The Big Plothole that you have to simply ignore because if you look at it everything falls apart

[cimorene]

I think perhaps it's generally agreed that the greatest plot... hole?... issue?... mistake?... in Star Trek is transporter technology, which is far too powerful as it's shown to work to bring people back from the dead (TNG), and I think also at some point alter their DNA (am I remembering that one right? Not that it matters, though, the back-from-the-dead ability, which obviously includes cloning/photocopying people implicitly, is bad enough). This is an ability which, as widespread as the technology is, would make monumental, fundamental changes to society that it... hasn't, because when they wrote that in nobody thought of it, and because fixing it after the fact would be pretty impossible, leaving no choice but to kinda ignore it.

I think droid rights/droid slavery is kind of this issue in Star Wars. It looks like that even being an issue was accidental and that nobody ever really thought it through at all? But it also feels like a fundamentally stupider error, because nobody accidentally wrote it in after the fact - you're talking about core characters written as sentient and sapient, memorable plot points about buying and selling them and then no other attempt to deal with it. I mean, maybe throwaway mentions of the existence of a droid rights movement was someone's idea of fixing it, but it doesn't work when the attention paid by the main characters (and the good characters) is so minimal. Even if it's intended to be a little horrifying perhaps - though I don't think it is - it doesn't work on sheer believability for me, because, you know, in human history, slavery (and other stuff like ethnic cleansings) at their worst and most widely-accepted state still had plenty of opponents. I suppose there's an argument that could be made that the lack of acknowledgement and support for that movement is explained by humans' natural lower empathy for non-human beings, but I don't buy it. (And also I don't buy that it was intentional.) Then there's the absolute disaster of the Han Solo prequel movie's treatment of the issue (although that can't be held against the rest of canon of course, but I think it adequately demonstrates that the modern era has nobody with a clue at the wheel in a supervisory capacity).

Comments

[oracne]

DEFINITELY, BOTH THOSE THINGS. I mean, meta-wise the point of transporters is to make it cheaper, effects-wise, for people to get from space to planet-of-the-week. And androids in SW, I feel, were there to "space up" the plot, but at the same time I think they filled roles that in an old American Western probably would've been assigned to a Racial Stereotype character, which makes the whole droid slavery thing a thousand times worse. ...I don't really have a point, I guess...just nodding along.

[cimorene]

True, the sidekicky nature of the roles and the fact that that's usually where representation and also horrible stereotypes get stuck adds a whole extra layer of gross to it beyond the inherent... slavery, which is ridiculous just to write. But also, they could have created a universe where all droids weren't clearly sentient and sapient, or where they couldn't feel pain, or where they weren't shown working everywhere in such numbers (like, there are human slaves in SW, but we don't see them on every planet and every rebel base).

[stranger]

In ST, if transporter and replicator technology is basically the same, yes. Transporters certainly change everything, but if food-and-other-producing replicators are common on Earth, that fucks up economics as we know it everywhere. Either Starfleet has a huge subsidy and the on-tap replicators are part of everyone's life-support (or salary, as it's known when using money) -- or, anything can be turned into anything cheaply, and there go economics, politics, and zero-sum games in general. Not that transporters don't imply much the same...

With you on the 'droid rights problem in SW. I actually made that one of the throw-away lines (in Leia's mouth) you're talking about, in a SW story about restoring the Republic -- ahh, the early '80s! -- and always thought it was a buried issue that nobody else saw, until Solo at least showed it up as a problem. But as you say, it should be a big deal.

[cimorene]

Oh yeah, well, transporters and replicators have to have matter or energy to convert into their final products, so they haven't solved scarcity exactly, but they definitely would cause a lot of problems for trade as well as the cataclysmic issues introduced by being able to UNDEADIFY people or make copies of them, which at the very least would be something you'd see massive legislation about and probably plenty of examples of. Star Trek does provide for the existence of non-replicated foods, and it's a meme in verse that replicated food doesn't taste as good as homemade, which shouldn't be possible if it's made from stored transporter patterns - it has to involve programming for that to be the case. (Either that or people don't taste the same after transport either, which means everyone who's ever been transported somehow has degraded! Definitely not Star Trek canon, but a good premise for scifi horror.)

Solo at least showed that it had occurred to someone that it was an issue, but I just can't get over the fact that multiple people involved in the production thought it was a good idea to do THAT with it.

[stranger]

Good points, yes. Replicator food could in fact be bland, or maybe just always exactly the same, probably, if it's programmed. (I sense a market for specialty programming, but how does that work with a non-money economy?)

I haven't really grappled with the "make a living copy" aspect of transporters, since I didn't really catch up with a lot of TNG after the first season. Ummm, ST isn't above creating impossible plots by the intervention of god-like aliens -- if it's only a one-episode plot point, could there have been god-like aliens in the wings facilitating the particular resurrection that happened, instead of it being an inherent transporter feature? Since, of course, the huge issues caused by having such a feature just *haven't happened* in the Federation as we see it in the overall ST universe(s).

That's grasping at straws, granted. Otherwise, there's a nice quasi-AU Federation (the one where people can be resurrected, but there are/aren't legal restrictions) that should be the background for ST overall. Has anyone even tried to write that one?

[cimorene]

Exactly. And that's how I vote the replicators, probably - but I don't really think that sameness is enough to make people say it doesn't taste as good by itself, there would have to be a big psych component, probably one that vanishes in blind taste tests. But at any rate the market for homemade persists, of only as a luxury. And we know they have those within the federation, if only in a relatively limited way, on spite of the worldwide elimination of hunger and poverty and discrimination (yeah right lol) that they claim to have achieved.

[cimorene]

As for the transporters, no, there's no other explanation when they do it. Like, I think there's some random bullshit like... The amount of data that fits in the buffer and the amount of energy it took but that's basically bullshit, nothing that couldn't be and wouldn't be logistically gotten around. The ep in question has Dr Pulaski, who is a horrible character justly hated btw, dying of a plague or sth, and they resurrect her from her last transporter pattern from the beginning of the ep, so several days old. If I remember right, there's another ep in one of the shows where they edit the transporter pattern in transit to like - fix someone's dna? Some kind of scifi genetic disorder? So yeah, in essence, even if it's legally restricted which is a leap for a spackle, since nobody mentions it when they resurrect the doctor, there HAS to be a black market, enforcement issues, and use outside the federation!

[stranger]

Ooo-kay, it's a really, really, unexplained plot hole. ST likes to think it's better than that, but it's still TV-level reality, so there we are. It's not like "warp drive" is anything but a workaround for FTL travel, even if it was an SF staple (under various names and hand-wavey explanations) for exactly that reason from well before the 60s. The transporter was like that, too, until ST used it to resurrect someone, which put life-and-death-(and DNA changes?) on screen as a possibility. Which, as you say, can't be ignored in a human society where people feel their mortality and want to deny it.

Unless we've had a lot more non-Starfleet parts of the Federation on view in later series than in 60s ST, and TNG/DS9/Voy, plus movies, maybe the ground-level society *does* have black markets in resurrection, as well as any legally allowed uses? The views of future Earth, and most planets, are very brief in terms of showing societal background. Taking Starfleet for the whole Federation may be skewed, and how much else do we see?

[cimorene]

Hm. I think there have been... some glimpses maybe. I remember a lack of unity, coherence, and logic in them most of the time - I don't think Star Trek writers have been very interested in it. Of course, there should still be more mention/visibility WITHIN the federation, if only because people are obviously aware of it. (Not to mention all the other times the totally available tech could've been potentially used that way in a pinch ON THE SHOW and wasn't.)