This was never definitively explained. What can and can’t be replicated seems to depend entirely on what the plot requires. For example, most medicines can be synthesised easily, unless of course it’s an Alien Plague With Dire Consequences and the Enterprise is needed to physically carry the vaccine to the planet that is suffering from it. Why the replicator can’t produce some raw elements isn’t explained either.
That occurred to me too. I seem to think it must have happened at some point, but I haven’t a cite. We only ever saw latinum on DS9, and people walk about the station more often than they teleport.
At any rate, transporters and replicators are not the same, even though the same effects are used. I’ve long suspected that transporters are ultimately based on a technology the Federation acquired from some long-dead race and which they do not entirely understand. Weird things happen using it that they are unable to replicate with any consistency.
In other words, a wizard did it.
Like, for instance, that episode on TNG where four adults went through the transporter and emerged as children. Of course, rather than seeing this as a fountain of youth and working out how to do it again all the effort is on how to get the people involved back to their adult state (and resisting an invasion by the Frengi, but that was just filler).
More to the point, why haven’t the Federation and Ferengi gone to war with each other? Taking over another government’s ship and putting its crew to work as slaves in a mine strikes me as pretty “declaration of war” territory. I know the Frengi are more analogous to a trading organisation than a unified people but still.
In the oringinall series episode “Elan of Troyius”, the main charactor is transported aboard wearing what turns out to be a necklace made of pure Dilithium, and the sensors don’t even pick up on it!
On DS9, Quark opined that Feringi were morally superior to humans because they didn’t have a history of war and enslavement, and Sisko didn’t argue the point. Pretending this isn’t a retcon (which it certainly is), I think the audience is meant to take it that the Ferengi bandits whom the Enterprise met from time to time were pirates, not privateers; i.e., that they were the exception, not the rule. Ferengi aren’t above profiting from other culture’s wars (i.e, selling arms to both sides) but they generally won’t wage it themselves, as the overwhelming majority of it think war is dumb.
I can’t argue with you, especially since my reference is at home, and I’m at work. If I can remember, I’ll check it when I get home and post what I find out.
I suspect it is two different cases; the position of the ship is given relative to the galactic core or Earth (sector 0,0,0) and the position of a target is given relative to the ship’s position; “Bearing 135 degrees mark 8” for example.
I believe that declaring war on the Ferengi would violate the Federation directive against not taking war seriously.
Not to mention the directive against not taking the Ferengi seriously.
yet when they were first introduced, they were supposed to be the next big bad - replacing the romulans - and there was clearly several battles with them - inlcuding the one where the “Picard Manuevuer” waas invented.
Isn’t the Picard Maneuver the one where every time he stands up he tugs his shirt down? 
It irritated my 12-year old self that Federation technology seemed to undergo a major overhaul in the week or so that passed between the end of Star Trek II and the beginning of Star Trek III. It made absolutely no sense for phasers and transporters and so on to be accompanied by different special effects. The prop phasers were completely different, too. It was made worse by the fact that Star Trek III’s tech was a big step down in the wow department.
Just to follow up, the Tech Manual isn’t absolutely specific (not surprisingly), but it does have a page on the SINS (Space Inertial Navigation System): “The Space Inertial Navigation System is the fundamental guidance base for the onboard navigational computer complex. It is activated and accurately aligned in the galactic coordinate system at commissioning in planetary orbit and thereafter maintains this alignment without error. The starship carries this datum with it (fwd) wherever it goes and moves within this reference framework: to port or starboard and up or down in any combination.”
The Galactic Coordination System shows a diagram with an example location bearing +58(d)00(cd)00(md) mark 300(d)00(cd)00(md) range 15.3375kpc, where (d) = division = 400
(cd) = centidivision = 40,000
(md) = millidivision = 4,000,000
Location of UFP:
Bearing 000(d)00(cd)00(md)
Mark 000(d)00(cd)00(md)
Range 10kpc (kiloparsecs)
Stated as “0 mark 0 - R 10 kpc”
So I believe the bearings are taken relative to UFP, not from the galactic center.
Watched “Mudd’s Women” last nite - they transported up with 6 lithium crystals at the end of the episode, with just a few minutes of battery power remaining.
Of course, that’s lithium, not di or tri, so, maybe later they can’t.
By the time of ST:TNG, they also have a shipboard method of recrystallizing the dilithium, which means they’re not as likely to find themselves short on dilithium at a crucial moment.
Unless the plot demands it, of course. :rolleyes:
That would explain a lot, including the weird temperamental behavior of the transporter at times.
Someone beams up with a whole lotta’ dusting of magnetic ore. So Mr. Transporter decides to split everyone going either way into two rather imperfect halves. Even heaters beamed down “duplicate” and neither one of one such a pair works. Oh, and Mr. Transporter even decides not to wait for the operator to return before turning out the second quasi-Kirk.
And nobody addressed the problem of Mr. Transporter continuing to do so indefinitely into the future. All we knew for sure at the end of the episode was that the order was given and the frostbitten men were beamed up, plus the fact that split humans could survive being put back together.
At no point did Scotty or anyone else say that, with what observations were made when Kirk was reintegrated, they could now properly reset or repair the transporter system.
But I suppose that they could hold off using the mysteriously ruined one until they reached a starbase, at which point a whole new system could be installed.
- “Jack”
“But Captain, we don’t have enough power to endlessly recharge our engines AND run the holodeck at the same time. What can we do?”
-Joe
Don’t forget Star Trek: Voyager, in which the holodeck’s power systems were mysteriously incompatible with the rest of the ship’s, so Harry can still get virtual blowjobs from a replica of Kes but the crew has to be on replicator rations.
Voyager was a festival of missed opportunities and stupid ideas. Which is bothersome because the series had such potential. If they had stuck to their basic premise–the ship being a lifetime from home & any support—they could have done endless interesting stories. Just showing the ship get more and more decrepit over the years because of their inability to do major repairs right would have been nice, as would, say, showing the difficulties with technological mismatches in the Delta Quadrant. I always wondered why their communications systems were compatible with any other ship’s; there was no reason for there to be a common protocol.
At least some of which could’ve stemmed from the fact that, y’know, a third of the crew had been forcibly recruited from the quasi-terrorist Maquis. Aside from some trivial lip-service, this was completely overlooked.
According to Wil Wheaton;
