Having technology not be exploited to the fullest extent that it logically could be is one of the main problems with the Star Trek universe. With the TV shows, that’s not a problem- it’s just agreed that for some reason characters on the show never do that. When you make the setting into a role-playing game, though, any GM can tell you that the players will wring every last possible advantage of said tech.
Transporters and Replicators are two of the worst offenders on both counts. The pseudoscience behind them is kept vague and exploitation of the technology kept to a minimum on the shows. Let players loose on them, though…
My own biggest issue with transporter/replicator technology was with regards to the Changelings in DS9. Supposedly, scanners somehow can’t just detect that someone is a Changeling infiltrator- which would include the scanners on a transporter pad. The problem here is that if you fool a transporter into thinking you’re not a Changeling- when you re-materialise on the other side, you won’t be a Changeling.
Thing is, is that a problem with the setting, or a problem with the players not buying into the setting? How is it any different to a player in a fantasy game trying to invent gunpowder or find some obscene loophole in the interactions between spells (or things like these)?
There’s a big difference between deliberately trying to subvert the setting, and just using common sense with regards to the tech. Star Trek deliberately gives characters in the shows plot-induced stupidity that makes them conveniently forget about things that worked fine in previous episodes. Usually, this is a case of writers not communicating between each other or not considering what the larger implications of something were.
You can’t accuse fans of not buying into the setting. And yet, how many Star Trek fans will complain and debate about how “Tech X worked in episode Y, so why don’t they remember it in episode Z when it would solve that problem just fine?”
When you run an RPG, those fans actually get a voice in how the plot unfolds. Especially in the 2d20 system which gives players Metacurrency to affect the plot.
We’ve seen a replicator (or something very similar) in Discovery. It appeared to be about half-way between a 3d-printer and a TNG-era replicator - and was definitely very slow! Definitely something you’d use for new items, but where possible you’d reuse earlier prodcuts rather than just create a new copy.
Discovery is more a reboot than a prequel; it’s played fast and loose with the tech even more than Enterprise or Voyager did. Even if one accepts that it’s supposed to be the same universe as the older shows, one has to cope with it ignoring the tech paradigms of the older shows.
as this is about replicators, transporters and the ethics and potential abuse of this technology.
Anyone else notice that voyager loses about 150% percent of her (not plot relevant) crew complement during her journey thru the delta quadrant?
So… transporters are basicly high resolution people printers, in fact i believe Mr. Barclay raised concerns about whether what comes out the other end is still you. There is also the case of the inadvertent cloning of then lieutenant Riker.
It is my headcanon that the transporters were used to print new redshirts, possibly using the deceased one’s body as source material… and funnily enough, this would likely be the LEAST criminal thing janeway did.
My headcanon is that Thomas Riker was not a clone, but a version from and alternate universe that was extremely close to the Prime universe
The Prime universe Potemkin and its counterpart both tried beaming their Riker aboard at the same time when a malfunction happened which caused the matter stream of the alternate Riker to pass to the Prime universe. Basic redundancies then prevented both Rikers from materialising at once, so purposefully failed this new matter stream and returned it to source.
Transporter technicians may have noticed at the time that there was a rejected transport signal but rejected it as a false positive because they tried beaming one person up and got one person.
Hmmm, that’s interesting. In TNG they did use stored 'buffer patterns" of people to change/fix some problems, like when Picard and others were children. It does make sense that if the transporter needed to know how to re-assemble people back together, that if you had a source of material/energy you could clone a whole army of whoever you wanted.
Due to the complexity of a complete person at quantum resolution (necessary for live transport of people), transporter patterns are stored for only a relatively short time after transport (because it takes up a vast amount of storage space). There’s a reason replicators only work at the lower molecular resolution, and even then only with various data compression methods (a replicated burger is to a real one as a digital photograph is to seeing something for real).
Also, replicators use a source of matter designed to require a minimum amount of change to save on energy.
So, being able to clone people with a transporter is an extraordinary resource-intensive way of doing things… and we already know that there are numerous ways of cloning a person in Star Trek, including methods of accelerating growth to produce an adult clone quickly. It’s a common enough technology that there are laws regarding clones. Transporter cloning is, relatively speaking, an inefficient method.
What if it was an evil person, and they programmed things like… civilian transporters to clone themself whenever the transporters beamed other people, so like… input of one person, output of the person being cloned. That would be an interesting way to have a take-over
problem with that idea is that If I was an evil treacherous person looking to take over a place, the last thing I’d want is a bunch of copies of me running around. You’d need instead to replace them with someone fanaticaly loyal to you…
Like maybe a Changling Infiltrator using it to sneak in a buncha Jem’Hadar?
As already mentioned by someone, I am pretty sure weapons, or specific type of weapons, couldn’t create with replicator. IIrc in one Voyager episode Tom Paris wanted to replicate a weapon for Holideck adventure, and got the response, that to some Starfleet protocol it is forbidden to the replicator for this. He ‘cheated’ then, when he used the replicator to create the components of the weapon.
After this episode I thought: if there is a protocol, that forbid the creation of several items, shouldn’t there also be some monitoring of the creation of components of forbidden items (sorry this many 'of", but I have no idea how could write it otherwise🤗) by one person in an specific time span (for example several hours to one or two days)?