Solve a Trek dilemma with tech

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

For instance, what if Kodos the executioner had access to an atavachron for Tarsus IV? No need for death.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Wasn't this already done? It was called TNG.

 

[Timo]

There never was any need for death at Tarsus IV anyway. A food shortage isn't dealt with by halving the population, it's dealt with by halving the rations. And if that doesn't help, then halving the population can't help in any fashion, either.

That is, if the population's survival truly depended on food "stores", this implies the planet was sterile (if it wasn't, 8,000 people could survive indefinitely by going outside and eating the local equivalent of berries and snails). If all food indeed were lost, then there are two scenarios: a scheduled resupply (or one specifically requested for the occasion, with a roughly known schedule as the result), and no resupply. For the first scenario, rations can be stretched - that's how human physiology works. For the second, everybody is dead already, and leaving 4,000 alive for a brief while (supposedly to eat the other 4,000) will change nothing.

How could there be "no resupply", since humans do need to eat? The one possibility is that there are crops to be harvested. And that already debunks the "sterile world" scenario, plus suggests a schedule where the "resupply" interval can be at most a year (Trek humans wouldn't have it otherwise - they always live at one AU from the star). But the length of the crop interval as such is irrelevant: in any case, it only involves halving of the resources, which can be dealt with by halving the rations, which in turn is always survivable for humans.

So, technobabble to the rescue. Sort of.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Or imagine if Beverly Crusher had had access to the Teacher when needing to repair Worf's spine?

 

[psCargile]

Using a transporter to return a person to a healthy state.

 

[Timo]

What if Picard had access to a lie detector whenever he faced adversaries bursting with duplicity? You know, like a half-Betazoid, or a man with a VISOR, or an android who can read eyeblink patterns?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Using a transporter to return a person to a healthy state.

Or resurrect the dead. Or clone an army. Or escape across the galaxy, through time or to an alternate universe.

The transporter can pretty much solve any situation.

Add in the serum Spock concocted in "Plato's Stepchildren" and you have a transporter clone army with telekenetic superpowers.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Erm...maybe that's why they don't.

 

[publiusr]

For instance, what if Kodos the executioner had access to an atavachron for Tarsus IV? No need for death.

Stasis field. Keep everyone alive until rescue.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I'd use the quantum inducers to repolarise the magnetic couplers to phase shift subspace to an inverse harmonic frequency of the Cochrane scale for every problem. Job done

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

^Trekbledegook, this.

 

[Timo]

Add in the serum Spock concocted in "Plato's Stepchildren"

But he didn't. McCoy just injected some of that substance so well known to UFP science and famed for its powers, kironide, into the bloodstreams of the heroes. That it then behaved completely unlike the conventional wisdom of UFP brightest scientific minds thought it should is a good hint that it won't work that way anywhere or anytime else...

Now, borrow Flint's shrinking machine or Apollo's giant green hand and you get pretty much the same effect against orbiting starships. Although those probably were palace-sized machines both. Or then Mandrake-class tricks of deception.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

^Trekbledegook, this.

I caught a random episode of Voyager recently and was inspired