this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Let's talk about classism in Star Trek. How come Sisko gets his own cooking station so he can make real meals and the lower deckers don't even get a replicator with every recipe? Sisko is cooking bouillabaisse with fresh fish and Tendi can't even get pesto. Just straight up unfair bullshit.
Counter argument: what if anybody could get their own cooking station, and all they had to do was requisition for it. And, maybe there are other low-profile officers who do have them, but we’ve never seen them because they weren’t the main characters? Or, no one else really cares enough about making home cooked meals, so they stick with replicators.
~BoTh sIDeS /s~
If that's the case I bet Miles runs a perishables storage business on the side. Pop some fresh beef into the transporter buffer and at the end of a five year mission it tastes like it was dry-aged 90 days.
Does transported beef taste like it's been replicated?
Does a transported person?
Yes.
Miles probably cooks a proper corned beef and potatoes when the occasion calls for it.
Sundays?
Its almost certainly something like this, i bet its actually all coming from replicator allowance.
In voyager, Harry Kim mentioned saving up replicator rations to replicate a clarinet. I assume the same can be done for any hobby.
Nothing would stop anyone from slowly replicating an entire kitchen (except maybe physical space constraints), then replicating basic ingredients to cook everything else, possibly even saving rations that would go to complex dishes in the long term.
Voyager gives the impression that although replicator usage is limited, almost nobody comes even close to reach the limits in normal times and nobody needs to ever "save allowance".
That would make sense given most Starfleet ships are within a reasonable distance from maintenance outposts and known (and vetted) trading partners where restocking and fixing things is just another Tuesday.
That could make sense, if a ship is on missions 3 weeks away from a resupply it'd make sense if there's a replicator limit for individuals. Like they have allotments for full meals each day and maybe books or personal items, but they still need to keep par values if matter in reserves. If you respond to a distress call, it'd be difficult to explain that you can't replicate repair parts for the disabled vessel because Mark replicated instruments for an orchestra he wants to put together and Karen redecorated her quarters for the 13th time this month.
It also follows that, under these constraints, the captain, likely the role on the ship with the least turn over, would have the most customized shit. When the ship is in drydock, some lower deckers get transferred to other stations, and new ones come aboard, but the captain is pretty much always just hanging out. Makes sense they'd use that time for hobbies, and that they'd want that stuff in their quarters, which are, for the captain moreso than any other crew member, their home
This grinds my gears too.
Why does Pike have open flames and a cocktail lounge while Uhura sleeps in a ~~spacecoffin~~ bunk.
Maybe it’s only the plebs; doesn’t La’an have a stufio apartment for her quarters?
There might be a Captain's privilege with that, especially since Captains quarters are often larger than crewman's. But it could also just be a personal preference. Sisko was raised in a restaurant and takes pride in his cooking. He also got miffed at Kassidy because she burned some of his peppers he said he spent months trying to grow. So obviously there are space limitations on being able to cultivate real food. Miles and Keiko sit down to home cooked meals as well, and there was a bit in S2 of TNG where Riker, Polaski, Worf and I think someone else make scrambled eggs in their quarters on a griddle.
I'm pretty fussy with the food that I like, and sometimes there are times when I choose to cook certain meals myself, rather than have a friend or partner do it. It's not that what they'd make would be bad, but it certainly wouldn't be the same.
I imagine it's similar to my current relationship to programming software. I'm a more proficient programmer than the vast majority of people (a fact that is easy to forget when hanging out in techy spaces online), but I rarely code my own software. I mostly use open-source stuff nowadays, so I occasionally tinker to make changes, or add minor features, but most software I regularly use is far too large and complex for me to make much sense of. I imagine that programming in new replicator recipes would require a high level of food chemistry and technical expertise.
Pike gets an actual fireplace in his quarters too.
You would probably expect semi-permanent deep space stations to have larger living quarters than ships in general, and since DS9 was a Cardassian station, you can probably expect that they'd make the captain's quarters extra large.