How accurate is Star Trek?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Alright, I have to bring up this money thing again.

I understand almost every good can be produced via a replicator. But, what about services? Yojimbo mentioned Cisco’s father running a restaurant simply to satisfy his own pleasure. He seems to be an exception, not the norm. There’s no way everyone is like him.

So what about the guy who has to program the holodeck computer? Or the teachers at the Starfleet Academy? Or the guy who has to repair a damaged shield generator? I seriously doubt these jobs are done without some sort of compensation.

Maybe it’s not money, but there must be something that they receive in exchange. Are we to believe the whole concept of GDP and GNP is irrevelent on Earth? Not likely.

22

In TOS, the impression I got is that members of Star Fleet didn’t need money except for when they were off the ship. All their food, clothing, shelter and medical care was provided for them. The only time they needed money was when they wanted to purchase something the ship couldn’t provide them, like tribbles.

There is a joke in “The Apple,” where Kirk asks Spock if he knows how much Star Fleet Command has invested in him and Spock starts to recite precisely how much has been invested in his training and Kirk says, “Never mind.”

In an episode or two or more, Kirk threatens to cut Scotty’s pay if he doesn’t solve that episode’s problem or promise to boost it if he does. In “The Doomsday Machine,” Scotty manages to re-charge the damaged Constellation’s phaser banks and Kirk tells him, “You’ve just earned your pay for the week.” The bartender wanted to sell tribbles to Uhura and Chekov at ten credits apiece and Cyrano Jones muttered, “Robber!” under his breath.

Clearly, they were getting SOME form of compensation, called “credits,” but we were never shown what a credit was. Perhaps it was some form of electronic currency, its value determined by the Federation government and everyone had an account. (If Uhura had bought that tribble instead of getting it as a gift, perhaps she would’ve contacted the ship’s computer and had it deduct ten credits from her account and deposit it in Space Station K7 bartender’s account.) Perhaps physical money didnt exist any more, except when dealing with a planet that still used it. In ST4, Kirk looks around 1986 San Francisco and remarks, “They’re still using money. We’ll have to find some.” I’m guessing he meant actual coins and bills.

Perhaps, in the future, we’ll all be paid by Direct Deposit, coins and bills will be historical relics, but our money will still be called “dollars and cents” even though no physical money will ever actually exchange hands. You just swipe a plastic card through a reader and the appropriate deduction from your account is made electronically. However, you would still be able to get physical cash if you should travel to a country that hasn’t yet joined the e-money system.

I’m not getting into the “gold-press latinum” question. I’m not nearly as familiar with DS9 as I am with TOS.

23

About the Money Issue…

The way I understand it, the Federation doesn’t use money for internal transactions… that is, a Federation McDonalds’ “sells” its synthburgers for free, perhaps? While at the same time, since other peoples in the same area of space DO use money, they have to have some sort of “external currency” to be used with the galaxy at large. Since Starfleet crewmen would have lots of contact with these other societies, they’d need some form of “universal” currency.

24

jab1, I agree with your assessment mainly, except to note that in at least one episode, “Charlie X”, Rand does make mention of the fact that the ship’s stores don’t carry the brand of perfume that Charlie gives her as a gift. I imagine it’s a situation roughly analogous to our navy, where the basic necessities, like food, uniforms, laundry services, are all provided on ship for free, but there are a few amenities that one can purchase if one desires to.

Again, I’m talking TOS. The other shows I haven’t watched nearly enough to try and fathom their economies.

25

There was a trivia question that asked, how much did the Enterprise cost? The answer was 50 billion credits. This was supposed to be from the episode “Mirror Mirror” but this was never mentioned in the show. I have read some of the original scripts contained background material regarding the characters and situations in the episodes that were never brought to the screen.

In “Catspaw” Asst. Chief Engineer Desalle (sp?) in command at the time makes the comment “I’ll bet you credits to navy beans.”

26

Re: Abuse of the holodeck:

I believe there was a TNG episode where Geordi created holodeck fantasies involving him and a female scientist visiting the ship. IIRC, she somehow busted him in the act, and they had a big fight. Apparently one of the main holodeck rules is “Not having fantasies involving crew members w/o their consent” or some such.

Don’t remember the rest of the show.

27

Aside from the usual complaints one can make about the veracity and likelihood of many of Star Trek’s various plots and premises, go out and get a book called Nit-Picker’s Guide To Star Trek, or something like that, which runs through every episode of TNG*** and points out errors in EVERY DAMN EPISODE!!

[sub]*** I am not a trekkie (or a trecker for that matter); I use that abbreviation because I can, okay?[/sub]

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Five months, one week, four days, 3 hours, 15 minutes and 53 seconds.
6565 cigarettes not smoked, saving $820.68.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 1 day, 19 hours, 5 minutes.

*“I’m a big Genesis fan.”-David B. *(Amen, brother!)[/i

28

In one episode of Voyager, Paris was running a betting pool where the stakes were replicator credits. Even though the replicators could make anything they needed, the use of them was still rationed evidently.

29

Well, to Voyager’s credit, using the replicator does use a lot of energy (compared to, say, a microwave oven). While this energy usage probably isn’t that big a deal when you can get refueled every other week or so, when you’re 75 years from the nearest gas station, every little bit counts.

30

True enough, SPOOFE. It makes sense that would be part of the reason–conservation of resources. But I was thinking that maybe this is how people got “paid” for their services, anyway. The “credits” were used for replicator rations, holodeck time, etc. A currency of sorts, independent of any shortage of supplies.

31

Perhaps “credits” refers to the quantity of the product in question that you can afford? Like, you may have 5 credits for apples, but 7 for oranges?

Or perhaps the writers are all just idiots? Star Trek should hire one dude to write/oversee the writing of all the scripts, and stick with him the whole time.

32

Either that, or you have 10 credits, and what you can get with them depends on how much energy/resources it takes to replicate what you want. “Tea, Earl Gray, hot” might take a few more credits than a glass of ice water. A Chicago-style pizza with all the fixin’s would take even more.

You may have stumbled on something, here…:cool:

33

Not to mention the fact that the stuff isn’t created out of nothing. A measured amount of raw material is converted into whatever is requested. (See the TNG Tech Manual, page 90.)

It’s really matter conversion, rather than matter creation. So, not only do they need to conserve energy, they need to conserve the raw materials for the replicators.