Specifically, normal replicators can and do make living things. In VOY "Emanations", there was no trick to making living neural matter for a patient by using the standard replicator available to the EMH.
The Doctor only says he replicated new tissue, we do not see him perform the procedure, let alone use a standard replicator. Based on what happens with the replication of Worf's spine in
“Ethics”, replicating any tissue would have required a specialized replicator.
Yet we never learn that the EMH would have access to specialized hardware - and this is during the first season, when almost everything aboard the ship was broken anyway.
Sure, specialized replicators may well exist (at least there's the industrial variety, and the Class IV thing associated with it). But we never actually hear of resolution issues associated with a specific type of hardware, and techniques prototyped on customized hardware might thus well be applied on generic hardware soon thereafter.
In both those cases they're dealing with hardware, the Exocomps, and spontaneous mystery lifeform.
Yes, hardware like you and me.
Since it is already known living things cannot be replicated using normal replicators
No, it is not "known". No character of Star Trek ever makes such a claim.
For all we know, replicators can create people wholesale. But we
do know that creating people wholesale is the
Ding an sich that our heroes cannot stomach: they hate cloning in all of its forms, as seen in "Up the Long Ladder" or "Second Chances" or, say, "The Measure of a Man". So the role of replicators and their limitations in the fact that cloning of people does not take place much in TNG is fairly minimal, and doesn't help us tell whether replicators can create life at the push of a button or not.
it stands to reason those beings were able to function with either lower resolution replication, or had greater redundancy in order to get around errors.
This is quite possible. Then again, there is no requirement to believe in lower resolution: the Exocomps had dedicated hardware that they were constantly self-improving, and the "Emergence" entity had the full resources of the E-D prioritized for its creation.
Not being able to replicate biomimetic gel fits with the issues they have with replicating certain critical drugs. This gives us levels of complexity from least to most.
- Food
- Organs
- Complex Chemicals
There's no simple linear scale there, though, as the supposedly crudish viral containment vessels of "The Child" placed the greatest demands of all on the system, with massive power drain and processing time quoted.
There should be several parameters in the difficulty equation, explaining not just why biomimetic gel is difficult while fine dining is easy, but also why photon torpedo warheads are worth stealing while exocomps get replicated.
On the contrary, complaints concerning the flavor of replicated food, and superiority of cooked food items occur several times in TNG. The same is likely true of DS9 as well. This is likely a subtle matter, as the 21st century expats didn't note anything, but Sisko's father, a chef, likely did say something to that effect, and I believe Riker did as well when he got some alien eggs. He made scrambled eggs and only Worf liked them.
It is equally possible that these self-appointed connoisseurs would fail a blind test. After all, replication
is the primary means of making food for mankind, as emphasized by the exceptions we see. Some people just like to complain.
Really, if there was room for error there, replicated food in all its immense variety would become poison often enough. And then some busybody would slap limiters on the tech and ban all that variety for the sake of safety.
In the ENT episode where the inventor of the transporter tries to retrieve his son from a years old transporter accident, his son is read on sensors as a subspace phenomena. It firmly establishes subspace and being turned into some sort of subspace event as being part of beaming. There are TNG incidents too, but I would need to review them. The one where Picard's soul is separated from his body might have evidence.
That one ("Lonely Among Us") establishes Picard's "soul" as "energy only" and "nothing but energy". Since this is highly exceptional circumstances, it's impossible to tell whether routine beaming would involve "energy" of this sort in any role at all - and we never learn what sort of energy this was anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
