They were replicators all right. In Tomorrow is Yesterday, the security guard they beamed up from the air force base got some food from one in the transporter room - way too quickly for a dumbwaiter system. Kirk used it in Trouble with Tribbles - I assume the tribbles infesting his sandwich were in the chamber already.
The first, first pilot had April mentioning parkland around the cities, during his fantasy picnic. This was a pretty common idea about how life would be like in the future during the early '60s - I think the GM Futurama exhibit at the NY Worlds Fair had something similar.
Remember that Uhura buys a tribble with credits in Trouble with Tribbles. Spock also says something about the cost of their training in Errand of Mercy. Money is all over the place, or something that looks just like it.
In one of the TOS episodes – God, I’m slipping, I can’t recall which one – Sulu give a parting blessing to the guest star of the week, wishing that “The Great Bird of the Galaxy make smooth your path” or some such. The cast picked it up, and applied the Great Bird of the Galaxy title to Roddenberry.
A non-replicatable liquid metal, used as currency. Mixed with gold and pressed into bricks or strips (about 1/2 the size of a credit card) for ease of use. 100 bars worth of latinum apparently fits in a shot glass, although the brick will crumble to dust without the latinum.
Lack of initiative. Once the home problems are “cured,” all that’s left is either exploration, colonisation, or conquest.
Exploration can get you into trouble by meeting a marginally stronger culture without your moral scruples.
Colonisation simply creates a larger but still closed system.
Conquest is an abandoning of your precious utopia.
So eventually, the utopia fails, either from without (say, by Borg with a real mix of cultures strengths, unlike what we’ve seen, or some Asimovian Living Galaxy for instance), or from within by sheer lack of motivation leading to stagnation, which would eventually lead to some sort of conquest (either by revolution, evolution, or enemies).
Starfleet vessels have a gizmo that freezes down matter to near absolute zero, then “flips” the charge to antimatter. But this highly energy intensive: it takes ten units of matter to create one unit of antimatter.
Replicators:
Unlike transporters which are tuned to the quantum resolution, replicators operate at the molecular resolution. This means they construct macroscopic objects from constituent compounds…possibly elements. But not subatomic particles.
This is not to say impossible, just impractical, as the memory/storage of a quantum resolution pattern is exorbitantly vast: during a transporter malfunction on DS9 the senior staff’s patterns to the main computer core…and had to dump all but the most vital software programs to make room.
A prototype quantum resolution replicator synthesized Worf a new spinal cord when he broke his back, but apparently the bugs haven’t been worked out, since a few years later Nog required a bionic prosthesis for a leg lost to a Jem’Hadar’s blaster.
Money:
Aside from the neo/quasi socialist leanings UFP, I always felt that the “no money” thing was simply the lack of a physical medium of exchange. Everything bought and sold through electronic debit/credit.
Propaganda:
In an argument between Jake and Nog Jake proudly recites how Humans no longer need money, for humans strive to better themselves.
What does that mean? asks Nog.
Um…ah…bubububu…IT MEANS WE DON’T NEED MONEY!
Thus, we see UFP citizens swallow the party line without really thinking of it.
I’ve often thought that the Federation seems to be a rather boastful and self-aggrandizing society. I mean, they say that Starfleet isn’t a military force. Yet it looks like a military force, serves the same function, and has a command structure copied directly from 20 Century Earth naval forces. And they say that they’ve comquered hate and predjudice. Yet look how the TOS crew treats Klingons, or how the TNG crew treats Ferengi. Or look at the Changeling “witch hunt” in DS9. They might have conquered predjudice between humans, but it certainly appears that xenophobia has stepped into take its place.
This is why I’m sure that credits probably function exactly like money, even though they insist that the Federation doesn’t use money Let’s face it; critical thinking isn’t a highly developed skill for these guys. (Except for Spock and Data.)
I asked about the downfall of the TUU because it seems like the breakup of the Federation would be the next logical part of the storyline, if we were to go to the future future again instead of the past future. Or something like that.
This is probably why they refuse to go into the future. They know that there’s really nowhere to go but down. But they don’t have the guts to go there, so instead they went sideways (sending Voyager off into the Delta Quadrant) and have currently gone backwards (making Enterprise a prequel series).
A critic said that after * Lord Hornblower* C.S. Forrester would have to write Hornblower, the god. As ships become more powerfull and Star Fleet comes to be “Time Patrol” instead of “Space Patrol”, there isn’t much more to write. 1701D required Q as an opponent. One of the good things about 1701 was that it could best primitive planets, but it wasn’t hard to find guys as well armed as she.
A “Time Patrol” series, if well written, could be very entertaining. Of course, as all of the mediocre time travel episodes have illustrated, finding that good writing is no sure thing.
Also, I’m not sure why you figure that the balance of power is any different in the TNG era than in TOS. Sure, the federation ships are more advanced, but so are others (the Federation couldn’t suddently kick the Romulans’ asses, for example).
How to make a future series? Easy. Have the Federation run out of antimatter in their vicinity (retcon that they were primarily using antimatter nebulae). This causes the whole chain of replicators/free energy to fall apart. Bits of the Federation gradually fall off, until they’re back to basically Earth, the Vulcans, the Andorians, and the Betazoids, with the Romulans off to the side.
Transporters use a lot of energy, so they can’t use them anymore (thus writing out the writer’s crutch) and fusion-based warp drive can only reach lower warp speeds (hence the contraction of travelable space and the fewer major players). The first mission for Our Fearless Heroes of the starship Excalibur is to reestablish contact with Romulus and negotiate for their quantum-singularity drive.
Later players in the scheme include the New Collective (a group of Borg who split off, preferring a somewhat more individualistic society (like the renegade drones in that Voyager episode) and the Vorlons. Or a ripoff thereof.
I don’t mean the balance of power so much as the strength of the protagonist’s ship. If you aren’t the flagship of the fleet, if there are bigger bad guys, if you can be damaged by natural events (whatever that is in the Trek universe, but I digress) it makes for more interesting storytelling.
Which is why we need porn to be added to the mix. (Yes, I’ve seen Sexy Trek, and no, I want to keep these characters, just undress them and have them phase in and out of polarity…)
In the next to last episode of Season Five, In the Cards, Jake and Nog find an old baseball card of Willie Mays that Jake wants to buy for his dad but since he’s a Federation citizen, he doesn’t have any money. He then turns to Nog to borrow his money and they eventually get into a permutation of the argument that you just mentioned with Jake saying “I’m Human! We don’t have money and don’t need it!” or something to which Nog replies “Then why do you need mine?”
Let’s face it; critical thinking isn’t a highly developed skill for these guys. (Except for Spock and Data.)