Star Trek (VOY): Dreadnought

[Linkara]

It's just such a pity how the status quo was God so much on Voyager. I could see Voyager doing a Battlestar Galactica-style thing of leading a ragtag group of ships across the quadrant, some staying and some going occasionally - refugees, resource issues, a mini-Federation heading towards a place some called home and others wanted to make home.

So, this leads me to my Stupid Question of the Thread™: Can a replicator completely replicate a new replicator, given enough raw material?

Theoretically I'd say yes if it had enough raw material... but not necessarily a fully-assembled one. It would depend on the size of the replicator - they have mentioned a few times on the show "industrial replicators," which implies large-scale versions of the ones we see in most TNG ships, basically the different sizes of 3-D printers.

[TrueMetis]

Given how often voyager was damaged, and that Seska was able to give the Kazon replicators without anyone mentioning one having been torn out of a wall, they would have to be able to.

The limitation on replicators is the complexity of the thing they are replicating. This however seems imposed limitation rather than a necessary one given that transporters and replicators do basically the same thing, but transporters can materialize living things while replicators can't, and again given the damage voyager sustained ship based replicators can seemingly create the necessary parts to fix a transporter. So not only should they be able to replicate a replicator, with some assembly required, they should be able to replicate one better than the one that replicated it. Makes you wonder why the hell they didn't just do that in The Enemy rather than attempt to get Worf to agree to be a donor.

ETA: Thinking about it the writers must have fucking hated replicators. With what we saw was possible between them and the transporters they should have been able to solve basically anything. Why where nano-probes so hard to replicate when they're perfectly capable of dissembling and putting a human being back to together from component atoms? Why can't they dissemble Nog and reassemble him with his leg back?

[TGLS]

Why can't they dissemble Nog and reassemble him with his leg back?

I guess for the same reason why Picard's artificial heart wasn't replaced with a clone organ, they don't make backup copies of the EMH, and Bruce Maddox couldn't just have Data scanned and start cranking out copies like a xerox machine.

[Durandal_1707]

So, this leads me to my Stupid Question of the Thread™: Can a replicator completely replicate a new replicator, given enough raw material?

The answer is... yes! They did it in DS9's "Call to Arms."

Why can't they dissemble Nog and reassemble him with his leg back?

I guess for the same reason why Picard's artificial heart wasn't replaced with a clone organ, they don't make backup copies of the EMH, and Bruce Maddox couldn't just have Data scanned and start cranking out copies like a xerox machine.

They do make backup copies of the EMH. We saw one of them in "Living Witness."

[Asvarduil]

So, this leads me to my Stupid Question of the Thread™: Can a replicator completely replicate a new replicator, given enough raw material?

The answer is... yes! They did it in DS9's "Call to Arms."

You are correct. Self-replicating mines.

I told you all it was a stupid question!

[SuccubusYuri]

I told you all it was a stupid question!

[TGLS]

They do make backup copies of the EMH. We saw one of them in "Living Witness."

And they never actually used it. Otherwise they wouldn't be panicking when they were worried the EMH wouldn't come back in Message in a Bottle.

[Asvarduil]

I told you all it was a stupid question!

I'm not even Madoka.

[Linkara]

I think we can assume that replicators DO have limitations on the kinds of things they can create. It's possible there are metals or materials that, while they can scan them, they don't understand enough about to truly replicate them in the same way. We saw in Q Who the Borg ship repairing itself - the metal actually twisting and moving on its own. It's possible this is more of a techno-organic material that can't really be recreated with a replicator. When it comes to living tissue, they might be able to assemble all the materials of skin and hair and whatnot... but not any of the material that made it ALIVE to begin with, which the parts of the body that sent blood and oxygen and cell growth and etc.

With transporters, they break down material and reassemble it, but they try not to add or remove bits. After all, we don't know how complex the patterns are - it's possible that while the system knows how to keep all the atoms arranged in a way that they'll reassemble correctly on the pad, but if they try to screw with ANY of those atoms, it screws up the pattern so much that it can cause irreparable harm - just look at when weapons pass through a transporter field or when they tried to beam up that guy in the middle of a storm and he ended up merged with some leaves. Sure, they've used the transporter to fix some of this stuff before to solve a problem - but it's always implied to be dangerous and difficult.

[Madner Kami]

Sure, they've used the transporter to fix some of this stuff before to solve a problem - but it's always implied to be dangerous and difficult.

You mean like... casually aging and de-aging people? It's all just inconsistent writing and while it's fun at times to try and make sense out of conflicting informations, disucssing the replicators' and the transporters' can's and can't's are just seriously exhausting at this point.