S1 Energy problems but holodecks on 24/7

[stj]

At least those two episodes, Year of Hell and Equinox, have antagonists that are fairly interesting and well played by two very good actors. They at least have that going for them, which put them ahead of most other episodes of the series, unfortunately.

Agree about Year of Hell. Ransom in Equinox being converted by Seven's beauty (and Imaginary Seven dialogue) is abysmally bad writing.

When it comes to the technology, you're looking at one of the central problems with the premise of the entire franchise. The story needs engines that can travel many times the speed of light, as well as the equally (if not more so) fantastic transporters. But the story also requires Data to be unique....

Freakish as it may sound, I don't like TNG because I just don't believe in Data. The problems you mentioned plus the general mind boggling notion that a potentially immortal android wants to be mentally and physically impaired as he grows old and dies. Hard science fiction might look skeptically at replicators and unlimited supplies of antimatter (where do they buy that?) But Trek has never been hard sf.

As for Voyager and talk of energy shortages, scarcity of torpedoes and the like, if such things were silly and illogical, then they should never have been emphasized in the first place.

Exactly!

But the series did emphasize them in the first season, and then sought to forget them afterwards. And the inherent lack of consistency in that is the silliest thing of all.

But I think you could reasonably suppose sticking with a bad idea is the silliest thing.

 

[Deks]

In terms of limited torpedo supplies and shuttles being damaged or destroyed ruoutnely ...
Easily explainable through the premise that the ship made a few stops, did trades for spare parts and resources ... which also allowed the crew to replenish their torpedo supplies.

Voyager crew had have been creative to begin with, so they had to have come up with a way to synthesize new torpedoes at pit stops for example.
Shuttles can be repaired, and we don't really know how many of them they had to begin with.
Perhaps they had 4 in total ... 2 older ones which they used routinely and repaired/reconstructed them as needed ... then switched to the remaining 2 ones of newer designs ... or scrapped the old ones and made the new ones.

There are ways to go around these issues ... most of them were addressed in Voyager novels for example (which aren't canon I agree) but still work.
Some kind of a throwaway line would have likely been good though.

 

[milo bloom]

But I think the real objection is not to the holodecks running. First of all, the notion that whatever is inside the holodeck is somehow real, as in the idiotic reference to holographic wine, is really crappy "science." But the crazy version of the hologram applies to the Doctor. It reaches the nadir when the Doctor, who doesn't actually breathe, is hailed as a singer in Virtuoso?(!)

As for the wine, the replicators seem to work on a similar principle as the holodecks, so I never had a problem with people eating on the holodecks. It just routed their ration from "foodstation 1275/b" to the holodeck transmitter.

As for the Doctor singing, he also talks, and while that could be a digitized speaker system throwing his voice to wherever his physical manifestation is, it seems to me the idea was always that he was moving air over something like vocal cords. Singing would just a further step.

Regarding the Holodeck energy being incompatible with the rest of the ship systems ... they did away with that tidbit from episode 'The Night' I think (season 4 was it?).
Ever since then, Holodeck energy was rerouted routinely to other ship systems.
ip.

Perhaps it works like this:
Energy needed for holodecks needs to be converted and stored into specialized generators, however, that same energy cannot be converted back into usable power for the rest of the ship for one reason or another.
It's possible this limitation existed early on in the show, but the crew managed to find a solution to the problem ever since 7 of 9 came on board (which is when incidentally, the problem was no longer a problem).

Perhaps they stopped at Tosche Station for some power converters...

 

[exodus]

Since the watch had been replicated I'd say the replicators were online at that point so Janeway's complaint stll stands. Even though Chakotay was right in a different sense.

Watch the ep. again.

Chakotay said he replicated it months ago.

I know and Janeway only told him to recycle it and there was the hope of restoring the replicators as well, but that wasn't the gist of their conversation.

What does the gist of their converstation have to do with this one?
I thought we were talking about the replicators?

 

[Harvey]

Agree about Year of Hell. Ransom in Equinox being converted by Seven's beauty (and Imaginary Seven dialogue) is abysmally bad writing.

What I like about Ransom is that he represented what Janeway could have done to get home, but ultimately couldn't because she was so principled (which stranded them in the first place). The business with an imagined Seven of Nine--I can take it or leave it.

But I think you could reasonably suppose sticking with a bad idea is the silliest thing.

I have no problem with them not sticking with it, but as a hardened Star Trek fan, I'll always be gnawing at the bit for explanations of inconsistencies.

You know, we'll probably argue over Battlestar Galactica from sunrise to sundown, but on these things, I think you're spot on, stj.

 

[black_dranzer]

Somewhat amusingly, when they talked about hooking up the holodeck energy generators to the main power grid in Parallax, I always thought they meant they'd made a holographic power plant and were trying to combine it with the ship's systems I maintain to this day that it could work, if given some satisfyingly unintelligable technobabble