TNG - A Matter of Honor

[Scififan]

I rather recieve the claims of "Real tastes better" as the simple fact, that everyone fails to season their food. The replicator needs to provide feasible meals for literally everyone, so it makes sense that at low flavour/seasoning baseline is chosen as the default.

So it's basically hospital food.

[Madner Kami]

All Klingon council is a joke as far as politics are concerned.

True. The Klingons are a super-power at the time of TOS, but their entire empire is threatened with collapse, because of a localized event (Praxis going boom). They are caught in endless loops of quasi-permanent civil-wars, which, if the events of Klingon Academy are considered canon, indirectly cause the explosion of Praxis in the first place (including a temporary invasion of the klingon homeworld by the Romulans, who are allied with the usurper-chancellor at the time) and even after Praxis goes boom, they still feud mostly amongst themselves.

By the time of TNG, they are already again on the route to the next civil war and once that civil war happens and is done, they start a war with what is a third rate power and, while winning overall, still get caught in yet another war of attrition that goes so badly that they are locked into a bloody stalemate less than one year later. They are doing everything wrong they can do and only survive, because the Federation isn't interested in their collapse and the Romulans aren't interested in bothering with klingon slaves.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

All Klingon council is a joke as far as politics are concerned.

True. The Klingons are a super-power at the time of TOS, but their entire empire is threatened with collapse, because of a localized event (Praxis going boom). They are caught in endless loops of quasi-permanent civil-wars, which, if the events of Klingon Academy are considered canon, indirectly cause the explosion of Praxis in the first place (including a temporary invasion of the klingon homeworld by the Romulans, who are allied with the usurper-chancellor at the time) and even after Praxis goes boom, they still feud mostly amongst themselves.

By the time of TNG, they are already again on the route to the next civil war and once that civil war happens and is done, they start a war with what is a third rate power and, while winning overall, still get caught in yet another war of attrition that goes so badly that they are locked into a bloody stalemate less than one year later. They are doing everything wrong they can do and only survive, because the Federation isn't interested in their collapse and the Romulans aren't interested in bothering with klingon slaves.

All of this, serious. I think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.

[Deledrius]

I think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.

That was truly a magical scene.

When they let Quark be a real Ferengi and show just how sharp they should be depicted if they weren't usually relegated to being comic relief, it's a thing to behold. His conversation about the price of peace with the Maquis Vulcan was brilliant as well. Highlighting the strategical focus the Ferengi mind has in anything that can be put in terms of a game-theoretic calculation of outcomes and their assigned values... ah what could have been. Nog's expert navigation of the Great Material River is a favorite runner-up demonstration too.

And those scenes highlight how easily you can still mine that brilliance for comedy without making the characters to be jokes themselves.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.

That was truly a magical scene.

When they let Quark be a real Ferengi and show just how sharp they should be depicted if they weren't usually relegated to being comic relief, it's a thing to behold. His conversation about the price of peace with the Maquis Vulcan was brilliant as well. Highlighting the strategical focus the Ferengi mind has in anything that can be put in terms of a game-theoretic calculation of outcomes and their assigned values... ah what could have been. Nog's expert navigation of the Great Material River is a favorite runner-up demonstration too.

And those scenes highlight how easily you can still mine that brilliance for comedy without making the characters to be jokes themselves.

Yes, the Firangi DS9 episodes with their social resolve most the time are straight mocking Neelix's assumed role as a resident navigator.

[Thebestoftherest]

I think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.

That was truly a magical scene.

When they let Quark be a real Ferengi and show just how sharp they should be depicted if they weren't usually relegated to being comic relief, it's a thing to behold. His conversation about the price of peace with the Maquis Vulcan was brilliant as well. Highlighting the strategical focus the Ferengi mind has in anything that can be put in terms of a game-theoretic calculation of outcomes and their assigned values... ah what could have been. Nog's expert navigation of the Great Material River is a favorite runner-up demonstration too.

And those scenes highlight how easily you can still mine that brilliance for comedy without making the characters to be jokes themselves.

Yes, the Firangi DS9 episodes with their social resolve most the time are straight mocking Neelix's assumed role as a resident navigator.

Helps 9 times out of ten when Quark an A hole they call him out on it, when Neelix does it they let them keep doing it.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.

That was truly a magical scene.

When they let Quark be a real Ferengi and show just how sharp they should be depicted if they weren't usually relegated to being comic relief, it's a thing to behold. His conversation about the price of peace with the Maquis Vulcan was brilliant as well. Highlighting the strategical focus the Ferengi mind has in anything that can be put in terms of a game-theoretic calculation of outcomes and their assigned values... ah what could have been. Nog's expert navigation of the Great Material River is a favorite runner-up demonstration too.

And those scenes highlight how easily you can still mine that brilliance for comedy without making the characters to be jokes themselves.

Yes, the Firangi DS9 episodes with their social resolve most the time are straight mocking Neelix's assumed role as a resident navigator.

Helps 9 times out of ten when Quark an A hole they call him out on it, when Neelix does it they let them keep doing it.

Except for Tuvac of course. I love those two together.

[Nealithi]

As Chuck noted with the self-replicating mines, it makes far more sense that the replicators operate more like 3D printers with some kind of material that it draws from rather than magic boxes that conjur shit out of thin air. The protein resequencers from ENT definitely do.

That being the case, it kind of makes sense that replicated food is incapable of matching real food. A glass of 20 year old Picard wine is not actually 20 years old.

Carrying around protein slurry is still less cumbersome than live animals. Though I do like the idea that the replicators basically make xerox food. Every plate the same as the last. So the only way to alter flavour would be as suggested. Replicate ingredients and cook by hand. Though with the exception of Pop Sisko's kitchen, we don't really see proper kitchens in crew quarters. Even Sisko seemed like he was cooking over a bunsen burner. So again limits on what they seem able to do. Or perhaps most folk prefer the equivalent of McDonald's in their quarters?

[TGLS]

I'm think that there's a bit of a placebo effect that's going on with replicated food vs. real food. The technology is an outgrowth of transporters, which already has its opponents, so maybe it's an extension of that meme.

With regard to a "Xerox effect", surely they could get 50 (or more) variations of a dish and just rotate through them. That would probably be enough variation for even someone eating the same dish every week. Besides that, wouldn't consistent food be just fine?

With regard to the "20 year glass of wine", lets be fair here; the replicator can make everything from squid to ice cream to the dishes they're served on. It's implausible to suggest that they can do all the molecular chemistry needed to process a slurry of sugars, acids, water and so on into wine, without also being able to do all the chemistry to make that wine also simulate the aging process.

[Thebestoftherest]

I'm think that there's a bit of a placebo effect that's going on with replicated food vs. real food. The technology is an outgrowth of transporters, which already has its opponents, so maybe it's an extension of that meme.

With regard to a "Xerox effect", surely they could get 50 (or more) variations of a dish and just rotate through them. That would probably be enough variation for even someone eating the same dish every week. Besides that, wouldn't consistent food be just fine?

With regard to the "20 year glass of wine", lets be fair here; the replicator can make everything from squid to ice cream to the dishes they're served on. It's implausible to suggest that they can do all the molecular chemistry needed to process a slurry of sugars, acids, water and so on into wine, without also being able to do all the chemistry to make that wine also simulate the aging process.

True but you got to remember when Riker said that replicated meat was as good as the real thing he couldn't go against it. I mean how would that go, we are going to force inferior slop down your throat because our beliefs are better than yours and we will belittle you as we do so.