Gaping Hole of Troiyus

[Wingsley]

Year Three's other outstanding Klingon episode, "The Day of the Dove", may shed some light on the treknology of TOS. Consider this passage, which takes place after all phasers become swords and the Enterprise begins surging forward into deep space out of control:

[Bridge]

KIRK: Full sensor scan of the ship. Report on any movement by the Klingons. The Klingon Empire has maintained a duelling tradition. They think they can beat us with swords.

SPOCK: Captain, neither the Klingon technology nor ours, is capable of this. The instantaneous transmutation of matter. I doubt that they are responsible.

KIRK: Any other logical candidate?

SPOCK: None. However, if they had such power, would they not have used it to create more effective weapons and only for themselves?

Of course, this is probably not the last word on this subject. I find it hard to fathom how starships that use matter-antimatter annihilation to exceed the speed of light, transporter to "beam down" to a planet's surface, and phased particle beams as weapons cannot muster at least some rudimentary level of replication/transmutation technology.

[Warped9]

Wingsley wrote:

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Year Three's other outstanding Klingon episode, "The Day of the Dove", may shed some light on the treknology of TOS. Consider this passage, which takes place after all phasers become swords and the Enterprise begins surging forward into deep space out of control:

Of course, this is probably not the last word on this subject. I find it hard to fathom how starships that use matter-antimatter annihilation to exceed the speed of light, transporter to "beam down" to a planet's surface, and phased particle beams as weapons cannot muster at least some rudimentary level of replication/transmutation technology.

That's not what I get from that. The phasers changed instantly into swords. They weren't broken down into basic elements first and then recycled into swords. The Feds could easily make swords if needed, but from raw materiel and not from already existing phasers turned instantaneously into swords. There's a difference.

In "A Private Little War" Kirk asks Scotty to fabricate 100 flintlocks. Certainly such an antiquated weapon wouldn't be kept on hand aboard ship "just in case." In "Patterns Of Force" McCoy is provided with the uniform of a Gestapo doctor within minutes---another rare and unusual item. In "The Cloud Minders" the inference is the Enterprise can easily supply enough filter masks required for all the Troglytes. In "Return Of The Archons" and "A Private Little War" native clothing is provided before beaming down. None of those items would have been carried aboard "just in case."

[Hartzilla2007]

Chemahkuu wrote:

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Bolding this time.

Oh sorry.

Warped9 wrote:

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They got so much wrong in the films I wouldn't take that too seriously.

Besides in TMOST...

Stop, if it isn't onscreen it isn't canon.

[Navigator_NCC2120]

Gary7 wrote:

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Speaking of dilithium crystals, the technology as depicted always annoyed me.

So, it's described as a power source and yet also a regulator of matter/antimatter reaction in the ship's warp core. This seems ambiguous to me. As I see it, one thing serves as a power source and another regulates the power consumption/reaction; never both with one thing. But in TOS, the concept doesn't ever seem to be very clearly defined, or ends up being contradicted by later episodes.

I always felt it should be that the dilithium crystals amplify and control the matter/antimatter reaction and that some radioactive material is used as the fuel. In fact, several episodes have quotes referring to "fuel". For instance in "The Doomsday Machine", Spock says "We can maintain this speed for only seven hours before we exhaust our fuel, but it can refuel itself indefinitely." Fuel implies a consumable substance, so where crystals are concerned I'd expect him to say "before we exhaust our power."


Anyway... I'll bet the crystals are too complex to replicate, which is why they couldn't be "manufactured" at will.

The warp drive was down at that point and they were running on impulse engines. So they were not using dilithium crystals.


Courtesy of website: http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/35.htm

[Bridge]

SPOCK: It's closing fast on the Constellation.
SULU: Standing by, sir.
SPOCK: Commodore, I suggest
DECKER: Kirk pulled us out of there by distracting it. Now it's our turn. Fire phasers. (they do) We did it! Hard about. Give me some distance.
SULU: We're moving away, Commodore.
SPOCK: This machine seems to have a programmed defensive sphere. Any energy source entering that field is subject to attack.
DECKER: Mister Spock, status report.
SPOCK: Warp drive and deflectors will be out for a solar day. Repairs proceeding on transporter and communications.
SULU: It's closing with us again, sir.
DECKER: Maintain speed and distance.
SULU: It's sucking in space rubble from those destroyed planets. Refueling itself.
SPOCK: We can maintain this speed for only seven hours before we exhaust our fuel, but it can refuel itself indefinitely.
DECKER: Then we'll have to fight it now before it gets any stronger.
SPOCK: Illogical. We cannot destroy it. Therefore, we cannot save Rigel. We must transport the Captain and the others from the Constellation and escape this thing's subspace interference in order to warn Starfleet Command.
PALMER: Mister Spock, we've pierced the interference locally.
SPOCK: Can you raise Starfleet?
PALMER: No, sir, but I've got ship-to-ship communications back. Picking up Captain Kirk.
SPOCK: On audio, Lieutenant.
KIRK [OC]: Enterprise. Enterprise, come in.
DECKER: Mister Spock, I am still in command. I will speak for this ship. Enterprise to Kirk.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

[Navigator_NCC2120]

ssosmcin wrote:

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Whether or not they were called replicators, the simple fact is they were only shown to provide food, nothing else. Sure, in Catspaw, we were told the Enterprise could create gemstones, but we were never told how or how long that would take. There was no indication they would come from the wall slots. Scotty called them "Food synthesizers" in Tribbles, yes? I was always of the mind they weren't creating food as much as delivering it. There were too many references to "the galley." I envisioned people making food and storing it. Then when you placed your order in the slot, it was beamed in or something. The food slots seemed a tad too magical for me sometimes.

If you want to put TNG era names on it, then call it the Food Replicator, because they were never shown to create anything else (food includes drinks, by the way).

No gaping hole in that regard, sorry.

No, Scotty called them food processors.


Courtesy of the website: http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/42.htm

[Rec room]

(There are tribbles on the walls, the floor, the tables, even as chess pieces. Kirk gets a tray from the food dispenser. It has tribbles on it.)
KIRK: My chicken sandwich and coffee. This is my chicken sandwich and coffee.
SPOCK: Fascinating.
KIRK: I want these off the ship. I don't care if it takes every man we've got, I want them off the ship.
(Scott enters, carrying an armful of fluff.)
SCOTT: They're into the machinery, all right, and they're probably in all the other food processors too.
KIRK: How?
SCOTT: Probably through one of the air vents.
SPOCK: Captain, there are vents of that type on the space station.
KIRK: And in the storage compartments. (goes to a table monitor) This is Kirk. Contact Manager Lurry and Nilz Baris. Have them meet us near the storage compartments. We're beaming down. Come on, Spock.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

[Wingsley]

Warped9 wrote:

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That's not what I get from that. The phasers changed instantly into swords. They weren't broken down into basic elements first and then recycled into swords. The Feds could easily make swords if needed, but from raw materiel and not from already existing phasers turned instantaneously into swords. There's a difference.

In "A Private Little War" Kirk asks Scotty to fabricate 100 flintlocks. Certainly such an antiquated weapon wouldn't be kept on hand aboard ship "just in case." In "Patterns Of Force" McCoy is provided with the uniform of a Gestapo doctor within minutes---another rare and unusual item. In "The Cloud Minders" the inference is the Enterprise can easily supply enough filter masks required for all the Troglytes. In "Return Of The Archons" and "A Private Little War" native clothing is provided before beaming down. None of those items would have been carried aboard "just in case."

But does all this add up to TOS-era Federation space vessels possessing replicator technology? Some sort of fabrication technology, for sure, but is it replicator technology?

[Warped9]

^^ You're getting hung up on terminology rather than what we see being done. It's no different than being adamant that shuttlecraft are only sublight vehicles when the evidence onscreen is that they're quite capable of FTL flight.

[CorporalCaptain]

I think it makes sense to posit something like replicators in TOS.

Consider that "rooms filled with vacuum tubes" in the 1950's were computers, yet only 30 years later desktop computers based on transistors were being mass marketed.

Imagine a few giant replicators on the TOS Enterprise (which are archaic when compared to the miniaturized TNG replicators) to do the heavy lifting of fabrication. Perhaps the food synthesizers are partially or even totally independent of the fabrication system, and instead more reliant on ecological waste reclamation. If the TOS "fabricators" are big and clunky, then they wouldn't necessarily be used for all the routine recycling tasks.

[Warped9]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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I think it makes sense to posit something like replicators in TOS.

Consider that "rooms filled with vacuum tubes" in the 1950's were computers, yet only 30 years later desktop computers based on transistors were being mass marketed.

Imagine a few giant replicators on the TOS Enterprise (which are archaic when compared to the miniaturized TNG replicators) to do the heavy lifting of fabrication. Perhaps the food synthesizers are partially or even totally independent of the fabrication system, and instead more reliant on ecological waste reclamation. If the TOS "fabricators" are big and clunky, then they wouldn't necessarily be used for all the routine recycling tasks.

Yes. And "archaic" is a relative term. Archaic comparative to TNG yet still highly advanced from our contemporary perspective. Today we can fabricate all manner of things, but it's a fairly slow and laborious exercise. Certainly we can't do it in minutes like they can in TOS.

[Timo]

The potential capabilities of Star Trek manufacturing technologies aren't that difficult to assess. We don't have to speculate when we can simply listen to the characters speak.

In ENT, they told us how their food was (at least partially) manufactured from raw ingredients down to the protein level, but they also told us there were types of spares and materials they could not manufacture aboard no matter what. In TOS, they told us they can fabricate things like flintlocks or clothing or (at least certain kinds of) jewels but they also demonstrated they couldn't have dilithium or cooling pumps for old nuclear reactors whipped up that easily, if at all. In the TOS movies, they told us that making life out of lifelessness was a new and highly experimental arrow in their quiver. And in the VOY era, they told us that they can create life (or functioning neural tissue, at any rate) at the press of a button, but that they did not have replicators in the TOS movie era yet.

We don't have any particular reason or authority to disbelieve them. We can only take what we see as absolute truth; what we hear as potentially modified truth; and what we infer as inconsequential and in all probability completely erroneous.

Regarding the idea of getting dilithium at the push of a button in TOS, that's flat out because our heroes say it is. Getting it at the push of a button in TNG, though... LaForge says to Scotty that pushing a particular button will keep existing dilithium going in ways that weren't available in the TOS movie era yet. But he says nothing about how new dilithium is obtained in his era.

Significantly, there isn't a single instance of canon Trek where a substance or structure would have been considered unreplicable per se. There are instances where it is considered impractical to replicate something - and there's "Night Terrors" where our heroes say they have lost the ability to synthesize elements, indicating they normally possess that ability. It would stand to reason, then, that dilithium could be replicated, at some unknown cost that the heroes may or may not be willing to pay. But none of this even remotely suggests that the TOS heroes would have had the option, too. And indeed the reference to them not having replicators heavily suggests that their manufacturing systems (by whatever name) left a lot to be desired in comparison with Janeway's - who, intriguingly enough, never ran into a dilithium shortage.

Timo Saloniemi

[ssosmcin]

Navigator_NCC2120 wrote:

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No, Scotty called them food processors.

Courtesy of the website: http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/42.htm

Oops. Thanks for catching that.

Still no hole, though. :-)

[ssosmcin]

Kirk asks wow long would it take Scotty to reproduce a hundred flintlocks. Scotty seems nonplussed by the question, this alone could indicate this isn't that easy a request. They may be able to fabricate the materials, but it's apparent they aren't going to call up the computer and say "replicate a hundred flintlocks." There will probably be a team of engineers slapping these together.

Regarding having Nazi uniforms on hand: "Patch historical computer into uniform section. I want McCoy outfitted as a Gestapo doctor Nazi Germany, old Earth date 1944. Make him a colonel." Could be replicator tech or just really super fast sewing machines.

They still can't make dilithium crystals, though.

[CorporalCaptain]

Scotty being nonplussed could have also been because of the implications with respect to non-interference.

[ssosmcin]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Scotty being nonplussed could have also been because of the implications with respect to non-interference.

Maybe, but it looked or felt more like a "you want me to do what now?" Not so much because of the Prime Directive (he knows who his boss is - he's used to it) but because he has a tough job ahead of him.

[Chemahkuu]

Warped9 wrote:

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I don't have a problem with that otherwise you'd have an inexhaustible power source.

Dilithium is a moderating element, not a power source. Even in the episode Scotty's removal of the crystals was more akin to a control rod being removed, causing the reactor to stop.

Antimatter still needs to be produced by large and dedicated machines deep in the ship at a cost to it's overall power, or done at intervals from raw space matter or a starbase.

Energy has never been inexhaustible in Trek, which I agree is a good thing.