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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x10 - "The Last Generation"

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Season 2 will never be great television, but the the point of the whole "childhood trauma can affect how you look at relationships in your adulthood" aspect of the story hit home for me in a number of ways. I just wish it had been better executed.
Sure. As I was having this conversation I thought of the terrible Ashton Kutcher film about a couple just married. It's not great but it has an amazing scene at the end of Ashton's character and his dad talking about relationships. The pictures don't tell the whole story.

Season 2 isn't great. It's less than satisfactory at times. But it's important.
I appreciated it because it helps establish the TNG cast as being humans with human traumas instead of these sterile, perfect models of humans who are utterly unrelateable
Exactly so. Tell me about humans, not perfection.
 
Never understood that critique since they have never felt perfect to me. They all had their issues/weaknesses

If you look at how the characters acted in TNG, at least until much later on in the series, they all were these practically aristocratic, extremely erudite characters who are somewhat detached from the idea of long standing emotional traumas. Yeah you had some isolated examples where this wasn't really so, however it wasn't until "Family" in Season 4 that we saw Picard unable to emotionally handle something.

If you look at what Gene Roddenberry intended for TNG you can see they're unrealistic and extremely condescending examples of "humanity"
 
I think that given how long Spacedock (a.k.a. Probert Station) went toe-to-toe with the "entire" Federation fleet, and given that in addition it was evidently an integral component of Earth's planetary shielding, I'd imagine it must have some essential defensive components that are very difficult to replicate.
DS9 also went toe to toe with entire fleets.

And as far as we know the ability of Space Stations to do that is linked to their ginormous fusion generators and much greater space for things like Shield Emitters.

The thing a lot of people here don't seem to be getting, is that compared to starships, space stations just aren't actually that complex at their most basic. Oh, you can add complexity via things like science labs and what not. But at the end of the day, Space Stations are just larger Star Ships without things like Warp Drive and overpowered Inertial Dampeners.


Plus it's fucking more massive than a shuttle by orders of magnitude and magnitudes. It can't just be "replicated."
Sure it can.

As of Prodigy they have confirmed Starfleet can now utilize free standing replicator arms to construct something. Relay the replication matter and energy through drones from elsewhere, which we already know they can do from the Exocomps, and there's functionally no difference outside of the size of the object being constructed.

Really, the only limiting factor for construction once you hit that point is computing power to coordinate the construction. And outside of the headscratcher that is Discovery's Spore Drive, computing power has never been a problem for the Federation.
 
DS9 also went toe to toe with entire fleets.

And as far as we know the ability of Space Stations to do that is linked to their ginormous fusion generators and much greater space for things like Shield Emitters.

The thing a lot of people here don't seem to be getting, is that compared to starships, space stations just aren't actually that complex at their most basic. Oh, you can add complexity via things like science labs and what not. But at the end of the day, Space Stations are just larger Star Ships without things like Warp Drive and overpowered Inertial Dampeners.



Sure it can.

As of Prodigy they have confirmed Starfleet can now utilize free standing replicator arms to construct something. Relay the replication matter and energy through drones from elsewhere, which we already know they can do from the Exocomps, and there's functionally no difference outside of the size of the object being constructed.

Really, the only limiting factor for construction once you hit that point is computing power to coordinate the construction. And outside of the headscratcher that is Discovery's Spore Drive, computing power has never been a problem for the Federation.
Unless you don’t have a positronic android at hand to code break a locked out starship bridge.
 
If you look at how the characters acted in TNG, at least until much later on in the series, they all were these practically aristocratic, extremely erudite characters who are somewhat detached from the idea of long standing emotional traumas. Yeah you had some isolated examples where this wasn't really so, however it wasn't until "Family" in Season 4 that we saw Picard unable to emotionally handle something.

If you look at what Gene Roddenberry intended for TNG you can see they're unrealistic and extremely condescending examples of "humanity"
I always took that as limitations of episodic tv shows at the time. You couldn’t have emotional traumas stretched over multiple episodes when some of the viewers wouldn’t know it was from as they didn’t watch the original episode.
Plus you don’t want too much of that. It’ll feel like one of those dreary HBO shows. :)
 
I think that given how long Spacedock (a.k.a. Probert Station) went toe-to-toe with the "entire" Federation fleet, and given that in addition it was evidently an integral component of Earth's planetary shielding, I'd imagine it must have some essential defensive components that are very difficult to replicate.

FWIW, the Jackill's fanon tech manuals gave the Ournal class spacedocks (the space mushrooms :D) a fairly substantial defensive armament even though they were never intended primarily to be anything else than support bases for the fleets and for planetary headquarters on worlds like Earth. They have a pretty integrated array of phasers, torpedoes and small craft in the worst case scenario that something like a Borg cube or the assimilated fleet in LG were to happen, so they could offer some measure of protective firepower before being overwhelmed. To say nothing of having support from any orbital defenses or ships that happened to be near spacedock, ideally.

I get the impression from such sources that the number of commissioned Ournals was relatively small, since they were state of the art in many ways but seemed to be very time consuming and expensive to build. So it makes sense to me that they would have such an arsenal if it were ever needed.
 
If you look at how the characters acted in TNG, at least until much later on in the series, they all were these practically aristocratic, extremely erudite characters who are somewhat detached from the idea of long standing emotional traumas. Yeah you had some isolated examples where this wasn't really so, however it wasn't until "Family" in Season 4 that we saw Picard unable to emotionally handle something.

If you look at what Gene Roddenberry intended for TNG you can see they're unrealistic and extremely condescending examples of "humanity"

Totally hear what you are saying but I guess the opposite is what I can relate to in life. I’ve had my fair share of traumatic events but the way I live, my job, my life- I deal with them privately in my interior self.

I don’t see them as unaffected in TNG but as stoic. That’s what makes the hints in that show of how they actually feel so impactful to me. The dichotomy between how they behave and what they express. That feels more true to me. But maybe I’m just repressed lol
 
There are some materials that cannot be replicated. What the in-universe reason is for this is not stated. (Maybe it's sheer nuclear density, maybe it's because the matter has an unusual footprint in subspace, etc.) But it's not unreasonable that some quantity of material that cannot be replicated is required for the super-powerful Spacedock tech. We just don't know.

Even when it comes to shuttle replication, we don't know that literally 100% of all of the shuttle is replicated. Perhaps >99% of it is by mass, but a few critical components, such as its dilithium crystals, are donated, where the dilithium crystals have been grown in the mothership warp reactor. If that is the case, then as long as the mothership functions, it can still replicate an endless number of shuttlecraft, at least below a certain maximum rate of production.
 
We know that dilithium crystals and antimatter cannot be replicated at least along with the stuff warp coils are made from
 
There are some materials that cannot be replicated. What the in-universe reason is for this is not stated. (Maybe it's sheer nuclear density, maybe it's because the matter has an unusual footprint in subspace, etc.) But it's not unreasonable that some quantity of material that cannot be replicated is required for the super-powerful Spacedock tech. We just don't know.

Even when it comes to shuttle replication, we don't know that literally 100% of all of the shuttle is replicated. Perhaps 99% of it is by mass, but a few critical components, such as its dilithium crystals, are donated, where the dilithium crystals have been grown in the mothership warp reactor. If that is the case, then as long as the mothership functions, it can still replicate an endless number of shuttlecraft, at least below a certain maximum rate of production.
I feel like you might be missing the forest for the tree's.

It's not that Spacedock was built with some sort of super tech. It's that Spacedock is so big it can have Power Generators and Shield Emitters the size of Federation starships.



We know that dilithium crystals and antimatter cannot be replicated at least along with the stuff warp coils are made from
We know Warp Coils can be as of Prodigy, since they replicated a working warp capable shuttle.
 
I feel like you might be missing the forest for the tree's.

It's not that Spacedock was built with some sort of super tech. It's that Spacedock is so big it can have Power Generators and Shield Emitters the size of Federation starships.




We know Warp Coils can be as of Prodigy, since they replicated a working warp capable shuttle.

I guess replicators have advanced since the Voyager days then
 
Season 2 will never be great television, but the the point of the whole "childhood trauma can affect how you look at relationships in your adulthood" aspect of the story hit home for me in a number of ways. I just wish it had been better executed.
As uneven that season was, Picard's childhood trauma and especially how he buried that trauma and rationalized it away to avoid having to face it was something that I found familiar on a personal level to the degree that it made me able to relate to him, which is something I've never been able to before. I wanted to be like his TNG-era self for a long time before I realized how unhealthy his arrogance, hubris and emotional repression was, so the fact that we're not that different deep down after all was very interesting to learn.
 
I'm reminded of John Singer's maxim from the TNG Technical Manual: "If you could replicate an entire starship, you wouldn't need to".

Besides, maybe Earth has multiple Spacedocks. London and New York have multiple major train terminals.
 
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There are some materials that cannot be replicated. What the in-universe reason is for this is not stated. (Maybe it's sheer nuclear density, maybe it's because the matter has an unusual footprint in subspace, etc.)
Plot convenience.

If you convert energy to matter (and let's not get indo sci-fi writers' understanding of those words), then everything is pretty much as easy to make.
 
We know Warp Coils can be as of Prodigy, since they replicated a working warp capable shuttle.

Not necessarily. The Protostar might have stores of shuttle warp coils and other components that can't be replicated that would be added to any produced vehicle separately.

I remember a DS9 novel (not canon, but it was a great book) that had a good example of this – people could replicate phasers in their quarters if they wished, but they'd be useless because they'd have no emitter crystals (which couldn't be replicated) and have no power (and it wouldn't be possible to charge them without using a non-domestic power source).

Plot convenience.

If you convert energy to matter (and let's not get indo sci-fi writers' understanding of those words), then everything is pretty much as easy to make.

There's a BIG gap between being able to do matter-to-energy conversion and make any object you want of arbitrary complexity. They can't replicate living material, for example; and it's hard to see how a replicator working at molecular resolution could do anything that required subatomic capabilities, like certain exotic particles or some advanced forms of nanotechnology.
 
There's a BIG gap between being able to do matter-to-energy conversion and make any object you want of arbitrary complexity.

Sure thing, but antimatter is just matter with an opposite charge and spin. It's no more complex than regular matter. It can be converted in exactly the same manner.

They can't replicate living material, for example
One wonders why not. They can replicate entire buffets of organic matter with complex molecular compositions.

In fact, that's not even true. The transporter is just another form of replicator and it can definitely create life forms. Tom Riker is an example of the transporter being able to make copies.
 
Plot convenience.

If you convert energy to matter (and let's not get indo sci-fi writers' understanding of those words), then everything is pretty much as easy to make.
Plot contrivance that's... canon [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Replicator#Limits]:

Replicators had limits to their functionality. If the object desired contained a certain degree of complexity in its molecular structure, it could not be replicated. (TNG: "The Enemy"; VOY: "Imperfection") Talaxian lungs were considered too complex to replicate, as Talaxian physiology included a complex series of neural links between the lungs and the rest of the body that replicators were unable to duplicate exactly. (VOY: "Phage") Certain medicatical compounds could not be replicated, nor could Cardassian plasma distribution manifolds (or rather the beta-matrix compositor used in making them), Borg cortical nodes, or bio-neural gel packs. (TNG: "Code of Honor"; DS9: "The Abandoned", "Empok Nor"; VOY: "Learning Curve", "Imperfection")

Certain materials, such as tricyanate and polyduranide, were considered difficult to replicate. (TNG: "The Most Toys"; VOY: "Scorpion", "Vis à Vis") For some reason, it took a long time to replicate nanoprobes. (VOY: "Scorpion", "In the Flesh")​

Also, from https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Latinum#Background_information:

Some viewers have suggested that latinum could not be replicated, given that if it could be replicated it would be worthless.​
 
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