Shuttlecraft emergency supplies

[Rex R]

Was reading a gripe how in one episode of TNG one of the shuttles crash landed and lo no water or food to be found. So in the 24th century the idea of stowing a two day supply of food and water is foreign to them?

 

[Bill S]

They also don't carry any supplies on them when going on away missions, like water or some food bars.

 

[Marc_G]

Don't they have replicators onboard? Sure if power fails replicators wouldn't work...

 

[David Schwantz]

Phazer is all you would need. Can kill small life forms to eat. Phazer can heat up solids minerals for cooking said small life forms, and at the same time you could extract water from the minerals for cooking, washing and distilling hydrogen for shuttle fuel.

 

[Scott_650]

There’s a simple rule that governs all resources available in any fictional situation:

Available resources are an inverse of the demand for those resources in order to generate dramatic tension.

 

[mh9162013]

Basically what @Scott_650 said: it's about the realities of a TV show or movie, not a mistake by the writers/producers.

If I recall correctly, the TNG Technical Manual says that Federation starships are to have an emergency supply of food and water in case of food replicator issues. If the starships have this requirement, I'm sure the shuttlecraft do, too.

EDIT: I quickly glanced at the TNG Technical Manual and couldn't find support for what I said above. But what I did find was that food replicators typically need "raw food stock" in addition to power, to create food.

 

[Hobie1dog]

fiction. no more needs to be said.

 

[Scott_650]

Basically what @Scott_650 said: it's about the realities of a TV show or movie, not a mistake by the writers/producers.

If I recall correctly, the TNG Technical Manual says that Federation starships are to have an emergency supply of food and water in case of food replicator issues. If the starships have this requirement, I'm sure the shuttlecraft do, too.

Thanks for the mention!

There’s degrees to what works in fiction, the creators are always going to rely on a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in whomever experiences what they’ve created. It’s a balancing act between over explaining/exposition, detailed world-building, and creating dramatic tension. And with TV shows/movies there’s the 500 pound gorilla in the room - production costs. How much money can a show use to fill in what some viewers see as “plot holes”? Every minute of dialogue, every SFX gag, every additional character, every prop, every set costs money.

The third of us who care about a high degree of “cannon integrity” would love that quick shot of the smashed by the crash shuttle emergency ration kit followed by a line of dialogue from a character pointing out how that raises the stakes of the situation. But the remaining two thirds either don’t care or don’t even think of things like that - they don’t have a problem making that internal jump from “crashed ship on a hostile planet equals no resources, everyone is going to die if they don’t do something”, for them it’s an acceptable use of the standard “trope” that being shipwrecked means the characters are in trouble. The creators depend on those tropes to allow them to show rather than tell. And to save money.

What tends to grate on me more than things like lack of shuttle craft emergency supplies is a lack of consistency. When the writers just throw something into the story to solve a problem or, even worse, just to include a “wow, that’s really cool!” moment - think Princess Leia using the Force to survive vacuum and fly through space or a character surviving a gunshot by wearing for the first time we’ve ever seen it body armor under their clothes - that stuff drives me out of the moment and indicates how little respect the creators have for their audience or the material.

 

[mh9162013]

It’s a balancing act between over explaining/exposition, detailed world-building, and creating dramatic tension. And with TV shows/movies there’s the 500 pound gorilla in the room - production costs. How much money can a show use to fill in what some viewers see as “plot holes”? Every minute of dialogue, every SFX gag, every additional character, every prop, every set costs money.

Fully agree!

"It's all about bucks kid. The rest is conversation."

 

[MClark]

Even the ISS/Soyuz was packing a shotgun (till '06) for bad situations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82

 

[David Schwantz]

Combo shotgun pistol. I want one

 

[SDramstad]

Its easy to deal with. Characters walk out of the cameras view and go to the food truck parked outside the set.

 

[Rob Campbell]

Shouldn't this be in the Nerd Pride thread?

 

[David Schwantz]

Are you calling me a nerd??

 

[Rob Campbell]

We're all needs. Myself included.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

The Russians included a three barreled pistol in the survival equipment for the Soyuz. I can post pics if anyone is interested.

 

[Scott_650]

Combo shotgun pistol. I want one

Could be done - all it would take is a drilling combo gun, a gunsmith with the right level of FFL and a cubic yard of money

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Missed the reference above. I've got pictures of the same gun, different name.

 

[bjphoenix]

They also don't carry any supplies on them when going on away missions, like water or some food bars.

When I leave my house going to get food or going to my office I carry more items in my pockets than they seemed to carry going down to an alien planet, and I just carry ordinary stuff not all the fancy EDC stuff that some people carry.

 

[mh9162013]

When I leave my house going to get food or going to my office I carry more items in my pockets than they seemed to carry going down to an alien planet, and I just carry ordinary stuff not all the fancy EDC stuff that some people carry.

Do Starfleet uniforms even have pockets?

 

[user 13]

No, an early Gene Roddenberry decree. No pockets on Star Fleet uniforms.