I’m glad there is no money in the Federation. Unless you count credits. Which are not money. Unless you use thousands of them to pay the Barzans. Or give them to Starfleet officers to buy things like tribbles and drinks at Quark’s.
I’m glad there is no money in the Federation. Unless you count credits. Which are not money. Unless you use thousands of them to pay the Barzans. Or give them to Starfleet officers to buy things like tribbles and drinks at Quark’s.
For TV writing, basically. If they actually used their technology to its full potential, the federation would never get into many of the problems they get into on the show.
Think of all those episodes where there’s intruders on the Enterprise or someone has gone missing but nobody noticed. What’s the first thing they do? Ask the computer to scan for life signs on the ship.
Turns out the computer is continuously monitoring the life signs of everyone on board! So why aren’t intruders immediately trapped with forcefields and security automatically notified? Why isn’t there an instantaneous, automatic amber alert when a crew member goes missing from the ship? Why aren’t injured/sick people automatically transported to sickbay instead of dying alone in their quarters or a low-traffic corridor?
The computer can also monitor life signs down on the planet, so it could and should transport people to sickbay instantly when they get injured. Otherwise, for dangerous planets with unstable atmospheres that block scanning and transporting they should not be sending crew down at all. Send probes! They can replicate tons of them, have them fly down to collect information, and return to orbit for rendezvous.
I always wondered why there is so much emphasis on mining. Why use bajoran/holographic slaves when you can just transport the ore directly to your cargo bay?
Plenty of episodes where crew members get trapped in caverns where the transporter can’t reach and they have to set up pattern enhancers. I would assume the miners are done ng just that, setting up pattern enhancers to increase range to whatever they’re trying to get to.
It also makes sense that ships would have overpowered, top of the line transporters and replicators. At least the best ships. I would assume that there are different spec l, lower quality devices in use. This was my main takeaway from lower decks. We’re used to seeing the best of the best on the enterprise. So yeah, if all of Starfleet was that good, both tech and people, they wouldn’t have so many problems. But it evidently isn’t.
Presumably the ore they’re mining can’t be transported safely at all because it’s explosive or something. It would also make sense that it can’t be replicated either, otherwise they’d just do that.