They should have been able to replicate it. But having only one mobile emitter was merely a plot point. That way when it got damaged we thought the Doctor might actually be in danger.
Why couldn't they replicate the mobile emitter?
- Thread starter The Borg Queen
- Start date
True. I remember a Ron Moore interview where he mentioned part of the problem of writing for Trek was that there was so much technology that could pull characters out of bad situation that you always had to look for reasons for something to malfunction in order to add danger. Having the emitter be a "one of a kind" device would eliminate the need to have it malfunction as often as the transporters.
The whole concept of "if Technology vs. Plot = Plot wins" is retarded.
If you find yourself writing a story with that kind of Diablos Ex Machina in it, then either write a different story where that doesn't happen or just don't write anything at all because it smacks of literary incompetence.
If you find yourself writing a story with that kind of Diablos Ex Machina in it, then either write a different story where that doesn't happen or just don't write anything at all because it smacks of literary incompetence.
This is certainly true in theory, and something that I had questioned myself on a few occasions.
The only thing that I could come up with was the fact that there are certain things that replicators have been proven to be unable to reproduce. Gold pressed latinum, for example. So, my guess would be that the emitter had certain components in it that the replicators were unable to reproduce and couldn't be made with anything else.
It need not really be true in theory. A transporter need not necessarily know all the intricate details of the thing it is transporting, any more than an automobile or an elevator does.
The transporter would only need that information if it worked on the principle of pulling the target completely apart down to quark level, and then rebuilding it or him. But that's not really what the characters say when they describe that device. What they say is that the transporter phases the target into a "phased matter stream", and then de-phases it or him back at the destination.
The transporter could in fact be a much "dumber" device than the replicator is. All the information about the target's details would be carried within that phased matter stream; there would be no need to scan it into computer banks, then email it to the receiving end, then use it as rebuilding instructions. All the more so when transporters usually don't have a receiving end, least of all one that could handle complex data.
Well, not really. That is, nobody on screen has ever declared any substance or item "unreplicable".
Some things are difficult to replicate, at least to satisfactory accuracy. Some things clearly aren't worth the effort of replicating. Some things cannot be replicated by damaged or power-starved replicators, or replicators of low quality or small size. Some things the replicator refuses to create, or doesn't know how to create, due to deliberate limitations on the software. That has been stated or implied. But there is no absolute ban on the replication of any known substance or item.
That's certainly possible in the sense that our heroes fail to run their replicators at the required level of detail. Say, they don't understand that in order to work, the holoemitter's components have to be correct down to the attometer; a picometer-level accuracy just won't cut it. And it may well be that attometer accuracy is a trillion times harder to do than picometer accuracy, and perhaps even beyond the capabilities of a standard starshipboard replicator.
I'd much rather go the "they don't need to replicate the holoemitter" route, though. After all, we lack a clear reference to our heroes' supposed inability of replicating the thing. AFAIK, all the references are merely to their inability of creating a functional copy of the EMH program itself, a feat basically unrelated to replication or the mobile emitter.
Timo Saloniemi
To understand why a second mobile emitter wasn't built,we must first determine why engineering effort on a ship thousands of light years from home should be focused on a backup copy of a holoemitter from the future.
First,the original hasn't failed yet.B'elanna hasn't run into an issue of the device failing permanently anytime soon.
Second,if I were 60000 light years from home I'd want my engineering staff replicating 29th century warp drive if anything,not a second holoemitter that can be hijacked or used as a haven for a hostile/alien computer tech.
First,the original hasn't failed yet.B'elanna hasn't run into an issue of the device failing permanently anytime soon.
Second,if I were 60000 light years from home I'd want my engineering staff replicating 29th century warp drive if anything,not a second holoemitter that can be hijacked or used as a haven for a hostile/alien computer tech.
Hey,
First post here - just couldn't help jumping in with a thought...
I've always assumed that, aside from hinted replicator issues (such as not replicating latinum), that as it's 29th century technology it wouldn't be reproduced due to distorting timeline or a temporal prime directive issue (which didn't exsist in Janeways time, but we're aware of a department dealing with time travel issues in DS9).
If it were reproduced whether on Voyager, or even after it got home, it would surely distort the future causing the emitter to be far out of date by the time Braxton took it back to the 24th century.
First post here - just couldn't help jumping in with a thought...
I've always assumed that, aside from hinted replicator issues (such as not replicating latinum), that as it's 29th century technology it wouldn't be reproduced due to distorting timeline or a temporal prime directive issue (which didn't exsist in Janeways time, but we're aware of a department dealing with time travel issues in DS9).
If it were reproduced whether on Voyager, or even after it got home, it would surely distort the future causing the emitter to be far out of date by the time Braxton took it back to the 24th century.
Yeah, that much I get. But as I asked upthread, why would they want to replicate it in the first place?
Well obviously a 29th Century replicator would be able to replicate 29th Century devices, such as the mobile emitter.
Same reason why people duplicate things they own; incase the first gets lost or ruined.
They didn't duplicate Janeway, though. Or the Voyager. Wouldn't one of those have been a priority?
Is there some bit of an episode where it is claimed that the future emitter could not be replicated? Or, indeed, that it wasn't? Typically, when the emitter goes missing, our heroes despair only because the Doc goes missing with it. When it gets misused, such as in "Drone", the existence of copies would not really affect the situation. And if there is an acute need for the emitter, and the original isn't at hand, the situation is usually such that none of the copies would be at hand, either.
Timo Saloniemi
Is there some bit of an episode where it is claimed that the future emitter could not be replicated? Or, indeed, that it wasn't? Typically, when the emitter goes missing, our heroes despair only because the Doc goes missing with it. When it gets misused, such as in "Drone", the existence of copies would not really affect the situation. And if there is an acute need for the emitter, and the original isn't at hand, the situation is usually such that none of the copies would be at hand, either.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, true, to the best of my knowledge, it has never been officially stated on screen that there are things that cannot be replicated. It has always been assumed that gold pressed latinum couldn't be replicated because, if it could, Quark would almost assuradly done so since it was so valued at his bar.
I do, however, seem to recall there being a novel that said it couldn't be replicated properly. That, if you tried to replicate gold pressed latinum, all you would ever get was latinum.
It's one of those things that is sort of like asking how a transporter works. It just does, you don't need to know how.
Then again, books have never been considered canon.
A bigger question to me has always been why transmitting the doctor's program across a data stream meant losing him on Voyager. It's data. One doesn't need to cut and paste a file into e-mail to send it. copy and paste works just fine! Especially since we find out in "Living Witness" that they DO have a backup copy.
Again, because of the literary incompetence of "Technology vs. Plot = Plot wins". 
