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Old 12-18-2021, 04:13 PM
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In my research, this quote from Ronald Moore came up...


"Replicators are the worst thing ever. Destroys storytelling all the time. They mean there's no value to anything. Nothing has value in the universe if you can just replicate everything, so all that goes away. Nothing is unique; if you break something, you can just make another one. If something breaks on the ship, it's "Oh, no big deal, Geordi can just go down to engineering and make another doozywhatsit." Or they go to a planet and that planet needed something: "Oh, hey, let's make them what they need!" We just hated it and tried to forget about it as much as possible."


PNQ: Opinions?


I think that Moore is overreacting. The writers did a good job explaining why certain spare parts can't be replicated ("Empok Nor" comes to mind immediately). Sure, almost every food ever discovered can be replicated with a margin of imperfection (insert rant about how much I hate Eddington here), but that doesn't extend to spare parts or more complex medications. Furthermore, remember that food is reconstructed from a base material specifically designed to be turned into food. Spare parts have to come from pure energy, a much more resource-intensive process. It gets worse when you think about the more exotic base materials that have to be transmuted from the more common stuff.



Even so, I never like "Planet A needs a medicine that can't be replicated, but a plant over on Planet B can be turned into the medicine" plotlines.



Plus gold-pressed latinum is specifically nonreplicatable (although I wonder how anything that can be transported can't be replicatable even if it's not economical).
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