# So What Was the Prevailing Econonmic Theory on Star Trek: TNG? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2003, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336 "2003-01-23T01:37:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/41 "2003-01-24T16:44:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gorgon Heap \* > \*\*Data and Yar. > > \*\* Another reason it doesn’t count is that she only did it because she was infected by an alien virus. (or something) Afterwards she was filled with shame and never did it again. ---
**Author:** ![Gorgon\_Heap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f475e1/32.png) [@Gorgon\_Heap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorgon_Heap)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/42 "2003-01-24T16:59:54Z")
Yeah well last night I thought of another one: O’Brian and Kaiko (Keiko, Kako, Cake-O?). Them done had a kiddie. And didn’t Worf and whats-her-face do it in the holodeck - thus concieving little Worf, whatever-his-name-was? ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/43 "2003-01-24T17:33:31Z")
Alexander. I forget who the mother was, but she died somewhere along the line. > [@](#): > > (Maybe a couple of hours in a holosuite with the program of your choice…) I’ve always wondered about this. You’ve got a large starship filled with young single people. You’d think that the most popular holodeck programs would be “Slutty Orion Slave Girls” and “Orgy on Rhysa (sp?)” and that the holodecks would get to smelling really rank after a while 😃 Speaking of which: what happened to the holosuites on DS9? Those diappeared pretty quickly. I guess that Starfleet has a vice squad. ---
**Author:** ![av8rmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@av8rmike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/av8rmike)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/44 "2003-01-24T18:34:24Z")
> [@](#): > > **Alexander. I forget who the mother was, but she died somewhere along the line.** [geek] K’eyhlar, but I’m probably getting the spelling wrong. > [@](#): > > \*\*In seven years, there was never any sex on the Enterprise \*\* Picard and Vash, the woman he met on vacation on Risa, “Captain’s Holiday”. OK, that wasn’t on the ship… 😛 Riker and Ensign Ro, in “Conundrum”, the episode where everyone’s mind was blanked. Later she recanted and admitted it meant nothing. Sheesh, you know Riker was getting laid all the time… 😃 About the replicators, I’d be willing to bet that they can’t fashion anything _larger_ than itself or a certain arbitrary size. Not to mention the complicated machinery like warp cores and plasma coils & such. My Tech Manual isn’t nearby, though. [/geek] ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/45 "2003-01-24T18:43:27Z")
They were around until the very end. But people apparently got bored with teh pron and used it to play spy games and have a full-time holographic '60’s Vegas lounge act. I liked the lounge singer character, but there was an episode that centered around how much Sisko disliked the program. Why? Because in the real 1960’s, black people wren’t welcome in such a place. Then again, neither were Ferengis, and they seemed to eb cool with it. The problem with a racial utopia is that eventually people forget they were ever oppressed and start to lose their distinct cultural identities. Avery Brooks was too much of an activist to remember that. It would be silly, for example, for a Jewish guy to boycott the game Medieval Total War because of the anti-semitic persecution of the middle ages. ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/46 "2003-01-24T18:47:51Z")
_RickJay The Enterprise was not exactly a Greenpeace protest vessel; it was armed to the gunwales and blasted someone in every second episode._ I’ve always been fairly baffled by the irresponsibility of the society in ST:TNG that takes children along on a mission that routinely gets into military encounters and other life-threatening situations. _Diceman You’d think that the most popular holodeck programs would be “Slutty Orion Slave Girls”_ That possibility, though hinted at (crew members falling in love with their holodeck creations, the Barclay “Hollow Pursuits” episode, etc) has been massively glossed over. It would make a very plausible scenario within the ST mythos that such applications had been a major driving force in the development of holodeck technology, given the long real history of every new visual medium (painting, print, photography, cinema, video) having been rapidly exploited for pornography. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/47 "2003-01-24T19:10:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by raygirvan \* > \*\*I’ve always been fairly baffled by the irresponsibility of the society in ST:TNG that takes children along on a mission that routinely gets into military encounters and other life-threatening situations. > \*\* I’m of two midns on that. On one hand, you’re right; on the surface it doesn’t make any sense. On the other hand, 1. If you were to find that having their families with them made your naval personnel substantially more effective, might it not be worth the tradeoff? 2. It could simply be that the great majority of Starfleet ships are never in a serious battle, and might not even be armed, so there’s a blanket policy that makes sense for 95% of the fleet but also applies to warships. Maybe it would be too much of a hassle to have two different policies. 3. We don’t REALLY know the relative risk of spaceflight. Maybe the Federation only loses 1 or 2 ships out of every 10,000. What never made sense to me is… how could you ever PLAN for this? A ship has a finite amount of space. Assuming you have X crew, you know you need X\*S space, where S is the amount of space needed per crewmember (bearing in mind captains get more space than ensigns.) But they’d have to build extra space for Y family members, right? But how do you know how many there’ll be? You can’t. So how do you allocate that space? I presume a crewmember with a wife and kids gets more space than one without, but how is it divvied up? What happens if there just isn’t any more space and you want your kids to join you on the ship? ---
**Author:** ![Pythagras](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/45deac/32.png) [@Pythagras](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pythagras)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/48 "2003-01-24T19:34:34Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. It could simply be that the great majority of Starfleet ships are never in a serious battle, and might not even be armed, so there’s a blanket policy that makes sense for 95% of the fleet but also applies to warships. Maybe it would be too much of a hassle to have two different policies. Well I do recall Picard being flustered and disagreeing about kids being on a starship. It seemed that (or he could have stated it) it was a new policy that flustered him. > [@](#): > > What never made sense to me is… how could you ever PLAN for this? A ship has a finite amount of space. Assuming you have X crew, you know you need X\*S space, where S is the amount of space needed per crewmember (bearing in mind captains get more space than ensigns.) But they’d have to build extra space for Y family members, right? But how do you know how many there’ll be? You can’t. So how do you allocate that space? I presume a crewmember with a wife and kids gets more space than one without, but how is it divvied up? What happens if there just isn’t any more space and you want your kids to join you on the ship? On the ship, other than Keiko(sp?) O’brien, all the wives and adult family members were other starfleet officers on the ship… ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/49 "2003-01-24T19:47:40Z")
On the sex issue: Everyone’s forgetting Troi and the alien of the week. She was getting it all the time and probably from both ends. ---
**Author:** ![Daniel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Daniel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daniel)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/50 "2003-01-24T19:55:39Z")
I seem to remember an early DS9 episode where O’Brien and Bashir were at Quark’s Bar and were talking to Quark about how they don’t use money, but in situations where there are commercial interactions (like being a patron at Quark’s Bar), Starfleet officers are given a token allowance to allow them to interact commercially outside of the Federation. Which is how they paid Quark. It was implied that while the amount was trivial, it was a constant allowance, and a Starfleet officer who decided not to spend it on a weekly bottle of beer could save up some money and get a nice piece of hand-crafted jewelry from a passing alien merchant. ---
**Author:** ![Daniel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Daniel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daniel)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/51 "2003-01-24T20:02:05Z")
oh, and on the issue of holodecks used for simulated sex: At the start of TNG, holodecks could only simulate “things”, not humans. It was a first-season episode that introduced the technology. However, by DS9, it was obvious that the _only_ people who used the Holosuites at Quark’s for anything non-sexual were the dippy Starfleet officers. ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/52 "2003-01-24T20:18:53Z")
\*RickJay 1. If you were to find that having their families with them made your naval personnel substantially more effective, might it not be worth the tradeoff?\* That seems plausible: that carrying an ‘ecology’ aboard (families, holodeck simulating home environment, etc) has some massive benefit in terms of crew sanity on long missions. ---
**Author:** ![Sock\_Munkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Sock\_Munkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sock_Munkey)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/53 "2003-01-24T20:27:34Z")
The civillians were SUPPOSED to go into the saucer section which was SUPPOSED to detach and hang back whenever trouble loomed but they only did it in 2 episodes, go figure. ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2003, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/54 "2003-01-24T20:51:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by El Elvis Rojo \* > \*\*That’s all well and good for starship crew members being sent on missions, but what about Mr. Average Joe in San Diego, CA who wants to take his family on a nice vacation to Pluto for Christmas? Are plane/space tickets free as well? What about hotel rooms? And souvenirs? \*\* How would Hookers EVER survive if there was no money for sailors on leave? 😃 1. ``` As for what would drive mankind if there were no material gains, I think it would become prestige. I think the nature of man calls for him to strive to some level of superiority. If it isn't money, prestige would make a lot of sense. ``` Whether it is the top bakery guy (programs the replicator I suppose…) or Commander of the Fleet, you want to look down the line and say, “Better than THAT guy!” It always seemed to me to be a meritocracy in ST. Whether that is feasible, I don’t know. But their 5x lightspeed thing was always pretty shakey as well! 1. But there must be Regulations on what can be replicated. Otherwise nihilists would blow up every city because that is what THEY decided to do instead of being a couch potato. 2. No sex for seven years. More than most Trekkies get… ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/55 "2003-01-25T01:14:52Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by RickJay \* > \*\*What never made sense to me is… how could you ever PLAN for this? A ship has a finite amount of space. Assuming you have X crew, you know you need X_S space, where S is the amount of space needed per crewmember (bearing in mind captains get more space than ensigns.) But they’d have to build extra space for Y family members, right? But how do you know how many there’ll be? You can’t. So how do you allocate that space? I presume a crewmember with a wife and kids gets more space than one without, but how is it divvied up? What happens if there just isn’t any more space and you want your kids to join you on the ship? \*\* The _Technical Manual_ states that vast sections of the ship were little more than open space and used on an as needed basis. So if you had a family come aboard that had, say, 10 children, you’d take an area of the open space and convert it to living quarters. With replicators, it’d take only a couple of minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/56 "2003-01-25T01:37:24Z")
Yeah, and how many episodes have they taken passengers on board without a second thought? ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/57 "2003-01-25T01:53:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RickJay \* > \*\*In one Q-related episode, Picard derides the manifestation of a 20th century U.S. Army general as wearing a “ridiculous costume,” e.g. his uniform. It’s a terrible, suspension-of-disbelief-bending moment on two levels; \*\* It was the series premier and it was worse than that: it was Ollie North’s uniform, IIRC (whatever rank he was). Since the premier was right around the Iran-Contra hearings, it was just a “:rolleyes: Oh shut the f\*ck up already.” moment. I think I’ve watched like 5 episodes since. And what the hell was up with Picard’s “Jeepers! A Force Field. I’d better surrender!” in the same episode? It was a force field, albiet a big one. Why the hysteria? Luckily, Unconditional-Capitulation-Picard was never faced with the Tholians or something scarier. And why don’t phasers disintigrate any more? Has becoming peaceniks caused a loss of technology? And did they ever explain _in the series, on camera_ (I’m aware of the fan theories) about what happened to the real Klingons? The _smart_ ones from the real Trek? How’d the lobster-heads, idiots every one, manage to wrest control of the Empire from the real guys? Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/58 "2003-01-25T02:31:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > And did they ever explain _in the series, on camera_ (I’m aware of the fan theories) about what happened to the real Klingons? No, but I believe that they have said off camera that they’re not going to. Basically it’s a bit of continuity that they can’t explain away without something _really_ contrived. The alternative is sticking with the really lousy makeup job forever. It’s not a question of two different races of Klingons, though. They even make a joke about it in the DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” where they use footage from an original series episode. I was also going to chide you for not liking TNG, but if you only ever saw five episodes, and they were from the first season, your position is totally understandable. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/59 "2003-01-25T04:43:46Z")
_real Klingons_ At one point this was reasonably explicable. The Klingons are an empire with subject races, and in the Kirk days of exploration the Federation had only met a humanoid subject race on the periphery of the empire. However, they scuppered this with “Enterprise” which brings in the Cornish-pasty-head Klingons in the pre-Kirk era … unless you take the view that Enterprise is an alternate time-line where starship technology is more advanced due to Cochrane getting a sneak preview. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336/60 "2003-01-25T04:48:17Z")
There _are_ ways to explain away the Klingon discrepancy, even multi-series characters like Kang, Kodos and Kor. The one I tried to work into my own fan fiction suggested the Klingons have a long bushido-like tradition, but that around the time of the original series, they went communist and as part of their rigid drive for comformity, started surgically removing the distinctive natural head-bumps to make everyone look alike. Later on, this pseudo-communism started to crumble and the surgery fell out of favour (hence the Klingons of the early movies) and the entire system finally collapsed in the sixth film after the Praxis disaster. All the old warrior crap came back, and soldiers who had been physically altered had themselves rebumped, in a manner akin to changing a city’s name back to St. Petersburg. The smooth-headed/communist phase is something the TNG Klingons don’t like to talk about. Geeky enough for ya? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-prevailing-econonmic-theory-on-star-trek-tng/150336.md?page=4)