And yet an argument for murdering Tuvix was they needed a cook, even though everyone hated Neelix’s food.
Anyone else on the ship could have learned to cook from youtube
Crewman Chell took over immediately with a full menu after Neelix left, so I’m pretty sure there was already something planned back then too. And it’s not like he enjoyed the work that he was assigned, so why wouldn’t they just let him work with Neelix before? Really, a lot of problems could have been solved by just allowing the Maquis crew a little more freedom in choosing their duties.
Shit they probably could have just set up an Emergency Culinary Hologram. Not like the Doctor would complain.
“State the nature of your culinary emergency. Oh Gagh? You serve it FUCKING RAW, YOU DONUT!!”
This would be excellent
It sounds like it would be a net-positive energy wise if they installed holographic emitters in the mess hall. Not only could they have one less person eating resources BUT they can greatly improve crew moral.
Then they can have a rotating roster of the best cooks, swapping between cultures or even cram all of that knowledge into a single hologram a’la the EMH.
While cooking is a complex chemistry exhibit that requires a lot of talent, it shouldn’t take anywhere close to the amount of processing power an EMH does. It just doesn’t need to know tens of thousands of procedures on dozens of alien species.
At most, it needs to know the equivalent of ‘not to overly kneed biscuits’ and ‘it’s a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake’
Speaking of holographic food, could you eat holographic food and have the same taste? Guessing you couldn’t get nutrients from it but I am just imagining. Eating cake and pie and no calories.
And everyone loves Tuvix’ cooking
I never understood that trope in the shows technobabble. Technically they have anti-matter reactors that produce so much power its unfathomable in todays world. Technically the replicator is a energy->matter machine… And the fuel for all these things comes from these crystals that they can detect from onboard scanners. Would it not then be plentiful enough to not require rationing? I can see the odd time when they run low on fuel, but constantly? really?
It’s just simply a fuel problem. As you pointed out, all energy comes from those dilithium crystals. There are other sources of energy one could harness but it won’t be remotely enough to power the ships systems. The replicator specifically uses a MASSIVE amount of energy and the conversion from matter -> energy -> matter isn’t a 1:1:1 ratio. There’s loss. So you’re always going to require some sort of fuel source which is the crystals.
However dilithium isn’t common to start with but surface-level dilithium that doesn’t require intensive mining operations is rarer still. The rationing gives Voyager more time and more dilithium for all primary ship functions. The ship likely wasn’t fully stocked with all needed dilithium for the trip because honestly it didn’t need that much for the initial trip it was taking. Once getting into the Delta quadrant they needed to stockpile in the event of coming into contact with hostile entities for an extended period of time, see ‘Year of Hell’ as an example of that.
The replicator is not a straight energy to arbitrary matter machine. It uses a lot of energy to rearrange matter quickly. But there are still storage tanks of basic nutritional components that go into the process. At least that’s what the Star Trek Technical Manual says.
Also, the dilithium crystals are allegedly not fuel, but catalysts or moderators. The ships (at least in the TNG era) still fuel up on cryogenic deuterium slush, of which half is converted into anti-deuterium before entering the warp core.
Enterprise-d, at least, had some limited capability to gather fuel from space with the ram scoops. These were the red things on the front of the nacelles.
Maybe it needs more jalapenos…
