Was just thinking about this while taking a boring regular shower with water. A sonic shower just vibrates at high intensity to pulverize dirt and knock it from your body; but what about oils and lipids and all that other stuff that makes you stinky?
On a side note, I realized that the only time any dental care is brought up, it’s with the ferengi. The race with quite possibly the worst teeth in the galaxy are the only ones seen using cleaning utensils on them.
In-universe explanation: they’re advanced enough to be able to kill, dissolve, and sonically motivate bacteria and dirt - even in pores. This would leave you incredibly clean. Remember: they’ve got transporters. They reconstruct you from an energy beam in a split second, not noticeably disrupting your perception of consciousness. Sonic-shower precision like that would be considered child’s play.
Two things:
- Woah, I never really thought about it, but the not disrupting your perception of consciousness thing is huge. Not only do they have to replicate all of the electrons and neurochemicals in the right locations, but they also have to ensure that their motion continues in exactly the same way.
- If they’re able to do all of that, why the fuck does anyone ever leave a transporter dirty? They clearly already do some level of this with the bio-filters. Same with teeth, why don’t the transporters keep your teeth sparkly and your breath fresh?
Bonus points:
- Are water-based showers a luxury? Surely you could just slap a replicator in there and not have to worry about plumbing.
- Speaking of plumbing, I can’t recall seeing a toilet in Star Trek. Even if there are, they’d just have a matter decompiler in there, right?
- So, why not just use the transporters to clear your bowels then? Can’t shit your pants on an away mission if you got cleared out on the beam down.
- Like, why can’t you just roll out of bed, hop on the transporter pad, and show up to your classes at Starfleet Academy having had a Shower, a Shit and a Shave on the way!
The teleporter is already at the edge of their technological capabilities anyway, to the point they have to resort to some hacks to make it work.
ST Picard
Like keeping “common biology” like common DNA sections in the transporter’s firmware to not have to care about all individual aspects.
And this is even without accounting for malfunctions. Can you imagine eating the wrong vegetable and ending up tuvixed with poop?
New Debate just dropped: Was Janeway right to murder Poovix?
But it was a two for one special!
So if I was in a rush, I could just transport myself across the room, but leave all the dirt and oil behind?
I feel like that’s the equivalent of a person from 100 years ago hearing about the internet, and saying “so if I wanted to get somebody a message in a hurry, I could pen a letter, have someone take a picture of it, take the picture to a developer, and then send that over the internet to somebody?”
I mean, you could, and it would be better than what you have to do now, but the actual way they’d do it in the future is probably a lot better.
Yeah… kinda like handing each other full sized tablets rather then using email / messaging., version control… space git
Ho-ly shit… You got me thinking and - if it weren’t so OP that it’d ruin the storytelling, the teleporters would make the federation the most terrifying army in the galaxy…
Transporters should be able to fix pretty much anything wrong with you. Lost a hand? Don’t worry, we’ll replicate it from your last transport. Feeling sick? Nope - we beamed the little beasties away. Just a little dirty? Uniform rumpled? That won’t do, we’ll just fix that for you. No need to stop what you’re doing, it’ll happen in the background, you won’t even notice it’s happening…
K’ovok, Klingon warrior, led his troop’s third assault on the federation outpost. They had been locked in combat with the Federation army for three days now. His troops were covered in blood, mud and unidentifiable filth after three days of glorious battle.
The Federation “dolls” didn’t even look sweaty. Their uniforms were clean, fit perfectly and they were still smiling - always smiling - with their white, perfect teeth.
K’ovok swung his bat’leth through the neck of a federation p’tagh and smiled with satisfaction as the body fell lifeless - and nearly headless - to the ground. He turned to find his next opponent…and heard the slightest hum. Whirling, K’ovok found himself facing the same man he had just beheaded shaking out his arms and smiling. Always smiling. Even his uniform was spotless.
“Nice swing” the Federation doll spoke, slowly adjusting his neck and jaw. “You sure can dish it out! Let’s see if you can take it, too.”
No plague, nor illness, nor infirmity ever touched the humans. As soon as they passed through one of their transporters, which was often, any deviance from perfect health was simply cleansed. From overeating to plagues to simple sloth, there was nothing the transporters could not repair, replace or remove.
Aboard a starship the systems were even more aggressive. So long as you wore your combadge, your vitals were measured for any abnormalities. A slight tingle on your skin as bacteria or just honest dirt was transported away, added to the biomass the replicators drew from. Occasionally, you might lose a few seconds of time in the case of a really bad mess. More than one officer could relate a story about dying of a heart attack of moment and then waking back up still in the command chair.
Of course, the transporter system had required generating an intensely thorough understanding of human biology to perform these feats. Most other species refused to make use of human transporters, for that very reason. The information required to configure them for “best effect” was simply too dangerous to hand to another species, however “benevolent” they may be. The Vulcans had famously accepted the “gift”. And in fairness, the transporters did work as advertised. Disease, infirmities, even many indignities of aging simply went away from Vulcan, cured by the transporter.
But some still wondered, at what cost? The humans were allies, but they now had the data to engineer highly specific germs, plagues that could spread unseen through the galaxy, yet kill only Vulcans.
There was no evidence such pressures were being applied, but it was notable how quickly the aloof Vulcan empire had become fast friends with humanity. Subservient, even, to their so-called Federation of Planets.
Some whispered that it was yet more insidious - to function as they did, the transporters needed to understand your biology perfectly, from the beat of your heart, to the thoughts in your head. What if the transporters scanned for “unhealthy” thoughts and simply “cleansed” those too?
And yet The Federation came on, and ever on. Spotless and smiling.
Brilliant! Could be a nice mirror universe plot, with O’Brien being the non-commissioned master of the Federation.
With some of the transporter specific jargon heard throughout the shows, I suspect it’s possible, but would take some modifications to the targeting scanners to separate the crud from the person. Like how they separated Tuvok and Neelix from each other in Tuvix.
Tuvix was exceuted!
I’m familiar with enough transportation duplication accidents, where it seems entirely plausible to duplicate people. They just don’t do it for politeness? For Tuvix I think they should have tried to duplicate him, and then murder one of the duplicates. Then you have three crew members
I just can’t imagine section 31, not taking the opportunity to duplicate diplomats, and high ranking officials, when they get transported, and then torturing the duplicate for information…
If you have transporters a lot of problems become super easy
Schlock Mercenary is a webcomic that actually handles that exact situation regarding the duplicates for torture information. It can be considered a Space Opera like star trek, but with mercenaries.
Using transporters for hygiene makes me think, close air support and enemy fire ought to be easier to apart. Risky move.
All the duplications I know of were freak accidents that only happened because of some outside interference. A plasma storm, a spatial anomaly, an influx of chronitons… They barely even understand the cause half the time, and they’re not trying to recreate it because they already have pretty good cloning technology that they don’t need to use a transporter in a weird storm where they have the potential to be vaporized by lightning.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Transporter_duplicate
It seems like startrek lore has settled on multiple containment beams will duplicate people. It’s referenced multiple times. :) Even intentionally done under battlefield conditions… best Halloween party ever
IDK about child’s play but definitely enough for the lower decks engineers to clean overnight.
Not to mention that they can vaccinate against practically every pathogen, so they could eliminate the types of bacteria that cause the majority of body odor.
Seems like statistically, each year a certain number of people would be vibrated to death by malfunctioning sonic showers.
Not to mention all the horny people who go deaf taking a “high frequency” sonic shower.
In ds9 it is mentioned they seal teeth in. Wich prevents any degradation.
But not bad breath?
They didn’t mention it…
You gotta belive not. All that residue there, prime for bacteria attack…
I assume the federation has a treatment that makes your mouth inhospitable to cavity-causing bacteria
hugh and stamets are both seen brushing their teeth in discovery. i imagine its just not shown very often
We are actually working on that now! There’s a sweetener called Xylitol that essentially starves bacteria to death because they can’t process it.
Edit: just found out it’s poisonous to dogs.
I could’ve sworn I read something a few years ago about some scientists genetically modifying or identifying this mutant variant of bacteria that was able to outcompete the natural stuff, but don’t produce the stuff that harms teeth. Was sometime in the 80s but the FDA completedly blackballed it.
I’ve not actually tried a modern sonic shower so I’ll take your word for the limitations of them as things stand and guess they’ve figured out how to make them work effectively in the next few hundred years.
I think the Ferengi we see have excellent teeth, by Ferengi standards. you can see they’ve working hard to look after them, rather than trying to look like hoomans.
