Hey yall! I’m stoned af and watching star trek on a weekend, naturally. I lost my place since last weekend in TNG season 3, but I knew that I wasn’t far in so I just watched all the intros until I found where I left off. Episode 8 “the price”, Troi gets frustrated with the replicator for wanting a “real” chocolate sundae. This raised a question for me, wouldn’t food replicators be intelligent enough to simulate the process of “the standard” ingredients being processed into the recipe? Like I thought that was the point of being able to say “Earl grey tea, hot”. Like wouldn’t she just have to say “betazoid chocolate sundae” or whatever?
EDIT: SECOND QUESTION: Say you have a family recipe cookbook or whatever and the comfort food is in that cookbook, couldn’t you just say “simulate the process of making the recipe from this cookbook”?
The replicator kind of gives the answer when Troi asks: it has been programmed to have all food items provide appropriate nutritional content. It’s why there’s still a tradition of people cooking real food even though they have replicators. A few examples would be Pike, Sisko and his dad, and O’Brien’s mom. Also most or all of the Maquis.
Don’t forget Neelix. He was always cooking up some sort of alien dish in the mess hall.
And isn’t Klingon gak alive? I don’t think the replicator can create living things.
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