I was going to post exactly this myself, so I’ll add: Ships aren’t completely dirt-cheap, since Obi-wan and Luke didn’t in the end go out and buy a ship (and they clearly weren’t really thinking of it, as Luke is making a rhetorical point about how ridiculously expensive the fare is). I always assumed Ben Kenobi had some money stashed under a rock somewhere, so the landspeeder isn’t covering the whole fare, just the difference between the Kenobi stash and the downpayment. But on the other hand, ships are cheap enough that a back-end-of-beyond farmer could have a “T-34” for his nephew/adopted son to joyride/kill whomp rats in.
Heh. And at that point 100% of all fatal accidents in the home would be caused by people falling off their frictionless toilets and breaking their necks!
Time to submit my own Star Trek script: Taking a Dump…WITH DEATH.
-Joe
That’s explicitly stated in the dialogue, if I’m remembering correctly. Something like:
Luke: “This is all I could get. Since the new [something] came out, these just aren’t in demand.”
Ben: “It’s alright, I have enough to cover the rest.”
I’m reminded of a funny scene in a star Trek novel. It starts in the middle of a conversation between two guests on the Enterprise from a non-Federation cuture:
Guest 1: “So I poked at prodded at the thing, but couldn’t find a control anywhere. Finally I got so frustrated I yelled ‘FLUSH, damn you!!’ And it did! What’s wrong?”
Guest 2: “…I need to get back to my cabin.”
But it was apparently on Alderan, since Obi Wan told Han, “2000* now. And 15000 when we get to Alderan.” I guess they didn’t have debit cards or branch banking.
*what they got for the floating fairmont.
As to Trek’s money issues, it always seemed to me that it was only Earth society, or maybe Federation, that did away with money. Ferengis, Klingons (iirc), various Voyager species, etc… still dealt with monetary units and bartering. iirc, ymmv, inafb
fb= future banker
And why is it that whenever a ship’s shields do fail it never occurs to anyone to simply beam over a warhead and let it detonate inside the ship? At most we get a boarding party beamed over. Boarding parties which never seem to bother with any kind of space suit or respirator, but it never occurs to anyone to seal off whatever corridor they’re in and flood it was nerve gas or depresurize it. ENT did have Mirror-Archer turning up the artificial gravity to trap a Gorn, but apparently nobody else ever thought of anything like that.
According to one line an an early TNG episode, Up the Long Ladder (aka the one with the Space Irish & Clones) “the ship cleans itself”. The subject was never brought up again.
The distinction between Earth society/government and Federation society/government has always been extremely vauge. Often one’s left with the impression that they’re one and the same. IIRC TOS had a bunch of references to things like money, “Federation credits”, and the crew being payed somehow. In Encounter at Farpoint Beverely Crusher had some kind of account she was charging stuff she bought in the marketplace too. In DS9 Quark’s always seemed to have Starfleet officers as well as Federation civilians among his customers.
You just answered your own question. If your aim is to capture the ship, get as much classified data from its computers and possibles, and reverse engineer energy tech, you want it mostly whole, which is not going to be accomplished by the method you suggest.
Now this is true. You’d also think they’d have battery-powered transport inhibitors in critical areas – both bridges, main engineering, and possibly sickbay – for such occasions.
Oh, sure, people bitch about Kenobi keeping the same last name when he’s hiding out from the Empire, but you think he should have a bank account?
You’re right. Remember all those times they tried to capture Borg cubes? Good times…
-Joe
Begun, the Clone Wars have…
All you need is a Death Star.
The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
I recall two instances in which Enterprise crew boarded a cube. The first time was in their first encounter, during which they knew nothing about their enemy and were trying to gather intelligence. The other was in the Commander Shelby two-parter, in which they were trying to rescue Picard. In both cases, transporting over a warhead was contra-indicated.
*[Granger has asked to take fresh DNA from some of the Enterprise crew in order to clone them, which Riker refuses]
Commander William T. Riker: One William Riker is… unique, perhaps even special. But a hundred of him, a thousand of him… diminishes me in ways I can’t even imagine.
Prime Minister Granger: You would be preserving yourself.
Commander William T. Riker: Human beings have other ways of doing that. We have children. *
You have to figure there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
And when they’re fleeing from the Cube they…throw torpedoes out the back hatch instead of transporting them next to (or inside) the reactor.
Too bad they didn’t bother saving one of those magic armbands - they could have just hopped over and grabbed Picard…and then presumably come up with a reason they couldn’t just use the most powerful weapon ever to just vaporize the Cube.
And on Voyager? Whether it was against the Borg or against their Tyranid knockoffs. In any of those cases they were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Still didn’t bother using their transporters as as weapon.
Sure. You’ve also got people who are perfectly willing to commit suicide in the name of victory. You don’t need Riker, you just need someone willing and skilled (enough). As for children, unless you’re really really confident that someone will write a subroutine to win things for the good guys by the end of the war, you’ll be handing over another drone for the collective.
A fleet fully armed and crewed warships at the touch of a button. But, nah. Let’s all just get assimilated.
-Joe
What magic armbands?
As for Voyager, it’s Tuesday. On Tuesdays, I don’t acknowledge that either Voyager or Enterprise ever existed, except for purposes of saying that on Tuesdays I don’t acknowledge that Voyager or Enterprise ever existed.
Riker’s already been cloned once, by the transporter. They could go to the other one and ask him for DNA.
I think he expected Bail Organa to float him some cash. “I have a message from your daughter. Something about Death Star plans.” “Great–I’ve been waiting for that!” “Hold on–there’s postage due.” “$%@*(& Jedi.”
“God damned space hippies. What’s next, FederationEx showing up and telling us that I have to pay because they don’t believe in money?”
For all we know, Luke saying “we could almost buy our own ship for that!” is true…but it’s a ship that while, technically, it’d get them there, it could very well have been for some beater that Luke could totally fix up to get there. As long as, you know, they didn’t have to make any sharp turns or anything.
The ones that let you transport through a shield, of course.
-Joe
Star Trek is full of magic arm-bands. Arm-bands that make you invisible, arm-bands that make you immune to time-dilation, arm-bands that protect against radiation, arm-bands for every occasion.
It’s also full of people like Carter Winslow, rich people. Carter Winslow was the “philanthropist”, in Spock’s words, who used several fortunes to support federation colonies which might otherwise have died out through starvation. Apparently the Fed and Starfleet don’t much care if their colonists starve and rely for disaster relief on the efforts of wealthy humans.
Well, considering that 99% of people on Earth are just sitting on their asses, the Federation and Starfleet are completely staffed with volunteers who explore space and save colonists just for the fun of it. So a “philanthropist” could be just an expert at persuading people to get off their asses and do something for a change.