# Did any Star Trek episode have a character with no job? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 5, 2016, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913 "2016-12-05T07:40:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/41 "2016-12-05T19:04:03Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Yes, quite impossible. I don’t agree. That’s one of the reasons I am a Star Trek fan. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/42 "2016-12-05T19:15:56Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Oh, Ter…that woman in The Deadly Years…[this woman would never be on TV today.](http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x12hd/thedeadlyyearshd0278.jpg) Was that before or after she started aging? :dubious: Anyway, she didn’t last long, did she? Should have been dressed in a red uniform instead of blue… ☹ ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/43 "2016-12-05T19:20:55Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > As for another with no job…Lokai. Travelling from port to port living off the goodwill of liberal, hippy socialist Feds…doing nothing but giving lectures. But not THIS TIME NOOOOOOOO…sorry, i got carried away. He was a professional refugee, sort of like Yassir Arafat (but obviously without his organization). Somebody like that would be constantly in the spotlight today. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/44 "2016-12-05T19:25:20Z")
Damn, those people must’ve hated mirrors. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/45 "2016-12-05T19:26:10Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Second of all, just because there’s no money doesn’t mean that people don’t have “jobs.” They just don’t get paid for those jobs with money. You can have an economy that rewards people with things like housing, food, etc. when they contribute to it, and refuses to reward them if they don’t. … And if you don’t agree with the system, you’re obviously insane. Off to a Re-education Center (oh, I’m sorry; a “Rehabilitation Colony”) with you! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/46 "2016-12-05T19:29:40Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > **The group identifies themselves, starting with Tongo Rad (whose presence must be handled carefully, owing to the delicate relationship between the Federation and the people of Catualla), Irina Galliulin (a Starfleet Academy dropout and a former love interest of Ensign Chekov), Dr. Sevrin (a noted communications and electronics researcher from Tiburon, who specializes in the theories of sonic manipulation), Adam (a popular musician), and two other women.** There’s your answer! The lot of them are living off Sevrin’s patents and royalties! Must be nice… :o ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/47 "2016-12-05T19:32:54Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Like Mudd, Cyrano Jones is an example of a ne’r do well human character. What, for transporting harmless little tribbles around the Galaxy? :eek: I hardly think Mudd and Jones should be mentioned in the same breath! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/48 "2016-12-05T19:36:50Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > I don’t agree. That’s one of the reasons I am a Star Trek fan. When they develop replicator technology, you’ll be able to give it a try … so long as you can pay for the energy you need. (Or, if someone gives it to you … for free… ☹ ) ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/49 "2016-12-05T19:41:55Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Even in a post-scarcity universe, you don’t send a ship out to explore with 400 highly trained people, and Doug. Go easy on Doug. He is still trying to find his purpose. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/50 "2016-12-05T19:45:57Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > Go easy on Doug. He is still trying to find his purpose. Sounds like a Far Side cartoon… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/51 "2016-12-05T20:09:34Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > There’s your answer! The lot of them are living off Sevrin’s patents and royalties! Must be nice… :o Unless Harry Mudd stole the patents and sold them illegally. I think a society like ST could exist. It just might not exist very well. Assume: energy is (virtually) free, and replicators exist. Every person on Earth can get all they need for basic survival (food, clothing, shelter) and do nothing all day if they want. There are probably hundreds of millions of people (billions?) who never leave their personal holodecks. Then there’s the normal Federation citizen. Each works to better themselves, to make a contribution. Sometimes they do good stuff, and sometimes they fail. These people don’t like the first group. They look down on them, but in a polite way. But they all believe in live and let live, and since they aren’t actively bothering anyone, no one bothers them. Then there’s the small but significantly important middle ground. The people who get free everything, but want more of it. The people that have everything they want and still aren’t happy. The born rebels, idealists, hippies as it were, those who can’t even conform to non-conformity. They are always agitating. They probably protest the Federation, and replicator factories. They probably want to go back to an agrarian, communal system. Once in a while they steal a spaceship and threaten the stability of the Order of Things. Something has to be done, usually at the end of a stick or a gun. That’s Kirk’s job. Thats why they get the best toys, because their job is the worst. Now whether society could function long term this way, who knows. It might stagnate in a hundred years, or even less. It might become easy pickings for Klingon types. The survival of all of those “layabouts” depends on the goodwill and skills of people like Kirk and Picard. What if they aren’t up to it? What if there aren’t enough people willing to defend the sluggards, the lifetime holodeck junkies? What if they just go off and leave the hippies to their own devices? Might be a big surprise to Adam and Severin when the whale probe, or the Sheliac, or the Borg come along and don’t bother or are unable to listen to their whining. Then Earth just becomes a memory. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/52 "2016-12-05T20:47:58Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > Go easy on Doug. He is still trying to find his purpose. Must not be very [special](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJJA6WRpvlg) then. ---
**Author:** ![Helena330](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/helena330/32/531_2.png) [@Helena330](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helena330)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/53 "2016-12-05T21:04:37Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > I don’t agree. That’s one of the reasons I am a Star Trek fan. I’ve been re-watching TOS and just got to Space Seed (with Khan) where they talk about the last world war, the eugenics war of the 1990’s. So we could be doing worse. We’re way behind on space travel, though, as that’s also when Khan launched the Botany Bay. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/54 "2016-12-05T21:23:48Z")
I think they’re advanced educational systems and medical science can get most people on the path towards self actualization, even if it is mostly a hobby of some sort. If you don’t fit in with normal Earth society, you can always head off to a colony and start some trouble. In the reboot, did Kirk have a job before Pike recruited him after his bar fight? He mentioned he had high test scores, but was he employed at the time? ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/55 "2016-12-05T21:26:11Z")
> [@Helena330](#): > > I’ve been re-watching TOS and just got to Space Seed (with Khan) where they talk about the last world war, the eugenics war of the 1990’s. So we could be doing worse. We’re way behind on space travel, though, as that’s also when Khan launched the Botany Bay. Yeah the late 20th and 21st century in Trek’s timeline is pretty rough. It gets worse before it gets better. > [@terentii](#): > > What, for transporting harmless little tribbles around the Galaxy? :eek: > > I hardly think Mudd and Jones should be mentioned in the same breath! :mad: He is definitely less of a con man but he has the air of a guy shirking responsibility like Mudd. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/56 "2016-12-06T00:14:50Z")
A Trek universe Leverage style show would be fun! ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/57 "2016-12-06T00:29:11Z")
> [@AncientHumanoid](#): > > A Trek universe Leverage style show would be fun! Make the characters all Ferengi and you may be on to something. “All hail the Grand Nagus!” ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/58 "2016-12-06T00:48:38Z")
> [@Helena330](#): > > I’ve been re-watching TOS and just got to Space Seed (with Khan) where they talk about the last world war, the eugenics war of the 1990’s. So we could be doing worse. We’re way behind on space travel, though, as that’s also when Khan launched the Botany Bay. The Eugenics Wars. The excuse the Federation always trots out to explain why they’re not all Bashir-level geniuses and, indeed, why Julian Bashir has to live in fear of a crime his parents committed to give him a better future. Sometimes, I wonder whether the eugenicists really failed. Look at the Federation. It’s a society that pulled itself up from a devastating world war, a war so horrible that people were able to launch interstellar craft with no records being kept and little mention made of the fact humans made it into deep space well before organized expeditions could catch up to them. It’s a society with advanced technology, technology capable of making a Khan or worse, technology capable of interstellar exploration, but one without the rule of law. And, finally, it was a society which gave way to a world government willing to join a galactic Federation of planets peacefully, without trying to impose its will on other worlds, even the really snotty ones, like the Vulcans. I always half-imagined that, in the chaos of global warfare and the general experimentation with genetic superhumans, some scientists managed to kill off the genes responsible for the worst examples of sociopathy and destructive impulsiveness to leave humanity a better species afterwords. They didn’t get all of them, but maybe they did get the worst of them, and Khan and his crew mates were the last surviving examples of serious, dangerous criminality in the human race. _That_ would put the anti-transhumanism of the Federation into perspective, knowing that a previous generation did the dirty work so they could abjure the whole messy business and just live with the dividends of that previous sin. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/59 "2016-12-06T01:07:08Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > …So you do what you do because it makes you a better person, because it contributes to the overall effort of society. In return, society provides you with what you need… Which is exactly how Marxism is supposed to work in theory; the TNG & later era Federation is essentially what the Soviet Union claimed it was working toward by “building Communism”. > [@GuanoLad](#): > > If there was no money, what was the deal with gold-pressed latinum? The Ferengi use latinum as a commodity money because it can’t be replicated. Gold (which can be easily replicated) is simply used to contain the latinum (which is a liquid). ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913/60 "2016-12-06T01:45:17Z")
I don’t understand the question. Throughout the series you have characters that are not employed in the traditional sense. Trelane didn’t have a job. Zephram Cochrane in TOS was a test pilot who crashed his ship and from that point on basically just “existed.” The little Clint Howard tranya dude… if he had a job they certainly never detailed it… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-star-trek-episode-have-a-character-with-no-job/773913.md?page=4)