this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
365 points (98.4% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
6065 readers
550 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Trigger Warning: Nerdy Pedantry.
ST "replicators" would be more properly called "fabricators". Replicators make more of themselves- they replicate. (see StarGate replicators for an example. or any of the NanoGoo scenarios.)
Fabricators on the other hand might be able to make more of themselves, but they're cheifly designed to make other shit- that is to fabricate.
In universe, I'm just going explain it away as, "This is what happens when you let politicians name shit."
As a side note, regardless of what ever you want to call it; why the fuck would you as a ship's designer have access to this technology and not literally integrate it into every aspect of you ship? Especially if you can go the other way- recycle matter back into energy.
grey- and black-water handling would literally be eliminated at the source. other trash, too. Armor plating damaged because Ryker boned the wrong chick again? replication units in the hull replace it automatically. Worf blows his load and you're now out of torpedos? Yeah. who cares, just salvage their hulk and make more.
Wesely crashes yet another shuttle because he's a kid? oh well. it's a good thing Earth has a lot of rivers.
☝️🤓The trek replicators do replicate things though.
Everything they can produce stems from an original object that was molecularly scanned and programmed into the replicator. They cant just make whatever out of nowhere, and they introduce miniscule errors and imperfections each time. Like making a photocopy.
Now these errors are for the most part irrelevant in most applications, because food for example is still very edible and nutritious even if it is not absolutely 100% as good as the original, same goes for most spare ship parts and such.
But still, trek replicators definitely replicate things, just not necessarily themselves.
Star Trek's replicators also modify the food, which may matter more than small-scale errors. They specifically create a copy of the food that is deliberately nutritionally tailored for your specific dietary needs, and to remove poisonous substances within it.
Those errors tend to be more of a problem for big complex molecules like DNA, or sophisticated things like computer chips.