In the Flesh - Did anyone else notice...

[USS Renegade]

So, I have been marathoning Voyager with my friend, whom I have gotten hooked on Star Trek. At the beginning of In the Flesh I just noticed something.

Chakotay is walking around "Starfleet Academy" and "Boothby" comes up and starts chatting with him, directly addressing him as "Commander".

But Chakotay is wearing the alternate rank bar that the Maquis wear. That should have tipped off "Boothby" immediately, and he certainly shouldn't have immediately recognized him as a Commander.

Then there was a Ferengi at the academy, and that would be at the start of season 7 of DS9, so as accurate as their intel was, they should know there was only one Ferengi in Starfleet at that time.

Furthermore, later in the episode, they identify Chuckles as "Commander Chakotay, first officer of the starship Voyager" once they discover he isn't 8472. Then they want to know how many ships are in the fleet with them and how they traveled that far.

So, if they gained any of their information from Voyager then they should damn well know that Voyager is stranded in the DQ. If they got that information from Earth... Older information should show Chakotay as resigned, not First Officer of Voyager. If it was up to date information they got from Starfleet, again they should know that Voyager is stranded.

Why did this never occur to me before?

 

[Candlelight]

Voyager had a complement of 75 shuttles and this is your nitpick...?

 

[Christopher]

Chakotay is walking around "Starfleet Academy" and "Boothby" comes up and starts chatting with him, directly addressing him as "Commander".

But Chakotay is wearing the alternate rank bar that the Maquis wear. That should have tipped off "Boothby" immediately, and he certainly shouldn't have immediately recognized him as a Commander.

It seems unlikely that the Voyager crew created those rank pins specifically for the Maquis. It stands to reason that they already existed for provisional ranks. (Though they would've had to be introduced sometime after Wesley Crusher left the Enterprise crew.)

Then there was a Ferengi at the academy, and that would be at the start of season 7 of DS9, so as accurate as their intel was, they should know there was only one Ferengi in Starfleet at that time.

The station wasn't meant to pass for the Academy, but to be a training facility for agents planning to infiltrate the Federation. Maybe the 8472 disguised as a Ferengi was just there to gather some general Alpha-Quadrant training before infiltrating Ferenginar, or maybe it planned to change to another species before going in.

Furthermore, later in the episode, they identify Chuckles as "Commander Chakotay, first officer of the starship Voyager" once they discover he isn't 8472. Then they want to know how many ships are in the fleet with them and how they traveled that far.

So, if they gained any of their information from Voyager then they should damn well know that Voyager is stranded in the DQ. If they got that information from Earth... Older information should show Chakotay as resigned, not First Officer of Voyager. If it was up to date information they got from Starfleet, again they should know that Voyager is stranded.

They know that Starfleet records claim that Voyager is stranded, but their only intelligence about it prior to the episode was that it was a ship that partnered with the Borg to attack them. They feared the Federation as an aggressor against them, and so they believed the innocuous information about Voyager's mission in Starfleet's databanks was a cover for a secret military or espionage mission.

Voyager had a complement of 75 shuttles and this is your nitpick...?

Rather, it had the ability to build new shuttles using onboard industrial replication facilities. We saw the process of new shuttle construction in "Extreme Risk" when the Delta Flyer was built, and in the age of replicators it shouldn't be that surprising that they can manufacture anything they need, even shuttlecraft.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

[
Rather, it had the ability to build new shuttles using onboard industrial replication facilities. We saw the process of new shuttle construction in "Extreme Risk" when the Delta Flyer was built, and in the age of replicators it shouldn't be that surprising that they can manufacture anything they need, even shuttlecraft.

Yeah, an intrepid class ship with a complement of 140 crewman constantly cranking out brand new warp drives is totally plausible

 

[Christopher]

^Why isn't it plausible? If the replicators can produce food or clothing from stored patterns, why is it any more difficult to accept that they can produce equipment from stored patterns?

 

[Timo]

there was only one Ferengi in Starfleet at that time

How so?

Nog was the first to be accepted into the Academy, and subsequently apparently got fast-tracked to a commission and frontline tasks. But hundreds of Ferengi youngsters might have seen the profit in such a move after Nog blazed the trail for them, and dozens might have graduated before Nog (considering that length of study seems to depend on personal skill and initiative rather than being decreed).

If the replicators can produce food or clothing from stored patterns, why is it any more difficult to accept that they can produce equipment from stored patterns?

...Indeed, it would be extremely difficult to argue that there is something the replicators cannot produce. We have seen them do amazing things, after all, and we have never heard of any substance or item that could not be replicated. At best, we can argue that replicating something would not be economical. But in the dire straits of Delta, our heroes would probably not be thinking in terms of economy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lighthammer]

RE: Maquis Rank Pins

As Christopher already suggested, those are indeed provisional rank pins. Although continuity tends to be screwy, especially where rank pins are concerned, in theory, Ensign Crusher should have been sporting one of those as well as all the crew members of the Valiant.

I don't think it would be a stretch to suggest anyone who was given an honorary rank should ALSO be using them. Beverly Crusher and Diana Troy for instance, they were awarded their commissions, they didn't go through the Academy. Some food for thought there >.>

RE: Starfleet Recreation

I always assumed the the Udine (8472) did some sort of long range scan of Earth or mentally probed people's minds for the information. I'm sure they didn't download Voyager's database or anything to create their reconstruction. So take your pick of which ever one makes more sense to you.

RE: Frengi in Star Fleet

As of the episode "Valiant" in DS9, Nog was the only Frengi in Star Fleet. That was in Season 6 of DS9 and "In the Flesh" is in Season 5 of Voyager. Chronology, In the Flesh takes place after Valiant, so its possible, but I think its simply more likely that the Udine messed up that detail. Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant before Nog joined Star Fleet so its certainly not something the Udine pulled from their databases or their minds.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think it would be a stretch to suggest anyone who was given an honorary rank should ALSO be using them. Beverly Crusher and Diana Troy for instance, they were awarded their commissions, they didn't go through the Academy.

Where in the world did you get that idea? Beverly spent eight years in the Starfleet Medical Academy, while Deanna spent the standard four years at Starfleet Academy.

I always assumed the the Udine (8472) did some sort of long range scan of Earth or mentally probed people's minds for the information. I'm sure they didn't download Voyager's database or anything to create their reconstruction.

Fluidic space is a whole other universe that's entirely unified in a single collective civilization. If they could open portals to the Delta Quadrant, they could probably open them to Alpha as well.

And the term used for Species 8472 in Star Trek Online is not "Udine," but Undine (rhymes with "unseen"). The name comes from a type of mythological water elemental (from unda, the Latin word for wave, seen in such related words as "undulate" and "inundate"), no doubt as a reference to their fluidic-space origin.

 

[exodus]

^Why isn't it plausible? If the replicators can produce food or clothing from stored patterns, why is it any more difficult to accept that they can produce equipment from stored patterns?

Exactly.
If Starfleet, Klingons, Romulans, etc. all have fleets of ships powered by anti-matter warp drives, then anti-matter is no longer a difficult thing to reproduce in the 24th century.

So, if they gained any of their information from Voyager then they should damn well know that Voyager is stranded in the DQ. If they got that information from Earth... Older information should show Chakotay as resigned, not First Officer of Voyager. If it was up to date information they got from Starfleet, again they should know that Voyager is stranded.

Didn't they mention in the ep. that they weren't sure where 8472 gathered their information from?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well the Romulans are experimenting with singularities are a power source rather than using your standard matter/antimatter reactions, and back in kirks day the Orions were able to keep pace with Enterprise while using atomic reactions to power their warp core.

Aborations obviously.

 

[Lighthammer]

@Christopher

No, neither did. They mention it through the course of TNG.

IIRC, Beverly mentions it in the episode where she gives the hologram of her husband to Wesley and Deana mentions it during the episode where they find Lt. Riker.

I could be off base on those episodes, but those sound like the correct references.

That being said, I did go poke around the wikis (memory beta) and they do give dates for when they entered, so I suppose it was retconned at some point.

 

[Bisz]

after all, and we have never heard of any substance or item that could not be replicated.

Latinum.

 

[Timo]

after all, and we have never heard of any substance or item that could not be replicated.

Latinum.

What about it? No character, episode or movie has ever established it couldn't be replicated.

As for the TNG medical pros vs. Starfleet Academy or SF Medical Academy, all the proof is highly conjectural.

Crusher's eight years at SFMA are exclusively indicated in a computer readout in "Conundrum", an episode based on the idea that everything is a huge lie that is being promoted through false computer data, among other things. When she gets to command "Starfleet Medical" for a year, we never learn that this would be an educational facility; indeed, in VOY "Endgame", Starfleet Medical is a hospital. On the other hand, AFAIK, Crusher never claims she would not have attended the regular Starfleet Academy.

Troi's Academy tenure is not established beyond the dubious "Conundrum" readout, either; in contrast, we know she attended the University of Betazed ("Ménage a Troi"). But again, she gives us no explicit reason to doubt his attendance of the regular SF Academy.

On the other hand, Bashir repeatedly refers to his days at the Academy, no "Medical" attached to the title. But in "The Passenger", "Explorers" and "Life Support" he says he attended "medical school". In "Explorers", he seems to equate this with something called "Starfleet Medical", a place where he also took engineering extension courses ("Armageddon Game"). In "Rivals", he mentions a "Starfleet Medical Academy" with that full title, stating he was the captain of the racquetball team in his final year. The length of his tenure at these facilities is never established, save of course for SFMA being explicitly a multi-year undertaking for him (and thus probably being the same place where he completed his medical studies at second-best place, losing to Elizabeth Lense). So we're left confused as to whether he attended multiple institutions, or just one with at least four different names (medical school, Academy, Starfleet Medical and SFMA).

McCoy referred to studies at "medical school" in TAS, never to Academy studies let alone SF Academy or SF Medical Academy, and his parallel universe version from the latest movie explicitly graduated from medicine before joining Starfleet. Pulaski was a well-referred medical researcher, but we learned squat about her connection with Starfleet educational facilities.

So our medical pros appear to be all over the map, and it shouldn't be reasonable to declare any career path unlikely or overwrite it with "consistent" speculation when so many options are open to us (and them).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

@Christopher

No, neither did. They mention it through the course of TNG.

IIRC, Beverly mentions it in the episode where she gives the hologram of her husband to Wesley and Deana mentions it during the episode where they find Lt. Riker.

I could be off base on those episodes, but those sound like the correct references.

The former is "Family." Here's the transcript; the word "Academy" does not appear in the episode. The only thing in the episode that pertains to Beverly's education is her line "Jack sent it to me while I was still in medical school."

Similarly, the latter episode, "Second Chances" (transcript), makes no mention of the Academy either. Nor is there any mention of schooling of any kind.

I've searched the whole transcript site for words like "rank," "award(ed)," and "commission," and I can't find a single reference claiming that either Beverly or Deanna didn't earn their rank the same way everyone else did.

That being said, I did go poke around the wikis (memory beta) and they do give dates for when they entered, so I suppose it was retconned at some point.

In fact, it was established as early as season 2 that Deanna had gone to the Academy. From "The Schizoid Man":

TROI: Now, Data, you remember the psychotronic stability examination. We all had to take it before graduating from the Academy.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Latinum.

What about it? No character, episode or movie has ever established it couldn't be replicated.

It's simple logic. Anything that can be replicated is, by definition, useless as currency.

And I believe DS9's "Who Mourns for Morn" establishes that latinum can't be replicated.

 

[KNH]

Hmm, peciuliar. Memory-Alpha states that it can indeed not be replicated, and as much is said in Who Mourns for Morn; but I just read through the script and I can't seem to find the fact mentioned. Did I just miss it? I searched for "replicated" and got no results, and the sentences with "latinum" were of no help either.

 

[Guy Gardener]

There's mention of 'stuff' that is unreplicatable in TNG, which I think was medicine?

From Empok Nor

SISKO: Can you replicate a new one?
O'BRIEN: No. Cardassian manifolds use a beta-matrix compositor which can't be replicated.

Rom learning curve

JANEWAY: How many do we have left in reserve?
TUVOK: Forty seven.
JANEWAY: Those gel packs run half the critical systems on this ship. Once they run out, that's it. We can't replicate new ones.

Eventually someone is going to invent a replicator that can replicate latinum and the Ferengi economy is going to be... hey? y9u know how big business has been suppressing the water powered car for the last 40 years?

 

[Timo]

It's simple logic. Anything that can be replicated is, by definition, useless as currency.

This sort of logic doesn't carry far. Or do you mean to claim that hundred-dollar bills cannot be printed?

Physical currency comes from somewhere in the first place. It is assigned arbitrary value by common agreement. And then it's made "unreplicable" by all sorts of trickery. Perfect photocopying of hundred-dollar bills is trivially easy nowadays, so tricks are done with the materials used. Perfect replication of the materials would be possible in the 24th century, so no doubt various tricks are performed that defeat that. With bills, there's a unique ID code, so a heap of bills with the same ID is only worth a single bill. Latinum as a currency is no doubt uniquely coded as well.

Now, latinum as a material for jewelry might not be coded - perhaps its value comes from it being so pretty? But prettiness is an arbitrarily agreed value, too, and I can't see Quark agreeing arbitrarily on something like that. More probably, even pure liquid latinum is chemically coded, and its use in jewelry is akin to the making of brooches out of hundred-dollar bills. When we did see a latinum ornament in "The Forsaken", it wasn't anything special in terms of looks.

Everything is replicable with enough effort, as there is no imaginable reason why it wouldn't be. But at some point, the effort becomes excessive for practical purposes. In "Rivals", a standard public replicator managed to perfectly reproduce a complex machine whose very operating principles were undecipherable. If a Cardassian piece of machinery is unreplicable by Cardassian replicators, it probably tells more about Cardassian replicators and Cardassian paranoia than about replicator technology in general. And the shot-to-hell replicators of Voyager weren't capable of anything much during "The Cheese", I mean, "Learning Curve" yet...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lighthammer]

RE: Coin in the Federation

There's a couple of main points here to make:

First and foremost, I feel obligated to point this out: The Federation is Communistic Republic. They don't have currency and seems they prefer to use the barter system outside of their own territory.

The Federation and/or Star Fleet do seem to have their own wealth of currency for dealing with organizations outside the Federation they have frequent contact with. Likewise officers on outposts that deal in currency acquire money through methods unknown (Probably either from doing odd jobs or from Star Fleet issuing them small amounts of money for that area) but that's the extent of money existing in Federation borders.

RE: Replicators

I don't think there's any info to date that truly quantifies the limits of replicators in Star Trek, but it seems as the series went on, the more limits they slapped on it seemingly in an effort to act as a foil for stories.

The trend I noticed is they started to add limits on its overall complexity of what it can replicate. Food has been a big one that we saw as far back as season 2 of TNG. There have been several lines that suggest replicated food just isn't as good as the real thing. There have been other instances of common goods that the replicated version just isn't as good. Several statements of clothing over the course of DS9 suggest handmade is some how better then replicated.

I wonder what the limits of the technology really are. We know:

• Replicators have trouble with very complex items.
• Replicators have trouble reproducing some materials.
• Replicated items don't seem as desired as the hand made equivalents.

According to Memory Beta, it's because replicators use a less sophisticated matter resolution scanner then transporters do.

I find myself wondering if it doesn't also have something to do with the type of matter its re-sequencing from too.

Although there doesn't seem to be any information to corroborate this, I've always postulated that replicators essentially pull raw matter of the ship's matter reclamation systems and re-sequences it into the requested item. The matter has to come from SOMEPLACE, you can't create something from nothing. It's even been stated in Star Trek the Law of Conservation of Matter hasn't been 'violated'. If this were true, I'd bet there's a limit of what replicators can do to transition one matter type into another and could potentially explain the problems with replicating some items more easily.

 

[Timo]

They don't have currency

Yet when UFP citizen and Starfleet officer Janeway wants to purchase an item from a Vulcan trader who is also a UFP citizen, there is a price on the item that she has to pay ("The Gift")?

In most of the stories, currency is absent. But it is present in enough of them to establish that it exists. It just isn't spoken of much. And, as far as we can tell, it isn't physical and thus isn't particularly relevant to the replicator discussion. So, no real contradiction there.

Now, salaries might be a thing of the past, and certainly money has undergone a transformation that makes Tom Paris declare it went "the way of the dinosaur" (so apparently evolved into something else and flew away). But that's just nuances.

Replicators have trouble with very complex items.

But OTOH have no problem with very complex items ("Rivals", "Quality of Life", "Emergence"). It seems to vary from episode to episode, and probably has more to do with the circumstances than the basics of replication technology.

Replicators have trouble reproducing some materials.

But OTOH readily produce surprising materials such as living neural tissue ("Emanations"). Again, there's a lot of variance there.

Replicated items don't seem as desired as the hand made equivalents.

This need not have anything to do with the quality of the products, mind you. It could simply be the stigma of having been replicated, just like "Made in China" cheapens any product regardless of its actual quality. Also, there's symbolic value to the sweat, tears and possible blood shed in making a product, as opposed to button-pushing; it may often compensate for the vastly inferior quality of the handmade product.

In the end, Voyager did defeat the torpedo and shuttle shortage somehow. And interestingly enough, this happened after the replicator problems of the first three seasons finally went away.

Timo Saloniemi