every single one of them due to the Great Link is complicit in genocide, mass murder, planned genocide, and slavery. If you were to bring the Founders to trial, you would find them all guilty in a way which normal races aren't since Odo and Laas among a few others are the only ones who aren't part of the Dominion's ruling class and crimes.

Basically, it's like Picard and the Borg or the Doctor and the Daleks.

Well, sort of.

The Founders are not EXISTENTIALLY evil. They are WILLINGLY evil. There's no children of the Great Link to die save Odo and they're all guilty.

Obviously, this has no real life equivalent and Star Trek shouldn't play with that metaphor but the plague as a weapon against the Founders isn't quite the Death Star on Alderaan. What Odo and the others did was more akin to showing Darth Vader mercy.
Good and noble but it's still showing it to people who are all guilty.

RE: Bashir

I'm really stunned Chuck's review ignores the fact Bashir destroys all of his credibility here as he kidnaps and tortures a man for information.

He is Section 31.

RE: Post Scarcity

I think of the Federation as existing in the bordeline between a socialized economy that provides for all the needs of its citizens and a legitimately post-scarcity society. There's still things which people want and they still require things which can't be replicated but it's not gotten to the point want is completely gone. To use a somewhat loaded comparison, it's a bit like the United States to the rest of the world. There are places where there is genuine poverty (particularly colonies and the borderlands) but compared to the rest of the Quadrant/Planet, it's often looked at like a paradise.

One needs only to look at Tasha Yar's homeplanet or the existence of commerce-based crime (smuggling for example) within the boundaries of the Federation, to instantly see "post-scarcity" as a farce.

I still don't know how Tasha had the backstory she did considering Gene's vision on humans in his universe at that point. It seems like it was some idea he came up with shortly after TOS that he hung on to even while his vision shifted more and more to the point its existence caused problems within the universe.

Tasha Yar's planet is not part of the Federation and its' not like Gene didn't view humans as capable of incredible evil in groups, it's just Earth and the Federation didn't have these sorts of problems. It's actually kind of a smug sort of view, "These humans chose to live outside the Federation and thus they've degenerated into Mad Max."

[Meushell]

RE: Genocide

There's an early episode of Babylon Five called "Deathwalker" which had the last member of a species of Space Nazis die at the hands of the Vorlons. This was, essentially, genocide on the part of the Vorlons because she's the last of her race. However, she's a Space Nazi and I actually am adapting the moral dilemma now to a Star Trek tabletop RPG game where the PCs have to decide whether to let a monstrous war criminal rebuild his race with technology.

What does this have to do with the Founders?

Well, the genocide point runs into a moral dilemma which doesn't exist in RL issues because the Founders are all Space Stalin. Every single one of them due to the Great Link is complicit in genocide, mass murder, planned genocide, and slavery. If you were to bring the Founders to trial, you would find them all guilty in a way which normal races aren't since Odo and Laas among a few others are the only ones who aren't part of the Dominion's ruling class and crimes.

Basically, it's like Picard and the Borg or the Doctor and the Daleks.

Well, sort of.

The Founders are not EXISTENTIALLY evil. They are WILLINGLY evil. There's no children of the Great Link to die save Odo and they're all guilty.

Obviously, this has no real life equivalent and Star Trek shouldn't play with that metaphor but the plague as a weapon against the Founders isn't quite the Death Star on Alderaan. What Odo and the others did was more akin to showing Darth Vader mercy.
Good and noble but it's still showing it to people who are all guilty.

You explained this so well. This is why I never had an issue with the virus being created by Section 31. They could have made the issue worse since the Vorta ran things just great on their own, but that’s not an issue within the show itself. Odo whining about Starfleet’s guilt is almost sickening. If it was about him getting sick, then by all means, complain, but that wasn’t really his issue. Maybe he needed to go spend more time in the gamma quadrant and see all the words his people destroyed or enslaved.

Look at the Vorta themselves for that matter. Their reward for saving a Changeling was to have their entire race altered and enslaved. Odo saying that it shows his people are capable of some kindness just shows that he doesn’t really get it.

[Deledrius]

Odo whining about Starfleet’s guilt is almost sickening. If it was about him getting sick, then by all means, complain, but that wasn’t really his issue. Maybe he needed to go spend more time in the gamma quadrant and see all the words his people destroyed or enslaved.

Odo's whining wasn't so much about whether the Founders deserved it. It was the fact that the upstanding Federation was just found to be sanctimonious instead. After spending seven years forced to do things their way, maybe even buying into it a little bit himself, and being told that they had the moral high ground all while he's been chafing under the necessity of working within Starfleet moral and legal structure for years... it was revealed that they are willing and able to commit an act of self-defensive genocide. Whether or not it's justified, or even ethical, it still goes against their stated principles. It's profoundly hypocritical. I always read that as the source of his disgust.

[Meushell]

Odo whining about Starfleet’s guilt is almost sickening. If it was about him getting sick, then by all means, complain, but that wasn’t really his issue. Maybe he needed to go spend more time in the gamma quadrant and see all the words his people destroyed or enslaved.

Odo's whining wasn't so much about whether the Founders deserved it. It was the fact that the upstanding Federation was just found to be sanctimonious instead. After spending seven years forced to do things their way, maybe even buying into it a little bit himself, and being told that they had the moral high ground all while he's been chafing under the necessity of working within Starfleet moral and legal structure for years... it was revealed that they are willing and able to commit an act of self-defensive genocide. Whether or not it's justified, or even ethical, it still goes against their stated principles. It's profoundly hypocritical. I always read that as the source of his disgust.

Perhaps. It seems like he should have known better then. LOL. He was about the only person who wasn’t surprised by the existence of Section 31.

Part of what bugged me was his little speech to Sisko. He came off as arrogant in it. Given his own history, he’s in no place to make that sort of speech.